Monday, February 10, 2025

Freedom for Palestine – no to ethnic cleansing!

No one, apart from the Israelis, can take Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza seriously.The Zionists always denied that the true aim of the genocidal assault on Gaza has been the destruction of the Palestinian population, and denial of all of their rights including the right to self-determination. They lied. 
So did those lackeys of US imperialism in Britain and Europe that not only provided diplomatic cover for Israeli aggression but armed and funded the Zionist state in its drive to crush the Palestinian resistance.
Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour Party who now heads the Independent Alliance bloc in Parliament has, however, taken the principled stand  holding Israel and those who are still sending arms to the regime rrsponsible for genocide in Palestine.
"The death toll in Gaza has already been updated to 61,709," Corbyn said. "The true scale of Israel's atrocities is only just emerging - and officials must face justice for every single life lost. So should those who continued to send weapons, knowing full well they were enabling genocide”.
Trump’s proposal is. of course, nothing new. It echoes plans that have been discussed by Israeli officials for many decades. Kicking out the Palestinians to turn the Gaza Strip into a millionaires playground may seem a good idea to the likes of Trump and Netanyahu but it is only a recipe for yet another war – and this time round, going on what Trump is saying, it will be American troops confronting the Arabs.
The Americans came unstuck in Iraq and the Israelis lost the Gaza war. Trump’s threats will not succeed in what the Zionist guns failed to achieve. Trump will not achieve what Biden could not do. 
Despite their vast resources, US imperialism and its Zionist lackeys have not broken the will of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people, who faced Zionist terror armed with American weapons for 15 months, will not bow to the empty threats of Donald Trump.

New Labour woes

This week a Scottish Labour MP  warned that the next government may be a “hard-line far-right effort” if Labour does not deliver “improved living standards”. Brian Leishman, who represents Alloa & Grangemouth, criticised his own party's government for not providing financial compensation to the ‘Waspi’ women who campaign against the way in which the state pension ages for men and women were equalised at the expense of many women.
Leishman was one of 10 Labour MPs who supported a Bill introduced by the SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn that would require ministers to publish measures to address the findings of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) report which recommended paying compensation to women born in the 1950s whose state pension age was raised so it would be equal with men.
Labour’s embrace of Tory austerity has led to further unpopularity on the street. And this week a new public opinion poll puts Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party ahead of Labour and the Conservatives. A YouGov survey puts Reform, at 25 per cent, narrowly ahead of Labour at 24 and the Tories on 21 per cent. The Liberal Democrats stand on 14 per cent, while the Greens are now at nine.
The Starmer government pleads poverty to justify means-testing the pensioners’ winter fuel benefit. It won’t pay compensation to the three million or so women born in the 1950s who were not properly informed about the state pension age increase. But it can find plenty to fuel the proxy war against Russia and pay for Trident and the rest of our so-called nuclear deterrent.  




Donbas communists: our historic mission

by Boris Litvinov

 Boris Litvinov, is the First Secretary of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) District of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF)


Our troops have advanced some 35 to 40 kilometres from Donetsk, which means the capital of the Donetsk People’s Republic is now beyond the reach of Ukrainian artillery and tanks, Now the administrative border of the Donetsk Republic with the Dnepropetrovsk region is just 10 kilometres away from the front. But there are still many problems due to the supply of Western weapons such as missiles and modern drones. So the attacks on Donetsk are still ongoing with weapons supplied to Ukraine from the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other NATO countries. But whatever weapons are used against us the decisive factor is the fighting soldier – the infantry. 
Of course, many people are now discussing the forms in which negotiations on ending the war will take place, but the question is, who will participate? And what will the negotiations be about?
At the moment, the DPR is not a participant in the negotiation process, as it was in 2014-2020. Today we are a legitimate region of the Russian Federation, according to the Constitution. Any negotiations on war and peace should be conducted by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Government of our common country. But, in our deep conviction, negotiations with Zelensky should not take place. Zelensky's legitimacy as President of Ukraine ended last May, when new elections were due to take place. He, Zelensky, is nothing to us right now. He can't decide anything. In fact, Zelensky is totally dependent on the United States and he is completely unable to make any independent decisions, so negotiations are possible only between the United States and Russia. But Ukraine will not even be the main subject of these negotiations.
Negotiations can be about areas of interest in the world; about global political and economic reconstruction like after the Second World War. And in such a new configuration of the world, Ukraine will become only part of a global issue.
Well, the main issue should concern all possible guarantees for the establishment of peace between states with different ideas about their future. No one should impose their will on others. Every state should develop independently of the wishes of others. And the peoples living in a particular region of the Earth must decide for themselves who to unite with, which state to be a part of, and which peoples to build their future with. We, the residents of Donetsk, Lugansk, and then Zaporizhia and Kherson, made our choice in a referendum – we will build our future with Russia. And this is the will of the overwhelming majority of the population of our republics and regions.
Now we see that Trump has already identified his areas of interest in Canada, Mexico, Greenland and Panama. And Russia also has its own post-Soviet areas of interest.
Russia stopped cooperating under the Warsaw Pact in 1991 in the forlorn hope that NATO would end its hostility to Russia. And one of the fundamental problems for Russia and its allies is that the NATO military bloc is moving step by step closer to Russia's borders. 
Nevertheless the time will come when none of the military blocs will threaten the other and there will be no military bases near the borders of Russia or the historical and traditional territories that were under Russian influence. We think that Trump probably understands this, and that the expansion of NATO to the East was a mistake.
European politicians – Macron, Starmer, Scholz and others think that they have a chance to end Russia, and that they should not miss this chance. In fact, European countries have been trying to do this for several centuries. Over the past 200 years, Russia has defeated Napoleon and the Ottomans; Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Fourteen of the Entente countries including the United States, Britain, France, Italy and Japan who intervened against Soviet Russia in1918 during the civil war that ended in their defeat in 1922. And the Soviet Union defeated the German Nazis and their allies during the Second World War. 
The Western countries tried to unleash a new world war against the USSR in the 60s of the 20th century. And the Cold War, declared by the West against the Soviet Union in 1946, has not stopped to this day, having turned into a hybrid war. 
The Russian people were able to withstand all these difficulties, thinking not so much about their personal well-being, but about preserving their historically formed land, preserving the covenant of their ancestors, strengthening the unity of the Orthodox faith and respect for the faith of the peoples inhabiting Russia, thinking and realizing the dream of humanity about a just society.
The people of Russia demonstrate solidarity in defending their interests, dedication, heroism and confidence in achieving victory over any invaders. It has always been so, and it will be so in the future.  And today, in the struggle for our true sovereignty, in the struggle against neo-fascism, in the new struggle against the West, we see that history repeats itself.
The 19th century Prussian Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, said "Make alliances with anyone, start any wars, but never touch the Russians...the Russians cannot be defeated, we have seen this for hundreds of years. Russians, even if they are dismembered by international treaties, will reconnect with each other as quickly as particles of a cut piece of mercury”. 
We are doing everything necessary to ensure that these warnings reach the minds of those who once again dream of ending Russia.
The Ukrainian state has turned out to be untenable. It can only exist together with Russia, and it has always existed as part of Russia. After the abdication of Czar Nicholas II from the throne in February 1917, the bourgeois rulers in Kiev proclaimed the independence of Ukraine. They held out on bayonets and money from foreign invaders for less than three years. But when they united with Russia and the other Soviet republics into a single socialist state – the USSR, Ukraine turned into a world-class advanced republic with a population of 52 million.
After the temporary cessation of the existence of the USSR, Ukraine again tried to build its independent country – again relying on money, weapons, and an alien Western ideology. And the result: the economy is in decline, the population is impoverished, Ukraine is being robbed by everyone, a war has been waged with its historically fraternal Russian people, and the population has shrunk to less than 30 million. This is the result of independence. Today, wars for the interests of the West are destroying the gene pool of Ukraine. More and more new generations of Ukrainians are being thrown into the fire of war.
We, the residents of Donbas, Zaporizhia, Kherson, and the whole of Russia, understand our historical mission – to live in peace with all peoples, freely manage our own destiny, and build on our land a just society that many peoples of Europe, Asia, America, and the whole Earth have dreamed of for centuries. 
And we, in our desire, will surely come to the victory of reason over the forces of evil. This is what our predecessors did, and we will continue to do so.


Sunday, February 02, 2025

Never Again!

The slogan used by liberated prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp to denounce Nazism is always recalled on 27th January, now known as Holocaust Day. That was the day in 1945 when the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops advancing into the Third Reich.
Millions, including some six million Jews, suffered and died in that unspeakable horror. And this year, on the 80th anniversary of its liberation King Charles joined world and religious leaders to mourn those who perished in Nazi death camps to pledge that future generations must never allow the horrors of the Holocaust to be forgotten or repeated. But the role of the Soviet Union that liberated Auschwitz is being deliberately ignored by the imperialists and their lackeys that use Holocaust Day to justify their own moral bankruptcy. 
The decision to exclude Russia from Auschwitz’s 80th  anniversary commemorations sends a troubling message to the world about the value of historical truth. When we start erasing inconvenient aspects of history to suit present-day narratives we lose sight of the lessons that history teaches us. The Holocaust and the broader atrocities of the Second World War  were enabled by dehumanisation, propaganda, and the denial of reality. To combat these forces in our time we must commit to an honest reckoning with the past even when it is uncomfortable.
Selective amnesia is dangerous. The Second World War was a global conflict that required immense sacrifices from the Allied Powers that combined to defeat Nazi Germany and its Axis allies. But no country paid a higher price than the USSR. Over 27 million Soviet citizens died in the war including 8,7 million battlefield losses. To erase or diminish that contribution is to distort the historical record and risk undermining the shared understanding that has underpinned the post-war international order.
 It is undoubtedly true that the Holocaust was perpetrated in a climate of anti-semitism and abhorrent racism deliberately fostered by the Nazis and the German ruling class. The Nazis didn’t invent anti-semitism but they stoked it up and fanned the flames to make pogroms seem respectable and even "patriotic". But it was not the existence of racist ideas on their own which led to Nazism and the “final solution” but the ruling class of finance capitalists which wanted war and territorial expansion.
 It was this class which used the Nazis to advance its aims and which systematically elevated racism – and particularly anti-semitism – in order to find an excuse for wholesale theft, super exploitation and war to provide a convenient internal enemy on which the attention of the people could be focused.
The Nazis said the Jews were to blame for people's ills. They said that it was the Jews who bled the country dry. They claimed that the Jews were the enemies of the Germans and the entire human race.These lies were told in order to conceal the real exploiters and parasites –  the capitalist class as a whole. It ensured that capitalism was not blamed while millions of innocent Jews, most of whom were working class, were persecuted.
The leading German bankers, manufacturers and other big capitalists made a great deal of money from the war itself and from forced labour and the camp system in general. They survived the fall of the Third Reich largely unscathed and some of their successors are still leaders in the field today.
 Yes; we should all learn from the Holocaust. We should learn to struggle against every form of racism. But we should also learn that it was capitalism which backed Hitler, it is capitalism which resorts to unleashing fascism when it cannot rule in the old way and it was capitalism which created the gas chambers of Auschwitz – these are the lessons of history.


Saturday, February 01, 2025

The Troubled Reality of Brazil

by Dermot Hudson

In December 2024 I paid my fourth visit to Brazil . Brazil is often portrayed as a glamorous paradise with bright  sunshine , beautiful beaches , majestic scenery and constant partying . However this image hides the troubled realities of Brazil – a country with a complex history which included one or possibly two periods of fascist rule (the initial period of the rule of Getulio Vargas and the Brazilian military dictatorship 1964-1985) and which still has much poverty and infrastructure problems (passenger railways are rare in Brazil ). Brazil also has a significant communist and leftist movement but sadly it is very fragmented and deeply split . Brazilian social democracy itself is not represented by simply one party but but by several ; the Workers Party of President Lula (PT ) , the Democratic Labour Party (PDT ) , the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB40) , the Social Democratic Party (PSDB) and also the semi-Trotskyite Party of Socialism and Liberty .
The glamorous image of Brazil is belied by scores of favela slums in cities like Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro. It was pointed out to me that a favela on a mountainside was visible from the beach at Copacabana in Rio De Janeiro. Since my last visit three years ago the far right government of Bolsonaro has been replaced by a PT-led coalition led by the veteran Lula himself, a former trade unionist and metal worker .The government is a coalition consisting of the PT, the PSB, the  communist PCdoB and the Greens. Lula's coalition had won a narrow victory over Bolsonaro in October 2022 but in January 2023 when Lula was due to be sworn in as President , the Bolsonaristas attempted a coup. On the 8th January 2023 , hordes Bolosonaro supporters tried to storm the Brazilian Congress and Supreme Court .In some parts of the country roads were blocked and buses were set on fire. The Bolsonaristas  hoped to get support from the armed forces but the armed troops either stood to one side or supported Lula. The Bolsonaristas riot evoked the precedent of Trump's supporters trying to storm the White House. It also had a much deeper significance than that .The Bolsonaristas hoped that the military would support them and stage a coup in their support, a repeat of the 1964 military coup against the reformist Goulart government . Bolsonaro himself had broken the post military dictatorship consensus by openly praising the Brazilian military fascist regime of the 60s and 70s, something that was for a long time regarded as No No by Brazilian politicians of all hues.
The present PT led coalition government is the 3rd Lula government and the 4th PT led government in Brazil. On this visit to Brazil, I did not witness starving people begging to bought food but I was told that this was still going on with some people pleading with shoppers to buy something for them. I also noticed homeless people living under motorway bridges. The favelas still exist and are very much present in the big cities. In Sao Paulo there is a right wing municipal administration which is trying to purge the homeless from the centre of Sao Paulo and bus and metro fares have been increased. Prices have gone up a lot since 2021, for example 500g of coffee now costs 26 Brazilian reals but in 2021 it was 18 reals and 10 reals a few years before that. Brazil is faced with a currency declining in value and budgetary deficit problems.
Internationally Lula has not supported the US-led imperialist condemnation of Russia but he has opposed Venezuela's accession to the BRICS bloc. Lula has taken an anti-Venezuela line and the Brazilian media is saturated with anti-Venezuela, anti Maduro propaganda.
Arguably despite several periods of administration lasting about 16 years , Lula and the PT have achieved little and less than the 'pink-brown ' reformist regime of Getulio Vargas (who nationalised industries and created the giant PetroBras petroleum corporation)  and the reformist regime of Joao Goulart .There is much disillusionment among PT voters and supporters . I was told that because Lula is "so useless" , the Bolsonaristas will be back at the next election . In Brazil as in many European countries the Left's espousal of trendy identity politics and liberalism  have switched off working class voters and built up a barrier between the Left and the working class , leading to workers turning to the right and far right .
Brazil is a country that has many supporters of People's Korea despite hostile media propaganda against the DPRK as well as the influence of the south Korean puppets in Brazil through K-pop music and garbage soap operas. In Brazil supporters of People's Korea are organised in the Korean Friendship Association (KFA) of Brazil , part of the worldwide Korean Friendship Association as well as the Brazilian Centre for the Study of Songun Politics(CEPS-BR)  and Brazilian Centre for the Study of the Juche Idea . I was able to meet the head of the KFA Brazil in Rio De Janeiro and a representative of CEPS -BR in Sao Paulo. Both organisations said that they were gaining new members and expanding their work .
All in all it was an interesting trip to Brazil. Brazil faces a difficult road ahead and it is not clear what direction Brazil will take in the future.
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