The Madness of King Trump

Rambling speeches, delusions of grandeur, unhinged threats to friend and foe alike,,,and now a demand for “unconditional surrender” as his offensive against Iran falters in the first week of open combat. The Iranians have crippled the American military network across the Middle East, cut off the Persian Gulf to all Western shipping while giving the Israelis a taste of their own medicine with daily drone and missile strikes on Tel Aviv and other cities across the Zionist entity. America and Israel’s “achievements” so far have been the killing of 165 school-kids in an air-raid last week and the sinking of an Iranian frigate in the Indian Ocean.
Trump’s team initially believed that they could wipe out the Iranian leadership and force the Islamic Republic to beg for mercy in a matter of a few days. Their treacherous attack in the midst of negotiations to end the crisis neither shocked nor awed the Iranians. They killed some but not all the Iranian leaders. They destroyed some but not all of Iran’s stockpile of drones and missiles.
The Iranians, enraged at the death of their Supreme Leader and many others in the leadership vow to fight on no matter what the Americans or Israelis throw at them. Their Arab allies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, north Yemen and the Palestinian resistance are joining in to help them. The Iranians have cut off the Persian Gulf and the Yemenis are blocking the Red Sea to all Western shipping. The spot oil price is soaring. The stock markets of the imperialist world are jittery amid fears that a massive hike in the price of oil on the open market will trigger another global slump. The longer the war goes on the more likely that will be, And even the Americans are now talking about a five or six week campaign.
In Britain the Tories and the Faragists are predictably rooting for a Trump triumph. So are Starmer & Co and the ageing Blairites he surrounds himself with. Jeremy Corbyn warns that “we cannot let Keir Starmer drag this country into another illegal war. That’s why I tabled a Bill to require Parliamentary approval for the foreign use of British bases” – a view supported by the Greens, the Bennite rump on the Labour back-benches and beyond.
Starmer’s bid to allow the Americans to use British bases for their war effort has been blocked by four Cabinet ministers, led by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.  
Starmer is still trying to appease The Donald and the feudal Arab oil princes who invest in Britain but depend on American guns to keep them on their thrones. But wiser counsel has prevailed in Europe. None of the members of the European Union, apart from the Baltic States which are little more than American protectorates, have shown any enthusiasm to join the Trump crusade against Iran. And Spain’s social-democratic government has taken a more principled position, refusing to allow the United States to use its military bases for attacks on Iran and condemning the strikes as unjustified and outside international law.
And this is what Britain must also do. The mass movement, the millions who’ve marched for Palestine are now demonstrating to stop any British involvement in imperialist aggression, stop the bombing and end the cycle of violence that threatens to plunge the entire world into flames. Stop bombing Iran! Stop Trump’s war!

What choice do we have?

Starmer squirms while Gaza burns. He warns MPs that the Middle East is “close to the brink” and in “very real danger of a regional war”  but refuses to rule out British military involvement if Israel attacks Iran. He declines to say whether MPs would get a vote first on any military action. Why is that?
The obvious answer is that Starmer is waiting to see what the United States wants and at the moment the White House is keeping its cards close to its chest. At the moment we can only second guess what the Americans will do though Biden’s 30 minute telephone call to Netanyahu doesn’t bode well for the future of Lebanon. What is however certainly clear is that whatever Biden wants Starmer will do.
This is what the “special relationship” is all about – doing the bidding of the Americans and those sections of the British ruling class who believe that their global interests are best served through the might of US imperialism. Crawling to the Americans comes as second nature to right-wing Labour leaders who never seriously challenged imperialism when the British empire spanned the globe,
Starmer & Co stand for little apart from personal ambition and slavish support for American imperialism and what they believe to be the dominant section of the British ruling class. Sadly they face no serious challenge, at the moment, from within the labour movement. Labour’s army of local government jobsworths and the legion of trade union bureaucrats that run the big unions and the TUC have been easily bought off by the very modest package of reforms promised by the new government. Like Starmer and the ageing Blairites now back at the helm of the Labour Party the grandees think they can safely ignore the mass movement on the street in support of the Palestinians.
We must prove them wrong. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched through the heart of London last weekend demanding justice for the Palestinians. Hundreds of thousands more are taking part in anti-war protests throughout the country. As Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who now heads the Independent group in Parliament said “without further de-escalation, unimaginable horror is on the horizon. But as we stand on the brink of a major regional war, do not forget those who lie dead in its wake. Do not forget what has been taken from us, forever. Do not forget the people of Gaza, where genocide continues unabated.
“We continue to march because we refuse to let the memory of Palestinians die. We continue to call for an end to all arms sales to Israel. We continue to speak up for the only path to a just and lasting peace: an end to the occupation of Palestine. After a year of genocide, we might ask ourselves why we bother to carry on when our demands have largely fallen on deaf ears. As long as there are Palestinians who dream of freedom, what choice do we have?”.

Zelensky's illegitimacy

Zelensky with his master, Joe Biden

by our Ukrainian correspondent Alex Miller

The famous French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau once said that “the Tyrant is one who, against the laws, proclaims himself a ruler acting in accordance with the laws. The Despot is one who places himself above the laws themselves. Thus, a Tyrant may not be a Despot, but a Despot is always Tyrant.”

The President is a person elected by voting, but the absence of an electoral process clearly indicates that we are talking about a Tyrant or Despot.

Many are willing to ignore the fact that Vladimir Zelensky came to power illegally due to gross violations of the Ukrainian constitution. Today, half a decade later, we can say that it was the political “theft of the century” that shocks society.

Nevertheless, taking into account all the illegalities described below, according to the Constitution of Ukraine, if in January 2019 Zelensky was elected president for a term of five years, then in May 2024, this five-year period passed and the presidency expired.

Like a mad joke from one of his sitcoms, Zelensky’s election promise “to free Ukraine from political corruption” was met with laughter by viewers.

At the same time, his personal political corruption began in January 2019, when his party congress falsely announced the nomination of Zelensky as a presidential candidate.

Ukrainian legislation strictly requires registration of the existing 14 regional branches of the party that participate in the nomination of a presidential candidate. However, this law was violated and Zelensky’s candidacy was nominated by only one branch of the party, registered with the Ministry of Justice in city of Kryvyi Rih. From the very beginning, Zelensky’s nomination did not comply with electoral rules.

Instead of a legitimate nomination, the Zelensky party congress turned into a theatrical play by ‘Studio Quarter-95’. For those who may be unaware, “Studio Quarter-95” is a Ukrainian comic group founded by Zelensky and some of his schoolmates in 2013. The group perform stand-up shows to entertain the masses with crude and degenerate humour. Thus, the comedian-turned-politician used vulgar shows and illegal actions to campaign for election instead of regular political rallies. Indeed, much to the dismay of millions of Ukrainians and international observers, he always lied and acted as a political clown, performing as an entertainer in all political debates and interviews.

"The law provides for a strictly regulated procedure for meeting political parties and nominating presidential candidates,” says Verkhovna Rada deputy, lawyer Volodymyr Oliynyk. “The Servant of the People party was registered as a local organisation in Kryvyi Rih, and Zelensky was nominated for president from it, and not from the all-Ukrainian party”.

Thus, the mentioned party congress was nothing more than a crude caricature of nomination – another work of fiction and corrupted political machination.

Zelensky deliberately entered into his lifelong role as a president with the help of media promotion and deep-pocketed criminal oligarchs, but not the law. They also helped to stage-manage the later creation of a political party – the ‘Servant of the People’ - for entry into the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. According to the financial report filed to the Ministry of Justice, the said ruling party rented just four square metres of office space in Kiev. This act legally proves the actual absence of the all-Ukrainian political party at the time of presidential election and its subsequent official registration after the elections.

At the same time, some new foreign actors began working in the shadows, paving the way for Zelensky’s rapid ascendancy in the murky, corrupt world of Ukrainian politics. Minister of Justice Pavel Petrenko and Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov actively worked behind the scenes to cover up the illegitimacy of Zelensky’s registration as a presidential candidate.

According to the testimony of eyewitnesses, Ukrainian deputy, journalist and right-wing politician Igor Moseychuk said “Zelensky paid a bribe of $300,000 to register his candidacy for president”.

“We were astounded by the level of backdoor corruption and public deception that accompanied the sudden rise of Vladimir Zelensky” noted one European-based election observer, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to ongoing investigations. “I think most Ukrainians would demand full accountability if they understood the full scope of the deception that occurred in 2019 and beyond”.

While a resounding defeat for democracy, the pay-for-register candidacy eventually turned out to be a relative success for Zelensky and his inner circle. Official forms were quickly filled out, and a political party without a permanent office, called the “Servant of the People”, was miraculously registered and went to the parliamentary election at the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. In total, according to the election results and if the reported votes are legitimate, Zelensky's party holds 247 seats in Parliament out of 450. A party with more than 226 seats in the Ukrainian parliament can adopt any law except the Constitution of Ukraine.

Later, realising that Zelensky faced criminal charges, he and his team began work to decriminalise responsibility for falsifying documents at the Central Election Commission. They created and passed a special bill. The authors of this bill were deputies from the “Servant of the People”, in particular, Oleksandr Kornienko, who today holds the post of First Vice Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada. They also attempted to hold early new presidential elections around the time hostilities broke out between Ukraine and Russia. When it became clear that any elections could entail huge troubles and loss of power, the Office of the President, in direct violation of the law, cancelled the elections “due to the military situation in the country” preferring to remain in office as long as possible with the iron fist of tyranny. 

On 21st May this year, after the expiration of the five-year constitutional deadline for new presidential elections, Zelensky’s Tyrant colours shone brightly as he formally forfeited the negligent amount of his ill-gotten legitimacy. His term of office has expired. He no longer has the legal authority to represent Ukraine as its top official, he has cancelled all elections and has completely lost his power as head of state. Yet Zelensky continues to flaunt his illegal, arbitrary powers without the consent of the people of Ukraine. On 7th August 2024, he passed and approved another law that allows press gangs to kidnap and send unhappy people to the front line without justice.

The Ukrainian people are gradually beginning to understand that the increasingly unpopular Zelensky clearly lacks the legal power to indiscriminately send people – including the elderly and physically impaired – into war zones or make any other decisions as head of state.

But endemic corruption, of course, dates back to the bloody coup d’etat of 2014, when Ukraine ceased to exist as a rule-of-law state. Then Washington and Brussels sponsored the implementation of neo-Nazis into state. These hardened criminals continued to occupy official positions including in the Ukrainian army. It is these dark, sinister forces under the Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Army, Vladimir Zelensky, that people face today in its existential struggle against a ruthless NATO proxy which acts out of the law.

Corruption always brings tyranny and despotism. Today Zelensky holds the office, like the Samosa dynasty that ruled Nicaragua for over forty years, for the benefit of US imperialism. Millions of Ukrainians pay the price with their lives.

The Ugly Americans

Last week the Americans blocked a move to grant the State of Palestine full membership of the United Nations. The State of Palestine is the autonomous authority that administers part of the Israeli occupied West Bank under agreements that the Israelis and their American masters now conveniently ignore. The motion was moved by Algeria on the 15 member UN Security Council in New York. Twelve members, including People’s China, Russia and France voted for it.  Two – Switzerland and the United Kingdom – shamefully abstained and it was vetoed by the single vote of the United States.
Robert Wood, the American deputy permanent representative to the UN, pathetically said that his country had vetoed the request because there was no unanimity amongst members as to "whether the applicant met the criteria for membership"  – though the only objection was from the United States in the first place.
"Today is a sad day," said Fu Cong, China's permanent representative to the United Nations. "Due to the veto of the United States, Palestine's application to become a full member of the United Nations was rejected, and the Palestinian people's decades-long dream was shattered”.
The Palestinians first applied for full UN membership in 2011 but they failed to secure the necessary nine out of 15 votes in the Security Council. They then went to the all-members UN General Assembly which overwhelmingly agreed to upgrade their status from "UN observer" to "non-member observer state" in November 2012. But hopes of full membership have now been dashed by American imperialism.
"Thirteen years is long enough, but relevant countries are still complaining that there is not enough time and they should not act in a hurry. Such a statement is disingenuous. Now more than ever, it is more urgent than ever to admit Palestine into full membership of the United Nations," said Fu. He said China "cannot agree with" the statement that "the Palestinian state does not have the ability to govern the country".
"The situation in Palestine has undergone many changes in the past 13 years, the most fundamental of which is the continuous expansion of [Zionist] settlements in the West Bank. The living space of Palestine as a country has been continuously squeezed, and the foundation of the two-state solution has been continuously eroded," he said.
"Relevant countries turned a blind eye to this, adopted an attitude of acquiescence or even connivance, and now they are questioning Palestine's ability to govern. This is completely gangster logic that confuses right and wrong," Fu said.
Whether Palestine meets the membership criteria stipulated in the United Nations Charter, and whether Palestine is "peace-loving", is "too much" to ask. "For the Palestinian people who have suffered from occupation, they are nothing short of rubbing salt into the wounds and are a great insult," Fu said. "The establishment of an independent state is the indisputable national right of the Palestinian people, not subject to questioning or bargaining," he added.
At the UN Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy, said “the fact that this resolution did not pass will not break our will, and it will not defeat our determination”. Back in the West Bank Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the American veto that had pushed the region “ever further to the edge of the abyss” was  “unfair, unethical and unjustified”. Indeed it was. It was also, sadly, entirely predictable.

A step in the right direction

US imperialism, after five long months of genocide, finally bowed to world public opinion this week by refusing to veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. But the Americans soon made it clear that they weren’t going to do anything about it,
If the Americans were truly concerned about the plight of the Palestinians they could have cut off all military supplies to Israel to force the Zionists to open up their check-points to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, accept a permanent ceasefire and to withdraw all Israeli troops from the Palestinian Arab enclave. Instead they’ve rushed to tell the world that the UN resolution was “non-binding” to assure the Israelis that the flow of American arms to Israel will not be suspended. 
This clearly wasn’t enough for the rabid Zionist leaders enraged at the further isolation of Israel on the world stage. Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the resolution as betrayal. He cancelled an Israeli delegation to Washington. “Israel will not cease fire,” Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz said. “We will destroy Hamas and continue to fight until the last of the hostages return home” while another minister said that “the Security Council decision proves that the United Nations is antisemitic, and its secretary general is antisemitic and encourages Hamas”.
Without sanctions the American abstention is in itself a meaningless gesture – a sop to the Palestinian solidarity movement that is sweeping across the United States and the rest of the world. Nevertheless it is a step in the right direction. Equally significant is the fact that  the Sunak government broke ranks with Washington on this issue – joining France, Russia and People’s China in supporting  the modest call on the Security Council for  “an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire”.
The Israelis thought that they could crush the Palestinians and drive them out of Gaza to clear the land for more Zionist settlers. They never imagined a war like this that has closed their Red Sea port of Eilat and forced over half a million Israelis to flee the country. They never expected such fierce resistance. Not just in Gaza. In the West Bank many Palestinians have joined the partisans to defend themselves against marauding settler gunmen. In the north Israeli incursions are paid back in kind by the Lebanese resistance on a daily basis. 
Now the anti-war movement is growing even in Israel. Former Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz says Netanyahu is leading Israel “from bad to worse”. A junior minister has resigned in the first public crack in Netanyahu’s emergency grand coalition while demands grow for Netanyahu to step down and call fresh elections.
While the Palestinians and Yemenis take on the Zionists head-on the millions on the Arab street and the millions upon millions throughout the world who have taken to the streets in support of their just struggle must step up the campaign to stop the Israeli slaughter and force the Zionists to recognise the just demands of the Palestinian Arabs. 

Take action for Palestine!

It didn’t take long for Israel to resume fighting in Gaza. The Netanyahu government has shown its true colours, jeopardising the lives of the remaining Israeli prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance by its indiscriminate bombing that is clearly intended to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for many years to come. 
On the Arab street millions upon millions are demanding action to stop the carnage. Across the world, not least in Britain, millions more are demanding an end to the fighting and justice for the Palestinians.
The Sunak government crawls to US imperialism and turns a blind eye to Israeli war-crimes. The Labour leaders who soon hope to form the next government do much the same. But the mass protests that week after week rock the streets of London and the protests that are taking place right across the country are fuelling the opposition to Starmer & Co within the broader labour movement. 
The demand continues for a ceasefire and for our politicians to halt their support for Israel’s war crimes. Make sure they hear it by supporting the protests until the fighting stops.

Kissinger leaves the stage

Though it ill behoves anyone to speak ill of the dead it would nevertheless be hard to find a good word to mark the passing of Henry Kissinger, the former US foreign minister who passed away last month at the ripe old age of 100.
Kissinger, the academic turned diplomat who served US imperialism during the Nixon era will, of course, be remembered as the pioneer who made a historic contribution to the normalisation of American relations with People’s China. He was also a supporter of detente which led to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union that curbed the nuclear arms race during the 1970s.
The political career of the man who was said to be the master of “realpolitik” in his hey day ended in 1977 with the defeat of the Republicans in the presidential elections. Kissinger returned to academia to promote his own legend while retaining an advisory role in Republican ruling circles right up until his death in November.
Kissinger may have called his dealings with the USSR “reciprocity” or “realism”. In reality it was just horse-trading with the Brezhnev leadership that was pursuing a futile attempt at achieving nuclear parity with the Americans to divide the world into Soviet and American spheres of influence.
But in what US imperialism considered to be its own “sphere” Kissinger merely continued the Cold War tactics of supporting worthless kings like the Shah of Persia and military dictators throughout the Global South who willingly sold themselves to US imperialism while supporting what we would now call “regime change” with disastrous results for the people of Chile and Cambodia. 
In reality Kissinger achieved little during his years in Washington. While he remains one of the few post-war American foreign ministers any can recall this is simply because those that followed him were much, much worse.

All smoke and mirrors

Quite why the Foreign Office has chosen to leak details of secret talks with the Russians at this time remains a mystery to the bourgeois media that unquestioningly published the story earlier in the week.
These sort of clandestine talks were, of course, the norm during the Cold War.  Hot lines and secret diplomatic exchanges via go-betweens in neutral countries remained open during the height of the imperialist confrontation with the Soviet Union. Vital links for spy deals, prisoner swaps and back-door channels to avoid misunderstandings that could rapidly escalate into a nuclear war that neither side could win. But if we are to believe the Foreign Office the only matters raised with the Russians at a number of covert meetings around the world were on routine issues of grain supplies and nuclear safety. These are issues that could usually be dealt with at ambassador level. They certainly would not normally justify covert liaisons in all sorts of places like New York and Vienna.
The Foreign Office is at pains to stress that at no point has the UK sought to enter peace talks around finding a diplomatic end to the conflict. If so what was the point of all these cloak-and-dagger meetings?
We can only guess at what was on the agenda but one thing’s for sure, and that is that the British envoys were acting as errand boys for the Americans. Though the Americans have been quite open about their own talks with the Russians they like to use trusted allies, like Britain and Japan, to raise issues without compromising their own position  in advance of any future direct negotiations.
Though Boris Johnson liked to pose as the man who persuaded  the Ukrainians to go for total war and break off peace negotiations with the Russians last year everybody knows that Johnson was only doing the bidding of Joe Biden and the American war-lobby which has used the conflict to tighten their grip over all their European allies.
Ukraine is essentially a protectorate of US imperialism. A vassal state that fights with NATO’s guns and lives on imperialist aid only keeps up the fight because the war is still in the American interest. 
No-one, beyond the chosen few in America’s ruling circles, knows what Biden’s war aims are but he’s clearly has got most of what he wanted when the war US imperialism provoked broke out in February 2022. NATO has taken over the once neutral states of Scandinavia. Russian gas and oil exports to Europe have been cut and US imperialism is now supreme in the UK and the European Union. It has come at a price that has largely been paid in blood by the hapless Ukrainians. But it has also cost the American tax-payers plenty in billions of dollars-worth of military supplies that can never be repaid. Now that bill is coming under scrutiny in the run-up to the next US presidential election.
Donald Trump is on the come-back trail claiming he could stop the Ukraine war in a day by talking directly to Putin. On the other hand the Democrats, still unsure on whether Biden is capable of fighting the next election, want to concentrate on their domestic reform platform which they believe will secure them a second term in office. They need a cease-fire to stop this becoming a campaign issue. But only time will tell whether the Biden administration is now ready to seriously talk about ending the war.

 

A step in the right direction

 When the United States openly called itself the leader of the “free world” American leaders were raised to Churchillian heights in the bourgeois media. General Eisenhower was, of course, a famous war-time commander who led the Anglo-American advance into Nazi Germany during the Second World War. A halo of sanctity surrounds John F Kennedy and the Carters, Clintons and Obamas are regarded as role-models for the “American way of life”. Ronald Reagan and the Bush family are praised for their supposed leadership during the Cold War. Even Richard Nixon gets a look in these days.
But what can they say about Joe Biden, an octogenarian US president who barely knows which day it is, facing a not much younger Donald Trump preparing to make a come-back while fighting criminal charges in four jurisdictions.
Last week Biden was at the G20 summit in India. President Xi Jinping of China and Russia’s Vladimir Putin gave it a miss. The Chinese delegation was, instead, headed by Prime Minister Li Qiang and the Russian by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as Putin could not travel to New Delhi because of the ludicrous “International Criminal Court” warrant for his arrest on trumped-up charges of “war-crimes” is valid in India. 
But they still got the better over the leader of US imperialism at the conference which ended with a joint statement that pointedly avoided any criticism of Russia over Ukraine. The  Zelensky regime had hoped the Americans would give them another cheap propaganda victory at  this international economic forum that consists of 19 major countries, including China, Russia, India, the UK and the United States as well as the European Union and the African Union. The final declaration, the Ukrainians said, was “nothing to be proud of”. 
But the Biden team were realistic. They went along with the consensus that merely noted "the human suffering and negative added impacts of the war in Ukraine with regard to global food and energy security". It was, as Sergei Lavrov, said, a “turning point” and a “landmark” decision.
The West had failed to ''Ukrainianise'' the summit declaration. The  final agreement on the wording was "a step in the right direction".
The G20 is being transformed from within by members from the Global South, with the West failing to hijack the intergovernmental forum’s agenda to focus on the Ukraine crisis, the Russian Foreign Minister said. 
Lavrov also touched on the declaration’s inclusion of important concrete objectives, like reforming traditionally Western-dominated institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and the need for the US and its allies to fulfill the obligations and promises made to the Global South, like technology transfers and financial support.
A new wind of change is sweeping the world as millions upon millions of people throughout the Global South rise up against Washington’s new world order. Another world is possible but it is not the European Union or the American dream of world domination.  A new and better world ia coming – the world Marx and Engels predicted and a world that will surely come to pass. It is already being built in the people’s democracies of today. It is now being fought for in every continent and every country.

Fare Thee Well, James Monroe!

by Bernie Holland

The ‘Monroe Doctrine’ originated by US President James Monroe in 1823 proclaimed that the whole of the Americas was its own ‘backyard’ and that any intervention by external powers in the politics of the Americas was a potentially hostile act against the USA. During the Cold War this ‘principle’ was extended to enable US imperialism to establish its hegemony over Western Europe and large parts of Africa and Asia.

It was during a visit to South Africa by US Foreign Secretary Anthony Blinken that Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor explained it is South Africa that will decide who their allies are and not have their choice of allies dictated to them by the USA. The purpose of Blinken’s visit was to ‘persuade’ South Africa that it should join the ‘democracies’ of the ‘international community’ in a concerted effort to isolate and contain Russia and to join the clamour and outrage against the Russian leadership in what can only be described as an effort towards regime change in Russia.
    As much as efforts are made to disguise the fact, this has been primarily the purpose of the provocation of Russia through the expansion of NATO over more than three decades. Over the same period, Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov have gone to great lengths to de-escalate tensions, largely borne of a Western animus towards Russia, by offering every opportunity to engage in diplomatic exchanges in the interest of furthering cordial relations. They have been rebuffed with insults and threats at virtually every turn, however.
    Gripped by an obsession with a ‘Cold War’ mentality, the USA continue peddling the lie that this ‘international community’ is united in ridding the world of the menaces of communism and imperialism, still viewing the Russian Federation as the old Soviet Union, the autocracy of which has to be supplanted by the liberal democracy of the Anglo-American sphere of influence based on 19th century geopolitical doctrine.
    Ignoring the fact that the emergence of that global majority of Eurasia and the Global South represents 85 per cent of the world community, the minority of the Anglo-American bloc display little in their view of the rest of the world that can be regarded as ‘internationalist’ in nature. In their drive to isolate and contain others, particularly through punitive economic sanctions, they are only succeeding in doing exactly the same to themselves.
    Reflecting on views expressed by EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell, it appears that the West has placed a partition between its perfumed garden of freedom and democracy and that of the ‘lawless jungle’ of its former colonies to the east, perpetuating the mistaken view that this western democracy will prevail over the autocracies of both Russia and China.
    Herein lies the root of this problem, namely the pressing forwards a notion that it is necessary to create enemies of those who wish to be your greatest allies. The reason for this ‘necessity’ is simply that by removing the belief that these ‘enemies’ and ‘threats’ actually exist, then will come the abandonment of the idea that war itself is an imperative. And it follows that should this be the case, then so should be that of dismantling and abandoning the war industry once and for all.
    It is the greed and depravity of those who profit from the grotesque leviathan of the military industrial complex, however, sponsored by the central figures within corrupt political power bases, that guarantees the continuity of this evil, which can be likened to the growth of a malignant tumour, a diseased organ within the body of Mother Earth.
    We cannot look to others to cure this pathology. We have to assume the role of apothecaries to find a prescription to transform this poison into an elixir that can be administered to this belligerent juvenile, devoid of emotional intelligence, which thrashes around in violence, demanding that his perverse appetite be satiated by the suffering of others. We have to sift the herbs of truth, justice, compassion, dignity and diplomacy to fashion a pill, bitter-sweet in taste, that can be administered to lead those, driven by devilish functions, to a more enlightened condition of being.
    Addressing those who perpetrate this vile xenophobic, racist and fascist drive to demonise and destroy the Russian people, their traditions, culture and religious convictions, in taking the prescription of these medicinal herbs, they will be brought to accept that the people of Eastern Ukraine have voiced their unanimity in choosing to enjoy the peace and security offered to them by Russia, in a wholesale rejection of the imperative to suffer under this illegitimate Ukrainian regime that is infected with fascism.
    Furthermore, in containing the course of this treatment, the patient must abandon this conceit that the diverse characteristics of ‘exotic’ nations are an irrelevance to a Western mind that presupposes a dominant position across the spectrum of world affairs.
    It is this pathological narcissism that prevents the patient from realising the potential offered by a new model of internationalism, borne of the transactional relationships developed within this emergent global majority, by means of which the participants have gained the liberty to reject entirely any notion that a world order can be maintained through the prosecution of military interventions, the concoction of ‘popular revolt’ by means of externally sponsored ‘colour revolutions’ and the bringing about of the overthrow of regimes which, leaning more towards social emancipation, are not inclined towards being further oppressed by the predatory instinct of western imperial and neo-colonial interests that are intrinsically founded on premises that are specious and immoral and benefit no one other than the merchants of death who reside in luxury, distancing themselves from the world of the ‘foreigner’, soaked in blood and carnage and permeated with human misery.
    Whilst the US President and his pack of cronies stage the pantomime of their Summit for Democracy in furthering their futile attempts to dismember and dismantle Russia, China and the BRICS movement, Brazilian President Lula continues his diplomatic endeavours with Chinese President Xi Jinping, choosing to work out bilateral trade agreements rather than engaging in plans for the next ‘war of choice’.
    Whilst nuclear disarmament remains on the horizon, shining a beacon of hope for the further evolution rather than the extinction of our species, another form of disarmament has already been effected, that being the removal of the economic weaponry of the dollar as a tool of sanctions. This has been effected by the rejection of the dollar in favour of the Chinese yuan and the Brazilian real as units of international currency. Furthermore, Lula will be in Shanghai on 13th April for the investiture of former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff as head of the new Development Bank within which the dangerous speculative adventures, favoured by the failing Western banking cartels, will be prohibited.
    Furthermore, what will surely stick in the craw of this increasingly belligerent and provocative Transatlantic alliance is the fact that, with South Africa chairing the BRICS-Plus Summit this year, Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor will find her ‘in-tray’ heaped with more than a dozen applications from other nations eager to join this alliance of the global majority, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Algeria, Argentina, Mexico and Nigeria being amongst them. Just one question remains here – will the USA be dispatching their ‘sophomore diplomat’ Anthony Blinken on yet another tour of these countries demanding once and for all that they gang-up against Russia?

A pivot for peace

The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China is over. A new leadership with Xi Jinping at the helm will lead the 96 million-strong Party as China continues down the road of modernisation and Chinese-style socialism.
    Under Xi's leadership, People’s China has made remarkable achievements in the areas including poverty eradication, scientific and technological innovation and the fight against the Covid pandemic, which has greatly improved the living standards of the Chinese people. Now communists all over the world are looking to see how the Chinese communists and the people’s government that they lead will face the challenges of the next five years.
    China has become a beacon of hope for all the peoples of the world struggling to build their own independent economies without imperialist interference. While Anglo-American and Franco-German imperialism use their military and economic might to impose their neo-colonial rule throughout the Third World the Chinese people can, and do, provide the Third World with an alternative source of high technology and economic assistance without the odious strings attached that always go with deals with the West.
    China, whose economy is now second only to the United States, has become a pivot for peace in a world torn apart by imperialist greed and aggression. China is strong but it threatens no one. China respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries. It stays true to the principle of equality of all countries big or small, strong or weak, and rich or poor, and it respects the development paths and social systems independently chosen by all the world’s peoples. The people’s government is dedicated to promoting a human community with a shared future.
    This was a congress of victors and we are certain that there’ll be plenty more victories to come as the Chinese people march forward to build a modern, socialist China.

A focus for war

The greedy eye of American imperialism has long focused on Ukraine. In 2014 the Americans used the craven Ukrainian oligarchs and the fascist gangs that they finance to overthrow the elected government in Kiev. Determined to join NATO and tear up all the social gains made by the Ukrainian workers in Soviet days the American pawns could only rely on the rabidly anti-communist neo-nazi gangs for support whose pogroms against the Russian-speaking community led to the anti-fascist uprisings in Crimea and the Donbas.
    Eight years later the Russians were forced to intervene after repeated Kremlin efforts to end the fighting in the Donbas were spurned by the puppets in Kiev and their masters in Washington.
    The Americans armed Ukraine to the teeth. They sent in mercenaries and imposed punitive sanctions on the Russian Federation. They expected Russia to come crawling on its knees begging for mercy. But Putin is still there. The Russians are stepping up their war effort in the conflict that has brought devastation to Ukraine in its wake.
    Now under a hail of Russian missile and drone attacks the Ukrainians, and their shadowy American intelligence controllers, are believed to be planning a false flag “dirty bomb” provocation to justify direct imperialist intervention. They tried and failed in Syria. They must not be allowed to get away with it in Ukraine.
    Communists must lead the call for an end to the fighting and a just and lasting peace in eastern Europe. This can only come with a neutral and de-Nazified Ukraine that recognises the right of Crimea and the Donbas republics to join the Russian Federation and equal rights for all the people of the regions of the Ukraine.

Energy for Life

by John Maryon

All life forms depend upon energy. Humans have used rapidly increasing quantities since our early ancestors discovered fire. Today modern civilizations would collapse without an abundant supply of usable energy. Its misuse, however, can create dangers and threaten to destroy the ecosystems upon which life, including our own, depend.
    Our main source of energy is the Sun. A giant fiery furnace, 93 million miles away, in which nuclei of hydrogen under tremendous pressure and temperature fuse together, in a process known as fusion, to form a deuterium nucleus. This is the start of a sequence of events in which protons then collide with the new isotope to produce helium. In accordance with Einstein 's famous equation, mass is converted into energy in the form of intense heat. This chain of events can continue for some seven-billion years until all hydrogen is converted into helium and our star becomes a red giant.
    All existing commercial nuclear power stations on earth operate on the Fission process. Heat energy is created when a critical mass of heavy radioactive elements is brought together, in a controlled manner, to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. The atoms are split apart, which results in the conversion of mass into energy. One major problem is what to do with the highly radioactive fuel rods. Fusion, on the other hand, produces no long-life radioactive waste. For this reason, and the fact that hydrogen is plentiful, nuclear fusion remains the ‘holy grail’ to meet future energy needs.
    The key to successful nuclear fusion lies in the ability to sustain and contain plasma at temperatures of up to 50-million °C. The Soviet Union played a pioneering role in the late 1960s by developing an experimental 'Tokamak' Reactor in which the plasma was contained by a powerful magnetic field. This approach has been adopted as a basis for further research in a number of countries.
    Refined energy in the form of electricity is clean, convenient and efficient at the point of use. Traditionally fossil fuels, particularly coal, have been burned to produce steam to drive turbines for electricity generation. When transmission and thermodynamic losses are added into the equation the overall efficiency is less impressive. The big danger comes from the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere; carbon that has remained locked in the ground for millions of years is transferred into the environment. Coal has played a major role in providing our essential energy needs for centuries, and we should never forget the skill and courage of those mining heroes who faced danger every day at the coalface.
    Serious situations can arise if energy is used as an economic or military weapon. Nuclear power stations can pose a risk to the environment even under normal conditions – but the unthinkable could result from terrorism or military attack. Currently the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is being targeted with Western-supplied missiles by Ukraine armed forces.
    Each day conveys of tankers leave eastern-occupied Syria loaded with stolen oil plundered by US imperialism, oil which should have been used to finance the rebuilding of that war-torn country. The greed and bare-faced robbery of imperialism knows no bounds as it continues to plunder the world.
    Both Nord Stream 1 (NS1) and Nord Stream 2 (NS2) natural gas pipelines were severely damaged by a terrorist attack that is widely held to have been carried out in a special US–NATO operation on 26th September 2022. The action was intended to be the successful culmination of a long-running campaign to stop the supply of cheap Russian gas. Due to a failure however, NS2 could be restored quickly if required. As the supply of cheap reliable Russian gas is reduced to a trickle, large demonstrations are taking place calling for the lifting of sanctions against Russia.
    Despite of massive anti-Russian propaganda by the bourgeois media an amazing event has occurred. At the Oktoberfest in Munich the crowd sang the Russian folk song {Kalinka}. An increasing number, apart from the German Greens, are no longer fooled as they face the prospect of a cold winter and dependence on limited supplies of very expensive US shale gas.
    For decades the USA has been able to dominate the international oil market by controlling price, output and supply. things are starting to change, however. At the recent meeting of OPEC 2, which followed appeals from President Biden to increase oil output and support a selective price cap, the decision was taken to reduce output by two-million barrels per day.
    The days are fortunately numbered for the notorious petrodollar that has supported US domination of world trade and finance. Russia now trades oil not only in roubles but also other currencies such as Chinese yuan and Indian rupees. The replacement of the US dollar will represent the removal of another link in the chains that enslaves the world.
    Until fusion is able to provide an abundance of cheap, clean energy a number of serious problems will remain. Conservation of energy is necessary by avoiding waste and unnecessary use and by improving thermal insulation standards. Importantly, the use of renewable energy is vital to help protect our beautiful blue planet. Such projects can be costly and have a long payback period. This undoubtedly deters capitalist investors who looking for a quick profit would prefer to finance a drive-in junk food outlet. An expanded, fully financed public transport system would cut CO2 emissions dramatically compared with private cars.
    All types of renewable energy have their benefits and drawbacks. Solar power is fine on a nice sunny day but has no output during the hours of darkness. Wind energy has a major role to play but cannot function when the air is still. Hydro-electric power is making an important contribution and can provide great benefit but cannot be applied in flat, drought-ridden terrain. Tidal and wave energy projects can make a contribution, but as with all civil projects great care should be taken to protect nature. The effectiveness of all these measures can often be improved when incorporating pumped storage schemes. The expansion of renewable energy is not helped by the insane, totally unjustified and disruptive attitude of the USA when it attempts to sanction Chinese solar panels on bogus human-rights grounds. It is important to avoid the potential disasters that can arise from fracking projects that can pollute the water table, increase the risk of earth tremors and emit more CO2.
    The most cost effective measures in many cases may come from simple improvements to basic home insulation standards. Amendments to building regulations to improve U-values have improved greatly but further improvements are justified by increasing energy costs. Light-emitting diode (LED) lamps have an efficacy far greater than that of an incandescent alternative. We must not forget that many poor people, the victims of capitalism, just cannot afford the high energy costs of today. To avoid shivering in the gloom this winter we must unite and fight to remove the Tories and redistribute the wealth of the idle rich that they represent.
    Common sense and reality are factors far removed from the collective stupidity and blinkered obsession of most European leaders today. They are apparently still unaware that they have fallen into a trap, set by the USA to destroy their industries and economies, by imposing sanctions against Russia that have backfired. Energy prices would fall by at least 70 per cent overnight if the full potential of Nord Stream 2 could be realised and negotiations are started to end the Ukraine tragedy.
    Hydrogen as a fuel has a number of attractions. It is the most abundant element on earth and when burned as a fuel produces water as a by-product. An alternative to burning the fuel is to convert its energy into electricity directly in a fuel cell. Electricity is generated through an electrochemical reaction. Cars are becoming available in which a fuel cell replaces the drive battery. The infrastructure, however, is not in place to store and dispense hydrogen. Whilst the emissions of such a vehicle would be almost zero, the same cannot be said for hydrogen production itself. The usual commercial method is to extract it from natural gas, which is costly and produces CO2. Another method is to use electrolysis but that requires electricity.
    I have attempted to outline the chief physical considerations for a wide range of fuels used to meet our energy needs. Long-term security without pollution requires far more than relying on technological advances and leaving it up to the 'market' to decide. It requires political policies based upon a scientific, fair and objective analysis of the challenge. It requires a Marxist approach to apply the socialist planning, public ownership of natural resources and democratic control of the mechanisms of distribution to ensure a clean, secure, safe and affordable provision.

The New Communist Party campaigns for the following measures:

• Full Public Ownership of all natural resources and energy companies.

• A total ban on fracking.

• Restore rural bus services.

• Investment to expand the rail network and replace all diesel services with electric.

• Full Public Ownership of train and bus services.

• Greater investment into land and off-shore windfarms, solar power and tidal power.

• Planting trees and creating more green spaces.

• Make all products and packaging recyclable.

• Opposition to the evil intrigues, exploitation and naked aggression of imperialism.

As dead as a dodo

The Prime Minister didn’t need to meet Joe Biden in New York to be told that the Tory dream of an Anglo-American free trade agreement was dead as the dodo. Truss didn’t need to be reminded that the Biden administration is determined to uphold the Northern Ireland protocol and support the Irish position and that of the rest of the European Union. Nor would she be too happy to see Biden dismiss Tory economic dogma to tell the world that he was 'sick and tired of trickle-down economics' which never work. What she hoped to achieve at this meeting on the fringe of the UN General Assembly remains to be seen. But crawling to the Americans comes as second nature to those sections of the British ruling class who believe that their global interests are best preserved through the might of US imperialism. The politicians who serve them on both sides of the House call it the “special relationship” – a term first used by Winston Churchill in 1946 at the start of the Cold War.
    Churchill, the war-time Tory leader turfed out of Downing Street by Labour at the general election in the previous summer, may not have inspired the Anglo-American pact that was being built by the new Attlee administration. But he certainly started the myth of the “special relationship” claiming it was an alliance of equals who shared a common history, a common language and a common literature and therefore a common destiny in defending what Western leaders were already starting to call the “free world”. It was, in fact, a delusion, or as maverick Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle would say many years later only “special” in the sense that it was a one-way road.
    The strategy of the British bourgeoisie following the establishment of the Common Market in 1957 was to act as a trans-Atlantic bridge to defend their global imperialist interests by playing off Europe against America. But the “bridge” to Europe was burned by Tony Blair when he threw in his lot with Bush over Iraq while Washington sees no need to heed any “special” British concerns because Britain now has no one else to turn to for support.
    If Liz Truss does not break with the die-hard Ulster Unionists she will never get back into Biden’s good books let alone build a post-Brexit understanding with Franco-German imperialism. That is, of course, her problem not ours.
    The Treaty of Rome or the ‘Treaty of Washington’ – either way there’s nothing in it for workers. We need to argue for an end to the American alliance which is dragging us into a conflict with Russia that has already sent the cost of energy spiralling. We need to confront the labour bureaucracy and the fake left posers who support the trans-Atlantic alliance and NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine.
    Above all we must campaign for an end to the fighting in Ukraine and for a just and lasting peace in eastern Europe. This can only come with a neutral and de-Nazified Ukraine that recognises the independence of the Donbas republics, Crimea’s decision to join the Russian Federation and equal rights for all the people of the regions of the Ukraine.

Stand by China!

Nancy Pelosi’s controversial trip to Taiwan may have helped divert attention away from the claims coming from the Republican camp that much of her immense wealth comes from insider trading. But she was clearly speaking for the most reactionary elements of the American ruling class on both sides of the House when she embraced the puppet leaders of Taiwan to tell them that the United States will not "abandon our commitment" to the island that began following the defeat of Chiang Kai-Shek’s reactionary forces in the Chinese civil war and the establishment of the people’s government in 1949.
    US imperialism and its lackeys imposed a diplomatic and economic boycott of People’s China while Taiwan thrived under American protection. General Chiang made the island a stronghold to pose as the legitimate government of China at the United Nations until it was kicked out in 1971.
    US imperialism has long sought to make the Pacific an American lake. This seemed almost attainable following the defeat of Japan in the second world war but the American dream was shattered by the revolutionary upsurge that led to the communist victories in China and Korea.
    The American attempt to over-run the Korean peninsula was halted in 1953 and their puppets were driven out of Indo-China in the early 1970s. The Cold War against China was faltering and realistic circles were coming to the fore in Washington.
    In 1972 the American leader, Richard Nixon, made a ground-breaking visit to Beijing for talks with Chairman Mao that paved the way to normalisation. Formal diplomatic relations were established in 1979 with the United States recognising the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China.
    Kicked out of the United Nations Taiwan’s status reverted to what it always had been in reality – a breakaway Chinese province that was, in reality, a US dependency. People’s China has long sought peaceful re-unification under the principle of “one country – two systems” that applies in Hong Kong and Macau while working with General Chiang’s successors over tourism and commercial flights.
    But in recent years separatist cliques encouraged by US imperialism have come to power on the island raising the banner of an “independent” Taiwan and reviving the old American “two China’s” policy that many had hoped had been buried during the Nixon era.
    Now Nancy Pelosi and the sinister ‘deep state’ forces behind her want to turn the clock back to the dark days of confrontation. It didn’t work in the 1950s when China was still recovering from civil war. It certainly won’t work with modern China – a nuclear power that is also the second largest economy in the world.
    Sadly Liz Truss now talks about China’s “growing malign influence” and Rishi Sunak tells us that Chinese educational centres in Britain – the Confucius Institutes that promote Chinese culture and language – are the “biggest-long term threat to Britain”.
    But China isn’t a threat. It’s an open door for mutually beneficial trade. China is one of our biggest trading partners. Trade has expanded rapidly in recent years. China now accounts for over 10 per cent of UK imports compared with 2 per cent in 1999. Last year the UK imported £63.6 billion of goods from China. This accounted for 13.3 per cent of all goods imports, making China our largest importing partner. There were £18.8 billion of goods exports to China (5.8 per cent of all goods exports), making China our sixth-largest exporting partner.
    Crawling to the Americans comes as second nature to Tory politicians who believe that the interests of the ruling class are best served through the might of US imperialism. But these are not our interests. Britain needs China more than ever. The revival of the British economy can only succeed with a closer economic partnership with China. Confrontation can only lead to disaster.

Where’s the beef?

The Remainers told us that leaving the European Union (EU) would plunge the country into chaos, with empty supermarket shelves, rationed medicines and monstrous tail-backs of lorries at the Channel ports. The fact that none of this has happened despite the coronavirus lock-downs and lay-offs over the last year doesn’t appear to have been grasped by Europhiles, who still dream of another referendum to take us back into the Common Market.
    A lucrative new free trade agreement with Australia now opens the door to cheap meat imports from the southern hemisphere. This is a step in the right direction but there’s plenty more the Government should take to make the most of the UK’s new standing outside the shackles of the EU.
    Tory Brexiteers talk about “free trade” – but not when it comes to People’s China. Only last week the Trade Secretary, Liz Truss, was warning against the UK becoming dependent on trade with China. Why?
    Well, the answer is US imperialism. Crawling to the Americans comes as second nature to those sections of the ruling class who believe that their global interests are best preserved through the might of US imperialism. But Tory and Labour politicians should think for themselves for a change. China is already Britain's second-largest trading partner, just after the USA. China overtook Germany to become Britain's biggest single import market in the first quarter of this year.
    China is an open door for mutually beneficial trade. Free trade agreements with China and the rest of world will bring down prices on the high street and help end conflicts in other parts of the globe.
    During the ‘Golden Era’ of China–UK relations a few years ago, politicians repeatedly stressed the importance of a closer economic partnership with China. Now, after officially leaving the EU and under the impact of the global pandemic, it is clear that Britain needs China more than ever.

Grovelling to Uncle Sam

LICKING THE BOOTS of the Americans has always been second nature to the leaders of the Conservative Party. Now it seems that Labour is going down the same path. If anything, Sir Keir Starmer has outdone Boris Johnson in backing the ban on Huawei and the nonsense about it being a Trojan Horse for Chinese intelligence that the Americans have spread to justify upping the ante in their vicious trade war against People’s China.

Brexit is a golden opportunity for Britain to expand its trade all over the world. A UK–China Free Trade Agreement would clearly be of great benefit to both sides, along with similar agreements with India, Russia and all our old Commonwealth trading partners. But Johnson clearly can’t see beyond a one-sided trade agreement with the USA. Now even that’s in doubt, as it all hinges on Donald Trump’s re-election in November and at the moment he’s trailing well behind his Democrat rival, Joe Biden, in the opinion polls.

Joining Trump’s new Cold War effectively ends hopes of a new trade bonanza with China that could have provided the basis for a genuinely independent post-Brexit British economy. Now all Johnson can put on the table to replace the Treaty of Rome is a third-rate ‘Treaty of Washington’ that will open up British markets to US vulture capitalism for little in return apart from cheap food which we could get from any country in the world under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules and a ‘No Deal’ Brexit.

Bourgeois politicians and their media lackeys are now churning out the usual lies to justify imperialist confrontation, backed by agents of imperialism posing as Hong Kong “democrats” or Uighurs claiming to have fled from Chinese “oppression”. Meanwhile supporters of the Palestinian cause are branded “anti-Semites” and calls for an end to the war in Yemen are simply ignored.

Communists call for major cuts in military expenditure, the scrapping of Trident, the withdrawal of all British troops from the Middle East, and an end to trade wars that can only lead to more unemployment and economic stagnation. The cuts in the arms budget should then be used for peaceful and civil purposes and creating jobs for the whole of society. But the Achilles’ heel of British imperialism lies in the working class. The labour and peace movement can, and must, stop the drive to a new Cold War.

If not now, when?

Over 45,000 people, many of them elderly, have officially died from the coronavirus plague. But the UK recorded 65,000 more deaths than usual in the last three months, so the true figure may be much higher. Whichever way you look at it, Britain has suffered the deadliest COVID-19 outbreak in Europe and one of the highest fatality rates in the whole world.

Nearly 20,000 people are confirmed to have died of COVID-19 in care homes in England and Wales. We also have one of the highest death tolls in the world amongst health and social care workers during the pandemic. At least 540 frontline staff have died after contracting the coronavirus in England and Wales – second only to Russia, which has recorded 545 deaths.

Thankfully the worst seems to be over, at least for the time being. So now is the time for an independent enquiry into the Government’s handling of the crisis. Boris Johnson agrees but not now. He told MPs: “I do not believe that now in the middle of combating, still as we are, a pandemic is the right moment to devote huge amounts of official time to an inquiry, but of course we will seek to learn the lessons of this pandemic in the future and certainly we will have an independent inquiry into what happened.”

Now is the time. Justice demands answers, whether Johnson likes it or not.