Monday News

There is the German Bild newspaper called the Bild. It featured an interview with the Ukrainian politician and oligarch Yulia Tymoshenko. She is being treated in a Berlin hospital. She tried to compare him or Vladimir Puti to Hitler. Putin made recent remarks. She said that Putin’s words were “the like of which the world has not heard since 1938.” She said that Putin represents unfiltered fascism, which was even more dangerous than Hitler’s National Socialism, because “he camouflaged it with phrases about friendship between peoples”, Tymoshenko said. Putin wants to “redraw the map of the world through wars, mass murder and blood”. This would become Putin’s “Mein Kampf”. This is extremism and totally false. The German newspaper in Germany called Bild has almost 2.5 million daily sales and a reach of over 12 million reading. This paper is spreading propaganda about the situation. Apart from the business daily Handelsblatt, which wrote that Tymoshenko’s statements raised “doubts about her state of mind”, no one in the world of German politics and media has rejected her Putin-Hitler comparison. Her words represent a distortion of historical truth. Tymoshenko trivialize the brutality of Nazism. German laws even forbid such statements. According to paragraph 130 of Germany’s Penal Code, if someone “denies or renders harmless an act committed under the rule of National Socialism”, such as genocide or crimes against humanity, it is punishable by up to five years imprisonment or a fine. She equates Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which was based on a clear vote by Crimean residents, with the Hitler’s war of destruction against the Soviet Union (where 20 million Soviet human beings were killed including millions of Jews, communists, and partisans who were mercilessly butchered even in Ukraine). This trivialization of Nazism and the Holocaust is wrong and evil. Tymoshenko has been praised in the Western media as an icon of Ukrainian democracy. Her right wing Fatherland Party has just formed an alliance with the fascist Svoboda for the planned elections in May. We know that German industrialists financed Hitler and President Paul von Hindenburg appointed him as chancellor in January of 1933 (because Hitler promised the capitalist ruling class that he would smash the organized working class once and for all and he would wage a war against the Soviet Union). The Nazis supported bigots in Ukraine to attack the Soviet Union. The Nazis used the Ukrainian farmland and resources as a means to fund that wicked Empire. There was the pro-Nazi OUN or the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists of Stepan Bandera. Bandera today is revered by Svoboda as a model and hero. Bandera worked with the Nazis during the Holocaust. On June 30, 1941, before the invasion of regular German troops, the wing of the OUN in the city of Lviv lead by Bandera carried out a massacre in which about 7,000 Communists and Jews were killed. Germany wants to get resources now and they are in cooperation with the EU and NATO allies. Svoboda, which is celebrated by the fascist German National Party (NPD) as “one of Europe’s most significant right-wing parties,” closely linked politically and organization ally with the British National Party (BNP), Hungary’s Jobbik, Italy’s Fiamma Tricolore and France’s National Front (FN). In May last year, the NPD faction in the Saxony state legislature received and entertained a delegation from Svoboda. Ten years ago, when Oleh Tiahnybok took over the leadership of Svoboda, he told his supporters in a speech, “Grab the guns, fight the Russian pigs, the Germans, the Jew-pigs and other vermin. Fight for our Ukrainian homeland!” These are allies of some in the German government. The German ambassador in Kiev met with Tiahnybok many times last year. Even the Christian Democrat affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation invited Svoboda members on study tours in Berlin. The Svoboda was a strong force in the Maidan (Independence Square) protests. Many fascist thugs helped to overthrow the government and they organized a reactionary putsch in Kiev. Yulia Tymoshenko knows these facts very well. Her Fatherland Party differs only slightly from those professing fascist and anti-Semitic views. Her electoral alliance with Svoboda was struck in close consultation with the German government. We should oppose fascism and imperialism forever.

The war activists and the peace activists advocate for an agenda. Many of them are in government positions. Some have huge funding, access to big media, and organize meetings all of the time. Some have contempt for the public and the war activists use fear a distorted view of nationalism as a means to gain support. War activists are propagandists typically. Many are not journalists, not researchers, and not academics. We should educate ourselves about these issues. William Kristol and Robert Kagan are neo-cons and war activists. They have their organization called Foreign Policy Initiative. It represents a modified version of the Project for the New American Century, which was an earlier war activist organization. The FPI talks less about oil and more about human rights, but they want the U.S. domination of the world. They find any success by anyone else in the world a threat to America. They want more military development and war if necessary to be an end in itself. This mentality was embraced by imperialists back in the 19th century. Agitators are deluded in believing that war brings strength and glory, builds character, and makes a nation a Super Power. Kristol recently lamented U.S. public opposition to war. The reason is that most Americans, via polls, are sick of wars. We are outraged in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. We don’t want new ones to start up again. In September, missile strikes into Syria were successfully opposed by public resistance. In February, a new bill to impose sanctions on Iran and commit the United States to joining in any Israeli-Iranian war was blocked by public pressure. The country and the world are turning against the drone wars. That is why real activists are right to advocate the dismantling the infrastructure that generate pressure for wars. There are military bases in over 100 nations. Weapons sales are growing. New nukes are being developed. NATO has expanded into the edge of Russia. The neo cons are invoking the Cold War as an excuse to promote war agitation (ranging from giving anti-ballistic missiles to Poland and Eastern Europe to literal military aid to the Ukraine). Kagan worked for Hillary Clinton. Kagan’s wife is Victoria Nuland. Nuland is involved in stirring up the situations in Ukraine as Assistant Secretary of State. President Barack Obama admires Robert Kagan. Kristol criticizes Obama as not going far enough and Kagan reassures Obama that he is doing the right thing yet he must build up the military a bit more. The war mongering by the current administration and previous ones can never be justified. We should build up own our nation. Even a small fraction of U.S. military spending can guarantee the whole world food, clean water, and medicine. So, we should fight against not only war, but oppression in the world via legitimate means. 

The whole situation must be discussed, because human beings are suffering in the world. Corporations in the States presently have massive profits and record tax breaks. Wall Street banking interests have record profits. According to the estimates from David Cay Johnston, American corporations hold about 7.9 trillion dollars in liquid assets. This level is higher than corporate revenues. There should be investments in STEM related fields. More human beings in America should have the opportunities to get into such careers. Such careers that are related to STEM fields are not going away, since we need concepts relating to science, technology, etc. as a means for us to develop homes, to grow infrastructure, to finalize engineering projects, and to advance technology in general. Also, we need a fairer tax code and there has to be revolutionary economic solutions here from ending QE to even establishing a guaranteed annual income (including other methods to fight for full employment. The central banking of the Federal Reserve blatantly benefits select monetary interests, which is antithetical to the aspirations of Main Street). Populists like Ellen Brown, Stephen Zarlenga, etc. want a fair public banking system (where banks are more decentralized not centralized. States, counties, cities, etc. should form their own banks as a means to strengthen economic power in communities nationwide). These banks can cause more direct economic improvement. So, the burgeoning movement for local, cooperatively-owned and community-oriented banks ought to be supported. We know that the error filled Federal Reserve is not public at all. We need the development of economic cooperatives too. Economist Kaoru Yamaguchi's computer model has shown that a public-based money system and spending government money on jobs fixing our infrastructure is the best form of economic growth. We should continue to support policies to fight racism, militarism, discrimination, and poverty. Massive austerity ought to be rejected since real folks want the poor to have justice not oppression. Solutions can’t be monolithic since our economic problems are very much complex.

In life, we have to learn more. Regardless, we are in a struggle for liberation. Now, we should be careful to not follow counterrevolutionary agenda. We are revolutionaries. We believe in workers’ rights and human rights in general. We should not only build up real infrastructure, but we should advance more radical politics. The oppression back in the early 20th century was terrible like today. Even Booker T. Washington by the end of his life began to speak out in more direct terms against Jim Crow, lynching, and D.W. Griffith historically inaccurate film of 1915 called “The Birth of a Nation.” In the early 20th century, black people were lynched all of the time. We have to reject xenophobia and chauvinism. Many counterrevolutionaries today love to cut welfare and social services as a means to advance “self-improvement” and “economic independence,” but such actions only hurt human beings, especially the poor. We have to have a class and racial analysis on why things are in the first place. Malcolm X was also right to advocate equality between the sexes. In other words, we have to reject fascism in all of it dimensions. Human beings should not only learn STEM fields. Human beings have the right to support the arts too including any form of culturally excellent subjects. We must agitate for solutions. The war on organized labor continues. A proletarian rebellion is rejected by the ruling class. So, the ruling class supports reactionary groups as a means to divide up humanity into warring factions and to allow folks to love the capitalist system. We know that capitalism has done wickedness. Chattel slavery was based on a plantation economy and accumulated capital via unfreed fixed labor. Even in the North during Jim Crow, black people were economically exploited. Still, the black proletariat and other black human beings have a tremendous impact on the evolution of the class struggle. C.L.R. James has argued that if it were not for the masses of black people in the South via the Underground Railroad and other slave revolts before the Civil War, the northern bourgeoisie and the Southern plantation owners would have compromised. C.L.R. James was right that Malcolm X wanted African American self-organization, but he did not want a new African American capitalist state. Malcolm X wanted equal rights for African Americans, but not assimilation into the white establishment capitalist society.  He said this after his Hajj into Mecca. He believed in equality in his following words from February of 1965: "...I believe in a society in which people can live like human beings on the basis of equality..." Malcolm X was a revolutionary and allied with the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements of the world. At the time of his assassination, Malcolm X was a great revolutionary. He would be even a greater leader if he was around today. Also, we have to acknowledge the leadership role of women who fought in the liberation struggle of humanity. Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Septima Clark (who created a network of Citizenship Schools that taught poor Black men and Black women to read, to write, and to register to vote), Rosa Parks, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, and Dorothy Height are some of the many heroes who stood up for truth plus justice.

In Venezuela, its citizens are fighting fascism. Captain Jose Guillen Araque is from the Venezuelan National Guard. He recently gave President Maduro a book on the rise of Nazism. He warned Maduro to fight back against fascism before it is too later. Later, the young captain Araque was shot by a U.S. backed assassin in the streets of Marcay in the state of Aragua on March 16, 2014. There has been up to 29 Venezuelan soldiers killed since the fascist uprising. This officer was a prominent, patriotic individual. The Venezuelan fascists have support from Washington (including from a swath of the Venezuelan upper and middle class). These fascists constitute a minority of the electorate and they want to take power via various means. So, President Maduro (as warned by Captain Guillen Araque) should end fascism. Many well-meaning democrats and social democrats have died in their fighting for democratic principles. These fascists are organized, violent political groups. They are using a mass terror campaign as a means to destabilize and overthrow the democratically elected Bolivarian government. This fascism lacks the extreme racist and nationalist ideology of German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese predecessors. Yet, they do work as proxy of U.S. imperialism and Colombian warlord allies. Yet, Venezuelan fascism’s racism is directed against its multiracial African-Amerindian Venezuelan working and peasant classes – as demonstrated by their vitriolic racism against the deceased President Hugo Chavez. These fascists hate the popular majority, they hate the Chavista Socialist Party (who won 18 out of the 19 elections), they resort to armed seizure of power by a minority acting on behalf of the domestic and US imperial ruling classes, and they want to destroy the very democratic institutions and procedures (which it exploits to gain political power). They target working class institutions from communal councils, neighborhood associations, public health and dental clinics, public schools, transport, subsidized food stores, political meeting places, public credit unions, trade union organizations and peasant co-operatives. They support capitalist banks, huge commercial landed estates, and manufacturing firms. Extremist fascists should not be compromised with. They try to end democratic institutions and they hate human liberties. First, the fascists are not simply a small band confined to pounding on pots and attacking municipal workers in the upper-middle class neighborhoods of Caracas for the benefit of the international and corporate media. The fascists are organized on a national basis; their members are active throughout the country. They act in a decentralized fashion, but their strategy is centrally controlled. They target vital institutions and infrastructure in numerous strategic locations. The fascists unite with reactionary professors, drug traffickers, smuggling gangs, paramilitary groups, etc. These terrorists have bombed health care clinics, stores, and the public transport system. So, they want to overthrow the democratic government of Venezuela. Some things are happening though to combat this threat. The National Assembly has voted to strip Congresswoman Corina Machado of her immunity as a deputy in the National Assembly so she can be prosecuted for inciting violence. The President of the National Assembly Diosdado Cabello has presented detailed documentary evidence of her role in organizing and promoting armed rebellion. Several opposition mayors, who were actively involved in promoting and protecting snipers, street thugs and arsonists, have been charged and arrested. The paramilitary groups have links to the business elite including the fascists. These terrorists bomb food markets and attack the trucks transporting food to the poor neighborhood, so these terrorists are the enemy. These fascists should be defeated.

By Timothy