By C.J. Atkins

The strongest weapon the ruling class possesses is its control of the press—its domination of the sources through which people get their information. A hundred years ago, a group of radical workers and Marxist writers launched a publication in the United States of America they hoped would break the monopoly that bosses and their hired media mouthpieces had in deciding what events count as news and how people should interpret them.

They decided to start a daily newspaper based on a truth which could never be found in any of the big papers of the time. That truth was that the people of the United States did not own their own country. They did not own its factories, its railroads, or its banks. They did not own its great material and financial wealth. They did not own its intellectual and technical resources. With no ownership of their economic and social infrastructure, it thus followed that they were not yet truly free.

The Communists of the 1920s dedicated themselves to the mission of putting that truth into print every single day. They embarked on the task of indicting capitalism and the racism, sexism, nationalism, and profiteering at its core—every single day. They jumped into the task of organizing and mobilizing the U.S. working class to struggle for its emancipation and for a socialist future—every single day. And so, in the early hours of January 13, 1924, inside a cold and dimly-lit building on North Halsted Street in Chicago, the first issue of the Daily Worker rolled off the printing press.

As the sun rose, the stockyards and steel mills of Chicago were blanketed with copies. By afternoon, distributors had fanned out across the industrial centres of the Midwest and the Great Lakes states, putting papers in the hands of workers ending their shifts in Gary, Cleveland, and Detroit. In the evening, stacks reached East Coast cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, with workers packing mass meetings in the hopes of getting their hands on an issue. Within a day, trains had carried bundles to the ports of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Other labour and socialist papers had preceded the Daily Worker, with names like The Industrial Worker, The Appeal to Reason, The Ohio Socialist, and The Toiler, but few could claim the Worker’s reach, and none matched its level of ideological clarity. Charles E. Ruthenberg, famed labour leader, anti-war activist, and Communist Party founder, had said five years earlier, “There will never be any hope for us unless we can build up newspapers pledged to the interests of the workers, newspapers which will present the truth about the workers’ cause and offset the lies of the capitalist press.”

For the next ten decades, the Daily Worker and its successors have endeavoured to be that hope. The Daily Worker was the voice of unemployed workers and destitute farmers during the Great Depression, pushing for a New Deal and the overhaul of capitalism. Together with the African-American press, it was one of the few outlets to condemn Jim Crow racism and the lynch mobs of the old South. It was the tool of organizers who unionized steel, auto, and other major industries and founded the CIO in the ’30s. Women writers, shut out at most of the major news outlets, became some of its most prolific researchers in that period.

When it came to building a Popular Front in the United States and fighting fascism, there was no publication more central to the effort. From the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War right up to the fall of Berlin, it was the pre-eminent tribune of the anti-fascist movement in this country.

As McCarthyite anti-communism trashed the U.S. Constitution in the 1940s and ’50s, The Worker was the most consistent defender of the Bill of Rights. So threatening was it to the capitalist class, that they actually tried to shut the newspaper down completely. But it never missed a scheduled issue; even in the darkest days of the Red Scare, it would not be silenced.

When the nuclear arms race threatened to destroy humanity’s existence, it was an unassailable advocate of peace and détente. During the Civil Rights Revolution, it was a rostrum for the Black freedom struggle. As the “New Left” blossomed in the 1960s and ’70s and an anti-imperialist upsurge against the U.S. war in Vietnam broke into the open, the Daily World’s pages were filled with the latest analysis and details of how to get active.

When Ronald Reagan and big business launched their assault on labour in the ’80s, the West Coast People’s World newspaper and the East Coast Daily World joined forces to become the People’s Daily World—a nationwide platform for resistance. While capitalists were celebrating their supposed victory over socialism at the end of the Cold War and pushing the narrative that “there is no alternative” to neoliberal globalization, the People’s Weekly World continued to tell the truth that there was a future beyond capitalism.

In the wake of 9/11, with the onset of the seemingly endless “War on Terror” and the growth of the internet revolution, the new online PeoplesWorld.org revived the tradition of daily Marxist journalism. Throughout the Great Recession, the struggle to save democracy from Trumpism, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Black Lives Matter uprising, this website was a refuge for progressive and working-class journalism.

Today, with war and the looming danger of fascist revival threatening the world even as resurgent labour and peace movements work to tilt the scales, People’s World is still the place to go for the news and views you need to understand the world—and to change it. And of course, as always, it remains the home for Marxist analysis developed by the Communist Party. Those are the things that make People’s World unique and indispensable.

But People’s World—like the Daily Worker in 1924—is a lone, independent swimmer going against the tide of media monopoly. The multiplicity of voices on social media might give the appearance of a free-for-all, where anyone who has something to say can be heard. The reality, though, is that the level of ruling class power over the press has grown even stronger in the past century.

Most of the “media” in the United States—national 24-hour news channels, local broadcast television news programs, social networking platforms, the major newsmagazines, newspapers, publishing houses, internet utilities, even video game developers—is owned by just a handful of corporate giants.

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg—survey the Forbes list of the world’s richest people and you will find the names of some of the men who possess almost unlimited power to determine what we see and what we don’t when it comes to getting news.

Whether it’s shadow-banning dissent linked to the war in Gaza, boosting pro-Trump bots online, or limiting the spread of articles and videos about the growing labour fight-back, the algorithms and whims of the media monopolists work overtime to give us a distorted view of our world. That’s why People’s World is more important than ever.

Throughout 2024, we will be sharing news of celebrations and commemorations that are in the works for the paper’s centennial. We will also bring you selections from our archives and memoirs that showcase the fighting journalism that made this publication famous—or infamous, in the eyes of the bosses.

For 100 years, this newspaper has stood on the firm conviction that the people of the United States must be the authors of their own future. And it has confidently clung to the belief that if our people get organized and fight to democratize not just American politics but also the economy, they will eventually choose to leave the capitalist ruling class behind and chart a path toward a socialist system.

For every one of those hundred years, it has been supported and maintained by the nickels, dimes, and dollars of working people—by readers like you. It is only because of them that this publication has survived and thrived. Ensuring that their contributions are managed wisely is the honour and responsibility of those of us lucky enough to produce People’s World every day. They are our only constituents; we are not beholden to corporate cash or the dictates of the employing class.

So, to all who have read, written for, donated to, distributed, and otherwise supported People’s World and its predecessors for the past century, we say thank you. Without you, this weapon in the hands of the working class would long ago have disappeared. But for as long as it exists, it will keep taking sides—YOURS. (IPA Service)

Courtesy: People’s World

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By C.J. Atkins

WASHINGTON—Playing the part of classic Cold Warrior in his Thursday night Oval Office speech, President Joe Biden made a sales pitch for a permanent war economy, using democracy as a prop to convince the American people that he needed $105 billion to spend on weapons for Israel, Ukraine, and—unmentioned in his remarks—Taiwan.

Shoehorning Israel’s war against the Palestinian people and the Ukraine-Russia war together, Biden deployed a narrative equating “terrorists like Hamas” with “tyrants like Putin,” both supposedly determined to “annihilate a neighbouring democracy.” Any background context to the two wars—75 years of Palestinian dispossession in the first case and an eastward-encroaching NATO military alliance in the second—was absent from the speech.

Hoping the strategy of linking the two fights will make it easier to secure the money, Biden said his emergency weapons budget request “serves the cause of freedom” and funds “America’s national security needs.”

Sounding almost Reaganesque in his rhetoric, Biden deployed time-worn phrases about America being a “beacon to the world” and “the indispensable nation” which allies like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky follow behind.

He declared that “innocent people all over the world” have “hope” and “believe in a better life” because of the United States. The president did not say whether he thought the “innocent Palestinians” he mentioned in the speech, those who are feeling the full wrath of the U.S.-backed Israeli military, shared that view of his government.

Biden reiterated U.S. support for a two-state solution and offered renewed sympathy for Palestinian civilians, but the overall thrust of the speech was aimed at giving Netanyahu a green light to proceed with his campaign against Gaza.

Polls suggest the majority of the American people disagree with Biden’s approach. Numbers released by Data for Progress on Thursday showed 66% believe the U.S. should call for a ceasefire in Gaza. A separate poll from YouGov and CBS News showed that 52% oppose sending weapons to Israel, and 72% think the U.S. should pursue diplomacy to bring a halt to the fighting.

Words such as “negotiations” or “ceasefire” never left Biden’s lips Thursday night, but there were several comments that likely left the military-industrial complex applauding. Speaking the language of Wall Street weapons-makers, Biden said his $105-billion war supplement is a “smart investment that’s going to pay dividends.” It comes on top of the $1 trillion defence budget already passed this summer.

Sending a new tranche of weapons to Tel Aviv and Kiev, Biden said, would “keep American troops out of harm’s way” by letting those countries’ forces fight on the frontlines.“We’re going to make sure other hostile actors in the region know that Israel’s stronger than ever,” Biden said, and arming Ukraine will guarantee that “American troops” won’t be “fighting in Russia.”

Most of the huge sum Biden’s requesting will go directly toward fresh arms purchases from major U.S. weapons manufacturers—companies that are already cashing in on this war. In the days immediately after Israel launched its latest assault on Gaza, the stock prices of defence-related corporations soared. Northrop Grumman was up 11%, Lockheed Martin 9%, and Raytheon 5%.

Rather than talking about missile profits on Thursday night, though, Biden attempted to sell the American public on the war agenda by presenting it as a jobs plan—a re-run of Cold War military Keynesianism.

He explained how the arrangement works:“We send Ukraine equipment sitting in our stockpiles. And when we use the money allocated by Congress, we use it to replenish our own stores, our own stockpiles, with new equipment. Equipment that defends America and is made in America. Patriot missiles for air defence batteries, made in Arizona. Artillery shells are manufactured in 12 states across the country, in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas. And so much more.”

Appropriating the mantle of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president who led the U.S. in the fight against Hitler’s fascism and Japanese imperialism, Biden waved the red-white-and-blue, saying, “Just as in World War II…patriotic American workers are building the arsenal of democracy.”

Unspoken in the Oval Office but included in the ask sent to Congress is at least $7 billion in weapons for Taiwan, labelled as “assistance for the Indo-Pacific region”—which means the allocation is part of the U.S.’ escalating new Cold War against China, as well.

While the president was busy on television building support for more war, a revolt against his blank-check backing of Netanyahu’s military campaign broke out into the open in Washington. Already on Wednesday, Josh Paul, the State Department official who signs off on U.S. arms transfers to foreign countries, resigned his post in protest, saying “provision of lethal arms to Israel” does more harm than good. “We cannot be both against the occupation and for it,” he said.

Then, just over an hour before Biden hit the airwaves, HuffPost reported that a group of State Department insiders were preparing to express their opposition with a rare “dissent cable.” Such documents are formal disagreements with official policy that staff can send to top leaders through a protected internal channel. The instrument was established during the U.S. war against Vietnam to allow diplomats to warn when they believe the U.S. is “making dangerous and self-defeating choices.”

Conservative Republicans already scuttled the president’s earlier request for $24 billion for Ukraine in August. He is now gambling that throwing in money to arm Israel, confront China, and further militarize the U.S.-Mexico border will win some of them over to his side, but several Republicans are already saying they won’t go along.“These are two separate and unrelated conflicts, and it would wrong to leverage support of aid to Israel in an attempt to get additional aid for Ukraine across the finish line,” eight Republicans said in a letter.

Given the growing number of Democrats in Congress calling for a ceasefire, unanimous support from Biden’s own party is not guaranteed. Some Democratic political operatives are also fearful that their leader’s agenda is jeopardizing his own chances of re-election next year. Fifty years after the 1973 oil embargo, memories of the major economic damage caused by past Middle East conflicts are rushing back. Oil prices are already up, thanks to Israel’s war, cutbacks in production by Saudi Arabia and Russia, and increasing Chinese energy needs.

Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, said Israel’s assault on Gaza is “definitely not good news” for oil markets and warned the war is “bad news for inflation.” With Biden’s poll numbers flagging in hypothetical match-ups with Trump, more economic trouble and higher prices are exactly what Democratic Party campaigners don’t want to see.

What Americans will be paying for Israel spent Thursday and Friday showcasing precisely what the American people are being asked to pay for. Dozens of Palestinians were killed as the Israeli Defense Forces continued its unrestrained bombing campaign across the occupied territories, including in zones it has said are “safe.” The IDF proudly announced it hit more than 100 targets overnight.

An historic church, built in 1150, was hit by Israeli bombs in Gaza City. It had been serving as a shelter. “Targeting churches and their institutions, along with the shelters they provide to protect innocent citizens, especially children and women who have lost their homes due to Israeli airstrikes on residential areas over the past 13 days, constitutes a war crime that cannot be ignored,” the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem said in a statement.

In the West Bank, Israeli forces attacked the Nur Shams refugee camp, killing 13 people, including five children. Hospitals in Gaza are starting to close, meanwhile, as they run out of fuel. Most Gazans are down to one meal a day and rely on dirty drinking water to avoid dehydration.

The much-vaunted humanitarian aid that Biden promised would flow to Gaza from Egypt remains stuck at the border. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrived at the Rafah crossing himself on Friday and begged for the gates to be opened, calling the loaded trucks a “lifeline” for Palestinian civilians and saying the aid was “the difference between life and death.”

On the Gaza frontier, Israeli troops are massing for an imminent ground assault. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told soldiers Thursday to “be ready to see Gaza from the inside.” IDF spokespersons said that when the invasion comes, civilian casualties and the recovery of Israeli hostages will be “secondary” to the effort to destroy Hamas.

Since the current war began, at least 4,137 Palestinians have been killed and over 13,000 wounded, mostly women, children, and the elderly. Another 1,300 more are thought to be buried beneath the rubble of bombed-out houses, apartments, hospitals, and shelters. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, most in the initial Hamas attack of Oct. 7. As many as 200 others are believed to still be held hostage inside Gaza. (IPA Service)

Courtesy: People’s World

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By C.J. Atkins

A group of former top U.S. diplomats has been conducting secret peace talks with officials at the highest level of the Russian government since at least April with the goal of negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine. That according to NBC News, which published an exclusive report on the talks Thursday just ahead of the 500-day anniversary of Russia’s invasion of its neighbour and as the Biden administration announced a new $800 million weapons package for Ukraine.

Among the goals of the meetings are setting terms for official negotiations and compromises to bring the fighting—which is essentially at a stalemate—to a conclusion. It is not yet clear how often the discussions have been taking place, if they are part of a single coordinated effort, or whether Wagner mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin’s coup attempt has affected Russia’s willingness to talk.

Participating in the back-channel diplomacy on the U.S. side has been Richard Haas, a major figure in shaping U.S. foreign policy for decades. He is currently president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he served as a policy planner at the State Department, a close advisor to former Secretary of State Colin Powell during the George W. Bush administration, a U.S. peace envoy to Northern Ireland, and coordinator of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.

Along with Haas, there is Georgetown Professor Charles Kupchan, a senior director of European Affairs on the National Security Council under both Obama and Clinton and a former State Department staffer. Thomas Graham also participated; he was the second Bush administration’s in-house Russia expert and a diplomat previously stationed in the Soviet Union and later Russia. Former Defense Department official Mary Beth Long, a specialist in NATO issues, was involved, along with several other unnamed persons.

Representing Russia, according to NBC, was Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov—the man in charge of international policy for President Vladimir Putin. Lavrov reportedly first met with the Haas-led group in New York in April when attending a U.N. meeting. A number of Russian academics and others in the Moscow foreign policy establishment who “have Putin’s ear” have also taken part.

Though none of the U.S. participants are current employees of the Biden administration, there is a long history of what in foreign affairs parlance is known as “Track Two diplomacy.” Private citizens not technically representing their government have often conducted talks in situations where it is embarrassing or politically compromising for official state actors to make the first move.

Such “Track Two diplomacy” has played a key role in the past in laying the ground for arms control talks, for instance. In 1994, former President Jimmy Carter went to North Korea for preliminary nuclear weapons program discussions that later produced a treaty. Such talks also led to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and Palestine.

Though those instances of Two-Track diplomacy led to breakthroughs in lowering tensions, the leaked story of the Haas-Lavrov peace talks—at least for now—is proving troublesome for all sides involved, though for differing reasons.

The revelation that influential figures in the Washington diplomatic establishment have been discussing a ceasefire in bilateral meetings with Russia without the participation of—or possibly even the knowledge of—the Ukrainian government gives credence, some say, to the view that the war is, at its core, a U.S.-Russia conflict.

Oleg Nesterenko heads up the European Trade and Industry Center, an intermediary that helps European companies establish operations in Russia. A regular but controversial fixture on the European news commentary scene, Nesterenko has said the root causes of the war “lie with the United States.” In an interview with the French publication L’Éclaireur des Alpes, he said, “It’s not the Ukrainians who have decided or are deciding anything—they’re just performers and victims in a great game that’s way beyond them.”

Eager to dispute any notion that the Ukraine-Russia dispute is really a proxy battle between the U.S.-led NATO military alliance and Russia, however, the Biden administration rushed to declare that it did not sanction the Haas team’s efforts—though it has been regularly updated on their progress.

White House spokesperson John Kirby told CBS that the administration was “aware” of the discussions, but they were “not engendered by us.” Sticking to the official line that only the government in Kiev can decide the future of Ukraine, the State Department repeated President Joe Biden’s past declaration of “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

It also said the U.S. will continue providing weaponry so that President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine “can negotiate from a position of strength when they think the time is right.” As recently as last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken explicitly denounced countries like China and South Africa that called for a ceasefire, but signs are emerging that the U.S. and its NATO allies may think the “right” time for negotiations is fast approaching.

In a secret trip to Kiev two months ago, CIA Director William Burns talked with Zelensky about how Ukraine’s much-vaunted “spring offensive”—now stretching into July—would aim to “pressure” Putin into peace talks by the end of the year.

The leaders of several NATO countries, whose economies have borne some of the worst burdens of the war’s fallout in terms of inflation and exploding energy prices, will reportedly tell Biden when they meet with him in Lithuania next week that they do not want to admit Ukraine into their military pact. NATO’s eastward expansion and the prospect of Ukraine joining the alliance was a key reason Russia offered for launching its invasion.

Biden administration officials and Democratic Party strategists would also apparently like to start working toward an endgame for the open stage of fighting in Ukraine before the 2024 U.S. elections. A number of Republicans have already signalled their intention to trim funding for Ukraine, and Democrats are worried that an endless stalemate in the east will become a political liability for the president.

In Moscow, where the fallout from the Prigozhin mercenary rebellion is still not settled, the Putin government appears determined to not give away any details of discussions it might be involved in concerning the war. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, simply called the NBC report “fake news” and said it was “disinformation spread by Western media.”

The Russian leadership has likely realized by this point that Putin’s intention to erase the existence of the Ukrainian state will not be realized. The right-wing government that came to power in Kiev following the 2014 U.S.-backed coup will probably remain, for now, with Zelensky at its head, still supported financially and militarily by the U.S. and NATO.

Any designs Russia may have had on recreating the old Czarist empire will also likely have to be shelved in favor of gaining security guarantees in relation to NATO and Ukraine. If any peace is to be achieved, Moscow will probably have to settle for the Russian army’s current territorial gains.

As for Ukraine, an official in Zelensky’s office would offer no specific comment on any possible talks but tried to dissuade observers from concluding Ukraine was being left out of negotiations on its future: “Our position is unchanged—the fate of Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine.”

In the April 2023 issue of Foreign Affairs, the pair authored a long article titled “The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine,” in which they focused on “getting from the battlefield to the negotiating table.” They predicted that following a largely moot Ukrainian counteroffensive in the spring and summer, the war would likely deteriorate into a bloody stalemate, a war of attrition with neither side making any great gains.

After arming Ukraine to a level sufficient for it to uphold the current frontiers, Haas and Kupchan encouraged the U.S. to begin looking for a negotiated settlement. Next, a “demilitarized zone” of sorts could be established along the current frontline with an international organization like the U.N. providing monitors to prevent more fighting. Such a ceasefire would then allow for broader long-term negotiations.

Should such a strategy be pursued, it would likely mean that Crimea and much of the eastern Donbas region would remain under Russian control, contrary to repeated demands from Ukrainian and U.S. officials that all former Ukrainian territory must be vacated by Russian forces. Such a bout of realpolitik could defuse the impasse of the current moment and mark a return to practical rather than propagandistic principles of diplomacy.

If the report of high-level U.S.-Russian negotiations is true, if those negotiations have made progress toward a true ceasefire, if the Ukrainian leadership can be cajoled by their NATO backers to accept a deal, and if the instability in the Russian military has not thrown everything into disarray—then there may be a way out of this war that doesn’t require tens of thousands of more Ukrainian and Russian deaths. There may be an exit strategy that doesn’t lead to nuclear annihilation.

Should they all materialize, though, it would mean arriving back, essentially, at the terms that were in the Minsk Accords of 2015 and in the Ukraine-Russia negotiations that happened in Istanbul in the weeks right after the war started. Both of those potential settlements were scuttled by Ukraine under U.S. and NATO pressure.

Among the outcomes if a ceasefire is concluded: The effective borders between Russia and Ukraine would be set at their current frontlines; Ukraine will not be a member of NATO; Russia will be militarily weakened and prevented in the short term from playing a major role in any future U.S.-China conflict; U.S. dominance within Europe will be reasserted and secure; U.S. fossil fuel companies will have squeezed their Russian competitor out of the European market; and the profits of major weapons makers will be far healthier than they were 500 days ago.  (IPA Service)

Courtesy: People’s World

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By John Wojcik and C.J. Atkins

Most of the corporate media hailed President Joe Biden’s surprise visit to Kiev this past weekend where he met Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. Russia, whom the administration has said cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons or diplomatic negotiations, was told ahead of time, apparently, and was trusted by the U.S. to insure nothing happened to Biden during the long train ride from the Polish-Ukrainian border to Kiev.

The chances the visit could result in improved prospects for peace were dampened, however, even before the trip—partially because the U.S., the largest supplier of weapons to Ukraine and the largest supplier of weapons all around the world, had ramped up rhetoric against China by accusing it of planning to sell arms to Russia. It’s worth remembering that the U.S. has a military budget 15 times the size of Russia’s military budget.

Visiting just before the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden labeled the conflict “a brutal and unjust war.” There can be little argument about the brutality of Russia’s actions in the war, nor can there be argument with the proposition that even decades of provocations by NATO and the U.S. don’t give Russia a blank check to do whatever it wishes in Ukraine.

A presidential visit to Ukraine, however, was not needed if the point was simply to condemn the brutality of the war. A visit on that level, one would think, should serve the cause of peace, and this visit did not do that.

A year after the invasion, Biden declared: “Kiev stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”

As soon as he left the “democracy” of Ukraine, he headed back to Poland, which he also praised as a key part of a world movement for democracy and against autocracy. Biden, of course, must notice that Poland is run by fascists who have tossed out some of the last semblances of democracy in that country.

The Republican state governments in places like Texas or Florida could take lessons from Polish authorities on what to do with the rights of women, minorities, and LGBTQ people—lessons on how to trash all of those rights. Poland also provides some of the best examples of how to crush unions and freedom of the press.

Shockingly, or maybe not so shockingly, some MSNBC pundits chimed in Tuesday morning with their assessments that Poland is replacing Germany as the main NATO and EU champion of “democracy.”

It almost seemed at times over the weekend that a major purpose behind Biden’s visit to Kiev was to pressure U.S. allies to maintain their unconditional support for the war the U.S. is engaged in with Russia by way of Ukraine. There was likely concern in the Biden administration that some of the U.S. allies may have been almost pleased about China saying it had suggestions for halting the fighting in Ukraine.

Many of these allies of the U.S., as they did with Russia before the imposition of the sanctions against that country, want to maintain good relations with China. They do a lot of business with China and could benefit from doing even more.

China said last weekend it is on the verge of unveiling a peace initiative regarding Ukraine. The U.S. reaction has not been good. Almost immediately, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that negotiations now, as proposed by China, would not be good because Russia would use them to cement an advantage in Ukraine. In other words, forget peace, and let’s make more war.

Also lessening the possibility of any ceasefire or negotiations any time soon, Biden announced in Kiev that the U.S. was going to provide an extra $500 million worth of military assistance—on top of the more than $50 billion already spent.

And though the White House continues to insist the U.S. is not at war with Russia, the Pentagon is set to pay the major arms producers in the U.S. to increase ammunition production to the highest level in decades. Germany and other U.S. allies had hoped to purchase ammunition from Brazil, not usually known for the fact that it has long been one of the world’s biggest producers of ammunition.

That has been cut off now because Brazil’s President Lula has announced that his country is for peace and will not supply arms or ammunition to be used in Ukraine. It leaves the U.S. as the unquestioned kingpin of armaments shipments and makes truly hypocritical the warnings to China this weekend by the U.S. about providing any weapons or equipment to Russia.

Blinken boasted how he had warned top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi at the Munich security conference that it would be a serious problem after alleged “intelligence reports” suggested China was planning to provide arms and ammunition to Russia.

But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin dismissed Blinken’s warnings, saying, “We do not accept the United States finger-pointing on China-Russian relations, let alone coercion and pressure.” He repeated that China wants to play a role in ending the conflict between Kiev and Moscow.

The Chinese position for months has been that the war in Ukraine can spin out of control into a larger worldwide conflict. Already, all three of the biggest world powers—the U.S., Russia, and China—are involved, along with much of Europe, Japan, South Africa, Iran, and others feeling pressured to pick sides.

China, along with Brazil, Cuba, and others, is continuing, however, to urge a ceasefire and peace talks.A Chinese statement urges the U.S. to stop pouring weapons into the conflict and to end the war hysteria the U.S. is building up over Taiwan.

“We urge relevant countries to immediately stop adding fuel to the fire, stop shifting the blame to China, and stop hyping up the discourse of ‘Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow,’” the statement from Wang Wenbin declared. The remarks were a reference to repeated U.S. claims recently that China is preparing to attack Taiwan.

“We will continue to promote peace talks, provide Chinese wisdom for the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis, and work with the international community to promote dialogue and consultation to address the concerns of all parties and seek common security,” the Chinese statement said.

Wang Yi, who was on the receiving end of Blinken’s threats in Munich, arrived in Moscow Tuesday ahead of a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov hailed Russia-China ties as “multidimensional and allied in nature.”The visit to Moscow comes as China’s Foreign Ministry issued a document Tuesday it characterized as President Xi Jinping’s “global security initiative.”

The aim of the initiative is to “eliminate the root causes of international conflicts, improve global security governance, encourage joint international efforts to bring more stability and certainty to a volatile and changing era, and promote durable peace and development in the world.”The statement said that the initiative would also “support political settlement of hotspot issues, such as the Ukraine crisis through dialogue and negotiation.”

Underlining how the Biden administration’s actions last weekend harmed the quest for peace, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, unfortunately, added to the problem by suspending Moscow’s participation in the last nuclear arms control pact with the U.S.

During his State of the Nation address, Putin said, “I am forced to announce today that Russia is suspending participation in the strategic offensive arms treaty.”

He said NATO had set up military bases on Russia’s borders. Of the U.S. he said, “No other country in the world has as many foreign military bases. They have hundreds of military bases around the world; the whole planet is dotted with their bases.”

Shortly after Putin’s speech, Biden spoke in Warsaw. He declared: “A year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kiev, which stands tall, proud, and most importantly free.He said the “whole world was tested in response to the war with Russia (his words, describing the war as a war with Russia), and the world did not look the other way. Putin thought NATO would fracture and divide. Instead, NATO is more united and more unified than ever before.”

Putin was “confronted today,” Biden said “with something he didn’t think was possible a year ago…. the democracy of the world has grown stronger, not weaker. But the autocrats of the world have grown weaker, not stronger because in moments of great upheaval and uncertainty, knowing where you stand is most important. Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia.”

Biden topped those remarks with an announcement that the U.S. is ready to impose yet more sanctions on Russia this week, declaring, “We will hold accountable those responsible for this war.”

As the two leaders spoke, Putin in Moscow and Biden in Warsaw, the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine was clearly at a stalemate.

That stalemate, combined with the speeches of the two leaders, leaves little hope for peace any time soon. The people and the peace movements of the world are needed to step in, now more than ever. (IPA Service)

Courtesy: People’s World

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By C.J. Atkins

Tally another victory for the neo-fascist, anti-immigrant right wing in Europe. Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy party—the successor to the post-World War II Italian Social Movement—is set to be the next prime minister of that country following Sunday’s national election.

Almost exactly a hundred years after fascist leader Benito Mussolini made himself dictator of Italy with his notorious October 1922 “March on Rome,” his political heirs are marching back into power. Meloni will be the nation’s first far-right leader since Il Duce was overthrown and executed by Communist partisans in 1945.

Her right-wing bloc won a decisive 44% plurality in the country’s multi-party elections, with the Brothers of Italy alone taking more than a quarter of the vote. The center-left coalition led by the Democratic Party, successor to the old Italian Communist Party, scored only 26%.

Speaking at a rally early Monday morning, Meloni hailed her party’s win as the expression of the will of the Italian people. “If we are called to govern this nation, we will do it…. Italy chose us. We will not betray it.”

While the result clearly represents a dramatic shift to the right, it is not necessarily a signal that voters are swinging in line behind the neo-fascists. Overall turnout was only 64%, a historic low by Italian standards.

Some poll results suggested droves of voters simply stayed home in protest, expressing their dissatisfaction with the anti-democratic backroom deals that put the previous three governments into office—including the outgoing administration of Premier Mario Draghi.

Sunday’s vote was a snap election forced by the sudden fall of Draghi’s “technocratic” government. His cabinet lost the support of parliament because of a number of contentious stances, chief among them Draghi’s vigorous support for NATO weapons shipments to Ukraine.

The outgoing premier also remained slavishly committed to the European Union’s strict fiscal austerity measures, which would require extensive and unpopular cuts to social spending in exchange for COVID recovery funds.

A €200 billion ($192.5 billion USD) bailout for Italy from the EU Commission hangs in the balance right now, as rising global interest rates threaten economic crisis for the country, which holds a public debt that currently stands at 135% of GDP. EU officials say that in order to get the money, Italy’s government must balance the books and slash spending.

While Europe’s leaders remain tight-fisted when it comes to COVID recovery cash, Italy’s real problem may not be reckless government spending, but rather Italian capitalism’s persistent failure to compete with the powerful economies of Germany and France.

Following WWII, Italy enjoyed a competitive advantage relative to some other Western European countries because of its low wages and heavy infusions of U.S. credit. This provided the basis for a short-term postwar boom, but eventually, the corruption and oligarchical nature of Italian capital became obvious. This led to a decline in foreign investment; the energy crisis of the 1970s exacerbated the problem further.

Productivity growth steadily declined over the decades that followed, with only a slight recovery when neoliberal reforms in the 1980s squeezed more labor out of workers. But even this was not enough, and productivity turned negative once Italy joined the euro currency bloc.

Since the adoption of the common currency in 1999, annual per capita economic growth has been stuck at zero. Even when accounting for the generally slower productivity growth of late capitalist economies and the recessions of recent years, competitors like Spain, France, and Germany still managed to notch growth rates of 1% or higher.

The historic divide between the industrialized north of Italy and the more agricultural south also meant these economic problems worsened the challenge of national disunity, which shows up in election results. The right’s support grew fastest in areas of the underdeveloped south. When she takes over, Meloni will inherit all these challenges. A look at the history of her party and its constituency provides some clues as to how she may govern.

The Brothers of Italy traces its roots directly to the Italian Social Movement (MSI) party, founded in 1946 by members of Mussolini’s then-outlawed National Fascist Party. Allied with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime during the 1930s and ’40s, Italy’s fascists fought alongside Germany in WWII and instituted their own anti-Jewish laws and policies forbidding independent trade unions and progressive political groups.

Following the defeat of Italy and Germany by the Allied powers, the neo-fascists of the MSI reorganized themselves, but only managed to poll in the single digits from the 1950s to the 1980s. But its survival kept the nationalist and authoritarian alternative on the table for the lower middle class, the economically discontented, and big business—if it ever felt compelled to call on it again.

As Italy’s economic fortunes worsened, the MSI saw an uptick in its support, almost winning the mayor’s office in Rome in 1993. To shed some of its most blatant fascist baggage, the party was renamed the National Alliance.

Meloni, raised in a working-class Rome neighborhood by a single mom, joined the movement around this time, eventually becoming head of the party’s youth league. She helped found the Brothers of Italy in 2012, merging together a number of like-minded neo-fascist and right-wing groups.

Meloni says the Brothers of Italy is “a new party for an old tradition.” And like previous MSI and National Alliance leaders, some of her kind words for the former dictator and his “old tradition” have come back to haunt her. She’s tried to publicly disavow the brutality of the fascist period, but also walks a tightrope trying to appeal to the voting base that yearns for a return to the days of Mussolini. Meloni declares the Italian right has left fascism behind in the history books and condemns the old regime and its “suppression of democracy” and “ignominious anti-Jewish laws.”

But at the same time, she rails against immigrants, LGBTQ people, and “Islamic violence.” And in an unmistakable signal to the movement’s old-timers, she has kept the MSI’s original fascist red-white-green flame logo on the Brothers party flag. Regardless of all the history acrobatics, it was probably Meloni’s repeated condemnation of EU officials and their fiscal warfare on Italian workers that gained her the most support.

Staking out clear opposition to the financial blackmail of the EU and the continent’s big banks provided a stark contrast to the weak and ambiguous positions taken by social democratic and center-left politicians. The inaction of the left provided an opening for the extreme right, which Meloni seized.

As with right-wing leaders around the world who say they’re for the workers when running for office but then govern for the bosses after winning, Meloni has already begun to make moves that go in the direction opposite her populist pledges. As voting day neared, she toned down her anti-EU rhetoric, portending a turn once she assumes power.

Meloni’s shift toward fiscal austerity will probably mean little will change in economic policy; she will likely follow the dictates of the EU’s financial masters and even throw in extra anti-labor policies for good measure.

No changes should be expected in Italy’s foreign policy either, despite the anti-war and pro-Putin positions taken by some of her coalition allies, like former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini.

Meloni is the strongest figure in the alliance, and she is in lock-step with NATO when it comes to continued weapons shipments to Ukraine. The same position may have cost Draghi support, but Meloni is almost guaranteed to stick to his policies when it comes to the war. The Brothers of Italy victory is the latest and most dramatic in a string of right-wing gains in Europe.

Just days ago, the Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots, made their governmental debut in Scandinavia. Marine Le Pen, daughter of Holocaust denier Marie Le Pen, took her party to second place in France’s presidential election in April. And right-wing authoritarians Viktor Orban and Andrzej Duda already rule in Hungary and Poland, respectively. In other countries, parties with similar ideologies also continue to gain ground. (IPA Service)

Courtesy: People’s World

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By C.J. Atkins

BERLIN: “It’s going to be a choice many of us will have to face when winter comes: freeze or starve.” So says Günter Pohl, a glassworker from the the town of Sprockhövel in Germany’s industrial Ruhr region. “The sanctions are supposedly targeting Russia, but they’re hitting us a lot more than they are Russia.”

He was referring to the economic penalties Western governments have imposed on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Though supposedly intended to cripple the Russian economy and pressure Vladimir Putin to bring his troops home, there are signs it’s the working people of Germany and other European countries who are bearing most of the punishment.

Pohl spoke with People’s World in Berlin on the sidelines of the UZ-Pressefest, a mass cultural and political festival hosted annually by UnsereZeit, a socialist newspaper affiliated with the German Communist Party (DKP). His sentiment is shared by many here—understandable given that paychecks are covering less and less these days.

Inflation clocked in at 7.6% for Germany in summer 2022, a near 40-year high. At the core of the problem? Energy costs, which are up an astounding 38% according to official statistics. Before the war in Ukraine, Germany secured the natural gas that heats its homes and powers much of its industry from Russia. It had been that way for decades, even during the Cold War.

But in the wake of Putin’s invasion, construction on the nearly-finished $9.5 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline—which would have transported more gas from Russia to the German coast by going under the Baltic Sea—was abruptly canceled. Gas flows through the existing Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Europe have already slowed by more than 60% and will go to zero by the end of August, at least for a while.

That shutdown presents a special problem for Germans. More than half of them—over 40 million people—use natural gas to heat their homes. During the summer, many still hoped the worst of the gas price hike might be avoided. Perhaps Ukraine and Russia would negotiate a ceasefire and the pressure on world energy markets would ease.

But now, fall can already be felt in the air in Berlin, and the prices of everything from food to transport to fuel continue to climb. Many are beginning to worry about what will happen when the temperatures really begin to drop.

“We expect prices to double,” Pohl predicts. “And no one will be spared…it’s not just the heating of homes, it’s also the cooking, the hot water for bathing…all of it.” Making the stained glass windows which are his specialty also consumes a lot of energy, so the same problem is repeating in manufacturing and throughout the economy.

Even those Germans who use electricity or oil for their homes won’t be able to avoid the rising costs. “A lot of people don’t earn enough money to do it,” he argues. “It’s going to be at least €2,000 more [$2,000 USD] for a family of four this winter. How will they pay?”

Wera Richter shares Pohl’s skepticism for the cold season ahead. “With prices shooting up, even people who have what are considered ‘decent’ incomes are going to have difficulty paying and surviving.” Richter is the editor-in-chief of UnsereZeit and covers the latest developments of the war and its economic fallout for Germans in the pages of the newspaper.

She says the DKP and UZ were warning earlier this year of what lay ahead for working-class Germans if a reckless sanctions regime was the West’s response to the war. The continued flow of Russian gas at the tail-end of last winter and the warm weather of summer kept public discontent in check for a time, but when the choice becomes food or heat, will public opinion begin to change?

Richter’s chief concern is that there has so far been “nearly a total lack of resistance” to the ill-conceived structure of the sanctions against Russia. The peace movement is weak, and images of the brutality of the war in Ukraine along with German leaders’ declarations of solidarity with Volodymyr Zelensky’s government have kept most people on side with the NATO campaign to back Kiev to the bitter end.

In the eastern part of Germany, the areas which made up the former German Democratic Republic, anti-war feelings are stronger, according to Richter. But the call for a negotiated ceasefire, which the DKP and UZ advocate (vs. an all-out military defeat of Russia which NATO says is the goal), is still a tough sell almost anywhere right now, Richter admits.

Eagerly waiting to step into the energy void left by the sanctions, of course, are U.S.-based corporations looking for new customers. Before the scuttling of Nord Stream 2, their share of the European gas market topped out at around 30%. But Russia’s war changed everything—essentially overnight. Soaring prices made expensive-to-produce gas from the U.S. more competitive on world markets, and European leaders could rely on sentiment for Ukraine among the general public to accelerate the turn away from Russia.

“Now they say we will buy fracked gas from the U.S.—ecologically the worst kind—but there’s not even enough ships and terminals to get it here,” Pohl says. American natural gas largely comes from the environmentally-damaging process of fracking, and getting it across the Atlantic requires liquefaction, huge tanker ships for transport, and specialized loading and offloading facilities.

“Maybe you can assemble a terminal pretty quickly,” Pohl grants, “but the number of ships they will need could take years to build.” So although U.S. gas is on the way, it could be a long time coming.

In the meantime, keeping up the economic charade of anti-Russia sanctions is leading to some pretty absurd tactics.

“The German government says we will not buy Russian gas because they are killing Ukrainians and conducting an illegal war, so instead we’ll buy gas and oil from Qatar and Saudi Arabia,” Pohl explains. But Qatar and Saudi Arabia (which is doing plenty of killing of its own in Yemen) can’t supply enough output to fulfill Europe’s needs. “So where do they get it? Russia! Russian oil and gas goes to places like Saudi Arabia, which then turns around and sells it to Germany.”

In this middle-man mark-up system, Germany still ends up buying the same Russian energy supplies it has sanctioned and forbidden—but at higher prices. “It would be funny if it wasn’t all so tragic,” Pohl muses.

In Russia, the oil is still flowing, but now more of it is heading east to customers like India and China. In fact, Russia is selling more oil than ever, and revenues are through the roof. The whole sanctions regime is boomeranging back on Europe; it’s estimated Germans will be paying over €5 billion [$5 billion USD] more for energy.

“Asia has saved Russian crude production,” said Viktor Katona, an energy analyst at the firm Kpler, told the New York Times last month. “Russia, instead of falling further, is almost close to its pre-pandemic levels.”

The biggest beneficiary in the whole affair, Pohl argues, has been U.S. imperialism. Its energy companies are breaking into the European market, and the costs of achieving its long-term goal of weakening Russia are being paid for, in part, with West European workers’ earnings and Ukrainian lives. “The winner of this war and sanctions will be the United States.”

How long this state of affairs can go on is an open question. Will the labor movement leadership continue to sleep at the wheel while the economy heads for the ditch? Will the public’s willingness to pay for the costs of war hold out when the mercury drops? Will Russia and Ukraine work out some kind of peace? (IPA Service)

Courtesy: People’s World

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