US Senator Daniel Inouye from Hawaii was a highly decorated WWII Veteran Unit 442 said 20 years ago that US need enemies real or imaginary in order to support our huge war machines. Nothing has changed! 來自夏威夷的美國參議員丹尼爾·井上是一名二戰老兵442 部隊，他20年前說美國需要真實或虛構的敵人以支持我們巨大的戰爭機器, 今天也是一樣!
Human rights violations against indigenous people in the US, Canada and Australia 在美國、加拿大和澳大利亞侵犯土著人民的人權 by Feng Qingyin Mar 18 2022
Video: The war fever stoked by the media in the US. Americans got a 60 second summation propaganda by cable news thought knew everything about Ukraine since the 1400s 美國媒體引發的戰爭熱潮。 美國人看了60秒有線電視新聞的總結宣傳，他們就認為自1400 年代的烏克蘭的一切都瞭如指掌, 極天真無知.
https://rumble.com/vxqd84-americans-got-a-60-second-summation-propaganda-by-cable-news-thought-knew-e.html
https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/675495547007107/?d=n
Ukraine offers Taiwan a wake-up call and lessons? English Tsai will have the F16 to escort her plane loaded with Diamonds, US treasury bonds and US$ to the international air space and continue on to Hawaii just like Marco from Philippines did. 烏克蘭給台灣敲響警鐘和教訓？ 蔡英文將讓 F16 護送她滿載鑽石、美國債卷和美元的飛機前往國際空域，並像前菲律賓總統馬可思一樣逃往夏威夷.
At 15:09 Beijing time on March 17, the CZ-4C Y47 rocket carrying the Yaogan 34-02 remote sensing satellite lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.
3月17日15:09，在酒泉卫星发射中心，长征4号丙遥47火箭成功将遥感34号02星送入预定轨道。
该星将与已在轨的01星和后续卫星组网运行，和以往一样，我们说是“农业星”，用于国土普查、城市规划、土地确权、路网设计等，并为“一带一路”提供信息保障。
在任务海域待命的远望6号船顺利完成了火箭入轨、卫星定轨等的测控支持，这是远望6号本年度的首次任务。今儿恰逢“国际航海日”，航天航海一家亲！
本发火箭安装了2M中继设备，当飞到地面测控站遥测范围之外时，中继设备会将数据传至中继卫星，中继卫星再传回地面。这样的中继测控减少了火箭发射轨道设计的约束，大幅延长了火箭信号的接收时段，以后还将降低远望号测量船出航的成本。
这是长征系列运载火箭的第411次飞行。
French Embassy in China enrages Chinese netizens over inappropriate post amid Ukraine crisis 法國駐華大使館因烏克蘭危機發帖不當激怒中國網民 By Global Times Mar 17, 2022
Screenshot of French Embassy’s post on Sina Weibo quotes Chinese writer Lu Xun
Screenshot of French Embassy’s post on Sina Weibo that quotes Chinese writer Lu Xun
Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Western diplomatic agencies have been conducting public diplomacy on the Chinese internet, with many insinuating China’s inaction during the conflict, although they know the cause of the crisis was NATO’s eastward expansion.
A post from the French Embassy’s official Weibo account on Tuesday quoted Lu Xun, a well-known anti-imperialist Chinese writer, as saying that “lies written in ink can never disguise facts written in blood.”
The comment drew backlash among netizens, given the historical background of Lu Xun’s quote – the March 18 massacre, a tragedy in which Chinese civilians were killed and injured opposing the ultimatum from the eight nations to invade China amid an anti-imperialist demonstration.
As one of the participants in the ultimatum from the eight nations, France also played a disgraceful role in the imperialist exploitation of China.
Many Chinese netizens believed that the post intended to criticize Russia amid the Ukraine crisis. “An imperialist should not use the anti-imperialist writer’s quote to criticize others,” one Weibo user wrote in response to the French Embassy’s post.
“I am often amazed by the shame of some Western countries, after so much genocide, trafficking, colonization, slavery, invasion, and slaughter, they can still talk about righteousness and morality in a dignified manner,” wrote one netizen.
Global Times
U.S. threatens nuclear war or sanctions
By Sara Flounders March 16, 2022
A seismic shift is sending shock waves through the global economy.
The well-established capitalist disorder, dominated by U.S. imperialism and in place since World War II, is on shaky ground. Extreme economic sanctions imposed on Russia are dragging the whole world into a war that started long before the Russian intervention in Ukraine on Feb. 24.
A big calculation is which countries will be forced to accept the onerous economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the U.S. Countries representing a majority of the world’s population are not willing to tie their sovereignty to total Wall Street control. To the shock of U.S. war strategists, almost all of Latin America, the Caribbean, many countries in Africa, and most of Asia have rejected the sanctions on Russia.
The open defiance by so many countries and major trading blocs is a stunning confirmation of the weakening hold of U.S. economic power.
U.S. dominance challenged
It is well recognized that U.S. economic dominance in Europe, and globally, has been challenged by increased European Union trade with Russia and China. The growing integration of the Eurasian bloc of countries, stretching from China and South Asia through Central Asia and Russia to Europe, gives a huge economic advantage to the countries involved.
The growing integration of EU trade and investment with Russia and China threatens both the domination of U.S. corporate power in Europe and U.S. global hegemony. It is in the interest of corporate power in the U.S. to cynically provoke a conflict where it is the least affected, but doing so in a region where its capitalist rivals in the EU will carry the heaviest burden.
U.S. threatens nuclear war to get sanctions
The U.S. has instigated a crisis by encircling Russia with NATO bases, organizing constant military operations and supplying heavy weapons to Ukraine to fire on Russia’s borders.
The United States is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons. It incinerated two entire cities — Hiroshima and Nagasaki — in 1945. It is the only country that refuses to agree to a “No First Use” nuclear policy.
By placing nuclear weapons in Europe and setting up nuclear-capable weaponry on Russia’s borders, it has been openly provoking Russia to strike in self-defense. The U.S. used the nuclear threat not only on Russia but to impel the European Union to impose harsh sanctions on Russia, even though it was against EU interests to cut economic ties with Moscow.
With the EU, and especially Germany, unwilling to impose sanctions that would break all relations with Russia, the U.S. played hardball. President Joe Biden threatened the EU on Feb. 26, two days after Russia began its military operation in Ukraine, that the only alternative to going along with the U.S. sanctions “would be the Third World War.”
“You have two options. Start a Third World War, go to war with Russia, physically. Or, two, make sure that the country that acts so contrary to international law ends up paying a price for having done it. . . . I know these sanctions are the broadest sanctions in history, and economic sanctions and political sanctions.”
In an interview with blogger Brian Tyler Cohen, Biden said his “goal from the very beginning” was to keep NATO and the European Union “on the same page.” (tinyurl.com/22dbb5d7)
The EU, a bloc of capitalist economies dominated by Germany, is unable and unwilling to directly challenge U.S. hegemony, especially when they are threatened with nuclear war in Europe if they don’t comply. The EU imposed all the sanctions demanded by the U.S. Their sanctions mirror those imposed by Washington. However, they are still able to purchase some gas from Russia, based on an agreement with the U.S.
Sanctions were imposed on Russia in 2014 after the majority Russian population in Crimea voted to rejoin Russia. This followed a U.S.-supported fascist coup in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. At that time, two regions in East Ukraine — Donetsk and the Lugansk People’s Republics — broke away from the fascist gangs in Kiev.
Since the 1999 U.S./NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, and despite constant warnings of danger even from its own political strategists, the policy of the U.S. government has been to keep absorbing more East European countries into NATO, building NATO bases around Russia, recruiting and training soldiers and mercenaries, creating provocations on the Russian border and using Ukraine as a pawn to destabilize the entire region.
These years of constant economic and military attacks on Russia are hidden from the public in the U.S. and the EU.
What is behind U.S. war policy?
Why is EU/Russian trade and integration so threatening to U.S. imperialism?
The EU is the biggest investor in Russia. A new and larger double pipeline, called Nord Stream 2, was built to carry cheap natural gas from Russia through the Baltic Sea and into Europe. It provides fuel for EU industries and heat for millions of homes. It provides a break from reliance on high-polluting coal and oil.
Energy comes to 62% of the EU imports from Russia. It costs much less than gas from the U.S., which is the largest exporter of fracked LNG gas. This is a challenge to opening new markets. With war and sanctions, U.S. gas and oil corporations will immediately profit from skyrocketing prices for fuel and guarantee their future control of the European market.
The clash is larger than just a gas pipeline. The U.S. economy is focused on military production. It is the largest exporter of weapons systems. But U.S. imperialism is unable to match China’s Belt and Road development plans. More than 138 countries have signed on for new ports, railroads, industrial hubs and low-interest loans.
China’s Belt and Road development loans are far more attractive than U.S. weapons systems and the harsh austerity plans that are attached to IMF and World Bank loans.
U.S. finance capital is alarmed that two-thirds of the member countries of the European Union have signed on as formal members of China’s Belt and Road Development projects. Port cities in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Hungary are being rebuilt. New energy projects are underway. Europe’s trade with China now exceeds its trade with the United States. (tinyurl.com/5bw7t6yv)
In the struggle to maintain its dominant position, U.S. imperialism has only one tool against these rapidly developing and sharply competing economic relations: war. Both military war and the economic war of sanctions.
Sanctions are war
Sanctions are not a deterrent to war or a substitute for war. They are in fact an escalation of the war.
Using the dominant role of the dollar in the world economy, Washington has imposed over 5,500 sanctions on Russia and is forcing other countries to reconfigure their economies to abide by these extreme economic penalties. The sanctions on Russia are the world’s most extreme economic war measures. (tinyurl.com/2p95893c)
Sanctions create hyperinflation, artificial famines, social upheavals and health crises that punish civilian populations. As deadly as bombs, sanctions are an act of war. They are correctly labeled a Crime Against Humanity.
Will sanctions succeed in restoring the position of U.S. imperialism? That is clearly the calculation.
International Monetary Fund senior deputy managing director Gita Gopinath gave an authoritative view of this expectation that financial sanctions will drive Russia into “deep recession,” and “shift global economic order. . . . It has implications for the global economic order as we know it.” (tinyurl.com/2chjw8fe) Other news articles predict that the Russian economy is “going down the ice chute,” will “tumble,” “go into free fall,” etc.
Several economists warn that it will impact the global economy. To the bankers and financiers, the pain of millions, even within the U.S., is of no concern, as long as they can pick up the pieces afterwards.
Speculators predict “defense” industries and energy companies will prosper. All financial predictions in the U.S. and Europe are that this will hit the European economy much harder.
Third of world sanctioned
Today more than 40 countries, encompassing one-third of the world’s population, already suffer under economic measures imposed by Washington. The U.S. has sanctioned Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, China, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Sudan and others. Countries that trade with targets of U.S. sanctions face heavy fines. This deadly form of economic warfare impacts all the surrounding countries and destroys regional development.
Many of these countries, however, are finding ways to survive through complex barter and exchange programs that are developing as the number of sanctioned countries grows.
Almost all of the countries hit by these harsh U.S. destabilizing measures and asset confiscations sanctions have signed up with China’s Belt and Road Initiative development programs. Many of the sanctioned countries, including Venezuela, Cuba and Syria receive reliable shipments of needed fuel and grain from Russia. These new forms of exchange, developed through necessity, are beginning to weaken the intended economic strangulation. Russia still has a strong market for its exports beyond the reach of U.S. sanctions.
Russia is also a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This is an economic and security alliance that is the world’s largest regional organization, covering approximately 60% of the area of Eurasia, 40% of the world’s population and more than 20% of global gross domestic product (GDP). Of the 14 members of this trading bloc, six are already under U.S. sanctions but continue normal economic relations.
Countries refuse to comply
To the shock of Washington’s war strategists, many countries not currently under U.S. sanctions are refusing to comply with the U.S. and EU sanctions imposed on Russia. To date India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, and other countries with smaller economies have refused to comply with U.S. measures that damage their own trade relations.
These are nations with growing economies and large populations. Several countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union and are now part of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) — Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan — are not likely to comply.
Several countries, not willing to openly confront U.S. economic wrath, have vaguely stated they would only comply with sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council, where a Russian or Chinese veto would make such a vote unlikely.
U.S. economic and political pressure on all these countries to comply will intensify in the coming period.
Threatening China
China’s top banking regulator, Guo Shuqing, says: “We will not participate in such sanctions, and we continue to maintain normal economic and trade and financial exchanges with relevant parties.” (New York Times, March 11) After Mastercard and Visa stopped their operations, Russian banks turned to China’s UnionPay, which offers payment options in 180 countries.
China has not yet given economic or military assistance to Russia. It has simply refused to cut off its normal economic relations. This is infuriating the Biden administration.
The U.S. publicly threatened China for helping Russia evade sanctions. China was reminded that two of its biggest trading partners are the U.S. and European Union. China needs access to those markets.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan threatened China directly, stating: “We are communicating directly and privately to Beijing that there absolutely will be consequences” if China helps Russia “backfill” its losses from the sanctions. “We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country anywhere in the world.”
Sullivan said China and all countries are on notice that they cannot “basically bail Russia out . . . give Russia a work-around to the sanctions,” with impunity. (tinyurl.com/j35ueywt)
If such brazen and insulting threats are being openly made to China, then harsher threats are being raised to other countries.
New forms of trade and exchange do challenge the hegemony power of the U.S. dollar. But extreme measures imposed on Russia will create intense economic pain of spiraling inflation and unemployment on a global scale.
The U.S. ruling class, the U.S. Congress and the U.S. corporate media are at this time unanimously in support of an economic war and even a military confrontation, regardless of how destructive they would be to human life, as long as they would break open new markets and destroy their rivals.
The Democrats quickly dropped Build Back Better promises and a COVID-19 health package in order to saturate Ukraine with weapons. Working people in both the U.S. and Europe will pay the price.
The growing danger is that a U.S. imperialist war on this scale, combined with the demand that the whole world participate, could dangerously escalate.
THE ZELENSKY SUMMIT MEETING IN KIEV ON MARCH 15 WITH POLISH, CZECH AND SLOVENIAN PRIME MINISTERS WAS A FAKE DEVISED IN WARSAW – THE MEETING WAS AT PRZEMYSL, POLAND; ZELENSKY ALSO 月 15 日在基輔與波蘭、捷克和斯洛文尼亞總理舉行的澤倫斯基首腦會議是在華沙設計的——會議在波蘭的普熱米斯爾舉行； 包括澤連斯基
THE ZELENSKY SUMMIT MEETING IN KIEV ON MARCH 15 WITH POLISH, CZECH AND SLOVENIAN PRIME MINISTERS WAS A FAKE DEVISED IN WARSAW – THE MEETING WAS AT PRZEMYSL, POLAND; ZELENSKY ALSO
This was sent to me, but it seems credible to me and makes a lot of sense. Otherwise it would be like going into Dien Bien Phu for a meeting during the siege of the French Foreign Legion. What this also tells us is that Z is outside of Ukraine, which is why he has such good communications with the rest of the world, and why it’s so easy for him to talk about fighting courageously to the last man. Also, he should be wearing a suit and shaving properly, since he’s not in a Kiev bunker.
Video: Summary of some of the points made in Wen Tiejun video “温铁军：全球化进程中的中国危机与经验【温铁军践闻录|两小时收藏向】
Both the US and the Soviets threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons on China, a total of 5 times. China had to develop nuclear weapons on its own to thwart such threats. China had to relocate the defense industries from coastal areas to inland areas to stay further away from military threats coming from the ocean, which required another round of heavy investment. The fact that China remained poor during the 1950s and 60s is not just the result of wrong policies, but because of heavy burden of national defense required for China to remain a sovereign nation. That was the price China paid for its national sovereignty.
9. Wen described a very interesting cycle in financial capitalist operation. Due to the quantitative easing (QE) by the developed countries, these excess currencies entered the capital markets which speculates on commodities such as oil and grain. This in turn increase the prices of these commodities which reduces the demand in developed countries, and therefore the demand for goods exported by developing countries to the developed ones. China tries to overcome this softness in its export market by issuing debt for investing in infrastructure. But these investments require importing the price inflated commodities. This is how the QEs by developed countries transfer costs to manufacturing countries like China. But this will cause the prices of exports to the developed countries to increase, which will cause a rise in interest rates to compensate for the inflation. This will make it difficult for small and medium size businesses to obtain credit, so that industrial capital will find it difficult to make a decent profit, causing it to turn to speculation in a vicious cycle. In order to obtain capital for the speculation, speculators are willing to pay still higher interests or usury rates. This causes capital to leave the banking system to shadow banking for usurious returns. This means the developing country’s debt burden will increase while the state has reduced control over the banking sector, making it exceeding difficult to steer and save the economy. The sustained reduced profitability of firms in manufacturing countries causes their share prices to fall. Then multinational corporations armed with easy and low cost money from the QEs will come in to swoop up these shares or assets stripped from these manufacturing firms. This is how developing countries remain underdeveloped and in distress during the rule of financial capital.
10. When the US dotcom bubble burst in year 2000, capital flowed to China to take advantage of the trillions of infrastructure investment the Chinese government made in response to the Asian financial crisis. That is how multinational corporations made a bundle from their investments in China. At the same time, it marked a golden 10 years for China with GDP growth of 9.6%.
11. Industrial capital has been replaced by financial capital as the mode of production in countries such as the US. But as we have seen, this mode of production will produce endless world crisis and is a dead end. China is proposing an ecological civilization (i.e. green) development strategy, enabling humans to live in harmony with nature. Humans will realize that excess greed will need to be transformed into an understanding that living in peace and as part of nature is the only possible way for the future. China, with its heathy economic structure of the relative composition of industrial and financial capital, is well positioned to take this route.
Professor Kenneth Hammond: The export of capital through imperialist or colonialist expansion was hugely important in the 19th & 20th centuries, but it was also part of the pattern of earlier development in European capitalism as the centers of accumulation shifted from Italy to norther Europe, and then across the Atlantic to the US. These processes were not mutually exclusive. In the present conjuncture, though, as the global economy has become more highly integrated and centers of productive activity have proliferated beyond the old imperialist core economies, financialization has become the predominant mode in much of Europe and especially in the US. One of the key factors in the de-linking of the Chinese and American economies is that as China assumes a stronger role in its domestic development and in global expansion the ability of American capital to maximize it profits in China is waning, and in conjunction with the saturation of the American domestic economy and the minimal opportunities for productive investment here, the decline of the US in the global capitalist system is accelerating.
Ukrainian-Americans criticizes Western war drive with Russia: US is using Ukraine as ‘cannon fodder’ 烏克蘭裔美國人批評西方與俄羅斯的戰爭驅動力：美國正在將烏克蘭用作“炮灰” by ByYuliy Dubovyk Mar 14 2022
A left-wing peace activist raised in Ukraine explains how the US government created the crisis, backing two coups in a decade, fueling a devastating civil war, and exploiting his nation as a proxy against Russia.
I am a Ukrainian-American. I grew up and spent over half of my life in Ukraine, although now I live in the United States. I wanted to explain my thoughts on the ongoing crisis with Russia, because mainstream corporate media outlets don’t ever share perspectives like mine.
It is definitely a stressful time, for obvious reasons. Fortunately, my family and friends in the country are alive and are doing well enough under the circumstances. Unfortunately, in the past decade this isn’t the first time I have had to check in on my loved ones there, and for basically the same reasons. This is what I wanted to talk about.
You see, the US government has meddled in Ukraine for decades. And the Ukrainian people have suffered because of this.
The overwhelming support that Western governments and media outlets have poured out for Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24 is not actually motivated by concern for the Ukrainian people. They are using us to advance their political and economic interests.
We know this because Washington overthrew our government twice in a decade, imposed neoliberal economic policies that made our country the poorest in Europe, and has fueled a devastating civil war that in the past eight years took the lives of 14,000 Ukrainians and wounded and displaced many more.
The following facts don’t get mentioned by the media, as they contradict the foreign-policy goals of the US government. So unless you are actively engaged in the anti-war movement, the info below is probably new to you. That is why I wanted to write this article.
US government backed two coups in Ukraine in one decade, and fueled a civil war that killed 14,000 Ukrainians
The first US-backed soft coup in Ukraine occurred in 2004, when Western-backed presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko lost the election.
The winner of the November 2004 vote, Viktor Yanukovych, was portrayed as being pro-Russian, so Western governments refused to recognize his victory and declared electoral fraud.
Western-backed forces in Ukraine then mobilized and carried out a textbook color revolution, called the “Orange Revolution.” They forced another run-off vote that December, in which their candidate Yushchenko was declared president.
In a shockingly honest 2004 report titled “US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev,” Britain’s establishment newspaper The Guardian admitted that the “Orange Revolution” was “an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing,” bankrolled with at least $14 million.
“Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign” attempted to topple governments “in four countries in four years,” The Guardian boasted, targeting Serbia, Georgia, Belarus, and Ukraine.
Much like in the United States, Ukrainian presidents are appointed and govern in the interest of wealthy oligarchs, so no Ukrainian president ends his tenure with a particularly high rating. The US-backed Yushchenko, however, set a new record for the lowest popular support in history.
In the next presidential election, in 2010, Yushchenko got just 5% of the vote, which should give you an insight into how popular he actually was.
During his first term Yushchenko implemented a program of austerity, reduced social spending, bailed out large banks, deregulated agriculture, advocated for NATO membership, and repressed the rights of language minorities like Russian speakers.
The second US-backed coup d’etat in Ukraine was launched in late 2013 and consolidated power in 2014, just a decade after the first one.
Viktor Yanukovych, who was frequently called pro-Russian by Western media but in reality was just neutral, won the 2010 presidential election fair and square.
But in 2013, Yanukovych refused to sign a European Union Association Agreement that would have been a step toward integrating Ukraine with the EU. In order to be part of this program, Brussels had demanded that Kiev impose neoliberal structural adjustment, selling off government assets and giving the Washington-led International Monetary Fund (IMF) even more control over Ukrainian state spending.
Yanukovych rejected this for a more favorable offer from Russia. So, once again, Western-backed organizations brought out their supporters into the Maidan Square in Kiev to overthrow the government.
As was the case during the “Orange Revolution” in 2004, the United States sent politicians to meet with the leaders of the demonstrations, and later coup leaders, in late 2013 and early 2014. US Senators John McCain, Chris Murphy, and others spoke in front of large crowds in Maidan.
At some point the control of the stage and leadership of the protests was overtaken by far-right forces. Leaders of such organizations as Svoboda (a neo-Nazi party) and Right Sector (a coalition of fascist organizations) spoke to the protesters, sometimes standing side-by-side with their American backers like McCain.
Later their organizations acted as the spear of attack against the Ukrainian police in the violent February 2014 coup d’etat, and they were the first to storm government buildings.
With the success of the US-backed forces and fascists, President Yanukovich fled the country to Russia.
US government officials met with coup leaders and appointed a right-wing neoliberal, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, to lead the new regime, because they recognized they couldn’t appoint the fascists and maintain legitimacy.
A leaked recording of a phone call between Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, and the US ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, showed that Washington chose who the leaders of the new coup regime would be.
Nuland referred to Yatsenyuk affectionately as “Yats,” saying, “Yats is the guy.”
The first actions of the post-2014 coup government were to ban left-wing parties in the country and reduce language-minority rights even further. Then Ukrainian fascists attacked anti-coup demonstrations in the streets all over the country.
As the anti-coup protests were being violently broken up by the far-right, two areas in the east of the country, Donetsk and Luhansk, rose up and declared independence from Ukraine.
The people of Crimea also voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia. Crimea has a Russian military base, and under their protection they were able to vote safely.
The people in Donetsk and Luhansk were less lucky. The coup government dispatched the military to suppress their insurrections.
At first many Ukrainian soldiers refused to shoot at their own countrymen, in this civil war that their US-backed government started.
Seeing the hesitation of the Ukrainian military, far-right groups (and the oligarchs that were backing them) formed so-called “territorial defense battalions,” with names like Azov, Aidar, Dnipro, Tornado, etc.
Much like in Latin America, where US-backed death-squads kill left-wing politicians, socialists, and labor organizers, these Ukrainian fascist battalions were deployed to lead the offensive against the militias of Donetsk and Luhansk, killing Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
In May 2014, neo-Nazis and other far-right forces assaulted an anti-coup demonstration in the major city of Odessa. 48 people were burned alive in a labor union building.
This massacre added more fuel to the civil war. The Ukrainian government promised to investigate what happened, but never really did.
After the 2014 coup, Ukraine held an election without any serious opposition candidates, and Western-backed billionaire Petro Poroshenko won.
Poroshenko was seen as the most “moderate” of the right-wing coup coalition. But that didn’t mean much, considering many opposition parties were banned or assaulted by the far-right when they tried to organize.
Additionally, the areas that would have heavier support for the voices who wanted peace with Russia, such as Crimea and the Donbas, had seceded from Ukraine.
The new president had the impossible task of trying to appear sufficiently patriotic for the far-right while at the same time sufficiently “respectable” for the West to continue backing him publicly.
To appease the far-right, Poroshenko gave out awards to World War Two veterans “on both sides,” including the ones that fought in Nazi Germany-aligned militias like the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
The Ukrainian government officially honored the leaders of these organizations, Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukevych, who organized massacres of many thousands of Poles, Jews, Russians, and other minorities during World War Two, and who willingly participated in the Holocaust.
The holiday Defenders of Ukraine Day, or Day of Ukrainian Armed Forces, was changed to October 14, to match the date of founding of the Nazi-backed Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
This is why you sometimes see red-and-black badges on Ukrainian soldiers. This symbol shows support for the fascist Ukrainian forces during World War Two.
(Also I have to make a separate but important point here: Ukraine was previously part of the Soviet Union, and the majority of the Ukrainian population during World War Two supported the Red Army and actively resisted Nazi occupation of their country. The Ukrainian fascist collaborationists and parties did not have as broad support as the anti-fascist resistance did, and were mostly active during the period of Nazi occupation.)
A large portion of the civil war that broke out in Ukraine after the 2014 coup was waged under Poroshenko.
From 2014 to 2019, in five years of civil war in Donbas, the geographic region that encompasses the Luhansk and Donetsk republics, more than 13,000 people were killed, and at least 28,000 were wounded, according to official Ukrainian government statistics. This was years before Russia invaded.
The Ukrainian army and its far-right paramilitary allies were responsible for the vast majority of civilian casualties, with the United Nations reporting in January 2022 that, between 2018 and 2021, 81.4% of all civilian casualties caused by active hostilities were in Donetsk and Luhansk.
These are Russian-speaking Ukrainians being killed their own government. They are not secret Russian forces.
Researchers at the US government-sponsored RAND Corporation acknowledged in a January 2022 report in Foreign Policy magazine that, “even by Kyiv’s own estimates, the vast majority of rebel forces consist of locals—not soldiers of the regular Russian military.”
Meanwhile, millions of Ukrainians fled the country due to the conflict, especially from the eastern regions that saw most of the fighting.
The United States strongly supported Poroshenko and the Ukrainian government as it was waging this brutal war that killed thousands, injured tens of thousands, and displaced millions.
This is why I say the US government doesn’t actually care about Ukraine.
In 2019, the Ukrainian people clearly showed that they opposed this war by overwhelmingly voting against Poroshenko at the ballot box. Current Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky got 73% of the vote, compared to just 24% for Poroshenko.
Zelensky ran on a platform of peace. He even addressed the Russian-speaking eastern parts of the country in Russian.
Very quickly after entering office, however, Zelensky changed his tone. Much like the supposedly “moderate” Poroshenko, Zelensky was told that he was risking losing Western backing, and the loyalty of the far-right, which could threaten to kill him.
So Zelensky did a 180 on his peaceful rhetoric, and he continued to support the civil war.
Neo-Nazis have a significant influence in Ukraine’s state security services
Here it is important to address another important point: The Ukrainian government is not directly run by fascists, but in Ukraine fascist forces do have significant influence in the state.
After the 2014 US-backed coup, neo-Nazis were absorbed by Ukraine’s military, police, and security apparatus.
So while the parliamentary representation of fascist parties is not large (they often get just a few percentage points of the vote in elections), these extremists continue to be supported by taxpayers’ money through unelected state institutions.
Additionally, these neo-Nazis have the street muscle to terrorize political opponents. They can quickly mobilize dozens or hundreds of people on a moment’s notice to attack opponents.
Moreover, these fascists are highly motivated combatants that ensure the loyalty of the Ukrainian military. They represent a powerful faction of the Ukrainian political spectrum, and one of the forces in Ukrainian society that pushes for escalating war with the separatist regions and Russia.
I sometimes see people try to reject this fact by saying, “How can Ukraine have all these Nazis if their president is Jewish?” Here is the answer: the Nazis are not appointed by Zelensky.
These fascists have a major influence in the unelected state security apparatus. The have systematically infiltrated the military and police. And they even enjoy support and training from Western governments and NATO.
The position of fascists grew substantially stronger in Ukraine in the eight years of the civil war, from 2014 to 2022.
For those reasons Ukrainian presidents (Jewish or not) have to take the position of the far-right into consideration. (Not to mention the possibility that far-right gangs could threaten to kill the president or other politicians if they defy them.)
Furthermore, all forces that normally oppose fascism or would oppose the civil war have not existed en masse for eight years in Ukraine: following the 2014 coup, many left-wing parties and socialists got banned by the Ukrainian government, and were assaulted in the streets by the fascists.
Any Ukrainian president, especially since the coup, is highly dependent on the support of the US government as well. So Zelensky is very much a hostage of the situation.
When Washington tells Zelensky he must continue the civil war in Ukraine against his own electoral promises, support NATO membership, ignore the Minsk II agreement of 2015, or even ask for nuclear weapons, he does everything he is told.
Like any other US puppet regime, Ukraine doesn’t have any real independence. Kiev has been actively pushed to confront Russia by every US administration, against the will of the majority of Ukrainian people.
The fact that most Ukrainians wanted peace with Russia was reflected by the fact that they voted for the peace candidate Zelensky in such overwhelming numbers, 73%. And the fact that Zelensky did a total 180 on that promise shows how little political power he actually has.
Western sanctions will only hurt working-class Russians (and average people in the US too)
Now to circle back to the present moment and what to do now. I don’t support the invasion Russia is carrying out. But the only government I can influence by the virtue of living in the United States is the US government.
Luckily, that is extremely relevant, because Washington is one of the root causes of what is happening in Ukraine now.
For the past eight years, I spoke out against the coup and the civil war in Ukraine that the United States supported, promoted, and funded.
While I never thought a war with Russia was possible, I and many other Ukrainians are against Ukraine joining NATO and escalating tensions with the separatist republics and Moscow.
Any further escalation by the US right now can only lead to a larger war.
I even hear some US politicians playing around with the idea of a “no-fly zone,” which means they are calling for NATO to shoot down Russian planes. This is the quickest way to World War Three.
The support for Ukraine that fills the Western media now is not out of real solidarity with the people of Ukraine. If that were the case, the US wouldn’t have overthrown our government twice in a decade; it wouldn’t have supported the policies that made us the poorest country in Europe; it wouldn’t have fueled a brutal civil war for the past eight years.
The reason US media outlets and politicians are all backing Ukraine now is because they want to use the Ukrainian military and civilian population as cannon fodder in a proxy war with a political adversary.
Washington is willing to fight until the last Ukrainian to weaken Russia.
For that reason, I am absolutely against US sanctions in general, and this round of US sanctions against Russia in particular.
The harsh Western sanctions imposed on Russia target the civilian population.
Sanctions don’t affect ruling elites, and all US sanctions ever do is collectively punish working-class people of a country where Washington doesn’t like their government.
Devaluing the Russian currency, the ruble, is effectively a form of shrinking workers’ wages, cutting the pensions of retirees, and preventing regular people from being able to access food or medicine.
This isn’t to mention the cost that these sanctions are now also having on the people in the United States itself, with gas prices as high as $6 a gallon and even $7 in parts of California.
The skyrocketing oil prices caused by this crisis will lead to more inflation. And while the official US inflation figure is 7.5%, the real number is probably in the double digits.
All of this makes life harder for average working people, in Ukraine, Russia, the US, and around the world.
Russiagate and anti-Russian xenophobia has made the crisis even worse
Another factor in the Ukraine crisis is the rampant surge of russophobia.
Since Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election, Democrats have blamed Donald Trump’s victory on Russian hacking without any solid proof. All of the supposed evidence they presented fell apart when investigated.
Many US politicians demonized Russia as much as they could, just to push the blame for their candidate losing on someone else.
Now Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine has made it okay to be openly xenophobic. I have even seen some people call for killing all Russians, boycotting all Russian businesses, revoking student visas for Russians, etc.
Even in the more “respectable” media, you see talking heads speaking about Russian people as if they’re not human.
Under Donald Trump, many of these same people demonized China, and then acted surprised when there was a wave of hate crimes in the US against East Asians.
During the US invasion of Iraq, the press demonized Arabs and Muslims, leading to hate crimes against their communities.
My point is that demonizing nationalities is never acceptable, and people can see through the flimsy excuses of hiding one’s own xenophobia behind the declarations of “solidarity” with my country.
In conclusion, I wanted to say that, if you live in the United States, the only government you can actually influence through demonstrations and other forms of protest is our own.
I absolutely think it is a crime right now to support the US government’s drive for war, sanctions, or further escalation of tensions in Ukraine.
The US government has been stoking this conflict for decades. Washington has funded coups and fueled a civil war in Ukraine.
Now, US corporations stand to greatly benefit from what is happening.
The government doesn’t care about the people here in the US, and the only reason it says it cares about people abroad is so it can justify further military spending and advance its foreign-policy goals – which aren’t good for anyone except for a handful of rich American oligarchs.
Johnson Choi Biz