The New York Times and people who speak in the interests of Western imperialism say Putin won’t use nukes against Ukraine because “his country could become an international pariah.”
The United States did use nukes on HIroshima & Nagasaki in 1945. Every major politician in the “Western” bloc has justified the unthinkable because it “saved lives” and “ended” World War II. This is not true: the Japanese were ready to surrender, but the U.S. wanted to project power at the Soviet Union and other rivals and sacrificed hundreds of thousands of humans for it.
QUESTION: Why isn’t the U.S. a pariah? Biden, leader of what I like to call the War Party, claiming the banner of “democracy,” is pouring tens of $billions into the U.S. arms industry to ship arms to Ukraine. Because he cares about people there? No. To strengthen the U.S./NATO interests for global exploitation against Russia and China, who have their own global empires.
What the U.S. did in 1945, said Putin last week, “created a precedent” for use of nuclear weapons. He’s using that history to justify Russia’s possible, horrific, unacceptable use of nukes.
I expect everyone reading this agrees that the use of nuclear weapons – tactical or otherwise – is never justified for any reason.
But there is tremendous, stultifying, passivity in the face of what the website The Dispatch says
has brought the world to “… its most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. No other single incident has had a higher potential to escalate into a general war between Russia and the United States, to inflict mass casualties on such a large number of people, or to bring such a high level of disruption to the global economy.”
Below is thinking and information from various perspectives on the global situation. I would like to hear from you – debrasweet@worldcantwait.net – on your thoughts regarding this moment.
From RevCom.us: Biden/Putin Faceoff Brings World to the Threshold of Nuclear War
Ukraine is not a battleground between democracy and autocracy, it is a conflict zone of imperialist rivalry between Russian imperialism and U.S. and Western imperialism. Both are fighting to impose their will on the other, to advance the interests of their empire at the expense of the other—and at the cost of tens of thousands of lives lost, with the looming threat of crushing and incinerating millions more.
‘End War in Ukraine’ Say 66 Nations at UN General Assembly – Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies found “that leaders from 66 countries, mainly from the Global South, also used their General Assembly speeches to call urgently for diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine through peaceful negotiations, as the UN Charter requires. They compiled excerpts from the speeches of all 66 countries to show the breadth and depth of their appeals.” For example, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh told the Assembly,
We want the end of the Russia-Ukraine war. Due to sanctions and counter-sanctions, …the entire mankind, including women and children, is punished. Its impact does not remain confined to one country, rather it puts the lives and livelihoods of the people of all nations in greater risk, and infringes their human rights. People are deprived of food, shelter, healthcare and education. Children suffer the most in particular. Their future sinks into darkness.
My urge to the conscience of the world: stop the arms race, stop the war and sanctions. Ensure food, education, healthcare and security of the children. Establish peace.
Lest anyone fall for the lie that Russia is the main or only danger to world peace, Nick Mottern of BanKillerDrones.com highlights the relentless U.S. expansion of weaponized drones. We know from Daniel Hale’s revelations as a now-imprisoned former U.S. drone operator and whistle-blower, that only about 10% those killed by U.S. drones in the “war on terror” were intended targets. Relating to Afghanistan, for example, he writes in Reminders of Why We Keep on Keeping On:
‘The U.S. is negotiating with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to trade nearly 50 military aircraft flown across the border as the Afghan government collapsed last summer for help hunting terrorists in Afghanistan, according to two people with knowledge of the talks.’ Quote from this Politico article indicating that the U.S. hopes that an arms deal with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan will solve its problem of not having killer drone bases in any countries surrounding Afghanistan. Here are Human Rights Watch reports for 2022 on Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
A comment with which I wholeheartedly agree in World War 3 and Dangerous Idiocy by Bob Avakian:
…It is vitally important for the masses of people, in this country, and other countries aligned with it, as well as in Russia—for people everywhere—to finally and fully wake up now, recognize the real, and profoundly heavy, stakes involved, and act in accordance with our actual interests—the interests of all of humanity: demanding that this war in Ukraine, and the involvement (direct and indirect) of the imperialists on both sides in this war, be stopped, before it not only causes even greater suffering for the people of Ukraine but possibly escalates into a far more terrible conflict which causes massive destruction and death, on a whole other level, and even possibly poses a threat to the very existence of humanity itself.