The world’s rogue state vs Iran

Update: On 2 November 2018, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, along with the foreign relations and finance ministers of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, issued a joint statement confirming their commitment to establish a ‘Special Purpose Vehicle’, such as a new system governing trade with Iran. Without such a channel, the renewed embargo against Iran by the rogue kleptocracy in power in the USA affects businesses in Europe.

This plan sees European investors and businesses being able to continue all legitimate business with Iran free from the threat of reprisal by the USA for violating its unilateral, completely illegal under international law, embargo. In the statement, European leaders also vowed to continue working with Russia and China.

On Monday 5 November, the American regime in Washington commenced its illegal embargo against Iran and with its usual cowboy bluster warned of ‘severe penalities’ against companies that continued to do business which their embargo wants to block.

More irritating, from the international point of view, is the vacuous threat by the Washington cowboys (US President Donald Trump and his top-tier psychopaths, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, National Security Adviser John Bolton and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin) that any company or individual violating the USA’s unilateral and illegal embargo may lose access to SWIFT global banking system which banks use to conduct international transactions. Even more absurd, the White House cowboys threatened SWIFT itself.

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Update: The Treasury Secretary of the government of USA (equivalent to a finance minister) has said that his government is “in negotiations with Belgian-based financial messaging service SWIFT, that facilitates the bulk of the world’s cross-border money transactions, on disconnecting Iran from the network“.

[SWIFT is the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is the financial network that provides high-value cross-border transfers for members across the world. It is based in Belgium, but its board includes executives from US banks. USA has a peculiar – unacceptable in multilateral and bilateral agreements, and illegal anywhere outside territorial USA – set of ‘laws’ that give the government of the USA permission to act against banks and regulators worldwide if they are seen to obstruct US foreign, defence or economic policy. SWIFT supports most interbank messages, connecting over 11,000 financial institutions in more than 200 countries and territories.]

The news agency report adds: “Washington has been pressuring SWIFT to cut Iran from the system as it did in 2012 before the nuclear deal. Although the United States does not hold a majority on SWIFT’s board of directors, the Trump administration could impose penalties on SWIFT unless it disconnects from Iran.”

In August, Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the European Union is working to protect economic ties with Iran and keep payment channels open. Maas said Europe has started work on creating a system for money transfers that will be autonomous from the currently prevailing Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).

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IT IS A MEASURE OF THE PHANTASMAGORIA that rules international relations today, that a pretend-country – one which observes only the law of the gun within its borders and uses its remaining power to impose the same kind of primitive law without – with a pretend-government, has given itself the right to label another country a ‘rogue state’.

This pretend-country is the USA, and in its macabre language, a ‘rogue state’ is any country that neither bows to the USA nor submits to its diktats and intimidations, nor permits entry to the USA’s corporations and banks, nor uses the American dollar as its medium of international exchange. There are still in 2018 a number of countries or nation-states which are neither parliamentary as the Anglo-Americans prefer, nor democracies as the Western Europeans imagine themselves to be. This does not make them “rogue states”, for that label should properly be affixed to just the one pretend-country ruled by a pretend-government: the USA.

In the pretend-government of America’s child logic, it can countenance countries pursuing their interests only provided those interests either coincide with the interests of the American pretend-government or are permitted by it. Any transgression is considered by the pretend-government of USA as being outlaw behavior. To most other countries and territories and states (there are 193 in the United Nations) outlaw behaviour means the use by the country’s government and agencies of methods contrary to accepted standards of international behavior and contrary to international law, cheating or reneging, the use of violent methods when peaceful ones are available.

Using this measure – found in the views of a majority among 193 versus the barking insistence of one – the USA is the pre-eminent rogue state (assisted by an adjutant rogue state, the rather recently invented Kingdom of Saudi Arabia). The citizens of this pre-eminent rogue state have been brainwashed to consider it normal that their country’s military installations exist in staggering numbers in other countries, on other peoples’ land – there are now around 800 US bases in foreign countries. Seventy years after World War II and 62 years after the Korean War, there are still 174 US ‘base sites’ in Germany, 113 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea, according to the Pentagon while hundreds more dot the planet in around 80 countries, including Aruba and Australia, Bahrain and Bulgaria, Colombia, Kenya, and Qatar.

The Islamic Republic of Iran does not have a military base in the USA, nor in any country near the USA. On the other hand, the pretend-government of the USA maintains 12 military bases in Iraq, 8 in Kuwait, 6 in Afghanistan, 2 in Bahrain and 2 in Turkey, that is, all around Iran. This is how the pre-eminent rogue state threatens and seeks to intimidate other countries.

This is the background against which a remarkable joint editorial published on 15 October by the editors of four of Iran’s leading newspapers must be considered. The four newspapers – Iran, Hamshahri, Etelaat, and Sazandegi – decried the reimposition by the USA of what are called ‘sanctions’ (a misuse of the word that has become commonplace, the correct words should be embargo or blockade) as a violation of the ‘unalienable rights’ of the Iranian people to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’, quoting in fact from the American Declaration of Independence which has long been consigned to ashes in the USA itself.

The joint editorial explained that the “access to medicine, drugs and medical equipments” offers “obvious proof” that it is “children, women and men” who are “actually targeted by blind sanctions.” The recession caused by sanctions will see “many job opportunities lost” in industry and agriculture, effects that will “subsequently provoke escalation of poverty among the households, and these households are just those who constitute Iranian people.”

The joint editorial has as its immediate reference point the abandoning by the USA in early May 2018 of the six-party Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which was signed in 2015, granting Iran sanctions relief in exchange for the curbing of its nuclear activities:

“Whereas leaving JCPOA is a non-diplomatic immoral behavior, imposing tyrannical sanctions against a great nation will certainly be an antagonistic, discreditable measure. The US government claims that its sanctions are targeted on Iranian governance, not on Iranian people, while Iranian government believes that the sanction would come to no harm. However, we as the freethinker freestanding journalists with an attitude independent of any government believe that contrary to what governments claim, the US tyrannical sanctions have brought about destructive repercussions for the lives of millions of Iranian citizens who legitimately enjoy the right of life under optimal conditions.

“The US government obviously tells a lie when claiming that the sanctions are not imposed on the Iranian people. Indeed, the pressure and economic blockade of Iran have left harmful and in some cases, terrible impact on the life of Iranian people, not least the poor, entirely inconsistent with any reading of human rights. Difficulty in having access to medicine, drugs and medical equipments is an obvious proof for this statement that it is the people, children, women and men, who are actually targeted by blind sanctions, and so is when the price of goods are skyrocketed far beyond the purchasing power of ordinary people, and when the cost for health, education and even nutrition for the people are disproportionately increased, when many job opportunities are lost as the immediate effects of the sanctions on the industry and agriculture, all these subsequently provoke escalation of poverty among the households, and these households are just those who constitute Iranian people.”

Yesterday (16 Oct) the pretend-government of the USA blacklisted some 20 Iranian companies, including banks, steel mills, zinc mines, and manufacturers of cars, buses and tractors – on the spurious grounds that they support recruitment of child soldiers for Iran! As has been the practice of the pretend-government of the USA, it employs brazen lies to justify its intention to see destroyed those countries that do not pay it tribute. It lied about the so-called weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it has lied repeatedly about the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict, it has supplied Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in their genocidal war against Yemen, it has lied to its own citizens about the origin of the 11 September 2001 attacks in the USA.

Resisting the usual attempts at arm-twisting by the pretend-government of the USA, earlier this month, the International Court of Justice ordered the USA to lift the sanctions on humanitarian goods and civil aviation, saying that they endanger civilian lives. The US “must remove any impediments” to the free exportation of food and medicines to Iran and to the safety of civil aviation, the ICJ said, to no avail however. As pointed out by Iranian experts on international law, the American withdrawal from the JCPOA and the measures it has taken to defy its implementation, the re-imposition of embargos and blockades on Iran and its commercial partners in the world, are a material breach of its international obligations and responsibilities.

It is the pre-eminent rogue state of the world (and its adjutant rogue state) which is the towering threat to peaceful and mutually beneficial co-existence, shared security, amity and understanding, sustainable development and the removal of impediments to the betterment of humans and the environment. Iran must have all our support.

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May Day 2015

Garment workers take part in a protest calling on the government to raise wages during a march to mark Labour Day in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

All the substantial issues confronting the working class today — the rapid growth of social inequality, a tattered veneer of ‘democracy’ behind which ever more rapacious forms of neo-liberal economics rule over peoples and the environment, the explosion of police violence within countries (as in the USA) and of armed conflict between countries and regions — all these are bound up with the struggle against new forms of dominance.

The dangers of war loom more menacing today than they did in 1914 and in 1939. But for many workers in many countries on this May Day in 2015, war has never gone away. It persists because of the division of the world into what are called competing economies (as if ‘country’ and ‘economy’ are synonymous: they are nothing of the kind). On May Day, the subordination of the productive forces of households, families, communities and villages to the corporate and financial elite is protested and revoked.

Workers carry banners with messages in support of workers’ rights during a march to mark Labour Day in Yangon, Burma (left). Members of the Group of the National Confederation of Trade Unions, raise their fists and shout slogans during their annual May Day rally in Tokyo.

The world of work has been reshaped by globalisation. Today, much of global trade involves global buyers and suppliers, which has implications for workers’ welfare. Multinational enterprises source from a network of suppliers, who, in turn, compete with one another to obtain business. The task of providing compensation is therefore left to the supplier of the product or service, who is under considerable pressure with regard to the wages and conditions they can offer workers.

There are no mechanisms within the political system (there are scant differences between political systems installed today, for their methods are so similar) through which any of the grievances of the vast majority of the population can find expression. These democratic demands should be linked to programmes that advances the social rights of the working class. Chief amongst these must be a massive redistribution of wealth, which has been snatched away by what is mockingly called the ‘market’, itself a ghastly amalgam of banks, technocrats, commodity speculators, global finance capital, lobbyists and consultants, the multi-lateral lending organisations (like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank), and all their cronies and cabals fostered by politicians.

Technological advancements and the expansion of the internet have caused temporal and physical distances to vanish. They have accelerated sweeping and damaging changes in the organisation of production and work. There has been a growth in the number of hours that enterprises operate (24 by 7 has become a household term) and therefore in the times when workers at all levels of service and production must be available to work. If they are not they are summarily sacked, fired, dismissed.

Protesters from the trade union PAME hold red flags during the May Day rally in front of the parliament building in Athens, Greece (left). People march in Moscow marking Labour Day.

Since the 1980s, but especially in the 2010s, under the pressures of ‘competition’ but in fact as a strategy to create an ever-greater pool of consumers who are otherwise disenfranchised, companies and corporations run by the financial puppeteers have demanded greater flexibility in production and organisation. This has abandoned the traditional employment relationship which, for all its faults, has been one that has survived the Modern Era. It was the basis for labour protection measures. No longer. Non-standard employment arrangements have become common features in what are now cynically called labour markets, no matter where they are – Argentina, Micronesia, Scandinavia, sub-Saharan Africa. Work has become unstable and frighteningly insecure for families. Work has in fact been deliberately caused to become chronically unpredictable.

A concerted assault on the domination of our societies by this putrid but dangerous financial aristocracy is needed. For this enemy is determined to maintain its stranglehold through violence and through the punishment of poverty. This grip over our economic and political lives must be broken, for only when our societies are based on public ownership and democratic control of the forces of production and the means with which to safeguard ecology, natural resources and cultural values can genuine ‘development’ (a grossly abused term) take place.

Je suis Charlie

Illustrations in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo by Jean Jullien (‏@jean_jullien), Francisco J. Olea (‏@oleismos) and The Independent newspaper (top, middle, bottom).

The weekly is pugnaciously irreverent and its satire is biting. Charlie Hebdo, the publication, has been far more than the lampooning weekly with the wicked wit it has been described as. To be vulgar, provocative and offensive and to be so often was what made Charlie Hebdo so spot on about contemporary politics and society.

It wrestled with pen and ink for the freedom to be all this, and in so doing, strengthened also the freedom to protest. There were no taboos – to question, with cleverness and humour, and to reflect boldly the contradictions of society, through illustration and cartoon, were what the weekly did consummately well.

With these methods – much loved in France, well liked in those parts of neighbouring Europe – Charlie Hebdo explained some of the essence of democracy. And of freedom of expression, so dear to all journalists and commentators, whatever their medium.

For giving such a service, the journalists of Charlie Hebdo were murdered.

Tolerance is a value our societies strive to inculcate and practice, but there is no virtue in tolerating those who murder. The murderers of Charlie Hebdo are the foullest criminals, reeking cowards who must be prosecuted for they are rank criminals and not holy warriors, however they might choose to describe themselves.

This is a weekly that stood – never mind its irreverence and vulgarity – for freedom from fear, including the fear of being different, of speaking out, of questioning majority (and minority) beliefs.

As the thousands of placards and hand-written signs and poignant drawn tributes have collectively said – we are all Charlie Hebdo. #JeSuisCharlie

An American agency and the evil its men do

“The hand which inflicts the fatal blow is not more deeply imbrued in blood than his who sits and looks on: neither can he be clear of blood who has countenanced its shedding; nor that man seem other than a participator in murder who gives his applause to the murderer, and calls for prizes in his behalf.” – Lactantius, From Epitome 58, translated by Thomas De Quincey

It has become abundantly clear, with the release of part of the US Senate Intelligence Committee on CIA torture, that the practices and the planning were not confined to a handful of aberrational cases or techniques. This shadowy and sprawling artifice of evil was an officially sanctioned, worldwide regime of torture that had the explicit approval of the top members of both political parties in the US Congress. The evidence for all of this is conclusive and overwhelming. The implications must shake to their core what the American government has so often called “the international community”.

That part of the US Senate Intelligence Committee on CIA torture report which has been released has revealed that torture techniques were approved at the highest levels of the government of the USA and then employed in prisons around the world, that these were and are the CIA ‘black sites’.

“But make real to yourself the vision of every blood-stained page – stand in the presence of the ravening conqueror, the savage tyrant – tread the stones of the dungeon and of the torture-room.” – George Gissing, from ‘The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft’ (1903)

The mainstream media in the USA – fulfilling their function as the propaganda mechanism of a government that from 2001 onwards paid even less heed to national and international law than during the foregoing century of conflict – for years refused to use the word ‘torture’ to describe any of what the Senate report details. The same media called these same techniques ‘torture’ when used by adversaries of America.

What has been released by the US Senate Intelligence Committee (in part) is the product of four years of work (2009-2013) and the full collection is estimated at running to some 6,000 pages. The released portion, which is a summary, runs to about 600 pages and some of that is redacted: the names of CIA agents participating in the torture, countries which agreed to allow CIA black sites, and other details.

Some of the key documents are posted here, barring the portion of the Senate report that has been released which is too large a file size to upload. Here are: the Senate CIA Torture Report Timeline (pdf, 162KB), the Obama Statement on the Senate CIA Torture Report (pdf, 41KB), the Feinstein Statement on the Senate Torture Report (pdf, 157KB), the Senate CIA Torture Report State Talk Points (pdf, 184KB), Senate CIA Torture Report Additional Views (pdf, 1.87MB), the CIA Response to Torture Report 1 (pdf, 5.39MB), the CIA Response to Torture Report 2 (pdf, 1.17MB, and here), the CIA Response to Torture Report 3 (pdf, 1.63MB and here), and the Globalising Torture report by the Open Society Justice Initiative (pdf, 1.08MB).

“The quelling of the Philippine uprising by the United States, and the British expeditions against the Boers in the Transvaal shocked his sense of justice. ‘They are horrible, these wars that the English and Americans are waging in a world in which even schoolchildren condemn war!’ he wrote.” – Henri Troyat, from ‘Tolstoi’ (1965), translated by Nancy Amphoux

What can be read is an account of how the CIA viciously brutalised people, some of them entirely innocent, and described what they were doing as an art and a science. Senate investigators, who had access to millions of pages of original CIA cables and other source material, used most of the released portion to show one example after another of CIA officials doing gruesome things, then telling convenient falsehoods to each other, to their bosses, to the White House, to anyone who questioned them, and to Congress – all to prove to everyone that torture worked.

By mid-2003, the CIA constantly repeated the fiction that “enhanced interrogation tactics” had “saved lives,” “thwarted plots,” and “captured terrorists.” Saying otherwise was like blasphemy. What is most chilling is the complicity of those who have remained offstage by design, and this portion of the released report does in no way exonerate them, the architects.

“America is the land of murders. Day after day in cities and towns and on lonely country roads violent death creeps upon men. Undisciplined and disorderly in their way of life the citizens can do nothing. After each murder they cry out for new laws which, when they are written into the books of laws, the very lawmaker himself breaks.” – Sherwood Anderson, from ‘The Marching Men’ (1916)

By any standard with which crimes of this nature have been judged throughout the 20th century, all of these individuals and many others involved must be arrested and prosecuted. The crimes documented in the Senate report make those for which Nixon faced impeachment (forcing him to resign) appear insignificant. Yet those who are implicated, far from fearing that they will be held accountable, brazenly defend their actions.

The administration of American president number 44 has already ruled out any action in response to the Senate report. On Tuesday, Barack Obama released a prepared written statement repeating the position of his administration that there will be no accountability for these crimes. “Rather than another reason to refight old arguments,” he wrote, “I hope that today’s report can help us leave these techniques where they belong — in the past.” What he left unsaid was that the idea of accountability for such criminality would, insofar as this administration will attempt, remain only an idea.

The CIA torture programme, and the designed inability to hold anyone accountable exposes the breakdown of constitutional forms of rule in the USA. Crimes have been committed and exposed before the world, and, within the framework of official political channels, absolutely nothing can or will be done about it. That the USA was in the grip of a gigantic military-intelligence apparatus that acts outside of any legal restraint began to be known a generation ago. The sequential ‘wars on terror’, the NSA spying on the world and now the CIA torture have provided further damning and deeply frightening proof.

Gorbachev, democracy and the Berlin Wall

Der Offizier Harald Jäger trifft unter dem Ansturm der Massen am Grenzübergang Bornholmer Straße die Entscheidung seines Lebens: Wir fluten! Foto: Tagesspiegel / EPD

The ‘celebration’ of the bringing down of the Berlin Wall (and the militarised border between the former East and West in Germany) is being held. Germany’s Christian Democrat-led government has marked the anniversary with many events, but the question ought to be: what are they celebrating? Is it the demise of communism? Is it the ‘victory’ of Western democracy? Or is it the fragile success of having steered without serious catastrophe a course that has become more unsustainable with every year for Germany’s 80.6 million?

These are the questions that do not hide behind the marketability of an event such as several thousand lit balloons in Berlin tracing the course of the Wall when it divided the city. The ‘installation’ will bring the tourists in, but little else for a city whose government – brazenly arm-in-arm with reckless property speculators – posed as being “poor but sexy” much to the disgust of Berliners.

It is difficult to slide away from the consequences of history. In the early euphoria following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Germany moved quickly to erase the scars of its Cold War division. “But East Germany’s legacy remains visible in statistics,” the weekly newspaper Die Zeit has commented, showing that German unification left scars that have not yet disappeared.

Gorbachev: Europe is weakening. Photo: RT.com

An editorial blog post related to the article observed: “The border still exists. Nearly exactly where it existed in reality, Germany is still divided in two. Until today, 25 years after the end of the imposed separation, there is an important demographic and economic imbalance, and there are also very different lifestyle habits.”

In the former eastern part of Germany, the income per capita is still considerably less than in what used to be old Federal Republic (the west), and farms are considerably bigger in the old German Democratic Republic (GDR) than in the old West Germany – the legacy of collective farming. Easterners also put their children in day care, and most get flu shots each year, and the eastern population is older.

Those older residents remember ‘glasnost’ and ‘perestroika’ more readily than do Germans elsewhere in Germany. These were the concept-words employed by Mikhail Gorbachev which made the reunification of Germany possible. The former leader of the Soviet Union (the USSR) returned to Berlin to speak at a forum organised to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the message he gave was weighed down by his disappointment with the West and was charged by his warning – delivered as clearly and precisely as when he was general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – that the new Cold War is the product of the current thinking of the West.

After the Berlin Wall was brought down and Germany began its process of reunification, the leaders of the western world were intoxicated with euphoria of triumph, and they adopted anti-Russian policies that eventually led to the current crisis, Gorbachev said.

Gorbachev: The West claimed monopoly leadership. Photo: RT.com

“Taking advantage of Russia’s weakening and a lack of a counterweight, they claimed monopoly leadership and domination in the world. And they refused to heed the word of caution from many of those present here,” he said. “The events of the past months are consequences of short-sighted policies of seeking to impose one’s will and fait accompli while ignoring the interests of one’s partners.”

Gorbachev gave a list of examples of those policies, including the expansion of NATO and the development of an anti-ballistic missile system, military interventions in Yugoslavia and Iraq, the west-backed secession of Kosovo, the crisis in Syria and others. The Ukrainian crisis is a “blister turning into a bleeding, festering wound,” he said.

Western policies toward Russia championed by Washington have led to the current crisis, and if the confrontation continues, Europe will be weakened and become irrelevant, said Gorbachev. “Instead of becoming a leader of change in a global world Europe has turned into an arena of political upheaval, of competition for the spheres of influence, and finally of military conflict. The consequence inevitably is Europe’s weakening at a time when other centres of power and influence are gaining momentum. If this continues, Europe will lose a strong voice in world affairs and gradually become irrelevant,” he said.

The anniversary of Mauerfall – the bringing down of the Berlin Wall and the militarised boundary between East and West Germany – has been employed by Zygmunt Bauman (professor emeritus of Sociology in the Universities of Leeds and Warsaw) to comment on the hopes of 1989 and the realities of 2014.

“We have seen a steady dismantling of the network of institutions intended to defend the victims of the increasingly deregulated greed-driven economy, and a growing public insensitivity to rampant social inequality, coupled with the incapacity of a rising number of citizens, now abandoned (since no longer viewed as a potential danger to capitalist order or a seedbed of social revolution) to fend for themselves as they might on their own glaringly inadequate resources and capabilities.”

Die größte Demonstration der DDR-Geschichte endete am 4. November mit einer Kundgebung auf dem Alexanderplatz. Foto: Tagesspiegel / EPD

This has resulted, Bauman continued, among the actual and prospective stake-holders of democracy, in a steady erosion of trust in the ability of democratic institutions to deliver on their promises: a stark contrast to the high hopes of the heady, optimistic aftermath of the Berlin Wall’s collapse. It has also resulted in an ever-widening gulf and a breakdown of communication between political elites and the man in the street.

“The ostensible triumph of the democratic mode of human co-existence, in practice brought a steady shrinking and fading of public trust in its potential accomplishments. Such unprepossessing and depressing effects struck, though in unequal measure, all member states of the European Union.”

Amongst the many commentaries in Berlin’s newspaper, one from taz – the short form of Die Tageszeitung – explains the cultural gulf between ‘ossis’ (from the east) and ‘wessis’ (from the former West Germany). “East Germans and immigrants were still commonly referred to as ‘foreigners’, both equally outsiders and underdogs in the West German perspective after the fall of the Wall. They dressed differently, had strange habits and foreign dialects and accents. But culturally East Germans had something in common with many immigrants – both came from societies in which the sense of community was very important.”

This was evident in everyday East Germany (the DDR). There were few telephones and not many public places in the GDR, and hence colleagues and friends met in their own flats and apartments. The result was that close neighborliness was well developed in many migrants at that time. They differed in this from the “distant West Germans”, who even 25 years ago preferred to met each other in cafes or restaurants rather than in their homes.

The frontier between Thuringia and Bavaria near Asbach, in 1950. Photo: Die Zeit / Deutsches Bundesarchiv / Otto Donath

Twenty-five years after November 1989 what is Germany recalling? There are many unkept promises rued by a society in which the joy of being “wieder ein Volk” (once more a people) has been eroded by the finance politics of austerity and the creeping ruin of corporate control. At the time it looked so very different.

In 1986, in the journal Widersprüche (April 1986), the sociologist Timm Kunstreich commented: “Especially concerning the understanding and productivity in the seemingly petty bourgeois work ethic conceptions, the prominent idea is one of characteristic blocking of the transformation process in the GDR. The consequence of the reduction of the integral state is that the ‘proletarian’ company is pushed into the ground. To many social institutions such a proletarian society appears as ‘Prometheus in chains’, bound by a rigid state-partisan control machinery based on collectivism and planned democracy.”

What has been transformed, what is blocked and what remain cultural differences? Far too many of the German Volk (especially the youth) are a Prometheus bound despite reunification, the so-called free market and the removal of the spectre of communism. Every trait of the DDR/GDR that was reviled is seen again, 25 years later, through the employment of new tools of technology, finance, the marginalisation of local alternatives, the intrusion of the private sector into the domains of the state.

This has resulted in a stark and saddening contrast to the high hopes of the heady, optimistic aftermath of the Berlin Wall’s collapse. “Twenty five years ago people stormed a barbed-wired wall that epitomised their un-freedom, hoping that once that wall were down, democracy would guarantee them freedom and that freedom would assure their well-being. Twenty-five years after democracy is in a state of unprecedented (and all but unimaginable at that time) crisis,” Bauman has said. The lit balloons that today give Berlin a ghost wall are alas no more than the gaslight of a depression that is palpable, though in unequal measure, in all member states of the European Union.

Retiring the American dollar

Off into history’s sunset, like the cowboy. This image (modified) is called ‘Dollar Green’ by the artist mancaalberto (http://mancaalberto.deviantart.com/)

Seventy years ago, to the very month, a man named Henry Morganthau celebrated the creation of a “dynamic world community in which the peoples of every nation will be able to realise their potentialities in peace”. It was the founding of what came to be called the Bretton Woods institutions (named after the venue for the meeting, in the USA) and these were the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development – better known as the World Bank – and the International Monetary Fund.

None of the lofty aims that seemed so apposite in the shattering aftermath of the Second World War have been achieved, although what has been written are libraries of counter-factual history that claim such achievements (and more besides) commissioned by both these institutions and their web of supporting establishments, financial, academic, political and otherwise. Instead, for the last two generations of victims of ‘structural adjustment’, and of ‘reform and austerity’ all that has become worthwhile in the poorer societies of the world has been achieved despite the Bretton Woods institutions, not because of them.

Now, seventy years after Morganthau (the then Treasury Secretary of the USA) and British economist John Maynard Keynes unveiled with a grey flourish a multi-lateral framework for international economic order, the Bretton Woods institutions are faced with a challenge, and the view from East and South Asia, from Latin America and from southern Africa is that this is a challenge that has been overdue for too long.

Let’s get the de-dollarisation of the world started.

It has come in the form of the agreement between the leaders of five countries to form a development bank. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, China’s President Xi Jinping, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma made formal their intention during the sixth summit of their countries – together called ‘BRICS’, after the first letters of their countries’ names – held this month in Brazil.

What has been set in motion is the BRICS Development Bank and the BRICS Contingency Reserves Arrangement. Both the new institution and the new mechanism will counter the influence of Western-based lending institutions and the American dollar, which is the principal reserve currency used internationally and which is the currency that the IMF and the World Bank conduct their ruthless business in (and which formulate their policies around, policies that are too often designed to impoverish the working class and to cripple labour).

At one time or another, and not always at inter-governmental fora, the BRICS have objected to the American dollar continuing to be the world’s principal reserve currency, a position which amplifies the impact of policy decisions by the US Federal Reserve – the American central bank – on all countries that trade using dollars, and which seek capital denominated in dollars. These impacts are, not surprisingly, ignored by the Federal Reserve which looks after the interests of the American government of the day and US business (particularly Wall Street).

In the last two years particularly, non-dollar bilateral agreements have become more common as countries have looked for ways to free themselves from the crushing Bretton Woods yoke. Only this June, Russia’s finance minister said the central banks of Russia and China would discuss currency swaps for export payments in their respective national currencies, a direction that followed Putin’s visit to China the previous month to finalise the gigantic US$400 billion deal between Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). It is still early, and the BRICS will favour caution over hyperbole, but when their bank opens for business, the sun will begin to set on the US dollar.

John Kerry and the what me worry doctrine

It is difficult to apply the title of ‘a new low’ to the dizzyingly long epic of lies that has emerged from the United States Department of State in the life of a generation. Nonetheless, the statement made recently in Cairo by the current incumbent to the position of US Secretary of State, John Kerry, now ranks as the most recent contender.

Kerry said that the government of the USA is “not responsible” for either the crisis in Libya, or violence in Iraq, where militants of the Al-Qaeda offshoot group ISIS are capturing cities one by one. “The United States of America is not responsible for what happened in Libya, nor is it responsible for what is happening in Iraq today,” said Kerry at a press conference.

Just over a generation ago, the CIA is credited with the coining of the term ‘plausible deniability’, which was apparently designed to protect the executive from revealing what they did (or didn’t) know by simply limiting what they did in fact know. What Kerry and his comrades in the topmost echelons of the government of the USA have done is to prove to the rest of the world that they practice a rare form of implausible undeniability.

Kerry – like Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Warren Christopher before him; like Lawrence Eagleburger James Baker, George Schultz, and Alexander Haig before them; and like Cyrus Vance and Henry Kissinger even earlier – has been schooled in obscuring the truth at home, and inventing noxious unrealities before the rest of the world in the endless American attempt to explain away its warmongering.

The mechanica of the British establishment appear to follow this doctrine, with which Kerry has now proven his mastery, but in fact the British government’s sophistry pre-dates that of the American ruling circles. Lord Palmerston, a nineteenth century politician in that country, advised his peers that Britain had no lasting enemies or allies, only permanent interests. And so for Tony Blair, prime minister of that island when George Bush the younger (assisted by Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney) began their ‘war on terror’, the bloody wave of extremism gripping Iraq is an internal occurrence and was in no way – oh not at all – facilitated by the Western invasion.

IPCC to world: stop and shrink, or perish

The language is clear and blunt. The message continues to be, as it was in 2013 September, that our societies must change urgently and dramatically. The evidence marshalled is, when compared with the last assessment report of 2007, mountainous and all of it points directly at the continuing neglect of our societies to use less and use wisely.

This Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) comes seven years after the last. It has said that observed impacts of climate change have already affected agriculture, human health, ecosystems on land and in the oceans, water supplies, and livelihoods. These impacts are occurring from the tropics to the poles, from small islands to large continents, and from the wealthiest countries to the poorest.

“There is increasing recognition of the value of social, institutional, and ecosystem-based measures and of the extent of constraints to adaptation”. Image: IPCC

“Climate change has negatively affected wheat and maize yields for many regions and in the global aggregate. Effects on rice and soybean yield have been smaller in major production regions and globally, with a median change of zero across all available data, which are fewer for soy compared to the other crops. Observed impacts relate mainly to production aspects of food security rather than access or other components of food security. Since AR4, several periods of rapid food and cereal price increases following climate extremes in key producing regions indicate a sensitivity of current markets to climate extremes among other factors.”

The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) contains contributions from three Working Groups. Working Group I assesses the physical science basis of climate change. Working Group II assesses impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability, while Working Group III assesses the mitigation of climate change. The Synthesis Report draws on the assessments made by all three Working Groups.

The Working Group II AR5 considers the vulnerability and exposure of human and natural systems, the observed impacts and future risks of climate change, and the potential for and limits to adaptation. The chapters of the report assess risks and opportunities for societies, economies, and ecosystems around the world.

Widespread impacts in a changing world. Global patterns of impacts in recent decades attributed to climate change, based on studies since the AR4 (in 2007). Impacts are shown at a range of geographic scales. Symbols indicate categories of attributed impacts, the relative contribution of climate change (major or minor) to the observed impact, and confidence in attribution. Graphic: IPCC

“Differences in vulnerability and exposure arise from non-climatic factors and from multidimensional inequalities often produced by uneven development processes. These differences shape differential risks from climate change. People who are socially, economically, culturally, politically, institutionally, or otherwise marginalised are especially vulnerable to climate change and also to some adaptation and mitigation responses. This heightened vulnerability is rarely due to a single cause. Rather, it is the product of intersecting social processes that result in inequalities in socioeconomic status and income, as well as in exposure. Such social processes include, for example, discrimination on the basis of gender, class, ethnicity, age, and (dis)ability.”

“Risk of food insecurity and the breakdown of food systems linked to warming, drought, flooding, and precipitation variability and extremes, particularly for poorer populations in urban and rural settings.” Chart: IPCC

The Working Group 2 report has said that impacts from recent climate-related extremes (such as heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones, and wildfires) reveal significant vulnerability and exposure of some ecosystems and many human systems to current climate variability. The impacts of such climate-related extremes include alteration of ecosystems, disruption of food production and water supply, damage to infrastructure and settlements, morbidity and mortality, and consequences for mental health and human well-being. The WG2 has starkly said that for countries at all levels of development, these impacts are consistent with a significant lack of preparedness for current climate variability in some sectors.

“Climate-related hazards exacerbate other stressors, often with negative outcomes for livelihoods, especially for people living in poverty. Climate-related hazards affect poor people’s lives directly through impacts on livelihoods, reductions in crop yields, or destruction of homes and indirectly through, for example, increased food prices and food insecurity. Observed positive effects for poor and marginalised people, which are limited and often indirect, include examples such as diversification of social networks and of agricultural practices.”

Here is how the Working Group II report, and it’s a hefty one indeed, has been organised.

“With increasing warming, some physical systems or ecosystems may be at risk of abrupt and irreversible changes.” Chart: IPCC

Volume 1 is called ‘Global And Sectoral Aspects’. Its sections and chapters are: Context for the AR5 (01-Point of departure, 02-Foundations for decision making), Natural and Managed Resources and Systems, and Their Uses (03-Freshwater resources, 04-Terrestrial and inland water systems, 05-Coastal systems and low-lying areas, 06-Ocean systems, 07-Food security and food production systems), Human Settlements, Industry, and Infrastructure (08-Urban Areas, 09-Rural Areas, 10-Key economic sectors and services), Human Health, Well-Being, and Security (11-Human health: impacts, adaptation, and co-benefits, 12-Human security, 13-Livelihoods and poverty), Adaptation (14-Adaptation needs and options, 15-Adaptation planning and implementation, 16-Adaptation opportunities, constraints, and limits, 17-Economics of adaptation), Multi-Sector Impacts, Risks, Vulnerabilities, and Opportunities (18-Detection and attribution of observed impacts, 19-Emergent risks and key vulnerabilities, 20-Climate-resilient pathways: adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development).

Volume 2 is called ‘Regional Aspects’. Its chapters are: 21-Regional context, 22-Africa, 23-Europe, 24-Asia, 25-Australasia, 26-North America, 27-Central and South America, 28-Polar Regions, 29-Small Islands, 30-The Ocean. There is also ‘Summary Products’ which contains: a Technical Summary and WGII AR5 Volume-wide Frequently Asked Questions. There is ‘Cross-Chapter Resources’ which contains: a Glossary, WGII AR5 Chapter-specific FAQs, Cross-chapter box compendium. Finally there is ‘Edits to the Final Draft Report’ which contains: Changes to the Underlying Scientific/Technical Assessment, List of Substantive Edits.

The Crimea syndrome

Update: With the referendum complete, the Republic of Crimea has addressed the United Nations seeking recognition as a sovereign state and called on Russia to integrate it into the Russian Federation.

Pro-Russian Crimeans celebrate in Sevastopol on March 16, 2014 after partial votes showed that about 95.5 percent of voters in Ukraine’s Crimea region supported union with Russia. Photo: RT / AFP / Viktor Drachev

However, a spokesperson for UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon told reporters the Crimea secession referendum will only exacerbate an “already complex and tense situation” and that the secretary-general is “deeply concerned and disappointed”. The UN position, as enunciated by Ki-moon, is for all parties to work for a solution that is guided by the principles of the United Nations Charter, “including respecting Ukraine’s unity and sovereignty”.

This is uncalled for and a display of partisanship that is not in accordance with the UN Charter in the first place, not for an inter-governmental body that has written “democracy” and “democratic principles” into more resolutions, statements and declarations that one can count. The Crimea referendum was held in the presence of international observers, including those from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The respect for sovereignty that Ki-moon expects for Ukraine, is equally to be expected for the Crimean population, and indeed for the populations of Somalia, Haiti, Sudan, Serbia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Syria. With these statements by Ki-moon, the role of the UN as a stabilising factor in international disputes comes into question. The embargos and restrictions and bans (collectively and incorrectly called ‘sanctions’ by the USA) against Russia are already coming into effect, despite advice from Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union, that they should be discarded.

15 Mar: In the first place, this is a referendum to be undertaken (on Sunday, 16 March 2014) in Crimea, which is in Ukraine, and involves residents of Crimea, not the residents of ‘western’ nations (or allies) – as the ruling regimes in the ‘western nations’ have taken to labelling themselves – and not residents of Russia.

The United Nations Security Council, a lame-duck body that has been used numerous times in the last 40 years to issue a rubber-stamp for the imposition of punitive embargoes (called ‘sanctions’ in American English) and for the waging of ‘just’ war (or wars of ‘liberation’, wars of ‘peace-building’ and wars to uphold ‘democracy’), has just voted on a resolution that calls the Crimean referendum illegal.

Russia vetoed this resolution (China abstained) and the ‘western allies’ voted for it. That the UN Security Council met to even consider such a resolution is testament to its nakedly partisan nature – serve the interests of the USA and its EU allies. The UNSC has no business to decide whether or not a referendum held in a region (province, republic, autonomous or otherwise) of any country is legal or not.

Why so? This is because, in its own words, the “Security Council takes the lead in determining the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression. It calls upon the parties to a dispute to settle it by peaceful means and recommends methods of adjustment or terms of settlement.”

A poll run by the Ria Novosti news service on its website shows the support – 72.8% in favour against 12.8% not in favour – for Crimea joining Russia.

A referendum is neither a threat to peace nor aggression, and there is no dispute involved that falls within the ambit of what the UNSC describes as dispute. The UNSC therefore, under the UN Charter, has no locus standi on a matter such as this.

The USA-drafted and USA-sponsored resolution that attempted to have declared the Crimea referendum ‘illegal’ should not have even been entertained. But instead, the USA and its EU allies sought to portray the referendum as “illegal, unjustified, and divisive. It will be administered under the barrel of a gun rather than under the eyes of international observers.”

So said Samantha Powers, the representative of the USA to the UN. Her words of staggering hypocrisy are exceeded only by the even more shameless hypocrisy of the US Secretary of State John Kerry on the matter, and by those of the president of the USA Barack Obama on the matter. America’s warmongering record since the end of World War Two stands as bloody counterpoint to the hypocritical disinformation being vomited out by the US government and being faithfully broadcast by pliant media.

The puppet government installed in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, as a result of the regime change engineered by the USA and Germany, and several more ‘western’ allies, also voted in its ‘Verkhovna Rada’ (parliament) for early dissolution of Crimean parliament (as reported by Itar-Tass). The coup-imposed government has cut off financial links to Crimea, but has pledged not to attack the peninsula militarily.

Even while Samantha Powers was arranging hypocrisy in great putrid piles around a US-drafted resolution that is nothing but crude sabre-rattling, NATO began air drills with fighter jets in Poland (which borders Ukraine). Recently dispatched US jets took part in the exercises, with more lies from Washington’s military hawks claiming that the drills were planned before the unrest in Ukraine. John Kerry has already denounced the scheduled referendum in Crimea on secession from Ukraine and reintegration into Russia as a “backdoor annexation” which proves nothing more than his limited but vicious vocabulary.

“Extremely high turnout at this polling station. Haven’t spoken to anyone yet who’s voted against joining Russia.” pic.twitter.com/KiyJSmrN9b

Following the script of this phoney attempt at intervention through the UN Security Council – which also serves, in the twisted logic of the US-EU combine that fostered the Kiev coup and which is just as keen to foment a new conflict on Ukraine’s borders – it is not difficult to see the close-range reactions. The coup-installed government in Kiev will reject the results of the referendum and accuse Russia of violating international law by using its military might to ‘redraw Europe’s borders’ – with the ‘western nations’ ignoring their gory histories of redrawing borders in Africa, Asia and South America.

The government of Russia will angrily remind the world that these Ukrainian ‘authorities’ came to power as a result of a coup planned and carried out by pro-Western and anti-Russian extremists, inspired by the US and EU, and that ethnic Russians in Ukraine are now facing discrimination and worse. NATO may even revive its old favourite scheme to install US missile defence systems in Central Europe (the old story was that these would protect NATO allies against ‘rogue states’ like Iran). ‘Sanctions’ will follow, a variant of the Cold War will once again settle over Europe.

But the finance and economics of this confrontation will change. The US and EU are intent on having some semblance of what they call a state in Ukraine in which to funnel billions of dollars and euros – that this economy even before the engineered coup was ramshackle and corrupt (run by oligarchs, now replaced by other oligarchs) does not seem to be a consideration. The pliant media assisted by faithful think-tanks who march to the drumbeat of the US State Department will paint this movement of speculative capital as being necessary to create a prosperous and democratic society. There will be no reference made to Yugoslavia, where the same set of tactics was used, and which didn’t work.

There are other differences. The opposition in Crimea to the USA-backed and fascist-led putsch of 22 February 2014 in Kiev has infuriated the US government in Washington and its EU ‘western’ allies. In Ukraine, the coup-installed government takes its orders from the International Monetary Fund and from Wall Street bankers (the source of or gatekeepers of the said billions) and is preparing a programme of savage austerity measures against the working class – of the same kind that has ruined labour in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain (which has also ruined labour in the ‘western allies’ but that ruination has been hidden better).

These foul machinations will be obscured by a typhoon of propaganda. Already incendiary proposals are circulating in the American and the global financial media. In an article titled ‘How to Put Military Pressure on Russia’, the Wall Street Journal (the house organ of the Davos parasites) has called for arming Polish Air Force F-16 fighters with nuclear weapons (!) and stationing detachments of US ground troops in Poland, Romania and the Baltic countries.

This has been backed by thuggish statements from Kerry, who said this week that if the Crimean vote takes place “there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday in Europe” and that sanctions against Russia would “get ugly fast”. Al Capone would have welcomed Kerry’s brand of diplomacy. Not far behind however are German chancellor Angela Merkel and Britain’s prime minister David Cameron. Also this week, Merkel said that planned EU sanctions are meant to cause “massive political and economic harm” to Russia, while Cameron promised, as any schoolyard bully does, that if we don’t “see Ukrainians and Russians talking to each other” (about what the USA and EU want, not about what the Ukrainians, Russians and Crimeans want) “then there are going to have to be consequences”.

The blatantly provocative and dangerously violent nature and tone of the pronouncements made by these heads of government and senior functionaries is to my mind in need of United Nations attention. Instead, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon told reporters in New York that the situation in Ukraine continues to deteriorate and there was “a great risk of dangerous, downward spiral”. He urged Russia and Ukraine not to take “hasty measures” that “may impact the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine”. Not a word by the UN sec-gen about the atrocious and dangerous misconduct by the heads of government of the ‘western nations’, by John Kerry, Barack Obama and Samantha Powers on this matter. So much for the ‘United’ part of the UN.

Sevastopol, Kiev, Moscow and the West

A soldier atop a Russian armored personnel carriers with a road sign reading ‘Sevastopol – 32 kilometers, Yalta – 70 kilometers’, near the town of Bakhchisarai, Ukraine, February 28, 2014. Photo: Haaretz/AP

The grave and censorious tones being taken by the government of the USA and by the major economic powers of the European Union concerning the crisis in Ukraine ring out with stunning hypocrisy. It is with them – principally the United States of America and Germany – that the responsibility for the current crisis lies.

The governments of these countries and their allies systematically intervened, the object being to redirect popular dissatisfaction with the corrupt regime of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych so that ultra-right nationalist and fascist forces would be strengthened. The aim all along was regime change – a technique used to vicious efficiency in the Middle East – so that the plans for the isolation of Russia could be furthered.

There is no doubt, as emphasised by the International Committee of the Fourth International, that Russian president Vladimir Putin represents oligarchs who enriched themselves by plundering state industry following the dissolution of the USSR. “His regime is incapable of making any appeal to the Ukrainian working class or to progressive sentiment within the country. Instead, he seeks to whip up chauvinism both in Russia and eastern Ukraine, adding to the dangers of civil and sectarian warfare”.

However, the newest comments by the US Secretary of State John Kerry represent a new low in early 21st century international statecraft, for he possesses none. “What has already happened is a brazen act of aggression in violation of international law, in violation of the UN Charter, in violation of the Helsinki Final Act, in violation of the 1997 Ukraine-Russia basing agreement,” Kerry told American television news channels. “Russia has engaged in a military act of aggression against another country and it has huge risks. It’s a 19th century act in the 21st century.”

Who does this man think he is fooling? The bloody record of American ‘foreign policy’ speaks for itself. Over the past 25 years alone, the USA has invaded, bombed or overthrown governments in Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Haiti, Sudan, Serbia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya. It has carried out assassinations and cyber attacks against Iran and is intervening to overthrow the government of Syria. The USA has ignored all international charters and peace treaties, has ignored the UN and does not accept any nation’s right to sovereignty or territorial integrity.

Unsurprisingly, Kerry was not challenged by his interviewers to comment in terms of that statement on Washington’s own constant threats to use force and military invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The RT news network quoted Marcus Papadopoulos, a political commentator, as asking, “Since when does the United States government genuinely subscribe and defend the concept of sovereignty and territorial integrity? They certainly are not doing that at the moment in Syria. They certainly did not do that when they attacked Libya. They certainly didn’t do that when they invaded Iraq. They certainly didn’t do that when they attacked Serbia over Kosovo and then later on recognised Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence.”

Boris Kagarlitsky, Director of the Institute of Globalisation and Social Movements in Moscow, is a well-known international commentator on Russian politics and society. In 2014 January and February 2014 he wrote two commentaries – before the fall of the Viktor Yanukovich regime and subsequent events. They are published at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal and they offer insights into the Ukraine-Russia-Crimea crisis of 2014 February and March.

“Neither the authorities nor the opposition enjoy the support of the majority of the population, and more important, neither side has a programme that would give it any prospect of winning this support and of constructing a broad social base. The problem lies not only and not so much in the notorious antipathies of east and west in Ukraine, as in the absence even of any attempts to suggest a socio-economic program aimed at integrating society, improving the conditions of life, reducing unemployment and developing the economy,” Kagarlitsky had written.

In his view, on one side was the corrupt, irresponsible administration of Ukraine’s former president, Viktor Yanukovich. And on the other were the nationalists and ultra-rightists, violent and aggressive, no less corrupt, and who in no way resemble democrats according to any understanding of the word.

Unidentified armed men patrol outside of Simferopol airport, Crimea, on February 28, 2014. Photo: Haaretz/AFP

It is against such a view of the Ukrainian mess (fostered by the European Union in collaboration with the USA) that the mounting alarms of the last few days ought to be seen. Already,there are reports of Russian leader Vladimir Putin having told US President Barack Obama in a telephone conversation that Moscow reserved the right to protect its own interests and those of Russian speakers in the event of violence breaking out in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

And moreover that there are an estimated 675,000 Ukrainians who left for Russia in January and February, fearing the “revolutionary chaos” brewing in Ukraine, according to news reports quoting Russia’s Federal Border Guard Service. Russian officials have said they fear a growing humanitarian crisis and the Itar-Tass news agency cited the service as saying: “If ‘revolutionary chaos’ in Ukraine continues, hundreds of thousands of refugees will flow into bordering Russian regions.”

Why it has come to this becomes clearer from two recent interviews (published mid-February 2014) with members of the revolutionary left in Ukraine that shed light on the nature of the movement that overthrew the Viktor Yanukovich regime, and the attitude of the small Ukrainian left towards it. Excerpts of the interview were published by Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. The first is with ‘Denis’ from a Kiev branch of a revolutionary syndicalist group, the Autonomous Workers Union (reposted from Pratele Komunizace) and the second is with Ilya Budraitskis, a Moscow-based socialist in Kiev (translated by RS21).

There is also an excellent summary by Suhail Ilyas who has outlined the main actors and possible courses that events in the Ukraine can take over the week to come. This sort of summary id decidedly difficult to provide, given the paucity of credible sources from Kiev and the Crimea, and the confusing nature of the relationships between so many blocs. But it is more valuable by far than the attempts by the major western media networks who proffer this new conflict as a Russia vs the USA plus EU struggle.