It now appears as if the Russian Federation has launched a full-scale attack upon Ukraine.

The World Socialist Movement is not concerned with the so-called rights and wrongs of this war, whether the niceties of international law were breached or if the sovereignty of Ukraine was disregarded. As workers, we are painfully aware that it will be fellow workers who will pay the blood price of the geo-political games played out by the Great Powers.

Ukraine isn’t the  “democracy” that Western politicians and media like to give the impression it is. In fact, the political and economic superstructure of Ukraine is not very much different from that of Russia. So the argument that it is “democratic” while Russia isn’t and that “we” must support it to defend “democratic values” is false.

The history of conflicts between states have left a legacy of antagonism between different groups, so they identify with their “nation-state” and the interests of its rulers rather than with their fellow workers in other states. Ukrainian nationalism has an ugly history. Before WW1 what is now Ukraine was divided between the Austrian-Hungarian and the Russian Empires and after it between Poland and Soviet Russia. Lviv, the centre of the pro-West faction in Ukraine was a major Polish city. During this period the Ukrainian-speakers were discriminated against by the Polish government. Under the Nazi-Soviet Pact the Polish part was annexed by Russia including Lviv. When Germany invaded Russia in 1941 many living in this part welcomed the Germans as liberators and many fought on the German side. Some served as concentration camp guards. The trouble for our fellow workers living in Eastern Europe is that history has dealt them a bad hand — no choice but to be dominated either by the EU-US or by Russia. It seems that the population of Ukraine is still divided over which, so providing both sides with pawns to play to further their interests.

Once again, it is incumbent upon ourselves to affirm that not a drop of working people’s blood should be shed in supporting either side of this capitalist conflict of which bloc can claim territory as part of its sphere of influence. Whether it is the Ukrainian nation or the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, it is not worth the sacrifice of our fellow workers’ lives. Who cares which parasitic class claims to own which patch of dirt?

Capitalism operates according to its own logic and confrontation among capitalists is a normal process that has been taking place since the emergence of the capitalist system.

The WSM condemns the attitude of all those prepared to see towns and cities littered with the corpses of hundreds or thousands of working men, women and children.  For what? To prevent what would be in the main merely a change of rulers. Unlike others, we are willing to conceive of Ukraine losing its “independence” if it means that our Ukrainian fellow workers and Russian Donbas fellow workers are not sacrificed for such spurious concepts as “democracy” and “freedom”.

The WSM issue our declaration of peace.

 Here is how Ukraine ranks in Europe and the world:

1st in Europe in proven recoverable reserves of uranium ores;

2nd place in Europe and 10th place in the world in terms of titanium ore reserves;

2nd place in the world in terms of explored reserves of manganese ores (2.3 billion tons, or 12% of the world’s reserves);

2nd largest iron ore reserves in the world (30 billion tons);

2nd place in Europe in terms of mercury ore reserves;

3rd place in Europe (13th place in the world) in shale gas reserves (22 trillion cubic meters)

4th in the world by the total value of natural resources;

7th place in the world in coal reserves (33.9 billion tons)

Ukraine is an agricultural country:

1st in Europe in terms of arable land area;

3rd place in the world by the area of black soil (25% of world’s volume);

1st place in the world in exports of sunflower and sunflower oil;

2nd place in the world in barley production and 4th place in barley exports;

3rd largest producer and 4th largest exporter of corn in the world;

4th largest producer of potatoes in the world;

5th largest rye producer in the world;

5th place in the world in bee production (75,000 tons);

8th place in the world in wheat exports;

9th place in the world in the production of chicken eggs;

16th place in the world in cheese exports.

Ukraine can meet the food needs of 600 million people.

Ukraine is an industrialised country:

1st in Europe in ammonia production;

2-е Europe’s and 4th largest natural gas pipeline system in the world (142.5 bln cubic meters of gas throughput capacity in the EU);

3rd largest in Europe and 8th largest in the world in terms of installed capacity of nuclear power plants;

3rd place in Europe and 11th in the world in terms of rail network length (21,700 km);

3rd place in the world (after the U.S. and France) in production of locators and locating equipment;

3rd largest iron exporter in the world

4th largest exporter of turbines for nuclear power plants in the world;

4th world’s largest manufacturer of rocket launchers;

4th place in the world in clay exports

4th place in the world in titanium exports

8th place in the world in exports of ores and concentrates;

9th place in the world in exports of defence industry products;

10th largest steel producer in the world (32.4 million tons).

The UK government had all the evidence it needed to know as far back as 2002 that the dangerous cladding used on Grenfell Tower should “never, ever” have been installed on tall buildings.

When the cladding – which consisted of a plastic core coated with thin sheets of aluminium – was tested, molten metal began to drip from the panel after just three minutes. The 30-minute test was halted after just five minutes for safety reasons when flames raged as high as 20m. The Building Research Establishment (BRE), a privatised testing organisation that carried out the test in summer 2001, handed its evidence to the government in September 2002.

Despite the “catastrophic” test failure, ACM panels were widely marketed as being compliant with a key standard known as Class 0, which meant they could be used on high-rise residential towers. The government issued no warning to industry and did not withdraw the Class 0 standard despite major concerns about its adequacy. ACM cladding was allowed to be installed on hundreds of high-rise developments over the fifteen years following the 2002 report.

Dr Debbie Smith, former managing director of the BRE was asked whether the government “was in no doubt at all that ACM panels” with a polyethylene core should “never, ever” be used over18 metres, Smith said yes.

Seven out of 11 companies’ were found by the BRE to have made misleading statements indicating their cladding met the Class 0 standard, meaning it could be used on buildings over 18m tall.

“It appears that the market claims of some manufactured products were not as they ought to be,” said Dr Smith.

Government knew in 2002 that Grenfell | The Independent

 Oil Change International’s Andy Rowell wrote that “there are always those who will want to profit from war or the threat of war, as unscrupulous as it may seem. And for the American oil and gas industry, there is no exception.”

“As Ukraine and Russia stand on the brink of a potentially lethal and bloody conflict, the American Petroleum Institute and its allies have been active on social media, arguing that now is a perfect time to expand LNG exports,” Rowell continued. “It is a flawed and short-sighted argument and one that will only cause more problems and chaos in the long term.”

Now that Germany has for the time being officially pulled the plug on the Russian pipeline, U.S. fossil fuel corporations stand to profit further from increased liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to Europe, an ongoing trend that is likely to intensify amid the conflict in Ukraine.

American energy executives have declared in recent weeks that they were eager to replace Russian pipeline gas with American liquefied gas, although U.S. exports would not be enough to make up for the vast Russian supply.

Opinion | Big Oil Uses Ukraine Crisis to Push for Expansion of Dirty US Fossil Fuels | Andy Rowell (commondreams.org)

 The World Health Organization and the UN children’s agency Unicef warned, in a new report rebuked baby formula makers for “unethical” marketing strategies, accusing them of aggressively targeting expecting parents and health workers and putting shareholder interests before children’s health.

It found that the $55-billion formula milk industry systematically deploys aggressive marketing strategies, spending up to $5 billion a year to sway parents’ decisions on how to feed their infants.

Many countries’ failure to crack down on the marketing of breast milk substitutes means far too many children are still being reared on formula. It is widely recognised that breastfeeding carries huge health benefits. Experts have long extolled the health benefits of breastfeeding, saying that breast-fed children are healthier, perform better on intelligence tests and are less likely to be overweight or suffer from diabetes later in life. Women who breastfeed also have a reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancer, research shows.

Despite the known benefits, only 44 percent of babies under the age of six months are exclusively breastfed, as recommended by the WHO and Unicef.  In the past two decades, the sale of formula milk has more than doubled. 

Lead report author Nigel Rollins, of the WHO’s maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health division, blamed the industry’s aggressive marketing practices. Rollins pointed to how companies use pseudoscience to suggest that breast milk is not enough on its own or that formula does a better job of helping babies to sleep through the night.

“This report shows very clearly that formula milk marketing remains unacceptably pervasive, misleading and aggressive,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

UN slams ‘aggressive’ formula milk marketing (france24.com)

 The wealth of the richest one per cent of households is more than 230 times that of the poorest 10 per cent.

The top 1 per cent of households have wealth of more than £3.6m each, while the top 10 percent hold 43 per cent of all the wealth in Great Britain.

This is compared to the household wealth of £15,400 or less for the poorest 10 per cent. 

Among the poorest 10 per cent of households, almost half held more financial debt than they did assets.

The figures according to new analysis from the Office of National Statistics reveal that the richest people in the UK have household wealth that is around 233 times higher than the wealth of some of the poorest in society.

Krishan Shah, a researcher at the Resolution Foundation, reacted to the figures, saying: “With wealth inequality remaining high and unchanged, this means that Britain’s huge absolute gaps in wealth have continued to grow.

The UK’s household wealth found that the median wealth in the South East was the highest in the country, at £503,400. This figure – once adjusted for inflation – has risen by 43 per cent since 2006. Comparatively median household wealth in the northeast stood at £168,500.

Some regions, such as the northeast and Scotland, have seen a decrease in wealth compared to the previous period of April 2016 to March 2018. They both experienced an inflation-adjusted fall in wealth of 7 per cent and 12 per cent respectively.

London also experienced a large decrease of 8 per cent, while the east of England and the west Midlands saw the largest growth – of 14 per cent and 13 per cent for each. 

Households whose ‘household reference person’ [main respondent to the survey] is of white ethnicity are four times more likely to have wealth in excess of £500,000 than households with a black African reference person. Pakistani and Indian households are less likely to hold pension wealth, with home ownership being more important in their asset holdings.

Total net wealth was calculated using four main components. These were “net property” (the value of your house or flat minus mortgage debt), “physical” (household contents, vehicles etc), private pension, and “net financial” (sum of your total savings or investments).

Researchers at the London School of Economics, Arun Advani and Hannah Tarrant, argued that the ONS figures had underestimated the share of wealth going to the richest households and that the analysis failed to account for business wealth.

Wealth of the richest 1 percent more than 230 times that of the poorest 10 percent, ONS says | The Independent

 117,500 tons of herbicides and insecticides are used across America’s farmlands annually, posing a potentially fatal risk to thousands of endangered and threatened species.

Meat and dairy production is driving the use of these pesticides. One-third of agricultural lands in the US is dedicated to corn and soy, primarily to provide calorie-dense diets for fattening up farmed animals.

Corn and soybean production globally accounts for about half of all sales of pesticides. Around three-quarters of the soy produced around the world feeds livestock, along with up to 45 per cent of corn grown in the US.

The most commonly-used substances in the US are glyphosate and atrazine.

Glyphosate can harm or kill 93 per cent of plants and animals protected under the Endangered Species Act. The research also points to adverse effects that glyphosate exposure has on human health, noting that the World Health Organization says it is “probably carcinogenic to humans”.

“More than 13,000 lawsuits have been filed in the US alleging that the pesticide causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma”, the researchers state.

Atrazine is banned in 35 countries. It is likely to harm or kill more than 1,000 protected species in the USA.

Converting more and more land for mono-crops like soy and corn is wiping out biologically-diverse habitats. From 2018 to 2019, about 2.6 million acres of US grasslands were converted to row crop agriculture, with 70 per cent used for soy, corn and wheat. 

Stripping out native grasses and vegetation decimates the habitats and food sources of a wide-range of species. Grasslands are also a little-recognised but crucial natural ally when it comes to battling the climate crisis. Grasses can store large amounts of carbon in the soil, sometimes as much as forest soils.

US meat industry using 235m pounds of pesticides a year, threatening thousands of at-risk species, study finds (yahoo.com)

 At least 200,000 tonnes of supermarket own-label food fit for human consumption ends up as animal food or is used to generate energy, according to research by the sustainability group Anthesis.

The surplus food could be going to hungry families instead of going to waste.

Supermarkets wasting 200,000 tonnes of food that could go to needy, say charities | Supermarkets | The Guardian

  “What we are doing is not making it worse for the Taliban, it is making it worse for the people. We are not punishing the Taliban. It is ordinary Afghans that are paying the price of peace.”

 David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee.

 Puerto Rico government employees and supporters have taken to the streets, emboldened by thousands of public school teachers who abandoned classrooms in early February to demand raises and better pensions. Protests have multiplied. Government workers are grappling with rising prices while getting the same salaries they had in 2008.

 Legislators are the only public workers who have an automatic cost-of-living increase for their salaries. Most of the other public employees in Puerto Rico, which is a United States territory, have not gotten pay raises in more than a decade — sometimes two — as the cost of living has risen and the island has suffered a lengthy economic crisis and a government bankruptcy in the aftermath of deadly hurricanes, earthquakes and the coronavirus pandemic.

Power and water bills are nearly 60 percent higher in Puerto Rico than the US average. Groceries are 18 percent more expensive than on the mainland. Many public employees work one or two additional jobs to make ends meet.

‘They’re fed up’: Workers in Puerto Rico take to the streets | Workers’ Rights News | Al Jazeera