Russia’s Channel One, protester Marina Ovsyannikova, recorded a video in which she called events in Ukraine a “crime”.
“I’m ashamed that I allowed myself to tell lies from the television screen. Ashamed that I allowed Russians to be turned into zombies,” Ovsyannikova, an editor at the channel, explained.
She called on the Russian people to protest against the war, saying that only they could “stop the madness”.
Ovsyannikova is now in police custody.
While the world’s attention is upon the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Yemen continues.
More than a dozen U.N. agencies and international aid groups said that 161,000 people are likely to experience famine over the second half of 2022 — a fivefold increase from the current figure.
“These harrowing figures confirm that we are on a countdown to catastrophe in Yemen and we are almost out of time to avoid it,” said David Beasley, head of the World Food Program, appealing for immediate funding to “avert imminent disaster and save millions.”
“More and more children are going to bed hungry in Yemen,” said Catherine Russell, UNICEF’s executive director. “This puts them at increased risk of physical and cognitive impairment, and even death.”
19 million people in Yemen — out of a population of more than 30 million — are likely to unable to meet their minimum food needs between June and December, up from 17.4 million.
Also, 2.2 million children, including 538,000 already severely malnourished, and about 1.3 million women, could be acutely malnourished by the end of the year, the report said.
Yemen depends almost entirely on food imports, with 30% of its wheat imports coming from Ukraine, the U.N. agencies said.
“Peace is required to end the decline, but we can make progress now. The parties to the conflict should lift all restrictions on trade and investment for non-sanctioned commodities,” said David Gressly, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Yemen.
‘Harrowing figures’: Yemen report says 161K to face famine | The Independent
There have also been anti-war protests in Russia – where police detained more than 800 people on Sunday.
The OVD-Info NGO, which monitors arrests during protests, said police had detained 817 people during demonstrations in 37 cities in Russia.
Law enforcement in Moscow said they had detained approximately 300 people in the city centre for breaches of public order.
“The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
“The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
Humanity calls for peace, freedom and human dignity. A man-made war against innocent people has no place in global affairs. The unwarranted war in Ukraine must stop on all sides. We, the working people of the world call for an immediate halt to all war.
People who want to understand the modern world and why it erupts periodically into wars must forget the Putins and their ilk, they must tear away the political coverings with their smoke-screens of propaganda. Then they will see the process of production, the only basis of life, the making and growing of food, the milling and the mining, yes, and the moulding of guns. For the class that owns the world does not want to lose it, they quarrel with each other for bigger slices of it, and, finally, they are afraid of having to give it up altogether. Shorn of their political trappings, nations are merely the geographical incarnations of national capitalist enterprises competing with each other for commercial supremacy.
What are the essentials required by capitalists in their hunt for profits?
Firstly, they must have access to raw materials (minerals, oil, etc.).
Secondly, a working-class willing to labour for them, and
Thirdly, an entry to markets where they can unload their goods at a profit.
In all three essentials, the European Union are a good first while Russia is the runner-up loser. The reasons for this are historical and need not concern us here. Nor need we explain why Russia has been left behind in economic development and is now forced to combine brutal imperialism with a belated sprint to bring its economy into the competition.
The purpose of this article is to expose the mercenary nature of this war, which the allies of Ukraine’s government claim are being fought for “principles of international justice,” “rights of national sovereignty” “freedom,” etc. All of which may be good propaganda with which to get factory-fodder to become cannon-fodder. The working class everywhere have still to learn that violence in language and method are often used by movements that are most reactionary.
Two main arguments are presented in order to obtain working-class support for this war:
(1) That the workers’ standard of living is bound up with the maintenance or increase of the national boundaries of their respective countries.
(2) That this war is a struggle against a particularly obnoxious and reactionary regime, whose removal would mean the release and triumph of progressive and democratic ideas.
But the removal of reactionary governments by means of war does not ensure progress or democracy. For it ignores the mass-mentality that alone can help them to power. Let Putin be overthrown tomorrow and you are still left with millions of Russians whose minds cannot as yet grasp the advantages of free expression of political views. Bombs and bullets can never be the means of enlightenment.
The oligarchs, they possess more wealth than ordinary people can ever dream about. They enjoy luxury and privilege and wield enormous power. They are no better than the common person. They are no wiser, no smarter, nor do they work harder yet they rule over us. We create their wealth and without us they are nothing. Yet we are scared to challenge and topple our oppressors because we fear them and so we remain obedient and compliant to their demands. To control us them they turn against you and me against one another. They pit us against each other along national and racial lines. Workers must be made to feel threatened by competing workers. Our aims in life are different to theirs. If we create solidarity with each other and decide to co-operate rather than compete against each other, we can start to talk about revolution. The problem is that working people are not administering the world. They are and we got to change that.
There can be no place for the present narrow patriotism, the bigoted nationalist chauvinism that serves the oligarchs so well.
Nationalism serves as a powerful wedge, weakening the workers’ movements and preventing them from uniting against capital. It retards the process of building class unity and consciousness. The Socialist Party opposes this war, as it opposed all wars, for its butchery, its bestiality and the hardships it brings to working people, whose struggles for existence are already a crying indictment of a world where the powers of production are only equalled by the powers of destruction.
The overwhelming majority of the working class do not see things our way, however little enthusiasm they may have for waging war. True, there are a number of small movements, that, for various reasons, are opposed to war. There are pacifists, whose genuine opposition springs from religious or humanitarian grounds, and the left-wing, who now claim to be making a socialist appeal. None of them takes the stand of the Socialist Party whose case is based on an understanding of the social system that causes wars. Nor can there be any comparison for consistency.
One thing is certain. Revolt against war itself can have no lasting achievement. The Bolsheviks came to power out of the chaos and discontent caused by World War One and we saw this very Party lead the Russian masses into a new era of aggression and invasion
The time is past for any half-measures. Capitalism has reached a desperate moment. Scarcely a year has gone by without bringing to the world further chaos in the shape of war and ethnic persecution whose magnitude brought governments toppling from their seats of power.
This is why the attack on war and the war-mongers must be aimed at capitalism itself. The World Socialist Movement alone can point the way to peace.
Paula Garb, a longtime activist who lived in the Soviet Union for 20 years and worked as a peacemaker during conflicts in Georgia and other areas of the post-Soviet bloc, said:
“It does seem as though maybe there is 50 or 60 percent of the whole country which may not be happy about the conflict, but are just accepting the Russian government’s narrative. Thousands of people are willing to be activists, but it may not be enough — yet.”
The Russian People Are Not the Russian Government, Activists Remind Us (truthout.org)
The great aim of the World Socialist Movement is the elimination of war forever from the world. But this can be accomplished only by the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism – that is, by the victory of the working class in the class war. Socialists are actively for the victory of the working class in the class war since only through such victory can war in general be done away with. The real roots of the war are in the class system of society. It Is not the love of democracy but the defence of national capitalist interests that pushes countries into war. The only way to end the madness of war is to end the system which inevitably leads to the horrors and atrocities of it.
The inner conflicts of capitalism lead and must lead to war. War is not the cause of the troubles of society. The opposite is true. War is a symptom. The only way to fight against war is to fight against the causes of war. Since the causes of war are the nature of capitalism, it follows that the only way to fight against war is to fight against capitalism. It, therefore, follows that the only possible struggle against war is the struggle for a socialist revolution.
Ask any soldiers what they fight for? For what do they shed the blood of their brother workers of their neighbouring country? For what do they cripple people? They will not tell you, they will not answer, because they themselves do not really know. Ask any one of them and each will cite you for a different reason. The problem is that words and practice do not coincide. War has other causes, other purposes, other reasons. What homeland does the worker have, what homeland do the dispossessed have? Do they have a homeland? The generals have a homeland, and so do the landowners, the merchants, the manufacturers and all those who carry a fat wallet in their pocket. To these, the wealthy. The homeland gives them all rights and privileges and the State concern itself about their fate. But what does the fatherland or motherland give to the worker, be he Russian or Ukrainian? The struggle to put food on the table, the struggle against poverty and lack of rights, oppression at the hands of the master, landowner and landlord, insults, grief, illness and humiliation.
For the poor, the motherland is a wicked stepmother, the fatherland is a cruel stepfather.
What kind of homeland is it if tens of millions are hired slaves working day and night for a handful of capitalists? What kind of homeland is it if these tens of millions of workers have nothing to lose but their chains? What kind of homeland is it when it is not the people themselves who conduct the affairs of the homeland, enact laws, supervise the national economy and control the national budget, but a handful of masters, of wealthy exploiters?
The capitalists of the whole world are now united in alliances that plunder and oppress the workers in many countries. The capitalists set the workers of one country against the workers of another country in order to strengthen their hold on workers throughout the world. The capitalists wage war in order to share out the spoils and weaken the workers by division. Thus those who speak about wars in terms of the defence of freedom and the homeland are lying. There is only one way to defend freedom and right, to defend the cause of the working class in war – agreement among the workers of every country and their common struggle against the capitalists in the name of a socialist society.
With all the nationalistic preaching, it is easy to obscure the fact the bottom of all war, there are economic causes. Nationalism is the cloak behind which the economic causes work. Nationalism leads inevitably to chauvinism and to national aggression. It leads to patriotism for the soil, for the particular bit of the earth’s surface on which a particular person has been born. It leads to narrowness and bigotry, to national jealousy and petty pride. Nationalism is the best for the intrigues and machinations of capitalists.
During the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, the collective wealth of billionaires in the United States grew by a staggering $1.7 trillion as Covid-19 killed millions of people across the globe and threw entire nations into turmoil, worsening extreme poverty, hunger, and other preexisting crises.
Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) finds that the 704 billionaires in the U.S. now own more combined wealth than the 165 million people in the bottom half of the country’s wealth distribution.
“For billionaires, it’s been two years of raking in the riches, while for most families it’s been two years of fear, frustration, and financial worry,” ATF executive director Frank Clemente said.
“The rising asset values billionaires have enjoyed over the past two years are not taxable unless the assets are sold,” ATF explains. “But billionaires don’t need to sell assets to benefit from their increased value: they can live off money borrowed at cheap rates secured against their rising fortunes. And when all those wealth gains are passed along to the next generation, they entirely disappear for tax purposes.”
According to ATF’s new analysis, the biggest billionaire winners during the coronavirus pandemic’s first two years were:
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who saw his net worth skyrocket by $209 billion;Google co-founder Larry Page, whose fortune grew by $63 billion; andGoogle co-founder Sergey Brin, whose wealth increased by $60 billion.
“Not one of the 15 richest U.S. billionaires gained less than $10 billion,” ATF noted
700 US Billionaires Got $1.7 Trillion Richer During Two Years of Pandemic (commondreams.org)
