The mass media is not great for accuracy or wide coverage and even less so for trustworthy analysis but it does often provide entertainment. Not always even intentionally.
Like when the western mass media reported one day that the Russians were shelling the nuclear reactor in the Russian-held sector of the Donbas area and, within hours, that the Russians were shelling from there.
We’ve all seen examples of the unreliability of the mass media (run by capitalists for the capitalist system so what can we expect, after all?) in our own country but hard to imagine more consistently unreliable and biased than its coverage of the war in the Ukraine.
Take for example the bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline on 26 September last year. The undersea pipeline was delivering Russian gas to Germany; its owners are Russian in financing partnership with European companies and it cost around $9.5 Billion euros to build.
It’s a twin pipeline stretching 1,230 km through the Baltic Sea. Each line comprises around 100,000 individual pipes, each 12 m in length.
So who did the wmm (western mass media) line up to blame, or at least to suggest might have carried out this sabotage? Yep, Russia, major shareholders in the pipeline and major route for exporting of their gas for sale to Europe!
Made no sense at all but to a public marinated in msm propaganda for months …
Now, if you were a reasonable detective, you’d be asking yourself: “Who stands to gain from this?” And you’d have to conclude “enemies of Russia”. Next, who would have the capability and opportunity to do it?
Well, states near the sea there who are not friendly to Russia, obviously. Like Sweden and Norway, whose states have reportedly been investigating for months without any apparent results..
But not just them, also US NATO, who has ships nearby and who carried out the BALTOPS 22 major naval exercise not long before the explosions – including underwater exercises. Sweden and Norway had both participated in the BALTOPS 22 joint NATO exercise.
Ships participating in NATO’s BALTOPS 22 exercise last year. (Images sourced: Internet)
Who would point the finger of suspicion at them? Not the western mass media, that’s for sure.
However a big fly has very recently landed in the ointment. Seymour Hersh, a long-established USA journalist, who has in his CV a Pullitzer Prize for the exposure of the 1968 US massacre of the Mai Lai village in Vietnam, published a report pointing the finger at the USA.
Of course Russia jumps on that – it’s their pipeline and they consider that the US is fighting a proxy war against them in Ukraine. The US and its allies in turn accuse Russia of just using the accusation to divert attention away from their continued invasion of Ukraine and war there.
Sure, that’s possible. But the blowing of the pipeline is an acknowledged fact and it was blown up by somebody – and the US are looking more and more like the most likely suspects. But don’t expect much help in clearing this up from the wsm.
A naval diver surfaces during NATO’s BALTOP 22 exercise last year. (Images sourced: Internet)
Apparently Hersch’s report is not reliable because he didn’t name his inside sources. Really? He didn’t burn his whistleblowing sources on whom, apart from any considerations of decency, he might need to use in future? Or for reason to be trusted by future whistleblowers?!
Now we have a new version. No, not Russia in the frame any more but some “pro-Ukrainian group” or “anti-Putin Russian group”. And the source for this? An unnamed (but suddenly that’s not a problem any more) US Intelligence agency. Yeah, sure.
Neither wsm massaging nor US laundering is going to clean this story up. In pursuance of its drive for world hegemony, the ruling class of the US has been pushing Russia, its main obstacle in Europe, into war.
Well, despite the dangers, the European allies of the USA can go along with that, some (e.g. Poland) more enthusiastically than others, but ok overall. But to sabotage the pipeline delivering gas to Germany, the big power in the EU?
Reckless, US ruling class, reckless. And not just environmentally.
SOURCES
Spare a thought for a family being tortured by the Irish State, which has jailed one of its sons already and went and jailed another one more recently. Yes, you’ve heard of them, the Burke family.
First of all, their son Enoch who was a teacher, objected to a pupil identifying themselves by another gender.
The school required him to refer to this person not as ‘he’ or ‘she’ but as ‘they’. Oh, you can imagine the torment suffered by poor Enoch!
The Burke family leaving from one of Enoch Burke’s court appearances. Enoch is on the far left (not politically) and Simeon in the centre (not politically either). (Images sourced: Internet)
True, he might only have to refer to this person a dozen times in the year but … being forced to say “they”. This is a sin against Enoch’s religion! His religious rights are at stake here!
So naturally Enoch had to take a stand and naturally too had to do it in a public situation in the school, for which he got suspended while awaiting a disciplinary hearing.
Enoch’s religious principles required him to refuse the suspension and keep attending the school and to disobey a court order, for which (and for his stalwart protests in court) he was sent to prison in contempt of court.
Eventually, of course, he was sacked but he applied to the High Court to prevent that, during which attendance he and his family antagonised the judge by their interruptions and manner.
Then the younger son, Simeon, emulating his older brother, refused to be silent and accused the judge of “forcing the people of Ireland to accept transgender”, obviously an attack on his religion too.
The judge was “shoving transgenderism down the throats of the people of Ireland, not only in the schools but in the universities”, cried out the younger Burke. The judge ordered him to leave the court and when he declined, the Gardaí were called.
Young Simeon was removed, during which he was, he told the Judge, “shocked and shaken to the core” and had “been treated in a brutal fashion” by a “mob of Gardaí”. And charged with breach of the Public Order.
Left: Enoch Burke; right: Simeon Burke leaving the High Court. (Images sourced: Internet)
This raised unkind comments on social media from people alleging that they knew Garda “brutal treatment” in Dublin and in Rossport and that Simeon simply had no idea (some going so far as to cruelly dub him “Simple Simeon”, a reference to a similar-sounding children’s game).
Simeon was offered bail in his own name for a paltry sum and with no conditions except to stay away from the High Court but the brave young Burke refused to sign his bail form. So he went to jail too.
Simeon Burke should know something about the law, having studied it at University of Ireland, Galway. He ran for Student Union President there against the Left in general, where, according to Isaac Burke’s media, out of 2,500 votes cast, he received 482 first preference votes.
The legalisation of contraception, divorce and gay marriage are all presumably “crimes against God” too in the eyes of the Burke family and the High Court judges are sworn to protect those decisions.
Some unkind people are pointing out that if the Burkes consider the High Court to be wrong and its operation against their religion, why take their case there for adjudication? Yes, that is puzzling.
But the substantive and original issue remains: should a man of religious conviction be forced to use the third person plural pronoun to refer to any person?
And, come to think of it, did the Burkes object when Christianity was being “shoved down the throats of the people of Ireland, not only in the schools but in the universities”?
The Irish State nominally rules over the 26-Counties land territory and its corresponding sea and airspace. Yet these have been and are repeatedly violated by the US and UK military with Irish ruling class secret collusion.
Now a Senator in Leinster House is seeking a hearing in the High Court to have the behaviour of successive Irish Governments in allowing UK military overflights declared unconstitutional.
The Sea, oh the sea … and the air!
As stipulated by international law, a sovereign state’s area includes the sea up to 12-miles from its border1 and therefore Ireland has a 12 mile territorial sea, a 200 mile exclusive economic zone before any additional claims are made to the continental shelf including the Rockall Bank.2
According to media report, a comprehensive survey of the Irish State’s territorial waters was not undertaken until 2014, i.e nearly a century after its foundation, which in itself is an indictment of an allegedly independent island state.
According to The Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) says potential territorial waters stretch to 898,442km sq – an area bigger than the oil rich North Sea.3
Royal Air Force fighter jet – the Irish State is reported to have secretly agreed to allow these to overfly Irish airspace (Photo sourced: Internet)
Through the decades when Ireland was a fishing nation and fresh fish was eaten weekly in most homes, Irish fishing boats had to compete with those from many other states fishing illegally inside Irish sea limits.
The Irish Navy was the only policing enforcement agency and through much of that time it had only three corvettes to patrol 12 miles out from the whole coastline of the Irish state. Subsequent EU legislation then left Irish seas more open to foreign-based fishing than it did to Irish boats.
The sovereign air space of a state corresponds to that over its land and 12-miles out to sea from its coastline.4
The use of Shannon airport by the US military in transit of troops, weapons and prisoners has long been known and protested.
Shannon Airport protests
Over the years there have been many highly-publicised protests over the US military use of Shannon, ranging from mass protests outside the airport buildings to deliberate trespass and even damage to a US warplane.
The response from the Government Minister to questions in Leinster House is always that the US is not violating Irish sovereignty, arms, military and prisoners are not being transported through there – because the US authorities have assured the Irish Government that they are not.
In February 2003 five members of the Catholic Workers’ Movement under the name Pitstop Ploughshares gained access to a hanger in Shannon Airport and damaged a USAF warplane there. They were Deirdre Clancy, Nuin Dunlop, Karen Fallon, Ciaron O’Reilly and Damien Moran.
They were jailed for up to 11 weeks awaiting committal for trial to which they were finally sent in Dublin Circuit Court in March and October 2005 on two counts of criminal damage, €100 and US $2.5 million. The faced a maximum 10 years if convicted.
Two aborted trials followed as one judge after another revealed their bias and partiality. In July 2006 after twelve days a mixed male and female jury acquitted the accused on all charges on the grounds that they had taken the action to save lives in Iraq and were justified in doing so.
In October 2012 dramatist, writer, former Republican prisoners and veteran activist Margaretta D’Arcy was arrested with Niall Farrell for scaling the fence and entering the grounds of Shannon Airport.
Four convicted Shannon Airport protestors, L-R Mick Wallace, Margarett D’Arcy, Niall Farrell, Clare Daly. (Photo sourced: The Journal.ie)
In June 2014 at the age of 80 and suffering from Parkinson’s disease D’Arcy was jailed for two weeks in Limerick Prison for refusal to pay the fine and remained defiant.
In July 2014 then members of the Irish Parliament Clare Daly and Mick Wallace5 used a rope ladder to climb over a perimeter fence and enter the grounds of Shannon Airport and made no attempt to avoid arrest.
They were both fined by a court for trespass in February 2015 and refused to pay the fine, eventually being taken to Limerick jail by Gardaí in December 2015 and released less than two hours later.
On 25 April 2017 anti-war activists Edward Horgan, a retired Irish soldier of 78, and civil servant Dan Dowling, 39, were arrested in the airport grounds and charged with criminal trespass and malicious damage (felt-tip graffiti slogan on a warplane).
In a very low-level publicity case in January this year (2023), a jury in Dublin found both guilty of trespass but not of criminal damage at the airport and were ordered to pay €5,000 each to a women’s refuge in Co Clare.
On St. Patrick’s Day 2019 two ex-USA military Ken Mayers and Tarak Kauff, now anti-war campaigners of the US chapter of Veterans for Peace, cut a hole in the airport’s perimeter fence, entered Shannon airfield with a banner and were arrested.
In May last year, a majority jury verdict found Mayers (85) and Kauff (80) guilty of interfering with the running of the airport but unanimously not of criminal damage to an airport perimeter fence and of trespassing the airport with the intent to commit an offence or interfere with property.
Ex-USA military Kauf and Mayers of Veterans for Peace (US) protesting US military use of Shannon Airport (Photo sourced: Internet)
The judge fined the anti-war activists 5,000 euro each. Both had spent 11 weeks in prison and had been required to spend nine months in Ireland awaiting trial, despite clear indications that they had no intention of absconding and indeed were looking forward to the trial to publicise the issue.
Senator Craughwell’s case to the High Court.
Less well-known is that successive Irish governments have for decades by secret agreement permitted permitted UK air force planes to fly over Irish airspace and to interdict, i.e. force or shoot down other aircraft. This is what has led to Senator Craughwell’s taking a case to the High Court.
The Independent Senator maintains that although not the case of a formal military alliance, granting permission to fly over Irish State airspace, unless validated by referendum, is a violation of Ireland’s neutrality and sovereignty and is seeking a number of declarations from the Court.
Craughwell, who is a former member of the Irish Defence Forces and the British Army, as well as being an ex-President of the Teachers Union of Ireland, said that his belief in the existence of a secret agreement is based on a reply from then Taoiseach Brian Cowen to Enda Kenny in 2005.
The Senator seeks High Court declarations including that the agreement between Ireland and the UK allowing armed British military aircraft to intercept aircraft over Irish airspace amounts to an impermissible dilution and breach of Articles 1, 5, 6, 13, 15, and 28 of the Irish Constitution.
He also seeks a declaration that the Government’s failure to exercise control over Ireland’s territorial waters, airspace and exclusive economic zone breaches Article 5 of the Constitution which declares that Ireland is a sovereign independent democratic state.
Craughwell further seeks an order restraining the government from bringing in legislation to give effect to the agreement, unless it has been passed by a referendum.
Aerial view of Ireland (Image sourced: Internet)
Irish State Neutral?
Most Irish people mistakenly believe that Ireland’s military neutrality is specifically enshrined in Bunreacht na hÉireann, the Irish Constitution. However Article 29, section 4, subsection 9° underlines the neutrality of the Irish State in respect of a military force of the EU:
The State shall not adopt a decision taken by the European Council to establish a common defence pursuant to Article 42 of the Treaty on European Union where that common defence would include the State.6
“This was originally inserted by the 2002 amendment ratifying the Treaty of Nice and updated by the 2009 amendment ratifying the Treaty of Lisbon. An earlier bill intended to ratify the Treaty of Nice did not include a common defence opt-out, and was rejected in the first Nice referendum, in 2001.”7
It is fairly clear that the citizens of the Irish state are generally in favour of retaining Irish neutrality but there are elements within the state frequently trying to undermine that policy, chiefly the native Gombeen ruling class.
The Irish State has never been truly independent; it came into existence agreeing to the partition of the nation and in waging war against the forces of national liberation, during which it executed more Irish Republicans than the British had during the War of Independence.
Subsequently, the Irish State has been characterised as neo-colonialist, dominated firstly by British capital, then by the US and finally by the EU.
There are elements within Irish upper circles who long to join the EU military and political club while some others share a nostalgia for the British Empire and Commonwealth and the kind of supporting and sharing role to which John Redmond and his Irish Nationalist Party aspired.
Finally, there are of course elements in the Irish armed forces that are attracted by career advancement through joint military operations with other armed forces along with greater weaponry, such as would be available in a joint European armed force or as part of NATO.
Worryingly, Mícheál Martin during questions in Leinster House some months ago denied that the population would have to be consulted in referendum before the State could join some military alliance.
What now?
Whatever formal position the State may take on neutrality in future, it has been undermining it for decades and doing so in secret.
Why the secrecy? Presumably because the ruling class is aware that most Irish people want to remain militarily neutral and would wish to get rid of a government that was trying to ditch the neutrality policy.
Ireland needs to be independent of all imperialist alliances. Should the Gombeen ruling class succeed in committing the State’s armed forces to some military alliance, the choice is certain to be either imperialist NATO or imperialist EU.
In the latter case, it is entirely possible that Irish troops would be sent to suppress social or national risings in Europe – for example in Catalunya or the Basque Country, with Spanish troops being sent to quell mass protests in Ireland.
Or in either case, that Irish troops would become part of some joint imperialist force in Latin America, Africa or Asia.
Meanwhile the Gombeens, because of the State’s allowing US and UK military aircraft over Irish skies and in Shannon airport, are potentially painting a target for retribution on to the Irish population.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Except obviously where it intersects with another state’s borders (seeAirspace – Wikipedia)
4Airspace – Wikipedia and obviously this currently ends at the borders of the Six County colony, whose own 12-mile UK zone also ends where it meets the Irish borders on land, sea and air.
Text by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (images and video chosen by Rebel Breeze)
29 July 2022 (first published in English in Socialist Democracy)
The Colombian Truth Commission’s (CEV) report Findings and Recommendations aims to be a text that reveals a truth, that up to now was hidden or partially hidden from Colombian society.
It is true that in Colombia, after decades of a conflict that began before many of those actually alive were born, along with propaganda from the media, the churches and political parties, there are many aspects that are not well known to everyone.
That is not to say that it is a document that reveals or uncovers these truths. If we look at the issue of paramilitaries and how the CEV treats it, various problems with this commission are evident.
It comes out with some truths about the paramilitaries that initially give one hope about the content of the Report.
Paramilitarism is not just an armed actor – understood as private armies with terror strategies aimed at the civilian population – but rather a network of interests and alliances also associated with economic, social and political projects that managed to impose an armed territorial control through terror and violence and also through mechanisms to legitimate it, the establishment of rules and norms.(1)
It is true that the paramilitaries are about more than just massacres, but the CEV not only fails to explain what the interests at stake are, but it gets it back to front about who is in charge and who serves.
It inverts the roles many times and though it acknowledges the role the State played, or still plays, the State is presented almost as just another victim of the paramilitaries.
The CEV accepts that the USA played a role in the 1960s.
The recommendations of US missions that visited the country during the administration of Alberto Lleras Camargo (1958-1962) led to Decree 1381 of 1963, Decree 3398 of 1965 and National Defence Law 48 of 1968, through which the involvement of civilians in the armed conflict was institutionalised.(2)
But it doesn’t explore this role that much further, it would seem as if various north American governments played no further role than that, that they have not been the one constant factor in the history of the conflict, as if their support to all the Colombian governments, the training of the Colombian military in the School of the Americas did not count for anything, and of course there is Plan Colombia which is dealt with by the report.
Neither do they explore the role of the state that passed those laws. It would seem as if the laws appeared through magic. They accept that paramilitaries enjoyed legal status for a long time, but they put no names to the matter, nor who benefitted from those laws or what were the interests of the presidents and congresspeople involved in passing those laws and decrees.
We are told of how Virgilio Barco suspended the legality of the paramilitaries in 1989, but according to the CEV it was revived in practice through the rural security cooperatives known as the Convivir.(3)
It is dubious to say that the Convivir were the paramilitaries in practice and not paramilitaries de jure, as it is not the case that these cooperatives were corrupted.
It was always the intention to legalise the paramilitaries through this figure and in that, President Cesar Gaviria and his Minister for Defence, Rafael Pardo both of whom signed the degree that brought them to life, played an important role as did President Samper who implemented the decree during his government.
These people are not spoken of as promotors of paramilitaries.
To the CEV the paramilitaries are a type of loose cannon, independent of the State, with a life of their own. The ills of the country are the result of the actions of this loose cannon and how it infiltrates the state, the institutions, including the military and how it co-opts spaces.(4)
Thus, the institutionalisation – through various governments – of armed groups legally at the service of private interests, as well as their legitimation from the 1960s show not only the tolerance but also the promotion by state of the outsourcing of public security (bold not in the original). The legal cover and political legitimation have allowed for the maintenance and expansion of the paramilitaries, structures that were co-opted by paramilitary bosses.(5)
To the CEV, the paramilitaries were an outsourcing of security to private bodies that went wrong. Dr. Frankenstein thought he was creating life and his creation turned into a monster despite his wishes.
Paramilitaries are referred to in this manner throughout the document, they exist and act with the approval of named sectors, but the responsibility does not lie with any known person. They are incapable of saying that Samper and Gaviria legalised the paramilitaries.
Samper was fully aware of what the Convivir were and defended them tooth and nail during his government, and lashed out at those who denounced the Convivir as paramilitary structures.
Ernesto Samper, President of Colombia from 1994 to 1998, representing the Liberal Party. Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) 2014-2017. He defended the Convivir and later pretended the paramilitary terrorism had been done behind his back. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Samper never put an end to the Convivir, rather it was the Constitutional Court that declared that they couldn’t use arms reserved for the State’s military, so the paramilitaries had no need to use this cover any more if they couldn’t obtain arms legally.
The paramilitaries were a state policy as can be seen from the laws and decrees enacted, in the promotions of military officers involved in massacres and also in the persecution of social actors, human rights organisations and in a number of cases the systematic murder of witnesses.
The CEV talks about these things but does not connect them together as a state policy. It shamelessly accepts the excuses of Uribe that everyone lied to him, the face Santos put on of it wasn’t me, or the “it was all done behind my back” of Samper.
A real truth commission would try to tell us not only what happened but who did it (with full names) and also why.
The same complacent attitude it takes with the State is extended to the business people. It talks of interests but does not put a name to them. But thanks to the decades long work of social organisations we can put a name to many of the cases.
The CEV doesn’t do that and goes on with its tale of some sectors. But these same sectors have been more honest than the CEV. The CEV names the cattle rancher’s association in Puerto Boyacá, Acdegam, as a key player in the founding of the paramilitary groups.(6)
But it does not mention the role played by Texaco. Carlos Medina Gallego in his book Autodefensas, Paramilitares y Narcotráfico in Colombia describes the birth of this group.
The USA-based petroleum company was present in the meeting that set up the paramilitary murder group. (Image sourced: Internet)
The process in the region began with the creation of a private army or paramilitary group alongside the army to jointly combat the subversives.
This group was set up during the military mayorship of Captain Oscar Echandía, in a meeting which, in addition to the Mayor, was attended by representatives of the Texas Petroleum Company, members of the Cattle Ranchers Committee, political leaders, the Civil Defence, members of the armed forces and other special guests.(7)
Neither does it mention the National Federation of Cattle Ranchers, Fedegan. The president of Fedegan, however did acknowledge the role they played. In 2006, in an interview given to Cambio magazine, he said that they had paid paramilitaries, as had others such as flower and rice growers amongst others.(8)
National Federation of Cattle Ranchers in Colombia — part of the group that set up the paramilitary murder group — their president admitted in 2006 that they had paid paramilitaries, as had some large agricultural interests. (Image sourced: Internet)
Around the same time, 10,000 cattle ranchers, traders and industrialists signed a letter acknowledging and justifying their financing of the paramilitaries.(9)
The CEV describes paramilitarism as something unstable and changeable in nature and that “it has had diverse actors, motives and modus operandi, which leads to difficulties when it comes to trying to come up with a static definition.”(10)
Yes, it is true that the paramilitaries have changed over time, as has the army, the state, the political parties, the guerrillas and even society. Nothing stands still, but that doesn’t mean we can’t come up with an approximation of what it is, taking into account the variables.
That is what the study of history, politics and also any branch of knowledge is about. So, the CEV doesn’t describe the paramilitaries as a state policy, not because it is a changing phenomenon, but rather because it doesn’t want to.
It deals with various paramilitary forms and leaves out one very clear telling example: the AAA (American Anti-Communist Alliance).
One of the founders of the Triple A (American Anti-communist Alliance) paramilitary terrorists, at the time Lt-Col. Harold Bedoya of the Charry Solano Battalion, later Commander of the Colombian Armed Forces. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The AAA was a paramilitary structure founded by the commanders of the Charry Solano Battalion, amongst them Lieutenant Colonel Harold Bedoya, who would later become the Commander of the armed forces.
The existence of such a paramilitary structure operating within the battalion was public knowledge as five soldiers reported it to the presidency, the Procurator, the Organisation of American States and the news was even published in the Mexican press. This structure is not mentioned in the CEV report.
Another paramilitary structure that is dealt with partially in the Report is the 07 Naval Intelligence Network. However, it does not delve into the reality of the Network and the significance of its activity as a state policy.
The case of the 07 Naval Intelligence Network based in Barrancabermeja that operated in part of Bolívar and Cesar stands out due to the seriousness of it. According to the ordinary criminal justice system, the network functioned as a powerful “death squad” with logistical means, personnel trained to kill and was responsible for dozens of murders, forced disappearances and massacres whose victims were mainly trade unionists, politicians, community leaders and activists. The network financed paramilitaries using secret funds.(11)
But the network was the paramilitary structure par excellence. Despite the CEV’s quote, they do not go into great detail as the issue cannot be dealt with and conclude that it was just some functionaries and not the military unit as such.
The Network murdered at least 68 people, though some estimates put the figure of 430. The soldiers implicated were exonerated by the commander in chief of the official armed forces of the state, General Fernando Tapias. To the CEV this is just another case of rotten apples.
But, can 60 years of violence be explained as the result of the actions of some soldiers, some politicians, some business people? We are talking about tens of thousands of dead, tortured, disappeared and the outcome follows from the actions of some… and not from a state policy?
…the paramilitary phenomenon has maintained a role in components of the state such as the armed forces, security and intelligence agencies, collegiate state bodies (Congress, assemblies and councils), judicial institutions and oversight bodies, as well as economic sectors such agri-industrial, extractive industries, public servants and candidates in elections. It has also permeated sectors of the church and the media. Without the close link between this body of sectors and the armed paramilitaries, this phenomenon would not have unleashed the deep wounds that it inflicted nor would it have lasted as long.(12)
Colombian paramilitaries working with the army and paid by big growers, these in “the Banana Bloc” in Colombia (Photo: Huffington Post)
There are no policies here, no state-backed dirty war but rather a compendium of massacres carried out by blood thirsty types that co-opted everyone else, i.e. Colombia is an open-air lunatic asylum.
Politicians and functionaries were another sector that was widely implicated in the paramilitary plan to “penetrate all political power: mayors, councillors, deputies, governors, congress people from the zones that we managed […] ultimately, regional powers that together guaranteed a national power for the self defence groups”. The relationship between politics and paramilitaries went in both directions as many politicians and functionaries in turn sought out the commanders of the paramilitary groups to benefit from their armed power.(13)
In this repugnant discourse, the paramilitaries are the ones who penetrate the state and some politicians seek them out, the paramilitaries are not a counter-insurgency strategy of the state nor a policy to implement “development” projects they want, but rather the excuse is “the paramilitaries made us do it”.
It comes across like crying children trying to blame the other for breaking the window, but they are not broken windows, rather tens of thousands of broken bodies. And the CEV does not want to blame who it should. It accepts that the State played a role, but limits it to individual behaviour and private interests but not part of a strategy.
Not even the genocide committed against the Patriotic Union (UP) is seen as a state policy, once again the State is a victim of the paramilitaries. The CEV describes it in the following terms.
It was during the attempts at a democratic aperture and the peace policies of the government of Belisario Betancur (1982-1986). It is in this context the paramilitary network from Puerto Boyacá sought to contain the democratic and peace initiatives through systematic violence (persecution, extermination and displacement) against members of left wing political groups such as the Patriotic Union and the Communist Party, trade unionists and social leaders.(14)
The reality is that no one expected the UP to be successful and the oligarchy took fright and responded as it always does: with violence. The extermination of the UP was not an attempt to contain supposed democratic measures from President Betancur, but rather an attempt to suppress a left-wing political group.
The CEV forgets that Betancur allowed the military to attack and burn the Palace of Justice in 1985, which was only a few metres from the Presidential Palace. He was not a just man whose peace initiatives were undermined by the unjust.
Lastly, we should look at how they describe the business people.
The economic agents were a key part of the paramilitary web. Some national and international business people, local and regional economic powers and productive sectors supported them in different ways because they had interests in the war.(15)
We shouldn’t be surprised that the CEV, led by the favourite child of the bourgeoisie reaches such conclusions. De Roux wrote an executive summary of the report before he even formally took up the job of President of the CEV.
In March 2017, shortly before he began working for the CEV he wrote a column in the El Tiempo newspaper with a simple headline I ask for forgiveness.(16) The column makes various assertions, amongst which the following stand out:
I incur in a generalisation when I write that the paramilitaries were financed by businesspeople. When, in truth, some paramilitary groups were financed by businesses, whilst the majority of women and men to whom we owe the production of goods and services in this country did not finance the paramilitaries.(17)
That is to say, as the CEV report does, that it was only some of them. He continues with another assertion that some of them did it as a response to guerrilla violence, repeating one of the great lies of the business associations and the State about the nature of paramilitarism.
Gustavo Petro, newly-elected President of Colombia (R) shaking hands with Francisco de Roux (L), who outlined the executive summary of the Truth Commission’s Report in his column before the latter was even published. (Image sourced: Internet)
Others out of rage, following the kidnapping and payment of the ransom, supported the AUC to attack the kidnappers. Others did so because they didn’t trust the state’s security forces.(18)
And lastly, this little gem which reduces the dirty war to the behaviour of just some.
I must also acknowledge that I have been unfair when I have generalised about soldiers and police officers in Colombia. I admit that I have an intellectual and emotive abhorrence of weapons on all sides. I am a follower of Jesus who once and for all separated God from all wars and preached efficient non-violence. But I know there have been many and increasing numbers of men and women in the Armed Forces who see service to the homeland as a service to the dignity and rights of every human being and the collective good of peace.(19)
A question arises. Given that De Roux through his column outlined an executive summary of the future report of the CEV, why did he not save us time, money and the effort by writing, on his own, a report 100% to his liking? It would have had the advantage of not selling false hopes to the victims of the conflict.
End.
Notes
(1) CEV (2022) Hallazgos y Propuestas. CEV p.296
(2) Ibíd., p.303
(3) Ibíd., pp 304 y 305
(4) Ibíd., p.299
(5) Ibíd., p.305
(6) Ibíd., p.310
(7) Medina Gallego, C. (1990) Autodefensas, Paramilitares y Narcotráfico en Colombia. Editorial Documentos Periodisticos. Bogotá p.173
(8) El Cambio No 704 diciembre 2006/enero 2007 Diez Preguntas (Entrevista con José Félix Lafaurie) p.48
(9) El Espectador (17/12/2006) La hora de los ganaderos, p. 2A
Against the bigger war going on in the Ukraine, a smaller one hotting up has been getting little attention. Turkey started shelling a region in Syria which the inhabitants call Rojava and killed some of those inhabitants, including military leaders, who have had mass funeral protests.
Salwa Yusuk, a deputy commander of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, was killed in a Turkish drone attack in Syria on Friday. Also killed in the same vehicle were Joana Hisso, 30, also known as Roj Khabur, and Ruha Bashar, 19, also known as Barin Botan. (Image sourced: Internet)
The Kurds’ representatives were blaming the USA and Russia but most of all the former, saying it’s part of a deal for Turkey to lift its objections to Sweden and Finland for membership of Nato.
The official quid pro quo was for those countries to repress their Kurdish diaspora and to remain silent on repression in Turkey. But it seems an unofficial part of the deal was to let Turkey set its military loose on Rojava, the inhabitants of which are now living in fear of a full Turkish invasion.
Far indeed do the consequences of the war in the Ukraine reach around the world – Rojava is over 2,000 km from the Donbas region (and they will reach much further than this before it’s over)!
The Kurdish-led Rojava sector fought ISIS from 2014 to March 2019, at first without any external help and later assisted by NATO bombing runs.
The USA’s earlier policy had been to boost Islamic jihadism as a counter to left-wing nationalism and Russian influence (for example in Afghanistan) – until jihadism threatened western interests also. Then it waged war to eradicate it and, in the course of that, supported the Kurds in Rojava.
But US/NATO wants a solid block facing (not to say encircling) Russia – so now previous bets are off and the Rojava region can be thrown to the wolves – or to Turkey; first by Trump to screams of outrage from US Democrats but now by Biden, to probable silence.
BACKGROUND
But why does the Turkish military want to shell Syria? Why specifically shelling the Rojava region? If you know, you know but if you don’t, a little background might help.
The Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Turkey, comprising around 18% of Turkey’s population; the largest concentration (2 million) of which lives in Istanbul. The majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslim, with Alevi Shi’a Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Yezidi communities.
Together with Kurdish populations in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia (all “Kurdistan”) the Kurds number between 25 and 35 million in the Middle East (with a very large diaspora in Europe, the USA and other areas).
The area occupied by Kurds in the Middle East is of huge strategic and resources importance and none of the major states in the area have agreed to their having a state.
After World War One and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious Western allies made provision for a Kurdish state in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres.
However the new leader of Turkey, Kemal Attaturk, the “father of modern Turkey” rejected a reduction in the size of the state and the subsequent imperialist Treaty of Lausanne set the boundaries of modern Turkey without any reference to the Kurds (“mountain Turks”, according to Attaturk).
Also in 1920, the Royal Air Force of the UK bombed the Kurds with chemical weapons and machine-gunned them during the Iraqi (then Mesopotamia) uprising,
In 1946 the USSR supported a Kurdish state in a part of what is Iran today but in the face of the western powers’ opposition and support for the state of Persia’s (then a client state of the West) claim to the territory, the USSR withdrew its support and the Kurdish state was suppressed.
Every attempt to set up a Kurdish state since then has been violently suppressed and, in Turkey, even an autonomous Kurdish region was beyond contemplation by the authorities, who suppress even Kurdish language and music.
THE KURDS IN SYRIA
In 2013 an uprising began against the Assad regime which, though it had some popular elements quickly became dominated by Jihadists and NATO proxies. The Syrian part of the Kurdish liberation movement saw an advantage for itself here and set up its own liberated areas.
Also in 2013 the fundamentalist islamist group ISIS burst on to the scene and, taking advantage of the Assad regime’s beleaguered situation, attacked large areas of Syria, to overthrow the regime but also to subjugate all peoples in the region, including the Kurds and Arabs of any kind.
The Kurds of Rojava fought to protect their areas from ISIS but also carried out a heroic rescue action to save Yazidis, opening and defending a corridor for Yazidi refugees to reach safety in the Kurdish liberated area where they built a cross-community alliance with Yazidis, Turkmen and Arabs, in which they state that all its citizens have equal rights.
Whether this is as true as they (and as their supporters in parts of the European Left) say or not, certainly women have a formally equal status and women are elected – and also appointed — to positions of high administrative and military responsibility.
Demonstrators in Stockholm against the NATO deal with Turkey and in solidarity with the Kurds (whose flags are also visible (Image sourced: Internet)
The Turkish regime has been at war with the Kurds within the state’s territory led by the PKK since 1974 and viewed the setting up of an independent republic under Kurdish leadership across the border in Syria with great alarm.
In 2014 Turkey began attacking support and supply lines from Kurds in Turkey to Rojava, which caused outrage among the extended Kurdish diaspora and other opponents of ISIS in the West.
London rally November 2014 in solidarity with Kurds in Syria and condemning Turkish attacks. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
And in fact, although Turkey is an important member of NATO, Turkish military attacked the enclave a number of times, both directly and through the use of muslim fundamentalist jihadists.
Nevertheless, NATO’s concentration on wiping out the ISIS threat in the area had to have a restraining effect on Turkey. And then there was Russia too, also supplying air cover — but to the Syrian regime.
“MY ENEMY’S ENEMY IS ….” — an understandable but dangerous philosophy
At first in 2013 it seemed that the Kurds around Rojava were merely taking advantage of the Syrian regime’s trouble to go for establishing their own republic, in addition to fighting the dire threat of ISIS.
In the latter struggle, they would of course gladly accept NATO bombing of ISIS and liaise with NATO commanders on where ISIS forces were gathering – for the Kurd’s own safety and for destruction of a dangerous enemy.
However some years ago an interview with the Kurdish commander of the Rojava military forces was published in which he said that the intentions of the Rojava military went further and involved overthrowing the Assad regime, an objective that they shared with NATO.
At a meeting organised by socialist Irish Republicans about five years ago, while expressing admiration for the Kurd’s struggle for self-determination in general and specifically against ISIS, I questioned from the audience a Kurdish speaker from London.
When I commented on what seemed a clear alliance with western imperialism and in particular the USA, the biggest imperialist power in the world, the speaker replied that they were merely accepting necessary aid for their defence against ISIS.
But when I pointed him towards the Kurdish military commander’s interview on the regime change objectives of his forces and of NATO, all he had to say was that I should visit Rojava.
Mass funerals (despite fear of further Turkish drone strikes) of three fighters of the Women’s Protection Unit (YPJ) killed recently (Image sourced: ANHA)
CONCLUSION
This situation and its history once again highlights the dangers of revolutionaries doing any deal with imperialism, most of all one where the long-term survival of one’s people depends on the continued support of an imperialist power.
It also raises the question of whether it is justifiable or at least wise in the longer term to use a major world power’s assistance in order to remove a smaller power.
The main Kurdish liberation movement of the PKK fought a heroic struggle for decades, in particular against the ferocious Turkish regime, with many martyrs and political prisoners.
One of its weaknesses was the almost deification of their leader Oçalan and the way his attempted embracing of the proposed “peace process” undermined the movement, as similar processes have done wherever they have been introduced.
Of course, as with the Spanish state, another fascist but supposedly democratic regime, the Turkish regime is not interested in any “peace process”, a slow sapping of the resistance movement. For its ruling elite, crudely crushing the resistance with brute force is the only way .
The Kurdish movement in Syria was seen as a spinoff from the PKK which supported it in its struggle against the Syrian regime but in particular in its heroic struggle against the Islamic State/ ISIS/ Deish.
However the Turkish state would view any independent Kurdish area, let alone one in nearby Syria as encouragement to Kurds within its territory. The ISIS movement threatened some Western interests and so NATO went to war with it, the Syrian Kurds linked themselves with NATO not only to defeat ISIS but also to overthrow the Assad regime.
US-led NATO wanted to overthrow the Assad regime but as part of its Middle Eastern encirclement of Russia (which is why Russia came to the aid of Assad against ISIS). Iraq and Libya had fallen already and, after Syria, Iran would be next on the list.
Thousands of people joined a demonstration in Tel Rifaat town of the Shehba Canton on Sunday 10th Nov 2019 in protest at the Turkish state’s invasion and genocidal practices in northern Syria. 40% of the population of Efrin (Afrin) having to survive in a semi no-man’s land, defended by the multi-ethnic SDF of AANES, after expulsion by the Turkish invasion, plantation and Turkification of their homes and properties.
But as the ISIS threat and the likelihood of deposing Assad faded, NATO support for the Rojava fighters declined. In October 2019 the SDF had to conclude an agreement with the Syrian regime to have it move into their area to end five days of attacks by Turkey.
When their protection from Turkey could be dropped in exchange for a US/NATO advantage in Eastern Europe, nothing stood against a Turkish all-out attack on Rojava. Nothing, that is, except the Russian airforce.
If Turkey is to attack Rojava with ground troops it will need to use air cover both in manned and unmanned vehicles, which would require Russia not policing the no-fly zone in Syria near the Turkish border.
In February 2021, a Russia-brokered agreement between the SDF and the Syrian regime to lift the SDF’s siege of regime-held towns showed strains. But last month, at a summit in Tehran between leaders of Iran, Russia and Turkey, the other two warned the latter not to attack the Kurds in Syria.
However, despite Turkey’s NATO membership, Russia does get along with the state’s rulers from time to time and the recent discussions between the ruling elites of Russia and Ukraine on unblocking the flow of grain and fertiliser out of the war zone were held in Turkey.
The Syrian regime does not want an autonomous area within the territory of its state and Russia’s leaders will be anxious to keep on good terms with its ally – but it will also wish to wean Turkey away from NATO.
The Rojava enclave, though never as wonderful as it was proclaimed to be from a socialist point of view, is nevertheless an interesting experiment in federalism and multi-ethnic administration.
It will be sad if Rojava falls to Turkish aggression and a mean repayment for their heroic struggle to rescue the Yazidis and to hold off the advance of ISIS which cost them 10,000 dead fighters. It may also be yet another disastrous byproduct of the proxy war NATO is waging in the Ukraine.
We are being constantly reminded by the western press on a daily basis, quite rightly, of civilians being killed in the Ukraine conflict1. On the Ukrainian side. Somehow, the Ukrainian military never fire at the Russian side – or if they do, they somehow never manage to kill civilians.
Amazing, really, in a war which the media keeps telling us is ferocious.
The Russian side is rarely quoted but when it is, its statements are dismissed. They say that the Ukrainian military plant themselves among civilian housing and fire artillery from there. Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they and anyway, the Ukrainian State denies it.
The Russian military are, according to the Ukrainian State, not so much careless about the the targets of their bombardment but deliberately aiming at civilian structures.
Why they would do that when, according to the same sources, they want to extend the Russian empire there, is not explained. It’s all about terrorism, according to Zelensky, the Ukrainian premier and media figure.
The Russian State story, not so easy to come by, is that they never target civilian areas deliberately, unless the Ukrainian military are using them to fire from – which according to the Ukrainian State, quoted without question by the western media, the Ukrainian military never do.
BOMBARDMENT AND CIVILIANS
Yesterday’s issue of Breaking News Ireland carried a very unusual photo. It was unusual because it was taken during actual military action, whereas we normally only get photos of damaged buildings and occasionally Ukrainian military standing firm.
Ukrainian Soldiers run after missile strike in residential area of Kramatorsk, Donetsk Region, Eastern Ukraine (posted 13 July) (Cred: Nariman El-Mofty/AP)
But the photo was more unusual than that because it showed Ukrainian soldiers running for cover after a Russian artillery strike, naturally enough but a less-than heroic image for public consumption. The caption tells us it’s in a civilian area in the Donetsk region.
WAIT A MINUTE! In a civilian area? So the Ukrainian military were in a civilian area and got fired on by Russian artillery? Doesn’t that coincide with what the Russians have been saying? Were those Ukrainian military perhaps even firing from that area? We don’t know.
We don’t know because we get hardly any western media coverage from the actual battlefronts, just quotations from the Ukrainian State and, from time to time, commentary from US/ NATO sources. And never any detail from the Russian side.
If we want a more realistic picture, we have to go to sources banned or at least not promoted in the West.
One of those sources is Patrick Lancaster, reporting on the war. In a recent video, he interviewed wounded civilians in a hospital in Izium, Kharkiv region, an area the Ukrainian military left a couple of days earlier and which is now under Russian military occupation.
So refreshing to watch.
Some interviewees blame the Russian State, some blame the Ukrainian State, some seem impartial or keep their own counsel – as one might expect, really, if one thought about it past the propaganda line, which is that everyone there — except the “Russian separatists” — blames the Russians.
And actually, the Breaking News article reported the reluctance of many to leave Sloviansk and Kramatorsk as they are being publicly encouraged to do by the Ukrainian Donetsk Governor, presumably as those areas are going to be pounded by artillery (but by Ukrainian or by Russian?)
This too is interesting, because even anti-Ukrainian State or pro-Russia interviewees (not always the same thing) interviewed by Patrick Lancaster in the Izium town, said that the Russian artillery had hit their town “very hard”.
But then some also stated that Marchenko, the pro-Ukrainian Mayor of the city had announced publicly that the city had been evacuated. All lies, according to one, “only five buses here …. and 50 taxis (but) from Kramatorsk.”
So if the advancing Russian military believed that only Ukrainian military remained in the city …..?
This is a military conflict and of course both sides are firing and, as well as soldiers, civilians are being inevitably killed on both sides. When that happens, is it likely that either side is killing civilians deliberately?
Certainly less likely by the Russians in the Donetsk area, which is a largely Russian-speaking region that has been attacked by Ukrainian right-wing military since that state’s abrupt change of government in 20142.
By the Ukrainian military side, probably more likely on the basis of the previous eight years, or at least of being more careless.
The article I’ve quoted showed a range of attitudes to the call of Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukrainian State’s Governor of the Donetsk region, for civilians to leave and to head into Ukrainian State-held territory — and also of different attitudes to the forthcoming Russian occupation.
Some are going, including a teacher of Russian, which is interesting, because another doesn’t want to go precisely because of the anti-Russian-speakers attitude of the State (and even more so of some of the Ukrainian military).
Some just don’t want to give up their homes and/ or be jobless (or elderly without support) in Ukrainian State territory. Some think they’ll be ok under the Russians while others think they’ll be no better off on the Ukrainian State side.
So, naturally enough a mixed picture but certainly very different to the one being projected day in, day out by the western media. How this article and photo slipped through that blockade is certainly curious.
DOES IT MATTER?
But at the end of the day, does it really matter much to us here in Ireland whether we are being subjected to inaccurate propaganda about the conflict in Ukraine?
Well, if that conflict was sparked by the expansion towards Russia’s borders of the NATO military alliance3, then it does.
If that conflict is part of the shaping up by US/NATO for a war against Russia and China (and possibly India), then it certainly does. Not just because all of those on both sides are nuclear powers and radiation can end up anywhere.
But also because the ruling elite of the British colony in Ireland is part of NATO and the ruling class of the Gombeen state is trying to push it into NATO — or at least into an EU military alliance, which would of course soon enough line up with NATO.
I don’t believe either side in this conflict without proof and analysis. But I do resent the completely one-sided propaganda coming from the western media. Maybe it’s the same in Russia with their own propaganda.
Maybe, but isn’t it the boast of the West that their democracies are superior, with free speech and press?
And if the western media is following the same propaganda line in its reporting out of common interest with US/NATO and EU, is the end result any different from the media in Russia saying what they are told to say?
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Would that they would equally well inform us of those beling killed by the Saudi proxy war in the Sudan or by the numbers of migrants being killed on a regular basis as they try to access safety or just a better life in western states – the same states that are usually responsible for their plight in the first place.
2Yes, eight years prior to the Russian invasion. On the rare occasions when the western media refers to this (they did in the Breaking News Ireland article) it is always portrayed as a problem caused by “pro-Russian separatists” without recording that those areas were attacked as Russian-speaking by Ukrainian fascist and far-Right military units, including the Azov Battalion and the people organised themselves in defence, then received Russian supplies and now, eight years later, a Russian invasion. The origin of the Crimea situation is a similar story.
3For those who think this is a ridiculous claim, type “NATO states in Europe map” into a search engine. Also look up “Minsk Agreement”.
Patrick Lancaster reporting from Izum, Kharkiv region, 120 Km/ 75 miles southeast of Kharkiv city (random civilian interviews + civilians wounded in hospital): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iFv5jxInOc
Patrick Lancaster, December 2016 (yes, SIX YEARS AGO) in Luhansk People’s Militia trench, under Ukrainian shelling (breaking Minsk Agreement): https://youtu.be/DAo7go-4l0g
Irish Republicans and revolutionary Socialists have traditionally been opposed to the commemoration of the dead in the “Great War”, WWI. Recently Michelle O’Neill, top Minister in the British colonial political regime in Ireland with the Lord Mayor of Belfast, both members of the Sinn Féin party, laid a wreath at the WWI memorial in Belfast, to the bewilderment of some and the disgust of others. But actually those emotions are misplaced, since the leadership of the Sinn Féin party were never Socialist and are no longer Republican.
The long-held position of Irish Republicans and Socialists that WWI should not be commemorated is however illogical and runs against history. The conflict was a hugely-important event in such areas as military, social conditions and mores, medicine, politics and economics.
The toll of WWI is around 40 million military and civilian casualties of which 20 million died. Of those, around 10 million were civilian dead. How can an event of such historical magnitude not deserve commemoration?
We should certainly commemorate the fact that a small group of monopoly capitalists, aristocracies and monarchies, in the course of an argument about how to divide up the world among themselves, sent millions of ordinary people, mostly workers, to kill one another to settle the argument. People who had no quarrel with one another and nothing to gain from killing one another; people whose real verifiable enemies were those very people who were mobilising and arming them before sending them forth to kill or be killed.
The conditions of the working classes at the time they were thrown into the killing arena should be commemorated. The lies that the war was fought for democracy and freedom of small nations should be exposed. The disciplinary court-martials and executions within the armies should be revealed, along with the treatment of conscientious objectors. The propaganda used for recruitment and to keep the home populations happy should be deconstructed and exposed. The fact that capitalism ends up as imperialism, which in turn causes war, should be made clear to all.
That wars are not alone fought for profits but that huge profits are made in the course of war is a grotesque fact that should become widely known.
A pile of used artillery shells used in WWI — all manufactured and paid for, exploded, more ordered, paid for, fired ….. Part of the huge profits made during imperialist wars. (Photo sourced: Internet)
All of this was true of WWI and is true (to one extent or another) of the wars caused by imperialism today, whether in Somalia, Western Sahara, Palestine or Ukraine. But now, in addition to the huge death toll of WWI, we have the possibility of the destruction of human cities around the world — and even of ecological disaster — in yet another war.
We should expose the fact that far from encouraging us away from war, WWI commemorations are for the most part about concealing those salient facts and encouraging us to be proud of how our forebears were conned into killing one another. By whipping up reactionary nationalism1, their commemorations make us vulnerable to being conned into fighting further wars, to agree to be sent to other countries to kill or maim people like us in other countries – or to be maimed or killed by them.
An innovative protest by the socialist Republican group Lasair Dhearg which however confines itself to pointing to the occupying British Army’s collusion with Loyalist murder gangs. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Commemorating the truth about imperialist wars past and present mean rejecting the wearing of the Poppy symbol. The Poppy is not about commemorating the dead in wars, as it is sold. This promotional emblem of the British Legion only commemorates the British soldiers who have been killed in wars – it does not commemorate all the soldiers of the colonies (for example Ireland) or the Commonwealth who died in the wars, not to mention all the civilian auxiliaries helping cook, clean, carry, dig, build etc for the British armed forces. The Poppy does not commemorate the dead soldiers of Britain’s allies, for example France, USA or Russia in the case of WWI. It does not commemorate the soldiers or auxiliaries of the hostile states who were killed, which might seem natural, until we ask ourselves why not, if the idea really is just to commemorate the dead soldiers in war. Most tellingly, the Poppy does not commemorate the millions of civilians who have been killed in wars – actually more than the total number of soldiers and a percentage of war deaths that is growing with every war.
The real role of the Poppy is to build social support for the imperialist British armed forces, including helping recruitment — so in other words, the emblem and its publicity is actually helping to build support for future armed conflicts.
The WWI soldier sculpture made from scrap metal, pictured in Stephens Green, Dublin. Republicans protested its siting in a 1916 battleground, (Photo sourced: Internet)
Not addressing the nature of imperialist war and just boycotting any idea of commemoration leads to missed opportunities. A few years ago a sculpture of a WW1 British soldier constructed out of scrap metal was installed in Stephen’s Green, a recreational park in Dublin’s city centre. Some Irish Republicans staged a protest around it in which they castigated it being located there in what had been a 1916 Rising battleground. They were correct in the historical reference but was that all that could be said about that war? Would most of the tourists passing by relate to that 1916 reference or would the whole international horror of imperialist war not have engaged them more?
A small protest emphasising the nature of WWI commemorations at one such attended by SF representatives (the commemoration) in the Irish National (sic) War Memorial Gardens 10th July 2021 (Photo: RTÉ)
We should indeed commemorate WWI but we should do it in the framework laid out, of exposing what the wars are about, who they benefit, what class contains the main victims – and not just the dead but also the injured, many of them crippled for life.
That is not how the ruling elites commemorate war and it is not how Michelle O’Neill and Tina Black did it. Michelle O’Neill said that she did this symbolic act in order to demonstrate that she is going to be “a First Minister for everyone” – clearly meaning Nationalist and Unionist. Liberals may laud O’Neill for that but one cannot represent national liberation simultaneously with colonialism, republicanism at the same time as loyalism, democracy at the same time as reactionary sectarianism. Making a war wreath green does not change its nature. Sinn Féin will often seem to try to present themselves as all things to different groups of people but essentially they are serving Irish Gombeenism2 in the 26 Counties and English colonialism in the Six.
Sinn Féin members Tina Black and First Minister-in-waiting Michelle O’Neill as they approach the WWI memorial in Belfast to lay a wreath. (Photo sourced: Internet)
In addition, workers and lower middle-class people from the Protestant or Unionist community were also killed and maimed in imperialist war. How does concealing the reality of war help those people?
End.
FOOTNOTES
1I use the term in the sense that not all nationalism is reactionary.
On 26th June 2022 tens of thousands took to the streets of Madrid in a rejection of NATO and imperialism. In addition to the people mobilised by the organisations and groups of the anti-NATO movement in Madrid, numerous buses were chartered from all over the state. The NATO Summit that was about to be held in Madrid (28 and 30th) has made it possible, after an important effort, to begin to revitalise and rebuild a movement opposing the armed wing of imperialism.
The groups attending with their slogans were many, from the anti-imperialist movement to some pacifist groups, through numerous organisations of the labour and popular movement, such as combative trade unionism or pensioners’ groups. Also noteworthy were representatives from abroad, such as a group of South Koreans against NATO, people from other European countries or groups from the Arab world, highlighting those who defend occupied Palestine and Western Sahara.
The repression has intensified during the previous two weeks and days: the city of Madrid has been militarised, organisers have even been arrested, they have been detained and threatened in their homes or they have been singled out in the press. Another demonstration called for the day of the summit, Wednesday the 29th, has been banned by the Government.
A section of the huge march on Sunday in Madrid (Photo: Insurgente.es)
COMMENT:
In addition to slogans against NATO (OTAN in Spanish), imperialism and war, one can also hear slogans specifically calling for the dismantling of NATO bases.
Not only will this huge demonstration and other acts in opposition to the summit lead to an intensification of general anti-imperialist struggle and against Spanish state repression but it will also likely encourage the forces for independence among the nations within the Spanish state, the Basque and Catalan nations and the Celtic nations of Galiza and Asturies.
On 2nd June a number of Left anti-imperialist organisations and individuals held a public rally in Bilbo/ Bilbao. The municipal authority refused them use of a building and they held it in the open air in the Etxebarrieta Square. The organisers issued a statement in Euskera (Basque language) and Castillian (Spanish) calling for unity against the war plans of NATO and the EU and denounced the equivocating posture of the ‘official’ left Basque movement, denounced also the militarism of the Spanish coalition Government and advertised a joint demonstration for 18th June in Moyua, on the south side of the river in Bilbao1.
STATEMENT ISSUED BY COORDINATING GROUP (translated by D.Breatnach from Castilian Spanish version published in Ecuador Etxea)
For several weeks, various people and groups from Bilbao, Meatzaldea, Uribe-Kosta, Ezkerraldea and Busturialdea2 have been coming together in this broad initiative to respond to the escalation of war that we are seeing around us. An escalation of war promoted by NATO, with the aim of shielding the world hegemony of the United States against the rise of emerging powers such as China, India, Iran or Russia. A strategy that is doomed to failure, but that will cause, if we do not prevent it first, destruction, misery and death throughout the planet.
In Bilbo/ Bilbao 2nd June, reading the declaration and call to unite and for rally on 18 June in Basque and Castillian (Spanish). (Photo source: Ecuador Etxea)
In relation to the conflict in Ukraine, we believe that in no case can one speak of an inter-imperialist struggle between the NATO countries and Russia. Rather, it is an offensive planned for years to overthrow the legitimate government led by Vladimir Putin and gain control of Russian energy resources and markets. A policy of looting and plundering that the current Russian President put a stop to, no matter how hard it is for some to admit it. Ukraine is nothing more than the operations base and the cannon fodder of Atlanticist imperialism against its historical enemy, Russia.
Many on the Left say that the Russia of today is not the Soviet Union of yesterday. And they are completely correct. The problem is that even the slightest economic planning for social purposes by any State has become an obstacle to the viability of the parasitic capitalism that we live under. There we have the cases of Slovdan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi, sadly imprisoned and/or executed in the face of complicit silence or the enthusiastic support of what they call the “international community.”
Those of us who are here today have already learned our lesson: first they demonize the currently out of favour ruler through the media, and then they justify military offensives and imperialist massacres. That is why at this time we cannot make the mistake of placing ourselves at equidistance. Both Russia and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics have every right in the world to defend themselves against the aggressions of NATO and the EU, which conspire and supply weapons to fascist governments like Zelensky’s to harass Russia and destabilize the region. Not to mention the openly Nazi battalions captured in Azovstal, whose release France and Germany now demand in order to advance in the negotiations. What do European governments owe the Nazis in Azov? What do they have to hide and why do they intend to buy their silence?
The truth is that we still do not know the exact reason why the States of the European Union have completely bowed to the interests of the United States. It is evident that the sanctions against Russia and the new oil and gas supply routes imposed by the US only benefit the Yankee tycoons, the Arab sheikhs and the absolutist monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the United Arab Emirates. NATO vassals like Borrell have definitively cast the old European project into History’s dump. They prioritize profit and military spending to the detriment of the health and living conditions of the broad masses and announce a future of misery and sacrifice for a war in favor of a capitalism that is against us. The European Union is definitely a rotting political corpse, in case anyone ever thought that it could have been a progressive alternative or for oppressed nations like ours.
Arnaldo Otegi, leader of “the institutional Abertzale Left” (Basque left-nationalist movement). (Photo source: Internet)
Precisely here in the Basque Country, the official position of the institutional Abertzale Left3 regarding what is happening in the Ukraine is especially embarrassing. It seems unbelievable that those who proclaim themselves heirs to the historic struggles of the Basque Working People, a people of which the majority in 1986 opposed remaining in this criminal organization4, now wave the flag of “no to war” and of ambiguity. It seems immoral to us, both the pacifism that denies the just right to defense of those who are attacked by imperialism, as well as the lukewarm posture of those who do not take a stand, thus facilitating the advance of imperialism. Anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism must be cultivated day by day, if we do not want the ideological and cultural offensive of NATO and the EU to continue having effect, in particular among the sons and daughters of the working class. Thirty-six years later we unambiguously reaffirm ourselves in NO to NATO, no to FASCISM, no to GENOCIDAL IMPERIALISM.
As we said, we are witnessing an implacable propaganda to make us part of this imperialist strategy, so that we do not rebel against what is happening. While they continue to spread one-sided thinking through the big media, television channels that question the official story — such as Russia Today — are closed without the slightest shame, content on the Internet is censored by appealing to supposed “verified information”, journalists like Pablo González5 are imprisonedor political information is systematically eliminated from our streets. They not only want to indoctrinate us, they directly deny us the right to be informed. Where are the defenders of freedom of expression? Are we already living in a hidden state of emergency?
It is our obligation, therefore, to denounce, not only the rise of international fascism, but also the fertile ground that the fascists have in the Spanish State of the bannings, the GAL6, the closure of newspapers and the systematic torture of political dissidents7. Atlantic capitalism will never be able to find a better ally than the PSOE8, veritable experts in the art of manipulating and deceiving the working and broad masses. Sadly, there are times when collective memory seems too fragile. Of course, for this new phase they have found a faithful shield-bearer, the party of Yolanda Díaz9. Seconds were never good, we are already seeing where these wolves in sheep’s clothing are leading us…
We said at the beginning that different people have come together to counteract this hegemonic discourse that manipulates consciences and protects the sequestration of rights and freedoms. From Muskiz to Gernika we rebel today here against this ominous imperialist offensive. All this suffering is not necessary, there is no reason to accept the misery and the war to which NATO and the EU want to condemn us. It is also not the time to stay at home watching, or to follow the war as if it were a video game.
We therefore issue a call to all the towns and neighborhoods of Euskal Herria and other nations to continue organizing the fight against imperialism, capitalism and fascism. And we also invite all the people who are against the imperialist offensive of NATO and the EU to participate in the demonstration that we will carry out in Bilbao, on June 18 at 6:30 p.m. from the Plaza Elíptica.
NO TO NATO! NO TO THE EUROPEAN UNION! NO TO IMPERIALISM!
End statement.
TRANSLATOR FOOTNOTES
1Which is also the location of the representation of the Spanish State in Bizkaia and guarded by armed police.
2A number of towns and districts across the SW Basque province of Bizkaia.
3The ‘official’ leadership of the left-Basque independence movement, e.g the EH Bildu party under the leadership of Arnaldo Otegi and others.
4In the 1986 referendum on whether to remain in NATO, the Basque Country gave the highest majority for No, with the Canaries and Catalonia coming behind. For the whole Spanish state, nearly 57% voted Yes against 43.15%.
5Basque freelance journalist reporting for Publico (Spanish left online media) and La Sexta, threatened and advised to leave Ukraine by state intelligence services, which he did but arrested by Polish intelligence on 28 February as he was about to re-enter Ukraine with a group of journalists. Poland has charged him with spying for Russia but to date produced no evidence and even denied him access to his lawyer. The Spanish State sent intelligence service agents to question his wife, mother and friends.
6GAL: A Spanish state terror and assassination organisation of the 1980s operating against the Basque resistance which was exposed as led by the Prime Minister (though never even questioned) Felipe Gonzales and directed operationally by the Minister of the Interior and senior Army and Police officers, a number of which received prison sentences.
7The Spanish state has long been accused by human rights organisations of torturing political dissidents and convicted in the European Court of Human Rights a number of times of failure to investigate complaints of torture. The State has closed newspaper and social media sites, jailed rappers, banned political parties, banned demonstrations, closed political cultural centres, disqualified political activists from representation in elections and jailed political activists.
8The main Spanish social-democratic party, currently in coalition government with Podemos.
9Yolanda Díaz resigned from Izquierda Unida (United Left – a broad coalition) but remained a member of the Communist Party of Spain; she is currently Deputy Prime Minister in the Spanish coalition government.
FromLa Izquierda Diario (the Daily Left) by Carlos Rubio (Translated by D.Breatnach)
Foreign Affairs and Interior Departments spare no expense when it comes to strengthening the Atlantic Alliance summit, scheduled for June 29 and 30th. The budget increase of 1.95 million euros for the State Security Forces includes the purchase of 6,000 Taser chargers for the convened protests.
On October 8, 2021, the next NATO summit meeting in Madrid was officially announced, where Prime Minister Sánchez announced that “they would have all the capabilities” to “guarantee security”, at a key “historic moment” for the organisation.
(Image from Social Revolution)
Two months before the official date, Ministers of the Interior Marlaska and Exterior Albares are already anticipating some of the measures to be taken to prepare for the Summit. €37 million will be the budget limit, which will include the cost of assembly and adaptation of Ifema (Madrid festival organising consortium — DB), the catering and the security of the meeting.
More specifically, the State Security Forces will have almost 2 million euros to reinforce their equipment, which includes the purchase of 6,000 chargers for Taser pistols, to guarantee “a safe environment in the face of a possible threat”, according to the Marlaska himself.
Together with this acquisition, the purchase of metal detector arches, parcel inspection scanners, digital personal video cameras and computer graphics equipment for the preparation of three-dimensional plans of complete buildings is expected.
(Image from Social Revolution): “70 years of war, NATO no, bases out”
The National Police will be the body deployed for this summit, which will be involved in “establishing a comprehensive security arrangement for it that will cover, in addition to the place where the meetings are held, travel and all those places of accommodation where the delegations of different countries that are planning their assistance will be staying”.
According to the Government, all these measures are a priority since “several organisations and social groups are already announcing protests.”
The leading issue at this summit, given the context, is the war in Ukraine and the position that NATO is to take against Putin’s reactionary invasion. This time, there will be 50 delegations, some of them invited from outside NATO but close to it, as in the cases of Ukraine, Sweden or Finland.
At this summit, it is foreseeable that the main trend that has already been taking place in recent months and has been justified by the war between Kyiv and Moscow will be strengthened: imperialist rearmament.
In recent months, from the various partners of the alliance and from the EU, weapons have been sent successively to Ukraine, defending the interests of the alliance, arming the Ukrainian Security Forces and militias, among which are groups such as the well-known Azov Battalion and the Pravy Sektor, to name a few examples. While Russian troops remain… on their battlefronts, these armed far-right groups are strengthening their hegemony and repression in the parts of the country they control.
(Image from Social Revolution)
In this regard, as Sánchez stated: “Madrid and Spain are going to play a determining role”. Last Thursday, the President of the Government announced that Spain was going to double military aid to Ukraine, at the same time that the Army ship “Ysabel” is sailing to Poland with 200 tons of ammunition and war material of various kinds.
Since March 2nd, when the first shipment of weapons by the Spanish State was approved in Congress, the efforts of the “progressive government” (i.e social-democrat and Podemos coalition – DB) to actively participate in the escalation of war have continued uninterruptedly.
(Image from Social Revolution)
Sánchez seems to reinforce his intention to turn the Spanish state into one of the main partners of NATO and the US in Europe. In accordance with the positive historical diplomatic relations between the US and Morocco, Spain legitimised less than a month ago the illegitimate occupation of Western Sahara by the Alaouite monarchy, selling the Saharawi people in exchange for a diplomatic relationship that maintains a strong border policy between Africa and the EU; and to ensure the economic interests of Spain over her former colony.
(Image from Social Revolution)
Spain is the seventh ranking country in contribution of money to the organisation and which, in line with the other members of the Treaty Organisation, raised its defence budget by 1.5 billion euros between 2020 and 2021, which is still far from the 2% requested by “the White House” from its partners.
With the 2018 budgets the “progressive government” approved from the beginning an increase of almost 11% in defence and 6.5% in the National Police and Civil Guard, so it is expected that this trend will continue to rise.
End.
“Prime Minister Sanchez and his master” (Image from Social Revolution)
The United States could immediately take direct actions that would de-escalate the over-arching nuclear threat that haunts Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. A few such actions would demonstrate good will and indicate a real intention to reduce tensions in the crisis which seems every day to grow more dangerous.
1. U.S. hydrogen bombs stationed in Europe could be withdrawn and their planned replacement cancelled.
The United States and Germany are formal states parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Articles I and II of the NPT flatly prohibit the transfer of nuclear weapons from one states party to another. Any fourth grader can understand that the NATO practice of “nuclear sharing” with Germany, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Turkey — which together have over 100 U.S. nuclear weapons — is an open violation of the clear, unambiguous, unequivocal and binding prohibitions of the NPT.
(Image sourced: Internet)
The United States stations an estimated 20 of its B61-3 and B61-4 thermonuclear gravity bombs at the German Air Force Base Büchel, 80 miles southeast of Cologne. These B61 H-bombs at Büchel are identified as “intermediate-yield strategic and tactical thermonuclear” bombs, and “the primary thermonuclear gravity bomb in the U.S.” according to the NuclearWeaponArchive.org.
Calling these weapons “intermediate” or “tactical” is shocking disinformation. The maximum yield of the B61-3 is 170 kilotons, and the maximum B61-4 yield is 50 kilotons, as reported by the Bulletin of the atomic Scientists. These H-bombs respectively produce over 11 times and 3 times the explosive blast, mass fire, and radiation of the 15-kiloton Hiroshima bomb that killed 140,000 people. (For background, see Lynn Eden’s “Whole World on Fire,” or Howard Zinn’s “The Bomb.”
The effects of detonating B61-3 or B61-4 bombs would inevitably be catastrophic mass destruction involving disproportionate, indiscriminate and long-lasting devastation. Plans to replace the current B61 with a new “model 12” could be cancelled now, and constitute a real ratcheting down of tensions in Europe.
2. The U.S. can discontinue its nuclear attack courses underway at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
The U.S. studies and plans nuclear weapon attacks at classrooms of its Defense Nuclear Weapons School (DNWS), and the one branch school outside the U.S. is at Ramstein in Germany, the largest U.S. military base outside the country, headquarters of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe, and NATO Allied Air Command. Outlines of nuclear attack coursework can be read on the DNWS website, which boldly declares the school: “is responsible for delivering, sustaining and supporting air-delivered nuclear weapon systems for our warfighters …every day.”
One class outlined on the DNWS website is for “Theater Nuclear Operations,” described as “a 4.5-day course that provides training for planners, support staff, targeteers, and staff nuclear planners for joint operations and targeting. The course provides an overview of nuclear weapon design, capabilities, and effects as well as U.S. nuclear policy, and joint nuclear doctrine…. Objectives: … Understand the U.S. nuclear planning and execution process…; Understand the targeting effects of nuclear weapon employment….”
Dispensing with this nuclear attack planning school would reduce tensions and help eliminate Russia’s dread of the U.S./NATO nuclear posture.
3. NATO can suspend its provocative military exercises.
Attacks with U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe are regularly simulated or “rehearsed,” as is often reported. Recent headlines noted: “German Air Force training for nuclear war as part of NATO” (Kazakh Telegraph Agency 2020), “Secret nuclear weapons exercise ‘Steadfast Noon” (German Armed Forces Journal 2019), “NATO nuclear weapons exercise unusually open” (2017), and “NATO nuclear weapons exercise Steadfast Noon in Büchel” (2015).
Giant NATO war games routinely zero in on Russia. In 2018, there was “Trident Juncture” with 50,000 troops in Norway, and “Atlantic Resolve” was conducted in Eastern Europe. In 2016, some 16,000 troops gathered in Norway for “Cold Response,” and in “Anaconda 2016” another 31,000 troops from 24 countries were again in motion across Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. In 2015, there was “Atlantic Resolve,” “Dragoon Ride,” and “Spring Storm,” all conducted across Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. In 2014, the routine “Cold Response” game in Norway involved 16,000 troops, and “Atlantic Resolve” took place in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.
Beyond the annual “Steadfast Noon” simulations, complex, multinational NATO exercises in Eastern European countries just recently ballooned in number. In 2019, there was a single big exercise called “Atlantic Resolve.” In 2020 there were five. In 2021 the number leaped to eleven, and NATO that year made plans for a total of 95 exercises. Individual NATO states had plans for another 220 of their own war games. Nothing justifies Putin’s naked aggression, but the marked increase in NATO war practices would even make the Dali Lama defensive.
4. The U.S. and NATO could end their nuclear weapon “first-use” policy.
The public policy of readiness to initiate attack with nuclear weapons — not as a deterrent against being attacked with nuclear weapons, but its exact opposite — is at the heart of both U.S. and NATO “nuclear posture.” This perpetual threat to start nuclear attacks during a conventional conflict, especially in the context of routine NATO nuclear war exercises, is unnecessarily destabilizing and reckless. In view of the enormously overwhelming power of U.S. and NATO conventional military forces, the nuclear option is grossly redundant and militarily useless.
(Source image: The Irish Sun 2019)
After he retired, Paul Nitze, a former Navy Secretary and personal advisor to President Ron Reagan, wrote “A Threat Mostly to Ourselves” where he observed: “In view of the fact that we can achieve our objectives with conventional weapons, there is no purpose to be gained through the use of our nuclear arsenal.”
Now that the U.S. public as a whole has been transformed into one big anti-war group, it should recognize that it can influence our own government but not Russia’s. Our demands for negotiation, cease-fire, de-escalation and a peace agreement need to be directed in a way that has some chance of success. ###
John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter.
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