We call on working people all over the world!
　On the 3rd of August ? the month when atomic bombs were dropped for the first time in human history on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ? we are holding the 52nd International Antiwar Assemblies in Tokyo and six other cities in Japan.
　Today, one hundred years after the shot in Sarajevo triggered off the First World War, the world is once again witnessing acute tensions building up, which reminds us of the eve of the war that engulfed the whole world for the first time in history. The US and China plus Russia are clashing with each other in both the east and the west parts of the Eurasian Continent. Conflicts that could provoke another world war are raging in many parts of the world.
　Comrades of the world! Blow up the dark clouds of warfare with the united power of workers and the toiling masses! Stir up the flames of antiwar struggle all over the world!

(1)

　In East Asia, military rivalry between US / Japanese imperialist rulers and the Xi Jinping-led Chinese government is intensifying day by day. Right after US President Barack Obama concluded his Asian tour with the signing of a new military pact with the Philippine government, the Xi Jinping government started to set up an oil rig near the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea in early May. In protest, the Vietnamese government, which also claims the Paracels, sent patrol boats to the waters. Chinese Coast Guard vessels repeatedly rammed them and used water cannons against them. There was even an incident where a Vietnamese fishing boat was sunken by a Chinese vessel. Meanwhile, over the East China Sea, a Chinese fighter jet came flying within 30 metres of a Japanese plane which was allegedly reconnoitring the Chinese military. The same dangerous encounter occurred more than once. Thus East Asia is in a tense situation where the slightest incident can touch off a war.
　In the western part of Eurasia, the Russian government led by Vladimir Putin, who seeks to strengthen the unity of CIS countries under the banner of a ‘Eurasian Union’, has started a new challenge. On seeing a pro-Western government appearing in Ukraine, Putin the Terrible placed the Crimean peninsula under military occupation and annexed it for the purpose of securing the home port of the Black Sea Fleet. He still keeps Russian troops assembled near Russia’s border with Ukraine, waiting for a chance to divide Ukraine and annex its eastern part to Russia. On the other hand, the newly formed Poroshenko government, backed by imperialist governments of the EU and the US, is now carrying out military operations to suppress pro-Russian militias in cities in the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine, while fanning Ukrainian nationalism against Russians.
　This is not all. In the Middle East, Iraq has plunged into a civil war. The ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), a Sunnite armed organization which is descended from al-Qaeda, has started a military offensive to topple down al-Mariki’s Shiite-led government. The al-Maliki government is supported by Iran, the US’s archrival. Against the ISIS, the Syrian al-Assad government has also launched an attack by crossing the border with Iraq. (The US government aided the ISIS in Syria.) Behind the scenes, Iran and Iraq are backed by Russia and China, while the emirs of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are giving support to the ISIS below the surface. On top of that, the greater Iran’s influence grows, the more Israel is eager to launch a military attack on Iran because Iran is intent on nuclear development with the ambition to become the ‘leader of the Middle East’. All this has plunged the Obama administration, now a lame duck, into an impasse.
　In the Middle East, tragic conflicts between religious sects, between ethnic groups, are intensifying, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, where US imperialists started war, perpetrated all possible atrocities and fled in the end. The civil war in Iraq, which is connected with hostilities between religious sects, is nearing the break-up of the state and aggravating the danger of throwing the whole Middle East into war.
　The world where we live has now entered a new phase. US imperialism is suffering a decline and yet is anxious to keep its hegemony over the world. By taking advantage of America’s downfall, China and Russia are rapidly strengthening their offensive against it. The rivalry between the two sides is intensifying more fiercely than ever, connected with their competition for resources.
　US imperialism, which boastfully enjoyed the status of the ‘sole superpower’ after the collapse of the USSR and arbitrarily repeated arrogant and barbaric acts in the name of ‘freedom’, is now in a predicament, suffering from successive defeats in the wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as from the Great Recession since 2007. Its political prestige has completely declined while its dollar-based economic dominance, along with its domestic economy, is also shaken and depressed. Yet, by resorting solely to its overwhelming nuclear military capability, the Obama administration is desperate to contain rising China, according to the strategy of ‘Rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific Region’. However, the Obama administration, which is obliged to cut military expenditure due to a massive budget deficit, is no longer able to contain China by itself. It is hence desperate to mobilize the military forces of pro-American states in the Asia-Pacific region. With the US-Japan new military alliance as a pivot, it is intent on forming a multilateral military alliance (by incorporating South Korea, Australia, the Philippines and so forth) as an Asia-Pacific version of NATO. At the same time, it is going ahead with the reorganization and strengthening of US military bases in the region.
　On the other hand, seizing the favourable opportunity, Chinese and Russian rulers have launched a new challenge to US imperialism. Xi and Putin declared a ‘new stage of the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination’ and disclosed their intention to vie with the US by saying, ‘It is for the people of Asia to uphold the security of Asia’ (Xi’s speech at the 4th summit meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia on May 21st).
　Inspiring Sinocentric nationalism, the Xi government is ambitious to build China into a ‘superpower in the 21st century’ and a ‘sea power’, and for that purpose, has started actions to seize command of the East and the South China Seas, and further of the western Pacific, from US imperialism. The Chinese government is also aiming to monopolize seabed resources of this area. It claims that now is the time for the Chinese to retrieve all that has been deprived of them by Japanese and other imperialist powers since the 19th century. In the meantime, the Putin government of Russia is intent on reuniting former constituent republics of the USSR with an ambition to build a ‘Eurasian Union’ with ‘great Russia’ as its core while foiling the eastward expansion of NATO and the EU. In opposition to Obama complaining that ‘international law prohibits the acquisition of another state’s territory through coercion or force’ (at the G-7 summit on March 24th), the Russian and Chinese rulers flatly rejected it by saying that they were making justifiable efforts to maintain the ‘postwar international order’ established through the defeat of Nazism, fascism and Japanese militarism in the Second World War.

(2)

　Seeing China’s rise in Asia, the Shinzo Abe-led government of Japan has a growing sense of crisis as an imperialist power. For this reason, this government is proactively responding to demands from the Obama government for ‘a greater role of Japan in the US-Japan alliance’. Putting up the deceitful flag of ‘proactive contribution to peace’, the Abe government dared to make a Cabinet decision to revise the established interpretation of the Constitution in order to authorize the Japanese state ‘to exercise the right of collective self-defence’. This means a rejection of the Constitution that states ‘the renunciation of war’ and ‘no possession of war potential’. This is for carrying out his agreement with Obama that US and Japanese governments will formulate new ‘guidelines for US-Japan defence cooperation’, known as ‘a war manual against China’, by the end of this year. The two imperialist powers are now reinforcing their ‘security alliance’ as a full-scale offensive and defensive alliance against China.
　This is not all. Taking this opportunity, Shinzo Abe, as a ‘strong nationalist’, is intent on building up Japan’s ‘Self-Defence Forces’ into a powerful imperialist army ‘with the capability to attack enemy’s bases’. What he aims for under the slogan a ‘leading nation’ is such a militarily strong nation that can engage in war with China and use armed forces everywhere in the world. He aims at a restoration of militarist Japan and therefore glorifies the aggressive war by the Tennoist state of Japan in the past. Abe’s jingoistic words and deeds are sowing the seeds of a new war in the heat of the rivalry between the US and China / Russia.
　At home, the Abe government is oppressing opposition movements and reinforcing the authoritative ruling system. Above all, this government is frantic to establish the National Security Council (that is presided by the prime minister and comprised of the foreign and defence ministers, as well as the heads of the self-defence forces and the police) and to operate it as the supreme decision-making body beyond the parliament and the cabinet meeting (after the model of the wartime one). In this way, the Japanese neo-fascist ruling system is being drastically strengthened. The Abe government is also determined to secure a financial basis for a ‘strong nation’ that he aims at. Under the slogan ‘Revive the strong economy’, the government has raised consumption tax rates and cut down social security expenses while reducing corporation taxes and taking every possible measure to support monopoly capitalists. Abe said boastfully, ‘The government will remake Japan as the world’s best country for companies to do business’. His government is now scheming to abolish the legal standard for working hours, thus depriving the workers of the rights which the working class has won historically. Abe’s scheme is to throw the workers into a status with no right as in the 19th century.
　This is not all. The Prime Minister is visiting economically emerging countries in person to sell Japanese nuclear plants. Shamelessly he is spreading complete lies such as that ‘Japanese nuclear plants are the safest because we went through the Fukushima nuclear accident’, or that ‘the Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant is under control’. In fact, Fukushima reactors are continuing to emit terribly high-level radiation and to discharge massive contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. Furthermore, the Abe government is pressing evacuees to return to their hometowns, where amounts of radiation are still large, for giving the impression that the accident was not disastrous. The government is victimizing them to sell the ‘safety’ of Japanese nuclear plants. Abe is not only selling nuclear plants. He abolished the ‘three principles controlling arms export’ and started to undisguisedly encourage the exportation of Japanese-made military weapons, for the interests of ‘merchants of death’!
　Comrades of the world!
　We are fighting in Japan with all our strength to smash the offensives that the Abe government has launched, such as the constitutionalization of the ‘exercise of the right of collective self-defence’, the full-scale strengthening of the US-Japan security alliance as an bilateral offensive and defensive alliance against China, and the reinforcement of the Japanese neo-fascist ruling system. We are also fighting resolutely against Abenomics, which gives preferential treatment to the monopoly capitalists and imposes all sacrifices onto the workers. In the middle of the struggles, we are calling on the toiling masses to form a ‘united front against fascism’. Encouraged by our tenacious struggles, the voices of protest are echoing everywhere in Japan: ‘Stop constitutional revision!’ ‘Down with the Abe government!’ In Okinawa, where the US and Japanese rulers are launching a new US Marine base construction, workers, students and local residents are rising up in struggle, voicing in unity, ‘Don’t let them drive even a single pile at Henoko!’
　The Japanese government carries out propaganda about the ‘threat of China’. Its aim is to suppress opposition movements rising like a flood tide. The government is trying to divert complains and angers of the masses to the outside. We are striving to reveal the true nature of such a nationalist campaign and to promote antiwar struggles in solidarity with the toiling masses of China, Korea and all over Asia.
　But, at this critical moment, the leadership of Rengo, the largest national centre of trade unions in Japan, has willingly participated in the ‘tripartite consultation among the government, management and labour’ that is initiated by Prime Minister Abe. While accepting every offensive of the government, including the strengthening of the US-Japan military alliance and constitutional revision, the Rengo leadership is only desperate to fill the role of putting a brake on workers’ struggles.
　On the other hand, the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) styles itself the leadership of the peace movement in Japan. But this party cannot resist Abe’s ‘threat of China’ campaign. What the JCP leadership is doing is to beg the government to use the Japan-US Security Treaty only for a defensive purpose as ‘stipulated in its text’. They are making only a little complaint within the same framework as the government, i.e. ‘how to defend Japan’. This reminds us of the degenerate Second International adopting a position of defending the homeland.
　We decisively protest against the building of the US-Japan alliance up into a bilateral offensive and defensive alliance against China in name and substance. Neo-fascist Shinzo Abe, who glorifies the ‘Greater East Asia War’, is now leading the Japanese imperialist state again into a war that imposes sufferings on Asian peoples. We absolutely foil it! At the same time, we oppose provocative military actions in East Asia by Chinese and Russian rulers. We call on the toiling masses in China, East Asia and Russia! Let us fight together in firm solidarity against the competitive build-up of nuclear military power between the US/Japan and China/Russia!

(3)

　The world of today, a world that experienced the collapse of the USSR, is now witnessing a head-on clash between the two powers: the US, a declining imperialist state, and China, which maintains the signboard of a ‘socialist state’ in name only. Imperialist America, which was enraptured in early 1990s at the collapse of the USSR, saying boastfully that it proved the supremacy of ‘freedom, democracy and the market economy’, arrogantly proclaimed itself as the ‘sole superpower’ and painted a rosy picture of a US-centred ‘new world order’. But now US imperialism is heading for a downfall. Meanwhile, the Stalinist bureaucrats of China, who saw the collapse of the USSR as if it were their own, schemed to maintain its bureaucratic ruling system by transforming the economic foundation into capitalism. They Stalinists place the toiling masses under poverty and autocratic rule. Rising China led by those bureaucrats is now taking every possible measure to become a ‘superpower of the 21st century’.
　Showing the unrestrained egoism of their own states, rulers of US imperialism and China are confronting with each other. Amidst the confrontation between the US and China (plus Russia), religious nationalism and national egoism are being inflamed. A spark of conflict that could lead to an ethnic or religious war is now smouldering, or burning, everywhere in the world. Workers and people are in the depth of suffering.
　Irrespective of advanced countries or developing countries, the rich are piling up greater riches, growing fat on money games. The misery of workers and the toiling masses who groan in poverty seems to have no end. The governments of the US, Japan and Europe carry out policies of monetary easing, such as a quantitative monetary relaxation policy (the US), a quantitative and qualitative monetary relaxation policy (Japan) and the ECB introduction of a negative interest rate (EU). With the aim of emerging from deflation and depression or of avoiding an impending deflation, rulers of the imperialist states have adopted these policies. For workers, however, it only means that more sufferings are being imposed on them. Authorities of advanced countries are issuing an immense amount of money, and financial institutions are using it for money games. Buffeted by their greedy games, so many people are in dire poverty because of the ‘globalization of the economy’. No jobs to live on and no houses to live in. And people who also have no food to eat are increasing day by day.
　The moribund capitalism is rotten to the core. In the midst of a crisis of capitalism, the government and the ruling class of every country are throwing workers and the toiling masses into severe poverty. Undisguised class divisions that evoke the 19th century capitalism are prevailing. By yelling the interests of the nation, the governments are driving workers and the toiling masses into wars under the slogan a ‘fight for the nation’.
　This misery of the world we must annihilate completely. When the state power tries to extend ‘national interests’ to the outside beyond its borders with armed forces, it always insists on the ‘historical legitimacy’, or emphasizes the ‘blood and soil’ of each country, in order to justify wars of aggression, while forcefully oppressing oppositions of its own people. In the form of ‘national interests’, the ruling class gives a semblance of universality to its particular interests. By presenting such false universality to both the inside and the outside of the country, it mobilizes the ruled class in wars against other nations. Now let us expose the deceitful nature of ‘national interests’ and ultra-nationalism propagated by rulers. We must eradicate war and poverty, abolish oppression and slavery, and therefore stand together, beyond borders, to fight against it right now! Workers and people of the world! Let us build up international solidarity against ?war and poverty?!
　‘Workers have no country,’ said Marx. The proletariat of each country is itself national, but rises above national differences based on the universality of the proletariat. It was Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, who threw away Marxism by labelling it as a relic of the 19th century. Shouting for the need to break through ‘stagnation’ of the USSR, he however had no intention whatsoever of examining the root cause of the ‘stagnation’, Stalinism. Instead, he knelt before the western values of ‘freedom, democracy and the market economy’ in the name of ‘de-ideologization’. Here we see how the USSR was disintegrated. And here lies the origin of the misery reigning over the world of today.
　The ‘socialist’ USSR became another name for ‘tyranny and stagnation’. However, what has distorted the Soviet Union is not Marxism but Stalinism, which destroyed Marxism created by Marx.
Comrades all over the world!
　Call to mind the words of Lenin in the midst of the First World War! He denounced the leaderships of labour movements for having degenerated into the standpoint of defending homelands. He called out, to the workers of the world, that it was time to overthrow the governments continuing the bloody war.
　Be alert to the rise of fascist parties and neo-Nazi groups! Taking advantage of workers’ sufferings and grief, those fascists are pretending to side with the toiling masses under the slogan ‘against ultra-capitalism’ or a ‘national unity’. In Europe, especially in its southern parts, people are groaning in poverty under the government-led severe austerities. The youth are suffering from massive job losses or starvation wages. Fascists are exclusively agitating for ultra-nationalism, splitting the working class and fanning hatred among workers. No to the rise of fascism! Don’t let fascists lead the world to another war!
　We appeal to workers and the toiling masses, who are in the midst of fights against the governments imposing war and poverty! Only the internationally united fight of the working class, overcoming the degenerate leaderships of labour movements, can eradicate wars raging amidst of confrontation between the US / Japan and China / Russia, root out environmental destruction and poverty, and hence open a way for building a new world. Now is the time to raise our voices all over the world: ‘Workers of all countries, unite!’　 (July 1st, 2014)

- Revolutionary Marxists in Britain

- Union Pacifist de France 

- Российская коммунистическая рабочая партия (РКРП-КПСС)

- Владимир Пронин

- Workers World Party /Partido Mundo Obrero

- Lewisham People Before Profit

- David McReynolds

- Faridabad Majdoor Samachar

- Свердловский обком РКРП-КПСС

- The EEK (Workers Revolutionary Party of Greece)

- DIE LINKE

-통합진보당

- Tendance CLAIRE du NPA

- A World to Win

- Fracción Leninista Trotskista Internacional

- News and Letters Committees

¨Revolutionary Marxists in Britain

21st July 2014, London, Britain

We, Revolutionary Marxists in Britain, send our warm and comradely greetings to the 52nd International Anti-War Assembly.

We declare our support for the Assembly’s stand against the war preparations of Shinzo Abe’s government in Japan. We recognise with you the need to oppose the growing military rivalry where US imperialism, allied to Japan and to Britain, confronts Russia and China.

There have been mass popular demonstrations throughout the world against the latest attack by Israel on the people of Gaza, but US President Obama has given his full support to the Israeli military action.

The shooting down by pro-Russian forces in Ukraine of Malaysian jet MH17 involved the tragic loss of 298 lives. Such an incident is the inevitable result of Putin’s strategy of military aggression and Russian expansionism in Ukraine. We must not let this tragedy become a pretext for western imperialist intervention in Ukraine. Extreme nationalism in both Ukraine and Russia must be answered by the politics of working class solidarity.

We support the Assembly’s call to annihilate the “misery of the world”, and its opposition to the attempts by government to drive workers in to the politics “national interest”, which has come with a rise in support for far-right and fascist organizations.  Your appeal rightly highlights the worldwide increase in poverty, unemployment and homelessness.    

In Britain, over a million workers in local government, and the civil service and fire brigade held a national strike on 10 July. Most schools were closed, and many services reduced.

Under the ConDem government, the pay of local government workers was frozen for three years, with a 1% pay rise this year to be followed by a 1% rise next year. That means a decrease in real terms of 20%. The pay of some workers, e.g. school meals staff, is so low that it will reach the legal minimum wage level next year.

The union bureaucrats, still tied to the Labour Party, will try to limit the struggle to one-day actions. The Fire Brigades Union is engaged on a series of strikes against changes to the retirement age and pension terms. It is important that they do not fight alone.

Labour leader Ed Miliband publicly opposed the 10 July strike. He has said that a Labour Government would still practise “wage restraint” and would not significantly increase welfare spending.  Meanwhile, Miliband has joined forces with Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and his Liberal Democrat Deputy Nick Clegg to ensure the rapid passing through Parliament of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill, which will guarantee access by the state surveillance departments of all emails, telephone messages, and social media activity.

In the private sector, employment conditions have worsened through zero-hour contracts, and low pay, while many unemployed have become “self-employed”, with the loss of rights and security that that entails. Although official figures show a decline in unemployment, real wages have fallen. Meanwhile, the richest 1% get richer.   

On July 10, demonstrations of striking workers took place in all major British cities. One encouraging feature of the rally which followed the march in London, where the speeches were dominated by bureaucrats, was the presence of strikers from the fashionable Ritzy Cinema, who are fighting for the “living wage”. The striking Ritzy workers received cheers and applause from trade unionists at the rally. While the ConDem government tries to create popular hostility towards public sector workers, the support for the Ritzy strikers helps to build solidarity between private and public sector workers.

Another dangerous aspect of capitalist globalisation are the proposed “trade partnerships, such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP), which gives legal powers to trans-national capitalist companies to sue governments for loss of profits arising from any legislation seeking to defend workers’ rights, the environment, health or food quality. These so-called “partnerships”, negotiated largely in secret, will enforce privatisation and worsen living conditions in rich and poor countries. The struggle against TTIP in Britain has made some gains, with notably the largest trade union, Unite, switching from support for TTIP to opposition.       

We fully support your “appeal to workers and toiling masses”. We fully agree that: “Only the internationally united fight of the working class” can eradicate wars and end environmental destruction and poverty. We raise our voice with yours: “Workers of all countries, unite”   

¨Union Pacifist de France 

July 20th 2014, Paris, France

Dear Comrades,

Thank you for your invitation. We always give you our solidarity.

The Union Pacifiste de France, French section of War Resisters international, wish you a very good meeting.

We also fight against the competition for strengthening nuclear capabilities between the US and China/Russia. We must build up international solidarity against war and poverty. 

With solidarity,

Comradely,

Maurice Montet

Secretary Union Pacifist de France 

¨Российская коммунистическая рабочая партия (РКРП-КПСС)

11 июля 2014, Санкт-Петербург, Россия

Уважаемые товарищи, соратники по борьбе!

Российская коммунистическая рабочая партия (РКРП-КПСС) горячо приветствует участников 52-й антивоенной ассамблеи в Японии и желает вам плодотворной работы на благо мира на планете.

Сегодня мы снова вспоминаем про страшную трагедию японского народа – преступную и бесчеловечную атомную бомбардировку Хиросимы и Нагасаки империалистами США.

В наши дни США и их пособники по НАТО продолжают выражать лицемерную озабоченность опасностью распространения ядерного оружия и используют это как предлог для проведения скрытой агрессии в виде разного рода санкций, а то и открытой агрессии против разных стран, не желающих подчиняться диктату Вашингтона. Тем не менее, все хорошо помнят, что реальная опасность применения ядерного оружия исходит именно от самих США, так они уже делали это в прошлом, и, являясь главным источником международной напряженности и агрессии, опьяненные ложным чувством собственного военного превосходства и безнаказанности, могут сделать это снова.

После гибели СССР – подлинного оплота мира на планете, постоянное нарушение всех норм международного права и национальных суверенитетов со стороны США и их союзников стали обыденным явлением. По мере обострения всеобщего кризиса капитализма, Запад все чаще прибегает к прямому военному насилию с целью обеспечить интересы ТНК, прежде всего финансовых. Под прикрытием демагогии на тему прав человека и демократии западный империализм при помощи непосредственного военного вмешательства или прямой поддержки реакционных антиправительственных выступлений устраняет неугодные правительства и приводит к власти откровенно фашистские режимы (как на Украине - практика, известная как фашизм на экспорт), режимы крайне реакционных фундаменталистов, или просто ввергают страну в состояние хаоса, как это было в Ливии.

Российская коммунистическая рабочая партия высоко ценит ваш вклад в дело борьбы за мир и выражает свою полную солидарность. Фашизм не пройдет!

Мы надеемся, что наши товарищеские отношения будут крепнуть и развиваться, и что мы по-прежнему будем находиться с вами в едином классовом строю в борьбе за дело мира, коммунизма, за дело освобождения рабочего класса, и против капитализма и империализма, являющихся постоянным источником войн.

С коммунистическим приветом,

Первый секретарь ЦК РКРП-КПСС                                 В. Тюлькин 

¨Владимир Пронин

Член Президиума Антифашистского комитета Украины

6 июля 2014, Киев, Украина

Уважаемые товарищи участники конференции! Время, прошедшее со времени предыдущей конференции, было наполнено борьбой прогрессивных сил человечества с агрессивными устремлениями мирового, прежде всего, американского, империализма, не прекращающего свои поползновения убрать со своего пути всё, что мешает его стремлению к мировому господству.

В этом промежутке времени американский империализм потерпел поражение в Сирии - благодаря мужеству сирийского народа и поддержке, оказанной Сирии Россией и Китаем. На этом неприятности империалистов на Ближнем Востоке не закончились. Как уже бывало и прежде, реакционные исламистские силы, вскормленные, организованные и вооружённые империалистическими государствами и реакционными режимами стран Персидского залива, вышли из-под контроля и, выброшенные из Сирии, обрушились на иракский режим. И естественно, что они сразу же в империалистической прессе перестали быть героями-борцами за демократию, но превратились в мгновение ока в бандитов и убийц!

В этот же период империализм потерпел особо обидное поражение в России, где «бело-болотная революция», спровоцированная с Запада с помощью его «пятой колонны», также долгие годы взращивавшейся на деньги Запада, из-за недовольства последними изменениями в политике путинского режима, переставшего после предательства Ливии послушно исполнять волю мирового жандарма – США. К сожалению, в этих событиях приняли участие некоторые левые силы, включая ряд коммунистических организаций, которые не сумели разобраться в сложной политической обстановке.

Но эти неудачи не охладили пыл американских властей и их западноевропейских подголосков. В следующем году они готовят массовые выступления против Президента Белоруссии Лукашенко, который после краха СССР был единственным политиком на постсоветском пространстве, который был им как кость в горле, не позволяя ни западным, ни российским олигархам грабить Белоруссию.

Но главный удар был нанесён на Украине, события в которой с конца ноября прошлого года и до настоящего времени находятся в центре внимания мировой общественности. В середине ноября 2013 года в центре столицы Украины вспыхнули массовые беспорядки. В ответ на отказ президента Украины Януковича подписать экономическую часть соглашения с Европейским Союзом, грозившее экономической катастрофой для украинской экономики, на киевский Майдан Независимости вышли молодые фашисты из национал-радикальных группировок, в том числе, из организаций фанатов при футбольных клубах, принадлежащих олигархам. Все последние десятилетия они проходили подготовку в военных лагерях на территории Западной Украины и в бывших советских республиках Прибалтики на деньги западных спецслужб и местных олигархов. К ним примкнули часть обманутой демагогическими лозунгами проевропейски настроенной молодёжи, а также мелкая буржуазия города и села (лавочники, владельцы частного автотранспорта, мелкие фермеры) и привезенные с запада Украины, где особо сильно влияние неонацистов, местные маргиналы. Итогом событий на Евромайдане было поражение олигархов Донецкого региона и приход к власти национал-фашистских сил вкупе с рядом национал-демократических партий, некоторые из которых в социально-националистической демагогии и политической практике не уступают самым крайним неонацистам. Это не могло не отразиться сразу же самым отрицательным образом на ситуации на Украине, так как торжествовавшие националисты и их союзники по Майдану сразу же приняли ряд провокационных законов, что тотчас же вызвало взрыв возмущения Юго-Восточной Украины, где население в подавляющем большинстве - русскоязычное. Крым, где основное население русские, после проведения референдума, результаты которого были легко предсказуемы, уже потерян, а в индустриальном сердце Украины - Донбассе, где всегда были сильны интернационалистские настроения, вспыхнуло народное восстание, которое нынешняя украинская власть, являющаяся по сути своей марионеткой Запада, действующей по его прямой указке, жестоко подавляет самыми безжалостными методами с применением авиации, артиллерии и бронетехники. Чем завершатся события на Украине, предсказать не возьмётся в данный момент никто, потому что в этот конфликт, спровоцированный Западом, прежде всего, США, втянулись другие европейские страны и Россия. К великому сожалению, на Украине сейчас не видно серьёзной и авторитетной партии или движения, способного возглавить народное сопротивление «пятой колонне» Запада, ныне правящей на Украине.

В послевоенный период американские империалисты, потерпев унизительное поражение там, где их вооружённые силы непосредственно участвовали в агрессии, как это было в Корее, Вьетнаме, Афганистане, Ираке и вынужденные в конце концов с позором убираться домой, некоторое время предпочитают загребать жар чужими руками. В связи с этим понятна борьба антиимпериалистических сил Японии, прежде всего, коммунистов, против откровенно выраженного намерения правящих кругов Японии развязать руки японской военщине и позволить ей вести вооружённые действия за пределами страны. В этом им обеспечена моральная поддержка из Вашингтона, надеющегося со временем использовать японские вооружённые силы в своих интересах. И если это драматическое решение будет принято, то не далеко то время, когда японская молодёжь будут гибнуть за интересы американской и японской буржуазии в других странах.

И ещё об одном хотелось бы сказать японским товарищам. Прошло время и трагедия Фукусимы, которая потрясла Японию и вызвала сочувственный отклик во всём мире и, прежде всего, на Украине, пережившей скоро уже тридцать лет тому назад Чернобыльскую катастрофу, постепенно отходит на второй план, отодвигаемая на второй план другими, более свежими событиями. С самого начала было понятно, что корыстные интересы японской буржуазии не позволят ликвидировать ядерную угрозу Японии из-за работы ядерных электростанций. Но японский народ, думается, не должен терять бдительность, потому что жадность буржуазии не имеет предела и она ждёт, когда схлынет волна народного гнева, чтобы снова в конкурентной борьбе за прибыли принимать самые рискованные решения, невзирая на угрозу жизни и здоровью своих соотечественников. Думается, в требовании организации действенного народного контроля за безопасностью на атомных электростанциях, если об этом заявят коммунисты, они найдут поддержку у всего народа Японии и завоюют авторитет, так необходимый коммунистам в их борьбе за социализм.

В завершение рад передать привет японским коммунистам и пожелания успешной работы очередной 52-й международной антивоенной конференции!

¨Workers World Party /Partido Mundo Obrero

July 29th 2014, New York, USA

Dear Comrades

From Workers World Party in the USA, we salute your 52^nd International Antiwar Assembly and send you our solidarity.

We in the USA understand how difficult it is to fight the militarism of “one’s own” ruling class. We must confront and defeat all chauvinism and patriotism of the imperialist rulers.

This year U.S. imperialism has stepped up its military intervention all over the world. It is supporting Israel’s murderous crusade against the Palestinians of Gaza. It is feeding weapons to the war in Syria against the government. Its occupation has wrecked Iraq and left it in crisis. U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan. And on a new front, the U.S.-NATO forces are supporting the most reactionary pro-Nazi forces in Ukraine.

As you point out, most of the aggression is directed against Russia and China.

In the Pacific, Rimpac 2014 is now taking place. This is the word’s largest maritime exercise, directed against China and Russia. Under U.S. command, 25,000 soldiers from 22 countries with 55 ships and 200 warplanes are participating. NATO is present through the naval forces of the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, the Netherlands and Norway, plus Italy, Germany and Denmark as observers. The “North Atlantic Treaty Organization” has been extended to the Pacific.

We know that the Abe government in Japan is equally attempting to remilitarize. The Japanese rulers want to participate as another imperialist power in the division of the spoils of the world. We are happy to see your work combating this militarism as well as Abe’s reactionary domestic policies directed at the working class in Japan.

John Catalinotto and Berta Joubert-Ceci,

International Department, Workers World Party, USA

¨Lewisham People Before Profit

29th July 2014, London, Britain

Lewisham People Before Profit is unable to send a delegate to the 52nd Assembly but we wish to convey our solidarity and fellowship with you and our commitment to your aims. Ordinary people everywhere desire peace, yet those with power divide us - telling us that war is for our protection, that people from other countries, or with different traditions, are dangerous and should be feared; this must be countered with international co-operation and with opportunities for genuine discussion, which is why we are so glad to offer you our support and warmest wishes for a successful gathering.

Lewisham People Before Profit began life as a campaigning organisation about 6 years ago, but in 2010 it became a political party and contested local elections, becoming the principal opposition to the “New Labour” group in power. We are still campaigning, on matters such as affordable housing, education and all the other services which have been severely cut by both local and national government. Many of our members are taking part today in the widespread protests at the continuing violence in Gaza.

We are organising an event here on 28th September to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the founding of The International Working Men’s Association. We are expecting delegations from overseas to attend, and we would be delighted to welcome members of your organisation to join us in London for the occasion.

John Walker and David Hamilton,

On behalf of Lewisham People Before Profit

¨David McReynolds
former chair, War Resisters International

29th July 2014, New York, USA

At this most difficult and dangerous time, when old empires are in collapse, as is true of the United States, and border conflicts threaten peace, as with Ukraine, Syria, and the terrible Israeli attacks in Gaza, and in the efforts in Japan to amend your constitution, it is important for non-governmental organizations to maintain contact and mutual support.

May I extend my solidarity with all those of you in Japan who work for a world free of nuclear and conventional weapons - a goal so distant yet so urgent.

You meet almost on the day of the first nuclear weapon being used, and at a time of tensions between Japan and China. How urgent to reach out to the people in China to establish bonds of friendship.

Peace,

¨Faridabad Majdoor Samachar

26th July 2014, Faridabad, India

Dear Comrades,

Thank you very much for your snail-mail and e-mail.

Comrades, the exponential leap in productive forces that the introduction of electronics in the production process has brought about has greatly enhanced the possibility of radical social transformations. In places like India, social death and social murder of peasants and artisans is happening at a very rapid pace. In the last 15-20 years wage workers have become the most numerous and vibrant social strata. We have been distributing our Hindi language publication Faridabad Majdoor Samachar amongst factory workers since 1982. Now 12000 copies are distributed each month around Delhi in Industrial Model Town - Manesar, Udyog Vihar industrial area - Gurgaon, Okhla Industrial Area - Delhi, and Faridabad. There have been very significant changes in the composition of factory workers. Extremely radical steps are being taken by workers in their thousands. [ The Attachment with this message will provide you a glimpse of these.] The state in India is finding it increasingly difficult to generate consent and obtain credibility. This seems to be the situation in most parts of the world. We are very far from 1914 and 1939..............Global radical social transformations are on the human agenda.

Comrades, our best wishes for the 52nd International Anti-War Assembly.

Love

Sher Singh

¨Свердловский обком РКРП-КПСС

30 июля 2014, Свердловск, Россия

Уважаемые товарищи!

От лица наших  товарищей членов Свердловского регионального отделения «Российской Коммунистической Рабочей Партии в составе КПСС» - мы выражаем солидарность и поддержку всем участникам 52–ой интернациональной антивоенной ассамблеи!

Сегодня,- когда мир сотрясает один за другим военные конфликты, развязанные воротилами капитала, для обогащения одних и уничтожения и порабощения других, мы не можем равнодушно взирать на планы агрессии и убийство мирного населения.

 Все, что в наших силах, и что  возможно сделать против войн и насилия мы будем  осуществлять, чтобы не только остановить, но и уничтожить зарождающийся в очередной раз «фашизм на экспорт».

Первый секретарь Свердловского обкома РКРП-КПСС

Россейкина Наталья Анатольевна.

◆ The EEK (Workers Revolutionary Party of Greece) 

1st August 2014, Athens, Greece

Dear Comrades,

The entire Greek working class, including our Party, the Workers Revolutionary Party (EEK) of Greece never forgets or will forget the Japanese victims of the nuclear holocaust in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this horrendous "monument"   to the barbarism of imperialism, war and  decaying  global capitalism.

We salute your 52nd International Assembly as the living expression of the fighting, unyielding  resistance of you and  of  the Japanese working class and people to  imperialist-capitalist  barbarism, which now again threatens  humanity with catastrophe.

The global capitalist crisis that erupted in 2007/08 not only did not ended but it is in rapid transition into  further  exacerbation.  Neither the mass injection of liquidity to save the banks and finance capital in the US, Britain, the EU nor "Abenomics" in Japan offered any way out  from the impasse of a historically exhausted social system in its advanced decline.

Seven years of crisis devastated the lives of millions of people in Greece, in Europe and all over the planet. And now, the ruling classes  turn  to the most brutal methods to  save the rule and the privileges of the "one per cent" on the top.

The far right is on the rise,as the results of the last European Elections of May 2014  have shown,and the Nazi stormtroopers are launched in  Greece, in Hungary, in Ukraine. In this last country the Nazis , under the guidance of the US and EU imperialism got control of the key positions in the oligarchic  state and wage  brutal repression and war against their own people in Eastern and Southern  Ukraine.

After decades, we have not just a renewal of the Cold War but of a  real ,hot, destructive war at the center of Europe, threatening to expand internationally.

Already wars and civil wars are waged not only in Ukraine but also  in the Middle East, from the new genocidal  war aggression of Zionist Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza to Iraq, Syria, and Libya.

We can and should stop this slaughters  by organizing the forces of proletarian internationalism and peoples resistances all over the world in a common revolutionary struggle against the butchers of imperialism, to transform the imperialist wars into a world socialist revolution.

Internationalism is not an abstract principle but a very practical one embedded in the material historical reality of our epoch. A small example: last year our Party faced a  lawsuit by the Nazi  Party "Golden Dawn" with the complicity of the right wing government launched  against us and against the General Secretary of the EEK Savas Michael-Matsas with the ludicrous accusations for "fomenting  violence and civil war to impose a Judeo-Bolshevik regime in Greece". Thanks to  a tremendous  international campaign of solidarity, including your solidarity, we won this battle. It was the first legal defeat of the Nazi 'Golden Dawn" in Greece. We thank all of you!

Now , the EEK and other revolutionary organizations and  social movements in the Balkans, Ukraine, Russia, and the Middle East, we  are preparing for 2015, the year of the centenary of the Zimmerwald Conference of 1915 against the First World War, a new international Conference in the Zimmerwald's spirit  to fight against the rising imperialist war, militarism, chauvinism, racism,and fascism. We extend our invitation to you too to discuss it and participate in this international mobilization.

with warmest internationalist communist greetings

on behalf  of the EEK

Savas Michael-Matsas, General Secretary of the Central Committee

◆ DIE LINKE

 1st August 2014 Berlin, German

Dear comrades,

Dear friends,

We send you warm greetings of solidarity to your 52nd International Antiwar Assembly.

Antiwar action is very necessary and is becoming more urgent from day to day all over the world. Since the conflict in Ukraine became violent, war is taking place again also in Europe. Europe in the interest of capital and free markets had tried to pull Ukraine to the west in disregard of what the Ukrainian citizens wanted. When after the protests on the Maidan a new government was build, European politicians even shook hands with fascist members of that government. The Russian occupation of the Crimean Peninsula and the Russian troops at the Ukrainian border make us fear for the worst. Neither the European nor the Russian hegemonism will be in favour of the people living there.

And if we look to the Near and Middle East and to Africa, there is much more for the people there to fear. Iraq, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Mali, Nigeria… Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip fill the media reports at the moment. A little bit of the events in Iraq is still in public awareness. But the casualties of the Syrian Civil War are not counted anymore in Western media. The tensions in the Syrian war are rising, but no one is watching. Instead, Germany is just debating if we are able to let in 5.000 or 10.000 Syrian refugees (of about 3 million Syrian refugees, who already left Syria and 4 million more still located in Syria). Meanwhile refugees from Syria and many other countries drown in the Mediterranean Sea at the border of the fortress Europe.

Western governments act, as if they are numb against all warning, as if they never experienced any historical education and if conflicts, war and suffering civilians in other parts of the world would not be of their concern.

At the same time we experience all the social developments you also described very well. The poor are getting poorer, the rich become richer. The EU imposed a strict austerity policy on the governments in the south of Europe, which leads just to more unemployment and poverty. And in many countries neo-fascist groups gain support in this crisis.

That’s why DIE LINKE in Germany has to stand up together with the peace movements in Europe and all over the world.

We call for an immediate arms embargo against the Near and Middle East and the Ukraine. We say no to arms exports in general.

We need political solutions – in Israel-Palestine, in the Ukraine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Syria, and for the situation in the East and the South China Seas.

We demand the withdrawal of the German Bundeswehr from all their foreign assignments.

We say no to drone wars.

We demand immediate help for the refugees.

We fight as DIE LINKE and as a member of the European Left for a social, democratic and peaceful Europe.

So we support your struggle in Japan and wish you a successful assembly!

In solidarity,

DIE LINKE Party Central Office

Andreas Günther

◆ 통합진보당

2014년 7월 31일　한국, 서울　

동북아시아와 세계의 평화를 위하여 매년 국제반전집회를 개최하고 있는 귀 위원회에 평화의 인사를 드립니다.

히로시마·나가사키 원폭 투하는 인류가 만든 가장 위험한 무기를 사람에게 직접 사용한 야만적인 행동이었습니다. 인류가 경험한 가장 위험한 핵무기가 지구상에서 없어지기를 바랍니다.

통합진보당은 한반도를 비롯한 전 세계 비핵화를 지지하고 있으며, 하루빨리 현실이 되기를 바라고 있습니다.

일본 아베정부는 일본 자위대 창설 60년이 되는 7월 1일 집단적자위권행사를 결정을 했습니다. ‘전쟁 할 수 있는 나라 일본’을 선포한 것입니다. 아베 정부는 한일군사정보공유약정(MOU) 체결을 위해 한국정부와 공동의 보조를 맞춰 가고 있습니다. 한국과 일본의 군사협력은 미국이 추진하고 있는 미사일방어체제(MD)를 구축하여 한미일 군사동맹을 완성하는 것입니다.

우리는 일본의 집단적자위권과 군사대국화를 반대합니다.

일본과 군사협력도 반대합니다.

일본의 집단적자위권은 아시아 평화를 위협하고 동북아시아의 군사적 갈등을 높이는 결과를 가져 올 것입니다.

평화를 지지하는 한국과 일본의 정당과 단체들이 힘을 모아 아시아의 평화와 세계 평화를 위해 함께 노력해 나가기를 기원 합니다.

국제반전집회실행위원회가 그 동안 노력해온 아시아의 평화를 위한 활동에 적극 지지를 보냅니다.

통합진보당은 아시아 평화와 한반도 평화를 위해 함께 노력하겠습니다.

감사합니다.

¨Tendance CLAIRE du NPA

31 juillet 2014, Paris, France

Chers, chères camarades,

Nous vous remercions de nous avoir adressé cette année, comme les années précédentes, votre “Appel pour le 52ème Meeting International Anti-Guerre au Japon”.

Votre éclairage sur les tensions dans la région Asie-Pacifique entre les blocs États-Unis – Japon d'une part et Chine – Russie de l'autre est précieuse pour nous qui sommes une organisation principalement implantée en France. Votre analyse de ces tensions nous semble juste dans la mesure où vous renvoyez dos-à-dos les deux blocs, contrairement à bon nombre d'organisations trotskystes qui appliquent encore dogmatiquement la théorie de l'“État ouvrier dégénéré” à la Russie ou à la Chine.

À travers votre appel, nous avons pu également mieux comprendre la gravité des attaques du gouvernement d'Abe sur tous les fronts : révision de la Constitution dans un sens belliqueux, efforts pour exporter la technologie dangereuse du nucléaire, attaque contre les acquis des travailleurs,etc. Nous soutenons votre lutte courageuse et déterminée contre le gouvernement Abe ainsi que contre les directions traitresses des centrales syndicales et du JCP.

Pour avancer dans la discussion fraternelle entre organisations révolutionnaires, nous souhaitons revenir sur quelques points de votre appel.

(1) Alors qu'il s'agit d'un appel contre la guerre, il nous semble que votre analyse des principales guerres en cours – en particulier en Ukraine et en Syrie (la guerre sanglante qu'Israël est entrain de mener à Gaza ayant commencé après l'envoi de votre appel) – est un peu trop rapide. Concernant l'Ukraine, vous analysez la guerre en cours uniquement comme résultant d'un jeu géopolitique entre les États-Unis et l'Union Européenne d'une part et la Russie de l'autre, et n'évoquez pas un des facteurs majeurs, à savoir la révolte, légitime, des populations de l'Est de l'Ukraine contre le nouveau gouvernement central soumis aux impérialistes et à l'influence des fascistes.

(2) Votre analyse de la situation internationale nous semble trop alarmiste, par exemple lorsque vous écrivez que “l'Asie de l'Est est dans une situation tendue où le moindre incident peut provoquer une guerre”. Nous ne sommes pas convaincus qu'une guerre est à l'ordre du jour dans cette région, en particulier parce que la Chine, même si elle est agressive en parole, est encore entrain de se développer économiquement et n'a pas encore intérêt à prendre l'option militaire. De même, vous qualifiez Shinzo Abe de “néo-fasciste”. Or à notre connaissance, Abe n'a pas encore exhibé les marqueurs qui caractérise le fascisme, à savoir : lois répressives contre les organisations de la classe ouvrière, organisation para-militaires visant à écraser le mouvement ouvrier, etc. Il nous semble important de caractériser précisément la situation afin d'élaborer l'orientation la plus juste.

Nous aimerions apporter à présent quelques éléments sur la France. La situation en France est toujours dominée par la crise économique. La croissance a été nulle au 1er trimester 2014, le taux de chômage continue à augmenter, dépassant désormais 10% de la population active. Le gouvernement est totalement discrédité : le président Hollande compte moins de 20% de soutien dans l'opinion publique, le Parti Socialiste vient de subir une déroute aux élections européennes (moins de 14% des votes), alors que le Front National, parti d'extrême-droite, est arrivée en première position pour la première fois avec près de 25% des votes.

Pour tenter de sortir de la crise, le gouvernement français, comme le gouvernement japonais, tape très fort sur les travailleurs : il vient par exemple d'adopter le “programme de stabilité 2014-2017” qui prévoit :

• 30 milliards de baisse de cotisations et d'impôts pour les patrons;

• 50 milliards de coupes dans les dépenses publiques et sociales;

• gel des prestations sociales et des retraites, gel du point de la fonction publique jusqu'en 2017.

Malgré toutes ces attaques, la situation sociale est morose : les défaites des années précédentes (principalement dues à la trahison des directions syndicales bureaucratiques) pèsent encore sur le moral des travailleurs. La récente lutte des travailleurs de la SNCF, malgré sa puissance, son auto- organisation et la clarté de ses revendications a également été défaite.

Sur le plan extérieur, l'impéralisme français continue à mener des guerres en Afrique (opération Barkhane au Mali, opération Sangaris en Centrafique,...), sous couvert de lutte anti-terroriste ou d'intervention humanitaire, en réalité pour défendre ses intérêts sur le continent.

Dans ce contexte difficile, la Tendance CLAIRE du NPA fait tout son possible pour soutenir les travailleurs en lutte et les peuples opprimés, et pour porter la perspective de la révolution communiste internationale.

Pour finir, nous vous souhaitons un plein succès au 52ème Meeting International Anti-guerre au Japon. Comme les années précédentes, nous nous joignons à vous pour lancer : À bas les guerres impérialistes ! À bas le système capitaliste, source de guerres, de destructions de l'environnement,

de misère, d'oppressions ! Vive la solidarité prolétarienne internationale ! Vive la révolution communiste internationale !

◆ A World to Win

31st July 2014, London, , Britain

Dear Friends and Comrades in Japan and around the world,

We in A World to Win send our revolutionary greetings to the 52nd International Antiwar Assembly in Japan.

We salute your struggle to overthrow the Abe government as it seeks to change the constitution to allow the Japanese state to engage in war.

The deepening global crisis widens the fault lines of the social and political relations established after World War II. Dictatorships throughout the world were shaken by the democratic demands of the masses first in Tunisia, then Egypt and throughout the Middle East from 2011 onwards.

Authoritarian regimes – east and west – now seek to divert attention from their inability to satisfy the needs of the majority by whipping up nationalist sentiments and big power aggression.

The United Nations is totally powerless in the face of mass murder by the Zionist state of Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza.

Parliamentary parties serving corporate interests are implementing austerity programmes. This has led to widespread alienation from the political process and significant votes for openly racist and even fascist parties in Europe.

Vladimir Putin seeks to destabilise the Ukrainian movement for rights and self-determination. He hopes to crush internal opposition by whipping up great Russian chauvinism and a regime of terror against  journalists and political opponents. Again the UN has stood by while he annexed Crimea and Ukrainian civilians and airline passengers are killed by Kremlin-sponsored gangsters.

Despite its disastrous interventions in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, the United States is busy leading the attack with its Trans-Pacific, and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnerships and continues its drone wars in Pakistan and secret operations elsewhere.   

Japan joins China, Europe and Africa in the competition to attract investment by forcing wages down, reducing corporate tax levels, slashing social care and pensions, replacing the remnants of the welfare state with a market state. “Abenomics” is creating huge debts by printing money, and driving real incomes down in order to restore profitability but failing to stimulate growth.

Global agencies like the IMF and World Bank tour the world pressing national governments to serve the interests of transnational corporations which will stop at nothing in the race for declining resources to fuel the growth they need to sustain profits, wilfully blind to the ecological damage they visit upon the planet. Global warming and its effects have increasingly become sources of conflict, as vital resources are depleted.

This weekend sees the centenary commemoration of the start of the war in 1914 which sent millions of workers to fight and die in the bloody struggle between competing imperialist powers for division of the world.

Today’s movements of peoples for their rights cannot be satisfied by the old order, nor by the nationalist or religious forces, such as ISIS, nor the military dictatorships that have seized the upper hand in the absence of secular and revolutionary leaderships. We look to new generations to fill this political gap.

Ending the rule of capital will allow us to develop new democratic forms based upon common ownership, so that we can begin a new epoch of not-for-profit sustainable production for need and a new peaceful relationship between all of humanity and our shared home.

A World to Win secretariat

◆ Fracción Leninista Trotskista Internacional

July 28th 2014, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Comrades,

We salute and send a warm revolutionary and internationalist hug to the organizers of the 52^nd International Antiwar Assembly: JRCL-RMF, the militant Zengakuren and all the delegates. We, the revolutionary workers and youth of FLTI, feel as one more of you, despite the distance, always fighting together for the interests of the world proletariat.

We know that our youth and members who fight for the re-foundation of the IV International all over the world are as brave and convinced as the workers and youth who fight every day surrounding US military bases in Japan, facing Abe’s fascist counterrevolutionary government.

We salute you from the blooded Africa, which has been exploited and plundered a thousand times. That was the place where for over 5 months 80,000 miners of Lonmin and Angloamerican rised, in a revolutionary strike. With their assemblies, pickets and strike committees, they fought against the Stalinist union bureaucracy of Southern Africa, for wages, dignity and their life, defending the minerals plundered by the imperialist pirates.

Five months of one of the most heroic strikes of the world working class, which was silenced by all the treacherous and reformist leaderships.

We salute you from Latin America, where the lie and scam of Stalinism and their “Bolivarian governments” are falling down. They are the biggest appliers of imperialism’s plans in the region.

Brothers Castro have already sold out Cuba to imperialism. They sold out the Colombian resistance to Santos’ fascist government, which is nothing but a puppet of US 7 military bases that, from Colombia, monitor all the oppressed peoples of the Southern America.

You know that in the streets of Latin America we have fought together with JRCL-RMF tens of times; as well as we do it together in Japan in your brave fights against Abe’s government and US imperialist bases in your country.

As yesterday in Chile, Brazil or Peru, this year we have seen the workers of Paty proudly in the fights of the Argentinean working class heading their columns with the banner of solidarity sent by Japanese workers from the Militant Cordon of Workers of Tokyo.

They have received your solidarity and your banner, which they took to demonstrations and rallies, demanding to get again their jobs, for the expropriation without compensation and under workers’ control of TNCs that close their factories and leave workers in the streets,.

The banners of LOI-CI Democracia Obrera, together with JRCL, surrounded the court that wants to punish workers of Las Heras and that condemned them for lifetime.

From FLTI, we salute the honor of Japanese revolutionaries who never left alone the world proletariat in their fights.

JRCL and its youth and FLTI have proven that we are not only internationalist in words, but that we are real militant forces of the world working class.

Comrades,

200 billion inhabitants out of the 7.000 billion of the planet are in extreme poverty. World market has reduced. Capital keeps leaving the productive process and goes more and more to speculation, emission of titles and valueless bonds and to generate huge debts in the colonial and semi-colonial world. Capital develops war machinery more and more, creating destructive forces, i.e. it prepares the conditions for new bankruptcies, new crisis and new wars against the exploited of the world. This is the only way that the rotten system survives, which needs to submit world working class to higher slavery and super-exploitation.

In 2007/2008 this system was hit by a huge crisis. Capitalist parasites spent in advance what human labor has not produced yet. The working class all over the world, from Europe to the Pacific Ocean, from Asia to Latin America, carried out huge combats.

In 2011 we, the exploited, conquered the chance of coordinate a world generalized process; we cornered imperialism. Greece was on fire, the exploited people of Spain set up the “indignados” (“outraged”) and the working class surrounded Wall Street; landless peasants rebelled in China and the workers in the maquilas (Sweat-shops) rose up; in Maghreb and Middle East was at the vanguard with a chain of powerful revolutions for bread and against imperialism.

But the leaderships of the US, European and Japanese working class submitted the proletariat in those countries to their own imperialism. The labor bureaucracy and aristocracy together with the World Social Forum fenced the revolution country by country and de-synchronized the revolutionary struggle of the masses of the semi-colonial world with those in the imperialist countries. The maximum expression of this WSF policy is the fence imposed against the Syrian masses suffering the biggest genocide against the working class during the last decades.

But today, the capitalist system has survived. And it was possible because the leaderships have saved such capitalist system, that is, the leaderships inside the mass movement have strangled his fights and fenced his revolutionary processes.

US imperialism, after his victories in ´89, started to dominate the world through his five military commands and even left in crisis all the ruling institutions imperialism had set up during the Yalta period. 

US imperialism threw his crisis to the world. He behaves as money lender. He covered his multi-millionaire commercial deficit with the reserves suck in across the world. But it was not enough.

The US imperialism was stopped, in his arrogance, by a huge mass struggle of the workers and people of Iraq and Afghanistan in particular, and above all, by his own US working class that like the European one prevented his imperialism from keeping the massacre directly and pillage against the people of Maghreb and Middle East.

The “Iraq syndrome” blew USA like yesterday the Vietnam one. The masses took out his fire power.

Since 2008 USA, masked as “democratic” and “generous” with the “coloured Bush” Obama,  threw his entire crisis on the world. Together with Merkel and the German Bundesbank reduced all the minor imperialist powers of Europe as vassals. They put France and England as squires and together with the Japanese imperialism they fenced Russia and China to impose on them new plans of semi-colonization and pillage. For that reason, they established theAtlantic and Pacific agreements. They rearranged the damaged UN. They imposed the UNASUR and CELAC on the American continent and obliged China to act like buyer and importer of what his transnational companies produce.

The relation of Russia with the productive apparatus of high technology of France and Germany can no longer be a secret. Russia, the great exporter of weapons, supplies his war and armament industry with technology of France and Bundesbank. Their soldiers train in the high-tech war simulators in Germany while France gives it technology for navy ships and radars for which Russia pays for royalties and patents in his weapons’ exports.

Germany has more than 25 billion of Euros as regards direct investments in Russia. The Great Russian bourgeoisie is in partnership with Germany and France and submitted to USA by thousands of credits and his margin of maneuver is getting narrow because imperialism in bankruptcy needs more and more to retain all his business.

Comrades,

Today, US imperialism can no longer intervene directly like in the past Bush did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, today they are setting up new institutions of dominance and plastering the old ones of Yalta. The Anglo-Yankees pirates today intervene in the international politic through all their agents.

In Latin America they have settled a counterrevolutionary pact with countries like Chile, Peru, and Mexico with whom they have a Free Trade Agreement. They have unified those countries with the “Bolivarian countries” in the UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) and CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States).

The Bolivarian bourgeoisies saved the damaged semi colonial capitalism of Latin America as well as  influenced the US proletariat to submit them to Obama and the Republicrat murderous regime

Imperialism exerts his dominance like in Middle East by using his hit men to strangle the heroic revolutions that made the working class and oppressed rebel from Tunisia to Syria and from Iraq to Palestine.

By counterrevolutionary pacts like Geneva II, imperialism concentrated all his agents in that region to fence and smash masses. USA intervenes in counterrevolutionary wars using proxies, through his lackeys and hitmen where each of them fulfills a necessary role. Putin and Al-Assad together with the Iranian Ayatollahs masked as “anti-imperialist” make the “dirty work” to massacre the masses as they did in Syria and today they guard the frontiers for Zionism.

The Saudi and Qatari bourgeoisie also using a language “anti-imperialist” or pseudo-democratic are the ones who appear to control and discipline the uprising revolutionary masses like in the North of Syria and today in Iraq for the insurrections’ chain that started in Fallujah not to win in Bagdad; and for the revolutions’ chain that started in Tunisia, in Syria not to conclude like in Libya defeating Al-Assad and not to triumph in Jerusalem smashing Zionism.

That’s the sinister plan where the imperialism uses all his agents and smashes the revolution by the Lebanon-ization of Iraq and Syria by re-drawing the borders to re-colonize and strangle the revolution in the uprising people of Maghreb and Middle East. This is the Geneva II plan.

At the end of 2013, when the Palestinian working class and people threatened with enter the struggle, the dog Bashar sustained by Putin began to punish and massacre them. It was the dog Bashar who bombed the hunger children in the Palestinian camps of Yarmouk near Damascus. As he protects the borders of Golan for Zionism, it is possible today for Zionism bombs and massacres in Gaza.

Meanwhile with the Atlantic agreement, the reformist leaderships of the European unions supported theimperialist Maastricht. They fenced the Greek revolution, divided and submitted the European working class. And the Imperialism threw his crisis on them.

Today, the bankers of London City, Paris and the Bundesbank together with Wall Street go for the East Europe. The Atlantic agreement is about this: a single market of USA and Europe through which almost 50% of the world GDP will pass.

EU and NATO seek to advance to the East. They need new markets and direct agents. They have already re-colonized the whole Eastern Europe. They have arrived to Ukraine. They have removed the Great Russian bourgeoisie from great extent of that territory.

Moreover, with the offensive of the new government of Kiev, USA and NATO they reached at the Russian doors of Donetsk. They left Crimea for Putin as a military base to discipline any upheaval on the part of the oppressed people in the region and advanced in their colonizing offensive of Ukraine already taking 75% of the gas pipelines and the most productive lands.

Who presented battle against the IMF, European Union, and Kiev pro-yankee government were not the white troops under the command of the counterrevolutionary Putin but the heroic mine workers of Donetsk, Sloviansk and Lugansk that still resist bravely with their militias, even they made the Russian soldiers defect to fight with them against the Kiev pro-yankee government. Meanwhile Putin took out quickly his troops settled in the borders and established a policy of “dialogue and peace” with the Poroshenko pro-yankee government and murderer of the Ukrainian proletariat. Donetsk workers know that if the IMF’s and EU’s plans are imposed, they will lose their jobs and end like immigrant pariahs in the Europe of Maastricht. The tragedy is that because of the responsibility of Stalinism and social-imperialist parties they have been isolated from the workers in the imperialist Europe who are paying for the crisis of bankers with miserable wages and unemployment.

There where the imperialism needs to defeat the left-wing of the working class stands up “Fronts Left” with which tie the most combative of the international working class to a policy of class collaboration.

That happens with SYRIZA in Greece, with Stalinism in Chile, supported by the "anti-parliamentary left," entered the parliament and government with Bushelet. Also in Argentina, with members of the FIT as MPs preparing draft laws with the "opposition" gorilla bourgeoisie in the Argentine parliament ... while the government of Wall Street Kirchner gets tired of attacking the workers and the people starve. A true policy of class collaboration whose maximum expression, we insist on it, is the policy centralized by that cave of bandits of the WSF constituted by Stalinism, Social-Democracy and renegades of Trotskyism.

No more Left lackey of Obama! The new “blacken Bush” is the new war criminal, the chief of all the imperialist gangs and the world counterrevolution! He at the command of all the lackeys and side by side the imperialist gangs has done even major counterrevolutionary actions in comparison to his predecessor Bush!

Comrades,

The renegades of Marxism want to make appear as “barbarian people” and a “fight among tribes” the upheaval of the working class of Maghreb and Middle East. The revolutionary Marxists affirm that the history of humanity is the history of the class struggle. Thousands years ago the epoch of tribes with hunter-gatherers ended. There is no sector in the planet where the capitalist mode of production doesn’t control the entire production of the human civilization. Those in struggle are social classes: The bourgeoisie and proletariat. Everything else is a lie. This is beyond the political and religious shapes the class struggle can acquire.

Today we witness that facing the uprising of exploited of Fallujah and Mosul, the European social-imperialist parties name them “upheaval of tribes”, we see as they treat the exploited insurrected in the whole Maghreb and Middle East as “barbarian people”.

That is not true. They say it to prevent the central countries’ working class from recognizing their class brothers in the colonial and semi-colonial world.

In Maghreb and Middle East and in Iraq those who have rebelled are not "tribes", it is the great working class that suffers and writhes in the oil wells of the imperialist transnational companies of Bush and Obama. The outcasts who do not support any more the existence of that US colony have rebelled. They confront the Iranian murderous Ayatollahs who covered the backs to the Yankee imperialism in his retreat of Iraq by sustaining the “Shiite” government of Maliki, a true lackey and guard of the interests of the British Petroleum, Halliburton, Exxon, Chevron and the other imperialist oil companies settled in Iraq. The imperialism has sent his lackey of the Saudi bourgeoisie to contain the masses’ upheavals in Fallujah and Mosul.

Out with the murderous Husseinite bourgeoisie and the Islamic State, proxy of Saudi Arabia! Unify the oil workers of the North of Iraq with those in the South! Rebel Bagdad! Let’s re-take the road of the uprising of the Iranian working class in 2009 who had carried out in the 80’s a great revolution of workers and soldiers setting up their shoras-their councils- defeating Sha Reza Pahlevi. Open the road to the working class of Iraq, Iran and the entire Persia! For the return of the shoras!

The true “barbarian” is not masses in the semicolonial countries but the forces of the imperialism. They are the barbarian: the kings of Bourbons of Spain, the queen of England at the head of the Royal Navy, and the French V Republic that invaded Mali to keep the uranium for his military nuclear apparatus. Here, the only barbarian tribes are the religious ones who belong to the Apocalypses of the Tea Party who behind the face of Obama boost new holocausts in the world. Let’s end with the cynic ideology and sinister propaganda spread by the labor aristocracy and bureaucracy!

Over a year that the oil wells of Libya are paralyzed by the workers in strike. The magnificent constructions in Dubai and Qatar, the oil wells in the entire Maghreb and Middle East are built by millions of workers, pariahs in their own land. The oil is taken out by the workers.

Yes. In Middle East there is a huge nomadic working class who is taken as slaves by the imperialist oil companies and native bourgeoisies to build their luxurious hotels. That’s the glorious working class who has rebelled from Tunisia to Libya and from Syria to Palestine. A working class that for the treason of his leadership is manipulated by the Sunni and Shiite bourgeoisies just like Stalinism and European social-democracy do with the working class submitting them to the “democratic imperialisms”.

Open the road to the working class of Maghreb and Middle East! Out the Sunni and Shiite bourgeoisies-those lackeys of imperialism! Open the road to the unity of the working class of the semicolonial world with the proletariat of the imperialist countries!

Today, the massacre against the workers and people in Gaza lifts the veil. Words died. Millions of workers and rebel, anti-imperialist youth are winning the streets across the world full of rage because of the Zionist massacre in the Gaza Strip.

Comrades, in this 52 Anti-War Assembly, we call on you to:

-stand up side by side the working class in the Maghreb and Middle East that by their upheavals in 2011  made shake the whole world capitalist system from his foundations.

-stand up side by side the Donbass workers and their heroic militias fighting the Kiev army who have been left to their fate by the killer Putin.

-stand up to generalize and take as ours the fighting methods of the worker democracy and strike pickets conquered by the Marikana mine workers in their confrontation against the imperialism. Because that is the path to defeat capitalists, their governments and the treacherous leaderships that prevent workers from fighting for their demands.

-fight together against Stalinism and his remains that like in China sold out the slave labor force to the imperialism and the worker and peasant Cuba to the Yankees. For our revolutionary honor, we, the Trotskyists in Latin America will give our life for in the worker and peasant Cuba not to wave again the banner of the imperialism.

-fight together to rebel the US and Japanese working class and proletariat of the European imperialist powers that have already stood up at the war cry “the enemy is at home!” to stop the genocide and massacre against the Palestinian masses. This struggle must not end.

-fight together to unmask the false Marxists that like the renegades of Trotskyism sustain by the left side to all the treacherous leaderships and legitimize the exploitation and deceits imposed by the native bourgeoisies in partnership with imperialism.

Comrades, let’s fight together!

STOP THE MASSACRE TO THE WORKERS AND THE PEOPLE OF GHAZA BY DEVELOPING THE HUGE MASS MOBILIZATION ACROSS THE WORLD!

DESTROY THE ZIONIST OCCUPATION ARMY FROM THE RIVER JORDAN TO THE SEA!

DESTROY THE ZIONIST STATE OF ISRAEL!

The Palestinian Intifada has begun because the masses cannot bare starvation any longer, 30% of unemployment and their land to be in the hands of the Zionist usurper. The masses had understood that without the defeat of the Zionist state of Israel there will be no bread, no work and no land. A new Palestinian revolution is about to come. The world working class has already come in support.

Imperialism has returned firing power to Zionism. It can do that because it has been massacred and made bloodshed of the Syirian revolution, while the revolutions in Tunisia and Libya were deflected and expropriated, and in Egypt the regime of Mubarak is back with the genocidal coup of the dictatorship of Egypt.

Yesterday, Homs fell, the capital of the revolution of the Maghreb and the Middle East. It fell the Tahrir Square. We cannot let Ghaza fall. Today the Zionist state of Israel must fall, which is the capital of the counterrevolution in the Maghreb and the Middle East.

You know that you count with all our forces to defeat the fascist government of Abe, the Obama the murderer and the imperialist pirates of Maastricht and the EU. We fight together with you against the US military bases that aim their missiles to all the workers and subjugated people of the Pacific Ocean and their own Japanese working class.

All of our forces to defeat the hitmen of imperialism, the counterrevolutionary forces that oppress the working class in Asia, the Pacific Ocean, such as the Chinese Mandarins and the White Counterrevolutionary Army of Putin!

The workers of Africa, Latin America and Europe each time understand more that they have great allies in the Japanese working class. These allies are the revolutionary workers from the JRCL-RMF and the Zengakuren youth.

The oil workers sentenced to life in jail from Las Heras, the dismissed workers of Paty today feel like one of you, a delegate to the 52º Antiwar Assembly. Their future and fate is linked, today more than ever, to the struggle if the international working class and the workers of the Pacific Ocean, which are exploited by the same transnational companies that plunder the peoples of Latin America.

Therefore, you and we are going to cry out loud: Open the road to the workers of Paty, Lear, Volkswagen, Ceramica Neuquen, which are punished by the worst attack of the government of Kirchnet and the transnational companies, among hundreds of thousands of workers!

Free the workers of Las Heras, the prisoners of Guantanamo and our Palestinian brothers that are rottening in the jails of Zionism!

Let’s strike together!

Let’s break the siege on Ghaza!

Let’s send weapons, medications and international brigades to fight side by side with the Palestinian People, to smash the fascist forces of Zionism, so the war cry of revolution can sound again in Maghreb and the Middle East!

For a free secular democratic Palestine! For a provisional revolutionary government of workers and peasants!

For the Socialist United States of Maghreb and the Middle East!

Comrades,

Zionism and imperialism deserve that the world working class make a world-wide intifada! From Germany to Sweden, from New York to Chicago, from Rome to Paris and Tokyo, a world-wide of the international working class is starting to rise. The Palestinian victory in Ghaza, Jerusalem and the entire occupied territory is and will be a victory of the whole world working class. This battle cannot be lost.

But we cannot achieve victory without making justice. For our revolutionary honor, we won’t let to be left in silence and hidden in history that the murderer Assad, supported by Putin, with the Syrian masses isolated, has imposed a genocide killing 500.000 workers and poor peasants and expelled millions of them to refugee camps in the borders, on behalf of all the imperialist powers. The martyrs of Syria claim for justice. They will be redeemed with the Palestinian revolution that will expel the Zionist invader and will settle things straight with the killer Bashar, with a new spark that will set on fire the whole region.

In the fights in Ghaza we can see clearly the trenches of the international class struggle.

On the one hand, we find the Stalinist parties, next to the Palestinian and Zionist bourgeoisies. In that trench we also find the dog Bashar and Putin, next to Hezbollah of Lebanon, guarding the Golan Heights and the northern border to the Zionist state of Israel. We find the Sunni and Saudi bourgeoisie, which disarm the masses, subjugate them and strangle their revolution with their party-army. We also find the renegades of Trotskyism, which support the evil plan of the UN of “two states” by left, which only wants to confine the Palestinian people to the ghettos of Ghaza and the West Bank.

On the other hand, in the trench in front of them, we see the heroic Palestinian masses, with the support and the anger of millions of workers and youth across the world that want to take the struggle for the victory of the Palestinian cause to Jerusalem and all the fights that are in the planet. Fighting together with them, we find ourselves, the authentic internationalist revolutionaries that have put our forces to re-found the Fourth International and the courageous revolutionary Marxists from Japan and the world.

Today, more than ever, the socialist revolution needs of the unity of the authentic revolutionary internationalists to organize the resistance and prepare the future revolutionary offensives. That is what our combat for closing the path of the next inter-imperialist wars is about. The iron alternative is still fascism and war, or victory of the international socialist revolution.

Finally, we want to salute you, so we can together pay a special tribute, and with it, pay tribute to all the new generations of workers and youth that enter into the fight for the cause of the proletariat.

In Libya, general Heftar, an imperialist lackey, rose. He tries to group forces to retake the oil companies that were occupied by workers and the rebel militias. The military clashes against the coup of NATO have begun. With the war cry of “let’s defend the revolution”, once again, the rank and file of the rebel militias of Libya stood up.

Confronting Heftar and his murderous officer’s caste, from the militias of Misrata, comrade Ibrahim al-Ja’abi fell in combat. He was only 20 years old, and when he was 17 he was in the lead of the militias of Misrata fighting to end with the regime of opprobrium of Gadafi.

We want our comrade to have a tribute from all the internationalists of the world, and together with him, to pay tribute to all the Palestinian youth that since they are 10 years old they stand up and fight, with their intifada against the Zionist aggressor.

He used to feel a Zengakuren himself, in his fight against the counterrevolutionary forces.

Open the road for the working youth! Long live the youth of the intifada!

Open the road for the international socialist revolution!

Long live the international unity of the working class!

For the working class to live, imperialism must die!

Collective for the IV International – FLTI

Internationalist Workers League (LOI-CI), Workers Democracy, of Argentina

Revolutionary Movement of the Rebel Militias, of Libya

Leon Sedov Brigade, of Syria

Workers International League (WIL), of Zimbabwe

Internationalist Workers Party (POI-CI), of Chile

Internationalist Trotskyist League (LTI), of Bolivia

Workers and Youth Revolutionary Committee for the Self-Organization (CROJA), of Brazil

Communist Workers League (LCT), of Venezuela

Group The Communers, of Colombia

Socialist League of the Internationalist Workers (LSTI), of Peru

◆ News and Letters Committees

30th July 2014, Chicago, USA

Dear Comrades of the Executive Committee for the 52nd International Antiwar Assembly,

We send you revolutionary greetings from the heart of U.S. capitalism, which we oppose with all our minds and actions.  We appreciate especially the struggle of the comrades in Japan against the Abe-led government which, as you show, is intent on creating a Japanese imperialist army as it, at one and the same time, aims to become richer by impoverishing its people and selling nuclear plants and weapons of destruction to international markets.  As we wrote in our Perspectives in the May-June 2014 issue of News & Letters:

“The ruling classes’ reactions to capitalism’s economic crisis and the ever-present currents of revolt have fostered militarism and narrow nationalism and fueled international conflicts. This background of ongoing tension means that the specter of a broader war lurks behind each individual flashpoint, from U.S. and Israel vs. Iran; to China’s territorial disputes with Japan, The Philippines, and other nearby countries; to North Korea vs. South Korea, Japan and the U.S. In each case, past episodes of brinkmanship are no guarantee that the next time will manage to stop at the brink. It’s not as if wars aren’t already being waged, including the 13-year-old war in Afghanistan, as well as battles in places like Somalia and eastern Congo, where fighting continues a decade after the end of the ‘African world war.’”

We are living in a time of never-ending wars in which the U.S. plays a leading role. History did not end with the Cold War. Just as the meager “peace dividend” soon evaporated in the U.S., chaos and lowered life expectancies appeared in Russia. The West abandoned the people of Russia and its former satellites to “free market” shock treatment, in collusion with the new oligarchs, who overlap with the old “Communist” elite. At the same time, the Clinton and Bush administrations expanded NATO and ran roughshod over Iraq, which is still suffering the aftermath of war and military occupation. The Obama administration greatly expanded the drone assassination program as well as the U.S. military presence in Africa and an open “pivot to Asia.”

But Putin judges that the U.S. has been weakened after its adventurous blunder in Iraq and the collapse of its “red line” in Syria. To the extent that it has been weakened, it is not so much due to “feckless” policies as it is due to mass disgust after over a decade of war combined with the deterioration of the superpower’s economic base. That is not helped by a military budget exceeding the total of the next 13 top military spenders. In the same way, huge factors in the USSR’s collapse were its own economic sickness, worsened by sky-high military spending, and its population’s disgust at its war in Afghanistan together with the explosions of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

However, the U.S. and the even more weakened Russia both possess nuclear arsenals sufficient to destroy human civilization many times over. The fact is that the threat of nuclear war is still very much present. Dmitry Kiselyov–head of Rossiya Segodnya, the Kremlin’s official international news agency, who acts as Putin’s chief propagandist–warned that Russia is “capable of turning the USA into radioactive dust.”

Ironically, some in the Western Left justify their support of Crimea’s annexation by pointing to the presence of fascists in Ukraine, disregarding the nature of Putin’s regime: chauvinist, militarist, patriarchal, dreaming to restore Stalin’s empire, and simultaneously rehabilitating Stalin and the Russian Orthodox Church, all within the framework of authoritarian state-capitalism under a maximum leader. State-backed violence against ethnic minorities, Gays and political dissidents is rampant.

What is tearing at the world at this moment is the inhuman war taking place between Israel and Hamas but where the majority of the people being killed by Israel’s invasion of Gaza are not members of Hamas but civilians, many of them children.  We end our greetings and solidarity statement to you with our statement on that invasion, as we wish you success in the gathering of anti-war activists and thinkers in Japan.  We are with you in spirit.

Stop Israel’s war on Gaza: the need for revolution in life and thought

The war crimes being committed by the Israeli government in its current assault on Gaza are reminiscent of 2008′s brutal “Operation Cast Lead.” The bombing has not spared hospitals, UN compounds, schools or homes for the disabled. A huge percentage of the dead and injured are children. This is collective punishment on a vast, criminal scale, disproportionate to any actual threat posed by the largely inaccurate rockets being fired into Israel.

There are well over a thousand dead now in Gaza. Many more have been injured and a generation of children traumatized. Hundreds of buildings have been destroyed. Infrastructure has been devastated once again.

As in previous conflicts, the presence of genocide advocates like Avigdor Lieberman, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Naftali Bennett, Minister of the Economy, in the government preclude any right Israel might claim to wage war on Palestinians. Such a government, riddled with genocide advocates, has only one duty: to be overthrown as quickly and as completely as possible.

The real spark that set off this current round of fighting was the formation on June 2 of a Palestinian unity government, agreed to by Hamas in a concession to reality. The Islamist organization has been weakened by the turns of regional politics in the wake of the Arab Spring upheavals. Having lost patrons to Syria’s revolution (Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and his patron, Iran) and Egypt’s counter-revolution (former president Mohamed Morsi) has left Hamas relatively isolated, supported mainly by U.S. allies Qatar and Turkey.

What is more important is that the formation of a unity government was a revolutionary demand raised by Palestinian youth and revolutionaries as part of Arab Spring: “The people want the downfall of the factions.” The masses well understood that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority were capable of representing their demands, and that the struggle between them was meant to give both room for continual sell-outs and counter-revolution.

While the Israelis have taken serious casualties in the ground incursion, the one-sided battle testifies to Hamas’ weakness. Military weakness, for one, as their arsenal of rockets has not proven to be any kind of credible military threat; and ideological weakness, as they have used what rockets they have in random attacks on civilian targets, rather than in combat. Hamas has well-trained fighters, motivated to defend their own territory, and an intelligent use of that firepower would have been wiser than crude attacks on civilians, attacks that do nothing but add to the general atmosphere of inhumanity and counter-revolution.

It has to be understood that 2014 is not 2008. The vision of new possibilities raised by the revolutions of the Arab Spring posed new ground for addressing the old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Revolution compels a rethinking of Israeli history (and not only by Israelis) all the way back to the founding of the state. The mere hint that this kind of radical rethinking might happen gave the Israeli Right all the incentive it needed for the current massacres, meant to bury such ideas forever.

It also has to be understood that 2014 is not 2011. The genocidal counter-revolution waged by Syria’s Assad has cut through all ideological illusions. It has revealed the essence of bourgeois society, and the ultimate relation of counter-revolution to revolution. What has become clear is that there really is no compromise possible. While Netanyahu’s government isn’t strictly comparable to Assad’s regime, it is also uncompromising in its attack on all progressive possibilities.

The Israeli strike at the Palestinian unity government is only one example. Another is the continuing effort to render any two-state solution impossible through the illegal expansion of West Bank settlements. This promotion of naked criminality and brutality has devastated both Palestinian and Israeli society. Netanyahu has declared the two-state solution to be dead, and his neo-fascist Cabinet members openly express their desire to annex the entire West Bank. Gazans exist for them only to be killed or dispersed. The West Bank protests against the Gaza massacre have been met with extreme brutality, killing 10 more Palestinian civilians as of now.

Even protests within Israel itself have met with violence from Kahanist thugs. It testifies to the dismal retrogression in Israeli society due to the continuing occupation.

This is brutality acted out on a very large scale. It adds nothing to the understanding one could glean in looking at the murders of the youths that led up to this moment. The killers of the three Israeli teens, Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrach, and Gilad Shaar, whose deaths were blamed without evidence on Hamas, committed a terrible crime that opened the door to Netanyahu’s assault on Gaza. The monstrous revenge killing of Palestinian teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was forced to drink gasoline and then set on fire, alive, foretold the massacre to come.

In spite of all, it remains the fact that the world has had that vision of revolutionary possibility. It is what motivates much of the support for Gaza that has brought thousands into the streets, all over the world. Even the Israeli government has begun to realize that it is fighting an idea whose time has come–the idea of freedom–that calls for the uprooting of all oppressive relations, and the creation of a new human world. It is a struggle that is taking place all across the globe today.

–The Resident Editorial Board of News and Letters Committees