Vladimir Vorobiev

"...we should remember that Uncle Sam is but a third lover of the plucky girl."
["The Daughter of Zion" greeting card for the new year, Germany, c. 1910.]

U.S. actor John Markovich wants to kill Robert Fisk

Irish peace activist Mary Kelly forcibly removed from the Church of the Nativity, May 10.

REMEMBER JENIN!

Chavez greets private Juan Rodriguez, who sent out the fax in which the president denied that he had resigned.

Israel Shamir

12.12.02 The American administration is a bloodthirsty wild animal. By Harold Pinter. I found that to emerge from a personal nightmare was to enter an infinitely more pervasive public nightmare - the nightmare of American hysteria, ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and belligerence; the most powerful nation the world has ever known effectively waging war against the rest of the world.

12.07.02 Some Thoughts on Improving the Human Condition from Class and Historical Materialist Perspective. By Dave SILVER. In the past decade groups such as the Committees of Correspondence have traveled down this revisionist road. As the German Communist Robert Steigerwald eloquently showed in his Anti-Communist Myths in Left Disguise, that it is impossible to be anti-imperialist, anti-racist or progressive when one buys into anti-communism for it is what Marx called an antagonistic contradiction.

12.01.02 DOWN WITH POLICE PROVOCATIONS AGAINST LABOR ACTIVISTS! In the last several days Russian secret police (FSB) and the authorities of Kemerovo Region launched a campaign of harassment and intimidation against Comrade Vladimir Vorobiev, a well-known labor leader from Kuzbass, and orchestrated the publication of slanderous articles against him in a number of media outlets.

11.25.02 Hague Tries to Quietly Murder Milosevic. By Jared Israel and Vladimir Krsljanin. The Hague "Tribunal" show trial has disastrously backfired. Slobodan Milosevic has so thoroughly defeated this NATO "court" that the pro- NATO media has eliminated virtually all TV and newspaper coverage. Since, because Milosevic is brilliant and because they are lying, the Hague cannot "show" their trial, they are trying to defeat Mr. Milosevic the way they find most natural: by murdering him. Meanwhile, his support Committees have been hindered by a drastic lack of funds.

11.24.02 Europe vs. America. By Edward Said. It is the coincidence between the Christian Right and the so-called neo-conservatives in America that fuel the drive towards unilateralism, bullying, and a sense of divine mission. The neo-conservative movement began in the 70s as an anti-communist formation whose ideology was undying enmity to communism and American supremacy. "American values", now so casually trotted out as a phrase to hector the world, was invented then by people like Irving Kristoll, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, and others who had once been Marxists and had converted completely (and religiously) to the other side.

11.16.02 Let Us Choose the Royal Way! Speech in Florence by Vladimir Voroviev, a member of the Russian delegation at the Social Forum in Florence.
Let us not deceive ourselves. No matter how many-voiced and multilingual our movement is there are only roads to choose from: the road of accommodation to capitalism, of reforming it --and the road of going beyond capitalism, of overthrowing it. The third road is that of illusion, or even worse – an attempt to avoid the responsibility to make the real choice.

11.09.02 The Green Rain of Yassouf. By Israel Shamir.“Go away, you Arab-lover,” hissed one of them. “You support our enemies. It is our land. It is the land of the Jews; the Goyim do not belong here.” In more peaceful circumstances, I would laugh: these disturbed young men from New York wished to expel the proper and rightful descendents of the people of Israel from their ancestral land.

11.06.02 Anti-Imperialist Mobilization in Florence. In the Nov 9 mobilisation against the war on Iraq in Florence, Italy, the Anti-imperialist forces of Italy have decided to participate in a separate block. Their main front banner will read: Defend Iraq – down with the black list!

11.02.02 Hague Tries Quietly to Murder Milosevic; His Defense in Financial Crisis. The Hague "Tribunal" show trial has disastrously backfired. Slobodan Milosevic has so thoroughly defeated this NATO "court" that the pro-NATO media has eliminated virtually all TV and newspaper coverage. Since, because Milosevic is brilliant and because they are lying, the Hague cannot "show" their trial, they are trying to defeat Mr. Milosevic the way they find most natural: by murdering him.

10.20.02 CAPITALISM IN CRISIS; IRAQ;—U.S . PRE-EMPTION, REGIME CHANGE AND PROTO-FASCISM AT HOME. By Dave Silver. For the first time “pre-emptive strike” and “regime change” is now declared a “right” of US imperialism as was “Manifest Destiny” of an earlier colonialism.

10.17.02 On Degeneration of Workers' Leaders The Classical Case of Oleg Shein, the Deputy. By Shamil Borodobaev. Translated by Ya. Dakushev. When three years ago Oleg Shein had won in the race for the seat in the State Duma it was seen as a big victory for all those who stood to the left of CPRF. We all hoped that Shein would not only carry on the work begun by the previous left deputies Grigoriev and Avaliani, but that he would raise it to a new level of militancy. We can now say that our hopes have failed come true. And even worse.

10.15.02 Separate Peace. By Israel Adam Shamir. I signed a separate peace treaty with all my neighbours in the Middle East. As far as I am concerned, Syrian children may come and swim in the Sea of Galilee, and children of Palestine are welcome to amusement parks of Tel Aviv, while I shall sip Lebanese arak at Bardaouni in Ramallah. The refugees of Gaza may come back to the fields they owned before 1948, and deal directly with the few old Polish Jews who "privatised" the lands. If Jerry Falwell wants to have a Jewish state, let him build it in Alabama. They lived through Reconstruction, they will manage.

10.10.02 A Generation Lost To the Market Economy in Bulgaria. By Vessela Sergueva. With commentaries by Blagovesta Doncheva. One should be very suspicious to the official news from the US\EC protectorate Bulgaria. As it is already very well known, THEY – THE GLOBO MASTERS - LOVE LIES! And demand THE SAME from THEIR servants.

09.30.02 Left, Left? Marching With the Right...
By Irina Malenko. You can see them chanting at all demos for any cause. They always carry politically correct posters. Their style and methods of recruiting have something of the Jehovah Witnesses.

09.24.02 Last Sunny Days. By Israel Shamir. The US plans to destroy Iraq, invade Syria, break Saudi Arabia into a few parts, separate the oil fields, pass them in the hands of Israel, and finish off with Egypt.

09.08.02 The Homeland Criminals; The Bush Axis of Evil. By Dave Silver. Our own “homeland criminals” are revving up for war. The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld- Ashcroft Axis of Evil continues the legacy of Hiroshima, Tonkin Gulf hoax of LBJ, the bombing of Yugoslavia, the collateral damage in Afghanistan and now the murder of more women and children in Iraq.

09.03.02 War and Peace. By Israel Shamir. Our choice was that of a drunken driver, who sees everything double. The Jewish Lobby is the War Party, the closely-knit gang of Jewish supremacists and their Gentile neo-con allies.

07.28.02 Why We Should Still Be Anti-Imperialists. By Jean Bricmont. It has become fashionable, in leftists circles, especially in France, to adopt of position of “neither-nor” (“ni ni” in French). Neither NATO nor Milosevic; or neither the Taliban nor the United States. And, probably tomorrow, neither Saddam Hussein nor whatever alliance the United States manages to set up against Iraq.

- Questions presented by Iraq to the Security Council. After disclosure of the spying activities of former UNSCOM inspectors and the International Agency of Atomic Energy according to the confessions made by some of the special committee members and statements issued by US sources and some Security Council permanent members and what was acknowledged by the General Secretariat. Is it fair that inspectors return to Iraq who could be used to spy against Iraq and its leadership and to update information about Iraq's vital economic installations to bomb them in a coming aggression?

07.20.02 WHY I WILL NOT SIGN THE AD FROM AMERICAN JEWS FOR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST ADDRESSED TO OUR GOVERNMENT. By Dave Silver. Your demand for “Palestinian acceptance of negotiated limitations on the ‘right of return’ in exchange for financial compensation for refugees” is both reactionary and racist. Well over a million Palestinian and Arabs were forced or decided to flee the new settler state so that the right of return should be unequivocal for those who choose to do so.

07.06.02 "Anti-Globalists": New Allies for the Russian Opposition? By Dmitri Glinski. In Russia, which has lost much of its sovereignty and national self-respect, the struggle for social and political rights, unlike in the West, is hard to disentangle from a "national liberation" movement. The barbarization of society, especially of parts of the ex-intelligentsia, often produces fairly repulsive variations of this movement. While we must condemn anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism and the rest of ugly deformities, we also better understand their nature... Those Western progressives who accept the burden of working with our "human material" would be well advised to help the "national liberation" movement adopt more civilized forms, rather than turning their backs in disgust.

07.04.02 The Pakistani Rich are Worse than Animals. By Taimur Rahman. Even the Israeli army has to maintain some semblance of democracy and concern for human rights in the international media, but the feudal lords of Pakistan are criminals beyond compare. They are worse than the zionists.

06.29.02 Russian Labor Leader Murdered. The body of Yuri Smolentsev, who disappeared on June 15, has been found in a pond. Yuri Smolentsev was the Chairman of the independent trade union SOTSPROF at the Alumina Plant located in the city of Achinsk. He had a long record of organizing strikes and court actions on behalf of the Plant workers.

06.26.02 Israel's Secret Shame. By John Pilger. Ethnic cleansing attended the birth of Israel but, more than 50 years later, the country is still in denial about its bloody past. Those who speak out risk their jobs. Behind the turbulent news from Israel, a struggle for historical truth has passed almost unnoticed outside academic circles; yet its wider significance is epic. In May 1948, more than 200 Palestinians were killed by the advancing Jewish militia in the coastal village of Tantura, south of Haifa.

06.25.02 The State of Mind (full version). By Israel Shamir. In 1991, when Russia's future was exceedingly obscure, Israel received a lot of young blood from there. Israel supporters in the US media carried out a two-pronged campaign: they warned of forthcoming pogroms, and they promoted the idea of a beautiful easy life for immigrants in the US. Whole issues of Newsweek and Time concentrated on the neo-Nazi Pamyat group and rampant anti-Semitism. At that time, I reported for the Haaretz from Moscow, and interviewed Pamyat leaders for the paper. I found this sinister organisation to number about as many members as the Flat Earth Society. Still, Russian Jews would come to our countryside house to ask for protection in case of a pogrom. I tried to calm them down, but I could not fight the mighty media machine alone. Ten years later, I met a Russian Jewish lady writer in Jerusalem who told me that she had initiated the rumours of pogroms.

06.22.02 Coup-Making in Venezuela: the Bush and Oil Factors. By Karen Talbot. According to an article in Proceso by Aram Ruben Aharonian (7), private investigations revealed that one of the moves of the 48-hour coup leaders was "the privatization of PDVSA, turning it over to a U.S. company linked to President George Bush and the Spanish company Repsol; plus the sale of CITGO, the U.S. subsidiary of PDVSA, to Gustavo Cisneros and his partners in the north: as well as an end to the Venezuelan government's exclusive subsoil rights."

06.16.02 Part of Me Cheered Too: The Western Left, Moral Universalism and Hatred. By Sebastian Job. I find myself thinking: 'Okay, I'll be the bunny'. In other words, I volunteer to break with this compulsion to express the 'right' reactions to the attacks and appear to be good. If I affirm the necessity of such a gesture, one moreover that may further distress the grieving, it is because the stakes are extremely high. Boxed in as we are between homicidal adversaries and fearful publics, just about the only weapon the rest of us have left is our will to tell the truth. The pertinent aspect of my reaction was this: a quiet but irrepressible sense of gleeful satisfaction.

06.14.02 Prince Charming. By Israel Shamir. In order to understand the obscure charms of the Daughter of Zion, we should remember that Uncle Sam is but a third lover of the plucky girl. With Bush's predecessors, the British Empire in 1917-1922 and the Soviet Union in 1945-1949, we have an advantage of full knowledge of sources and motives. The archive documents were aired, published and analysed by better men, while we can just sum up the fruits of their labour, and find out "what attracts them".

06.08.02 Being an ethnic minority. By Irina Malenko. Let’s face it. My people are not used to being an ethnic minority. In our own country we are an overwhelming majority of the population. And even here, being abroad, in a country where many people have told me that I was actually the very first Russian they personally met, some of us are not willing or able to face this fact.

06.08.02 А Global Transnational Ruling Class Requires Global Solidarity and Resistance. By Dave Silver. We can’t forget that there is a dialectical connection of class and race. Of exploitation and oppression embodied in the slogan of workers and oppressed unite. Institutionalized racism is used by the corporate rulers to maintain and preserve a racist colonial world which makes capital accumulation easier.

06.03.02 On the Threat to National Security of Russia Statement of the Central Committee Communist Party of the Russian Federation 25 May 2002. The special services of USA and their allies penetrate freely all corners of the country. They are trying to infiltrate their agents of influence into power structures of Russia. Pro-American forces are openly seeking control over the Foreign Ministry, the army and security services.

06.01.02 Interview with Mary Kelly - a nurse from Cork, one of 2 Irish citizens who witnessed first hand Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people.By Irina Malenko. It's very hard to look at dead children, to see the horror in their starring eyes, their long eyelashes, heads split open. One boy had a bag on his lap - his brains were in it. All were dressed in poor clothes. I ran out of there when I saw the coroner handle them roughly. I could not accept that they could not feel anymore.

05.30.02 Beatings in Moscow. Clarification. By Oleg Shein. 26 participants were arrested, including the activists of the trade union "Defense" Victor Petrov and Sergei Sychov. The arrested were mostly workers, white-collar workers, and students, and included an elderly female worker from Yaroslavl and journalists. Police did not stop beating the arrested inside the police bus. Five persons received heavy injuries, concussions and fractures.

05.26.02 There's a Firestorm Coming, Provoked by Bush. By Robert Fisk. In the United States, the Bush administration is busy terrorising Americans. There will be nuclear attacks, bombs in high-rise apartment blocks, on the Brooklyn bridge, men with exploding belts - note how carefully the ruthless Palestinian war against Israeli colonisation of the West Bank is being strapped to America's ever weirder "war on terror" - and yet more aircraft suiciders. If you read the words of President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and the ridiculous national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, over the past three days, you'll find they've issued more threats against Americans than Mr bin Laden.
05.21.02 Bush Brothers receive money from same sources that support hemisphere’s worst terrorists. By Raisa Pages.AS a U.S. soldier died in the faraway mountains of Afghanistan – while supposedly fighting terrorism and having been sent by the person who appropriated the leadership in the fight against that evil – that same President George W. Bush was attending a banquet in Miami with the hemisphere’s most notorious terrorists.

05.16.02 Israel and "Anti-Semitism." By Alexander Cockburn. So the left gets the rotten eggs and those tossing the eggs mostly don't feel it necessary to concede that Israel is a racist state whose obvious and provable intent is to continue to steal Palestinian land, oppress Palestinians, herd them into smaller and smaller enclaves and in all likelihood ultimately drive them into the sea or Lebanon or Jordan or Dearborn or the space in Dallas/Fort Worth airport between the third and fourth runways (the bold Armey plan).

05.15.02 Why does John Malkovich want to kill me? By Robert Fisk. Take Jennifer Loewenstein, a human rights worker in Gaza – who is herself Jewish and who wrote a condemnation of those who claim that Palestinians are deliberately sacrificing their children. She swiftly received the following e-mail: "BITCH. I can smell you from afar. You are a bitch and you have Arab blood in you. Your mother is a fucking Arab. At least, for God's sake, change your fucking name. Ben Aviram."

The Last Action Heroes. By Israel Shamir. As a professional journalist, I regret that this tense drama of siege, breakthrough, diversion, relief, salvation, arrest, escape and confrontation at Easter, in the shadow of the great church, the best stuff there is, did not reach the mass audience of Europe and America, that it was not broadcasted by all TV stations and reprinted by all newspapers. But the regret does not diminish my joy, as one of the kids who broke the siege was my own son.
Irish nurse is deported from Israel. By Paul Cullen. Ms Kelly was "very angry" at her treatment at the hands of the Israeli forces, according to Ms Georgina Reeves, a spokeswoman for the International Solidarity Movement, to which Ms Kelly belonged. As the only nurse among the group, she provided medical assistance to the wounded.

05.13.02 Communism, fascism and the Russian working class. A very short answer to an extraterrestrial critic. By Alan Wood. So what about fascism? The organisers of the demonstration began by excluding the fascists (the so-called National Bolshevik Party) who in the past participated on the May Day demonstration. At the front of the Communist youth column, just where I was marching, there was a large placard with the slogan: "DEATH TO FASCISM!" On repeated occasions the demonstrators chanted: "Fascism shall not pass!"

05.09.02 "Israel's Willing Executioners". By Edward Herman. The Israelis know what is being done to Palestinians on the West Bank, they have long been able to read about the institutionalized torture of Palestinians in their papers, and they are well aware of the character and scope of the recent devastation and killings, yet despite significant dissent they openly approve, vote brutalizing governments into power and keep them there. Sharon's popularity has risen in the wake of his "war" on the Palestinian refugee camps and cities. The prima facie case is that the Israelis are more clearly "willing executioners" than the Germans or Serbs.

05.07.02 Venezuela: The Lies Go On. By John Pilger. When the conspirators made their move on April 12, the response of the British media provided an object lesson in how censorship works in "free" societies.

04.25.02 The Downfall and the Future of Socialism. By Dave Silver. A key and immediate task facing Leninists is to strengthen not only the practical every day struggle against the Right, but equally important to mount an ideological struggle against those who profess to be Left or even Communist who have bought into the counter revolutionary “new thinking” using Stalinism as a code word for their an anti-communism.

04.24.02 The Dangerous Liaisons. By Israel Shamir. Professor David D. Perlmutter wrote in LA Times: “I daydream--if only! If in 1948, 1956, 1967 or 1973 Israel had acted just a bit like the Third Reich, then today Israelis would shop, eat pizza, marry and celebrate the holy days unmolested. And of course Jews, not sheiks, would have that Gulf oil’.

04.19.02 Irish Filmmaker's Eyewitness Account of the Venezuelan Coup d'Etat. By Michael McCaughan. "I arrived in the centre of town just as the shooting started," says Kim. "I filmed a while then took cover in a doorway. Whoever was firing aimed directly at the crowd, which was pro-Chavez. I filmed two dead bodies, both of them beside the podium set up to rally Chavistas to defend the presidential palace.

04.19.02 "IMF has bought Turkey and paid its price". By Evren Madran. Even the Kurdish left who is looking forward to a U.S. solution in Iraq, joined the leftist protests that blamed the American imperialism for what’s been happening in Palestine. Thousands of people from the political parties, labor unions and associations have gathered in the streets of Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, and Adana to condemn the Israeli aggressiveness.

04.16. 02. Socialist Cuba, the Hope of the Planet. By Dave Silver. Fidel  said that Che “was totally opposed to using and developing capitalist economic laws and categories in building socialism.”  Che advocated that the “building of socialism and communism is not just a matter of producing and distributing wealth but is also a matter of education and consciousness.”

03.07.02 Ten Years of Shame. By Alexander Tarasov. The "intellectuals" of the 1990s ... have discovered a hypocritical, servile contempt for their own people--viewed as mere cattle. The intellectual prostitutes and shopkeepers have adopted (as lackeys and servants often do) the views and manners of their lords.

03.05.02. The Invasion. By Israel Shamir. In the unfolding Palestinian holocaust, PNA was forced to play a morally ambiguous, nay, impossible part of Judenrat, the Jewish Authority, established by Germans in the ghetto and camps of the occupied Europe.

03.31.02 Romanian Workers Want Ceausescu and the Communist Party of Romania Back. By Tomas Mellen. In November 1999, thousands of workers held a mass rally outside the Palace of Culture (community buildings for working class entertainment and education from the socialist era) in Iasi, hanging pictures of the former Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu on the walls and chanting "Ceausescu - PCR" (Romanian Communist Party). "During his time, we used to have bread and jobs too. Now we are the laughing stock of crooks, thieves and sellers of the country," the protesters said.

03.29.02 Emergency in Argentina. Buenos Aires: The workers at the Brukman factory are expecting a POLICE ATTACK on their factory sometime after next Tuesday. They are organizing a march Tuesday morning to the Ministry of Labor at 9 am- The occupation by workers and the production by the workers themselves represents a threat to the very nature of capitalism.

03.26.02 The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict; Statement to the Broad U.S. Left. By Dave Silver. We in the belly of the beast must demand an immediate halt to all military aid, the Right of Return of refugees who wish to do so, the dismantling of all Settlements and compensation for destroyed homes, Jerusalem as an international city and for massive international assistance to rebuild and develop the economy where the leaders of a new Palestine and not transnationals, I.M.F. or World Bank determines how, when and where the assistance shall be used.

03.19.02 Being Irish Means They Are Guilty?
By Irina Malenko. The US media were so outraged about 3 Irish Republicans visiting FARC's zone that they accused then in all sorts of crimes without any factual evidence. But what they are forgetting to mention, is that over 60.000 Latin American officers, many of them - Colombians, were trained in the US's very own military School of Americas (currently Western Hemispheric Institute for Security and Co-operation, WHISC), and that SOA graduates are "consistently linked to some of the worst human rights atrocities" (NMC).

03.14.02 Communist Party of Britain: Resolution 2 For popular sovereignty against imperialism
The past decade has seen a sharp and menacing shift in the character of imperialism. Economically capitalism has moved into a serious crisis of over-accumulation. Politically the imperialist powers, led by the United States, have embarked on a dangerously predatory and aggressive course that threatens the democracy of all countries.

03.09.02 Battle for Palestine. By Israel Shamir. On March 3, a Palestinian Rob Roy armed with an old, WWII – vintage carbine, succeeded to lay low the whole troop of heavily armed Jews. One after another, he shot the soldiers, and their officers, and escaped unharmed. In one stroke, he erased the overblown myth of Israeli military valiance. Never again the supporters of Israel will sneer at Arab courage, never again they will tell stories of shoes dropped in Sinai and Six Day War. He repeated the feat of Karameh and returned the honour to Palestinians.

03.05.02 Communists of a Different Kind. By Irina Malenko. “Sometime in the 80s, when you had your perestroika, and it was just beginning, Fidel said in one of his speeches that it might happen that there would be no Soviet Union anymore, and that we should be prepared to this possibility and to the situation where we would have to continue our revolutionary struggle under the objectively new conditions. To be honest with you, at that time we could not  imagine that the Soviet Union could possibly be no longer – how can it be that there would be no Soviet Union?

03.05.02 World Social Forum - Conclusions and Next Steps. By Dave Silver. The coming together in Porto Alegre of representatives of Indigenous Peoples, workers, peasants, and intellectuals was an inspiring event for national liberation struggles as well as against exploitation, oppression and racism worldwide.

02.23.02 The People's Republic of China: From Revolution and Communes to Counter Revolution and Capitalism. By Dave Silver. One fifth of the world’s population, China, an essentially feudal society for over 2000 years was victim of plunder, oppression and dominance by colonialism and western imperialism on an unprecedented scale until the middle of the 20th century. From the Chang and successive Dynasties, Mongol invasions, Opium Wars with British and French colonialism of the 19th century and the U.S. “Open Door Policy” of plunder, to genocidal Japanese imperial domination and international isolation until 1972 when US imperialism played its “China card” to gain a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union.

02.21.02 Let Them Talk (The Cuban Diary, pt. 3). By Irina Malenko. Cuban scientists have invented a prevention vaccine against AIDS that is being tested at the moment. But even after being tested, if successful, there is very little chance that this vaccine will be allowed to enter the world’s market: the US won’t allow this to happen.

02.21.02 Russia and Nato. By Viacheslav Tetekin. Mr. Robertson now comes to Russia without fear of being arrested and sent to Belgrade to serve his prison sentence. NATO Information Center, closed two years ago, has been reopened in Moscow. It is not quite clear what is the purpose of the Center. The "democratic" Russian press abounds with those keen to promote NATO's interests. And they are substantially cheaper than Western-propaganda intelligence officers serving in the Information Center.

02.10.02 Island of Women's Freedom. By Irina Malenko. It’s up to us – to put the arrogant Uncle Sam back to his place where he belongs. To express it in the language of his own intellectual level, let him stick his “freedom” up his arse --his freedom to rob, to oppress, to humiliate and to brainwash all of us.

02.16.02 Letter of the Slavic Union in Israel to the leaders of Russia, France, Germany, China and to the people of the US and the UK. As the threat of aggression against Iraq grows, we, members of one-million- strong Russian Community in Israel/Palestine, call upon you to stop the imminent bloodshed and save millions of innocent men and women from violent death.

Balkanizing the World What Empire Wants. By Nebojsa Malic. When the implausible proposal of exile for the Iraqi leader was floated ten days ago, Saddam Hussein must have thought of Slobodan Milosevic. His constant appeasement of U.S. demands, from Dayton to Kumanovo, only brought more demands and new sanctions, which did not stop even after he was taken to the Hague Inquisition in chains. Clearly, in Milosevic’s case, trusting the Empire proved his undoing. Unlike the Serbian people, Hussein seems to have realized that.

02.13.02 THE MOTHER OF ALL WAR SHOWS. From The Black Commentator. The Bush cabal devoutly believe they are at a Hiroshima-like juncture in history - that they have at their disposal the means to start the world over in an apocalyptic spasm of swift and terrifying violence.

Repressions against the workers' leader intensify

Governor Tuleev and his henchmen plan to get rid of Vladimir Vorobiev for good

DID YOU HELP THE REVOLUTIONARIES ARRESTED AND TORTURED IN UKRAINE?

Igor Danilov Alexander Gerasimov B. Zinchenko

Аnatoly Plevo Sergei Berdiugin Denisov

Ilya Romanov Nina Polskaia E. Semenov

Alexander Smirnov

01.26.03 Enemy of the People and Right of Response. A Letter to Editor.
By Israel Shamir. An important Israeli right-wing newspaper Maariv published a very long (four A3 pages) article, Enemy Within, attacking me and spreading numerous lies (09.01.03, www.maariv.com ) Well, this is to be expected from a Zionist publication. However, the editor Mr Amnon Dankner refused to publish my response (below in English translation, Hebrew text available on Indymedia Israel). Please write to him (his email address dankner@maariv.co.il ) and demand to publish my response!

01.12.03. From the investigative team of Burtsev.ru:
IS LISA TAYLOR OF ISWOR A ZUBATOVIST AGENT-PROVOCATEUR?
By Tatiana Aparina
The secret police wants to know who we are, they use provocateurs, we call them Zubatovists (from Zubatovism).  They want to find out who are the editors of Left.ru, who is Anton Baumgarten.  Taylor acts like Zubatovist agent-provocateur. We believe that Taylor may work for the imperialists and Zionists.  And we want to start an international investigation into her political connections, past and present.

01.12.03 POLITICAL PRISONERS; THE INTERSECTION OF CLASS AND RACE. By Dave Silver. Thanks to felony disenfranchisement laws in the U.S. and to racial disparities in the criminal justice system, a remarkable one and a half million African-Americans, or 13% of black men do not have the right to vote, which is approximately seven times the national average. The connection of resurgent U.S. imperialism and the prison craze is that the figurehead of imperial expansion George W. Bush, as governor of Texas came to oversee as Molly Ivins noted “the largest prison system on planet earth.”

01.03.03 POLITICAL ARRESTS IN UKRAINE Searches Produce Nothing. Brutal Tortures of Young Communists.The key event became the night storming of the apartment in Nikolaev. In the wee hours of the night a special unit, belonging either to the police or the state security, detonated the door to the rental apartment where at that time were staying Igor Danilov, Nina Polskikh, Oleg Alekseev, and Sergei Berdiugin.

10.17.02 On Degeneration of Workers' Leaders The Classical Case of Oleg Shein, the Deputy. By Shamil Borodobaev. Translated by Ya. Dakushev. When three years ago Oleg Shein had won in the race for the seat in the State Duma it was seen as a big victory for all those who stood to the left of CPRF. We all hoped that Shein would not only carry on the work begun by the previous left deputies Grigoriev and Avaliani, but that he would raise it to a new level of militancy. We can now say that our hopes have failed come true. And even worse.

06.29.02 Russian Labor Leader Murdered. The body of Yuri Smolentsev, who disappeared on June 15, has been found in a pond. Yuri Smolentsev was the Chairman of the independent trade union SOTSPROF at the Alumina Plant located in the city of Achinsk. He had a long record of organizing strikes and court actions on behalf of the Plant workers.

06.16.02 Part of Me Cheered Too: The Western Left, Moral Universalism and Hatred. By Sebastian Job. I find myself thinking: 'Okay, I'll be the bunny'. In other words, I volunteer to break with this compulsion to express the 'right' reactions to the attacks and appear to be good. If I affirm the necessity of such a gesture, one moreover that may further distress the grieving, it is because the stakes are extremely high. Boxed in as we are between homicidal adversaries and fearful publics, just about the only weapon the rest of us have left is our will to tell the truth. The pertinent aspect of my reaction was this: a quiet but irrepressible sense of gleeful satisfaction.

05.13.02 Communism, fascism and the Russian working class. A very short answer to an extraterrestrial critic. By Alan Wood. So what about fascism? The organisers of the demonstration began by excluding the fascists (the so-called National Bolshevik Party) who in the past participated on the May Day demonstration. At the front of the Communist youth column, just where I was marching, there was a large placard with the slogan: "DEATH TO FASCISM!" On repeated occasions the demonstrators chanted: "Fascism shall not pass!"

01.26.02 Confessions of a"sovok"? No, of a Soviet individual! By Alexander Zinoviev Only now do I realize that the whole undertaking of privatization was actually aimed at the destruction of all collectives and of collectivism. The organization of collectives and communes has been killed. It is terrible that all of this occurred before my own eyes, and I did not lift a finger to interfere with it.

01.25.02“Cuba is far away, Cuba is near…” By Irina Malenko. Part 1: Till the Cock Crows Thrice in Havanna. If one is to believe Western propaganda, university professors including, then, for example, Soviet women were working exclusively because “their husbands could not afford to feed them”. It is virtually impossible to argue with those who are brought up with such a primitive vision of life and, of course, are judging everybody else by his or her own standard.  I am not even attempting to do that: those who are born to crawl, as we say, cannot fly… On the foto: Irina Malenko in Havana

02.23.02 The People's Republic of China: From Revolution and Communes to Counter Revolution and Capitalism. By Dave Silver. One fifth of the world’s population, China, an essentially feudal society for over 2000 years was victim of plunder, oppression and dominance by colonialism and western imperialism on an unprecedented scale until the middle of the 20th century. From the Chang and successive Dynasties, Mongol invasions, Opium Wars with British and French colonialism of the 19th century and the U.S. “Open Door Policy” of plunder, to genocidal Japanese imperial domination and international isolation until 1972 when US imperialism played its “China card” to gain a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union.

01.23.02 NATO OUT OF LATVIA! The ruling bourgeois-comprador elite of Latvia, even before entering NATO, is doing its best to serve the interests of its imperialist lords. With this purpose the government has approved the construction of a radar station on Latvian territory. This will serve as part of the air defense system of the aggressive imperialist bloc. The construction of the radar station is planned to take place in a populated area in the Rezeknenskii region. This would jeopardize the life and health of the local population.

01.21.02 Health Care Crisis: A Contrast Between Cuba and USA. By Raisa Pages. In a statement issued last year, Dr. David Satcher, director of the U.S. Public Health Service, reported that 37% of Hispanics and 25% of the African-American population lack medical insurance. Dr. Satcher’s report noted that the majority of cases concern poor workers who do not receive insurance through their employers and do not qualify for public assistance.

01.17.02 Holding the World Hostage - Part I. By Karen Talbot. According to one account of his speech as
reported on National Public Radio, Bush spoke of the new military strategy allowing total management of  the planet. He indicated  that any nation taking  exception to that role and  acts on it, (not only in terrorist manner) will be met with force, "not just comparative retaliatory force, but devastating force."

01.08.02 Why I Don't Like Gorby. By Irina Malenko. … I remember Gorby's visit to Rotterdam where I lived at that time. This once head of state  was acting like some sort of escort service offering himself for dinner for the rich Western entrepreneurs. Among Russian emigre circles there were continuous rumours that Mikhail Sergeevich was even entertaining them with singing Russian folk songs accompanied by a guitar….

01.06.02 Time to Think. By Dr. Martin Conovan.In recent years the majority of people have experienced an erosion of their capacity for critical self-reflection - thinking. We are all born with the ability to think, but our capacity to think, both individually and collectively, has been progressively undermined by an array of forces and agencies. A "world-view" is currently being peddled which suggests it is perfectly reasonable to live in a society of vast inequalities in wealth and power, and an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. To challenge or question the ways things are invites ridicule, marginalization and the labels "awkward" and "dreamer".