Norway: Just Withdraw From NATO

Gary Leupp

Norway has announced that it has invited the U.S. to expand the contingent of Marines it sent to the country last year to 700, and to post troops closer to the Russian border. Russia protests that this undermines trust between Oslo and Moscow. Why is this important?

In 1949 Norway joined NATO pledging to the USSR that it would not accept the stationing of foreign troops in the country unless threatened with attack. However, last year 330 U.S. troops were stationed there and there are now plans to more than double the number. Moscow wonders why. Why the relentless expansion of NATO, to include even little Montenegro last year? Why the provocative exercises in Poland? Why the enduring mutually damaging sanctions on Russia?

Norway is losing billions on lost seafood exports to Russia, and oil and gas deals in the Arctic are held up by the sanctions. Norwegians indeed don’t necessarily agree that events in Ukraine in 2014 warranted the ongoing sanctions.

So why now, does Norway—a progressive, peaceful, affluent nation of well-educated rational people—break with the long time understanding with Moscow and send such an unfriendly signal to its powerful neighbor, with which it shares a 120-mile border?

I shouldn’t feel this personally. But nevertheless. I feel embarrassed.

My mother was half-Norwegian, half-Swedish. My paternal grandmother half-Norwegian. (That makes me 3/8 Norwegian.) I know how to make lefse. I am proud of my Viking heritage, and the mainly Norwegian-led campaigns that led to the settlement of Iceland and Greenland, and the “discovery of America” by 1000; produced the Viking-ruled province of Normandy in France in the 910s; led to the Norman invasion of England in 1066 establishing the House of Normandy dynasty, and to the Norman conquest of Sicily from the 1060s. (It was those amazing dragon-headed longships that didn’t just ply the North Sea, Atlantic and Mediterranean but the rivers of Central Asia, trading peacefully with many peoples.)

I am proud of the global sweep of my ancestors, brutal that I assume they were (if I am indeed descended from Vikings, as opposed to mere thralls or full-time peasants). I am proud of the very progressive playwright Henrik Ibsen (The Doll’s House), the tenderly psychological painter Edvard Munch (The Scream, The Sick Child, Madonna), and the romantic nationalist composer Edvard Grieg (Peer Gynt, based on Ibsen’s play).

My wife and I named our son Erik, with a deliberate K since a C would be Anglo-Saxon and wimpy.

I am proud of that fact that while no coffee is grown in Norway and it was only introduced in the late seventeenth century, and was intensively opposed by the Lutheran clergy, its consumption became prevalent in the 19th century and now Norwegians drink more coffee daily than any people on earth. I remember the strong smell of perk coffee every morning at my Grandma Nelson’s apartment in Minnesota in my childhood. Park of ethnic identity, like lutefisk. All of this good and positive.

In my youth Scandinavia meant some sort of “socialism” or at least welfare state; distance from the U.S. on foreign policy, especially the Vietnam War; rational secularism in the face of a declining Lutheran establishment; and ideals of sexual liberation. The Sami liberation movement made progress, led by people like the amazing joik singer Mari Boine. The Nordic countries had a reputation for charitableness and disproportionate donations to aid organizations. They had an independent often joint foreign policy; for example, all Nordic countries including Norway recognized the DPRK in 1974 and established embassies in Pyongyang. Norway has played a role in negotiations between the DPRK and Washington. And between Israel and its backers and the Palestinians; remember the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995?

By tradition the NATO Secretary-General (as opposed to its military chief) is not a U.S. officer. Since the establishment of the position in 1952 it had been held by four Italians, three Netherlanders, three Britons, two Belgians, one German, and one Spaniard up to August 2009. Then the former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen became the first Scandinavian to hold the post. He was followed in October 2014 by the former Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg. Meanwhile, the Norwegian/Finnish aerospace and “defense” group Nordic Ammunition Company (Nammo) has become one of the world’s top 10 weapons exporters, mostly supplying NATO.

Suddenly the Nordic peoples are embracing the beast with new fervor. The Nordic countries have grown closer to the U.S. in terms of common response to Russian behavior (which is to say, Russia’s response to NATO expansion). Rather than note that U.S. policy in the Balkans and the Middle East for the last three decades have produced horrible suffering for the world, readily apparent on the faces of the 300,000 refugees currently in Norway, they cozy up further to the source of the problem. Oslo says; send us more troops to defend us against Russia!

Uff da! as my mom and her mom would said. (This means WTF in Norwegian.)

Sweden and Finland are of course not members of NATO. But as a NATO website notes: “Sweden is one of NATO’s most active partners and a valued contributor to NATO-led Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan and the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS/Daesh – it is one of five countries that has enhanced opportunities for dialogue and cooperation with NATO.” And: “Finland is one of NATO’s most active partners and a valued contributor to NATO-led operations and missions in the Balkans and Afghanistan – it is one of five countries that has enhanced opportunities for dialogue and cooperation with NATO.”

This is not good. What has NATO ever done for Norway? Or maybe one should ask, what has Norway ever done for NATO?

In 1999, in the first-ever deployment of NATO forces in war (something that had never occurred during the Cold War), the Royal Norwegian Air Force dropped bombs on Belgrade from F-16s. Norwegian troops were the first of the NATO forces to arrive at Pristina (following the Russians). Norway has had about 500 troops in Afghanistan since 2001. Norway contributed 150 soldiers to the criminal attack on Iraq in 2003 withdrawing them three years later, but 50 Norwegian military but officers are again in Iraq, working as trainers. In March 2014 after NATO had decided to destroy Libya, the Royal Norwegian Air Force deployed six F-16AM fighters in conjunction with Danish fighters, carrying out about 10% of the bombing missions during the campaign, dropping about 600 bombs and attacking Gaddafi’s residence in Tripoli.

That is, Norway has committed war crimes for NATO. Norway has paid deference to Washington, despite the fact that its trade is overwhelmingly with the EU. It has a strong economy and reasons to strengthen ties with neighboring Russia rather than provoking Moscow with a dumb gesture.

At a certain point the Viking leader Rollo broke with his brother Ragnar Lothbrok, to free himself and assert his own identity. I am not suggesting that Norway invade France as Rollo did, or anywhere else, but that it do the opposite, and tell the U.S. that Oslo won’t bomb for you anymore. And why host U.S. troops?

USA’s “Soft” Coup In Ethiopia

Thomas C. Mountain

The USA has launched a “Soft Coup” in Ethiopia in an attempt to relieve growing revolutionary pressure from the Ethiopian people after 3 years of failed martial law rule.

These past three years had seen brutal repression with thousands killed and tens of thousands thrown into regime dungeons with no end in sight. The devil was taking his due, with a growing foreign currency shortage, unemployment and hunger and disease stalking the land, and to top it off the decades long divide and conquer ethnic warfare strategy of the regime has come home to roost.

Lead by pressure from the Oromo’s, over 40 million strong and Africa’s largest nationality, the old Abyssinian empire, Ethiopia, is coming apart at the seams. Most of the population, mainly Muslim, want independence or some sort of self rule from the Orthodox Christian “Abyssinians” of Haile Sellasie and Menelik infamy continued by today’s ethnic minority Tigrayan regime.

In this “Soft Coup” the ruling regime, former Marxist-Leninist-Hoxha-ite guerrilla fighters from the province of Tigray turned 100% democratic (they won 100% of the seats in the Parliament the last election) have seen themselves pushed into the back seat with a 42 year old Oromo, the country’s and Africa’s largest nationality at 40 million strong, now installed as Prime Minister.

To understand just how unprecedented this is you have to understand a little Ethiopian history. Ethiopia, or Abyssinia as it used to be known, is an African Empire created with Italian supplied firearms during the late 19th century. The biggest victims of the Ethiopian Empire were the Oromo peoples who until the Abbysinians of Menelek and later Haile Sellasie got their hands on Italian machine guns and artillery had used their legendary cavalry to sweep back all previous
attempts to enslave them. And enslave them the Abbysinians did, for after gunning down their warriors on the battlefield, the Amhara ethnic minority empire went on a rampage against their new subjects, enslaving, murdering and massacring across Africa’s largest nation in a wave of terror and destruction unprecedented in African history, overstanding even the African slave trade in brutality and extermination in such a short period. It has been estimated that millions of Oromo were wiped out in the decades immediately after their defeat by the Abbysinian Empire, many starving to death as their cattle and graineries were looted. The Abbysinian soldiers were not paid salaries and took their livelyhood by being freely allowed to loot and pillage after victory on the battle field, guaranteed thanks to Italian supplied firepower.

When the Abbysinian brigands were done Africa’s largest nation was reduced to beggary and bondage with their Oromo town of Finefine annexed and renamed Addis Ababa, capital of a Christian Abbysinia.

So to have a Muslim, Oromo Prime Minister is no small matter in Ethiopia marking how much and quickly the times are a changing. Of course Don Yamamoto is behind all this, he hasnt been the Ambassador to Ethiopia all these years and now Assistant Secretary of State for Africa and not learned a few things. Any one can see that the old guard regime die hards werent going to keep a lid on the Ethiopian social pressure cooker much longer and if the USA didnt act quickly it may find itself a day late and a dollar short in terms of influence.

For the USA this is a nightmare in the making for Ethiopia has been the main recipient of US military investment and the center of US intelligence gathering in Africa and a local policeman on the beat in service to Pax Americana in the Horn of Africa, through which flows the commerce of Asia and Europe, the worlds biggest trading partners.

To avoid this the USA has ordered a change in course for their regime henchmen with new faces being installed and promises of peace and prosperity in the wind, especially peace with Ethiopia’s number one nemesis and former colony, Eritrea.

To accomplish this veteran Horn of African “diplomat” Donald Yamamoto, now Assistant Secretary of State for Africa has instituted a “soft coup” approach starting last year when the decision was made that the old Tigrayan ethnic minority regimes usefulness was now a liability. Brute force and the iron fist had only made the masses of Ethiopian more resolute in their hatred of the regime and something pretty quick had to be done or the situation could begin to spiral out of control.

Hard cash from mainly the USA and the UK began to dry up, and the squeeze was on. With a $13billion trade deficit buying critical imports has become a robbing peter to pay paul strategy, and the resultant shortages and inflationary pressures have only increased the Ethiopian regimes isolation.

Under Trump the USA has seen reproachment with former arch foe North Korea (arguably Asia’s only socialist country) and it seems Eritrea, Africa’s only socialist country, is finding a much more friendly reception at the US State Department these days.

The United Arab Emirates, who have built military and naval bases in Eritrea (in open defiance of UNSecCouncil Sanctions) are said to have Trumps ear and have been pushing for lifting sanctions and the economic embargo against Eritrea, with peace with Ethiopia and an explosion of trade for the Eritrean economy being a major incentive.

Now that the new Ethiopia regime leadership has announced, though not yet implemented, adherance to the Algiers peace treaty and border demarcation agreement the Crown Prince of the UAE has arrived bearing $1billion of hard cash and $2billion in “investments”, an emergency injection of liquidity for a hard currency strapped Ethiopia regime.

As for peace with their neighbors Eritrea has stuck to our demands as detailed in the peace deal and border demarcation after the last aggression by Ethiopia and until the letter of the deal is in place Eritrea has said it has nothing to talk to Ethiopia about.

Buying time is what the USA supported by the UAE is counting on with its new “soft coup” scheme for Ethiopia and the 90 million person question is whether the Ethiopian people, lead by the Oromo’s, Africa’s largest nation, will bite the American/UAE bait or tell Pax American to go to hell and decide to break free from the Abyssinian empire and declare themselves independent.

The next few years could see a leopard change its spots, as in the old regime changing its coat. Or it could see a bust up of Africa’s only indigenous empire, todays Ethiopia.

With the disaster called South Sudan to learn from so called “independence” could be jumping from the frying pan into the fire, with small, ill organized countries easy pickings for the circling sharks lead by the United Snakes of Amerikkka, all to willing to incite “black on black, African tribal violence” rather than allow any truly independent African countries brought to birth.

End the Wars to Halt the Refugee Crisis

Ramzy Baroud

Europe is facing the most significant refugee crisis since World War II. All attempts at resolving the issue have failed, mostly because they have ignored the root causes of the problem.

On June 11, Italy’s new Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, blocked the Aquarius rescue ship, carrying 629 refugees and economic migrants, from docking at its ports.

A statement by Doctors without Borders (MSF) stated that the boat was carrying 123 unaccompanied minors and seven pregnant women.

“From now on, Italy begins to say NO to the traffic of human beings, NO to the business of illegal immigration,” said Salvini, who also heads the far-right League Party.

The number of refugees was repeated in news broadcasts time and again, as a mere statistic. In reality, it is 629 precious lives at stake, each with a compelling reason why she/he has undertaken the deadly journey.

While the cruelty of refusing entry to a boat laden with desperate refugees is obvious, it has to be viewed within a larger narrative pertaining to the rapidly changing political landscape in Europe and the crises under way in the Middle East and North Africa.

Italy’s new government, a coalition of the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement and the far-right League party, seems intent on stopping the flow of refugees into the country, as promised on the campaign trail.

However, if politicians continue to ignore the root causes of the problem, the refugee crisis will not go away on its own.

The disturbing truth is this: Europe is accountable for much of the mayhem under way in the Middle East. Right-wing pundits may wish to omit that part of the debate altogether, but facts will not simply disappear when ignored.

European politicians should honestly confront the question: what are the reasons that lead millions of people to leave their homes? And fashion equally honest and humane solutions.

In 2017, an uprising-turned-civil-war in Syria led to the exodus of millions of Syrian refugees.

Ahmed is a 55-year old Syrian refugee, who fled the country with his wife and two children. His reason for leaving was no other than the grinding, deadly war.

He told the UN Refugees Agency: “I was born in Homs and I wanted to live there until the end, but this vicious war left us no other choice but to leave all behind. For the sake of my children’s future we had to take the risk.”

“I had to pay the smuggler eight thousand US dollars for each member of my family. I’ve never done anything illegal in my whole life, but there was no other solution.”

Saving his family meant breaking the rules; millions would do the same thing if confronted with the same grim dilemma. In fact, millions have.

African immigrants are often blamed for ‘taking advantage’ of the porous Libyan coastline to ‘sneak’ into Europe. Yet, many of those refugees had lived peacefully in Libya and were forced to flee following the NATO-led war on that country in March 2011.

“I’m originally from Nigeria and I had been living in Libya for five years when the war broke out,” wrote Hakim Bello in the Guardian.

“I had a good life: I was working as a tailor and I earned enough to send money home to loved ones. But after the fighting started, people like us – black people – became very vulnerable. If you went out for something to eat, a gang would stop you and ask if you supported them. They might be rebels, they might be government, you didn’t know.”

The security mayhem in Libya led not only to the persecution of many Libyans, but also millions of African workers, like Bello, as well. Many of those workers could neither go home nor stay in Libya. They, too, joined the dangerous mass escapes to Europe.

War-torn Afghanistan has served as the tragic model of the same story.

Ajmal Sadiqi escaped Afghanistan, which has been in a constant state of war for many years, a war that took a much deadlier turn since the US invasion in 2001.

Sadiqi told CNN that the vast majority of those who joined him on his journey from Afghanistan, through other countries to Turkey, Greece and other EU countries, died along the way. But, like many in his situation, he had few alternatives.

“Afghanistan has been at war for 50 years and things are never going to change,” he said.

“Here, I have nothing, but I feel safe. I can walk on the street without being afraid.”

Alas, that sense of safety is, perhaps, temporary. Many in Europe are refusing to examine their own responsibility in creating or feeding conflicts around the world, while perceiving the refugees as a threat.

Despite the obvious correlation between western-sustained wars and the EU’s refugee crisis, no moral awakening is yet to be realized. Worse still, France and Italy are now involved in exploiting the current warring factions in Libya for their own interests.

Syria is not an entirely different story. There, too, the EU is hardly innocent.

The Syria war has resulted in a massive influx of refugees, most of whom are hosted by neighboring Middle Eastern countries, but many have sailed the sea to seek safety in Europe.

“All of Europe has a responsibility to stop people from drowning. It’s partly due to their actions in Africa that people have had to leave their homes,” said Bello.

“Countries such as Britain, France, Belgium and Germany think they are far away and not responsible, but they all took part in colonizing Africa. NATO took part in the war in Libya. They’re all part of the problem.”

Expectedly, Italy’s Salvini and other like-minded politicians refuse to frame the crisis that way.

They use whichever discourse needed to guarantee votes, while ignoring the obvious fact that, without military interventions, economic exploitation and political meddling, a refugee crisis – at least one of this magnitude – could exist in the first place.

Until this fact is recognized by EU governments, the flow of refugees will continue, raising political tension and contributing to the tragic loss of lives of innocent people, whose only hope is merely to survive.

US becomes first nation to quit UN human rights body

Bill Van Auken

The United States Tuesday formally withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council, the first nation in the world to voluntarily quit the organization.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced the decision at the State Department late Tuesday afternoon, delivering prepared remarks and turning on their heels and leaving as the assembled press shouted out questions, including about Washington’s own egregious trampling of human rights on the US southern border.

The decision came one day after opening of the session of the council in Geneva in which its outgoing chief, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, delivered a farewell speech warning against the rise of “chauvinistic nationalism” and denouncing governments for implementing “policies intended to make themselves as inhospitable as possible by increasing the suffering of many already vulnerable people.”

He specifically issued a sharp condemnation of the Trump administration’s immigration policy and voiced concern over the US-backed war against Yemen.

“The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable,” he said, demanding that Washington call an immediate halt to its “zero tolerance” immigration policy and the “forcible separation of these children.” He quoted the president of the American Association of Pediatrics, who declared that locking the children up separately from their parents constituted “government-sanctioned child abuse.'”

Turning to Yemen, where the Pentagon has been providing arms, mid-air refueling for Saudi warplanes and intelligence and logistical support without which the near-genocidal war against the Yemeni people could not take place, al-Hussein stated: “I emphasize my grave worry regarding the Saudi and Emirati-led coalition's ongoing attacks in Hodeidah—which could result in enormous civilian casualties and have a disastrous impact on life-saving humanitarian aid to millions of people which comes through the port.”

Just days earlier, Washington and London had joined in killing a Swedish-proposed resolution calling for a ceasefire in Yemen and a halt to the Saudi-UAE offensive.

The developments on the US-Mexican border and the effective torture of children for the purpose of deterring refugees from coming to the US, as well as Washington’s criminal role in Yemen, expose the rank hypocrisy of Washington’s pretense of quitting the Human Rights Council out of some moral outrage over the body’s failure to pursue abusers.

It is clear, however, that the plan to quit the council had been made well in advance, announced nearly a year ago by Haley, and justified in the name of defending Israel and the failure of the body to bow to Washington’s demands that it serve as an instrument of US policy of aggression against Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.

A year ago, Haley delivered a speech in Geneva that amounted to an ultimatum to the Human Rights Council to implement US-dictated “reforms” or face Washington’s withdrawal.

Chief among the changes demanded by Haley was the abolishing of Agenda Item 7, which makes the “Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied territories” a permanent part of the UNHRC’s agenda. The Trump administration and Haley have argued that the existence of the agenda item is evidence of “anti-Israeli bias,” rather than the recognition of the unique status of the Palestinian territories, which have been under permanent occupation for over half a century, with their population denied elemental human rights.

Haley reportedly attempted to blackmail Palestinian representatives at the UN to support the repeal of the agenda item, threatening that unless they did so, Washington would not renew its funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which supports 5.9 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Haley has been a consistent voice in defense of Israeli impunity in the oppression of the Palestinians. Earlier this month she used the US veto on the UN Security Council to kill a resolution calling upon Tel Aviv to avoid “excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate force” in its repression of the “Great March of Return” demonstrations in Gaza, where 128 unarmed protesters have been killed with live ammunition, and another 14,600 injured.

In their remarks at the State Department Tuesday, both Pompeo and Haley made sanctimonious references to “God-given” human rights, that only the Trump administration, presumably, was prepared to uphold.

Pompeo indicted the Human Rights Council for “shameless hypocrisy” in that it had “some of the world’s most serious offenders sitting on the council itself.”

Haley called the council a “cesspool of political bias,” while claiming that Washington’s participation had provided “the last shred of credibility that the council has.”

In reality the biggest human rights criminal on the face of the planet is US imperialism itself, which in the last quarter century of uninterrupted aggressive wars has killed and maimed millions and decimated entire societies. The departure of the US representatives from the council is only another step in the repudiation of international law in the pursuit of an “America first” agenda that points towards new and more catastrophic wars that the UN is incapable of opposing.

The Trump administration will lose influence for the United States and the leverage to affect diplomatic outcomes if it goes ahead with its decision to leave the UN Human Rights Council, US Congressman Eliot Engel said in a statement on Tuesday.

“By withdrawing from the council, we lose our leverage and allow the council’s bad actors to follow their worst impulses unchecked, including running roughshod over Israel,” Engel, the ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said.

Assets of world’s “high net wealth” millionaires surged to $70 trillion in 2017

Barry Grey

The concentration of the planet’s wealth in the hands of a narrow financial elite is growing by leaps and bounds. A new report published Tuesday reveals that the wealth of the world’s 18.1 million “high net worth individuals”—those having investable assets of $1 million or more—shot up by 10.6 percent last year to top $70 trillion for the first time ever.

The “World Wealth Report 2018,” issued by the consulting firm Capgemini, revealed that the combined wealth of the world’s millionaires rose for the sixth consecutive year in 2017 to reach $70.2 trillion. It is on target to surpass $100 trillion by 2025.

Capgemini defines a high net wealth individual (HNWI) as someone with assets above $1 million, excluding his or her primary residence, collectibles, consumables and consumer durables. This defines a wealthy elite that owns more than $1 million in stocks, bonds, real estate or other investments.

The number of HNWIs grew almost 10 percent, or 1.6 million. The United States, Japan, Germany and China are the four largest markets for millionaires, accounting for 61 percent of the world’s HNWIs. The US tops the list with 5.3 million HNWIs, a 10 percent increase from 2016.

However, the Asia-Pacific region has most of these millionaires overall and accounted for the bulk of the increase in both the number of HNWIs (74.9 percent of the total) and the rise in their global wealth (68.8 percent). Economic inequality appears to be rising faster in this region than any other. Japan saw a 9 percent increase in HNWI millionaires, China an 11 percent rise and India a stunning 20 percent increase.

The financial oligarchy itself resides within what the report calls “ultra-high net wealth individuals,” those with $30 million or more in investable assets. They comprise only 1 percent of HNWIs, or 174,000 individuals, but they account for a vastly disproportionate share of the overall wealth of HNWI millionaires, as well as the increase in HNWI wealth. These ultra-HNWIs own some 35 percent of total NHWI wealth. In 2017, their ranks grew by 11.2 percent and their wealth by 12 percent, reaching $24.5 trillion.

The main factor driving the rapid enrichment of the financial aristocracy is the record rise in stock prices. “High net worth individuals around the world enjoyed investment returns above 20 percent for the second year in a row,” Anirban Bose, head of Capgemini’s financial services global strategic business unit, wrote in the report’s preface. The report noted that global market capitalization grew 21.8 percent in 2017.

The stock market has served as the primary mechanism for central banks and governments around the world to increase the wealth of the financial oligarchy, which dominates the world economy and all of the official institutions of society and dictates the policies of governments. For decades, the central banks, led by the US Federal Reserve, working in tandem with governments of the nominal “left” no less than the right, have deliberately engineered a vast transfer of wealth from the working class to the ruling elite by pursuing policies designed to pump up the financial markets.

These polices have been intensified since the 2008 financial crash. The Fed and the US government, first under Bush and then Obama, responded to the Wall Street meltdown by enacting measures to ensure that the oligarchs recouped all of their losses and were able to exploit the crisis to further enrich themselves. In addition to bailing out the banks and hedge funds with trillions of dollars in tax-payer money, they provided virtually free credit to Wall Street by means of near-zero interest rates and used “quantitative easing”—a euphemism for money-printing—to offload the banks’ bad loans onto the Fed’s balance sheet.

From the low-point of the post-crash recession in March 2009 to the present, US stock prices have risen four-fold, stoking a similar stock bonanza internationally.

This stock market boom and the entire process of social plunder have depended on the suppression of working class opposition and a savage attack on workers’ living standards by means of austerity and wage-cutting. The throttling of the class struggle has been contracted out to the trade unions, the industrial police agencies of the ruling class.

One of the most significant findings in the Capgemini report is that the total financial wealth of the world’s HNWIs more than doubled between 2008 and 2017, rising from $32.8 trillion to $70.2 trillion. This same period has seen, in the world inhabited by the vast majority of humans, a growth of poverty, hunger, homelessness, disease and, in the United States, a decline in life expectancy, a surge in infant and maternal mortality, and record rates of suicide and drug addiction.

This attack has continued and intensified under Trump, as well as governments in Europe, Latin America and Asia. Just last week the Federal Reserve raised interest rates and announced a tightening of monetary policy in response to the growth of workers’ strikes and protests. The oligarchy is petrified that lower unemployment and a tight labor market will encourage a militant wages movement that would undercut the entire basis of the stock market surge. It is moving to slow the economy and drive up unemployment.

To place the wealth of the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires in perspective, the total of $24.5 trillion owned by “ultra-high net wealth individuals” is almost one-fifth of the world gross domestic product of $135 trillion.

$24.5 trillion is more than the GDP of the United States. It is more than the combined GDPs of the next three countries—China, Japan and Germany.

Just the global increase in ultra-HNWI wealth in 2017, $2.6 trillion, is larger than the GDPs of countries such as Italy, Brazil, Canada and Russia.

What could this money be used for were it not squandered to satisfy the demands of the rich and the super-rich for mansions, private jets and yachts? To give an example, the United Nations estimates it would cost $30 billion a year to eradicate world hunger. That means the money currently controlled by the world’s ultra-HNWIs could eliminate world hunger for 817 years.

The “World Wealth Report 2018” is only the latest in a wave of studies documenting the ever tightening grip of a tiny financial oligarchy and its ultra-wealthy periphery over the world’s resources. Wealth concentration on such a scale makes it impossible to seriously address a single social issue. The staggering diversion of resources into private wealth accumulation by the financial oligarchy starves society of the resources it needs to deal with the most basic problems.

The working class has no choice but to confront head-on the problem of economic inequality. The financial elite enforces its social interests through the wholesale buying of political parties and politicians, making democracy under capitalism nothing but a hollow shell. Any attempt within the framework of the profit system to carry out a modest reallocation of resources to ensure that all people had the basic rudiments of nutrition, health care and education would provoke a furious response from the oligarchy, which has at its disposal not only the courts, politicians and mass media, but, even more decisively, the police and the army.

When social reform becomes impossible, social revolution becomes inevitable. There is no avoiding the conclusion that it is necessary to expropriate the wealth of the financial oligarchs.

Battle rages for Hodeidah as Yemen faces threat of mass starvation

Bill Van Auken

A nightmare is unfolding in Yemen’s Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, with civilians attempting to flee a siege mounted by US-backed forces led by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia as bombs and shells explode around them.

The plight of the city, where the United Nations warned that 250,000 could lose their lives to the onslaught, is overshadowed by the threat posed to the entire country by the shutting down of the port, which is the lifeline for food, fuel, medicine and other vital supplies upon which at least two-thirds of the country’s population of 27 million depend.

With 8 million already on the brink of famine and 22 million dependent upon food aid, the paralysis of Hodeidah for any length of time threatens to claim millions of lives from hunger and disease.

Opening a three-week session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the head of the UN’s human rights department, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, stated on Monday: “I emphasize my grave worry regarding the Saudi and Emirati-led coalition’s ongoing attacks in Hodeidah which could result in enormous civilian casualties and have a disastrous impact on life-saving humanitarian aid to millions of people which comes through the port.”

Even before the latest siege began, the UN had warned that given the existing conditions and the stranglehold imposed by the Saudi-UAE blockade, another 10 million Yemenis could be facing famine by year’s end.

Efforts by United Nations special envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths to broker a ceasefire were scuttled Monday, after the foreign minister of the UAE, Anwar Gargash, rejected anything outside of an unconditional surrender by the Houthi rebels who hold the port and their immediate evacuation

“There can be no conditions in any offers to withdraw,” said Gargash at a press conference in Dubai. “If the rebels wanted to set conditions, they should have thought of that a year ago. … Now is not the time to negotiate.”

The UAE ultimatum follows last week’s decision by the UN Security Council, meeting in secret session, to reject a call by Sweden, a non-permanent member of the council, for the body to demand an immediate ceasefire and a halt to the Saudi-UAE offensive. The proposal was killed by the US and Britain, both permanent members of the council with veto power, and both heavily involved in arming and supporting the Saudi-led forces.

A third permanent member of the Security Council is France. The French daily Le Figaro, citing senior military sources, reported on Saturday that French special forces are deployed in Yemen along with forces from the UAE.

The United States gave the green light for the offensive on the port city, despite warnings by aid organizations and the UN that the military action could lead to the starvation of millions. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a brief statement acknowledging that Washington had assured the UAE regime that it understood its “security concerns,” while urging it to maintain the “free flow of humanitarian aid.”

This is rank hypocrisy, given that the strategic aim of seizing Hodeidah is to cut off supplies to the territory controlled by the Houthis in order to starve the population into submission.

It has since been reported that US military personnel are working together with Saudi and UAE forces to select targets in the port city, supposedly to avoid civilian casualties.

The siege has already triggered a deepening of Yemen’s humanitarian catastrophe, with the UN reporting that nearly 5,000 families have been displaced by the action, with many of them fleeing villages south of Hodeidah into the crowded port city of 600,000, which itself faces imminent bombardment and has little resources to support internal refugees.

A local aid worker told the British daily Independent Monday: “People are trying to leave with rockets and mortars over their heads. Other people are besieged in their homes. They don’t know if their family members managed to escape or who survived. It’s hot and there is no water and we are scared. Please stop what is happening.”

In the Dubai press conference, the UAE foreign minister said, “Our approach is one of gradual calibrated and methodical pressure designed for unconditional withdrawal of [the] Houthis.”

Behind these words it is apparent that the ground force besieging Hodeidah, made up of UAE troops, Sudanese forces and Yemeni mercenaries, have made little progress in their attempt to take the city.

Yemen’s Ansarullah movement, as the Houthi rebels are officially known, dismissed reports that Saudi-led forces had seized Hodeidah’s airport and said that they were in retreat. The airport itself, however, has been completely destroyed by bombardment.

“A battle of attrition awaits the Saudi alliance which it cannot withstand. The Saudi coalition will not win the battle in Hodeidah,” Ansarullah spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam told the Lebanese-based al-Mayadeen TV.

Given the lack of progress on the ground, the Saudi-led force can be expected to place ever greater reliance on air power, raising the threat that Hodeidah will face a similar fate as Mosul and Raqqa, which were largely reduced to rubble by US bombs, missiles and shells, killing and wounding tens of thousands of civilians.

This air war against the Yemeni people would be impossible without US approval, in terms of political support, arms supplies, the mid-air refueling of Saudi and UAE warplanes and the Pentagon’s staffing of a joint command center in Riyadh that relays US intelligence for targeting airstrikes.

The Trump administration in the US and May’s government in Britain are, together with the reactionary oil monarchies that they arm and support, guilty of massive war crimes in Yemen.

For Washington, Yemen is seen as a means of countering Iranian influence in the region. US officials have claimed, without presenting any credible evidence, that the Houthis act as a proxy for Tehran and are armed and trained by Iran. In reality, both Riyadh and Washington oppose any government in Yemen that is not a servile puppet of Saudi and US interests.

To press its campaign against Iran and for US hegemony in the region, US imperialism is willing to sacrifice the lives of millions.

Australian government denies palliative care to dying refugee

Max Newman

Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal-National government is continuing its punitive and inhuman treatment of refugees by refusing to provide a 63-year-old dying man with the palliative care he requires. Ali, an Afghan refugee, is dying from lung cancer in one of Australia’s offshore prison camps, located on the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru.

The Australian Border Force (ABF) told Ali he would not be moved to Australia. It claimed that Ali had “refused treatment” because he declined an offer to be transferred to Taiwan to receive care. Ali told ABF he did not want to go because it is most likely there will be no translator for his language, Hazaraghi, and no one who could perform the Shia Muslim rituals before he died.

The ABF also offered Ali $25,000 to return to Afghanistan, where his wife and children live. However, he is a member of the historically persecuted Hazara ethnic minority. Hazaras have been the target of killings and assaults by the government and Sunni extremist groups, such as the Taliban.

Ali is currently imprisoned in the RPC 1 camp on Nauru, which cannot provide him with the necessary palliative care. Doctors on the island described the camp as “dangerously inadequate,” saying his prognosis is “dire” and his life expectancy is “a matter of months.”

Members of the Hazara community on Nauru condemned the denial of Ali’s request for transfer to Australia. They told the Australian media he “is very angry, he is very upset as well. He said these people do not have a human heart.”

Australia’s government is condemning Ali to an excruciating death. Dr Barri Phatarfod, speaking for Doctors for Refugees, said: “In Australia, we have well-defined palliative care standards [and the ability to] deliver powerful analgesia to offset the agonising pain of cancer ... none of these are available in Nauru.”

Sources inside the detention centre reported that executive-level Department of Home Affairs officials decide on requests for medical transfers. When asked to comment, department officials said medical transfers are determined on a “case-by-case basis.”

Already, two deaths in the detention camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island have been directly linked to the denial of medical transfers. Faysal Ishak Ahmed, a 27-year-old asylum seeker from Sudan, died in December 2016 after suffering a seizure and Hamid Kehazaei, an Iranian refugee, died in September 2014 from a treatable virus.

Australia’s bipartisan “border protection” regime, maintained by Liberal-National and Labor governments alike, involves militarily turning back or forcibly imprisoning all asylum seekers who try to reach Australia by boat.

Like the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of ripping refugee children away from their parents and imprisoning them in separate tent camps, the denial of medical treatment is a deliberate measure to punish and deter people from fleeing persecution and oppression.

This is coupled with a lack of health care facilities to treat a number of medical issues, including childbirth and endemic mental health problems. The conditions in Australia’s prison camps are so severe that detainees, including young children, are driven to harming themselves, and numbers have committed suicide. In 2016, a leading doctor who worked at the camps likened the conditions to torture.

There have been at least 12 preventable deaths since the Greens-backed Labor Party government reopened the offshore detention centres in 2012. The latest victim is Fariborz K, a 26-year-old Iranian man whose body was found by his wife last Friday on Nauru. He was only recently married, and his wife and mother have been hospitalised after the incident. His 12-year-old brother has been taken into care by the camp authorities.

In April, Fariborz’s young brother made a video issuing a public plea for assistance. “I feel helpless because there is no one to help us,” he said. “There is no one to see how we are suffering. My mother is very sick and my brother is totally depressed.”

The International Health and Medical Service, which operates the medical facilities in the camp, assessed Fariborz on April 24 as “being severely traumatised” due to being held captive as a 10-year-old child in Iran.

Fariboz and his family have been imprisoned for more than five years on Nauru, with no options for transfer to another country. There is mounting evidence that a US-Australia refugee swap deal is deliberately excluding anyone from Iran, Somalia or other countries on the Trump administration’s travel ban list.

The swap deal involves heavily-vetted refugees being transferred to the US, in exchange for an undisclosed number of Central American asylum seekers. This agreement is itself reactionary, consigning refugees to opposite sides of the world, denied the right to reunite with their families.

However, the agreement did offer detainees some glimmer of hope to escape their horrible conditions. For Fariboz and his family, even this limited option was not available.

Fariboz’s death came just weeks after a Rohingya man died in an apparent suicide on Manus Island. He jumped from the window of a moving bus travelling at 60 kilometres an hour.

Starting with the Labor government’s mandatory detention of refugees in 1992, successive Australian governments have pioneered many of the brutal measures now being taken in Europe and the US. In 2017, US President Donald Trump praised the “Australian model” as the standard for the treatment of refugees and immigrants worldwide.

The “Australian model” combines cruelty toward refugees with a “points-based” immigration program that discriminates in favour of wealthy applicants and those whose labour power can be most readily exploited by Australian-based employers.

UNICEF Innovation Fund for Drone Startups in Developing Countries 2018

Application Deadline: 22nd July 2018

Eligible Countries: UNICEF programme countries (see Link below)

About the Award: The UNICEF Innovation Fund is looking to make up to $100K equity-free investments to provide early stage (seed) finance to for-profit technology start-ups that have the potential to benefit humanity through the use of drones.

Type: Grants, Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: Applicants must:

• have already had their startup registered.
• be resident in one of UNICEF’s programme countries
• have a working, open-source drone prototype or service (or you are willing to make it open-source) showing promising results

Selection Criteria: The UNICEF Innovation Fund is currently looking to invest in a group of companies developing drone solutions. Examples of these include, but are not limited to:
1) Software to collect, share and analyse data from UAVs (for low-connectivity areas)

• Remote transfer or processing of visual data over low bandwidth networks
• AI / Machine learning / Deep learning algorithms for feature detection and counting
• Data management portal/stakeholder access protocol management

**Of particular interest software applications that work in low-connectivity areas
2) Software to manage flight and delivery operations

• Manage supply chain payments and quality of assets for sensitive products
• Load, delivery or flight navigation optimization
• Digital management of delivery execution
• Feature detection to land or drop deliveries autonomously on landing pads

3) Business models and sustainable drone services in emerging markets

• Develop new services through the use of existing third-party drones for transport, image capturing and analysis (e.g. to support health care, crop disease detection, risk  mapping, search and rescue, disaster preparedness, etc.)
• Explore ways to combine existing services into multi-role service applications

4) Air Safety, risk management tools and Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) Systems

• Simulation or predictive tools for managing altitude, navigation deconfliction, schedules, routings, or fleet management
• Use case specific risk assessment tools (integratable with ICAO, EASA, NASA or other internationally recognised frameworks in development)
• APP for field operations and decision-making process management
• Machine-to-machine / V2V anti-collision software, neural networks

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• Seed funding. The Fund provides $50- $100,000 in equity-free seed funding. The money is intended for  prototype testing and validation, and to get it to a stage where the company has proof that the solution works.
• Product and technology development. Selected startups will receive technical assistance from the UNICEF Ventures team to help validate and improve their solutions.
• Business Growth. The Fund taps into a network of mentors who help startup teams develop their business model and strategy to grow their company and ultimately profit.
• Networks and platforms. UNICEF Ventures has a Drones lead and data science team with access to corporate and academic partnerships and use cases that selected drones start-ups can benefit from.
• Maximize impact. As the world’s leading organisation for children, UNICEF has a network of experts and partners across its Country Offices who can provide geographically localized advice and partnerships needed to reach more users.
• Drone Corridor.Selected start-ups will have access to the UNICEF Drone corridor in Malawi providing the physical space for testing their solutions. Data from peer companies testing in the three drone  corridors where UNICEF is present will be made available.

How to Apply:  Check the general eligibility criteria:

• You must be registered as a private company in a UNICEF programme country;
• You are working on open source technology solutions or willing to be open-source under the following licenses or their equivalent: BSD (software), CERN (hardware), or CC-BY (content);
• You have an existing prototype of the solution with promising results from initial pilots;
• Your solution has the potential to positively impact the lives of children.

If your company and project meet the eligibility criteria and is aligned with the tech use cases we have outlined above, visit our site to read more about the application process and submit an application.

• Go to www.unicefinnovationfund.org
• Click on ‘Submit’ and then ‘Submissions by Start-ups’.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Award Providers: UNICEF Innovation Fund

Possibility Of Global Nuclear Disarmament?

Sandeep Pandey & Bobby Ramakant

After a hiatus in the movement for global nuclear disarmament it is heartening to note that there are some positive developments over the last couple of years. The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution for ‘taking forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations’ on 23 December, 2016 which culminated in the adoption of ‘Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons’ on 7 July, 2017, with 122 countries voting in its favour, only one voting against it and 70 not participating. International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize ‘for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic human consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.’ And more recently, on 12 June, 2018, United States and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have agreed for denuclearization of Korean Peninsula in peace talks held at Singapore.

It is noteworthy that the very first resolution of General Assembly of UN adopted on 24 January, 1946 called for elimination of nuclear weapons. Since then a number of resolutions have been passed. However, there has hardly been any movement in that direction. Number of nuclear weapons and number of countries possessing them have gone up. The dishonesty of the big five – all members of Security Council, US, United Kingdom, Russia, France and China, officially described as the Nuclear Weapon States – in continuing to hold on to the weapons while trying to ensure that no other nation produces these weapons through imposition of Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty has made a mockery of the exercise of global nuclear disarmament. 191 States have joined NPT, the largest number to have done so in any arms limitation or disarmament agreement, which includes the five nuclear weapon States. India, Pakistan and Israel have kept out of these treaties with all three having ‘illegally’ acquired the nuclear weapons. India did not go along with CTBT as it thought that the treat failed to include a commitment by nuclear weapon States to eliminate their nuclear weapons within a time-bound framework. US and China have not even ratified CTBT. North Korea had acceded to NPT in 1985 but came out of it in 2003 following testing of its nuclear weapons.

In 1988 the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi put forward a comprehensive proposal for global nuclear disarmament which till date remains the only such initiative by a head of any government at the UN. He described these weapons as immoral and abhorrent as they don’t distinguish between combatant and non-combatant, criticized them for making international politics undemocratic and thought that these inexcusably expensive weapons divert planet’s precious resources away from most pressing needs of human beings. He castigated the much touted principle of nuclear deterrence as the ‘ultimate expression of the philosophy of terrorism, holding humanity hostage to the presumed security needs of a few.’ However, when Rajiv Gandhi saw that the nuclear weapon States were not serious about the goal of global nuclear disarmament he gave up what was the last serious effort by India to pursue the objective of nuclear weapons free world. Ten years after this famous speech at UN, India tested its weapon at Pokaran. Quite predictably India has not voted for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Two Strategic Arms Limitation Talks took place between US and Soviet Union in 1969 and 1979, which led to another two Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties in 1991 and 1993, proposing limits on number of nuclear weapons which each side could possess. In spite of all these well intentioned efforts the world today has a combined stockpile of over twenty thousand nuclear warheads, enough to wipe out all human population from the face of earth. Ironically, these weapons exist for human security.

The Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons believes that the only way to guarantee that nuclear weapons are never used again under any circumstances is to completely eliminate them. It raises concerns about disproportionate impact of nuclear weapons on health of women and girls due to ionizing radiation. It considers suffering and harm caused to victims, such as Hibakusha, the Japanese survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki tragedies, as unacceptable. Significantly, it also raises concerns about impact of nuclear weapons activities on indigenous population. Most Uranium, the raw material found in nature for making nuclear weapons, mining sites are located in habitats of tribals or aborigines. The Treaty considers production, maintenance and modernization of nuclear weapons as waste of economic and human resources. It says nuclear weapons pose risk to all humanity because of possibility of detonation by accident, miscalculation or design. The Treaty highlights the need for a legally binding prohibition of nuclear weapons which includes irreversible, verifiable and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons. It believes nuclear weapons to be abhorrent to principles of humanity and dictates of public conscience.

Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons prevents its party States to develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. It also precludes the possibility of stationing, installation or deployment of nuclear weapons in any party State’s territory.

Article 6 of the Treaty holds States responsible for providing medical care, rehabilitation, psychological support, social and economic inclusion for any victims of use or testing of nuclear weapons. This shows that the Treaty is comprehensive and sensitive to all aspects of nuclear weapons programme.

So far 59 States have signed this Treaty and 10 have ratified it. In order to come into effect ratification by at least 50 countries is required. One hopes that countries which have not signed or ratified it will come forward sooner than later to see it through and take it to its logical conclusion, making this world free of nuclear weapons.

Is Indian Democracy Dying?

Arshad M Khan

The prominent journalist and editor, Shujaat Bukhari was leaving work when he and his two bodyguards were shot and killed. Suffice to say newspapers are the lifeblood of democracy and Indian administered Kashmir under the decades-long grip of a half-million strong security force has a questionable claim. Yet brave journalists, unafraid, write and sometimes pay the consequences.

Following Mr. Bukhari’s murder and the thousands attending his funeral, the security services have raided presses shutting down newspapers. The internet is not quite as easily controlled, so some have been busy updating their sites.

Since Gauari Lankesh was brutally murdered at her doorstep in September 2017, another four journalists have lost their lives. She, too, espoused views contrary to the ruling party’s current philosophy of an India aligned only with the mores of upper-caste Hindus.

Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhi, the principal Indian leaders who fought many decades for independence would have been appalled. Gandhi protected low caste untouchables referring to them as the ‘children of god’; they are now known as Dalits. Nehru, a Brahmin by birth, was a socialist in belief. His dream was of a secular, socialist India. The latter is long over, the former under vicious attack as Muslim and Christian minorities are marginalized. In addition to journalists, three heavyweight intellectuals have been killed. All were rationalists, the Indian word for atheists.

Gandhi was assassinated less than six months after independence by a right-wing Hindu nationalist who was angry at Gandhi’s moderate attitude toward Muslims. The assassin Nathuram Godse was a member of the extreme-right Hindu Mahasabha political party, and had his roots in the paramilitary, Hindutva-promoting Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Its militancy has led to its being banned three times: after the Gandhi assassination, during the Indira Gandhi emergency rule in the mid-1970s, and for its role in the Babri Mosque demolition. The British also found its beliefs beyond the pale and banned it during their rule.

Not only is the RSS flourishing now but it serves openly as the ideological mentor of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Together they continue to push their agenda for a Hindu India tolerating only Hindu culture or beliefs, in other words, Hindutva or Hindu hegemony.

Hindutva scholar Shridhar D. Damle confirms what is quite well known, that the RSS is now exerting its influence in academia, government and cultural organizations. The laws restricting cow slaughter are not a Narendra Modi whim. Mr. Modi joined the RSS at the age of eight, was nurtured and nourished by it, the philosophy seeping into his bones like mother’s milk; any moderation necessitated only by political considerations.

The RSS infiltration of academia is pervasive. Last year, its think tank, Prajnah Pravah, summoned 700 academics including 51 university vice-chancellors (presidents) to Delhi to attend a workshop on the importance of a Hindu narrative in higher education; just one example of influencing what can be taught. A gradual loss of academic freedom has been the frightening consequence of constant interference backed up by its militancy — frightening because dying with intellectual freedom, journalists, writers and thinkers is also Indian democracy … slowly but surely, unless the voters stand up to the RSS sharkhas (volunteers) at the next election.

Nobody knows who killed Mr. Bukhari. But when the standards have been set and a certain climate prevails, does it mean much?

Russian authorities ordered destruction of documents on Stalin’s terror

Clara Weiss

On Thursday, June 7, the Russian Museum of the History of the GULAG reported that archival material about people who were kept in the Soviet forced labor camp system and were subsequently released has been systematically destroyed, on the basis of a secret decree from February 2014. The extent of the destruction of archival material is not yet clear.

It is estimated that up to 12 million people fell victim to the Great Terror, unleashed by the Stalinist bureaucracy in the second half of the 1930s: they were either shot, or sent to prison and forced labor camps (GULAGs), where many died or were disabled for life. Up to 7 million people were imprisoned in the Soviet GULAG system. In 1937-1938 alone, 1.7 million people were arrested on political grounds. The vast majority of them were accused of being part of the “Trotskyist-Zinovievite center” or other presumably “terrorist” organizations, allegedly inspired by Leon Trotsky, the leader of the Russian Revolution and anti-Stalinist Left Opposition.

The Great Terror, which the Soviet historian and sociologist Vadim Rogovin described as a “political genocide”, resulted in the physical destruction of the Soviet Left Opposition, which had up to 30,000 members, as well as tens of thousands of dedicated Communist workers and intellectuals, both from the Soviet Communist Party and international sections of the Third International (Comintern). Stunning in its scope, the terror also swept away millions of people who were not actively engaged in politics, let alone the opposition, at all.

As the Soviet writer and sympathizer of the Left Opposition Varlam Shalamov observed, the Stalinist terror was directed against “all those who remembered the wrong part of Russian history” – that is, the historical truth about the Russian Revolution, its leaders, and the inner-party struggle of the 1920s. It was aimed, in other words, at wiping out, not just politically but also physically, the historical consciousness and memory of the Soviet and international working class.

In many cases, archival material, especially the “personal files” or even only minor biographical archival cards, remain the only testimony left of the very existence of a victim of the terror. As Roman Romanov, the head of the GULAG Museum, explained to the Russian newspaper Kommersant :

“When someone died in prison or perished in a camp, his personal file was sent to be kept indefinitely in an archive. But when someone was released, his [personal] file was destroyed. However, there remained an archival card, which included information such as the name, date and place of birth, the camps in which this person had been, as well as the date of his or her release”.

Precisely these cards have been systematically destroyed since 2014 on the basis of a decree issued by several Russian state agencies.

The very existence of this decree, criminal by all measures, has only been revealed more or less by accident due to the work of a Russian historian, Sergei Prudovsky, who collaborates with the GULAG Museum. When requesting information about a peasant, Fedor Chasov, who was repressed during the Great Purges of 1937-1938 and sent to a notorious Magadan camp in Russia’s North East, he found out that the archival card about Fedor Chasov had been destroyed.

Prudovsky told the Russian newspaper Kommersant: “I issued a request to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Magadan’ Oblast’. They responded that the personal file of the arrested had already been destroyed in 1955 according to a decree from this period. It also became clear that the archival card was destroyed as well”.

When Prudovsky asked why the latter had been destroyed, Mikhail Seregin, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs responsible for the Magadan’ oblast’ told him that the legal basis had been a decree “for purposes” from February 12, 2014. This decree was signed by virtually all significant Russian state institutions: The Interior Ministry, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry for Extraordinary Situations, the Defense Ministry, the FSB, a number of other federal secret services, as well as the Main Prosecutor’s office and the State Courier Service .

The head of the GULAG Museum, Roman Romanov, has since written a letter to Mikhail Fedotov, an advisor to the Russian President and the head of the Council of the President for human rights. In this letter, Romanov indicated that the GULAG Museum had received information from the Interior Ministry that confirmed that these cards of convicted victims of the terror had been destroyed.

This is not the first time that the destruction of this kind of archival material has come to public attention. According to the Kommersant report, in 2014, a resident of the Moscow oblast’ tried to find information about her relative who was convicted and sent to Magadan in 1939, only to learn that his archival card had been destroyed. The woman appealed to the Higher Court of the Russian Federation and eventually the Constitutional Court, but lost the case both times.

Fedotov told Kommersant that he was “looking into” the issue and stated, in glaring contradiction to what is going on in reality: “We [the Russian government] will always defend the preservation of archival material, it contains very important historical information… When there is a document, it is virtually impossible to falsify it. But when there is no document, anything can be made up.”

But this is precisely the purpose of this decree which, in this sense, is in line with the aims of the Stalinist Great Terror itself.

While important archival material has been made available since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, access to Russian archival material often remains notoriously difficult, especially when it comes to the Soviet period.

Over the past 25 years, collections have been opened and closed at the behest of the government, with countless files still being withheld from public view, often without clear reasoning provided. The access to “personal files”, in particular, is difficult. Many of them are accessible only through the FSB archives, and work on them always requires the approval of blood relatives, who in some cases may not even exist.

With all these restrictions, and despite a climate of extreme reaction and political confusion that has prevailed in Russia since 1991, important historical documentary collections have come out that shed new light on important aspects of Soviet society and history, and not least of all the struggle of the Left Opposition.

This kind of work is directly threatened by the secret workings of the Russian state to withhold and destroy archival material, as well as the ongoing political and financial pressure exerted on all those working on this history. The 2014 decree is a clear warning of the dangers posed to serious historical research into the crimes of Stalinism by the control of the Russian state over the archives. Much like state operations such as last year’s major television series to slander Trotsky, this decree is a sign of an ongoing state conspiracy and determination of the Russian oligarchy to falsify history and cover up the crimes of Stalinism.