War Crimes? The My Lai massacre, mostly women and children dead. This photo taken by the U.S. Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle on March 16, 1968. [Photo: US Army]. President Nixon commuted William Calley’s life imprisonment sentence on 22 counts of premeditated murder and he served just three and a half years house arrest.

Starmer attacks democracy

Having decreed Jeremy Corbyn cannot stand for Labour Keir Starmer has also decreed that failure to support Nato is incompatible with membership of Labour but at least Corbyn does not support arming Ukraine. Shamefully John McDonnell had signed up to Chris Ford’s ‘Nato-arm-Ukraine’ Solidarity with Ukraine organisation as have five other MPs, as well as Peter Tatchell, Paul Mason, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Anti-Capitalist Resistance, the Labour Representation Committee, three right wing trade union general secretaries, three assistant general secretaries and a president (GMB, PCS, NUM and ASLEF) – See Morning Star February 17).

All serious militants and socialists should demand UK out of Nato, an end to sanctions on Russia and no arms or support for the US/Nato-proxy Nazi-infested Kiev regime. The defeat of the US/Nato proxy war on Russia, with no illusions in Putin’s regime, is the best possible outcome of this conflict. Peace can only come with the defeat of the US/Nato warmongers.

US/Nato and Zelensky are losing the war

According to Aljazeera on February 16 Russian forces have almost encircled the city of Bakhmut from the north, northeast, south and west. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner paramilitary mercenaries, said:

“If this happens, Bakhmut will be in a tactical encirclement, and Ukrainian troops will be completely cut off from the supply of ammunition, medicines and fuel” and it will fall by April. This serious military setback – of course Zelensky and the western media have practically stopped reporting on this and say it is of no importance – has spread great alarm.

On the anniversary of the Russian invasion their Spring offensive is threatening not only the Ukrainian holdouts in the Donbass but on the Southern front as well. The political crisis in Moldova and the breakaway pro-Russian state of Transnistria makes the linking-up with the Russian army to cut off Odessa and Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea a real possibility.

Moscow is accused of fuelling a regime change uprising in Moldova’s capital Chișinău against US-imposed inflation and austerity. Ironically they are accusing Russia as being as bad as themselves in the February 2014 Maidan coup; now Russia is trying to “Fuck the US” and install their own “Yats”, to paraphrase Victoria Nuland’s boast back then. 

Then at last relatives may get justice for the victims of the Nazi atrocity that was the Odessa Trade Union House fire on May 2, 2014. These known and videoed war criminals committed the atrocity protected by the Kiev police and army,  who approvingly stood by and watched them.

The United Nations Ukraine commented seven years later: “The authorities only investigated the misconduct of the ‘pro-federalists’ during the clashes and not the misconduct of ‘pro-unity’ supporters”. So they blamed the Russian for the two fascist deaths but endorsed the murder of the 46 (relatives claim up to 100) in the building and battered to death when they jumped from the fire. “Colorado beetles are roasting up in Odessa” one fascist tweeted in celebration. Ethnic Russians in the Donbass and elsewhere did not need Putin’s intervention to get the message on the urgent need for separation.

Hence the great alarm now sounded by Volodymyr Zelensky and the West over the situation on the battlefields and China’s intentions in this conflict. The Munich Security Conference over the weekend of February 18-20 was alarmed as reported by Germany’s POLITICO. There was, “more than a hint of foreboding just beneath the surface… as “Western leaders congratulate themselves for their generosity, the country’s armed forces are running low on ammunition, equipment and even men.”

They needed more help and fast Zelensky implored; “We need speed”. Then U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris demanded a Nuremberg 2.0 for the Russian leaders for their “war crimes” – of course the US does not recognise the sovereignty of the International Criminal Court in The Hague any over any of its own war crimes, just over those of its enemies.

In the 1968 My Lai massacre, just the tip of the iceberg of US war crimes in Vietnam, to mention just one arena of its post WWII war crimes, US troops killed between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians.

No one was jailed for the openly admitted war crime, proved in court. Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh exposed the massacre almost 54 years ago, just as he has exposed the US blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines to subjugate Germany and Europe in general today.

Kiev’s hero, Nazi mass murderer of Poles and Jews, Stephan Bandera, would have been proud of these fascistic My Lai US ‘patriots’. On January 1 2023 the whole Ukrainian Rada (parliament), army generals and local officials openly celebrated his anniversary, to the chagrin of Poland, Israel and the US.

China is US/Nato’s main target

Clearly China understands that Russia is threatening military victory, and this will make the US/Nato projected WWIII on China far more difficult to justify and pursue. Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s Diplomatic Editor, reported Antony Blinken on the warpath on February 19 against Chinese Foreign Minister in Munich, Wang Yi. But Wang made it clear that they would not back down over Taiwan.  “Let me assure the audience that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory,” he asserted confidently; Taiwan “has never been a country and it will never be a country in the future.”

Wintour reported that Blinken told US networks that the US had information China was considering whether to give Russia assistance, possibly including guns and weapons, for the Ukraine war. “The concern that we have now is, based on information we have, that they’re considering providing lethal support,” Blinken told CBS’s Face the Nation shortly after he met with Wang. “And we’ve made very clear to them that that could cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship.” 

There were more problems, “China’s trade with Russia is increasing and it has been buying Russian oil, but probably below the US$60 per barrel price cap imposed by the EU and G7 group of states”. Disobedient scoundrels!

Wintour, in his Guardian review of the effectiveness of the sanctions against Russia on February 20, observes that “early claims Moscow would buckle quickly proved hubristic, yet Putin has also made miscalculations” and Joe Biden’s confident assertion back in March 2022 that “the Russian economy is on track to be cut in half,” proved to be the opposite to what really happened.

The Russian economy contracted by only 2.2% last year. Unemployment… now stands at 3.7 %… A bumper harvest has driven growth in the agricultural sector. Russia is now forecast by the International Monetary Fund to grow faster in 2023 and 2024 than the UK. It is hardly financial apocalypse now,” we learn.

“The early summer of 2022 was a total bonanza for the Russian treasury, as it benefited from the record surge in energy prices. In March, Russia was making €1bn a day from energy exports. Oil and gas increased to 60% of Russian fiscal revenues, up from 40%. Germany alone has bought €24bn of Russian fossil fuels since the invasion

“… The surplus on Russia’s current account for the year was $227.4bn – a 86% increase on the previous year and more than double the previous record. That helped strengthen the rouble, making imports cheaper. This in turn helped to gradually bring down inflation, taking some pressure off the real incomes of the ordinary Russian population.”

Germany’s POLITICO hedges its bets

Some EU countries and the global South are rallying behind Russia against US/Nato. Greece, Malta, Austria, and Belgium are not cooperating fully. Turkey’s exports to Russia surged to over $1bn a month and was the route Russia used to import vital goods such as manufacturing parts. And Italy was using Turkey as an access point into Russian markets. The US has sanctioned and exploited too many countries who now see a chance for revenge. But there’s hope! “In the end an international sanctions war is a game of cat and mouse in which both sides look for clues amid the disinformation to try to pre-empt the other’s moves. Ultimately it is not as decisive as the battlefield, but if the west can stay the course, Putin may yet find his options narrowing. If he survives it will be a huge blow to the power of the dollar, and one that will not go unnoticed in Beijing,” POLITICO concludes (our emphasis).  ▲