The Ukraine War in Context

DOWNLOAD FULL EPISODE

While I would prefer to spend this episode focusing on the heroic women who stood up in Petrograd on March 8 1917, playing a key role in overthrowing a tsar, ending a war and changing world history, the current reality demands that I address the situation in Ukraine. 

This is itself noteworthy.  The western media never provided non-stop coverage of the now seven-year long war in Yemen.  The NCRA never sent out recommendations to campus/community radio stations across Canada telling them to beware of Israeli misinformation during that country’s multiple assaults on Gaza.  Neither Iraq nor Libya nor Syria nor Afghanistan were covered in this way with people being forced to choose sides by the powers that be.  The last time I remember that happening was after 9/11 in 2001.  The Russian incursion into Ukraine is being treated as an attack against us all, in the same way as when those planes hit the twin towers in New York.  And it’s worth asking why that is.

Numerous western news outlets, from CBS to the BBC, have openly stated that the reason why the war in Ukraine is so terrible is because it is a “civilized” European country populated by white people who “look like you and me”.  And the idea that we must stand in racial solidarity with a white country under attack is a dominant subtext in the media coverage of this war.  The same reporters repeat that Ukraine is not Afghanistan or Iraq where violence has effectively been normalized in public discourse and that we should be shocked by a war on European soil, even though we’re talking about a continent marked by the bloodiest conflicts in human history. 

We see the same racialized sentiment in how refugees are being treated in Ukraine and Poland.  The reality of segregation among refugees is finally being recognized in the mainstream media after widespread outrage on social media at seeing Black and Brown people, mainly international students from India and numerous African countries, being forcibly prevented from boarding trains and buses out of the country.  Refugees of color have faced violence from security forces and armed Ukrainian civilians.

I want to stress that the present war is not new.  It did not begin with Russia’s intervention on the 26^th of February, in fact it’s been raging since 2014 when the democratically elected government of Ukraine was overthrown in a US-backed coup.  The coup, often referred to as the Euro Maidan, featured a heavy presence of far-right neo-Nazi elements acting as shock troops against government security forces in the street battles that erupted in Kiev and other cities.  These forces then gained prominent positions in the post-coup government that was fully backed by the United States and NATO, which proceeded to destroy or drive underground every progressive political force in the country – from trade unions to the communist party.  The 2014 Odessa massacre, in which dozens of people were shot or burned to death by neo-Nazi militia at the trade union headquarters in the city of Odessa was among the ugliest incidents in this campaign of terror, which also involved banning the Russian language in schools and businesses and essentially giving away the entire Ukrainian economy to the IMF and western business interests.

This is what led to the civil war in eastern Ukraine which continues to this day.  Ukrainian leftists and Russian-speaking sectors of the population armed themselves in defiance of the coup government and its fascist thugs.  They defended themselves, and while they received some aid from Russia, they were mainly on their own in the harrowing battles of 2014 and 2015 when the self-proclaimed Peoples Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk were besieged again and again.  The signing of the Minsk Accords in 2015 was meant to end the conflict by granting autonomy to the breakaway republics within Ukraine and guaranteeing new elections, but it was never implemented by the Ukrainian government, which went on shelling and attacking Donetsk and Lugansk right up to the current escalation of the war in 2022.  15,000 people have died in eastern Ukraine since 2014, yet this goes unrecognized in western media portrayals of the conflict.   

The same is true with regard to the powerful influence of neo-Nazi and far-right political forces, which were strong enough to openly defy the Ukrainian president in 2019 when he belatedly tried to implement the provisions of the Minsk Accord and force him to back down.  The neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and similar military formations are now fully integrated into the Ukrainian Army, National Guard and police.  They are not fringe elements as some would have you believe and their bloody reign of terror against leftists and ethnic minorities in Ukraine has continued.  I’ve talked on this show before about how Canada, the US and Israel have armed and trained these fascist goon squads.

But the pivotal US role in the conflict must be understood, because it would never have even begun without the US-supported coup in 2014 and NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe after the Cold War. The war in Ukraine the most manufactured conflict I've seen since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  The US engineered the violence in 2014 in order to secure its own strategic interests in Eastern Europe and it has never allowed for any peaceful settlement or meaningful de-escalation since then.  For the past two months we've seen the United States government deliberately escalating tensions, preparing people for war via the most insane media blitz I've ever seen, while rejecting Russian diplomatic overtures and sabotaging every attempt at dialogue and de-escalation between Russia and Ukraine.  Now it is dumping more guns and military hardware in Ukraine instead of facilitating peace talks, just like it did in Syria.  This is not an inter-imperialist conflict between rival empires.  This is an example of a global superpower manipulating two neighboring countries into fighting one another by rendering peace impossible.  The US is effectively using the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder against Russia and it's absolutely sickening.

Breakthrough News - Building the Anti-War Movement Amid War-Fever and Censorship

The Left Lens - Joe Biden Manufactures Consent for War with Russia

COVID & Capitalism

DOWNLOAD FULL EPISODE

I quoted and/or consulted a number of articles for this episode, and the links are below for those who want check them out.

Davide Mastracci - The West Abandoned Its Citizens To COVID. China Saved Theirs

Shi Huli - "Everyone's happy to do their part": interview with a Xi'an resident in lockdown

Carlos Martinez - Zero Covid: China silences the critics

Friends of Socialist China - Chinese translation of 'Capitalism on a Ventilator' making waves in China

Scott Scheffer - While China successfully battles COVID, the US targets China and loses the battle against COVID

Joe Scholten - US media attacks China's COVID-19 policies for saving lives, while Americans die

 

Combating Sexual Violence Through Solidarity and Awareness

DOWNLOAD FULL EPISODE

Back in the USSR begins 2022 in conversation with Jensen Williams, the Public Educator of Guelph-Wellington Women In Crisis, a local feminist community-based organization providing support services to women experiencing abuse and sexual violence.  Specifically, we discuss how the ongoing pandemic has exacerbated the threat of gender-based violence for huge numbers of women across Canada and how capitalism and economic austerity have fueled this violence in many ways.  We explore how state violence regularly intersects with gender-based violence and the role that colonialism and racism plays in this.  But above all, we focus on how people can take action in their own communities and organizations to confront and defeat this violence so that the right to live in peace can be realized by all.

This is what's going on.

Truth, Reconciliation and Decolonization in Canada

DOWNLOAD FULL EPISODE

You’re listening to Back in the USSR on 93.3 FM CFRU.  I am Siegfried, and I want to issue my first ever content warning, comrades and friends.  This is something that I should have done last week.  It’s something I should have done on numerous occasions before, because many of the things that get mentioned on this show are pretty heavy and potentially triggering for members of the audience.  I don’t want anyone to be in a situation that’s too much for them, so I’m going to warn you right now that this episode of the show is going to be dealing with residential schools and the genocide of indigenous peoples in Canada.  If you’re not comfortable getting into that right now, please take the time to care for yourself.

September 30, 2021 was the first ever National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.  This was made into a federal statutory holiday in Canada, although we didn’t get any time off in Ontario because Ontario is one of several provinces which refuse to recognize the holiday.  September 30 was being marked as Orange Shirt Day since 2013 by Indigenous peoples in this country seeking to honor the survivors of residential schools and to commemorate those victims of residential schools who never came home.  In particular, it centers around the story of Phyllis Webstad, whose first-hand story I’m going to read for you right now:

I went to the Mission for one school year in 1973/1974. I had just turned 6 years old. I lived with my grandmother on the Dog Creek reserve. We never had very much money, but somehow my granny managed to buy me a new outfit to go to the Mission school. I remember going to Robinson’s store and picking out a shiny orange shirt. It had string laced up in front, and was so bright and exciting – just like I felt to be going to school!

When I got to the Mission, they stripped me, and took away my clothes, including the orange shirt! I never wore it again. I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t give it back to me, it was mine! The color orange has always reminded me of that and how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and how I felt like I was worth nothing. All of us little children were crying and no one cared.

I was 13.8 years old and in grade 8 when my son Jeremy was born. Because my grandmother and mother both attended residential school for 10 years each, I never knew what a parent was supposed to be like. With the help of my aunt, Agness Jack, I was able to raise my son and have him know me as his mother.

I went to a treatment centre for healing when I was 27 and have been on this healing journey since then. I finally get it, that the feeling of worthlessness and insignificance, ingrained in me from my first day at the mission, affected the way I lived my life for many years. Even now, when I know nothing could be further than the truth, I still sometimes feel that I don’t matter. Even with all the work I’ve done!

I am honored to be able to tell my story so that others may benefit and understand, and maybe other survivors will feel comfortable enough to share their stories.

I’m going to put a link on the blog so you can read more about Phyllis and her background.  The Canadian Government chose to make Orange Shirt Day into a federal holiday.  I went to one of the ceremonies that was held here in Guelph, at the Sacred Fire in Royal City Park.  I listened to the elders, observed the ceremony and the drumming, inhaled the smoke from the Sacred Fire, personally confronted MP Lloyd Longfield once more about the water crisis on reservations, and generally did what I could under the circumstances.  There were a lot of settlers there, a lot of clapping, a lot of talk about reconciliation, and I was reminded of a quote by the African revolutionary Amilcar Cabral in which he exhorted fellow revolutionaries to “claim no easy victories”.  And it was all too easy for settlers, like myself, to watch the drumming, inhale the smoke, and feel righteous for simply caring.

There was a lot of high-handed rhetoric coming from public officials on September 30: talk about moving forward and re-building trust and just tons and tons of stuff about reconciliation between indigenous people and the settler-colonial state which continues to kill them.  As someone who participated in the Wet’suwet’en protests in early 2020, just before the pandemic hit, it was truly surreal.  Everyone back then was saying that reconciliation was dead and yet suddenly it’s back on everyone’s lips now, as though a new federal holiday could substitute for actual, concrete policy change…of which there’s been practically nothing.

This is what the Wet’suwet’en Checkpoint Instagram account had to say on September 30: “Reconciliation is nothing more than a catch phrase to the colonial government – and this day comes across as nothing more than a pacification.”

It’s notable that Justin Trudeau chose to go on vacation that day in Tofino rather than accept an invitation by an indigenous nation to honor the memory of the 215 children recovered from the former residential school in Kamloops.  As now, the remains of more than six thousand children have been unearthed on the sites of former residential schools.

With this in mind, it’s very hard not to view this new holiday as a PR stunt by the Canadian Government.  They were really on the backfoot after the Wet’suwet’en protests and now they’re trying to rehabilitate themselves and reclaim some of the legitimacy they lost amidst all the RCMP crackdowns and mass arrests that took place back then…and are taking place again at Fairy Creek.  They wanted to put reconciliation back onto everyone’s lips and make it seem like they care, despite having done nothing to alleviate the suffering of oppressed Indigenous communities.

As I took part in the event at Royal City Park, I couldn’t help but think of the word “catharsis”.  The event could have been framed as a way to “blow off steam” and vent emotion before effectively returning to normal.  Aristotle, that arch-misogynist and apologist for slavery, talked approvingly about tragic dramas that were put on once per year in the Athenian amphitheater; describing how they allowed men in particular to let their pent-up emotions go so they could be cool-headed and rational for the rest of the year.  It was like a social safety valve.  With regard to the truth and reconciliation ceremonies on September 30, not only settlers but Indigenous people as well, including residential school survivors, were given an official outlet for their grief, which Trudeau and his government hopes can be kept contained and manageable.

Another thing that the ceremony reminded me of was Edmund Burke’s political ideology of “reconciliation”.  Burke was the 18^th century founder of modern conservative politics and sought to “reconcile” the masses of working class and oppressed people to the system by invoking the idea of a shared history and a supposedly “harmonious” past where everybody got along and knew their place.  It’s an inherently reactionary idea, but Trudeau is basically pushing the same thing here today.  Reconciliation implies that there was a time when settlers and Indigenous peoples lived together in peace, and that this time can be returned to somehow.  This is nonsense.  As some commentators pointed out on September 30, settler interactions with Indigenous nations were always characterized by colonial violence, culminating in the genocidal violence of the residential school system and other violent attempts to eradicate Indigenous culture and communities entirely.  There is no promised land to go back to or rebuild.  Any justice that we can forge will be in the context of a new system that allows justice to be built in this land.

Dismantling colonialism in Canada will be very hard.  Even though we’ve seen settler-colonial regimes fall in the past, they’ve been very different from the modern Canadian context.  Apartheid South Africa was propped up by a hyper-militarized settler minority that used brutal violence to suppress the Indigenous masses of Black South Africans.  Colonial Algeria in the 1950s was treated as an extension of France itself and had a White minority population numbering in the millions, yet the indigenous population still outnumbered it many times over and was able to fight for independence. 

In Canada the Indigenous population is a small minority, surrounded by great masses of settlers.  No country like this has ever successfully decolonized.  The genocide here was so bad that it reduced Indigenous people to minority status on their own land.  In terms of decolonization, we’re in uncharted territory here.  Settlers are going to have to be part of any anti-colonial liberation struggle, but for that to happen, settlers are going to have to want something better for themselves.  You cannot build a revolution on altruism.  Many struggles, from labor to the environment, are going to have to combine in the struggle for Indigenous liberation if justice is to be done and colonialism finally overthrown on occupied Turtle Island.

In this year’s federal election, the Communist Party of Canada campaigned on a “new, equal & voluntary partnership” that would recognize the right of nations within Canada to self-determination, up to and including secession and draft a new constitution based on an equal, voluntary partnership of Indigenous nations, Quebec, Acadians, and English-speaking Canada.  This was in addition to ensuring a just settlement of Indigenous land claims, respecting Indigenous rights under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) to veto pipelines and development on and near their lands, as well as enacting the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.  This was the only electoral platform that I saw that really challenged the foundations of colonialism and called for radical change.  The empty words that most politicians speak about guaranteeing the rights of Indigenous people don’t mean much when the fundamental oppressive relationships of settler-colonialism remain intact, Indigenous people remain marginalized and the prisons remain packed with them.  Society as a whole needs to be re-structured for genuine decolonization to be achieved.  It’s not impossible, but for such revolutionary change to happen, all the peoples of this land have to want something more.