Interview: Capitalism is Addicted to War…not just against Russia but workers as well

 

Neo-feudalism is what we are being offered in place of the “American dream”. This is why we are seeing growing efforts of workers to organize unions

By Finian Cunningham (Strategic Culture Foundation)

The following interview is a follow-up to an earlier one conducted this month with American writer and veteran labor rights activist Bruce Gagnon. He explains the current U.S.-led NATO conflict against Russia in a historical context. U.S.-dominated Western capitalism is addicted to war as a modus operandi going back to its original genocidal conquest and foundations in slavery through its colonial wars and other wars of aggression over the past century and more. The current conflict playing out in Ukraine is but a continuum of class war against the workers of the United States and other Western states.

American workers, however, are fighting back in the form of a resurgence in unionizing and strike actions. The crisis in capitalism is driving the U.S. ruling class and its European NATO associates to war against Russia, and ultimately a Third World War. The struggle for real democracy in the U.S. (and Europe) is part of the same challenge to defeat American-led Western imperialism. What’s at stake is the very future of the planet.

Bruce Gagnon coordinates the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He began his political career in 1978 organizing Florida fruit pickers for the United Farm Workers Union (UFW). While working for the UFW, he served on the union team negotiating contracts between the Coca-Cola Corporation (Minute Maid orange juice) and the UFW. He writes a daily blog called Organizing Notes.
 

Interview

Finian Cunningham: How do you explain the novel trend of U.S. workers joining trade unions, reversing decades of diminishing organizational membership? We have seen significant achievements by workers forming unions at Apple, Google, Amazon, and Starbucks, for example. The mainstream news media have given little coverage to explain this development. Can you put the trend in historical context? What is driving it?

Bruce Gagnon: The driver of these unionization campaigns is two basic factors. First, is the unbridled greed of the big-box-tech corporations who mistreat their workers and pay them as little as possible. The second factor is the declining economy across the U.S. where workers can’t live on low-wage jobs – they can’t afford rent, food, and healthcare. It’s great to see workers standing up to Mr Big, that is, corporate capitalist power and the ruling class. It’s long in the coming. Mr Big will make some transitory concessions but in the long run, will find ways to take back the gains made by workers. It’s another “period of capital re-accumulation”. It is the history of the labor movement in the United States.

For example, take the story of Gary, Indiana. The city is located along the southern shore of Lake Michigan about 25 miles (40 km) from downtown Chicago, Illinois. Gary was founded in 1906 by the United States Steel Corporation as the home for its new plant, Gary Works. The city was named after lawyer Elbert Henry Gary, who was the founding chairman of the United States Steel Corporation.

What is most interesting is the answer to this question – why was Gary actually created? The labor movement in the U.S. was very strong in the late 1800s. They had fought hard, bloody battles to earn the right to be unionized. This power meant union halls were created. Local bars, stores, parks, and such like, became a growing inter-weaving of worker community power that were threats to Mr Big. Workers can’t be allowed multi-generational stability – they must be kept on a constant treadmill of moving and rebuilding union and community strength.

So many steel mills, and other such industries, moved to new communities – in fact, Gary was created on empty scrub fields. Most importantly, the thriving worker culture in places like Chicago had to be destroyed. Similarly today in the U.S., major industries moved South and overseas to secure cheaper labor. American workers are not needed anymore. Thus, we see working-class whites turned against people of color – divide and conquer. Keep the pressure off Mr Big at all costs! Washington learned this modus operandi (MO) expertly from the Bank of England.

Question: Over the past year, we have also seen a record number of labor strikes in U.S. industries. Would you say that the industrial disputes, like the surge in unionization, are reflective of intensifying class war in the U.S. causing more poverty and stress, but also more unionization and strike actions?

Bruce Gagnon: Younger workers appear to be very clear about the class war being imposed on them by Wall Street and corporate interests. I’d say this has been surging since Occupy Wall Street began some years ago and the slogan ‘We are the 99%’ became part of the public lexicon. I think the impact of the Occupy movement (shut down under orders of Barack Obama) is highly under-rated. When you factor in massive student debt, low wages, often bad working conditions, and the general disrespect for the workers and poor people by corporate America, it is no surprise that this union movement is growing.

I recently read the autobiography of Mother Jones and there are so many similarities between corporate domination of the labor force today and the coal and textile industries’ horrible exploitative treatment of workers in years past. One other key thing stands out that links the past and today’s unionization efforts – the subservience of the political class and the media to corporate interests.

 

Question: At this time of pressing social hardship in the United States and also in Europe when workers are told there is “no money” for improving public services and pay conditions, it seems particularly incongruous that the Western governments are able to find extra billions and billions of dollars and euros to flood Ukraine with military aid. Do you agree that there seems to be a confluence of war, one being waged at home against workers and one abroad de facto against Russia? Are American workers seeing it like that from their own experience or are they susceptible to the mainstream media blandishments about America and NATO “defending Ukraine”?

Bruce Gagnon: Just look at the strong national campaign demanding ‘Medicare for All’ here in the United States. During the last national election, the Democrats refused to embrace and push that legislative agenda. Obviously, the insurance industry was opposed to it. In fact, the Democrat’s talking point on healthcare was “everyone should have the right to access to healthcare”. That actually meant everyone should be able to buy a health insurance policy from the industry.

Covid hit many workers, and the poor not only lost their jobs and their housing but also what little access to the healthcare they may have had. Homelessness grew dramatically.

At the very same time, we witnessed major funding increases for the Pentagon, including for the recently created Space Force. The U.S.-NATO were flooding their military agents in Ukraine with millions (and now billions) of dollars in military hardware. So somehow the Western nations could come up with all this money for another war but not for the most needy in our societies. This was not a mistake on their part – it was a clearly thought-out strategy.

Due to robotics, computerization, agribusiness mechanization, and such, we now have massive numbers of “superfluous” people around the globe. The ruling elites don’t want to encourage the unwanted by treating them with dignity and ensuring they can survive with good jobs, food, housing, healthcare, and the like. It reminds me of Hitler’s Warsaw, Poland’s Jewish ghetto where the Nazis had a “Caloric Reduction Intake Schedule” which was a calculated form of genocide. The Nazis understood that by reducing access to food and some level of healthcare it would mean earlier deaths. The Israelis are today using a similar program to genocide the Palestinian people; Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, etc., all the same.

I’d say with confidence that Wall Street is running the same program across the entire Western nations. Workers basically understand their lives mean nothing to Mr Big, and they are beginning to fight back – as they well should.

Question: American President Joe Biden portrays himself as “the most pro-union president” in a long time. If Biden were really prioritizing the interests and rights of American workers, as he claims, then how do you explain his evident foreign policy of pursuing aggression towards Russia and China? Is he a witting fraud on workers?

 

Bruce Gagnon: Let’s not forget Biden was heavily involved in the creation and promotion of the 1994 federal crime bill. This new law extended the death penalty to 60 new crimes, stiffened sentences, offered states strong financial incentives for building new prisons, and helped lead to the wave of mass incarceration that’s resulted in the United States accounting for 25 percent of the world’s prison population. These are the working class and the poor people that have been locked up in major numbers due to this Biden-backed bill.

Biden’s electoral home state of Delaware is most known for being a tax haven. Delaware is the chosen home for large corporations and many financial services firms. Delaware has more businesses incorporated in the state (1.4 million) than there are residents (967,000 in 2018). Biden is an apparatchik for Mr Big.

Biden, with support from both Democrats and Republicans, has declared that Russia and China are “existential threats” to the U.S. The ever-expanding U.S. military and NATO have been encircling both those nations with more American bases and more frequent war games. All of this takes huge new Pentagon appropriations that of course benefit the military-industrial complex. Members of Congress are rewarded for higher loyalty to the war budget than to the suffering citizenry. Daddy Warbucks, that is the military-industrial complex, makes sure to drop some big coins into the campaign coffers of these “selected” officials.

As the economy worsens, working-class and poor kids, just out of high school (if they even graduated), find it nearly impossible to get jobs. Thus the “economic draft” pulls much youth into the military where they are trained and sent off to the more than 800 U.S. bases around the globe. It was during the George W. Bush administration that the Pentagon was repeatedly announcing that the U.S. role under corporate globalization was going to be “security export”. That is where we are today. Biden was one of the architects of this strategy. If Biden was a Republican the peace movement would be largely united today. It’s very sad. But that is the score.

Question: In a previous interview for Strategic Culture Foundation, you contended that the U.S.-led NATO confrontation with Russia and China – as currently playing out in Ukraine – is really about a bigger geopolitical struggle to stem the historic decline in Western corporate capitalism. Does that mean that the deteriorating social conditions in Western states are the other side of the coin of increasing belligerence in the foreign policy of the U.S. and its NATO partners?

Bruce Gagnon: Mr Big wants it all – all the gold. The war in Ukraine is about attempting to break Moscow’s back – regime change and the balkanization of Russia into smaller nations. This is what the U.S.-NATO did to former Communist Yugoslavia in 1999 during the Bill Clinton administration.

The West fears the multipolar world that Russia and China are helping to birth. The U.S.-EU intends to abort that birth even if it means inciting World War Three. Thus all available monies across the West must be hastily pumped into the U.S.-NATO war machine. Note that Germany recently announced it would increase its military spending by $112 billion. Out of whose hides will those funds come from?

Question: If the U.S. adopted a foreign policy of pursuing amicable, cooperative relations with other nations instead of constantly seeking enmity and adversity; and if the U.S. truly accepted multipolar, mutual relations of equals as opposed to unilateral dominance and hegemony, would you agree that such a United States of America would be much more substantially democratic and orientated towards the priority interests of workers who make up the majority of its 330 million population?

 

Bruce Gagnon: I often share the story about Lakota warrior Crazy Horse and the military-industrial complex that existed in the late 1800s. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were brought onto the reservation in South Dakota. They only surrendered to the U.S. Army because their people were starving. Washington had sent snipers on trains to ride across the western plains and shoot any buffalo they came in contact with. They decimated the herds. The hearts of the native people were broken – they saw the evil enemy they were facing in the flesh.

The U.S. Civil War ended in 1865 and the Indian Wars soon after. The military-industrial complex was worried about its future. They had artists make renderings of Crazy Horse supposedly back on the warpath.

Newspapers in the big cities across the U.S. printed stories about Crazy Horse raping white women and killing children. Soon the public was led to express their outrage and “the people demanded something be done”. Doesn’t that sound familiar? The Congress in Washington immediately swung into action and appropriated more funds for the Indian Wars – while Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were sitting on the reservation in South Dakota without a gun to their name.

This story has been repeated legions of times since – leading up to Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003, Libya, Syria, and now Ukraine. And the public relations script coming from Washington is always so familiar.

The citizens of the U.S. could have full employment, a clean environment, Medicare for All, real social justice, and much more, except the U.S. has long been a fascist nation. Italy’s World War Two leader Benito Mussolini defined fascism as the “wedding of corporations and government”. That definition fits the United States of America.

Writer and humorist Mark Twain became an anti-imperialist during the U.S. occupation of the Philippines (1898-1946). Folks might check out his writings. America’s original sin was the genocide of the native people and the institution of slavery. The only way out is to confront this addiction. “Hello, my name is America and I am addicted to violence, greed, and endless war”. Where is the leadership to make this happen?

Question: Is the two-party system in the U.S. doomed to be a bipartisan War Party government?

Bruce Gagnon: As long as the United States has the winner-take-all electoral system there is slim chance of real democracy and justice. This nation is being driven off the cliff – intentionally – as capital has gone global. Neo-feudalism is what we are being offered in place of the “American dream”. This is why we are seeing growing efforts of workers to organize unions. There is no other way around it – we either organize to protect one another or we are condemned to barbarity. 

Life today in Mariupol

 

 

Mariupol is in eastern Ukraine.

Start paying attention to the Romania, Moldova and Ukraine borders. The US encouraging attacks on Russian forces from those places. See more on this story here

In addition the US-NATO appear to be pushing Poland to enter western Ukraine (where the Nazis predominate) in order to grab those lands. It appears Ukraine is going to be broken into smaller bits.

This is precisely what the US-NATO desire to do with all of Russia - break it into smaller nations so the western resource extraction corporations can control the vast resource base of Russia. It would take WW III to make a serious run at that strategy - and sadly it appears that Washington, London, Paris, Brussels and Berlin are willing to take a crack at it.

The western oligarchs are rolling the dice again....didn't turn out so well for US-NATO in Afghanistan even after 20 years.

Are they really willing to go to full-blown war with Russia? 

It would be purely insane for certain.

Bruce

Some joy and calm returns to Mariupol

 

 

Really lovely interviews with the people of Mariupol who are back at the market.

All fighting in the city is over except for the Azovstal steel works plant where Nazis and their civilian hostages are located in the deep underground bunkers. Up to this moment the Nazis have refused to allow the civilians to be released thru humanitarian corridors.  

There are believed to be scores of US-NATO military 'advisers' and other international mercenaries inside the bunker.

Italian journalist with English subtitles just hit the CC at the bottom  

U.S.-Led NATO is at War against Russia

 

 

By Finian Cunningham

 

The full-on U.S. imperial war agenda of targeting Russia for defeat is now coming into focus

 

We are now in the realm of World War Three. The abysmal situation is such that the war is in danger of going nuclear in which case the future of the planet is at stake.

Incredibly, to warn of this danger leaves a person open to the accusation that they are peddling Russian propaganda. Blindly, the Western governments are doubling down on the powder-keg.

The U.S.-led NATO alliance is flooding Ukraine with heavy offensive weaponry capable of hitting Russia, and the British government this week has openly called for Ukraine to target Russia’s “depth” with NATO weapons.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented that the U.S. military alliance is now fully-fledged in a proxy war against Russia. He said there is a “serious danger” of confrontation spiraling into a nuclear conflagration.

Only a fool or an insane person could remain insouciant about the dynamic unfolding.

Ominously, there is evidently no diplomatic will from Washington and its allies to address the background to the war in Ukraine or Russia’s long-held security concerns. The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is being vilified for even attempting to negotiate a peace settlement by going this week to Moscow before traveling on to Kiev.

There is a palpable sense that the U.S. and NATO are recklessly pushing a military showdown with Russia – albeit under the cynical guise of “defending Ukraine”. All the while, the Western public is being kept in the dark by a complicit corporate-controlled news media.

This week saw the United States host what can only be called a war conference at its European command center in the Ramstein airbase, Germany, where NATO military chiefs coordinated their weapons delivery to Ukraine. This is a war footing.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the United States and its NATO allies would “move heaven and earth” to get more weapons into Ukraine to defeat Russia’s military intervention in that country. Austin’s rhetoric was a disturbing malapropism with apocalyptic resonance.

But it does reveal the determination to take on Russia that is now openly visceral. The conflict in Ukraine is emerging for what it is – a war between the U.S.-led NATO bloc and Russia. Moscow has long held that the U.S. and NATO are a hostile entity tacitly aiming to subjugate Russia. Such claims have been derided as Russian paranoia. However, it’s now apparent that the actual intent is hostility and defeat of Russia.

Austin stated at the Ramstein conference that America’s allies are now openly exploiting an opportunity to “weaken Russia” and pursue the regime change objective in Moscow that U.S. President Biden referred to in his controversial Warsaw speech last month.

Earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accompanied Austin, the Pentagon’s civilian chief, on a secret visit to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. American news media dutifully complied with an embargo on reporting the Sunday visit which shows that these media are complicit in conforming to Washington’s agenda of belligerence.

 

The American envoys held three-hour discussions with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky during which they pledged more military support on top of the huge arsenal already provided by the U.S. The meeting is a stark signal to Moscow of what the real American intentions are. This is not about resolving Russia’s grievances over NATO expansionism and the neutrality of Ukraine. That discourse was never taken seriously by the United States anyway. No, now relations are in the framework of the U.S. waging a war against Russia, with Ukraine merely the present battleground.

When the top American officials returned to Poland they held a press conference Monday at a warehouse shipping NATO weapons to Ukraine. At one stage, Austin told reporters about the earlier meeting with Zelensky: “So our focus in the meeting was to talk about those things that would enable us [sic] to win the current fight and also build for tomorrow [sic].”

Unable to contain his enthusiasm for confrontation, the Pentagon chief went on to make it more apparent the direct U.S. involvement: “In terms of our – their ability to win, the first step in winning is believing that you can win. And so they believe that we can win; we believe that they – we can win – they can win if they have the right equipment, the right support. And we’re going to do everything we can – continue to do everything we can to ensure that that gets there.”

When Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered what he called “the special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, he said Russia had no choice but to defend the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass who had endured eight years of a deadly offensive by the NATO-backed Kiev regime forces.

The United States, NATO, and the Kiev regime have shown no will whatsoever to resolve the civil war in Ukraine peacefully by implementing the Minsk accords negotiated in 2015.

It is more apparent than ever that the conflict in the Ukraine was never a localized civil war but rather was always a front line in a bigger geopolitical confrontation between the U.S.-led NATO bloc and Russia, as Bruce Gagnon explained in a recent interview for Strategic Culture Foundation.

Instead of an earnest effort to genuinely resolve the conflict, the NATO-backed Kiev regime and its openly Nazi regiments are mobilizing in a general war footing against Russia.

The rationale is now explicitly stated as the U.S. and its allies wanting to defeat Russia and subjugate it.

British armed forces minister James Heappey even went as far as telling the BBC this week that Ukrainian forces should strike Russia’s depth with NATO weaponry.

Russia’s military defense doctrine forgoes first-use of nuclear weapons but it reserves the right to use such weapons if the country comes under existential threat even from conventional military assault.

The United States and its NATO allies have willfully ignored Russia’s decades-long concerns about its security and in particular the use of Ukraine as a cat’s paw to destabilize and dissipate Russia. The full-on U.S. imperial war agenda of targeting Russia for defeat is now coming into focus. The crazies are in charge of the asylum. And shouting about it too.

No Nazis in Ukraine?

 

 

Even Nazis from Israel are coming to Ukraine to fight on the side of the US-NATO puppet regime in Kiev. 

During World War II, German and Ukrainian fascists killed and burned alive hundreds of thousands of Jews, but the Jewish oligarchy from the Anglo-Saxon countries deliberately traded with the Third Reich. 

Jewish fighters today in Ukraine are not representatives of the Jewish people, but are militants of the Jewish oligarchy.

 

 

 

See more about this here

Interview on Italian TV

 

 

In this special Pangea's Grandangolo episode Jean Marazzani Visconti interviews Bruce Gagnon, an exponent of the No War movement in the United States. 

He analyzes the current events related to the war in Ukraine. 

See the Italian version of the interview below. 

 

No love for elensky.....

 

• We know elensky is popular in the Western media, but what’s his popularity in eastern Ukraine?

elensky has decreed that opposition political parties be outlawed, and those accused as traitors are arrested. Also see here

I know, I put no 'Z' in front of his name. He was the one who wanted the letter Z banned around the world. So OK, I won't use it when referring to 'his highness' - Ukraine's most famous actor.

• Don't forget please that when elensky ran for office in Ukraine his main plank was to end the civil war. Once in office he abandoned that promise - with a not so gentle push from the Nazis who told him if he stopped the war on the Donbass they'd kill him.

• I understand that some say there are not really any Nazis in Ukraine - that it is a fabrication from Moscow. But truth is the Ukrainian army is crawling with Nazis.  Don't expect western corporate dominated media to report on that story. Not allowed. 
  

 

• In the meantime the US is planning to upgrade a base called Lakenheath in England to store nuclear weapons. The 2023 Pentagon budget request says that NATO “is wrapping up a 13-year, $384 million infrastructure investment program at nuke storage sites in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK, and Turkey to upgrade security measures, communication systems, and facilities”. 

• US officials Blinkin and Austin were just in Kiev meeting with elensky and then held a news conference in Poland. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Austin said at the news conference. 

• Did you hear than an employee of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), detained in the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), confessed to passing classified information in the military sphere to foreign intelligence services' officials? In other words OSCE has been spying on the Donbass republics and passing on targeting information to the Kiev puppet regime. That is a violation of the OSCE charter. But who cares, right?
  

• It appears clear to me that Washington and Brussels are taking serious steps to prepare for a much bigger war. 

• Ukraine is just a pawn on the US-NATO chessboard. The “Grand Chessboard” assumes US supremacy and exceptionalism and adds the strategy for implementing and enforcing this “primacy” on the biggest and most important arena: Eurasia. That means Russia must be taken down.
  

Does anyone notice?

Duck and cover time again?

Good luck world. Just might be time to speak up before it is too late.

Bruce

Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett near Mariupol

 

 

According to Western media, now copy-paste reporting the same claims, Russian forces apparently secretly buried *up to 9,000 Mariupol civilians* in "mass graves" in a town just west of the city. 

Except, it never happened, there is no mass grave. 

It's actually just a normal, small, cemetery…no pits, no mass graves, just an orderly cemetery whose grave diggers refuted Western claims. 

On April 23, with journalist Roman Kosarev, I went to Mangush (Manhush in Ukrainian), found a normal cemetery setting, and spoke with the men responsible for burials, who refused the allegations and said they buried each person in a coffin, including, they noted, Ukrainian soldiers.

More fake news?

 

The car tires look to be in good shape as well. Quite a trick.

Hearing from President of Russian VFP

 

In 2019 I organized a study tour of Russia for members of the Global Network. We went to Moscow, Crimea and St. Petersburg. While in Moscow we met several members of Russian Veterans For Peace (VFP) and heard from their Executive Director Aleksandr Rassokhin (in the center behind the Russian flag holding papers). Below are his words recently sent to US VFP members who inquired about his position on the Ukraine-Russia situation.

 

 Уважаемые Друзья!

 Respected friends,

Буду писать по русски, так как возможности интернет позволят Вам перевести смысл более точно, чем я смогу написать по английски.

I write to you in Russian, because your translations would more accurately convey what I am trying to tell you, than if I tried to write in English.

Во первых мы ( ветераны и члены нашей организации и поверьте подавляющее большинство наших граждан) считаем, что на Украине идет война России с коллективным Западом во главе с Соединенными Штатами.

First of all, [Russian] veterans, members of our organization, and believe me the great majority of our citizenry consider that what is happening in Ukraine is a war between Russia and a Western collective with the United States at its head.

Мы считаем. что все годы со времен распада Варшавского Договора, возглавляемая Соединенными Штатами Европа, сделали все, чтобы эта война состоялась.

We believe that, ever since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, Europe (under the leadership of the United States) has done everything it could to ensure that the conditions for this war would come about.

Мы одобряем войну только в одном случае. Россию прижали к стенке и требуют от нее "застрелиться".

We support this war only because Russia has been backed up against a wall, and they [unspecified] demand that we commit suicide.

И мы будем защищаться до конца.

But we will defend ourselves to the end.

Мы вынуждены были это делать. Иначе сказать-это США и их "союзники" спровоцировали эту войну.

We were forced into this. In other words, it was the USA and its "allies" who provoked this war.

В общественном сознании США и Европы, Россия и  "русские" профилируются как люди второго сорта. Изгои и дикари, которые не имеют право на существование.

The USA and Europe seem to think that Russia and "the Russians" are second class people, not deserving even the right to exist.

Мы видим тотальную ложь и лицемерие по отношению к России.

[All] we see are complete lies and hypocrisy when it comes to Russia.

Если Вы думаете, что во всем виноват Президент Путин и нужно только его убрать, чтобы окончательно решить вопрос существования России, то Вы СИЛЬНО ОШИБАЕТЕСЬ.

If you think that all guilt lies with President Putin, and that if only he could be removed [from power], then the question of whether Russia even exists is thereby solved, YOU ARE MAKING A HUGE MISTAKE.

Вы помогли русским сплотиться. 

 [All you are doing] is helping to unite the Russian people.

Как бы страшно не звучали слова, которые однажды произнес Президент Путин, но я сам готов их повторить.

Нам не нужен такой мир, где нет России.

Allow me to repeat the words that President Putin said. "We have no need of a peace in which there is no Russia."
(Could also be translated as "We have no need of a world in which there is no Russia. The word mir means both "peace" and "world".)

И русские победят в этой войне. Либо весь мир сгорит.

And the Russian people will win this war, even if it means burning up the whole world.

 

 

 

США и НАТО - вот главные разжигатели войны.

Но мы не проиграем. Чего бы нам это не стоило.

Даже если весь мир будет против нас.

The USA and NATO are the primary instigators of war. But we will not lose, no matter what the cause. Even if the entire world is against us.

В 90 годах, мы впервые познакомились с Вьетнамскими ветеранами Америки. Представители этой организации приезжали в Россию.

In the 1990s, we met for the first time with American veterans of the War in Vietnam, who had sent their representatives to Russia.

Мы нашли много общего в нашем отношении к Миру во всем Мире.

В одной из поездок в США я познакомился с мистером Jerry Genesio  и организацией Veterans for Peace.

Мы были рады, что нашли единомышленников в стране, которую всегда считали потенциальным агрессором.

We learned that we had much in common as regards peace in the entire world. And on a trip to the USA, I met with a Mr. Jerry Genesio and the Veterans For Peace. We were delighted to find people of the same mind in the very country we always regarded as a potential aggressor.

И мы делали все, чтобы через народную дипломатию укрепить связи и не допустить больше конфронтации между нашими странами.Я знаю, что большинство Американцев такие же простые люди как и мы. И мы не хотим никаких войн.

And we did all we could through citizen diplomacy to strengthen ties [of friendship] and to prevent further confrontation between our countries. I know that the majority of Americans are just simple people like ourselves, and that we both have no desire for any war.

Но слов простых людей оказалось мало. Все эти годы НАТО приближало свой военный потенциал к границам России.

Сегодня мы видим результат.

But the words of simple people counted for little. Throughout all these years, NATO kept encroaching upon the borders of Russia with its military might. Today we see the result.

Америке нужно перестать относиться к планете как к своему заднему двору. 

America needs to stop thinking of the rest of the world as its back yard.

Нужно уважать интересы других и тогда будут уважать Вас.

Война закончится тогда, когда Америка перестанет вмешиваться  и попирать интересы России и других стран.

If you would only respect the wishes of others, then they will respect you. War* will only end when America stops interfering in the affairs of Russia and other countries.

 Нам не нужна Американская демократия, которую Америка насаждает по всему миру, прикрывая свою сущность захватчиков и агрессоров. Пусть Америка живет со своей демократией как хочет.

We have no need for [the sort of] American democracy, which America imposes on the rest of the world in order to cover up its own robberies and aggression. Let's let America live with its own democracy however it likes.

У России большая история. Нас не нужно учить жить.

Нас не нужно воспитывать. У нас "Большой Театр" в Москве старше, чем вся история Америки.

Russia has a great history.  We do not need to be taught how to live. We don't need to be civilized [Not a literal translation, but it's what he means.] Our Bolshoi Theater is older than your country!

Мы не хотим свободной любви, гомосексуализма и прочей мерзости. И нам не нужно угрожать. Для нас мир это мужчина и женщина. Традиционная семья. Вера в Бога и спасение.

We do not want [your] free love, homosexuality, or any other sort of filth.  And we will not stand for any threats.  In our country, marriage is between one man and one woman - the traditional family. Faith in God and in salvation.

С нами Бог! А если Бог с нами, то кто против?

Не в силе Бог, а в Правде.

 

God is with us!  And if God is with us, who can be against us? And it's not [just] the power of God, but of Truth.

С Уважением

Из России с миром и Любовью

Александр Рассохин.

 Исполнительный директор "Veterans for Peace" Россия. Коми Республика.

With respect,

Aleksandr Rassokhin

 Executive Director "Veterans For Peace", Russia, Republic of Komi

* Could also be translated as "the war". There is no word for "the" in Russian, so Aleksandr might mean "this war" or "all war". Without further context, there's no way to tell. 

A wise voice

 

 

Young boy in Mariupol speaks his truth.

Sunday song