Current Events (February 2022) – by Dan Baker

Current Events, February 2022

I recently learned that four friends were killed when Turkey, using US sourced jets, drones and missiles, leveled the YPG International Academy in Rojava. Many other friends were wounded. This fills me with rage, conviction and grief. Please take a moment of silence for the brave internationals and locals who were murdered by the Turkish State. These martyrs were fighting against daesh, against fascism and dogmatic mysticism, patriarchy and environmental abuse. Shehid nemarin. The martyrs never die.

At the same time Amerikkka postures on the Ukraine border and threatens to plunge the working class into an unwinnable World War against Russia and China and their allies. Under no circumstances should any international anarchist, or various leftists, support those wars, Neither should we give any aid to Russia or China. We should make 2020 Uprisings and Vietnam anti-war protests look like gentle warm-ups in our resistance to this bloodbath. Our fight is against the wealthy ruling class and authoritarian military and prison industrial complexes of all nation-states. China has pledges to support Russia in the Ukraine. The US has funded, supplied and facilitated the far-right neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in the Donbas region of the Ukraine for the last decade – now those chickens are coming home to roost. China has millions of soldiers, the US has only a few hundred thousand, and only a tiny fraction of that are infantry, fit for combat. The rest are support, truckers, and office workers. Russia has one of the meanest special forces in human history and they don’t care about rules of engagement. They are unscrupulous about committing war crimes. China can draft billions of people into their military. Most Americans will refuse to fight. Even if I was offered a deal to get out of prison I would not fight in this war.

China will use this conflict to take back Taiwan, and they have Olympic athletes as hostages. They also have nuclear weapons and allies who feel that the US needs a taste of its own medicine. Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. China also owns the US economy. At any point they can shut off our internet, our wifi, shut down our banks and demand we pay all of our debts. The Amerikkkan economy is trash right now, weakened by capitalistic profiteering of Covid-19 and a series of losses in the arena of war. The US abandoned the Kurds, again, and failed miserably in Afghanistan. Patriotism is a thing of the past, comfort is the currency and the militant personalities that populate Amerikkkan conservative parties have both committed to a stone-age mythology and lost the moral high-ground in the eyes of the world. The US is not the strongest, fastest or best at anything anymore. The opinions of “foreign” countries are what will determine the survival of working-class people in this country. It would be suicidal to continue to disregard their voices.

We have to consider the human cost to allies like India, whose economy is also in shambles, and who would likely draft a billion people to fight a grotesquely huge front-line. China will likely draw the US into European and Asian fronts to get them overextended. After exhausting the various militaries and stretching them thin, China and Russia will be able to comfortably and easily invade the North American mainland. The rest of the world is tired of Amerikkkan bullying and feel that the US could use a taste of its own medicine. Imagine this country as the world’s new playground for proxy wars and testing military weapons. China and Russia are not some small Arab country that can be bullied – they are superpowers who have been planning this World War for a very long time, and they do not feel the need to fight fairly. This war will last for decades and the blockades, sanctions, economic embargoes and other asymmetrical tactics and strategies will starve and dehydrate the common people worldwide. Capitalist nations are not prepared to survive such a fight.

Another side effect of this conflict will be dependence on fascists like Trump. Biden will lose the liberal and far-left support base and the far-right will look to Trump for wartime bluster. But he will advance the most racist and genocidal agenda that humanity has ever witnessed. Civil War will result. I don’t believe that China will occupy the losers of this conflict, but Russia might try. There will be all out guerrilla warfare with blood running in the streets. This will lead to nationalist paranoia and demands of loyalty to Christian, racist militias, and the execution of conscientious objectors, gays, trans and left-wing activists.

We have to convince those running for president that no war hawks will win. We must seize the narrative and influence the weak to unite against the Right. The Right is united in their group psychosis – mythology, racism, and violence. Our main priority has to be to game the corrupt system to insist on global peace and international infrastructure. Our health is dependent and interdependant on the quality of life of our most distant neighbors and so-called enemies. It does not matter which authoritarian is in charge, as the donkey says in Animal Farm, they are all going to abuse us.

Using social media we can connect with Russian and Chinese people and learn how we have more in common than we realize. We have to argue with every loudmouth war hawk at work, at the store, on the street, everywhere. Don’t let the baby killers assume that we all agree with them. Make them uncomfortable. We all have a moral obligation to all of humanity to stop this war before it starts. If we can’t do that then we must seize the moment and use the chaos of this conflict to achieve our own goals – abolishing police, establishing feminist social structures, environmental protection and direct democracy through autonomous zones. With nation state forces spread thin, and with us refusing to participate, the meek shall inherit the earth, having created our own infrastructure, farm land, solar, wind and hydro power and defending our own way of living free from hierarchy and oppression. If the boys want to play rough, make them go outside. This is our home, not a war zone.

Dan Baker 25765-509

FCI Memphis

PO Box 34550

Memphis, TN 38184