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Workers including bus drivers, healthcare staff and teachers active in rank-and-file committees in the UK were invited by the Socialist Equality Party to discuss a fight against war based on the working class and socialism.

Opening the meeting last Saturday, SEP National Secretary Chris Marsden drew attention to a point made in the February 28 World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board statement, NATO goes to war against Russia: The essential causes and interests of wars are often not at first apparent. They are concealed by an avalanche of propaganda. However, sooner or later, the real and more profound driving forces and significance of the conflict emerge.

Three weeks later, Marsden said, it was now clear that what is involved is not only a war in Ukraine, but a campaign by the US and NATO imperialist powers for war against Russia and a redivision of the world that also has China in its sights.

We were now at the most dangerous point in history, he continued, where the use of nuclear weapons was not only being considered but planned.

The US and the other imperialist powers were being driven by an acute crisis that was economic, social, and political.

During the pandemic, the major corporations and oligarchs had been given trillions of dollars, euros, and pounds, and now this must be clawed back. Price rises and spending cuts were adding to a social and political catastrophe under conditions where people are already desperate. Everything is set to get worse. War abroad means class war at home.

Preventing war meant facing up to the absence of a mass anti-war movement. The old anti-war movement has collapsed; the Stop the War Coalition (STWC) and Labour lefts do not offer any genuine means for opposing the escalating war danger.

Our answer to war, Marsden concluded, is the development of a mass anti-war movement, based on the international working class. The fight against imperialist war must be developed as a conscious and international political movement for socialism.

Introducing the discussion, SEP Assistant National Secretary Tom Scripps stressed that the question of the war was not exhausted simply by pointing to who fired the first shot. What was necessary was to understand the context, all the players involved, their interests and objectives, and where these events are threatening to take us.

The present conflict, said Scripps, followed 30 years of uninterrupted US-led wars and interventions, many involving NATO or NATO powers: Iraq, Yugoslavia, everything done in the name of the war on terror, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Libya, Syria.

All those military campaigns were about gaining geostrategic advantage for the US for the benefit of its banks, its corporations. That objective had now turned US predatory attentions towards Russia and China. US strategy documents had been talking about the need to prepare for great power conflict.

In the discussion, Jude argued, We should also link into the fight for Julian Assanges freedom. He represents the stance of opposition to war through his exposures on WikiLeaks.

Marsden said Assanges fate was the personal embodiment of the collapse of the anti-war movement, He represents everything the anti-war movement has abandoned. If there was an anti-war movement today worth of the name, it would be carrying placards with Assanges picture on them. Instead, the Stop the War Coalition wanted to make their figurehead the Corbynite Labour MPs.

Jude asked how to counter government and media propaganda.

Marsden answered, We have to start from where we are. The anti-war movement has collapsed, a new one has to emerge. An objective conflict is developing between the working class and ruling class. What we must do is fight for clarity. We must explain as clearly as possible what is actually happening. In these circumstances, knowledge is the most essential weapon the working class can have.

Several participants spoke on the domestic crisis. Laura noted that the previous Wednesday had been National Covid Remembrance Day and there wasnt even a minutes silence in parliament because they are too busy preparing a world war.

Adam commented, I feel that an anti-war movement is vitally important as the war is going to have a knock-on effect on our standard of living globally.

Jay added, Working people will be forced to pay for this war like they are for Covid.

Scripps replied that the war had been going for a month and already massive social fault lines were opening up. Forecasters were saying that there would be a collapse of living standards in Britain in the next months, double what we saw after 2008.

Education workers Chris P and Ruth referenced the censorship of material critical of NATOs warmongering or the governments pandemic policy on social media.

Katrina, a nurse, described how as a healthcare professional social media is banned. People have been sacked for comments on Facebook. Its policed by the employers. We cant even say what sort of day weve had, or we get hauled into the office. As nurses, we are silenced.

In the last month, we have shed about half a dozen senior members of staff who have been there quite a while. This leaves it all on the shoulders of junior staff, which can put patients at risk. The NHS [National Health Service] is shedding staff left, right and centre. It is a nightmare.

Medical student Sanya said, Like frontline workers, medical students are being forced into high-risk environments.

Laura thanked Katrina, adding, Patients are the collateral damage from decades of relentless cuts and underfunding. The connection between war abroad and war at home could not be clearer, with what millions of people have suffered in the pandemic.

Chris D added, Here in Northern Ireland the COVID cases are rising rapidly, and the hospitals are on the brink again, but the media are acting like the pandemic is over.

Stephen, a care worker, said he had not detected any major susceptibility to pro-war hysteria among those he worked with, or at least none that could not be dispelled by explaining the background to the current situation.

Tim, a secondary school teacher, said he had been struck by how his Year 12 pupils quickly understood that there was a bigger picture than just Putin ordering the invasion of Ukraine. Straight away they said, well the US and NATO have provoked this.

Tony Robson said members of the London Bus Workers Rank-and-File Committee shared a broad anti-war sentiment. They had not forgotten or forgiven these previous illegal wars. They live in a country where war criminals get knighted, not sent to The Hague [for prosecution].

The fundamental issue was to give a lead to anti-war sentiment, which meant a reckoning with Labour and the unions. Referring to the mass P&O sackings, he said workers knew that if this is not defeated then it will provide a pretext for a wholesale attack, But there was no expression given to that sentiment by these organisations. Instead, they were waging a nationalist campaign, lining up workers behind their ruling class in a race to the bottom, when workers only way forward is an international struggle.

Shortly after the meeting, bus worker Jason sent in his thoughts. Calling the meeting insightful, he said, Young people deserve better than the decades of inter-generational war that has been waged on them. He added, There is no effective voice for the working class. Where I live the local Labour party/supporters walk around with placards that say, give our young people the skills for tomorrow. Yet they helped defund and turn it into what it now is.

Katrina commented, Im really glad I came online. I wasnt going to but actually what is the point in moaning if you're not prepared to do something about it? It was so informative and has definitely changed some of my way of thinking.

Closing the event, Marsden said that developing an anti-war movement ultimately meant building an anti-war party. This meant joining and funding the Socialist Equality Party.

Foreword to the German edition of David Norths Quarter Century of War

Johannes Stern, 5 October 2020

After three decades of US-led wars, the outbreak of a third world war, which would be fought with nuclear weapons, is an imminent and concrete danger.

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Socialist Equality Party discusses building an anti-war movement with UK workers - WSWS

This photo, dated March 30, 2022, and released by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, shows officials in the information field of the Workers' Party of Korea taking part in the final day of the first workshop at the April 25 House of Culture in Pyongyang after it opened March 28. (KCNA)

North Korea reiterated calls for the ruling party's propaganda officials to help weed out anti-socialist and non-socialist practices, as it wrapped up a three-day workshop, according to state media Thursday.

The workshop for officials in the information field of the ruling Workers' Party concluded the previous day with a study session on prioritizing ideological work as the "very core of the Party work," the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

"The workshop called for regarding it as the general orientation and target of the Party ideological work to model the entire Party and the whole society on the respected Comrade Kim Jong-un's revolutionary idea," it added.

Officials were urged to "concentrate all rabble-rousing forces" on improving peoples' living standards and carry out a "fierce campaign" against anti-socialism and non-socialism.

During the workshop, the North also held a lecture warning officials to stay alert against the "imperialists' moves for ideological and cultural poisoning."

On the first day of the workshop Monday, the North's leader sent a letter to the party officials, urging them to wage a battle in rooting out "evil spirits" of anti-socialism and bring fundamental change to their ideological work.

The workshop appears to be part of the Kim regime's efforts to tighten social discipline and rally internal unity amid growing economic pressure from the fallout of international sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic. (Yonhap)

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N. Korea calls on party officials to wipe out anti-socialist practices - The Korea Herald

Kadir Akin, with his second book, paves the way for Turkish socialists to pursue their common history with Armenians faithfully and intersectionally, to offer a perspective on what has been left out of history of socialists on the lands they live today.

BY CIHAN ERDALBianet.org

Paul Ricoeur, in Memory, History, Forgetting (2004)*, argues that no such thing as a historical reality exists readymade, so that science merely has to reproduce it faithfully. The historical reality, because it is human, is ambiguous and inexhaustible (p. 334).

In his book Sakli Tarihin Izinde: Osmanlida Modernlesme, Anayasa, Sosyalizmin Kkleri ve Ermeni Vekiller (Tracing the Hidden History: Modernization, Constitution, the Roots of Socialism and Armenian Deputies in the Ottoman Empire), Kadir Akin traces the history of the socialist movement led by Armenian intellectuals and deputies as the members of the Chamber of Deputies of the Ottoman Empire during the Second Constitutional Monarchy (1908-1915) not as an academic-historian but as a socialist-intellectual and engaged-researcher.

As a researcher who is committed to contributing to a more faithful relationship with the historical reality of Turkey, Akin attends to challenge both the nationalistic/right-wing and alternative/left-wing accounts of the past, by shedding light on the pivotal roles of Armenian, Greek, Jewish, and Bulgarian revolutionaries in the emergence of socialist politics in the late Ottoman era. In his preface to the book, Ertugrul Krk, the current Honorary President of the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), aptly describes Akins endeavour as the following:

Rather than doing historiography, he wants to contribute to the restoration of the wounded (historical) consciousness of the Left by calling on historians and historiography to help. Sakli Tarihin Izinde invites the socialist movement with all its fractions, the Left, libertarian and critical citizens to re-approach the state, nation, republic, democracy and socialism in the context of the Armenian Genocide (p. 17-18).

Akins first book Armenian Revolutionary Paramaz, which was published in April 2015 (Dipnot Yayinlari), should also be regarded as an invitation to the Turkish Left to recall the struggle of Armenian socialist Paramaz (Matdeos Sarkisyan), who was one of the leading militants of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (SDHP).

The assassination of Hrant Dink marked a milestone for reckoning with the past evils of our country, particularly for our generation in Turkey who engaged in politics throughout the 2000s. The unforgettable chain of conscience and minds of the country, following our great loss, unsettled the dominant, hostile imaginaries of Armenians, who had been taught to us over decades as being giaours, nationalist separatists, traitors, or spies by the Kemalist historiography.

Particularly striking is that the discursive-imaginary orientation of the Turkish Left towards its past has never been fully free of such dominant-nationalist modes of approaching history. The narrative of the past struggles of socialists in Turkey in the 20th century has predominantly built on the heroic stories of some prominent political figures, who suffered from execution, exile, imprisonment, or torture.

However, until the time Akins book was published in 2015, very few of the socialists, leftists, and democrats in Turkey knew the name of the Armenian Revolutionary Paramaz, who was, after an unlawful trial that lasted for 17 days, executed with 19 other comrades in Beyazit Square in 1915.

Such shameful disregard and silence, indeed, was not accidental, given the fact that the hegemonic discourse in the Left used to see no harm in starting its historical trajectory with the foundation of the Turkish Communist Party in 1920 and the significant role of its founder Mustafa Suphi.

Kadir Akin unearths the truth that the Turkish socialists embodied the chauvinist perspective for so long, which historically categorized the political Armenian groups as the ones who were in cahoots with the imperialists.

In an interview with Akin (Sert, 2021)***, the writer describes how excited he was when he first read Paramazs defense at the Van Court while he was on trial in 1897, and highlights Paramazs internationalist political perspective:

Our demand is to live on equal terms with Armenians, Turks, Kurds, Greeks, Alevis, Laz, Yazidis, Syriacs, Arabs and Copts. As a revolutionary, I believe we will achieve this goal. () We are not nationalists, we are not guided by the nation-building motivation. We are friends of the people, not chauvinistic nationalists. We know that a nationalist rule will maintain the same order. Our demand is that all inhabitants of Armenia, Armenians, Kurds, Turks, Arabs, Laz, Circassians, Assyrians, Yazidis and Mitrib elect their own rulers by their own will and vote. We demand this future for all inhabitants of Armenia, for all Ottoman peoples.

Uncovering a forgotten pastKadir Akin, with his second book Sakli Tarihin Izinde, paves the way for Turkish socialists to pursue their common history with Armenians faithfully and intersectionally, to offer a perspective on what has been left out of history of socialists on the lands they live today.

Akin makes it clear that there is more scholarly, political, and ethical effort needed in encountering the struggles of Armenian, Greek, Jewish, and Bulgarian socialists in the late Ottoman era, which has faded into oblivion over decades and has not yet been recognized adequately.

While uncovering this forgotten past, Akin meticulously provides a broader narrative in the book for readers to comprehend the historical conditions in which those Armenian intellectuals-deputies fought for their revolutionary ideas. This includes the poverty brought by the economic destruction during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid, the 1908 Workers Strikes, how the demands of the Christian peoples of the Ottoman were suppressed under the Islamist policies of Abdulhamid, the relations between the Unionists and Armenian politicians who opposed the tyranny, the conflicts between the Armenian Parties (EDF and SDHP) and the initiatives of their coalition-building, and importantly, how the path to the Armenian genocide has been developed.

What makes Akins contribution unique is that it redeems the past struggles of Armenian deputiesincluding Krikor Zohrab, Hampartzum Boyaciyan, Vartkes Seranglyan, Vahan Papazyan, and Dimitar Wlahof who served in the General Assembly of the Ottoman Empire (1908-1915) as the leading actors of a movement for socialism, equality, and freedom for all peoples of Ottoman.

How many of us had knowledge about their existence and struggles? How many of us knew about Vahan Papazyan speaking out on the education policies (May 8, 1911), Vartkes Serenglyan defending the labor rights against capitalist class, or the historic speech of Hampartzum Boyaciyan on workers fraternity (May 13, 1909) in the Chamber of Deputies?

Kadir Akin illustrates how Armenian deputies believed in the internationalist fight for the workers fraternity, womens rights, freedom of the press, and socialism, which would break down prejudices between and unite all the people of the Ottoman.

Sakli Tarihin Izinde offers a proposal to reimagine the unforgotten past, the past-present relations, and the future of internationalist-socialist struggle in Turkey. Re-approaching the history of socialist movement alongside the truth which Kadir Akin enables us to recognize, journeying to the path for a multicultural, democratic, and equal society becomes more possible.

Recalling the radical history does not only transform our collective memory, but also expands the capability for building a different country and world ahead.

* Ricoeur, Paul (2004) Memory, History, Forgetting. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London.

** Akin, Kadir (July 2021) Sakli Tarihin Izinde: Osmanlida Modernlesme, Anayasa, Sosyalizmin Kkleri ve Ermeni Vekiller. Dipnot Yayinlari

** Sert, Soner (2021, August 26). Kadir Akin: Sosyalist hareket tarih bilincinden yoksun durumda, Gazete Duvar. https://www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/kadir-akin-sosyalist-hareket-tarih-bilincinden-yoksun-durumda-haber-1532607

About Cihan ErdalCihan Erdal is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Canada. His research interests include social movements, activist youth cultures, contemporary experiences of time and temporalities, memory studies, neoliberalism, intersectionality, citizenship and social policy.

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Tracing the Hidden History: Unearthing the Past of Socialist Movement in Turkey - Armenian News by MassisPost

Jose Cortes, a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, will officially be on the ballot with a full voter guide statement on June 7. Cortes, who grew up in El Cajon, is running on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket in Californias new 51st Congressional District race for U.S. House of Representatives.

At a campaign fundraiser celebration on March 10, Cortes announced to over 40 supporters at Next Door Craft Beer & Wine Bar that the initial campaign efforts were a success. Cortes said, Thank you for coming out and supporting a grassroots, revolutionary campaign here where they feel the safest. Here in this political system that they tell us it is so democratic, but we see with our own eyes is meant to keep people like us out.

By collecting hundreds of signatures and raising over $6,000, Cortes was able to submit a 250-word statement that will go out to hundreds of thousands of voters throughout San Diego County. The full statement is published below.

I am running to represent the interests of the working class, and dedicate my platform to building real power in our communities to create lasting systemic change. I am Chicano and a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. I have organized with the PSL since 2017 after participating in anti-racist protests in El Cajon.

Since then, I have participated in and led actions against police brutality and war. I helped organize a successful campaign to overturn a local ban on feeding homeless people.

I am running on a campaign platform that includes addressing the housing crisis by canceling rent and mortgage debt accumulated throughout the pandemic, passing Medicare for All, constitutionally guaranteeing universal healthcare and housing, eliminating private health insurance, disbanding NATO, bringing home all of the troops for humanitarian and environmental reasons, jailing killer cops, defunding and demilitarizing the police, paying reparations to Black people and Native Americans, guaranteeing full rights for all immigrants, and canceling student debt. The PSL has a plan to actually defeat COVID-19 using the money billionaires have stolen from us workers.

I encourage supporters and voters to get involved with the struggle for a better world by contacting the San Diego branches of the PSL and the Peace and Freedom Party. This campaign is about building community power, and that cannot be done without working-class organization and struggle. A better world is possible, but we have to fight for it!

You can donate or sign up to volunteer for the campaign on the official website.

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Socialist Jose Cortes obtains ballot access and full voter guide... - Liberation

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Sri Lanka held a lively online meeting Sunday, March 20, titled Oppose USNATO war drive and the Russian invasion of Ukraine!

Prior to the meeting, the SEP and the IYSSE launched a strong campaign against the imperialist war drive, which attracted wide support among workers, students and youth.

About 150 out of more than 250 registrants joined the meeting, which was held through Zoom, and dozens more watched the event on the partys Facebook page. Participants attended from across Sri Lanka as well as from India, France, the Middle East and several other countries and regions throughout the world. The video has so far been viewed by more than 1,200 people, with 300 others sharing it.

SEP political committee member Saman Gunadasa chaired the meeting. He pointed out that a full-scale war against Russia is being prepared through a media propaganda campaign. As a part of the anti-Russia campaign, he said, the pro-imperialist media is covering up the fact that the US military has killed millions of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and many other countries in the Middle East and other regions.

Gunadasa emphasized that it was crucial for workers in Sri Lanka, South Asia and throughout the world to understand that there is no future for the working class or the planet itself without building an anti-war movement of the international working class, based on the perspective on international socialism.

David North, the chairman of the International Editorial Board of the WSWS and the national chairman of the SEP in the US, made opening remarks to the meeting. He started by emphasizing that the International Committee of the Fourth Internationals approach to the war is based on revolutionary, socialist and internationalist principles.

While stating that the ICFI has unequivocally opposed the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, North emphasized that it was necessary to expose the deceit and the falsifications of the imperialist powers in their hypocritical anti-Russian campaign.

North explained that thirty years ago, at the time of the dissolution of Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy, the ideologists of the ruling class proclaimed the end of history. The dissolution of the USSR supposedly represented the triumph of capitalism that would bring with it a blossoming of democracy, equality and prosperity.

The breakup of the Soviet Union did not produce prosperity for the masses, North said. It produced poverty. Different fragments of the former Soviet Union are ruled by oligarchic, corrupt governments, and the republics that were established on that basis have been plagued by war.

The entire capitalist world, North said, is confronted with a crisis of monumental proportions. One cannot understand the crisis that has erupted in Ukraine without reference to the global crisis out of which it has emerged. This finds its most extreme expression in a global pandemic that has cost the lives over six million people during the last two years. The US, the most advanced capitalist country in the world, is at the verge of reaching one million deaths.

North said that those deaths could have been avoided, but the necessary measures to stop the pandemic were rejected for two reasons. First the necessary measures conflicted with corporate financial interests, and second the elimination of the virus is not possible on a national basis.

North insisted that the pandemic has revealed an extraordinary indifference to human life on the part of the ruling class. This must be taken as a warning under conditions of the looming threat of a nuclear war. One cannot avoid drawing the conclusion that there is a definite relation between the reactionary policies in response to the pandemic and the reckless policies pursued in response to the war in Ukraine.

Concluding his speech, North said the fundamental and decisive question is: How will this mad drive towards war be stopped? The only way, he said, is through the development of the international class struggle the building of a world party of socialist revolution. He concluded by saying that he hoped the meeting will contribute significantly towards building a powerful international movement of the working class against war and for socialism.

Sakuntha Hirimuthugoda, representing the IYSSE in Sri Lanka, addressed the meeting next. He started his speech by referring to the World Socialist Web Site s analysis of the efforts of the White House to escalate the conflict in Ukraine into a proxy war between the NATO powers and Russia. As a result, the danger of a third world war is mounting. The imperialist powers around the world are sitting on the rim of the volcano of World War III, and they are throwing explosives into it.

Quoting from ICFI statement, Socialism and the Fight Against War, he said that the ruling classes everywhere are impelled to defend their positions by extracting unending sacrifice from workers in their home national state, in the form of mass unemployment, austerity and the destruction of living standards.

Hirimuthugoda added that the ruling elites throughout the world are only capable of leading mankind toward destruction, in the form of war, austerity, dictatorship, fascism, the pandemic and mass unemployment. This can only be stopped by mobilizing the youth and the rest of the oppressed behind an independent working class movement fighting for socialism.

Concluding remarks were delivered to the meeting by SEP political committee member Pani Wijesiriwardena. He said: The deep-rooted and fundamental causes for a war are not revealed in how it begins. They emerge in the course of the wars development. When World War I broke out in 1914, only the most far-sighted MarxistsLenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg, in particularsaw the explosion of the long-escalating inter-imperialist conflict as its root cause.

Referring to the WSWS perspective titled, The war in Ukraine: The questions that must be asked , the speaker continued: The ruling elites in the US and Europe are facing a major economic, political and social crisis, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the ruling class is not capable of providing any solution to the growing social anger, war is being used to divert internal social tensions to an outside enemy.

Wijesiriwardena explained the reactionary role of pseudo-left organizations around the world within this context. He mentioned a statement issued by a Pabloite organization, which claims to be the Executive Bureau of the Fourth International, that supports the vicious anti-Russia campaign. Its Sri Lankan affiliate, the Socialist Peoples Forum, had said that Russia had violated the self-determination of Ukraine while covering up for the role of NATO and American imperialism in instigating the war.

The speaker noted that the US war drive has intensified the geopolitical tensions in the Indian Ocean region and in Asia. He described the disastrous implications of the US conflict with China, which is taking the form of demands that China distance itself from Russia. Although New Delhi has tried to maintain a balance between its military-strategic partnership with the US and its long-standing relationship with Moscow, it is getting difficult to continue that due to the mounting pressure from the Biden administration. The Colombo government has claimed to be neutral in this crisis, but it is under intense US pressure to align with its interests and distance itself from China.

In the conclusion Wijesiriwardena said: Although the capitalist governments have no program to end this devastation, the working class around the world is opposed to the war. What needs to be done is to develop their opposition as a conscious political movement for socialism.

Foreword to the German edition of David Norths Quarter Century of War

Johannes Stern, 5 October 2020

After three decades of US-led wars, the outbreak of a third world war, which would be fought with nuclear weapons, is an imminent and concrete danger.

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Sri Lankan SEP/IYSSE holds well attended online meeting against US-NATO war drive and the Russian invasion of Ukraine - WSWS