Imperialist Barbarism, the crisis of capital and the peoples' struggle

We, participants in the meeting convened in Serpa, are aware that the Earth faces a crisis of global civilization that may have as its outcome the extinction of humanity. To contribute to spread awareness of this threat, inseparable from the functioning of a monstrous gear, today is a revolutionary task.

It is hard to take in the vastness of the world because the vast majority are still unaware that what is necessary to overcome the current crisis is the disappearance of capitalism.

In the era of instant information, misinformation spreads. As capital controls the media system planet-wide, a lie is imposed as truth to people. Alienation of the masses has never been so scientifically crafted by those who exploit them. A counter-culture seller, exported by the U.S., contributes to the passivity of the masses and an irrational consumerism, turning most into robots.

A dangerous lie that travels around the world daily is that the U.S. image is projected as winners in the misnomered financial crisis.

Although the U.S. is not technically in recession, it is false to say there is a move to recovery. That's because the crisis started is a structural crisis of capitalism, economic, environmental, military, social, energy, cultural.

Approximately 30 million workers are unemployed or underemployed, but corporate profits increase prodigiously. The Washington Post, speaking for the establishment, acknowledged on 30 July, in an article by Steve Pearlstein, who said in the real world companies exist to create profits for shareholders and not jobs. The same week, The New York Times noted that the drop in sales is accompanied by an increase in profits. An example: Ford halved its workforce in the last five years. Initially Ford suffered a loss of 20 billion dollars. But this year, it has been announced a likely profit of 5 billion dollars. Fred Goldstein, of the International Action Center, reminds us that capitalists install technologies designed to destroy jobs, because the logic of the system requires that production is reduced for firms to be profitable.

The debate in Washington opposes those who argue for greater 'austerity,' locking in the astronomical increase in public debt. There are also those who call for more 'stimuli' for the recovery of the banking and big business. But all indications are that when the 787 billion dollars are exhausted that were injected by the state into the economy, the country will fall back into recession.

President Barack Obama hesitates. Pursued by the Republican right, he has had to make concessions, fearful of a Republican victory in the elections of November 2. He only gives criticism, gently, to bankers and other bigwigs of finance, but in practice passively watches their prodigious enrichment. The priests of money still allocate earnings and fabulous prizes to themselves. The Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, a liberal on Wall Street, enjoys the full confidence of the President.

The reform of Health was a big hoax. Insurers will pocket hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of illegal immigrants are not covered by new legislation passed by Congress. The defense budget is the highest since World War II, but the funds allocated to education and transport have been considerably reduced.

The IMPERIAL STRATEGY

Contrary to the hopes raised, the current administration has not broken with Bush's aggressive policy, geared towards the universal and perpetual domination of U.S. imperialism.

Obama kept in the Pentagon Republican hawk Robert Gates and appointed Hillary Clinton Secretary of State. Those two have taken still more negative positions regarding the Middle East, Latin America, Palestine and East Asia than those of Madeleine Albright and Condoleeza Rice.

In October, the Pentagon, with the endorsement of President Obama, created Cibermand, an organization whose purpose, according to General Kevin Chilton, is for the U.S. to prepare for the "confrontation of cyber war." Other generals affirmed that the military control of cyberspace will ensure the U.S. perpetual power on Earth.

Another terrible threat to humanity from the imperial system are the electronic weapons that can hit a human target at 10,000 kilometers away. It is enough to just push a button somewhere in the U.S. to shoot down the selected 'enemy.' The new magnetic weapons are another innovation of the arsenal of terror created by the technology of science put in service to criminal politics.

In Latin America, there was no appreciable change in the politics of hostility toward Cuba. The Fourth Squadron of the South Hemisphere returned, strengthening the alliance with the neo-fascist regime of Colombia. The coup in Honduras - was organized at the U.S. Embassy - as well as the coup attempt in Ecuador. All of this has demonstrated an increase in the aggressiveness of the Obama government in the Region.

The constant campaign unleashed by the United States media against the progressive regimes of Bolivarian Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador is part of an ambitious strategy in the medium term. Washington came to the conclusion that the use of traditional military coups to overthrow those governments which count on strong support from the masses would be counterproductive, helping to foster anti-imperialist feelings in all of Latin America.

To burrow inside the governments of Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa, causing their implosion, is the objective the Obama Administration works towards.

Imperialism in Latin America, make no mistake, is on the offensive and, with few exceptions, there is a reflux in the struggle of the masses.

Obama tries to deepen relations with Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, aware that the policies pursued by the governments of these countries do not affect the functioning of the capitalist system, being compatible with his logic.

In Colombia, a neo-fascist government is masquerading as Democratic, the closest U.S. ally in the hemisphere. At the end of September, its president received warm congratulations from Barack Obama on the murder of FARC commander Jorge Briceño in an operation involving 27 helicopters and 30 combat aircraft.

The oligarchs who oppress the people of Colombia accuse him of murder and terrorism. But Jorge Briceño, el Mono Jojoy, will go down in history as a hero in Latin America. I am fulfilling a duty, comrades, here paying homage to this revolutionary fighter and another such as Raul Reyes, also murdered in a bombing, and Manuel Marulanda, the founder of FARC.

THE STRUGGLES IN EUROPE

In Europe, the global crisis hits the countries unevenly.

The European Union is affected by the contradictions which occur in large, incompetent structures, unable to adopt a common strategy. They only understand each other when it is a question of imposing drastic measures upon countries such as Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal. The small states of Eastern Europe are treated as guinea pigs. This applies to the Baltic Republics, subjected to ultra-liberal recipes of devastating social effect. In some cases salary reductions reach 30% there.

Allow me just to note that as a result of policies that onload the cost of the crisis on workers, designed to benefit big business, including banks and multinationals, we are witnessing an intensification of mass struggle in many countries of the continent. This is already a reality in Greece, France, Spain and Portugal where workers take to the streets in gigantic protests. Here a special mention of the proportions assumed by the struggle of the masses in France and Greece. Demonstrated by firmness and toughness in the face of brutal repression and the level of political consciousness, the Greek working class and its vanguard party, the KKE, have become leaders in recent months, gaining the respect and admiration of all progressive forces in the world.

A clear conclusion: The crisis destroyed the mask of so-called representative democracy throughout Europe. In the European Union and beyond, the sovereignty of the people are hit hard by the bourgeois dictatorship with a democratic façade.

LOST WARS OF THE U.S.

While NATO, an instrument of imperial power, is extending its tentacles now inside Asia, the U.S. military is also deploying on the African continent. Its air force has bombed Somalia. The Pentagon decided to maintain a large standing army in Africa, called AFRICOM. It only remains to decide the host country.

In the Middle East and Central Asia, U.S. imperialism is facing inseparable challenges to its project to control the huge reserves of oil and gas in the region.

They have been involved in two wars of aggression against the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan, reaffirming their full support to the State of Israel and they are using neo-fascist threats to use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Iran.

A perverse, gruelling propaganda, it is presented that the military escalation of the global fight against terrorism is required, allegedly needed to be taken by the U.S. in defense of the eternal values of humanity.

In reality, the United States, with the active complicity of the European Union has been spreading terrorism and barbarism throughout the planet.

Professor Petras does not exaggerate. In Iraq and Afghanistan, they have committed monstrous crimes that bring back memories of the SS Nazi German Third Reich. In this orgy of barbarism, everything is legal including killings, cutting tongues of detainees, torture and rape, the destruction of entire villages by bombs from drones, pilotless planes. But despite them having invested over a billion dollars, these wars are abject lost wars.

Obama, who made Afghanistan the top priority of his foreign policy, maintains a huge army in this country, numbering double that of the NATO occupation forces. He has also not hesitated to extend the assault on Pakistan's tribal areas, target now of almost routine daily bombings.

Another very uncomfortable situation for Washington, Afghanistan is currently the largest producer of heroin. Before the invasion, opium poppy cultivation there was almost residual.

A new aggression is sketched in the horizon. The White House now continually threatens Iran - the country with the second largest hydrocarbon reserves in the region - repeated in another context is the serial line "weapons of mass destruction," the pretext for the invasion and destruction of Iraq.

Because the government of Ahmandinejad does not submit, Washington has already imposed several rounds of sanctions on Iran - with the amen of the UN Security Council - and encourages the Israeli fascist ally to multiply their provocations against Tehran.

This irrational strategy justifies the fears of intellectuals such as Chossudovsky for whom an attack on Iran could be the prologue to World War III.

Do not forget that most of the oil imported by the U.S. and Europe comes through the Straits of Hormuz, which would be immediately closed to navigation if Iran were bombed.

Let's be realistic: the irresponsible policy of President Obama is pushing humanity to the brink of an abyss situation.

How to react? It seems obvious to me that regardless of the opinion that one has of the regime of Ayatollah Kamenei, solidarity with the people of Iran, heirs of a great civilization, is now inseparable from the defense of human life against barbarism.

The disaster of the Asian wars of the current U.S. administration, which continues the escalation of Bush - is so obvious that it has begun to affect the backbone of discipline in the armed forces.

The former top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, was fired because he harshly criticized the President's strategy for the Region in an interview. But the unrest continued. General David Petraeus, his successor, does not hide his criticism of Obama's military policy. They are also accompanied by officers of his staff. And what happened? Nothing. The president did not react. This silence was interpreted by influential media as evidence that Obama lost control of an Asian policy that was increasingly being run by the Pentagon.

On the eve of U.S. elections the growing popularity of extreme right-wing movements such as the Tea Party of Sarah Palin raises alarm among some Democratic leaders and even in some Republican environments.

The complexity and severity of the financial, economic and social crisis hitting the U.S. tends to favour the rise of a deeply reactionary populism that unfurls openly counter-revolutionary banners.

Fascist projects on the Horizon for the USA? The Philippine, Walden Bello, poses the question "Fascism in America?" And responds: "It's not as implausible as you might think."

I am not so pessimistic. But capitalism does not have valid solutions to its structural crisis and for that very reason the USA, bastion of the system, is seeking desperately to find genocidal wars for pillage.

Without being humanized, the system must be eradicated from the earth.

Its agony will be slow and the end has no date. The struggle of the people will be decisive for its destruction. It is my unshakeable conviction that socialism is the only alternative to capitalist barbarism. I will not be alive then. But as I learned in the revolutionary struggle, the ideas for which I lived and I fought - those survive these short individual existences.

Translated from the Portuguese version by:

Lisa Karpova

Pravda.Ru