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June 24, 2017 - No. 23 Canadian Forces Mobilized for Aggressive War and Occupation Condemn Canada's
Participation in • Trudeau
Government's Support for New U.S. Aggression in Syria Canadian Forces Mobilized for Aggressive War and Occupation Condemn Canada's Participation in
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The U.S. began to step up its
aggression in Syria as government forces gained the upper hand against
ISIS which is now said to be on the verge of defeat in that country.
This as well as the specific examples of attacking Syrian forces to the
benefit of ISIS shows how the U.S. defends ISIS and will do anything to
advance its goal of regime change in Syria or at least prevent the
Syrian people turning their success into victory. The situation in
Libya today as a result of carrying forward its goal of regime change
to completion using brutal NATO air bombardment and support for
terrorist groups is a tragedy and shows the consequences of this U.S.
desperation. Canada too participated in this crime and, during the
British election the role of British intelligence agencies in
instigating armed revolt against the Libyan state by terrorists came to
light after the same forces carried out an attack in Manchester. 
"We have a global
responsibility to respond to this
crisis
and to support those who are forced to leave home," he added. "We
must address the root causes of forced migration by seeking
diplomatic solutions for violent conflicts and standing united in
the fight against terrorism. We must also redouble our efforts on
climate change, so that it does not further exacerbate insecurity
in the world."
A June 12 CBC News report
from Latvia interviewed
locals in
Riga, but was not able to find anyone who agreed with
the official line of the need for NATO deploying to defend
against "Russian aggression." One man told the CBC that the "fear
is minimal" while others "view the arrival of NATO battle group
as unnecessarily provocative," the report said. One person said,
"I don't think it's necessary to annoy the Russians," while
another, whom the CBC made sure to identify as a "Russian
speaker" said "I don't think there's any kind of threat." The
only person the CBC could find to speak in support of the mission
was its commander, Lt.-Col. Wade Rutland, who said the mission is
"entirely defensive and proportionate in response to Russian
actions."
Canadian troops are in
Ukraine for Operation UNIFIER,
which
the Department of National Defence says is "to support Ukrainian
armed forces in Ukraine. The operation's focus is to assist them
with military training. This will help them improve and build
their military capacity. The CAF coordinates its training with
training by the U.S. and other countries that help in the same
way. Military training is one part of Canada's overall support to
Ukraine." Within the "Ukrainian armed forces" are not only
regular forces which have been depleted by desertions and low
morale since the 2014 U.S.-backed Ukrainian coup, but a "National
Guard" made up of fascist paramilitary groups formed after the
coup to suppress the people's resistance. They have been widely
accused of terrible crimes against the people and war crimes,
particularly targeting so-called pro-Russian Ukrainians,
communists and those opposing the coup government. Since the
coup, Canada has provided $700 million to Ukraine including for
military equipment.
What is the Trudeau
government
up to with the surprise
announcement that soldiers can be deployed throughout Ukraine? As in
Iraq, Canada officially declares it is not part of a
combat mission in Ukraine. In the case of Iraq this has been shown to
be a lie time and
time again and furthermore covers up the aggressive aim of both
missions. Canadians should demand answers about the Trudeau
government's unacceptable escalation of Canada's role in
imperialist intervention in Ukraine.|
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Big Powers Collude and Contend for
Control of Europe
G7 Summit Takes Up Imperialist Foreign
Policy Concerns
Mass action against G7 meeting in Taormina, Sicily,
May 27,
2017. Banner reads in part, "Sicily marching against the world's
powerful."
On May 26 and 27, heads of state and government of the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and United States, plus the European Union) met in Sicily for the 2017 G7 Leaders' Summit. According to the Final Communique, the meeting hoped to "send a message of confidence in the future, ensuring that citizens' needs are at the center of our policies." Contradicting the pretence of "citizen-centred policies," thousands protested outside the meeting to denounce the G7 member states, highlighting in particular their responsibility for the refugee crises, poverty, war and insecurity around the world.
The meeting resulted in
four official
statements, while various private meetings between heads of state
and government took place on the sidelines.
The statements released were:
- On the fight against terrorism and violent extremism;
- A Leaders' Communique;
- A "People-Centered Action Plan on Innovation, Skills and Labor;" and
- A "Roadmap for a Gender-Responsive Economic Environment."
A major focus of the Leaders' Communique was U.S. imperialist foreign policy preoccupations. The Communique began with a commitment to "strengthening a rules-based international order that promotes peace among nations, safeguards sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all states and ensures the protection of human rights."
The Leaders' Communique casts blame upon the Syrian government, Russia and Iran for the conflict in Syria and calls for Russia and Iran to "stop this tragedy." It threatens the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which it labels "a top priority in the international agenda [that] increasingly poses new levels of threat of a grave nature to international peace and stability and the non-proliferation regime through its repeated and ongoing breaches of international law." The statement also blames Russia for the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and commends the coup regime in Ukraine for its progress in an "ambitious and yet necessary reform agenda."[1]
Coming days before the U.S. announced its withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Agreement, the Leaders' Communique stated, "The United States of America is in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement [on greenhouse gas emissions] and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics. Understanding this process, the heads of state and of government of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom and the presidents of the European Council and of the European Commission reaffirm their strong commitment to swiftly implement the Paris Agreement."
The communique on terrorism and extremism emphasized control over the internet, including removal of so-called extremist messages. It stated, "We encourage industry to act urgently in developing and sharing new technology and tools to improve the automatic detection of content promoting incitement to violence, and we commit to supporting industry efforts in this vein, including the proposed industry-led forum for combatting online extremism."
"We will support the promotion of alternative and positive narratives rooted in our common values and with due respect to the principle of freedom of expression," the final communique said. It noted that the G7 countries "agree to task our Interior Ministers to meet, as soon as possible, to focus on implementation of the [commitments contained in the communique] and to work collectively with the private sector and civil society to defeat terrorism."
Canada will host the 2018 G7 Leaders Summit in Charlevoix, Quebec at the Fairmont Le Manoir Richelieu, with the dates to be determined.
Note
1. The Leaders' Communique also speaks about the "Global Economy" and achieving "sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth." It states that, "inequalities -- not just in income, but in all their forms -- represent a major source of concern" that "undermines confidence and limits future growth potential." It states that "free, fair and mutually beneficial trade and investment, while creating reciprocal benefits, are key engines for growth and job creation" and commits to "keep our markets open and to fight protectionism." The statement calls "for the removal of all trade-distorting practices -- including dumping, discriminatory non-tariff barriers, forced technology transfers, subsidies and other support by governments and related institutions that distort markets -- so as to foster a truly level playing field." It further welcomes "the Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity, established by the G20 and facilitated by the OECD, and urges all Members to promptly deliver on effective policy solutions that enhance market function and adjustment in order to address the root causes of global steel excess capacity."
(Photos: Centre Sociale Liotru, Sapienza Clandestina, Radio Ondad Urto, il Turpiloquio)
Rivalry Between U.S. and Germany Deepens
Banner at
February 18, 2017 protest against Munich Security Conference
reads "Peace
Instead of NATO -- No to War!" (V.K.
Wurzburg)
Recent meetings of the big powers in Europe brought to light further contradictions between the U.S. and Germany over who will control Europe. This inter-imperialist rivalry has expressed itself in the form of Germany striving to become "torchbearer of the west" in the face of a U.S. that has allegedly turned away from "moral and political leadership."
In line with this effort to assert its hegemony in Europe, Germany is increasing the size of its armed forces, increasing military spending and has brought under its direct military command brigades from the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Romanian armed forces in preparation for a German-led European military union. According to reports, Germany is also negotiating with France to exercise control over the French nuclear arsenal.
To the acclaim of the German ruling elite, Chancellor Angela Merkel has begun to more forcefully assert this German aspiration to supplant the U.S. in Europe.
Following the NATO and G7 meetings, German Chancellor Merkel announced at a May 28 campaign event in Bavaria, "The times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over, as I have experienced in the past few days. We Europeans must really take our destiny in our own hands. Of course we need to have friendly relations with the U.S. and with the UK and with other neighbours, including Russia. We have to know that we must fight for our future on our own, for our destiny as Europeans."
Merkel further called the G7 discussion with Trump on climate change "very unsatisfactory." Merkel said, "Here we have a situation that six members, or seven if you want to add in the [European Union], stand against one." According to media reports, in the discussions between G7 leaders, Merkel told Trump, "If the world's largest economic power were to pull out, the field would be left to the Chinese." Shortly after, Trump announced that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.
Guy Verhofstadt, a Belgian member of the European Union
Parliament, who is in charge of negotiations with Britain concerning
its
exit from the EU, said following Merkel's remarks, "It's now time for
EU to reinvent itself and move forward."
While in Europe, U.S. President Trump criticized Germany's trade surplus with the U.S. and threatened to block the import of German cars. This merely highlighted the irrational statements that are made, because U.S. and German car companies have in a number of cases merged. For instance, German auto manufacturers Opel and Ford-Werke are both U.S.-owned. To harm one is to harm the other. Despite this, Gary Cohn, the White House's chief economic adviser and director of the National Economic Council, said of Trump's comments about Germany's trade surplus, "We do to you what you do to us."
Merkel's comments about the need for Germany to exercise
"European" leadership echo those of other German elites, foreign
policy think-tanks and the Munich Security Conference in February
2017.[1]
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on June 20
added that "If the United States is starting to take a skeptical view
of its role as the guardian of global order... I would see this as a
call to action directed at Europe, including Germany." Schaeuble warned
of Russia and China being "given a free hand to dominate the spheres of
influence that they have defined for themselves" and said that Europe
and Germany must prevent this "end of our liberal world order."
Note
1. See TML Weekly, February 25, 2017.
(With files from german-foreign-policy.com)
New European Union Measures to
Expand Military Integration
A
European
Union
leaders'
summit
on
June
22
and
23
endorsed European
Commission proposals for further EU military integrations. The summit
declaration endorsed proposals for joint financing for research and
development in Europe's arms industries and to work out financing
details for joint military battle groups, among other things. With
Britain -- which opposed a defence union -- leaving the European Union,
Germany, and to a lesser extent France, see the time as ripe for
consolidating a military union under the leadership of the biggest
European powers. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on June 13, "It
must be our goal to develop common, pan-European capabilities" and
announced that she is working with French President Emmanuel Macron to
do so.
In advance of the summit, several new initiatives were announced by the EU along including new funding for the EU-based arms monopolies. On June 7, the European Commission, the 28-member Cabinet of the European Union, launched a 5.5 billion euros (CAD$8.29 billion) per year European Defence Fund to "coordinate, supplement and amplify national investments in defence research, in the development of prototypes and in the acquisition of defence equipment and technology."
The next day, the European Council, comprised of the heads of state or government of EU member states, adopted a decision to create a Military Planning and Conduct Capability (MPCC) body within the EU Military Staff. The MPCC will "assume command of EU non-executive military missions" which currently comprise several training missions in African countries. The European Commission informs that the MPCC will be the "static, out-of-area command and control structure at the military strategic level, responsible for the operational planning and conduct of non-executive missions, including the building up, launching, sustaining and recovery of European Union forces."
EU leaders then met in Prague, Czech Republic on June 9 to debate the next steps in forming a European security and defence union under the slogan, "A Europe that Defends and Protects." European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker declared, "The protection of Europe can no longer be outsourced. Even our biggest military powers -- and I could count them on one, maximum two, fingers -- cannot combat all the challenges and threats alone." Juncker said that the need for European military integration and rearmament is not a consequence of the Trump administration, but that "Over the past decade it has become crystal clear that our American partners consider that they are shouldering too much of the burden for their wealthy European allies. We have no other choice than to defend our own interests in the Middle East, in climate change, in our trade agreements."
EU Commission
Vice-President for Jobs, Growth,
Investment and Competitiveness Jyrki Katainen stated, "In today's
world, a strong NATO and a strong EU are more important than they
ever have been before. Without duplicating what already exists,
Europe needs to take its security and defence into its own hands
in order to be a stronger partner to our allies."
In preparation for the June 9 meeting, the European Commission issued a report authored by Katainen, the former Prime Minister of Finland and Federica Mogherini, Vice-President of the European Commission / High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and a former Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Reflection Paper on the Future of European Defence states, "An unprecedented momentum is currently drawing the EU and NATO closer together." It outlines "different scenarios of possible futures for European security and defence by 2025, and maps our possible ways forward."
The Reflection Paper provides various poll results and statistics in a manner that presents the creation of a European military bloc as responding to citizens' needs and aspirations. It notes that total European military spending is 227 billion euros ($342 billion) versus 545 billion euros ($823 billion) by the U.S., and that these figures amount to only 1.34 per cent of EU gross domestic product versus 3.3 per cent of U.S. GDP. EU member countries have approximately 1.8 million active military personnel compared to 1.4 million from the U.S.
Speaking on June 9, European Commission President Juncker noted that European Union members spend only $30,000 per soldier versus more than $120,000 per soldier for the U.S. "No wonder then that less than three per cent of European troops are deployable at this very moment. That shows that we need to invest more, and invest in a more efficient way," Juncker said.
The Reflection Paper sets out three possible scenarios for an EU defence union.
1. Security and Defence Cooperation
This scenario envisages an informal but deepening cooperation in military affairs among EU member states, with the EU able to "deploy civilian missions and relatively small-scale military missions and operations aimed at crisis management." NATO would remain the primary military organization and "where both the EU and NATO are present, NATO would continue to rely on the deeper military capabilities at its disposal, whereas the EU would exploit its broader toolbox and link up its 'softer' tools, instruments and actions to its targeted military missions and operations."
2. Shared Security and Defence
EU member states would "show far greater financial and operational solidarity in the field of defence, building on a broader and deeper understanding of respective threat perceptions and convergence of strategic cultures." This would enhance the EU ability to "project military power and engage fully in external crisis management and in building partners' security and defence capabilities." The EU and NATO would "systematically cooperate and coordinate in mobilising the full range of their respective tools and instruments." Whereas NATO would be the main organization to mobilize in response to "collective defence" issues among NATO members, the EU would "take more decisive action in dealing with threats and challenges falling below [that] threshold."
For the EU to be able to take on this new military role, "Decision-making would become quicker and would match the speed of the rapidly changing strategic context. The EU would ultimately become a stronger and more responsive security provider, with the strategic autonomy to act alone or alongside its core partners." The just-launched European Defence Fund is portrayed as the spearhead of increasing EU military capacity.
3. Common Defence and Security
In this scenario, "Solidarity and mutual assistance between Member States in security and defence would become the norm, building on the full exploitation of Article 42 of the Treaty on European Union which includes the progressive framing of a common Union defence policy, leading to common defence."
NATO and the EU would then stand on equal footing. The "protection of Europe" would "become a mutually reinforcing responsibility of the EU and NATO. Complementing NATO, Europe's Common Security and Defence would enhance Europe's resilience and protect against different forms of aggression against the Union, as well as provide the reassurance our citizens expect."
In the "Common Defence and Security" scenario, the EU would "run high-end operations to better protect Europe." "Threat assessment" and "contingency planning" would be carried out at the EU level. This would be "underpinned by a greater level of integration of Member States' defence forces..." EU armed forces would be "pre-positioned" and "made permanently available for rapid deployment on behalf of the Union." This would also "be underpinned by a genuine European defence market, with a European mechanism to monitor and protect key strategic activities from hostile external takeovers."
The EU Commission Reflection Paper presents these three options as a matter of how quickly EU member states "want to build a genuine European Security and Defence Union" and to what extent they are "willing to anticipate rather than to react to the strategic context."
In conclusion, the EU Commission paper states, "The future of the European Union as a peace project for generations to come now rests also on the foundation of a Security and Defence Union: looking at 2025, Member States will decide the path and speed they want to go to protect our citizens."
Results of French Elections
Macron's Weak Mandate Presented as a Ringing Endorsement by the French People
Parliamentary elections were held in France between June 11-18 to elect 577 members to the National Assembly for a five-year term. The election results, announced by France's Ministry of the Interior on June 19, reveal that 27,127,488 registered voters abstained from casting a ballot. This represents an abstention rate of 56.36 per cent, the highest ever in parliamentary elections of the Fifth Republic.
The distribution of seats in the new National Assembly is as follows:
- Macron's La République en marche! has 306 seats, with 16.55 per cent of registered voters. This is a far cry from the "major endorsement of Emmanuel Macron and his movement" touted by the ruling circles and their media. (During the first round of presidential elections, Macron garnered the support of 18.19 per cent of registered voters).
- The MoDem (Mouvement démocrate), the centrist party allied with Macron, has 42 seats, with 2.33 per cent of the registered vote.
- Les Républicains have 112 seats, with 8.54 per cent of the registered vote.
- The Parti socialiste has 30 seats.
- Jean-Luc Mélenchon's party, La France
insoumise, has 17
seats.
- Le Front national of Marine Le Pen has 8 seats.
Why, despite the strong abstention rate, are the results presented as an endorsement of Emmanuel Macron by the people of France? What they actually show is the demise of the illusion maintained by the ruling circles and their media that Macron would "get France out of the old politics" with his "civil society-based movement," defined as "everything that transcends parties."
Just days before the first round, following a June 7 Council of Ministers meeting, Macron defined what was at stake during the elections, declaring that in order to ensure an absolute majority for his government and La République en marche!, "the French have a simple answer to give to a simple question. The question is: stop, or go forward [and] whether we want action or impotence?"
What Macron means by "action versus impotence" is to declare the inevitability of the perpetuation of human rights violations, the constitutional enshrinement of the state of emergency and the strengthening of police powers. This also means the intensification of the neo-liberal agenda, which has deepened the crisis in which the French nation-state is mired, as well as rule by decree. It also signifies the continuation of the warmongering and adventurist policies of France within NATO, the European Union in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.
The new legislature opens on June 27, following the election of the new President of the National Assembly. The first measures that Macron and his government will carry out will be to impose on the National Assembly the extension of the state of emergency and its enshrinement in the constitution, as well as rule by decree in order to pass their neo-liberal legislation, in particular the Labour Law. This anti-worker law will serve to criminalize the demands of the workers for the affirmation of their rights. The majority of the French people did not vote for that.
Demolition of Anti-Fascist Memorials in Poland
Polish Ruling Class Falsifications About
Country's Liberation from Nazi Rule
Monument in Rzeszow celebrating the liberation of the city from the
Nazis. In 2016 the city rejected calls from Poland’s historical legacy
institute to remove such memorials.
On June 22, 2017, the Polish government's lower house voted to amend the "decommunization laws" to demolish all monuments and memorials honouring the Soviet Union's liberation of Poland from the Nazis. The fact that the amendments were passed on the 76th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union would appear to be no accident. The majority of parties of the Polish parliament endorsed the amendments in the first and second readings. A total of 408 MPs voted yes, seven said no, and another 15 abstained. The war against monuments is clearly aimed at trying to erase from the Polish people's memory the fact that the Red Army and their own patriots, many of whom were communists, saved them from total annihilation by Hitler's Nazis. But facts are stubborn things and the facts of history do not change despite the efforts of the modern day falsifiers of history.
So what are the facts about the liberation of Poland?
At 4:15
AM on September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland in a massive
assault. Hitler's Wehrmacht of 1,850,000 troops, 3,200 tanks,
2,000 combat aircraft, and 11 warships -- over two-thirds of Germany's
entire combat force -- destroyed the Polish state and massacred the
Polish people[1]. Behind the
Wehrmacht followed Himmler's
S.S. Einsatzgruppen, killing squads specialized in mass murder.
The Polish people were greatly outnumbered but fought back
bravely. The leaders of Poland fled to Rumania on September 17
but the Polish people's spirit of resistance remained strong.
Many Poles fought courageously in the communist-led underground
Resistance. Poles formed their own patriotic Polish divisions and
fought alongside the Red Army against the Nazis all the way to
Berlin.
Gravestones with red stars in Polish cemetery honour the Red Army
soldiers who died in the
liberation of Poland.
Against Poland, the Nazis perpetrated one of the worst crimes history has ever known. Poland suffered the largest number of casualties per population of any European country. A total of about 6 million people were killed. Direct extermination by mass murder, death camps, and so on took some 4,450,000 Polish lives including 2,700,000 Polish Jews exterminated; 2,000,000 children and youth were murdered; more than 50,000 Roma were exterminated; some 12,000 mentally handicapped people were murdered; and thousands of Polish prisoners of war, soldiers, and officers were systematically shot.
Some 40,000 Polish intellectuals, political personalities, and other leaders were shot by the S.S. within the first six weeks of the Nazi occupation. Beginning in May 1939, Nazi Operation Tannenberg, which was part of Hitler's Generalplan Ost (Masterplan East), had already identified and listed more than 61,000 Polish activists, intelligentsia, scholars, former officers, and others, who were to be interned or shot, mainly by the S.S. Einzatsgruppen. The murder of 5,000-6,000 Poles in Fordon, Bydgoszcz in October-November 1939 is just one example of the many executions the S.S. and the Wehrmacht carried out. Another example is the murder of the 4,143 Polish officers found buried in Katyn Forest.
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The Soviet Army marched into the territory of Poland on September 17, only after the Polish state had collapsed, the Polish army had disintegrated, the government had ceased to function, and its leaders had fled. Further, the part of Poland the Soviet Union marched into was the territories of the Ukraine and Byelorussia that Poland had forcibly annexed from the Soviet Union during the Polish-Russian War of 1919-20, when Poland was one of the 14 invading imperialist countries that attempted but failed to strangle the newborn Soviet socialist republic.[2] Only about eight per cent of the people in the Ukraine and Byelorussia were of Polish origin. "As a result of the Soviet Union's timely entry into what had been territories of the Polish State, Hitler was forced to accept a line of demarcation between his troops and the Red Army. [...] [The] Red Army saved millions of people inhabiting those areas, from suffering the fate which Hitler reserved for the rest of the Polish people."[3] Even the arch-reactionary Winston Churchill publicly justified the Soviet march into eastern Poland.
Today, the modern-day Hitlerites, including the rulers of Poland, masquerading as democrats, continue to spread the vicious lies that "both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland" and that "Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union secretly conspired to divide Poland between them." These lies, meant to equate the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany, were first put forth by Hitler himself, who referred to "secret protocols" to divide Poland in a speech where he declared war on the Soviet Union. The "secret protocols" were resurrected again by the Nazi defendants at Nuremburg where the Presidium threw them out as a forgery. It was only when the U.S. took up the mantle of Hitlerism after the Second World War and became the modern day master of Goebbels' big lie technique that Hitler's concoction about "secret protocols" became a so-called historical fact.[4]
The real historical facts clarify why Hitler attacked Poland. In 1939 Poland was an imperialist country created by Britain and France through the 1919 Versailles Treaty. One of Poland's aims "was to add the rich agricultural regions of the Ukraine to Polish territory and extend Polish territory [...] from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. [...] The Polish landlords and bourgeoisie dreamed of restoring the Polish empire of medieval times."[5] Financed and armed by the British and French monopolies who wanted to regain their lost profits and privileges,[6] the Polish rulers attacked the Soviet Union in 1918, occupying large parts of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Lithuania. During the following 18 years of semi-fascist Polish rule, the workers and peasants in those regions were viciously exploited by the Polish landlords and industrialists.
As war clouds loomed over Europe, the Polish ruling circles considered Britain and France to be their allies and the Soviet Union their avowed enemy. The Anglo-American and French imperialists wanted to ensure their own world domination so they followed the policy of appeasing Hitler and egging him on toward the East to attack the Soviet Union, rather than organizing collective security with the Soviet Union. Poland also hoped that Hitler would go east and attack the Soviet Union, and that Poland could seize Soviet territory. Thus Poland refused to settle outstanding border questions so as to make the Soviet defence line against the Nazis as deep as possible within Soviet territory and refused the Soviets permission to enter Poland to stop the Nazi advance. Instead of taking all measures necessary to defend against the impending Nazi invasion, the Polish rulers wanted to manoeuvre for advantages for themselves.
In attacking Poland, Hitler was both taking up the Anglo-American policy of going east and implementing his own plan, outlined in Mein Kampf, to increase Germany's "living space" (lebensraum) by taking over the Ukraine as part of his plan to enslave the entire world. Hitler made his barbaric intentions toward Poland very clear. Only ten days before the attack, Hitler in his Obersalzburg speech instructed his generals to "send to death mercilessly and without compassion men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (lebensraum) which we need."[7] Tragically, in the end, Poland paid very dearly for its own imperialist ambitions and its rejection of Soviet assistance.
Polish people warmly great the soldiers of the Red Army and Polish army
liberating
their city in 1945.
Today, the reactionary Polish ruling circles continue to spread the same lies that the Nazis did and try to throw mud on the wartime exploits of the Soviet Union. On September 1, 2009, Polish President Lech Kaczynski called for "glory to all the soldiers who fought in World War Two against German Nazism and Bolshevik totalitarianism." Soon after, the April 10, 2010 crash of a Polish airliner near Smolensk, in which Kaczynski and 95 others died, was used by the Polish rulers and others around the world to resurrect the old lie that the Soviet Union and not the Nazis committed the wartime Katyn Forest Massacre. Such deliberate falsification ignores the fact that it was the Nazis who killed 6 million Poles and that it was the Red Army, together with a Polish Army, that finally liberated Poland from the Nazi occupiers and returned to the Polish people the lost land in the West formerly taken by the Nazis.
Notes
1. Much of the German military equipment used in the invasion was built by U.S.-owned companies such as Ford, General Motors, and Focke Wulfe (I.T.& T.)
2. An estimated 7 million Russian men, women, and children were killed during the 1918 invasion.
3. See Hardial Bains, Causes and Lessons of the
Second
World War, Toronto: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin
Institute, 1990.
4. Poland had already concluded a non-aggression pact with Germany in January 1934, the first state to form such an alliance with the Nazi administration.
5. See Hardial Bains, Causes and Lessons of the Second World War, Toronto: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin Institute, 1990.
6. These included oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, the Metro-Vickers arms trust, and the big banking houses such as Baring, Hambros, and Credit Lyonnais. Soon-to-be U.S. president Herbert Hoover also had large investments in Czarist Russia.
7. See E.L. Woodward, E. L. and Riftlep, Rohan (eds.), Documents
on
British
Foreign
Policy:
1919-1939, 3rd
series. London: HMSO. 7:258-260, 1954.
Readers Note
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- TML Weekly Editorial and Technical Staff
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca