Peace and blessings, dear comrades and friends.
We are a group of worried human beings, from different faith backgrounds. We believe that the goal of every genuine religious movement is building a better world for all of humanity and all living creatures on this planet. Our great Prophets, Gurus and Saints have always called upon us to struggle against injustice, oppression, exploitation and war. They have always emphasised our great innate capacity for empathy, solidarity, cooperation, reciprocity and peace. Inspired by these great visionaries from the past, we want to continue their struggle in our time. United with our comrades from many different religious backgrounds, we want to do our share for the construction of a new society that is spacious and good, a world that overflows with milk and honey.
Over the last few weeks we have been following the news about Ukraine and Russia with great concern. We have seen how mutual mistrust has escalated into a dangerous military stand-off near the border between Ukraine and Russia. Today we see how NATO member states are sending troops and weapons to one side of the border while Russia and Belarus are sending their troops to the other side. Today over one hundred thousand soldiers are present on both sides of the border.
This is a dangerous escalation of a conflict that has been going on for almost a decade now. Joseph Biden, the president of the USA and leader of NATO, the most aggressive of the belligerent sides, has called this situation “the most consequential thing that’s happened in the world in terms of war and peace since World War II.” The NATO and Russia Federation, successors to the two giant military blocks of the cold war, are once again facing each other with drawn guns. The nightmare of a new world war is with us once again.
We are aware of the long history of today’s conflict. We have witnessed how, over the past few decades, the Russian Federation has found itself more and more surrounded by NATO strongholds. We have seen how the Western imperialist bloc, under the unquestionable leadership of the USA, have used the implosion of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the defensive Warsaw Pact to expand their dominance over the whole planet. They have unilaterally declared their “international rules-based order”, the undisputed rule of the Western imperialist nations under the undisputed dominance of the United States of America. All countries and movements that dare to challenge this imperialist order, are outlawed as rogue states and threatened with suffocating sanctions or military invasion. This new world order, just like the Pax Romana two thousand years ago, only pretends to be peaceful. Just like then, this new Pax Americana is the violent imposition of the rules and laws of the all powerful super-state in the centre of the empire.
Only a handful of nations have dared to challenge this new American lead world order.The Russian Federation and China are by far the strongest of these. Even though we can’t agree with everything these states do, and we have some serious concerns about some of their policies, we do defend their strong stance against this US dominated imperialist world order. We also understand that it is exactly this opposition to the violent Pax Americana, that has brought these two countries into conflict with the USA and its NATO client states.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, The Russian Federation has found itself increasingly surrounded by NATO troops. In 2014, after the Western backed uprising that toppled the democratically elected government of Ukraine and the unconstitutional installation of a new right extremist regime, Russia felt the threat of a NATO puppet regime even more. Slavishly loyal to its Western masters, the new regime in Kiev was thoroughly anti-Russian and made it clear that Russia was Ukraine’s worst enemy. With full support of the European Union and the USA, Ukrainian nationalists started a terror campaign against the Russian majority population in Crimea and the Donetsk region. Ukrainian nationalists, NATO troops and openly neo-Nazi groups joined forces in a campaign to ethnically cleanse the region and to drive out all Russian speaking inhabitants. After all attempts to find a diplomatic solution had failed, Russia answered to this threatening situation by sending in troops to protect the Russian speaking people in the region and to support their antifascist struggles against the new extreme right alliance. The situation escalated to the point where the Russian Federation army invaded, occupied and annexed Crimea and openly supported the struggle for independence by the people of the Donetsk Republic.
Today, eight years later, the stalemate situation hasn’t been resolved. The Western imperialist states still want to expand the NATO alliance until Russia is completely surrounded. They still support the authoritarian populist regime in Ukraine. They still want Ukraine to become part of the NATO. All Russian Federation proposals for a negotiated peace, have been discarded by the United States. The American people didn’t even have a chance to be informed about these proposals. The idea that Russian Federation leaders want to negotiate a peaceful solution, does not fit in with the official propaganda myth that paints “Russia” as the eternal bully, while NATO and the USA are painted as agents of peace and democracy.
As people of faith, inspired by our prophets, gurus and saints, we refuse to believe these propaganda myths. We refuse to believe that the Western imperialist nations are only interested in the human rights of the Ukrainian people. We know the track record of the USA, the most aggressive warmonger in recent history. We have not forgotten the mass murders in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Grenada, Chile, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Libya, Iraq again, Afghanistan and countless other nations where US troops or their puppets stepped in to quench every challenge to its hegemony in blood. We denounce Joseph Biden’s hypocrisy when he calls the Russian Federation maneuvers at the Ukrainian border “the most consequential thing that’s happened in the world in terms of war and peace since World War II.” Only somebody who is wilfully ignoring almost a century of American war crimes, could ever come up with such a statement.
Those of us who consider themselves Christian, are even more outraged as they see how the American war machine, is hijacking symbols and slogans from the Christian tradition. Christianity started out as a movement of Jewish radicals who opposed Roman imperial rule. Today the new Roman Empire, the Western imperialist “rules-based order” with the USA as its absolute ruler, follows the path laid out by its progenitor and disguises it self as Christian. But the real message of Jesus, the real message of Christianity, is that one can’t serve both wealth and the God of the prophets at the same time. It is not possible to both be a real follower of Jesus, and support the world’s most dangerous war machine at the same time.
We believe it is our duty to unmask this hypocrisy just like the prophets, gurus and saints unmasked the hypocrisy of the rulers in their time. No matter how complex the geopolitical situation may be, we believe that war is never the answer. In the name of all the peoples of this world, especially the people of Russia and Ukraine, we demand that all military preparations in the region cease. We believe that inter-imperialist conflicts should prioritise resolution through diplomatic negotiations.
We demand the immediate withdrawal of both NATO and Russian Federation troops from the border area. We demand an immediate halt to the further expansion of NATO. We will pray for a peaceful solution, but we will also participate in all forms of peaceful protest against both NATO and Russian Federation warmongering.
Signed By:
-ISM (Interfaith Socialist Movement)
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Muslims for Socialism
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Christians for Socialism
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Jewish Comrades for Socialism
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Satanisme in Beweging – Dialectical Satanists
- JPLO (Jewish People’s Liberation Organisation) – Jewish Socialist Bund