_{Image: Luo Jie China Daily}

U.S. determination to be the world's hegemon created the crisis in Ukraine. The impacts are felt by working people in this country, who must look outside for solidarity and leadership as they struggle in a political system that offers them no representation. 

“As a radical standpoint, perspective, position, the politics of location necessarily calls those of us who would participate in the formation of counter-hegemonic cultural practice to identify the spaces where we begin the process of re-vision” (bell hooks)

+The constant morality play that the U.S. public has been exposed to has resulted in mass support for war. Of course, ordinary people will pay the price, the ruling class will get over once again and Biden achieved his bipartisanship the old fashion way - through war!

+The U.S. corporate media frames the Ukraine conflict as a premeditated, unprovoked attack by the maniacal government of the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. But from the very beginning of Biden’s administration, it seemed like his agenda was to create the conditions in Ukraine that would evoke a conflict with the Russian Federation. It has turned out to be one of the few objectives of his administration that was met.

+The claims by commentators in the U.S. that war crimes and crimes against humanity that are being committed by the Russian state perfectly reflect the psychopathology of white supremacy, a narcissistic cognitive disorder that renders the afflicted with an inability to see objective reality in the same way as others.

+It is not just gas prices going up. These bumbling incompetents thought they could impose sanctions on a country fully integrated into the world capitalist economy without it hurting consumers in the U.S.- will now have to explain why food prices will go up.

+It appears that along with Russia, consumers in the U.S. will feel the effects of economic sanctions with higher prices and austerity while U.S. energy companies experience windfall profits. Perhaps with those profits that will be realized by the energy companies and the military/industrial complex they might have enough tax money to provide a little relief for workers through Build Back Better legislation. Oh, but my bad! The biggest corporations do not pay taxes in the U.S.

+I thought this was 2022 but it is really 1914. Inter-state war between capitalists to re-divide markets and colonial spheres of control is a class issue. The working class should never align itself with its bourgeoisie under the illusion it is carrying out some moral campaign.

+Black Alliance for Peace, "The crude ideological framing of the U.S. and Western Europe positions on Ukraine as a battle between "democracy" and authoritarianism that is successful in the white supremacist colonial West, does not work in the global South where Western backed coups and wars are the norm."

+I support the expropriation of oligarchs and capitalist property without compensation, apparently the same way that the U.S. does with the confiscation of the property of Russia capitalists! Does that mean that I am finally on the same side as the U.S. state?

+The moral bankruptcy of Western liberalism is as follows: Whenever someone applies to Europe the normalized behavior of European colonizers in the global South, they become the embodiment of evil (Hitler)  There is nothing in Ukraine that is unfamiliar to us in the global South at your hands!

+Ukrainian president  Volodymyr Zelensky continues to prod the West to take on more responsibility to protect Ukraine since in his inexperience he allowed his people to become yet another group sacrificed to advance U.S. strategic interests. But it is too late. When will people learn?

+Former Bolivian president Evo Morales tells the United Socialist Party of Venezuela congress that it is time to think seriously about how to put an end to NATO and U.S. imperialist policies, while some liberal/leftists are finding ways to support their bourgeoisie and NATO once again. There is such a fundamental gap between Western leftists and revolutionaries in the South.

+For anyone who wonders how societies go mad and embrace totalitarianism - this is it. You see how easy it is to seduce the public into supporting un-freedom by weaponizing "freedom?" It is all presented as common sense and decency, and anyone who does not conform is the enemy.

+With all of the crimes committed by the U.S. state, the peoples in the global south always separated their criticism of the U.S. government from the people of the U.S. But the crude, ignorant, liberal led public opinion in the U.S. does not seem to be making that distinction with Russia.

+The coverage of conflict in Ukraine by capitalist media is appalling. Where is any voice expressing a different view, an alternative strategy to continued war, a call for a ceasefire and diplomacy? Instead, media pushes a line of war and sensationalist fantasies of Ukrainian victory.

+The great patriotic U.S. energy companies are calling for immediate sanctions on Russia oil and gas. With Iranian and Venezuelan oil suppressed and Russia energy out of the market, guess who supplies the gaps? Higher gas prices for us, windfall profits for them. War is a racket!

+The incompetents running Biden's foreign policy ignored advice from old school realpolitik professionals ,from the late George Kennan to Henry Kissinger, not to threaten Russia with game-playing in Ukraine. The result is a war the working class will pay for with higher gas and food prices.

+Sanctions are forms of economic warfare meant to give a comparative advantage to the U.S. and its Western European allies. Its use is of course illegal and violates all of the principles of the World Trade Organization that all of the big capitalist nations are a part of, and exposes the mythology of the free market.

+Illegal economic sanctions used by U.S. and European capital to give it a comparative advantage in global market and to discipline and punish global South nations, (surely no one believes they have anything to do with justice) has run into its own contradictory logic with the attempt to impose them on an economy  integrated into the global system.

+The fight for voting rights and procedures is not the fight for real democracy. Democracy is more than voting. For example, in the U.S. there are no representatives from a working-class party in either the House or Senate & legally democrats & republicans enjoy a monopoly.

+Sanctions are sold by U.S. propagandists as targeting specific nations, but the real target is not just those nations like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and now Russia, but also the so-called allies of the U.S. and now U.S. consumers.

+The objective of U.S. policy in Russia was always economic. It was to create the conditions for more draconian sanctions on Russia in order to disarticulate the Russian economy from Europe, making it easier for U.S. capital to assert its hegemony over Germany and France, and thus, all of the European market.

+U.S. policies are increasingly being seen as reckless and disruptive to the global economic order. The dollar, once seen as a safe haven for excess capital and accumulation that could be tucked away in New York and London banks, is now seen as subject to the wild vicissitudes of whatever administration holds the reins of government in the U.S. The steady and mature stewardship of the global capitalist order by senior policymakers steeped in realpolitik has been replaced by immature ideologues who are unable to grasp the changed world that the U.S. finds itself in.

+There are a number of nations that can talk about war crimes and crimes against humanity that nations commit. But the one nation that absolutely should never be allowed to utter a word about war crimes committed by another nation is the U.S.

+Freedom is living in a nation that has no oligarchs - supposedly like in the U.S. The billionaires that control the economy, politics, state and culture in the U.S. are just called "billionaires" and the people love them.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president of the United States on the Green Party ticket. Baraka is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and was awarded the U.S. Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shim award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.