The Proletarian Report - August 10

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"Escalating Conflicts: Ukraine's Incursion, Middle East Tensions, and Bangladesh's Political Shift"

Ukraine

Ukrainian military launches incursion of Russia (August 7)

Early Tuesday morning, Ukrainian forces launched what appears to be the largest incursion of Russian territory to date in the border region of Kursk. According to Russian military authorities, the attack involved a unit of the Ukrainian armed forces with 1,000 men and 50 armored vehicles, including seven tanks. So far, Kiev has not officially taken responsibility for the attack.
The Russian government declared by Wednesday evening that the attack had been warded off. However, a state of emergency is still in effect in the Kursk region. In the night between Wednesday and Thursday, Russian air defense shot down at least seven missiles by the Ukrainian armed forces targeting the region.
Ukraine launched its biggest incursion of Russian territory to date as the situation at the front looks increasingly desperate for the Ukrainian army. It keeps losing territory to Russian forces after two-and-a-half years of war, which have already claimed the lives of an estimated half-a-million men.
On July 16, a new law came into effect, forcing millions of Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 years old—including those who fled the country—to update their registration data so that they can be drafted into the army.

German state of Hesse sends Ukrainians who have fled back to war (August 6)

Almost 20,000 Ukrainian men of all ages are registered in Hesse, around eight times as many as before the start of the war in Ukraine. This figure also includes children, young people and senior citizens. Almost 5,000 are in employment and paying social security contributions, i.e., they have a permanent job and are socially integrated; many also have families.
Official propaganda is that Germany is standing by Ukraine to defend “Western values” such as democracy and human rights against an “unprovoked attack by Putin.” In reality, for the German bourgeoisie, the Ukrainian population is only good enough to be used as human materiel in the war against Russia.
In order to lead the offensive against Russia, it is setting up a NATO office in Ukraine and a NATO command in Germany. Long-range precision weapons are also being stationed in Germany again, including at the Wiesbaden base in the densely populated Main-Rhine region, jeopardising the lives of millions of people.
The war in Ukraine has now taken on the character of a war of attrition. Hundreds of thousands have already fallen victim to it on both sides, and new cannon fodder is being recruited using brutal methods. The Kiev puppet regime has ordered the mobilisation of a further 500,000 soldiers. “Young people are being taken from gyms, restaurants, shopping centres and the streets and forced into the army,” reports a correspondent for the WSWS. According to these journalists, there have been several recent incidents of desperate soldiers turning their weapons on their commanders, while desertions of soldiers from the front are growing,
The move against Ukrainian men in Hesse is just the first step in the nationwide deportation of refugees from Ukraine, forcing them to serve as cannon fodder on the Russian front. The next step has already been announced. The German government is preparing to deploy troops itself.

Reason:

Above all, the military defeats on the front have prompted NATO and Ukraine to intensify their efforts to open a “second front” in the war, within Russia itself.
As part of this strategy, incursions such as the one in the Kursk region are designed not only to divert military resources from the front.
They are also intended to destabilize the political situation in Russia and fuel the raging infighting between different sections of the Russian oligarchy and state apparatus in order to create conditions for a regime change operation in Moscow.

The operation by Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region has been planned for a long time This was stated in an interview with the Financial Times by former Minister of Defense of Ukraine Andriy Zagorodnyuk. Zagorodnyuk said it includes diverting Russian troops fighting elsewhere in Ukraine, as well as bringing the war home to Russians and discouraging them from supporting the war effort. It also aims to expose Russia’s weaknesses, including its inability to protect its own border, and to try to seize the initiative a year after an unsuccessful counteroffensive, following months of Russian gains.

Ukrainian attack on Kursk prompts media calls for US escalation against Russia (August 9)

Ukraine continued its offensive into the Kursk region of Russia for a fourth day Friday, continuing to advance despite claims by Russian officials that the offensive had been contained.
On Friday, the US Department of Defense announced that it was sending another $125 million in weapons to Ukraine, including, according to the Institute for the Study of War, “HIMARS systems; 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition; Stinger missiles; Javelin and AT-4 anti-tank systems; Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) anti-tank guided missiles; multi-purpose radars; HMMWV multi-purpose wheeled vehicles; small arms ammunition; explosive munitions; and additional equipment and munitions.”
US and European news outlets have hailed what The Economist dubbed “The second battle of Kursk,” referencing the World War II battle in which Soviet forces, then allied with the United States, France and England decisively defeated the armies of Nazi Germany. Eighty-one years later, German armored vehicles are being thrown against Russia over some of the same terrain, this time with American vehicles fighting alongside them.
The US media has responded to the ongoing Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region with demands for a further loosening of the rules of engagement for targeting Russia with NATO weapons, bringing NATO and Russia ever closer to a direct confrontation.
“Will the US help Kyiv stay on offense?,” the Wall Street Journal pressed in an editorial, demanding that the Biden administration cross more of its “red lines” for direct involvement in the war against a nuclear-armed state.
The editorial concluded, “the best response is to flow even more weapons into Ukraine, including long-range missiles that target bases and supply lines in Russia, and remove limits on the use of ATACMS missiles.”

Israel

Prisoner rape

video evidence has emerged confirming that a group of Israeli soldiers carried out the gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner in the infamous Sde Teiman facility. Of the ten soldiers arrested over the incident, five have already been released. Responding to the video, far-right Finance Minister Bezalil Smotrich demanded a “criminal investigation” to determine who recorded the video, which he said had caused “tremendous damage to Israel in the world.” The systematic use of torture and horrific abuse of prisoners was documented in a report released this week entitled “Welcome to hell” by the Israeli rights group Bet Selem.
“Welcome to Hell” https://youtu.be/YYhGEmxbaK0?si=8AMNptoCpg2sN1fl

Bombing schools

REMINDER TO JOIN TELEGRAM
The Israeli military bombed a school in eastern Gaza while worshippers were performing the fajr (dawn) prayer early Saturday, killing at least 100 Palestinians.
Gaza government media sources said the school was housing about 250 Palestinians, roughly half of which were women and children.
NYC Journalist Faces Hate Crime Charge for Allegedly Filming Gaza Protest Action; Police Raid Home

Threat of Middle East war on hair-trigger as Israel kills Hamas official in Lebanon, US lifts ban on weapons sales to Saudi Arabia

The danger of a region-wide war in the Middle East continues to loom large, provoked by the aggressive actions of Israel and its American imperialist ally. On Friday, the Israel Defence Forces carried out the targeted killing of a Hamas official deep inside Lebanon, while a Reuters report revealed that Washington will lift a three-year ban on the sale of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia.
Washington views the war preparations with Iran as intimately connected to the other fronts of the global conflict in which it is engaged with the aim of subjugating its rivals in Europe and the Asia-Pacific. This rapidly escalating third world war is rooted in crisis-ridden capitalism, which is driving the major powers to engage in a new re-partition of the globe to secure their economic and geostrategic interests. In Ukraine, NATO is emerging ever more clearly as a direct party to the conflict, as shown this past week with the use of NATO military equipment by the far-right Kiev regime to launch an attack on Russian territory.
Recognising how close the region is to all-out war, Iran’s bourgeois-clerical regime is reportedly divided over how to respond to Haniyeh’s assassination. Although the targeted killing was a humiliation for the Iranian authorities that virtually compels them to respond, Pezeshkian is reportedly trying to convince the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps not to launch a direct strike on Israel for fear that it could trigger war. Instead, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported that Pezeshkian would prefer to strike Mossad spy bases in neighbouring Azerbaijan or Iraq. Leading IRGC officials are in favour of striking military facilities in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities in alliance with Hezbollah.

Iran

Still planning to respond?
The USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group has sailed to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt

The Ford returned home in January. And after months of battling the Houthis in what has been described as the Navy's most intense combat operations since World War II, the Eisenhower finally left the Middle East in June, returning to the US.

The carrier was replaced last month by the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group, which was previously operating in the Indo-Pacific region, where the US doesn't currently have a forward-deployed carrier presence.
Now, the Lincoln carrier strike group is set to replace the Roosevelt, which was operating in the Persian Gulf as of last week, according to the USNI News Fleet and Marine Tracker. It's unclear where the Roosevelt is headed next.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-navy-fourth-aircraft-carrier-warships-react-middle-east-fighting-2024-8
August 7

Yemen’s Houthi movement said on Wednesday that it had targeted a ship identified as the “Contship Ono” in the Red Sea as well as two US destroyers in the adjacent Gulf of Aden, Reuters reports.
The Houthi air force targeted US destroyer, “Cole”, with a number of drones and the US destroyer, “Laboon” with a number of ballistic missiles, the group’s military spokesperson, Yahya Saree said.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240807-yemen-houthis-target-contship-ono-ship-two-us-destroyers/

https://news.usni.org/2024/08/02/carrier-uss-abraham-lincoln-heads-to-middle-east-as-iran-threatens-strikes-against-israel

The US Navy says it can't stop the Houthi attacks on shipping with force alone

Bangladesh

Muhammad Yunus, promoter of “entrepreneurial development,” to head Bangladesh’s emergency interim government

Students launched protests against a regressive, discriminatory government-job allocation regime at the beginning of July. In response to brutal state repression, including the deployment of the anti-terrorism Rapid Action Battalion, the movement broadened, with significant sections of working people joining the protests.

At least 300 people are said to have died as a result of the Hasina government’s campaign of state violence, which included thug attacks organized by Awami League cadre.
On Sunday, after the bloodiest day of violence to date, students called for a mass march on the prime minister’s residence for the next day to press their demand that Hasina go.

The military gave Hasina just 45 minutes Monday to resign, vacate the prime minister’s residence and accept the military’s offer of safe passage out of the country.

Hasina, who had led the country for the previous 15 year
it concluded that her attempt to suppress mass popular opposition had backfired and was destabilizing and potentially imperiling capitalist rule.

The SAD leaders have also publicly declared that they will not accept an interim government formed by the military top brass, which has a long, bloody record of coups and dictatorial rule. But otherwise they have cooperated closely with the military, which is leading the process of government formation.

On Tuesday, SAD activists took over directing traffic in Dhaka, the national capital.

Following Hasina’s ouster, the police, who had played the principal frontline role in the attempt to drown the protest movement in blood, fled their posts as protesters surged through the streets and looted the prime minister’s residence, other official buildings, and homes and businesses of some prominent Awami League supporters.
Nationwide, dozens or more police stations were torched. The police association said its members would be on “strike” until their security could be guaranteed.

In a televised address Wednesday, Army Chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman spun flowery democratic phrases. “I am certain that he (Yunus) will be able to take us through a beautiful democratic process and that we will benefit from this,” declared the commander-in-chief of the state institution that is the bulwark of capitalist rule.
“We won’t betray the blood shed by the martyrs for our cause,” declared SAD’s coordinator, the 26-year-old Nahid Islam, who sprang to national prominence after he was brutally tortured by police last month. “We will create a new democratic Bangladesh through our promise of security of life, social justice and a new political landscape.”

In reality, the interim government will be a right-wing capitalist regime, beholden to the transnational garment industry giants, other foreign investors and the Bangladeshi bourgeoisie. Its first task will be to restore order and continue the implementation of the austerity measures demanded by the IMF in exchange for the $4.7 billion bailout it provided the Hasina government last year.
It, and whatever government succeeds it, elected or otherwise, will uphold the staggering social inequality that characterises contemporary Bangladesh, with the military remaining the power behind the throne.
Yunus is a thoroughly right-wing figure. An economist and founder of the Grameen Bank, he professes concern for the poor, but promotes as the solution to the mass poverty created by imperialist oppression and capitalist exploitation “entrepreneurial development.” That is the promotion of micro-businesses financed by micro-credit. His conceptions have been copied by larger financial institutions, resulting in what critics have called a new form of debt bondage.
US officials have been quick to praise the military’s role in the current crisis and to announce their readiness to work with the Yunus-led interim government. No doubt Washington hopes it will be able to leverage its longstanding connections to Yunus to press for Bangladesh to distance itself from China, as part of its all-sided military-strategic offensive against Beijing

RCI involvement (August 6)

Sheikh Hasina overthrown in Bangladesh! All Power to the Workers’ and Students’ Committees!

The revolutionary masses have overthrown Hasina, ending her 16 years of brutal rule! As we write these lines, millions have descended on Dhaka, with millions more expected to arrive in the course of the day. The masses have taken possession of the Ganabhaban (the Prime Minister’s residence). As of 2:25pm local time, Sheikh Hasina and her sister were flown to the air force base in Kurmitola, and from there will flee the country. But conspiracies are afoot in the army to steal the people’s victory. The masses must be more vigilant now than ever! We say: all power to the workers’ and students’ committees!
The student coordinators correctly escalated the movement. They called on the masses to organize committees, as we have argued over the past three weeks, in order to ensure the government could not disorganize the movement once more with a new blackout. Furthermore, they called on the people to descend on Dhaka today for a showdown, armed and ready for self-defense. “Make a bamboo stick. Make Bangladesh free,” read one social media post.
And most significantly of all, they called on the workers to join in a general strike:

“I call upon the working people of Dhaka and surrounding districts to come to Dhaka,” said Asif Mahmood in a statement yesterday. “Garment workers in particular will be called to take to the streets. Historically, the contribution of the working people during the revolution of this country is undeniable. Come forward to perform your historical duties this time too.”

It is clear that the Army Chief Waker-uz-Zaman is trying to lead an “orderly transition.” That is to say, the army is trying to rob the people of victory and make sure that power does not fall into the hands of the revolutionary students and working people.
The coordinators of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement have correctly stated, “We don’t want military government, we want people’s government.” This is correct! They have rightly pointed out that General Waker-uz-Zaman is Sheikh Hasina’s brother-in-law, explaining, “He cannot be expected to do justice to the martyrs.” This, again, is correct!
The people must maintain their mobilization until power is transferred to the students and working masses. How can this be done?
In fact, we would say that the revolutionary students and working masses that have secured this victory must be the only partners in an interim government. The army tops would love nothing more than to take a few student leaders as ‘partners’ into an illegitimate bourgeois government where they would ultimately call the shots. It would give them precisely the veneer of legitimacy that they lack.
The opposition parties such as the BNP represent no alternative. They stand for the exact same system of untrammeled rule of big business as Hasina. Meanwhile, many so-called “civil society” representatives, like the business federations, have been the main backers of Hasina. She created for them a regime in Bangladesh where they could profit enormously from the super-exploitation of the working class.
The students and workers must trust only in their own power. The revolution has polarized Bangladesh into two irreconcilable camps: the revolutionary students and working masses on one side; and the Hasina clique, big business and the leading echelons of the state on the other. There is no independent third party. The workers and students must take power into their own hands!
What can be done?

The way forward has already been posed by the movement itself. Students and workers have shown enormous capacity for organization. They have already begun to create struggle committees all over the country after the call went out from the coordinators.
Now, the general strike must continue, and the leadership must urge the masses to extend the committees to cover all workplaces, all communities, and all education institutions. The rank and file of the army must be called upon to form their own committees, excluding the officers, in order that they can check the conspiracies of the army.

These committees would immediately begin displacing the rule of the bosses in the factories, and the courts, and police locally—freeing those comrades that have been imprisoned without waiting for a writ from a local Awami League-appointed magistrate.

Bangladesh solidarity: Talha to be freed!

Last week Talha Mahmud Chowdhury, a student and supporter of the Revolutionary Communist International, was abducted by members of the Chhatra League, the thugs of Hasina’s Awami League, and imprisoned on serious, trumped-up charges of attempted murder and vandalism. Today we received the news that, following the fall of Hasina’s regime, he is expected to be released tomorrow.
For the crime of supporting the heroic quota movement and opposing Sheikh Hasina’s government, Talha has been locked up in the Khulshi Police Station, in Chattogram, for the past three weeks.
While government forces were marauding around the country, massacring students and workers, revolutionaries like Talha, with the courage to stand up to the real criminals, have been languishing in jail cells.
The Revolutionary Communist International launched a worldwide campaign to free Talha, along with the thousands of other student and worker activists thrown in jail. In London, Berlin, Dublin, and Vienna, revolutionary communist gathered to protest the criminal regime and demand Talha’s release. Supporters around the planet put pressure on their Bangladeshi embassies, high commissions, and diplomatic missions to demand Talha’s and the other detainees immediate release.

Lenin: War and Revolution

Lenin: The Defeat of One's Own Government in the Imperialist War

Lenin: Speech Delivered at an International Meeting in Berne, February 8, 1916

Layoffs

Nigeria

Tinubu government mobilises police and army to crush protests across Nigeria

Amnesty International said that the security forces had killed 13—at least four of whom were bystanders

Scott Ritter

FBI raids home of Scott Ritter over allegations he is an unregistered foreign agent

On Wednesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided the upstate New York home of Scott Ritter, the former US Marine Corp intelligence officer and United Nations weapons inspector. Ritter’s cars were also searched.
Outside of his residence in Delmar, Ritter told reporters that the FBI and New York state police presented him with a warrant that focused on a potential violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Ritter posted the photo with Kennedy, which was taken at a sports bar at the Hilton Garden Inn in Albany, and wrote, “Burgers with Bobby!”
Ritter then pointed to the latest Zionist atrocity, saying, “They blew up a school today with students in it. The students were inside the school burning to death.” He added, “That happens on a daily basis.”
Ritter then worked for the United Nations Special Commission, the body tasked with searching for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq following the war, between 1991 and 1998. He was chief inspector for 14 of the more than 30 UN inspection missions in Iraq.
Ritter was the subject of multiple law enforcement sting operations involving alleged sex offenses with under-age girls. The first case occurred in 2001, when he was charged with a misdemeanor crime. The case was eventually dismissed and the record sealed after he completed six months of pre-trial probation.
He was arrested a second time in November 2009 in connection with communications with a police decoy he met on an Internet chat site. In the second case, Ritter rejected a plea bargain and was found guilty of a series of sex-related offenses in a courtroom in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, on April 14, 2011. He was later sentenced to one-and-a-half to five-and-a-half years in prison and served time at Laurel Highlands state prison in Somerset County, Pennsylvania from March 2012 to September 2014.

Long live the international solidarity of the workers and students of all countries!