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The following is based on a report given by Joe Sims at the National Board meeting on March 2, 2022.

Perhaps the most suprizing thing about Bidens State of the Union address the other night is that nary a word was said about the storming of the Capitol. How could that be? A scant few weeks after the coups first anniversary and no mention? What manner of political calculus led Washingtons top Democratic strategists to conclude that it was either impolitic or impolite to mention the most important event in this countrys history? Was it a focus group, a poll, a gut-felt hunch, plain old stupidity, or what?

Gus Hall used to say that the essence of being president was in offending the least number of people, but after January 6th, this is ridiculous!

The answer might lie in the content of a speech pitched smack dab in the middle of center field. After almost 20 minutes of casting fire and brimstone at Putin for invading Ukraine, Mr. Biden called for increased police funding and securing the U.S.s southern border, calls that received standing ovations from both sides of the aisle.

So how are you going to win the midterms by appealing mainly to independents and soccer moms? Hmm.

Four noncontroversial unity proposals were premiered at the joint session of Congress: combating opioid addiction, outlawing ads targeted at children, providing aid to veterans, and renewing the war on cancer. Could these, along with repackaged parts of Build Back Better, be the main planks in this years Democratic legislative agenda?

Hey, Mr. Biden, better call Manchin and Sinema and be ready with some big bucks. You can forget about Mitch McConnell supporting anything you do now or, if you dont change course, in what appears to be your exceedingly short-lived political future.

Now, dont get me wrong: there were some good things in the speech. The president did stress that today, the countrys in a better place. But hell, this was true the second after Trump left office. Unemployment is lower, COVID is receding, and infrastructure legislation has passed.

And the speech did bring attention to voting rights, the PRO-ACT, and trans rights, even though theres zero chance of passage of House-approved legislation on these or any other front in the near term.

In addition, there were strong appeals in the State of the Union to working-class issues like tax fairness, womens equality, and child care. With respect to tax fairness Biden said, Just last year, 55 Fortune 500 corporations earned $40 billion in profits and paid zero dollars in federal income tax. He called for a 15% tax on global corporations in response. Good.

But, while working-class issues were mentioned, they seemed rather muted. By way of comparison, Rashida Tlaib gave a reply to Biden on behalf of the Working Families Party that called for electing a working-class majority to Congress around issues like canceling student debt, raising the minimum wage, recalculating the poverty index, and turning the Rust Belt into a Green Belt. She also took aim at the military budget.

Now thats an agenda one can relate to instead of the other days repositioning. Come on guys! Average is not going to win the midterms! Enough with projecting Bidens sometimes under, sometimes overstated Im-the-normal-guy image and its either me or tbe President of Krazyland.

Indeed, Biden on Tuesday night chose to largely stay away from the sharper issues that have divided the country. This stood in sharp contrast to the GOP reply given by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds. Reynolds centered her remarks on inflation, mandates, childrens education (read critical race theory), immigration, and government overreach. The Republicans have no fear of feeding red meat to their base.

Thus, the state of the union remains uncertain and unstable, despite the beginnings of a return to normal. But with inflation and now war in Europe, normal may not be enough. People are fearful and nervous, and one has a very strong feeling that the election is going to turn on the price of gas.

Yes, Russias invasion of Ukraine looms large: it was wrong and in violation of international law. In the words of the CPUSAs National Board, War between states is never an acceptable solution and must be rejected in the strongest terms.

The working class of both countries deserves support and solidarity, as does the growing peace movements there. One million signed a petition for peace in Russia recently. Thats huge!

But look: lets get our priorities straight: The main task has to be to work to develop a peace movement and to change the Biden administrations policy. Thats the best way and only way to support the workers of Russia and Ukraine.

The context set by U.S. imperialisms role over the past months cannot be ignored, including Cold War rhetoric, saber rattling, and what might be called a de facto NATOization of Ukraine. By NATOization is meant the arming of the country beginning with Trump and continued by Biden, and the building of infrastructure with potential military uses along with provocative Western military exercises by U.S. and U.K. armed forces.

In this regard, the building of the peace movement must be considered within the context of fighting the fascist danger. In other words, its imperative that a broad movement be built around the key issues today: a cease fire, withdrawal of troops and setting a date for such, ending sanctions, bringing in the UN. These actions could set the stage for additional future steps for peaceful coexistence, arranging regional security, including ending the supply of arms. Here we should be careful not to substitute anti-imperialist positions for what the broader forces in the peace movement may be ready to endorse.

Strong stances will have to be taken and unity among broad forces fought for. All-peoples unity is necessary. As for an election strategy that soft peddles the January 6th insurrection suggested by its absence from mention in the state of the union, as truckers used to say, The only thing in the middle of the road are white lines and dead jack rabbits.

Wake up yall before its too late: whats going to win this election is a mass movement organized around the issues the movement has to adapt to and meet the political moment. The point here is that the issues cant be determined by elites; they have to be constructed and fought for from the ground up by the broad masses of our class and people.

Images: White House (Facebook); Green jobs, Lihn Do (CC BY 2.0); Peace sign, Dyniss Rainer (CC BY-SA 2.0).

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What Biden didn't say at the State of the Union - Communist Party USA

Administration officials have studied how sanctions would affect each of the big banks, including Sberbank and VTB, Russias two largest banks. Sberbank has about a third of the assets in the countrys banking sector, and VTB has more than 15 percent. Some experts are skeptical that the administration would put those two banks on the S.D.N. list for fear of the consequences for the Russian and global economies. For now, U.S. officials are not ready to cut off all Russian banks from Swift, the important Belgian money transfer system used by more than 11,000 financial institutions worldwide.

The Treasury Department has other sanctions lists that would impose costs while inflicting less widespread suffering. For example, it could put a bank on a list that prevents it from doing any transactions involving dollars. Many international commercial transactions are done in U.S. dollars, the currency that underpins the global economy.

The Treasury Department is also expected to put more Russian officials, businesspeople and companies on the sanctions lists.

By Thursday afternoon in Russia, the nations stock market had fallen nearly 40 percent.

The Commerce Department has been making plans to restrict the export of certain American technologies to Russia, a tactic that the Trump administration used to hobble Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications company. The controls would damage the supply chain for some Russian sectors. U.S. officials said their targets included the defense industry and the oil and gas industry.

European officials are expected to announce sanctions similar to many of the ones planned by the United States, as they did this week. However, they have been more wary of imposing the harshest sanctions because of the continents robust trade with Russia.

Although Mr. Biden has said he will contemplate any possible sanctions, U.S. officials for now do not plan big disruptions to Russias energy exports, which are the pillar of the countrys economy. Europe relies on the products, and surging oil prices worldwide would cause greater inflation and more problems for politicians. However, Germany announces this week that it would not certify Nord Stream 2, a new natural gas pipeline that connects Russia and Western Europe. On Wednesday Mr. Biden announced sanctions on a subsidiary of Gazprom, the large Russian energy company, which built the pipeline and had planned to operate it.

What is at the root of this invasion? Russia considers Ukraine within its natural sphere of influence, and it has grown unnerved at Ukraines closeness with the West and the prospect that the country might join NATO or the European Union. While Ukraine is part of neither, it receives financial and military aid from the United States and Europe.

Are these tensions just starting now? Antagonism between the two nations has been simmeringsince 2014, when the Russian military crossed into Ukrainian territory, after an uprising in Ukraine replaced their Russia-friendly president with a pro-Western government. Then, Russia annexed Crimeaand inspired a separatist movement in the east.A cease-fire was negotiated in 2015, but fighting has continued.

How has Ukraine responded? On Feb. 23, Ukraine declared a 30-day state of emergencyas cyberattacks knocked out government institutions. Following the beginning of the attacks, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraines president, declared martial law. The foreign minister called the attacks a full-scale invasion and called on the world to stop Putin.

We have been frank, we have been candid with the American people that our measures the measures we have and are prepared to impose on the Russian Federation certainly wont be cost-free for the Russian Federation, Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, said on Wednesday. But they wont be entirely cost-free for the rest of the world as well.

Excerpt from:
Ukraine Crisis: What Happens Next for the Rest of the World? - The New York Times

PARIS President Vladimir V. Putin has ordered Russian troops into Ukraine but made clear his true target goes beyond his neighbor to Americas empire of lies, and he threatened consequences you have never faced in your history for anyone who tries to interfere with us.

In another rambling speech full of festering historical grievances and accusations of a relentless Western plot against his country, Mr. Putin reminded the world on Thursday that Russia remains one of the most powerful nuclear states with a certain advantage in several cutting-edge weapons.

In effect, Mr. Putins speech, intended to justify the invasion, seemed to come closer to threatening nuclear war than any statement from a major world leader in recent decades. His immediate purpose was obvious: to head off any possible Western military move by making clear he would not hesitate to escalate.

Given Russias nuclear arsenal, he said, there should be no doubt that any potential aggressor will face defeat and ominous consequences should it directly attack our country. He added: All necessary decisions have been taken in this regard.

Mr. Putins move into Ukraine and his thinly veiled nuclear threat have now shattered Europes notions of security and the presumption of peace it has lived with for several generations. The postwar European project, which produced so much stability and prosperity, has entered a new, uncertain and confrontational stage.

In the run-up to Mr. Putins invasion of Ukraine, a train of Western leaders made the pilgrimage to Moscow to try to persuade Mr. Putin not to do it. The Americans essentially offered a return to arms control; President Emmanuel Macron of France was prepared to search for a new security architecture if Mr. Putin was unhappy with the old one.

The sincere, perhaps nave, belief of Mr. Macron and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany in the possibility of bringing Mr. Putin to reason suggests the gulf between the worlds they inhabit. The Russian leader was not interested in taking a fine scalpel to Europes security order, but rather a blunt knife to carve out, Cold-War-style, whats mine and whats yours.

Europe has rediscovered its vulnerability. Mr. Macron said on Thursday that Mr. Putin had decided to bring about the gravest violation of peace and stability in our Europe for decades. Of Ukrainians, he said, Their liberty is our liberty.

But no European country, nor the United States for that matter, will put lives on the line for that freedom. The question, then, is how they can draw a line for Mr. Putin.

After his short war in Georgia in 2008, his annexation of Crimea in 2014, his orchestration in 2014 of the military conflict in eastern Ukraine that created two breakaway regions, and his military intervention in Syria in 2015, Mr. Putin has clearly concluded that Russias readiness to use its armed forces to advance its strategic aims will go unanswered by the United States or its European allies.

Russia wants insecurity in Europe because force is its trump card, said Michel Duclos, a former French ambassador. They never wanted a new security order, whatever the European illusions. Putin decided some time ago that confrontation with the West was his best option.

Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvards Kennedy School, said the talk of nuclear conflict was worrisome. But I find it difficult to believe that any world leader, including Mr. Putin, would seriously contemplate using nuclear weapons in any of the scenarios we have here, for the simple reason that they understand the consequences, he said.

Still, history has demonstrated that European wars involving a major global power can spiral out of control. A long war in Ukraine could eventually bleed into Poland, Hungary or Slovakia.

Central Europe and the Baltic States, effectively NATOs front line against Russia, will live with a sense of credible threat for some time.

One ominous scenario remote but less so than before the invasion is that Mr. Putin, who has demanded that NATO pull back out of formerly Soviet-controlled countries to its posture before enlargement in 1997, will eventually turn his attention to Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, the small Baltic States that now form the front line of NATO countries.

Feb. 24, 2022, 6:00 p.m. ET

Mr. Duclos suggested Mr. Putins aim may well be to install a puppet Russian government in Kyiv and that, if he succeeded, he will want the same thing in the Baltic States.

All three countries, subjugated in the Soviet empire after World War II, joined NATO in 2004. President Biden has vowed that the United States and its allies will defend every inch of NATO territory, meaning that even a Russian attack on tiny Estonia could trigger a conflagration.

Immediately after the Russian invasion, the three Baltic States and Poland triggered Article 4 of the alliances founding treaty, which allows members to hold consultations when they feel their territorial integrity is threatened. NATO met in an emergency session as a result.

These nations fears were one clear sign of how the Russian invasion has upended European security and European assumptions in ways that appear certain to last.

What is at the root of this invasion? Russia considers Ukraine within its natural sphere of influence, and it has grown unnerved at Ukraines closeness with the West and the prospect that the country might join NATO or the European Union. While Ukraine is part of neither, it receives financial and military aid from the United States and Europe.

Are these tensions just starting now? Antagonism between the two nations has been simmeringsince 2014, when the Russian military crossed into Ukrainian territory, after an uprising in Ukraine replaced their Russia-friendly president with a pro-Western government. Then, Russia annexed Crimeaand inspired a separatist movement in the east.A cease-fire was negotiated in 2015, but fighting has continued.

How has Ukraine responded? On Feb. 23, Ukraine declared a 30-day state of emergencyas cyberattacks knocked out government institutions. Following the beginning of the attacks, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraines president, declared martial law. The foreign minister called the attacks a full-scale invasion and called on the world to stop Putin.

But Mr. Walt noted that if, in Ukraine, Russia cares more than anyone else and has greater means to affect the outcome in the short term, that equation begins to shift if Mr. Putin reaches further afield. At that point, resolve and capabilities start to shift back in our favor. He added that my chances of dying in a nuclear war still feel infinitesimally small, even if greater than yesterday.

European states, particularly France, generally viewed the American conviction that a Russian invasion was almost inevitable as too alarmist, but differences were papered over in the pursuit of diplomacy.

In the end, the diplomatic efforts Europeans believed in were doomed because an increasingly isolated Mr. Putin has worked himself into a revanchist fury. He appears to see himself standing alone against the United States and what he portrays as the far-right nationalists and neo-Nazis that the leading NATO countries are supporting in Ukraine.

Mr. Putins steadily mounting anger over the past two decades has been focused on the perceived Western humiliation of Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union 31 years ago and on NATOs subsequent expansion eastward to safeguard countries like Poland that suffered during the Cold War under Moscows totalitarian domination.

But the Russian leader has evidently developed his outrage into a consuming worldview of American iniquity. What this will mean in military terms in the coming years remains to be seen.

Nearly everywhere, in many regions of the world where the United States brought its law and order, this created bloody, unhealing wounds and the curse of international terrorism and extremism, Mr. Putin said. Americas conduct across the globe was con-artist behavior.

He continued: Therefore, one can say with good reason and confidence that the whole so-called Western bloc formed by the United States in its own image and likeness is, in its entirety, the very same empire of lies.

Mr. Putin seemed oblivious to the fact that the choreography of the Russian invasion has been one of extraordinary, if predictable, doublespeak.

It has included unsubstantiated accusations of humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime; Russian recognition of the independence of the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk so that these peoples republics could ask Russia for help; and the claim that therefore Russia was within its rights, under the United Nations Charter, in responding to a request for assistance by sending troops to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.

In the end, Mr. Putin appears to have had no hesitation in ordering Russia into Ukraine. He accused the authorities in Kyiv all neo-Nazi usurpers, in his view of aspiring to acquire nuclear weapons for an inevitable showdown with Russia.

He appeared to have forgotten that Ukraine once had a vast nuclear arsenal before it gave it up in 1994 under an agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum. Russia was one of the countries that signed the accord, promising in exchange that it would never use force or threats against Ukraine and would respect its sovereignty and existing borders.

So much for that.

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Beyond Ukraine, the Target Is What Putin Calls Americas Empire of Lies - The New York Times

Early Thursday, just as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia announced on television that he had decided to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine, explosions were reported across the country.

Blasts were heard in Kyiv, the capital; in Kharkiv, the second largest city; and in Kramatorsk in the region of Donetsk, one of two eastern Ukrainian territories claimed by Russia-backed separatists since 2014.

Ukraines Interior Ministry said that Russian troops had landed in the southern port city of Odessa and were crossing from Russia into Kharkiv. Footage captured by security cameras showed Russian military vehicles crossing into Ukraine from Crimea, the peninsula that Russia seized in 2014.

Rocket attacks targeted Ukrainian fighter jets parked at an airport outside Kyiv, and Ukraine closed its airspace to commercial flights, citing the potential hazard to civilian aviation.

More than 40 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and dozens were wounded in the fighting on Thursday morning, said Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

As air raid sirens blared in Kyiv, the western city of Lviv and other urban areas, residents rushed to take shelter in bus and subway stations. In Kyiv, people packed up their cars and waited in long lines to fill up with gas on their way out of the city. In eastern Ukraine, early signs of panic appeared on the streets as lines formed at A.T.M.s and gas stations.

With attacks across the country, it quickly became clear that Russias campaign, whatever Mr. Putin meant by a special military operation, was aimed at far more than the rebel territories in the east. Within an hour, Ukraines state emergency service said that attacks had been launched in 10 regions of Ukraine, primarily in the east and south, and that reports of new shelling were coming in constantly.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraines foreign minister, called it a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and said his country would defend itself, while calling on the world to stop Putin.

Russias Defense Ministry said that it was using high-precision weapons to disable military infrastructure, air defense facilities, military airfields and Ukrainian army planes, Russias state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported. But the ministry said it was not attacking cities, and promised that the civilian population is not at risk.

The Ukrainian authorities said that invading naval forces were coming ashore at multiple points, including in Kharkiv and the southern city of Kherson. Three emergency workers were injured when a command post was struck by shelling in Nizhyn, in the north, and six people were trapped under rubble when the citys airport came under attack, Ukraines Interior Ministry reported.

Military depots, warehouses and National Guard were hit with artillery blasts, the ministry said.

As dawn broke in Kyiv, Mr. Zelensky of Ukraine said he had declared martial law. The countrys defense minister told citizens that the army was fending off enemy forces and doing everything it can to protect you.

But the army was under siege. In the east, Russia-backed separatists their ranks bolstered by the arrival of hundreds of Russian mercenaries in recent days, according to European officials said they were hammering Ukrainian troops along the entire 250-mile front line that has divided the rebels and Ukrainian forces since 2014.

Seeking to capture the entire territories of Donetsk and Luhansk, which Mr. Putin recognized as independent on Monday, the rebels were using all weapons at their disposal, the Russian news media reported. Ukrainian officials said the attacks included artillery strikes.

Ukraines state border service reported that Russian troops stationed in Belarus, north of Ukraine, had launched an attack with support from the Belarusian military. Russia had deployed as many as 30,000 troops to Belarus for exercises this month that the United States warned could provide cover for an attack against Kyiv, which lies a fast 140-mile drive away from a main border crossing. President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus denied that his forces were involved.

By midmorning in Kyiv, Russias Defense Ministry said it had disabled all of Ukraines air defenses and air bases. Ukraines Interior Ministry said that Russian forces had captured two villages in the Luhansk region.

The fighting intensified as Ukrainian forces shot down six Russian fighters and a helicopter in a fight to maintain control over key cities, a senior Ukrainian military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to release information outside official channels. Ukraines defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, called on all Ukrainian civilians to join the fight and enlist with territorial defense units.

Ukraine is moving into all-out defense mode, he said.

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What Happened in Putin's Invasion of Ukraine Last Night - The New York Times

In the wake of what the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, described as Russias fully fledged invasion of Ukraine, the west has to decide how to respond to what Frances Emmanuel Macron has called a turning point in European history.

Yet can the west now offer Ukraine more than a mixture of prayers, sanctions and diplomatic demarches? Throughout this conflict western intelligence has shown it has been able to predict Putins next step, but less capable of stopping it. Boris Johnson told the Ukrainian people we are with you, but what this western solidarity means in practice is now up for debate.

The 30-nation Nato alliance will stick to its pledge that it will never send forces to protect Ukraine as a non-Nato member. Backbench Tory calls to give Ukraine air support have no support in Nato.

Instead the west will test Russias resolve through tough sanctions and by some countries providing arms if there is a resistance.

The coordinated sanctions in Washington, London, Berlin and Brussels being announced on Thursday are billed as massive, but Putin sits on a $600bn (450bn) war chest and will benefit from oil prices soaring past $100 a barrel. That makes him less dependent on the west to raise capital than five years ago, and such is his dominance of the Russian media that the chances of internal protests pressurising, let alone toppling, the 69-year-old president look minimal. The oligarchs may complain if sanctions are placed on them, but Putin is in too deep to retreat.

One London-based diplomat said this week after viewing Russias televised and cowed national security meeting: We used to talk about Putins inner circle. There is no inner circle. There is only Putin. Another said: The only thing that will change Russian public opinion is the mothers of Russia seeing the bodybags.

Nikolai Petrov from the Chatham House thinktank warned all infrastructure of political opponents and opposition has been destroyed, making it much easier for the Kremlin to to mobilise public opinion.

Dire predictions by the British of Putin being mired in a battlefield quagmire will now be tested. Many Ukrainians appear on western media to attest that Putin has underestimated Ukraines will to fight. They insist they will not tolerate a puppet government loyal to Moscow. But the long queues of traffic fleeing Kyiv in the westward direction speaks to another story. It is as likely that Ukraines prisons will be filled with dissidents.

In the short term there will be a debate, including in Germany, about whether to arm the resistance, with some Green party and CDU leaders already advocating this.

The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, at the weekend said this was not the moment for Germany to make a 180-degree turn on such a strategic policy. Yet the debate is live. The former German defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said: Im so angry at us for historically failing. After Georgia, Crimea and Donbas, we have not prepared anything that would have really deterred Putin.

Keir Giles, also from Chatham House, urged the west to be cautious. Looking at Russias 100% success record on suppressing resistance movements in territories it has occupied often using medieval levels of savagery and inflicting terror on the civilian population we ask what would aid to a resistance achieve and would it make the situation better worse or better. The images of destruction in Aleppo, Grozny and Afghanistan show how merciless the Russian military can be.

Stoltenberg has said that it is a matter for individual nations to decide the help they provide to any resistance. But the risks are high. In his speech announcing the invasion, Putin warned outsiders tempted to interfere that there would be consequences you have never encountered in your history a chilling veiled reference to nuclear war.

There is also a danger that an insurgency would exacerbate a refugee crisis likely to be triggered across central Europe.

Plans are in infancy in the EUs Frontex border agency to prepare for the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees. Some diplomats are optimistic that, unlike with Syria in 2015, there will not be a political backlash, pointing out many Ukrainians have already been welcomed to Europe. As many as 15,000 Ukrainians already live in Berlin. But autocrats have learned that refugees are weapons of war.

The British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has clearly indicated that there is a serious risk that Putin, judging by his words, will not stop at Ukraine, but wants to restore Russias empire, and remove western forces from all former Warsaw pact countries.

Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, said Putin had gone full tonto, and almost every western politician who returned from Moscow was disturbed by his demeanour and inability to focus on realistic solutions to the crisis.

It means once Ukraine is swallowed by Putin, Russia will be able to station forces land, air and missile in bases in western Ukraine as well as Belarus, which has effectively lost independence.

He may not invade the Baltic states, but he is in a better strategic position to demand a retreat by Nato to Warsaw pact boundaries and a land corridor through Poland to link Kaliningrad, the headquarters of the Russian Baltic fleet.

It will mean high defence spending, less dependence on Russian energy and more troops on Natos frontiers. Finland and Sweden may seek to join Nato. If Putin wanted less Nato, he may get more.

Finally, the west has to confront questions about the validity of the whole postwar diplomatic security architecture.

On Wednesday night UN diplomats gathered to condemn Russia at an emergency meeting, one chaired by Russia, this months presidents of the UN security council. It symbolised the degree to which the UN has become utterly compromised. But there may have been one diplomatic voice in New York that will disturb the west most that of the Chinese envoy. In his brief remarks he remained studiously on the fence, refusing to condemn Russia and knowing the wests anguish may provide it with nothing but opportunities ahead.

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What can the west do about Russia invading Ukraine? - The Guardian