‘The UK and US arm both the Saudis and the Israelis’

• NEWS of the widespread Russian anti-war movement is emerging, including of the nearly 1,000 incidents of soldiers who have refused to fight.

Vladimir Putin quickly created new laws making resistance to the invasion illegal, an indication of how widespread is the opposition of the Russian people.

Those of us who were draft-dodgers from the US genocide in Vietnam, will recognise the courage of every soldier who refuses to be part of Putin’s killing machine in the Ukraine.

More than four million women, children and men were killed in Vietnam, many by chemical and biological weapons.

The resistance of the Vietnamese people ended that racist and imperialist war with the help of millions of American refuseniks (including draft-dodgers and over half-a-million soldiers who deserted) and soldiers who “fragged” (killed) their officers.

Yet the press and western governments talk about the possible Russian use of chemical and biological weapons as if Vietnam had never happened; and the potential use of nuclear weapons as if the US had not committed one of the greatest war crimes of all time in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Saudi Arabia, which has killed close to 400,000 Yemenis, is ignored, as is apartheid Israel which continues the incremental slaughter of Palestinians while selling arms to dictators around the world.

The UK and US arm both the Saudis and the Israelis. In the latter case there is a proud history of Israeli refuseniks, and there are always refuseniks in every war. The more, the better.

Sir Keir Starmer’s hostility to the anti-war movement, his whole-hearted support for Tony Blair and NATO which was involved in both the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, is obscene. Blair, like Putin, lied to instigate a war: Iraq cost over 650,000 lives, most of them civilians.

Again on this the press and western governments are silent.

SAM WEINSTEIN
Payday men’s network, NW5