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Report on the anti-NATO protests in Madrid By Joe Lombardo UNAC
people attended both conferences and I spoke at the Counter Summit, which had
the perspective of organizing an anti-imperialist movement and was organized
mostly by Spanish, anti-imperialist organizations. My talk can be found here. UNAC also distributed a statement on NATO
and Ukraine at the two meetings in both Spanish and English that can be found
here and a flyer
from the Sanctions Kill coalition with a bar code to a very important report
on sanctions authored by members of the coalition. Spanish and English
version of the flyer were distributed and the
English version can be found here.
Following
the alternative summits, thousands marched together in a common demonstration
to protest the NATO summit. The demonstration was major news in Madrid and
was in all the news stations and newspapers.
One paper dedicated its entire front page to the demonstration. (see below)
The NATO
summit is happening at the same time that the
US/NATO proxy war against Russia is waging in Ukraine. Therefore, it is important that the peace
movement has shown a strong opposition to NATO at this time. NATO is set to revise its orientation and
to become more of a world-wide tool for US imperialism. It is proposing a new alignment that will
see it spread its aggression to Asia and around the world. According to information that can be found
on the NATO web site, they will project Russia and China as their main
enemies. This means that we will see
further aggression against major military and nuclear powers that will put
the entire world at risk. Only a few
months after the US/NATO defeat in Afghanistan, they choose to conduct
another war, this time with Russia, a major nuclear power. They hoped to fill
the coffers of the military industrial complex by providing weapons to fight
a major war in Europe. The US also
hoped to break the strong trade relationship between Europe and Russia and
Europe and China to allow US companies to fill the gap. They also hoped that the strong sanctions
applied against Russia would cause the Russian economy to collapse, causing a
crisis in the country that might lead to collapse of the governement, and
allow for a more US/NATO compliant government in Russia. Possibly this would
foreshadow a breakup of Russia and allow the US and its NATO allies to more easily dominate it.
With a defeated Russia they hoped to be able to further surround China
- which is challenging US hegemony around the world - and be in a better
position to eventually defeat China, economically and militarily. But their
plan is failing as Russia is winning the war in Ukraine. Instead of having
its economy fail, it is the Western economies that are in trouble with both
recession and inflation, while the ruble is rising against the dollar, the
Russian economy is growing, and the Russian people are showing strong support
for their country’s fight against the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine. But
despite this reality, the NATO summit is set to double down and move forward
with its aggression towards Russia and China.
This will affect every person on the planet in a negative way and so
we must continue to build our movement to bring about a world of peace not
war and to oppose the US/NATO aggression around the world. No to NATO
expansion! No to
NATO! No weapons
to Ukraine! No to war! Hands off
China! Note: After the protests, members of UNAC
attended a meeting of the No to NATO group where plans were started for
future work including webinars, more focus on the climate crisis and a
commitment to organize for the next NATO summit, which appears to be planned
for 2023 in Lithuania. |
