Speech to Niagara Regional Council on proposed voluntary Russia sanctions

 I am Saleh Waziruddin from the Communist Party of Canada's Eric Blair Club, the Niagara organization of the Communist Party.

This resolution for “voluntarily” sanctioning yourselves is going to do absolutely nothing to help Ukrainians or to ease their suffering. It is going to do absolutely nothing to hurt the Russian government or to hold back the war and destruction in Ukraine. Other than Niagara Falls those in the Russian government have probably never even heard of the other eleven municipalities in Niagara represented on this Council.

How many of you were planning to travel to Russia in the future, or travel to Russia regularly? It's a completely meaningless sacrifice then to say that you will voluntarily be banned from traveling to Russia forever. This is not your Spartacus moment, in the movie where the leader of a slave revolt, a revolutionary, was going to be executed and others stepped forward to risk their lives to save his. You are risking and sacrificing absolutely nothing by this pointless resolution, you are only putting on a performance that you are somehow being brave.

What this resolution does do is it needlessly escalates tensions. The horrible situation needs to be resolved through a political settlement and peacefully, this is much better than a military solution. Escalating this war through pointless performances is ultimately irresponsible and very dangerous with consequences many of us may not fully realize.

We are increasingly accelerating towards World War III. But you don't have to take my word for it. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, an organization founded by Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the Manhattan Project, have a “doomsday clock” to measure how close we are to utterly destroying each other and our planet. Their latest measurement from the war in Ukraine is that we are “at doom’s doorstep: it is 100 seconds to midnight.” They have issued a statement saying:

“Leaders around the world must immediately commit themselves to renewed cooperation in the many ways and venues available for reducing existential risk. Citizens of the world can and should organize to demand that their leaders do so—and quickly. The doorstep of doom is no place to loiter.”

and that's why I'm here tonight.

In the days before World War I many thought it would never happen, but before people fully realized it a war of the senseless slaughter of millions spread through the world. World War II had not ten but eleven times as many military casualties, not to mention the even much greater civilian casualties and massive death and destruction. From what we're already seeing of war another world war would be even worse this time around.

We have a responsibility to work for peace and to bring about peaceful solutions to the conflicts around us. I am asking you not to so needlessly and pointlessly contribute to escalating tensions especially when we are closer than many of us realize to a renewed horror of another world war.