Ray Stevenson

We may be excused on this tenth anniversary of Northstar Compass if there are mixed emotions and variable estimates about what has, or has not been accomplished or created since August of 1992. That was when we published our Volume 1, Number 1 Edition. There are undoubtedly many voices who will join us when we pose the question: "How the hell did we get here…?"

But we must remind ourselves and our readers that a decade ago, few then could be found who would predict ten years of continuing regular publication and life and that in 2002 our reach would be seventy far-flung countries situated on all seven continents. Without surrendering an ounce of our independent conviction that our "message"…perhaps even elevated to the level of "faith"…our Association of Friendship, Solidarity and Peace with several generations of Soviet people and friends has prevailed. That essential quality of our efforts, has never been in question, although there have been those who derided and sought to impede our activity.

We could not have begun to visualize the massive, wild seas of wars, conflicts and confrontation that were to erupt in that decade as a result of the counter-revolution against the Soviet people and the emergence of the "new" virulently corrupt unipolar world of political, economic and military savagery under the NATO Transnational Corporate powers, led by the United States of America.

Our Vol. 1, No. 1 however, said that a central aim and task was to bring a "tiny gleam of light in the for-boding darkness of corporate domination and unaccountability to anything but their profit line…" That, we have worked to accomplish without wavering or back-pedaling a single inch. It was not prescient, but that same edition exposed the connivance and plots of U.S. monopoly oil interests, together with the Gorbachev, Shevernadze regime of betrayal that preceded the dismantling of the USSR.

Pinpointed was the sell-out of the Tenzig oil fields to California Chevron-Standard Oil. Lurking in the background of that infamous and disgusting "arrangement" was the ongoing current rape and theft of the oil deposits of the Muslim Soviet Republics of Central Asia. Today the Central Asian and the world suffers the US military assault on the Afghan peoples, a war to make possible the building of an oil pipeline across the country and to bring the "black gold" to American and other oil tankers riding the waves of the Indian Ocean. The cost of such "counter-revolutionary" twenty year plans by monopoly for the dismantled Soviet Republics and people, and the "awarding" of pay-offs and buy-outs in illicit, oil-stained funds to the installed (and US supported) misleaders and counter-revolutionary traitors starting from Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, Shevernadze, Yakovlev, down the line to the petty warlords in Afghanistan, this hardly needs emphasizing in our corrupted, TNC "unipolar" world. The Afghan people, and the people of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, et al (and for the rest of us perhaps later) will foot the bill in manifold ways for oil profits for the TNCs. Of course the CNN "psycho-war" pundits and their ilk, seek to either convince the world, or divert the people into accepting this state of affairs as a desired exercise in a crusade for "freedom and democracy". NSC will continue to expose that "no-brainer" today as it has in the past.

During our decade, we have as well been instrumental in the historic formation of the "International Council for Friendship, Solidarity and Peace with Soviet People". That worldwide body was formed in Toronto in September of 2001 by more than seventy delegates from seventeen countries and the four corners of the world. There was unanimous agreement that by their restoration of whatever forms of socialism they would determine, the Soviet people remain the foremost and leading force whereby the workers and people curb, reverse and ultimately destroy the "unipolar" neo-liberal and totally false "globalization" designs of world monopoly, the new "neo-Imperialism". The broadest united front is required for those ends. While at the World Congress the International Council proclaimed itself as limited to the parameters of "Friendship, Solidarity and Peace" the massive, democratic and also potentially revolutionary consequences of such developments are now unmistakable and increasingly evident.

That International Council is an extension of the "window to the world" for the beleaguered friends in the fourteen former Soviet Republics that Northstar Compass has been. During NSC’s years, literally tens of thousands of communications in written messages, newspapers, brochures, letters, e-mails and telephone discussions, have been received from Soviet people and forces and to outer limits of our ability, transmitted to all audiences we could reach via e-mail and the Internet web page, maintained by NSC. We have survived because those messages together with the monumental work of Editor Michael Lucas and Treasurer Helen Lucas and a few others reflected a genuine demand and requirement of peoples around the world in formation. In many varying forms the International Council will deepen and extend that vital work.

Could our work have been more fruitful and substantial? That goes without question. But the key to such improvements was the acceptance by multi-pro-Soviet organizations in many different countries and ways, of the absolute necessity of mutual cooperation and highly developed means of United Front activity. It is with profound regret that we cannot report such approaches and activity was apparent from some quarters where it could have been properly expected. We submit our deepest wish that such weaknesses will be overcome in coming days, whether of a theoretical, practical or other nature.

And what of the future as we survey the past decade? As this is written a veritable cornucopia of disasters emanating from the "bowels of the TNC-USA-Monopoly beast" continue to place the very survival of life on the planet as it has evolved, in potential dire disaster zones. The well-hyped "highest" political governance position (erected on the shifting sands of neo-Imperialism) on Mother Earth, the Presidency of the United States, has just declared a dogma of dictatorship that threatens to be extended to the world’s people…beginning with the embattled Palestinian people. In effect he told them: "The U.S.A. will allow you to have elections for a new Palestinian Authority only if you elect people acceptable to ME!" If the Palestinians reject that Hitlerian pronouncement (as they certainly will) even more American manufactured tanks, guns and warplanes will continue to patrol Palestinian territory, manned by Israeli soldiers. Ordering the Palestinian Authority to disappear and to hold "new elections" under U.S. supervision by the way of Israeli President Sharon’s total destruction of the Palestinian Authority, infrastructure and a continued occupation, this megalomaniacal "oil king" in the name of U.S. citizenry seeks total occupation and military control of the entire Mid-East and Central Asian oil resources, he has climbed a common noxious ladder to sit beside all predecessor dictators and potentates of infamy recorded by history.

The next target where Bush will seek to impose the rule of his oil-drenched kingdom is Iraq. Already the above mentioned illegal military occupation of Afghanistan and the former Muslim Soviet Republics has been accomplished with the overt co-operation of the tawdry and equally illicit President Putin of Russia together with the NATO Allies.

With such an agenda being pressed (to use together with a Reagan verbose verbiage) a "full-court press" (i.e. "to the fullest extent", the question naturally arises: "can any nation or people stand alone before this monstrous military behemoth of ‘star wars’ mentality and also unprecedented military capability?" Or is it a case of "whom the Gods will destroy, they first make mad"…?

Perhaps insanity is the result of developing criminal debacles of Enron, plunging stock markets…a population kept in a state of near hysteria, and in-line by the wildest, most noxious "Big Lie" hype and "jingoism" as per CNN etc…? The "hype" equals the perfidies of an older "Big Lie" proponent, Herr Goebbels by name. History also informs that the 1929 debacle of the "stock-market crash" led to other brands of insanity, including falling bodies in massive suicides through twenty story skyscraper windows.

If there are those who will contradict these estimates and whose worship and faith has been displaced from Churches, Mosques, Synagogues, Temples or what have you, to worship Greenspan's teetering stock markets and their Deity is now represented by the American dollar, rather than God, Mohammed, Jesus Christ, Gautama or other super-naturals of historical mythology and folk lore, then the realities of today’s TNC-unipolar world have passed them by. The vaporizing effects of "faith" that God blesses ONLY "America" will prevail for all people, for all time everywhere. At NSC however, we do not believe that. Instead, we generally believe that the use of the highest and most complex organization of matter…what has been called protoplasm, i.e. the human brain and the sensibilities of human and other life are the reality of human activity and endeavor. We also believe this should be used universally. As such, the capacity to examine, analyze, project, belongs to peoples of every land, of every historical experience and development. There cannot be other than a burgeoning and growing consciousness that, as we live in our material universe, our knowledge, commonly held, must tell us that the pathway of "dollar and power worship" is really another fantasy induced by self-proclaimed witch-doctors that in "days of old" controlled their fellow humans by virtue of selling hallucinating drugs en-masse. While on this note, (perhaps in some unknown manner) the "hallucinogenics" prevailing among top level monopoly and governmental personnel of money and unlimited force, should be taken away from them and placed beyond their reach.

From what has been said above, it is plain to see that the next ten years of NSC are even more unpredictable than were the past ten, except to say, that a reversal and revolutionary transformation of the world’s economic social, political systems is demanded if the human species and our "fellow travelers" such as Monarch butterflies and grizzly bears (among other species) too are contemplating survival here on Mother Earth. It is reality that this is our only "space ship." As such, it demands much more gentle, loving care than is accorded all living creatures…including humans by the "masters of OIL and the TNCs."

That was surely a major part of our "inner compulsions", that impelled a few of us who made the decision to publish Northstar Compass a decade ago, and to stand by the Soviet people who had by Marxist-Leninist Socialism bootstrapped themselves through seven decades of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. That the theoretical and practical application of the early period was debased by opportunists in criminal counter-revolutionary pools spawned by opportunism and corrupted careerism that followed, in no way does this destroy the brilliant and immense progress that rose from the Soviet people. Like a mighty Phoenix, rising from the centuries old devastation of shaman-like Czarist oppression, led by a truly Marxist-Leninist Party, such was their splendor, the world stood amazed and wondering. The history from the proletarian-led revolution of 1917, through years of imposed isolation, followed by the ghastly cost of WW II that was won by Soviet Socialism, through vast human and scientific advancement and their splendor shone like a radiant sun. All humanity benefited. All humanity suffered unbelievable and terrifying losses the counter-revolution and our "unipolar world". The old bromide applies: "the proof of the pudding’s worth, comes with the eating."

In the past and in years to come, the insensate power-driven forces of TNC neo-Imperialism, have laid the groundwork and brought into being social, political and human counter-forces that will restore on a wider, more secure foundation among the people of the Soviets, and indeed world-wide, in fundamental change, new forms of Socialism. Lives of security, of abundance, of dignity and rising cultural achievements for all the world’s peoples are ahead.

As one of the founders of Northstar Compass a decade past, and in conjunction and closest ties with others in our dedicated group, we have raised aloft banners of Friendship, Solidarity and Peace that can and will prevail. The legacy of those hard and difficult ten years and the preceding history will continue to be reflected from the pages of Northstar Compass and its successors.

Thus we celebrate our ten years of unremitting struggle… with total confidence in the future.

Click here to return to August 2002 index.