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  • Wicked Leaks, Part 1: How The Media Quarantined Evidence On Nord Stream Sabotage

    Last week, Alex Nunns, author of The Candidate – Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path To Power and former Corbyn speechwriter, described the current assault on democracy within the Labour Party:

    ‘What’s happening in the Labour Party is new. The Labour right, having had the shock of their lives in 2015, are now intent on eradicating the left entirely. This isn’t how their predecessors thought. It’s a new departure in Labour history that’ll have long term consequences.’

    So why the change?

    ‘Previous generations of Labour right bureaucrats accommodated the left not because they were nicer than the current lot but because 1) the left was part of a power bloc which they needed to advance their own ends & 2) they were confident in containing the left within that bloc.

    ‘This generation of Labour right bureaucrats acts differently because 2) has changed, but 1) hasn’t. Their predecessors weren’t all stupid, so there will be a long-term cost.’

    In other words, the Labour right is ‘eradicating the left entirely’ because, as the Corbyn near-miss in 2017 showed, the level of public support for left policies is now so high that it threatens to surge uncontrollably through any window of opportunity.

    This rings true, and not just for the Labour Party. What we have often called the ‘corporate media’, but which in truth is a state-corporate media system, has followed essentially the same path for the same reasons.

    Where once the likes of John Pilger, Robert Fisk and Peter Oborne were granted regular columns in national newspaper and magazines, and even space for prime-time documentaries, their brand of rational, compassionate dissent has been all but banished. Pilger commented recently:

    ‘In recent years, some of the best journalists have been eased out of the mainstream. “Defenestrated” is the word used. The spaces once open to mavericks, to journalists who went against the grain, truth-tellers, have closed.’

    In October 2019, Peter Oborne published an article on ‘the way Boris Johnson was debauching Downing Street by using the power of his office to spread propaganda and fake news’.1. The media response:

    ‘This article marked the end of my thirty-year-long career as a writer and broadcaster in the mainstream British press and media. I had been a regular presenter on Radio 4’s The Week in Westminster for more than two decades. It ceased to use me, without explanation. I parted company on reasonably friendly terms with the Daily Mail after our disagreement…

    ‘The mainstream British press and media is to all intents and purposes barred to me.’ (p. 132 and p. 133)

    As with the Labour Party, the reason is that the game – and it always was a game – has changed. In the age of internet-based citizen journalism – heavily filtered by algorithms and ‘shadow-banning’ though it is – elite interests can no longer be sure that the truth can be contained by the ‘free press’ and its obedient ranks of ‘client journalists’.

    In our media alert of 26 July 2002, we wrote:

    ‘This does not mean that there is no dissent in the mainstream; on the contrary the system strongly requires the appearance of openness. In an ostensibly democratic society, a propaganda system must incorporate occasional instances of dissent. Like vaccines, these small doses of truth inoculate the public against awareness of the rigid limits of media freedom.’

    That was true two decades ago when we started Media Lens. But, now, the state-corporate media system relies less on inoculation and more on quarantine: inconvenient facts, indeed whole issues, are simply kept from public awareness. We have moved far closer to a totalitarian system depending on outright censorship.

    An example was provided by a remarkable leading article in the Observer, titled, ‘The Observer view on the global escalation of Russia’s war on Ukraine’. The title notwithstanding, this October 9 article made no mention at all of the terrorist attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines just two weeks earlier, on September 26. But why?

    The pipelines are multi-national projects operated by Swiss-based Nord Stream AG, with each intended to supply around 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Russia to Europe through pipelines laid beneath the Baltic Sea connecting to a German hub. Completed a decade ago, Russian gas giant, Gazprom, has a 51 percent stake in the project that cost around $15 billion to build. US media watch site, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), made the key point:

    ‘Any serious coverage of the Nord Stream attack should acknowledge that opposition to the pipeline has been a centerpiece of the US grand strategy in Europe. The long-term goal has been to keep Russia isolated and disjointed from Europe, and to keep the countries of Europe tied to US markets. Ever since German and Russian energy companies signed a deal to begin development on Nord Stream 2, the entire machinery of Washington has been working overtime to scuttle it.’

    The evidence for this is simply overwhelming. For example, FAIR noted that during his confirmation hearings in 2021, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told Congress he was ‘determined to do whatever I can to prevent’ Nord Stream 2 from being completed. Months later, the US State Department reiterated that ‘any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks US sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline’.

    If that doesn’t make US hostility to the pipelines clear enough, President Joe Biden told reporters in February:

    ‘If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.’

    Asked by a reporter how the US intended to end a project that was, after all, under German control, Biden responded:

    ‘I promise you, we will be able to do that.’

    No surprise, then, that, following the attack, Blinken described the destruction of the pipelines as a ‘tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy,’ adding that this ‘offers tremendous strategic opportunity for years to come’.

    Former UN weapons inspector and political analyst Scott Ritter commented:

    ‘Intent, motive and means: People serving life sentences in U.S. prisons have been convicted on weaker grounds than the circumstantial evidence against Washington for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines.’

    In a rare moment of ‘mainstream’ dissent echoing Ritter’s conclusion, Columbia University economist, Jeffrey Sachs, surprised his interviewer by saying:

    ‘I know it runs counter to our narrative, you’re not allowed to say these things in the West, but the fact of the matter is, all over the world when I talk to people, they think the US did it. Even reporters on our papers that are involved tell me, “Of course [the US is responsible],” but it doesn’t show up in our media.’

    Sachs added: ‘there’s direct radar evidence that US helicopters, military helicopters that are normally based in Gdansk were circling over this area’.

    Despite all of this, FAIR reported of US corporate media coverage:

    ‘Much of the media cast their suspicions towards Russia, including Bloomberg (9/27/22), Vox (9/29/22), Associated Press (9/30/22) and much of cable news. With few exceptions, speculation on US involvement has seemingly been deemed an intellectual no-fly-zone.’

    Thus, the possibility of US involvement has been intellectually quarantined. Instead, US media have been tying themselves in knots trying to find alternative explanations. The New York Times wrote:

    ‘It is unclear why Moscow would seek to damage installations that cost Gazprom billions of dollars to build and maintain. The leaks are expected to delay any possibility of receiving revenue from fuel going through the pipes.’

    In Britain, the Guardian affected similar confusion:

    ‘Nord Stream has been at the heart of a standoff between Russia and Europe over energy supplies since the start of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, but it is not immediately clear who stands to benefit from the destruction of the gas infrastructure.’

    If not ‘immediately clear’, it surely becomes clear after a moment’s honest reflection. Another Guardian report commented:

    ‘Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states and the US – including its former president Donald Trump – have been fierce critics of the Nord Stream pipeline, and Germany has announced its intention to wean itself off Russian gas completely and Gazprom has wound down deliveries to almost zero.

    ‘For a Nato ally to have carried out an act of sabotage on a piece of infrastructure part-owned by European companies would have meant much political risk for little gain, but for Russia to destroy its own material and political asset would also seem to defy logic.’

    The risk is not, in fact, that great in a world where politicians and media like the Guardian refuse to point the finger of blame at the world’s sole superpower. As we have seen, the assertion that an attack by a Nato ally would be ‘for little gain’ was publicly contradicted by Blinken’s own comment that the destruction of the pipelines ‘offers tremendous strategic opportunity for years to come.’

    The Guardian added:

    ‘Some European politicians suggested Russia could have carried out the blasts with the aim of causing further havoc with gas prices or demonstrating its ability to damage Europe’s energy infrastructure.’

    But as the Guardian acknowledged, this ‘logic’ seemed ‘to defy logic’ and suggested journalists were burying their heads in the sand at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. A further Guardian report noted:

    ‘A senior Ukrainian official also called it a Russian attack to destabilise Europe, without giving proof.’

    Or any reasoning. The report continued:

    ‘British sources said they believed it may not be possible to determine what occurred with certainty.’

    How convenient. The Telegraph reported:

    ‘Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said that if it was confirmed it was an act of sabotage by Russia it would be “in nobody’s interest”.’

    Again, a statement directly contradicted by Blinken himself. His ‘in nobody’s interest’ comment was the main focus of most media coverage.

    FAIR discussed a tweet from a Polish member of the European Parliament, Radek Sikorski – a one-time Polish defence minister as well as a former American Enterprise Institute fellow, who was named one of the ‘Top 100 Global Thinkers’ in 2012 by Foreign Policy. FAIR reported:

    ‘Sikorski tweeted a picture of the methane leak in the ocean, along with the caption, “As we say in Polish, a small thing, but so much joy.” He later tweeted, “Thank you, USA,” with the same picture.’

    These comments were occasionally reported in the UK press, but Sikorski later tweeted against the pipeline, noting:

    ‘Nord Stream’s only logic was for Putin to be able to blackmail or wage war on Eastern Europe with impunity.’

    He added:

    ‘Now $20 billion of scrap metal lies at the bottom of the sea, another cost to Russia of its criminal decision to invade Ukraine. Someone…did a special maintenance operation.’

    This was clearly an ironic reference to the term ‘special military operation’ used by Russia to describe its illegal invasion of Ukraine.

    Significantly, the Telegraph reported some but not all of this:

    ‘Sikorski posted a photo of the Nord Stream methane bubbling to the Baltic’s surface, with the brief message: “Thank you, USA.”

    ‘Sikorski has since deleted his tweet, and has not since elaborated on it… [but] it was widely seized upon by pro-Russian media seeking to make the case for American sabotage.’

    But as we have seen, Sikorski certainly had elaborated on it; and media didn’t need to be ‘pro-Russian’ to believe the comments pointed towards Western sabotage.

    The Daily Mail also struggled to understand:

    ‘On Twitter Radoslaw Sikorski posted a picture of a massive methane gas spill on the surface of the Baltic Sea with the comment: “Thank You USA”. The hawkish MEP later tweeted that if Russia wants to continue supplying gas to Europe it must “talk to the countries controlling the gas pipelines”.

    ‘Whatever did he mean?’

    In fact, Sikorski had been very clear about what he meant.

    In a single, casual comment in the Mail on Sunday, Peter Hitchens may be the only ‘mainstream’ journalist to actually affirm the likely significance of Sikorski’s comments:

    ‘Radek Sikorski may have given the game away. First, he tweeted “Thank you, USA” with a picture of the gas bubbling up into the Baltic. Then, when lots of people noticed, he deleted it. That made me think he was on to something.’ 2

    Curiously, non-corporate journalists like Jonathan Cook, Caitlin Johnstone, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, Bryce Green, even hippy Russell Brand, were able to find all the evidence and arguments omitted by ‘mainstream’ journalists supported by far greater resources.

    And this makes the point with which we began this alert: there is now so much high-quality journalism exposing the establishment outside the state-corporate ‘mainstream’, that the task of the ‘mainstream’ now is to protect the establishment by acting as a buffer blocking citizen journalism from public awareness.

    The Observer editorial which failed to even mention this major terror attack on civilian infrastructure talked of a ‘Putin plague’, describing the Russian leader as ‘a pestilence whose spread threatens the entire world. Ukraine is not its only victim’. That’s the Bad Guy. So who are the Good Guys in this fairy-tale? The editors added:

    ‘In this developing confrontation, much more is at stake than Ukraine’s sovereignty. On life support, it seems, is the entire postwar consensus underpinning global security, nuclear non-proliferation, free trade and international law.’

    It is easy to understand why the Observer would prefer to quarantine the possibility of US involvement in a terror attack that would make a nonsense of the editors’ lofty rhetoric about a ‘postwar consensus’ based on ‘international law’.

    Also no surprise, the Observer once again found answers in the favoured, fix-all solution beloved of the Western press – regime change:

    ‘If the Putin plague is ever to be eradicated, if the war is ever to end, such developments inside Russia, presaging a change of leadership, full military withdrawal from Ukraine and a fresh start, represent the best hope of a cure.’

    • Part 2 to follow shortly.

    1. Peter Oborne, The Assault on Truth, Simon & Schuster, 2021, p. 130
    2. Hitchens, ‘How could I know…’ Mail on Sunday, 2 October 2022.
    The post Wicked Leaks, Part 1: How The Media Quarantined Evidence On Nord Stream Sabotage first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Thirty Progressive Democrats Break Rank, Calling for a Ceasefire in Ukraine

    Reps. Pramila Jayapal and other members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus at a recent news conference outside the U.S. Capitol. (Credit: The Washington Post)

    In a dramatic break with the Biden administration on the eve of the midterm elections, 30 House Democrats sent a letter to President Biden urging him to engage in direct talks with Russian President Vladmir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. In addition to bilateral talks, signatories to the letter, initiated by Progressive Caucus Chair Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, urge the White House to support a mutual ceasefire and diplomatic efforts to avoid a protracted war that threatens more human suffering and spiraling global inflation, as well as nuclear war through intention or miscalculation.

    Despite President Biden’s recent acknowledgement that we have never been closer to nuclear Armageddon since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Biden has not met with Putin since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, and he recently told the press he will refuse to meet with Putin next month when the two attend the G-20 Summit in Bali.

    In addition to Congresswoman Jayapal (D-WA), the Democratic signers of the letter are Representatives Adams (NC), Blumenauer (OR), Bowman (NY, Bush (MO), Carson (IN), Clarke (D-NY), De Fazio (D-OR), DeSaulnier (CA), Garcia (IL), Grijalva (AZ), Jackson Lee (TX), Jacobs (CA), Johnson (GA), Jones (NY), Khanna (CA), Lee (CA), Moore (WI), Newman (IL), Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Omar (MN), Paine (NJ), Pingree (ME), Pocan (WI), Pressley(MA), Raskin (MD), Takano (CA), Tlaib (MI), Velazquez (NY) and Watson Coleman (NJ).

    Expressing praise for Biden’s “commitment to Ukraine’s legitimate struggle against Russia’s war of aggression,” the letter dodges the question of whether the United States should continue to arm Ukraine with medium-range rockets, ammunition, drones, tanks and other weapons.

    The letter reads “…. we urge you to pair the military and economic support the United States has provided to Ukraine with a proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire.” The key words here are “has provided” as opposed to “will provide,” leaving open the possibility that some Democrats will oppose future weapons transfers.

    Back in May, not a single Democrat voted against the eye-popping $40 billion Ukraine package, much of it earmarked for weapons, intelligence, and combat training. On September 30, Congress passed the “Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act,” giving another $12.35 billion of our tax dollars for training, equipment, weapons, and direct financial aid for Ukraine–without so much as a whisper of dissent from Democrats.

    So far, the only congressional opposition to arming Ukraine has come from far right Republicans. Despite Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s enthusiastic support for the $40 billion package, 57 House Republicans and 11 GOP Senators voted against it. Some objected because they thought the U.S. military should focus on China or on the U.S.-Mexico border, but others cited concerns over the lack of oversight, unmet domestic needs and runaway spending.

    One of the most prominent critics of Biden’s handling of the war is former President Donald Trump. Never mind that Trump reversed his predecessor President Barack Obama’s decision to refrain from sending offensive weapons to Ukraine and failed to negotiate the continuation of two vital arms control treaties with Russia—the Open Skies Treaty and the Intermediate Nuclear-Range Forces Treaty (INF). Trump is now using his public appearances and the media, including his social media platform Truth Social, to call for peace talks.

    “Be strategic, be smart (brilliant!), get a negotiated deal done NOW,” he wrote online. At an Arizona rally, Trump boomed, “With potentially hundreds of thousands of people dying, we must demand the immediate negotiation of the peaceful end to the war in Ukraine, or we will end up in World War III and there will be nothing left of our planet.”

    Trump has also insisted that if he were president, the war in Ukraine would not have happened because unlike Biden, he would have met with Putin: “I’d talk to him; I’d meet with him. There is no communication between him and Biden.” Trump volunteered himself as a possible negotiator. “I will head up group???” he wrote on TruthSocial.

    Also calling for negotiations is far right Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson. Carlson says that the nuclear threat “is enough for any responsible person to say, ‘now we stop,’ especially if that person is the leader of the United States, the country which is funding this war and that could end this war tonight by calling Ukraine to the table.”

    Tesla’s Elon Musk, now backing Republicans, told his 107 million Twitter followers that “the probability of nuclear war is rising rapidly” and suggested a very rational peace deal in which Russia keeps Crimea, Ukraine affirms neutrality from NATO and the UN oversees referendums in the Donbass.

    Another newly minted Republican now condemning U.S. support for the war is former 2020 Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, once a supporter of Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders and a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. Gabbard announced that she is quitting the party in power, saying: “I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers.”

    Political observers might surmise that Gabbard is positioning herself for another presidential run, but whether or not that’s the case, her sharp criticism of Democrats is finding an audience among millions of Fox viewers.

    If Republicans take over the House in November, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy warns they may turn off the money spigot for Ukraine. “I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine.”

    McCarthy’s comment caused such panic on Capitol Hill that according to NBC News, leaders in both parties are considering passing legislation in the lame duck session to send Ukraine $50 billion more in weapons, military training and economic aid, bringing the total U.S. tab since the Russian invasion to over $100 billion, which exceeds the budget of the entire U.S. State Department.

    It will be telling to see if any Democrats, including those who signed the Jayapal letter, will vote against more weapons. As inflation worsens and voters seek leaders to address their economic needs instead of endless war in Ukraine, Democrats, especially those who call themselves progressives, should not cede the peace position to Donald Trump and Tea Party Republicans bent on repealing voting rights, deregulating environmental protections and banning abortion.

    The future of their Democratic Party is at stake – and the human race, too.

    The post Thirty Progressive Democrats Break Rank, Calling for a Ceasefire in Ukraine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • House Progressives Call on Biden to Pursue Diplomatic Talks to End Ukraine War

    Noting the pain and suffering of the Ukraine people and the risk of nuclear war that threatens the entire world, progressive U.S. lawmakers on Monday called on President Joe Biden to make a decisive shift in his approach to the conflict by initiating a “proactive democratic push” with the goal of seeking “a realistic framework for a ceasefire” through direct negotiations with Russia.

    Led by Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the lawmakers said the U.S. must lead efforts to end the war as peacefully as possible in addition to providing the Ukrainians with economic and military aid, which now totals $60 billion.

    “If there is a way to end the war while preserving a free and independent Ukraine, it is America’s responsibility to pursue every diplomatic avenue to support such a solution that is acceptable to the people of Ukraine,” wrote the lawmakers. “The alternative to diplomacy is protracted war, with both its attendant certainties and catastrophic and unknowable risks.”

    The letter was sent to the White House exactly eight months after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has counted at least 6,374 civilian deaths, including more than 400 children, and nearly 10,000 civilian injuries. The war has also displaced an estimated 13 million people.

    Putin escalated the war by illegally annexing four occupied regions last month, as well as issuing his latest nuclear threat, saying his military “will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia.”

    In their letter Monday, progressives including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) noted that Biden himself has said Putin “doesn’t have a way out” and that “there’s going to have to be a negotiated settlement” to end the war.

    Beyond casualties in Ukraine, they noted, “the conflict threatens an additional tens of millions more worldwide, as skyrocketing prices in wheat, fertilizer, and fuel spark acute crises in global hunger and poverty,” in addition to elevating the risk for a nuclear strike.

    “The longer the war in Ukraine goes on, the greater the risk of escalation — to widespread, devastating effect,” Jayapal told The Washington Post.

    Marcus Stanley, advocacy director for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said the progressives’ leadership “is crucial and welcome.”

    “This letter marks the first time prominent Democratic elected officials have publicly called on the administration to pair support for Ukraine’s self-defense with a strong diplomatic effort to seek an end to the fighting,” said Stanley. “Without diplomacy the war risks turning into an extended, bloody stalemate with ongoing and increasing damage to the world economy and to Ukraine itself. Even worse, it could easily escalate into a broader or even a nuclear conflict.”

    While stating their agreement with the White House’s consistent statements that Ukraine must be included in any diplomatic discussions about the conflict and the country’s fate, the progressives urged the administration to reconsider its position that the U.S. will fund Ukraine’s military resistance for “as long as it takes” to defeat Russia.

    “We agree with the administration’s perspective that it is not America’s place to pressure Ukraine’s government regarding sovereign decisions,” the lawmakers wrote, adding: “We believe such involvement in this war also creates a responsibility for the United States to seriously explore all possible avenues, including direct engagement with Russia, to reduce harm and support Ukraine in achieving a peaceful settlement.”

    Despite Zelenskyy stating that Putin’s recent annexation makes peace talks impossible in the moment, the letter from the U.S. lawmakers notes that the Ukrainian president has previously acknowledged that the war “will only definitively end through diplomacy.”

    In an op-ed for Common Dreams on Monday, Medea Benjamin and Marcy Winograd of CodePink called the letter “a start” on the path to a negotiated settlement for a ceasefire.

    Until now, the pair noted, most lawmakers speaking out against the White House’s approach to the conflict in Ukraine have been right-wing Republicans, including Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who said earlier this month that if Republicans win control of Congress in November they will not approve more aid for Ukraine.

    “Democrats, especially those who call themselves progressives,” wrote Benjamin and Winograd, “should not cede the peace position to Donald Trump and Tea Party Republicans bent on repealing voting rights, deregulating environmental protections, and banning abortion.”

    The letter was sent a day after U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s most recent discussion with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and comes a month after a poll commissioned by the Quincy Institute showed that nearly half of U.S. voters believe the administration should do more to push for diplomatic talks to end the war.

    “We urge you to make vigorous diplomatic efforts in support of a negotiated settlement and ceasefire, engage in direct talks with Russia, explore prospects for a new European security arrangement acceptable to all parties that will allow for a sovereign and independent Ukraine, and, in coordination with our Ukrainian partners, seek a rapid end to the conflict and reiterate this goal as America’s chief priority,” wrote the lawmakers.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Terror to elation: Ukrainian woman’s journey from Azovstal to PoW to freedom

    Exclusive: Guardian hears of ordeal in first major interview given by any of the women freed in last week’s prisoner swap

    It was like something from the cold war. After five months in the most notorious jail in occupied Ukraine, Alina Panina, 25, had found herself, without explanation, at the foot of a bridge over a river in no man’s land with 107 fellow female Ukrainian prisoners of war.

    Behind Panina lay Russian-occupied territory and her experiences of the siege of Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks, the subsequent surrender and then captivity in Olenivka prison in Donetsk. There she was witness to the aftermath of an explosion that killed 53 male prisoners, a blast said by Kyiv to have been engineered by Moscow to silence the victims of torture.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • BBC at 100: the future for global news and challenges facing the World Service

    ANALYSIS: By Simon Potter, University of Bristol

    The BBC celebrated its 100th birthday last Tuesday. It came as the institution faces increasing competition for audiences from global entertainment providers, anxieties about the sustainability of its funding and a highly competitive global news market.

    Its international broadcasting operation, the BBC World Service, is only a little younger, established 90 years ago.

    Delivering news and programmes in 40 languages across the continents, it faces similar, significant questions about financing, purpose and its ability to deliver in a world of increased social media and online news consumption.

    Currently the BBC’s international services are mostly funded by British people who pay a television licence fee, with a third of the total cost covered by the UK government.

    The BBC claimed that, as of November 2021, the World Service reached a global audience of 364 million people each week.

    The role of radio
    Radio is still clearly a key means to extend the reach of the World Service and a core part of the BBC’s global news package. It is highly adaptable and reasonably affordable.

    It also gives people in parts of the world where access to media can be difficult relatively easy access to news. Short-wave radio, the traditional means of broadcasting over very long distances, is also difficult for hostile regimes to block.

    Recently, fears that Russia would target Ukraine’s internet infrastructure and erect firewalls to prevent its own citizens’ accessing western media sources, led the BBC to reactivate shortwave radio news services for listeners in both countries. UK government funding of £4.1 million supported this.

    Current thinking about the World Service has been shaped by a 2010 decision of UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s government to withdraw Foreign and Commonwealth Office funding for BBC international operations from 2014. This seemed to end a 60 years-long era when the BBC was the key subcontractor for British global “soft power” (using cultural resources and information to promote British interests overseas).

    The plan was that British TV licence-fee payers would fund the World Service, seemingly as an act of international benevolence, free of government ties. However, this seemed unlikely to be sustainable at a time when BBC income was being progressively squeezed.

    A person in Western Sahara with a radio set.
    Access to radio news is much easier than other forms of media in some parts of the world. Image: Saharaland/Shutterstock/The Conversation

    In 2015, World Service revenues were boosted by a major grant from the UK’s Official Development Assistance fund, covering around a third of the World Service’s running costs.

    One anonymous BBC insider was quoted by The Guardian saying that this would sustain the corporation’s “strong commitment to uphold global democracy through accurate, impartial and independent news”.

    Even before the Second World War, the BBC claimed it only broadcast truthful and objective news. Policy makers recognised this as a crucial asset for promoting British interests overseas, and seldom sought to challenge (openly at least) the “editorial independence” of the BBC.

    The BBC’s 2016 royal charter further entrenched this thinking, stating that news for overseas audiences should be “firmly based on British values of accuracy, impartiality and fairness”. The idea that a truthful approach to news was a core “British value” that could help promote democracy around the world became part of the BBC’s basic mission statement.

    In 2017, the BBC established 17 new foreign-language radio and online services. To maximise possibilities for listening it purchased FM transmitter time in major cities around the world, and deployed internet radio, increasingly accessible to many users via mobile devices.

    The focus was on Africa and Asia. However, the World Service also strengthened its Arabic and Russian provision to serve those who “sorely need reliable information”.

    Fake news factor
    The World Service’s rationale has been strengthened by growing concerns about “fake news”: distorted and untrue reports designed to serve the commercial or geopolitical interests of those who manufacture it.

    The BBC has, in response, further emphasised its historic role as a truthful broadcaster. In its trusted news initiative it has worked with other global media outlets to tackle disinformation, hosting debate and discussion, and sharing intelligence about the most misleading campaigns.

    Claims for continued relevance also rest on a drive to bring news to an ever larger audience. The BBC’s stated aim is to reach 500 million people this year, and a billion within another decade.

    In 2021 the BBC claimed to be on course to realise this goal, reaching a global audience of 489 million. The audience for the World Service accounted for the single largest component of this global figure.

    What then should we make of the BBC’s announcement in September 2022 that 400 jobs would have to go at the World Service due to the freezing of the licence fee and rapidly rising costs?

    Radio services in languages including Arabic, Persian, Hindi and Chinese will disappear, and programme production for the English-language radio service will be pared down. Certainly, these cuts will reduce the BBC’s impact overseas.

    But they should also be understood as part of a longstanding and ongoing transition from shortwave radio to web radio.

    Similarly, cutting back on World Service non-news programming might not be a major cause for concern. In an age of global streaming services and social media, audiences can receive programmes from providers from across the globe.

    The World Service would find it hard to compete with many of these services. However, the BBC remains in a pre-eminent position to offer trusted news.

    By focusing on providing news online, the World Service is putting its resources where it can best promote British soft power and international influence, thereby improving prospects for its own continued existence.

    However, abandoning radio entirely would be a mistake. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated, radio remains a crucial way to reach audiences who might find their access to trusted news via the internet suddenly cut off.The Conversation

    Dr Simon Potter, Professor of Modern History, University of Bristol. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

  • A Crimean “Bridge too Far”?

    This is a war between Russia and the United States.
    — Jeffrey Sachs, talking with The Grayzone, October 9, 2022

    We’re now 8 months (or 8 years and 8 months) into the Ukrainian conflict, and the “dogs of war” are still barking it up, and their bark has become increasingly “nuclear” in tone.  Take Joe Biden’s recent “Armageddon” reference at a fundraiser, where he compared the current situation to the nuclear-tipped danger of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.  Well, what a bizarre comparison, since Russia would be in the position of the “United States” in the analogy, but maybe Biden’s really that “strategically confused.”  Nevertheless, Biden’s “gaffe” did serve to raise anxiety levels, and Lord Fauci knows we all need some more of that, ever since the Covid kind of receded into the background noise we always knew it was.  Of course, “Apocalypse” Joe may have really been suggesting that we should be sending more Bibles than Bombs to Ukraine, but no available evidence, unfortunately, supports this theory.

    By weird coincidence, perhaps, a few days after Biden’s Biblical end-of-times invocation, Russia made Sergei Surovikin commander of their Ukraine operation.  Surovikin’s nickname:  “General Armageddon.”  At the very least, then, we can say that “Armageddon’s” trending this October and — Just in time for Halloween!

    Of course, the threat of nuclear war has been baked into the blue-and-yellow cake of this entirely avoidable conflict from the beginning, and, even immediately prior to Russia launching its “Special Military Operation” on February 24; indeed, Ukrainian comedian president Zelensky had made some smelly nuclear noises at the Munich Security conference some days before that may have triggered the invasion.  Chernobyl quickly became a symbol of the conflict in its opening phase, with western corporate media insisting that Putin was trying to cause “Chernobyl 2: the Sequel.”

    Somehow, the “Chernobyl story” has gone quiet since Russian forces decided that Kiev (or Kyiv) would not fall in 3 days.  Nevertheless, the Zaporozhia nuclear power plant has risen in the South of “We-don’t-know-what-country!” to take Chernobyl’s place, and to keep the idea of a radiological catastrophe in — or at least hovering around — the news cycle.  Russian forces have had control of the plant, apparently Europe’s largest, for months.  By many accounts, the Zaporozhia nuclear plant has been subjected to frequent shelling, often attributed in the western press to the very same Russians who are in possession of it. Well, one supposes that, by the same illogic, the Russians also scuttled their Nord Stream pipelines in NATO-side Baltic Sea waters just to spite — themselves.  One does not have to be a Scuba Team Sabotage Specialist to see the absurdity of this accusation.

    Which brings us to the Kerch Bridge sabotage event of October 8, which was instantly celebrated in Kiev (or Kyiv), with a blown-up (pun not necessarily unintended) postage stamp of the blown-up section of the burning bridge as a downtown sidewalk billboard with folks taking smiling selfies in front of it.  One suspects that these selfie-takers were not taking selfies in front of the blown-up SBU building in downtown Kiev (or Kyiv) two days later.  SBU is the Ukrainian equivalent of the CIA or MI6, both of which Intel agencies no doubt had offices inside.  No word, predictably, upon the extent of the destruction of this Ukrainian intel HQ building. Instead, western media pretended that Russia’s missile barrage was primarily aimed at children’s playgrounds all over Ukraine.  Even Democracy Now! pushed this Russophobic narrative by showcasing a 5-year old Ukrainian boy to explain the initial wave of Russian missile strikes, as if that “progressive” news outfit couldn’t find an adult correspondent:  Talk about child exploitation!

    Of course, central to the AmericaNATOstani’s Ukraine script is the talking point that “Villaindimir” Putin is threatening the use of nuclear weapons, and his provocative speech of September 30 is cited, quite hysterically, as “Exhibit A!”  In that speech, “Mad Vlad” was recognizing the validity of the referenda in the 4 breakaway regions of southern and eastern Ukraine, which all voted to join Russia.  In fact, Putin never mentioned nuclear weapons, but he did refer to the collective West as being “anti-democratic, totalitarian, and satanic.”  He also declared, in no uncertain terms, that 4 centuries of Western global hegemony are over (paraphrase).  Pretty bold statement there, Mr Putin!  The non-TransAtlantican World may not approve of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, but certainly are not too upset by it.  Clearly, there is a new world system emerging, and the traditional arbiters of Power, the Imperial West, will have to get used to watching the Show, which they used to direct, from the “cheap seats.”

    Ironically, perhaps, Putin is a “westerner,” even though western media, at the behest of western intel agencies, of which they are merely speaking tube apparatuses, wants everyone to believe that he’s the latest incarnation of the “brutal dictator” we’ve been taking down all of these Made-for-TV episodes, or decades:  the “Villain with the Thousand Faces.”  But, truth be told, all slips of slithery tongues aside:  It’s the crazy Bidenite Regime pushing the “Armageddon” button, the Apocalypse envelope — not Putin.

    To that end (The End?), it was widely reported this morning, the 10th “22” of 2022, that the U.$. Army’s 101st Airborne Division has been conducting “live fire exercises” in Romania, next door to Ukraine.  The 101st, or “Screaming Eagles” as they are colloquially known, have not been deployed to Europe since World War 2.  One wonders:  What’s up with that?  Operation “Save the Day”?  Another “Charge of the Light Brigade”?  Yet the Sun is inexorably setting on Western power, hegemony, call it what you will.  The West is like a long spoiled child that the rest of the World is sending back to its room; unfortunately, this spoiled child has many nuclear “toys” at its disposal as it tries to tantrum its way out of the inevitable.

    Interestingly enough, Armageddon is mentioned only once in the Bible’s last “official” book, the Book of Revelation, 16:16.  Perhaps “Smoke-Signaler-in-Chief” Biden was merely blowing some slippery smoke by invoking “Armageddon,” like:  “It’ll be Armageddon, folks, if you don’t donate, and donate like you mean it!  Hey Fat, you know…the Thing!”  There’s a midterm election coming up.  Some say it’ll be a “game changer,” if only because people like to repeat the talking point phrase “game changer.”  With any luck, it will be an Armageddon Stopper…”Strategic confusion, folks, nothing but strategic confusion!”

    The post A Crimean “Bridge too Far”? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • Always Opposing The Last War But Not The Current One: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    Those who hate Russia the most are the ones who embody everything they claim to hate about it: they’re all pro-war, pro-censorship, pro-propaganda, pro-trolling operations, and support Ukraine in banning political parties and opposition media. They are what they claim to hate.

    Meanwhile those of us who oppose those things are told to “move to Russia”, even though we’re the ones advocating the supposed “western values” they claim to support while they’re doing everything they can to undermine them. They should move to Russia.

    ❖

    ❖

    Western propaganda means people always oppose the last war but not the current war. The US provoking and sustaining its Ukraine proxy war is no more ethical than its invading of Iraq; it just looks that way due to propaganda. Ukraine isn’t the good war, it’s just the current war.

    It is only by the copious amounts of propaganda our civilization is being hammered with that this is not immediately obvious to everyone. In the future (assuming we don’t annihilate ourselves first), the propaganda will have cleared from the air enough for people to see clearly and realize that they were lied to. Again.

    The US indisputably deliberately provoked this war. The US is indisputably keeping this war going. The US indisputably benefits from this war while Ukrainians, Russians and Europeans get nothing but suffering from it. Empire apologists will admit to the latter in rare moments of honesty, as Matthew Yglesias recently did when he wrote the following:

    The United States is using up a lot of military equipment in the war, but it’s being used for the purpose of destroying Russian military equipment. Since we were already fully committed to an anti-Russian military alliance, this is actually a really good deal for us. Basically, NATO equipment + Ukrainian lives are being traded for Russian equipment + Russian lives, which leaves NATO coming out ahead. That’s doubly true because NATO is much richer than Russia, so we win a long-term game of “everyone explode their weapons as fast as they can make them.”

     

    Again, though, what makes that really true is that NATO material is killing Russian soldiers, while Russian material is killing Ukrainian soldiers. That’s a deal in our favor.

    It’s easy to oppose the last war. It’s hard to oppose current wars as the propaganda machine is shoving them down our throats. Everyone’s anti-war until the war propaganda starts.

    ❖

    ❖

    The fact that the White House is weighing a national security review of Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase because he’s perceived as having an “increasingly Russia-friendly stance” is an admission that the US government views large social media platforms as its own propaganda services.

    ❖

    There is no one who can be trusted with the authority to determine what constitutes “disinformation” or “misinformation” on behalf of large numbers of people. This is because we are not impartial omniscient deities but highly fallible, biased humans with our own vested interests.

    This fatal logical flaw in the burgeoning business of “fact checking” and “counter-disinformation” is self-evident at a glance, and it becomes even more glaring once you notice that all the major players involved in instituting and normalizing these practices have ties to status quo power.

    The idea that someone needs to be in charge of deciding what’s true and false on behalf of the rank-and-file citizenry is becoming more and more widely accepted, and it’s plainly irrational. In practice it’s nothing other than a call to propagandize the public more aggressively. You might agree with their propaganda. The propagandists might believe they are being totally impartial and objective. But as long as they have any oligarchic or state backing, directly or indirectly, they are necessarily administering propaganda on behalf of the powerful.

    Question the assumption that people saying wrong things to each other on the internet is a problem that needs to be fixed. People have always said wrong things to each other. Untruth has always existed. We’ve managed. It’s not a problem we should want the powerful to fix for us.

    ❖

     

    ❖

    Science should be the most collaborative endeavor in the world. Every scientist on earth should be collaborating and communicating. Instead, because of our competition-based models, it’s the exact opposite: scientific exploration is divided up into innovators competing against other innovators, corporations competing against other corporations, nations competing against other nations.

    If we could see how much we are losing to these competition-based models, how much innovation is going unrealized, how much human thriving is being sacrificed, how we’re losing almost all of our brainpower potential to these models, we’d fall to our knees and scream with rage. If science had been a fully collaborative worldwide hive mind endeavor instead of divided and turned against itself for profit and military power, our civilization would be unimaginably more advanced than it is. This is doubtless. We gave up paradise to make a few bastards rich.

    It’s not too late to have this, of course. We could still abandon our competition-based models for collaboration-based ones and create paradise on earth together; we’ve just got to want it badly enough as a species.

    A collaboration-based society where everyone gets what they need wouldn’t just eliminate the inefficiencies and obstacles created by competition: it would free up the brainpower of our entire species to devote itself to innovation and discovery. As Stephen J Gould said, “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

    Poverty, inequality, the patent system, the need to earn money to survive, corporate competition, corporate secrecy, competition between states, state secrecy, war, militarism; all these drainages leave us with a tiny fraction of our available scientific potential. Overcoming the existential roadblocks we’ve set up for ourselves in our near future is going to require a tremendous amount of brilliance, and we won’t have access to that brilliance until we become a conscious species and move from competition-based models to collaborative ones.

    _______________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, buying an issue of my monthly zine, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • 55% of Humanity Does Not Reject the Accession to Russia of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia

    On October 12, 2022, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution rejecting the accession to Russia of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions in Ukraine.

    The resolution is titled, “Territorial Integrity of Ukraine: Defending the Principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” It reads, in part:

    [The UNGA] Declares that the unlawful actions of the Russian Federation with regard to the illegal so-called referendums held from 23 to 27 September 2022 in parts of the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine that, in part, are or have been under the temporary military control of the Russian Federation, and the subsequent attempted illegal annexation of these regions, have no validity under international law and do not form the basis for any alteration of the status of these regions of Ukraine…

    A majority of the 193 countries of the UNGA voted IN FAVOR of the resolution. Here was the final tally:

    143 In Favor

    5 Against

    35 Abstentions

    10 Not Voting

    Let’s call the votes in the last three categories: NO, ABSTENTION and NOT VOTING, or NAN for short. The tally then looks like this:

    143 In Favor

    50 Nan

    From this result it appears the resolution won overwhelming support, just as Western media reports. But voting in the UNGA is undemocratic in the extreme. For example, Tuvalu (population 12,000), Principality of Liechtenstein (population 38,128) and China (population 1,439,323,776) each get one vote in the UNGA. 1 That is why the vote tally looks very different when measured by world population:

    54.56% of world population: Nan

    45.44% of world population: In Favor

    If the vote were measured by population, then this resolution failed decisively. The Western press casually and routinely buries this obvious fact. But that’s the least of the deceptive reporting of the vote. When it comes to the October 12 resolution, and this year’s other UNGA resolutions condemning Russia, the press has also avoided reporting that these votes are consistently marked by the global divide of race, wealth, and position in the world economic order: the whitest, richest, most powerful and imperial countries support these resolutions, and the poorer, weaker countries of color, in general, tend not to.

    As you might expect, just as with the UNGA resolutions condemning Russia on March 2 and April 7 of this year, the NAN vote includes the world’s most socialist-leaning and redistributive governments, as well as the leading anti-imperialist countries in the US crosshairs, such as China, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, Eritrea, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and Viet Nam. 2

    Statistics on the race/wealth divide in the March 2 and April 7 UNGA votes can be found in two articles, here and here. 3 But take just the racial split in the March 2 vote, since that result was very like the result for the October 12 vote. On March 2 the UNGA voted to condemn the Russian intervention of February 24. That condemnation won the support of only 41% of the world’s population. The racial split in the vote was plain. Although “white” countries account for roughly 14% of the world’s population they made up one-third of the vote IN FAVOR of the March 2 resolution, and only 3% of the recorded NAN vote.

    Before comparing the March 2 and October 12 votes, note that whiteness is closely associated with the richest countries, as well as a central, or “core,” position in the world order, according to world-systems analysis.4  In that analysis, the “core” states of the world-system are the countries of North America and Western Europe, plus Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Japan and Singapore, while all other countries belong to the “periphery” or “semi-periphery” of the world-system.5

    With that in mind, compare the March 2 vote to the October 12 vote. The October 12 anti-Russia resolution won slightly more support than the March 2 resolution (45% on October 12 vs. 41% on March 2). 6  Yet the breakdown of the two votes by wealth, color and core/periphery status of the countries was virtually identical.7  Which means that by population, the majority of countries of color, poorer countries, and countries of the global periphery have for eight months maintained their refusal to condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

    This is remarkable given the world-historic events in Ukraine. Eight months of the war have now passed, tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed, with many more severely injured and millions displaced. The Western press has been relentless in its uncritical support of the US/NATO effort in Ukraine, including near daily accounts of Russian atrocities while ignoring all reports that refute them, and ignoring as well many reports of Ukrainian atrocities and war crimes. The US and the EU have placed severe sanctions on Russia, which, curiously, seem to be harming Western Europeans and the people of the Global South more than the ostensible target.8

    Most important, perhaps, for the nations of the UNGA, is that the October 12 resolution concerns the most significant events in Ukraine since February 24: the accession to Russia of Ukrainian territory. This is presumably a much more serious violation of the UN Charter than the assumed violation Russia committed with its February 24 intervention. And yet a majority of the world’s population still refuses to condemn the territorial acquisitions.

    Just as notable is the opposite phenomenon: the unbroken unity of the wealthy, almost entirely white, nations of the imperial core. Every single one of these countries voted IN FAVOR of the October 12 resolution. In the face of world-shaking events stemming from the war, this privileged voting block has proved unbreakable in its animosity toward Russia.

    But UNGA resolutions are not the only measure of this global divide on Russia/Ukraine. If support for the West’s sanctions regime against Russia is any indication, the split is perhaps more dramatic. As Gfoeller and Rundell wrote in Newsweek (9/15/22), “While the United States and its closest allies in Europe and Asia have imposed tough economic sanctions on Moscow, 87% of the world’s population has declined to follow us.” And note that countries agreeing to the sanctions on Russia are nearly all countries of the imperial core.

    Racialized imperial relations are different than personal racism. Russia is a white country, though it is not among the rich nations and belongs to the periphery of the world-system. Japan and Singapore are rich, core countries, even though they are countries of color. Yet Russia, like the Soviet Union before it, has aligned politically with the Global South. This is especially true now, with regard to Syria, Iran, China and the Left governments of Latin America, such as Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. This earns Russia a special racialized status in the Western press and the global order. 9  On the other hand, Japan and Singapore have long been given a national status comparable to one that existed for some individuals in apartheid South Africa, that of “honorary whites.” Neither fact belies the racism of the global system. On the contrary, it becomes more obvious. People of the Global South seem to recognize this when they watch Russia confront the global hegemon in Europe.

    And so, just as with previous UNGA votes condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the Western press, with maximum duplicity, continues to treat the October 12th vote as a resounding world condemnation of Russia, when, in fact, it is proof of the world majority’s refusal to condemn Russian actions in Ukraine.

    Ukraine is now the tragic battlefield of the Global North, but the vote on this UNGA resolution and world rejection of sanctions against Russia reveal a deeper, global conflict drenched in the blood of centuries of imperialism and white supremacy.

    1. For world population figures in this article, see world population; population by country; population of India.
    2. Abstention on such resolutions should not be read as silence. For example, the NAN vote includes the abstention of China, which recently expressed support for Russia’s actions in Ukraine: “On Russia’s core interests and major issues of concern, China expresses its understanding and full support for Russia. On the Ukraine issue, for example, the United States and NATO are expanding directly on Russia’s doorstep, threatening Russia’s national security and the lives of Russian citizens. Given the circumstances, Russia has taken necessary measures. China understands, and we are coordinating on various aspects. I believe Russia was cornered. In this case, to protect the core interests of the country, Russia gave a resolute response.” (Li Zhanshu, chairman of China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee, September 8, 2022).
    3. “The UN Condemnation of Russia is Endorsed by Countries Run by the Richest, Oldest, Whitest People on Earth But Only 41% of the World’s Population” (March 28, 2022), here, here, or here; “Global Divide: 76% of Humanity (& Nearly All Poorer Nations of Color) Did Not Vote To Kick Russia Off the UN Human Rights Council” (April 25, 2022), here, here, or here.
    4. World-systems theory puts the global wealth split into relief, dividing the nations of the world into the “core” and “periphery” of the global system. In world-systems theory the surplus value of labor flows disproportionately from the periphery to the core: “The countries of the world can be divided into two major world regions: the ‘core’ and the ‘periphery.’ The core includes major world powers and the countries that contain much of the wealth of the planet. The periphery has those countries that are not reaping the benefits of global wealth and globalization.” (Colin Stief, ThoughtCo.com, 1/21/20).
    5. According to Salvatore Babones (2005), the core countries are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.
    6. The slight difference between the March 2 and October 12 votes is accounted for by a reshuffling of the votes of five countries which voted IN FAVOR in March and NAN in October, and seven countries that voted NAN in March and IN FAVOR in October. The first group includes Djibouti, Honduras, Lesotho, Sao Tome and Principe, and Thailand. The second group includes Angola, Bangladesh, Guinea-Bissau, Iraq, Madagascar, Morocco, and Senegal.
    7. See fn. 3.
    8. The United Nations reported on statements at October 12 session considering the resolution: “India joined several other speakers in expressing deep worry that the people of the global South were feeling pain from a food, fuel and fertilizer shortage, and sky-high price increases, as a result of the war.”
    9. Occasionally the animus is stated boldly. Here is Former US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on NBC’s Meet the Press in 2017: “…the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, almost genetically, [are] driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever…”
    The post 55% of Humanity Does Not Reject the Accession to Russia of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 55% of Humanity Does Not Reject the Accession to Russia of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia

    On October 12, 2022, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution rejecting the accession to Russia of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions in Ukraine.

    The resolution is titled, “Territorial Integrity of Ukraine: Defending the Principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” It reads, in part:

    [The UNGA] Declares that the unlawful actions of the Russian Federation with regard to the illegal so-called referendums held from 23 to 27 September 2022 in parts of the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine that, in part, are or have been under the temporary military control of the Russian Federation, and the subsequent attempted illegal annexation of these regions, have no validity under international law and do not form the basis for any alteration of the status of these regions of Ukraine…

    A majority of the 193 countries of the UNGA voted IN FAVOR of the resolution. Here was the final tally:

    143 IN FAVOR

    5 AGAINST

    35 ABSTENTIONS

    10 NOT VOTING

    Let’s call the votes in the last three categories: NO, ABSTENTION and NOT VOTING, or NAN for short. The tally then looks like this:

    143 IN FAVOR

    50 NAN

    From this result it appears the resolution won overwhelming support, just as Western media reports. But voting in the UNGA is undemocratic in the extreme. For example, Tuvalu (population 12,000), Principality of Liechtenstein (population 38,128) and China (population 1,439,323,776) each get one vote in the UNGA.1 That is why the vote tally looks very different when measured by world population:

    54.56% of world population: NAN

    45.44% of world population: IN FAVOR

    If the vote were measured by population, then this resolution failed decisively. The Western press casually and routinely buries this obvious fact. But that’s the least of the deceptive reporting of the vote. When it comes to the October 12 resolution, and this year’s other UNGA resolutions condemning Russia, the press has also avoided reporting that these votes are consistently marked by the global divide of race, wealth, and position in the world economic order: the whitest, richest, most powerful and imperial countries support these resolutions, and the poorer, weaker countries of color, in general, tend not to.

    As you might expect, just as with the UNGA resolutions condemning Russia on March 2 and April 7 of this year, the NAN vote includes the world’s most socialist-leaning and redistributive governments, as well as the leading anti-imperialist countries in the US crosshairs, such as China, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, Eritrea, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and Viet Nam.2

    Statistics on the race/wealth divide in the March 2 and April 7 UNGA votes can be found in two articles, here and here.3 But take just the racial split in the March 2 vote, since that result was very like the result for the October 12 vote. On March 2 the UNGA voted to condemn the Russian intervention of February 24. That condemnation won the support of only 41% of the world’s population. The racial split in the vote was plain. Although “white” countries account for roughly 14% of the world’s population they made up one-third of the vote IN FAVOR of the March 2 resolution, and only 3% of the recorded NAN vote.

    Before comparing the March 2 and October 12 votes, note that whiteness is closely associated with the richest countries, as well as a central, or “core,” position in the world order, according to world-systems analysis.4 In that analysis, the “core” states of the world-system are the countries of North America and Western Europe, plus Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Japan and Singapore, while all other countries belong to the “periphery” or “semi-periphery” of the world-system.5 


    With that in mind, compare the March 2 vote to the October 12 vote. The October 12 anti-Russia resolution won slightly more support than the March 2 resolution (45% on October 12 vs. 41% on March 2).6 Yet the breakdown of the two votes by wealth, color and core/periphery status of the countries was virtually identical.3 Which means that by population, the majority of countries of color, poorer countries, and countries of the global periphery have for eight months maintained their refusal to condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

    This is remarkable given the world-historic events in Ukraine. Eight months of the war have now passed, tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed, with many more severely injured and millions displaced. The Western press has been relentless in its uncritical support of the US/NATO effort in Ukraine, including near daily accounts of Russian atrocities while ignoring all reports that refute them, and ignoring as well many reports of Ukrainian atrocities and war crimes. The US and the EU have placed severe sanctions on Russia, which, curiously, seem to be harming Western Europeans and the people of the Global South more than the ostensible target.7

    Most important, perhaps, for the nations of the UNGA, is that the October 12 resolution concerns the most significant events in Ukraine since February 24: the accession to Russia of Ukrainian territory. This is presumably a much more serious violation of the UN Charter than the assumed violation Russia committed with its February 24 intervention. And yet a majority of the world’s population still refuses to condemn the territorial acquisitions.

    Just as notable is the opposite phenomenon: the unbroken unity of the wealthy, almost entirely white, nations of the imperial core. Every single one of these countries voted IN FAVOR of the October 12 resolution. In the face of world-shaking events stemming from the war, this privileged voting block has proved unbreakable in its animosity toward Russia.

    But UNGA resolutions are not the only measure of this global divide on Russia/Ukraine. If support for the West’s sanctions regime against Russia is any indication, the split is perhaps more dramatic. As Gfoeller and Rundell wrote in Newsweek (9/15/22), “While the United States and its closest allies in Europe and Asia have imposed tough economic sanctions on Moscow, 87% of the world’s population has declined to follow us.” And note that countries agreeing to the sanctions on Russia are nearly all countries of the imperial core.

    Racialized imperial relations are different than personal racism. Russia is a white country, though it is not among the rich nations and belongs to the periphery of the world-system. Japan and Singapore are rich, core countries, even though they are countries of color. Yet Russia, like the Soviet Union before it, has aligned politically with the Global South. This is especially true now, with regard to Syria, Iran, China and the Left governments of Latin America, such as Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. This earns Russia a special racialized status in the Western press and the global order.8 On the other hand, Japan and Singapore have long been given a national status comparable to one that existed for some individuals in apartheid South Africa, that of “honorary whites.” Neither fact belies the racism of the global system. On the contrary, it becomes more obvious. People of the Global South seem to recognize this when they watch Russia confront the global hegemon in Europe.

    And so, just as with previous UNGA votes condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the Western press, with maximum duplicity, continues to treat the October 12th vote as an resounding world condemnation of Russia, when in fact it is proof of the world majority’s refusal to condemn Russian actions in Ukraine.

    1. Ukraine is now the tragic battlefield of the Global North, but the vote on this UNGA resolution and world rejection of sanctions against Russia reveal a deeper, global conflict drenched in the blood of centuries of imperialism and white supremacy.
      For world population figures in this article, see world population; population by country; population of India.)
    2. Abstention on such resolutions should not be read as silence. For example, the NAN vote includes the abstention of China, which recently expressed support for Russia’s actions in Ukraine: “On Russia’s core interests and major issues of concern, China expresses its understanding and full support for Russia. On the Ukraine issue, for example, the United States and NATO are expanding directly on Russia’s doorstep, threatening Russia’s national security and the lives of Russian citizens. Given the circumstances, Russia has taken necessary measures. China understands, and we are coordinating on various aspects. I believe Russia was cornered. In this case, to protect the core interests of the country, Russia gave a resolute response.” (Li Zhanshu, chairman of China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee, September 8, 2022)
    3. “The UN Condemnation of Russia is Endorsed by Countries Run by the Richest, Oldest, Whitest People on Earth But Only 41% of the World’s Population” (March 28, 2022), here, here, or here; “Global Divide: 76% of Humanity (& Nearly All Poorer Nations of Color) Did Not Vote To Kick Russia Off the UN Human Rights Council” (April 25, 2022), here, here, or here.
    4. World-systems theory puts the global wealth split into relief, dividing the nations of the world into the “core” and “periphery” of the global system. In world-systems theory the surplus value of labor flows disproportionately from the periphery to the core: “The countries of the world can be divided into two major world regions: the ‘core’ and the ‘periphery.’ The core includes major world powers and the countries that contain much of the wealth of the planet. The periphery has those countries that are not reaping the benefits of global wealth and globalization.” (Colin Stief, ThoughtCo.com, 1/21/20)
    5. According to Salvatore Babones (2005), the core countries are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.
    6. The slight difference between the March 2 and October 12 votes is accounted for by a reshuffling of the votes of five countries which voted IN FAVOR in March and NAN in October, and seven countries that voted NAN in March and IN FAVOR in October. The first group includes Djibouti, Honduras, Lesotho, Sao Tome and Principe, and Thailand. The second group includes Angola, Bangladesh, Guinea-Bissau, Iraq, Madagascar, Morocco, and Senegal.
    7. The United Nations reported on statements at October 12 session considering the resolution: “India joined several other speakers in expressing deep worry that the people of the global South were feeling pain from a food, fuel and fertilizer shortage, and sky-high price increases, as a result of the war.”
    8. Occasionally the animus is stated boldly. Here is Former US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on NBC’s Meet the Press in 2017: “…the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, almost genetically, [are] driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever…”
    The post 55% of Humanity Does Not Reject the Accession to Russia of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • British PM Liz Truss Exits

    After just six weeks in Office, the UK Prime Minister, Liz Truss – a Tory – quits. The shortest ever PM in British history. Rumors have it that Boris Johnson, her immediate predecessor – may also be the favored candidate as her successor.

    Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Composite: PA/Getty images

    Could well be.

    It would be a little-veiled game.

    And as usual, no coincidence; not that Boris resigned, not that Liz Truss entered, nor that she resigned after only a short period. And it will not be coincidence if Boris is reelected and stays as British PM up to, or close to, 5 years.

    The opposition – Labor – would like to call for new General Elections, but they will be overruled by the Tories’ almost two-thirds majority in Parliament.

    Boris Johnson was ideal for the tandem Washington-London on a rampage intent on demolishing Europe via the Russian war with Ukraine. Johnson was the brain, Biden and his hintermen the executioners. And as they were working on dismembering Europe, they also were, with NATO aid, simultaneously attempting to crush Russia.

    The illusion of arrogance has no limits.

    Britain’s exit from the EU was no coincidence either. It was part of the plan – the plan to act relatively undisturbed outside the EU on the very EU’s destruction. They have Germans, who do the same from inside – Ms. Ursula von der Leyen, (unelected, but appointed) President of the European Commission, former German Defense Minister; and Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of Germany. Among his many high-ranking former political positions, he was Vice Chancellor under Angela Merkel, Minister of Finance and Mayor of Hamburg.

    They are both involved from within, destroying Europe economically and socially.

    Boris Johnson first lost popularity with the long-drawn-out EU-exit; then with his floppy handling of the “covid crisis” – and a number of intended or not, other crises: An enormous budget deficit, a national debt of about 95% of GDP in 2022, the highest since 1960. An infamously decaying infrastructure throughout the country – as well as other plunders, including a sex-scandal of a senior lawmaker in Johnson’s Government.

    When some 50 parliamentarians resigned within 48 hours in protest of the sex-scandal, Johnson resigned in July 2022, in what was considered a non-confidence manifestation.

    British General Elections would have been due in January 2025, in a bit over two years. With Boris’ popularity in free fall, even within his own party, the Tories would have had next to no chance to win the elections. The Conservatives have currently about a 3 to 2 majority over Labor.

    The British exit from the EU looks increasingly like the precursor to the plan currently being executed. Destroy Europe and “contain” Russia for the benefit of the big One World Order (OWO).

    Remember – nothing is coincidence. It fits all into the Great Reset and – interalia – into the UN Agenda 2030. The European Union, a block of 27 countries and half a billion population, would be too unwieldy to control, and does not fit into the OWO’s Command Center.

    So, in response to the British crises earlier this year, better get Boris out and replace him temporarily with a “caretaker”. Ms. Liz Truss was a perfect fit for the scheme. She knew exactly what her role was, and she played it as good as she could.

    Ms. Truss knew what to do as an immediate measure to earn immediate countrywide criticism, namely reducing taxes for the rich.

    The British economy is in a sharp down-turn, losing in August 2022 unexpectedly 0.3% in output, driven by a sharp decline in manufacturing and a small contraction in services, according to the Office for National Statistics recent assessment.

    Ms. Truss also knew that under such somber circumstances, certain measures like tax cuts for the rich, are a no-go. She did it anyway – to draw the ire of the public and of her own Parliament, even her Tory colleagues.

    Her then newly appointed finance minister, Jeremy Hunt, reversed the decision on the tax cuts for the rich and said that the government will prioritize help for the most vulnerable, referring also to the high inflation of 10.1% in September and projected to rise further until the end of the year. A British recession is in the making.

    With all that self-made circus, the time had come for Liz Truss to go. Most media and political analysts predicting on Wednesday 19 October, that her ouster or resignation was not even a “question of days, but of hours”.

    Yesterday, 20 October, Liz Truss resigned, “as planned”, leaving the field open for the new – old PM, Boris Johnson. After the Liz Truss disaster, he has gained new popularity. A socio-psychological trick. A majority of Tories want him back. And since the Tories will be Kingmakers – again – Johnson’s re-election is almost assured.

    See this.

    That means the Washington-London-NATO Trio will be intact again, and able to continue their war game – with economic catastrophes for Europe, and by and large the global north. The key players US, EU and Germany are well aware and play the self-destructive game, as long as they can – or as long as they are allowed to do so by their still slumbering populace.

    The visible people on top are following orders, coming silently down through the WEF – instrument of the gigantic Financial-IT Complex (FITC), running the world. Up to end 2019, they did it more or less clandestinely. Since 2020, the beginning of the dictatorial worldwide implementation of the insane covid fear – paralleled by the deadly vaxx-tyranny – this Cult of the Riches has become increasingly visible, hiding behind just a thin “veil of shame”.

    If re-elected as PM, Boris and his party’s two-third’s majority would have a good chance to last through another 5 years. Enough time to drive the Elite’s Agenda forward. The proxy-war with Russia could be dragged on for several years – always with an “immediate threat” of turning nuclear. Initiated by Russia, of course.

    The UN Agenda 2030 is in full implementation. All behind the curtain of war. Bothing is coincidence. The dots connect. One just has to see them.

    The media love to play right along with the propaganda song, keeping people around the (western) globe on their toes, diverted with fear from whatever else is going on behind the scene – in an attempt of completing the Great Cult Reset, including with the WEF’s planned 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR), and the consequential transhumanization.

    To 4IR and transhumanization is intimately linked to the rapidly expanding construction of 5G-antennas throughout the western world. Both 4IR and transhumanization depend on a 5G seamless and flawless coverage. The antenna proliferation is hardly visible and even less talked about. Construction often happens at night.

    The duo, Biden/Johnson, representing the old but faltering British Empire, supported by an ever-expanding NATO, are hoping to prevail and revive the Empire’s Dream back to reality.

    It won’t happen. The Boris tactic of resigning to be re-elected is a clever ploy. But far from enough to face the dawning new world in the East – an era of collaboration and Peace – an era of cooperation and development. Development, as in seeking social balance and equity.

    The future is in the East, where the sun rises. The East encompasses already about half the world’s population and a number of existing and emerging associations, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the BRICS-plus, ASEAN, Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and many more.

    The British-American Empire is on its last leg. Never mind the last-ditch Biden/Johnson efforts with NATO backing. Their economy is fake and broke. The economy of the emerging East is solid and real.

    The post British PM Liz Truss Exits first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Scientists Warn Nuclear War Would Make the World Colder, Darker and Hungrier

    Even as Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly warns he could use nuclear weapons if he believed Russian (or Russian-seized) territory was threatened, tensions also remain high in other potential nuclear flashpoints from North Korea and Taiwan to border regions of China, India and Pakistan.

    This comes as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has just embarked on its annual nuclear training exercises in Belgium. The U.S. has an estimated 100 non-strategic nuclear weapons deployed at six military bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. Russia is expected to hold its own nuclear exercises soon, though U.S. officials say no notification has yet been provided as required under the New START treaty.

    On October 6, President Joe Biden warned that the threat of Armageddon was at its highest point since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. While the world remains focused on the threat of nuclear war, scientists, academics, and other experts are warning how a nuclear conflict would change life on Earth.

    Recent reports coauthored by Alan Robock, a distinguished professor in the department of environmental sciences at Rutgers University, paint a portrait of a post-nuclear war world that is colder, darker and hungrier than is usually described in nuclear reporting.

    In these reports, scientists explain how nuclear weapons, if used in a range of circumstances, could cause firestorms that would release smoke, soot and pollutants into the upper atmosphere, blocking sunlight and causing a sudden cooling effect long known as “nuclear winter.” Such a disturbance would impact the world’s oceans and dramatically undermine food security, potentially causing a large-scale collapse of agriculture that could lead to global famine.

    In the journal AGU Advances, scientists report that global cooling caused by a nuclear war could disturb ocean and sea ice ecology for decades or even centuries, killing off marine life and disrupting natural systems.

    A second report published in Nature Food illustrates how nuclear weapons, like enormous wildfires, would unleash soot into the stratosphere that could persist for years. Similar to historic massive volcanic eruptions, destruction resulting from the use of nuclear weapons could lead to sudden cooling on a global scale, resulting in widespread crop failure, famine and extreme political instability.

    Under a range of nuclear war scenarios, multiple nuclear detonations between 15 to 100 kilotons could kill tens or hundreds of millions of people in a matter of hours or days. U.S. non-strategic nuclear warheads range from 0.3 kilotons to 170 kilotons. The bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were approximately 15 and 21 kilotons respectively.

    In the event of a major nuclear war between Russia and the United States, a resulting nuclear winter could cause as many as 5.3 billion people to die of starvation within two years of such a war.

    With sunlight blocked, staple crops like wheat, maize, rice and soybeans would rapidly fail, leaving the world suddenly short of enough food. Countries in northern latitudes (including nuclear-armed Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China and North Korea) would see the greatest decline in calorie production.

    Following a regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan, calorie reductions may be less severe, but depending on the scenario, other problems like the destruction of infrastructure, radiation poisoning, large-scale death and political upheaval would offer the coldest of comfort.

    The disruption to agriculture and resulting food shortages would not be evenly distributed, suggesting some countries in southern latitudes like Australia and New Zealand could experience relatively less severe climate impacts but would face unprecedented waves of refugees fleeing nuclear and climate-impacted countries.

    The Nature Food study’s authors conclude: “…the reduced light, global cooling and likely trade restrictions after nuclear wars would be a global catastrophe for food security.”

    Speaking with Truthout Robock, who has been studying nuclear winter since 1984, said that while current computer models are more comprehensive, the basic idea that if sunlight is blocked, the Earth’s surface will be colder and darker hasn’t changed since he began studying the threat.

    In the 1980s, after Robock, his colleagues and their Russian counterparts presented similar findings to Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the U.S. and Russian leaders issued a joint statement declaring that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” The same declaration was repeated by the UN Security Council’s five permanent members (P5) with nuclear weapons (Russia, U.S., China, France, U.K.) last January, but their subsequent rhetoric and actions call their commitment to not using nuclear weapons into question.

    Unlike in the 1980s, when massive demonstrations against nuclear weapons pressured leaders to sharply reduce their arsenals, today’s threat of nuclear war has not yet translated into worldwide protests.

    “We’ve calculated [that] even though the number of weapons has gone down, there’s still enough to produce a nuclear winter if Russia and the U.S. have a nuclear war,” Robock says, noting that unlike the other nuclear-armed nations whose arsenals are limited to no more than a few hundred, both the U.S. and Russia still maintain thousands of nuclear warheads.

    “If you wanted to threaten the use of [nuclear weapons] to deter an attack, how many do you have to put on the capital of your enemy? The answer is one,” he says. “Maybe you need two, but a couple hundred is more than enough, so why don’t the U.S. and Russia get down to a couple hundred right now?” Such a reduction in stockpiles, Robock says, would greatly reduce the danger of nuclear winter.

    The climatological effects of a nuclear war, Robock says, are not the same as trying to counter the effects of climate change through methods like stratospheric geoengineering or climate intervention. “This would be instant climate change, not gradual climate change. A nuclear winter would cool down a lot and kill all of our crops.”

    A Medical Disaster

    In February, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) published a report entitled “No Place to Hide: Nuclear Weapons and the Collapse of Health Care Systems” which examined how the detonation of one nuclear bomb could affect 10 major cities. Casualty projections ranged from over 260,000 to more than 1.2 million injured from a single 100-kiloton bomb.

    Hospitals and medical systems in cities like London, Beijing or Washington, D.C. no matter how well-equipped, would be unable to adequately respond to a nuclear bomb. Tens or hundreds of thousands of patients in need of care for severe burns, cuts, broken bones, concussions, radiation poisoning, and other grave injuries would overwhelm doctors and nurses. Hospitals would almost certainly be damaged and destroyed, with health care professionals among the dead and injured. Those needing emergency treatment would likely be far greater than the number of patients seen at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The likely damage to vital communications and transportation infrastructure and other critical technology would make it difficult or impossible to provide even basic care as computers, vehicles, and medical and lab equipment were severely disrupted or rendered inoperable. Essential water, electricity and sewage systems could be cut off and in the near term there would be an immediate shortage of medication and medical supplies. In the long term, supply chains that deliver medicine and equipment would be severely impacted.

    For years, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has also warned that no medical system would be able to respond to the use of nuclear weapons of any size or number. In the words of former ICRC President Peter Maurer, “if a nuclear weapon were to detonate in or near a populated area, no state or international body could adequately address the immediate humanitarian emergency nor the long-term consequences, nor provide sufficient assistance to victims.”

    A Civilization-Ending Event

    Ira Helfand, a longtime emergency room physician and co-chair of Physicians for Social Responsibility’s Nuclear Weapons Abolition Committee, spoke with Truthout by video call from Massachusetts.

    Helfand likens the current nuclear crisis to a global near-death experience, but says that unless humanity recognizes how close we are to death, we risk failing to take the action needed to reduce the threat and avert a future catastrophe. Without profound change, he worries we will not address the underlying conditions that led to the current crisis.

    Helfand cites the importance of recent scientific reports in helping make the connection between the climate and nuclear crises. He says that not only would a nuclear war cause a climate disaster, at the same time, the climate crisis increases the chance of a nuclear war. As large regions of the planet are rendered unfit for human habitation, global tension will increase, with climate catastrophes creating more refugees.

    “People are talking about the need to relocate perhaps more than a billion people,” says Helfand. “That doesn’t happen smoothly and easily. That generates enormous amounts of conflict.” Ten or 15 years from now when the climate crisis has worsened, the movement of tens or hundreds of millions of people will cause tremendous political instability. If nuclear weapons are “still on the table,” Helfand says, there’s a greater chance they may be used.

    He points to burgeoning climate crises in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia where he fears two nuclear-armed countries — India and Pakistan — are on a collision course, not because of ideology, religion or political doctrine, but because of water. Melting Himalayan glaciers, catastrophic flooding, changing rainfall patterns and control over essential water flow could set the stage for a future conflict between Pakistan, India and China.

    “We’re in a situation where there has to be a totally different way for great powers to interact with each other,” shifting from a model based on competition to one based on cooperation, Helfand says. “If such a crisis reaches its full fruition and becomes a military conflict between two nuclear-armed states, we’re going to have a civilization-ending event.”

    The aftermath of a nuclear war would be chaotic as survivors fought for whatever was left. Any nation that might “come out on top” of a nuclear conflict would have the “ash heap of human civilization” to claim as its own, he says.

    Before such a nightmare scenario occurs, Helfand sees an opportunity to come together if our leaders are honest, courageous, truthful and tell people what needs to be done. A paradigm shift in which nations recognize the need to cooperate is necessary if survival is to remain possible. “This just can’t go on indefinitely,” he warns. “Either we’re going to do something very fundamentally different, or we’re going to have a nuclear war and that needs to be clearly understood by everyone.”

    This May Be the Last Time

    Susi Snyder, financial section coordinator for ICAN, says that even a relatively small nuclear detonation would have a global ripple effect. She points to the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of how a large-scale disruption’s impact can continue for years.

    When thinking of a nuclear weapon’s aftermath, Snyder says that beyond the death and destruction, there would be associated disruption of transportation, trade, commerce, travel and global markets. The current war in Ukraine has already fueled food and energy crises in multiple countries, and a nuclear war would be far worse. Any use of a nuclear weapon would jar commodity and resource markets, disrupting trade, creating instability and uncertainty, and suddenly driving the need for alternate sources of food, energy and raw materials. Such abrupt shifts could also threaten human rights and the environment in places that were suddenly in demand.

    Depending on how limited or widespread the use of nuclear weapons was, much of what is considered “normal” for most people in developed countries — reliable communications, transportation, the availability of household utilities, food, consumer goods, and even travel and entertainment — could be disrupted or cut off.

    The damage from even a relatively “small” or limited nuclear detonation would likely draw humanitarian aid away from other areas. Even in such a scenario, Snyder says, “every place will be affected in some way.” Because a nuclear threat has the potential to harm every part of the planet, Snyder says countries that are usually left out of the nuclear discussion are becoming more vocal, emphasizing the humanitarian and environmental risks to countries geographically far removed from nuclear-armed nations.

    Post-Cold War notions that the threat of nuclear weapons is a thing of the past have quickly faded and frustration is growing as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) has failed to end nuclear arms races or deliver complete nuclear disarmament.

    Recognizing the urgent need to do away with nuclear weapons, 68 countries have adopted and ratified the much more recent Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which entered into force in 2021. Unlike the NPT, the TPNW prohibits the development, testing, production, acquisition, possession, transfer, stockpiling or threat to use nuclear weapons.

    None of the P5 nuclear weapon states or the four other nuclear-armed nations (India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea) recognizes the TPNW. Instead, they embrace the theory of deterrence. Nuclear deterrence — the threat to use one’s nuclear weapons against another state — Snyder says, allows for naked conventional weapon aggression without fear of reprisal, as is being demonstrated by Russia in Ukraine today.

    She also notes that there are dozens of multinational corporations which profit from nuclear weapons and have a vested interest in perpetuating their production. She says this raises the question, “Is it ok to incinerate a city in 30 minutes or less? If it’s legitimate, then the pathway is nuclear weapons for everybody. And if it’s not legitimate, then there really is one choice — to end nuclear weapons for everybody.”

    In an age when it only takes 45 minutes to go from the decision to launch a nuclear weapon to a detonation that could abruptly bring about the end of life as we know it, we must deliberately and soberly consider the consequences of using nuclear weapons. The luxury of looking away is gone. People around the world — especially in nuclear armed nations — have a responsibility to pressure politicians to abolish these horrific weapons. Without a sharp increase in vocal and mobilized opposition to the unstable and unsustainable nuclear threat, the danger will continue and eventually, many fear, humanity’s luck will run out. Now is the time for each of us to take whatever action we can — because no one knows if or when nuclear weapons will be used again, very possibly for the final time.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Pretending To Seek Peace In An Unwinnable Proxy War: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

    Listen to a reading of this article:

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    We should probably talk more about the fact that the US empire is loudly promoting the goal of achieving peace in Ukraine by defeating Russia while quietly acknowledging that this goal is impossible. This is like accelerating toward a brick wall and pretending it’s an open road.

    The narrative that Russia can be defeated by escalating against it makes sense if you believe Russia can be defeated, but the US empire does not believe that Russia can be defeated. It knows these escalations are only going to exponentially ramp up death and devastation.

    “Beat Putin’s ass and make him withdraw” sounds cool and is egoically gratifying, and it’s become the mainstream answer to the problem of the war in Ukraine. But nobody promoting that answer can address the fact that the ones driving this proxy war believe it’s impossible. In fact, all evidence we’re seeing suggests that the US is not trying to deliver Putin a crushing defeat in Ukraine and force him to withdraw, but is rather trying to create another long and costly military quagmire for Moscow, as cold warriors have done repeatedly in instances like Afghanistan and Syria.

    Wanting to weaken Russia and wanting to save lives and establish peace in Ukraine are two completely different goals, so different that in practice they wind up being largely contradictory. Drawing Moscow into a bloody quagmire means many more people dying in a war that lasts years.

    The US does not want peace in Ukraine, it wants to overextend Russia, shore up military and energy dominance over Europe, expand its war machine and enrich the military-industrial complex. It’s posing as Ukraine’s savior while being clearly invested in Ukraine’s destruction.

    It is not legitimate to support this proxy war without squarely addressing this massive contradiction using hard facts and robust argumentation. Nobody ever has.

    ❖

    The idea that the US and NATO have no special obligation to help negotiate a peace settlement in Ukraine only makes sense if you pretend the US and NATO played no role in causing the war in Ukraine. Which is to say it only makes sense if you believe a silly, infantile fiction. There are plenty of arguments to be made that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is immoral and illegal, but to claim it was unprovoked and exculpate the US-centralized power structure from any responsibility for provoking it is inexcusable fact-free bullshit.

    ❖

    Saying “Putin can end this war by withdrawing!” in response to discussions about what the west can do to bring peace to Ukraine is just interrupting serious adult conversations with childish prattle that only serves to cover up your desire for this war to last forever.

    ❖

    Westerners demand more nuanced and believable motives from their Marvel movie villains than from the propaganda narratives their media peddle about enemies of the US empire.

    ❖

    ❖

    Imagine living on a dying world where people are brainwashed from birth into mindless consumerism and saturated in propaganda promoting war and status quo kleptocracy and exploitation, and deciding that the real sign of societal deterioration is teenagers using different pronouns. Like okay sure we’re being marched into armageddon and dystopia by mass-scale psychological manipulation that’s so ubiquitous and pervasive that hardly anyone ever notices it or talks about it, but the real sign our civilization is crumbling is my friend’s kid using “they/them”.

    ❖

    It is always right and good to criticize the most dangerous actions of the most powerful government in the world. It is always right and good to demand the west uphold the values it claims to uphold and play by the rules it claims to play by. This is self-evident and requires no defense.

    I’ve long felt like a big part of my job here is just being the voice that says “You’re not crazy. I see it too.” Assuring people they’re not going mad when it looks like everything they were told about the world is a lie and everyone they were trained to trust is deceiving them.

    Because that is the message you will receive when you start asking the important questions and getting the important answers about ruling power structures in our world: people will act like you’re a raving lunatic for talking about US empire malfeasance and western propaganda. Only by mass-scale propaganda brainwashing would it ever appear insane to criticize the most dangerous impulses of the most powerful and destructive government on earth. It’s the most normal, sane and rational thing in the world, but it’s made to look freakish by narrative spin.

    To paraphrase Jiddu Krishnamurti, it is no measure of health to be deemed sane in a profoundly insane society.

    ❖

    Boss makes a dollar,
    I make a dime,
    boss’s overseas wage slave makes a penny,
    the war victim gets death,
    the factory farmed animal gets torture,
    the biosphere gets mass extinction,
    that’s why I endorse global communism
    and the metamorphosis of human consciousness
    on company time.

    Okay it doesn’t rhyme like the original but I like it anyway.

    __________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, buying an issue of my monthly zine, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Putinism’s Defeated Opposition

    In a new collection, Ilya Budraitskis provides a trenchant analysis of the ideological underpinnings of Putin’s Russia and the domestic political groups that have opposed his government.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • The Most Powerful Weapon The West Gave Ukraine: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

    Listen to a reading of this article:

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    It’s pretty wild how the US is sending armored vehicles to Haiti to help quash the exact sort of uprising it’s been actively trying to create in places like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and Hong Kong.

    ❖

    The Pentagon is seeking sweeping new powers in preparation for a war with China, the Senate NDAA bill increases proposed military aid to Taiwan from 4.5 to 10 billion dollars, and Tony Blinken is claiming without evidence that Beijing has greatly accelerated its plans to annex Taiwan. This is all as aggressions continue to ramp up against Russia. They really are doing this thing.

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    So it looks like this is what we’ll be doing for the foreseeable future: calling to escalate the war in Ukraine, facilitating the escalation of the war in Ukraine, and then screaming with shock and outrage when the war in Ukraine escalates. That seems to be what we’ve got planned.

    ❖

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    That's because the threat perception doesn't come from geography but from propaganda. Americans are the single most propagandized population on earth. https://t.co/ATBWPt4OXF

    — Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) October 18, 2022

    ❖

    “Maybe my government is actually in the wrong here and is just lying and manipulating to advance its own interests?” should be a much more common thought. It’s a line of inquiry that should be taught to schoolchildren. It is by design that it doesn’t occur to people more often.

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    The most powerful weapon the west has given Ukraine is not the HIMARS, it’s the US propaganda machine.

    ❖

    The only people who support western proxy warfare in Ukraine are those who deny the extensively documented ways the western empire has provoked, sustained, manipulated and exploited this war. You can only support what’s being done by lying and/or being lied to.

    ❖

    “Calling for de-escalation actually causes escalation” is the single dumbest empire bro talking point yet to emerge from this war.

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    Still laughing about how liberals just spent months amplifying and celebrating a trolling operation founded by a literal Nazi.

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    NAFO founder Kamil Dyszewski (@Kama_Kamilia) is an antisemitic gamer from Poland pic.twitter.com/q5YPmDOFYZ

    — Moss Robeson (@mossrobeson__) October 14, 2022

    ❖

    If nuclear war erupts it won’t matter whose fault it was. It won’t matter who started it. It won’t matter whether Moscow had legitimate claim to Zaporizhzhia. All that will matter is that it happened. There will be no adjudicating responsibility after the fact. We won’t be here.

    The time to turn away from the trajectory toward nuclear war is now, not later. It’s bizarre how many people I get telling me “Well if nuclear war happens it’ll be Putin’s fault,” like that will be any comfort to them as they hug their family close and wait for a horrific death.

    There’s just so much sloppy thinking about the actual end of the world. People aren’t looking directly at this thing and thinking rigorously about what it would mean. What it would entail. This is understandable; it’s a terrible thing to contemplate. But we do urgently need to.

    People don’t seem to get that nuclear annihilation is the one mistake we could make that we can’t ever fix. There’s this unquestioned assumption that if it happened there’d be some kind of course correction afterward, but there won’t be. No one will be here to do it. No takesies backsies.

    People can’t imagine their own absence. That’s why we make up stories about life after death. It’s also why we’re having a hard time squarely facing the prospect of an Earth with no humans on it. People still assume human inventions like “fault” and “blame” will remain after us.

    People kill themselves by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge a lot. The few survivors all say that the first thought they had upon free fall was instant regret. They realize in an instant that every problem they have can be solved except for the one they have just given themselves. Imagine having that thought, but it’s all life on Earth that we’ve killed. That’s what nuclear holocaust is. A moment of instant terrible regret followed by the blackness of the void.

    ❖

    During the Cuban Missile Crisis the top news story every day was how that whole Cuban Missile Crisis situation is going. During the nuclear brinkmanship crisis of 2022 the top news stories are about Kanye, Trump and Alex Jones. We are sleepwalking toward a cliff’s edge.

    ❖

    A sane society would chase off anyone who advocated nuclear brinkmanship and drive them out of human civilization. In our society we give them punditry gigs on mainstream media platforms and lucrative jobs at influential think tanks.

    ❖

    There are people among us who dress up their personal suicidal ideations as a world-weary, humble knowing that humans are shit and we need to die. I call these omnicidal ideations, and they are not noble or humble, they are monstrous and at odds with all of life on earth. If you can’t want to live for yourself, then live for your dog. Live for the ladybugs. Live for all the innocents that don’t deserve any of this.

    ❖

    This is all completely unnecessary. There’s nothing inscribed upon the fabric of reality saying states need to be waving armageddon weapons at each other. There’s no valid reason not to lay aside these games of global conquest and collaborate together toward a healthy coexistence on this planet.

    We could have such a beautiful world. All the energy we pour into competition and conquest could go toward innovation that benefits us all, making sure everyone has enough, eliminating human suffering and the need for human toil. We’re trading heaven on earth for elite ego games.

    There’s no valid reason we can’t move from models of competition and domination to models of collaboration and care. Collaboration with each other; care for each other. Collaboration with our ecosystem; care for our ecosystem. We’re throwing it away in exchange for senseless misery and peril.

    ___________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, buying an issue of my monthly zine, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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  • The Other Russia-West War: Why Some African Countries are Abandoning Paris, Joining Moscow

    The moment that Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba was ousted by his own former military colleague, Captain Ibrahim Traore, pro-coup crowds filled the streets. Some burned French flags, others carried Russian flags. This scene alone represents the current tussle underway throughout the African continent.

    A few years ago, the discussion regarding the geopolitical shifts in Africa was not exactly concerned with France and Russia per se. It focused mostly on China’s growing economic role and political partnerships on the African continent. For example, Beijing’s decision to establish its first overseas military base in Djibouti in 2017 signaled China’s major geopolitical move, by translating its economic influence in the region to political influence, backed by military presence.

    China remains committed to its Africa strategy. Beijing has been Africa’s largest trading partner for 12 years, consecutively, with total bilateral trade between China and Africa, in 2021, reaching $254.3 billion, according to recent data released by the General Administration of Customs of China.

    The United States, along with its western allies, have been aware of, and warning against China’s growing clout in Africa. The establishment of US AFRICOM in 2007 was rightly understood to be a countering measure to China’s influence. Since then, and arguably before, talks of a new ‘Scramble for Africa’ abounded, with new players, including China, Russia, even Turkiye, entering the fray.

    The Russia-Ukraine war, however, has altered geopolitical dynamics in Africa, as it highlighted the Russian-French rivalry on the continent, as opposed to the Chinese-American competition there.

    Though Russia has been present in African politics for years, the war – thus the need for stable allies at the United Nations and elsewhere – accelerated Moscow’s charm offensive. In July, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda, and the Republic of Congo, fortifying Russia’s diplomatic relations with African leaders.

    “We know that the African colleagues do not approve of the undisguised attempts of the US and their European satellites .. to impose a unipolar world order to the international community,” Lavrov said. His words were met with agreement.

    Russian efforts have been paying dividends, as early as the first votes to condemn Moscow at the United Nations General Assembly, in March and April. Many African nations remained either neutral or voted against measures targeting Russia at the UN.

    South Africa’s position, in particular, was problematic from Washington’s perspective, not only because of the size of the country’s economy, but also because of Pretoria’s political influence and moral authority throughout Africa. Moreover, South Africa is the only African member of the G20.

    In his visit to the US in September, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa defended his country’s neutrality and raised objections to a draft US bill – the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act – that is set to monitor and punish African governments who do not conform to the American line in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

    The West fails to understand, however, that Africa’s slow, but determined shift toward Moscow is not haphazard or accidental.

    The history of the continent’s past and current struggle against western colonialism and neocolonialism is well-known. While the West continues to define its relationship with Africa based on exploitation, Russia is constantly reminding African countries of the Soviet’s legacy on the continent. This is not only apparent in official political discourses by Russian leaders and diplomats, but also in Russian media coverage, which is prioritizing Africa and reminding African nations of their historic solidarity with Moscow.

    Burning French flags and raising Russian ones, however, cannot simply be blamed on Russian supposed economic bribes, clever diplomacy or growing military influence. The readiness of African nations – Mali, Central African Republic and, now, possibly, Burkina Faso – has much more to do with mistrust and resentment of France’s self-serving legacy in Africa, West Africa in particular.

    France has military bases in many parts of Africa and remains an active participant in various military conflicts, which has earned it the reputation of being the continent’s main destabilizing force. Equally important is Paris’s stronghold over the economies of 14 African countries, which are forced to use French currency, the CFA franc and, according to Frederic Ange Toure, writing in Le Journal de l’Afrique, to “centralize 50% of their reserves in the French public treasury”.

    Though many African countries remain neutral in the case of the Russia-Ukraine war, a massive geopolitical shift is underway, especially in militarily fragile, impoverished and politically unstable countries that are eager to seek alternatives to French and other western powers. For a country like Mali, shifting allegiances from Paris to Moscow was not exactly a great gamble. Bamako had very little to lose, but much to gain. The same logic applies to other African countries that are fighting extreme poverty, political instability and the threat of militancy, all of which are intrinsically linked.

    Though China remains a powerful newcomer to Africa – a reality that continues to frustrate US policymakers – the more urgent battle, for now, is between Russia and France – the latter experiencing a palpable retreat.

    In a speech last July, French President Emmanuel Macron declared that he wanted a “rethink of all our (military) postures on the African continent.” France’s military and foreign policy shift in Africa, however, was not compelled by strategy or vision, but by changing realities over which France has little control. 

    The post The Other Russia-West War: Why Some African Countries are Abandoning Paris, Joining Moscow first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • They’re Recycling The Viagra Rape Atrocity Propaganda They Used On Libya

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    The west is advancing the claim that Putin is distributing Viagra to his soldiers so that they can more effectively rape Ukrainians, which was a ridiculous propaganda narrative the first time the west used it to manufacture consent for regime change in Libya.

    In a Thursday interview with the French government-owned news agency AFP, a Mauritian-British official from the United Nations named Pramila Patten claimed that Russia has a “military strategy” of mass rape in Ukraine and that Russian soldiers are being “equipped” with the erectile dysfunction medication Viagra in order to facilitate that military strategy.

    “When you hear women testify about Russian soldiers equipped with Viagra, it’s clearly a military strategy,” Patten said.

    Because AFP is one of the major propaganda multipliers whose material is republished by news media outlets around the world, Patten’s completely unevidenced claim of weaponized Viagra has been uncritically reported as a real news story by outlets like CNN, The New York Post, Forbes, The Independent, The Hill, and Yahoo News. This claim will now be folded into many rank-and-file mainstream news consumers’ understanding of what is happening in Ukraine, despite its brazenly propagandistic nature.

    The only other time the west has been hammered with a story about marauding Viagra-armed rape brigades like this was in 2011, when the western empire was circulating atrocity propaganda to manufacture consent for regime change interventionism in Libya. In March of that year an email later published by WikiLeaks was sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by her private advisor Sidney Blumenthal, informing her of an unconfirmed “rumor” that Libya’s longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi “has adopted a rape policy and has even distributed Viagra to troops.” Blumenthal notes that this claim originated from “the rebel side” of the conflict, which we now know included Al Qaeda, whom Gaddafi had been fighting.

    The following month that “rumor” was repeated before the UN national security council by Susan Rice, another Obama administration official, this time presented not as a rumor but as a reality. Although anonymous US military intelligence officials informed the press the very next day that they had no evidence of Rice’s claim, by June an International Criminal Court investigation was underway with western news media continuing to uncritically report claims of weaponized Viagra in Libya.

    Meanwhile, another UN human rights investigator named Cherif Bassiouni said he’d found those allegations to have arisen from “massive hysteria” and that both sides of the conflict had been making them about the other. Amnesty International failed to turn up any evidence of mass rapes and weaponized Viagra in Libya, and a 2016 report by the British Parliament found that the false “humanitarian intervention” by NATO forces which resulted in Gaddafi’s death had in fact been based on lies.

    This information came far too little, far too late. The case was made for intervention and Libya was plunged into chaos and humanitarian catastrophe by the western empire and its jihadist proxies on the ground, putting a final nail in the coffin of the claim that NATO is a “defensive alliance”.

    Of course we cannot conclusively prove that Putin isn’t giving his soldiers sex drugs to help them rape Ukrainians more efficiently. We cannot conclusively prove that Ukrainian spies aren’t sneaking across the border and injecting Russian babies with HIV either, but we don’t treat bizarre, nonsensical and completely unevidenced claims as true just because they cannot be definitively proven false. Especially when those exact claims have been used to advance depraved power agendas in the past in instances that remain completely unevidenced.

    Earlier this year the western media were uncritically publishing claims made by a single official in the Ukrainian government that Russian soldiers were running around raping Ukrainian babies and children, despite the fact that those claims had no evidence and were accompanied by demands for more western military assistance. Weeks later, that very same official was fired by the Ukrainian parliament for, among other things, circulating unevidenced claims about rapes by Russian soldiers.

    As we’ve discussed previously, the U.S. and its proxies have an extensive history of using atrocity propaganda, for example in the infamous “taking babies from incubators” narrative that was circulated in the 1990 false Nayirah testimony which helped manufacture consent for the Gulf War. Atrocity propaganda has been in use for a very long time due to how effective it can be at getting populations mobilized against targeted enemies, from the Middle Ages when Jews were accused of kidnapping Christian children to kill them and drink their blood, to 17th century claims that the Irish were killing English children and throwing them into the sea, to World War I claims that Germans were mutilating and eating Belgian babies.

    Western mass media are proving time and time again that there is no accusation against Russia that they will not promote as factual news reporting, no matter how evidence-free and ridiculous. The fact that they’re going to the well and recycling old atrocity propaganda illustrates this even more lucidly.

    If we were being told the truth about this war, we wouldn’t be hammered with blatant atrocity propaganda by so-called “news” outlets. We wouldn’t be subjected to ever escalating censorship of voices who criticize the western empire’s role in this war. We wouldn’t be swarmed by pro-NATO online trolling operations founded by actual neo-Nazis.

    How are people not yet tired of having their intelligence insulted?

    ________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, buying an issue of my monthly zine, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Red Cross frustrated by lack of access to PoWs in Russian-occupied Donetsk

    ICRC responds to Volodymyr Zelenskiy criticism, saying it being refused entry to notorious Olenivka prison

    The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has gone public with its frustration at being refused entry to a notorious Russian prisoner of war camp after scathing criticism from Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

    In his daily evening address, Ukraine’s president accused the ICRC of a lack of leadership, suggesting that officials were picking up their salaries without doing their jobs.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • We’re Being Pushed Toward Nuclear War On A Fiction: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    We’re being driven toward nuclear war on the completely fictional claim that Putin is a Hitler-like megalomaniac who’s just invading countries completely unprovoked, solely because he is evil and hates freedom, and won’t stop invading and conquering until he’s stopped by force.

    The news media aren’t telling people about the western aggressions which led to this war. They’re not telling people the US is keeping this war going with the stated goal of weakening Russia and is rejecting peace talks and refusing to push for peace. All people are being told is that Putin is another Hitler who won’t listen to reason and only understands violence. The world’s two nuclear superpowers are being pushed closer and closer to direct military confrontation based on a complete fiction which omits mountains of facts.

    To participate in this madness is indefensible. It is indefensibly immoral to foist a fictional version of events upon a trusting populace in order to manufacture consent for more and more aggressive acts of brinkmanship with a nuclear superpower. These people are depraved.

    ❖

    “No no you don’t understand, if we weren’t being told constantly by the media that this proxy war needs our full support and censoring the voices who dispute this and using giant troll armies to swarm and silence anyone who questions this, we might fall victim to propaganda.”

    ❖

    “You’re not anti-war, you’re just anti-AMERICAN wars,” said the person who is loudly cheerleading America’s proxy war in Ukraine.

    Warmongers don’t like being called warmongers when they support a US proxy war that was deliberately provoked by the US and is being sustained by the funding and facilitation of the US with the explicit goal of weakening a longtime geopolitical rival of the US. They get very upset when you point out the fact that they are doing this, and when people’s opposition to their warmongering is described as “anti-war”:

    They very much prefer to pretend that this time the US is on the good and righteous side of a war, because in that imaginary world they’re the cool anti-fascists standing up to an evil tyrant and those who oppose their warmongering are the real warmongers.

    “This time the US is on the GOOD side of a war! Also, goo goo ga ga I am a little baby with a little baby brain.”

    ❖

    The closer we get to nuclear war the less patience I have for sectarian spats between people who are supposed to be opposing war and militarism. Grow the fuck up and get over yourselves. This is more important than you and your ego.

    ❖

    Don’t let anyone tell you your criticisms of US warmongering make no difference; if they didn’t, the empire wouldn’t work so hard to dissuade you from making them. They work so hard to manufacture public consent for their agendas because they absolutely require that consent.

    An entire globe-spanning empire rests on our closed eyelids. Depends on keeping us in a propaganda-induced coma. Circulating ideas and information which discredit and dispute that propaganda poses a direct threat to that empire. That’s what all the censorship of dissent is about.

    Is your one tweet, video or public demonstration going to bring the empire crashing down? Of course not. But it will spread awareness by that much. And all positive changes in human behavior are always preceded by an expansion of awareness. You’re nudging us all toward awakening to whatever extent you help expand awareness of truth and reality.

    We can’t be the Hollywood hero who single-handedly decapitates the machine, but we can all collectively throw sand in its gears, making it harder and harder for it to function. That’s what disrupting the imperial propaganda machine accomplishes, because that machine depends on propaganda. The weakest part of an empire that’s held together by lies and manipulation is its lies and manipulations; that’s why it’s such an aggressively protected aspect of its power. And it happens to be the one part that anyone with a voice can attack, and attack effectively.

    The nightmare scenario for our rulers is the same as the nightmare scenario for every ruler throughout history: that the masses will get sick of their rule and use the power of their numbers to get rid of them. That’s exactly what the propaganda matrix is designed to prevent.

    One aspect of this struggle that is a bit like a Hollywood movie is that it kind of is a struggle between light and darkness, because the empire depends on keeping its activities obfuscated and unseen while we’re all working to make its machinery visible and transparent. That’s why Assange is in prison. It’s also why internet censorship keeps ramping up, why propaganda is getting more and more blatant, and why online discussion is swarmed by astroturf trolling ops. Those in power are working against the people to keep things dark and unseen.

    _______________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, buying an issue of my monthly zine, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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    Feature image was posted to Flickr by Amaury Laporte at https://flickr.com/photos/8283439@N04/51909291570 (CC BY 2.0)

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Biden’s Broken Promise to Avoid War with Russia May Kill Us All

    Attack on Kerch Strait Bridge linking Crimea and Russia Credit: Getty Images

    On March 11, 2022, President Biden reassured the American public and the world that the United States and its NATO allies were not at war with Russia. “We will not fight a war with Russia in Ukraine,” said Biden. “Direct conflict between NATO and Russia is World War III, something we must strive to prevent.”

    It is widely acknowledged that U.S. and NATO officers are now fully involved in Ukraine’s operational war planning, aided by a broad range of U.S. intelligence gathering and analysis to exploit Russia’s military vulnerabilities, while Ukrainian forces are armed with U.S. and NATO weapons and trained up to the standards of other NATO countries.

    On October 5, Nikolay Patrushev, the head of Russia’s Security Council, recognized that Russia is now fighting NATO in Ukraine. Meanwhile, President Putin has reminded the world that Russia has nuclear weapons and is prepared to use them “when the very existence of the state is put under threat,” as Russia’s official nuclear weapons doctrine declared in June 2020.

    It seems likely that, under that doctrine, Russia’s leaders would interpret losing a war to the United States and NATO on their own borders as meeting the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.

    President Biden acknowledged on October 6 that Putin is “not joking” and that it would be difficult for Russia to use a “tactical” nuclear weapon “and not end up with Armageddon.” Biden assessed the danger of a full-scale nuclear war as higher than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

    Yet despite voicing the possibility of an existential threat to our survival, Biden was not issuing a public warning to the American people and the world, nor announcing any change in U.S. policy. Bizarrely, the president was instead discussing the prospect of nuclear war with his political party’s financial backers during an election fundraiser at the home of media mogul James Murdoch, with surprised corporate media reporters listening in.

    In an NPR report about the danger of nuclear war over Ukraine, Matthew Bunn, a nuclear weapons expert at Harvard University, estimated the chance of Russia using a nuclear weapon at 10 to 20 percent.

    How have we gone from ruling out direct U.S. and NATO involvement in the war to U.S. involvement in all aspects of the war except for the bleeding and dying, with an estimated 10 to 20 percent chance of nuclear war? Bunn made that estimate shortly before the sabotage of the Kerch Strait Bridge to Crimea. What odds will he project a few months from now if both sides keep matching each other’s escalations with further escalation?

    The irresolvable dilemma facing Western leaders is that this is a no-win situation. How can they militarily defeat Russia, when it possesses 6,000 nuclear warheads and its military doctrine explicitly states that it will use them before it will accept an existential military defeat?

    And yet that is what the intensifying Western role in Ukraine now explicitly aims to achieve. This leaves U.S. and NATO policy, and thus our very existence, hanging by a thin thread: the hope that Putin is bluffing, despite explicit warnings that he is not. CIA Director William Burns, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and the director of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, have all warned that we should not take this danger lightly.

    The danger of relentless escalation toward Armageddon is what both sides faced throughout the Cold War, which is why, after the wake-up call of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, dangerous brinkmanship gave way to a framework of nuclear arms control agreements and safeguard mechanisms to prevent proxy wars and military alliances spiraling into a world-ending nuclear war. Even with those safeguards in place, there were still many close calls – but without them, we would probably not be here to write about it.

    Today, the situation is made more dangerous by the dismantling of those nuclear arms treaties and safeguards. It is also exacerbated, whether either side intends it or not, by the twelve-to-one imbalance between U.S. and Russian military spending, which leaves Russia with more limited conventional military options and a greater reliance on nuclear ones.

    But there have always been alternatives to the relentless escalation of this war by both sides that has brought us to this pass. In April, Western officials took a fateful step when they persuaded President Zelenskyy to abandon Turkish- and Israeli-brokered negotiations with Russia that had produced a promising 15-point framework for a ceasefire, a Russian withdrawal and a neutral future for Ukraine.

    That agreement would have required Western countries to provide security guarantees to Ukraine, but they refused to be party to it and instead promised Ukraine military support for a long war to try to decisively defeat Russia and recover all the territory Ukraine had lost since 2014.

    U.S. Defense Secretary Austin declared that the West’s goal in the war was now to “weaken” Russia to the point that it would no longer have the military power to invade Ukraine again. But if the United States and its allies ever came close to achieving that goal, Russia would surely see such a total military defeat as putting “the very existence of the state under threat,” triggering the use of nuclear weapons under its publicly stated nuclear doctrine.

    On May 23rd, the very day that Congress passed a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine, including $24 billion in new military spending, the contradictions and dangers of the new U.S.-NATO war policy in Ukraine finally spurred a critical response from The New York Times Editorial Board. A Times editorial, titled “The Ukraine War is Getting Complicated, and America Is Not Ready,” asked serious, probing questions about the new U.S. policy:

    “Is the United States, for example, trying to help bring an end to this conflict, through a settlement that would allow for a sovereign Ukraine and some kind of relationship between the United States and Russia? Or is the United States now trying to weaken Russia permanently? Has the administration’s goal shifted to destabilizing Putin or having him removed? Does the United States intend to hold Putin accountable as a war criminal? Or is the goal to try to avoid a wider war…? Without clarity on these questions, the White House…jeopardizes long-term peace and security on the European continent.”

    The NYT editors went on to voice what many have thought but few have dared to say in such a politicized media environment, that the goal of recovering all the territory Ukraine has lost since 2014 is not realistic, and that a war to do so will “inflict untold destruction on Ukraine.” They called on Biden to talk honestly with Zelenskyy about “how much more destruction Ukraine can sustain” and the “limit to how far the United States and NATO will confront Russia.”

    A week later, Biden replied to the Times in an Op-Ed titled “What America Will and Will Not Do in Ukraine.” He quoted Zelenskyy saying that the war “will only definitively end through diplomacy,” and wrote that the United States was sending weapons and ammunition so that Ukraine “can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.”

    Biden wrote, “We do not seek a war between NATO and Russia.…the United States will not try to bring about [Putin’s] ouster in Moscow.” But he went on to pledge virtually unlimited U.S. support for Ukraine, and he did not answer the more difficult questions the Times asked about the U.S. endgame in Ukraine, the limits to U.S. involvement in the war or how much more devastation Ukraine could sustain.

    As the war escalates and the danger of nuclear war increases, these questions remain unanswered. Calls for a speedy end to the war echoed around the UN General Assembly in New York in September, where 66 countries, representing most of the world’s population, urgently called on all sides to restart peace talks.

    The greatest danger we face is that their calls will be ignored, and that the U.S. military-industrial complex’s overpaid minions will keep finding ways to incrementally turn up the pressure on Russia, calling its bluff and ignoring its “red lines” as they have since 1991, until they cross the most critical “red line” of all.

    If the world’s calls for peace are heard before it is too late and we survive this crisis, the United States and Russia must renew their commitments to arms control and nuclear disarmament, and negotiate how they and other nuclear armed states will destroy their weapons of mass destruction and accede to the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, so that we can finally lift this unthinkable and unacceptable danger hanging over our heads.

    The post Biden’s Broken Promise to Avoid War with Russia May Kill Us All first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US Rejection Of Moscow’s Offer For Peace Talks Is Utterly Inexcusable

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow was open to talks with the the US or with Turkey on ending the war in Ukraine, claiming that US officials are lying when they say Russia has been refusing peace talks.

    Reuters reports:

    Lavrov said officials, including White House national security spokesman John Kirby, had said the United States was open to talks but that Russia had refused.

     

    “This is a lie,” Lavrov said. “We have not received any serious offers to make contact.”

    Lavrov’s claim was given more weight when US State Department spokesman Ned Price dismissed the offer for peace talks shortly after it was extended, citing Russia’s recent missile strikes on Kyiv.

    “We see this as posturing,” Price said at a Tuesday press briefing. “We do not see this as a constructive, legitimate offer to engage in the dialogue and diplomacy that is absolutely necessary to see an end to this brutal war of aggression against the people and the state, the Government of Ukraine.”

    This is inexcusable. At a time when our world is at its most perilous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis according to many experts as well as the president of the United States, the US government has no business making the decision not to sit down with Russian officials and work toward de-escalation and peace. They have no business making that call on behalf of every terrestrial organism on this planet whose life is being risked in these games of nuclear brinkmanship. The fact that this war has escalated with missile strikes on the Ukrainian capital makes peace talks more necessary, not less.

    This rejection is made all the more outrageous by new information from The Washington Post that the US government does not believe Ukraine can win this war and refuses to encourage it to negotiate with Moscow.

    “Privately, U.S. officials say neither Russia nor Ukraine is capable of winning the war outright, but they have ruled out the idea of pushing or even nudging Ukraine to the negotiating table,” WaPo reports. “They say they do not know what the end of the war looks like, or how it might end or when, insisting that is up to Kyiv.”

    These two points taken together lend even more credibility an argument I’ve been making from the very beginning of this war: that the US does not want peace in Ukraine, but rather seeks to create a costly military quagmire for Moscow just as US officials have confessed to trying to do in Afghanistan and in Syria. Which would explain why US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the US goal in Ukraine is actually to “weaken” Russia, and also why the empire appears to have actively torpedoed a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia in the early days of the conflict.

    This proxy war has no exit strategy. And that is entirely by design.

    Many have been calling for the US to abandon its policy of actively sustaining this war while avoiding peace talks.

    “President Biden’s language, we’re about at the top of the language scale, if you will,” former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen told ABC’s This Week on Sunday regarding the president’s recent remark that this conflict could lead to “Armageddon”.

    “I think we need to back off that a little bit and do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing,” Mullen said, adding, “As is typical in any war, it has got to end and usually there are negotiations associated with that. The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.”

    “One thing the United States can do is… drop the position, the official position, that the war must go on to weaken Russia severely, meaning no negotiations,” Noam Chomsky argued in a recent appearance on Democracy Now. “Would that open the way to negotiations, diplomacy? Can’t be sure. There’s only one way to find out. That’s to try. If you don’t try, of course it won’t happen.”

    “It is time for the United States to supplement its military support for Ukraine with a diplomatic track to manage this crisis before it spirals out of control,” said the Quincy Institute’s George Beebe following the Monday missile strikes on Kyiv, calling it “a major escalation in the war” that was bound to “bring the world closer to a direct military collision between Russia and the United States.”

    “The Americans have to come to an agreement with the Russians. And then the war will be over,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said at an event on Tuesday, adding that “anyone who thinks that this war will be concluded through Russian-Ukrainian negotiations is not living in this world.”

    It’s absolutely insane that the world’s two nuclear superpowers are accelerating toward direct military confrontation and they aren’t even talking to each other, and it’s even crazier that anyone who says they should be gets called a Kremlin agent and a Chamberlain-like appeaser. Responsible Statecraft’s Harry Kazianis discusses this freakish dynamic in a recent article titled “Talking is not appeasement — it’s avoiding a nuclear armageddon“:

    I have fought more than thirty combat simulations in wargames under my own direction for a private defense contract over the last several months, looking at various aspects of the Russia-Ukraine war, and one thing is clear: the chances of a nuclear war increase significantly every day that passes.

     

    In every scenario I tested, the Biden Administration slowly gives Ukraine ever more advanced weapons like ATACMS, F-16s, and other platforms that Russia has consistently warned pose a direct military threat. While each scenario has postulated a different point at which Moscow decides to use a tactical nuclear weapon in order to counter conventional platforms it can’t easily defeat, the chances that Russia uses nukes grow as new and more powerful military capabilities are introduced into the battlefield by the West.

     

    In fact, in 28 of the thirty scenarios I have run since the war began, some sort of nuclear exchange occurs.

     

    The good news is there is a way out of this crisis — however imperfect it may be. In the two scenarios where nuclear war was averted, direct negotiations led to a ceasefire.

    I repeat again that it is absolutely pants-on-head gibbering insanity that these direct negotiations are not already presently underway. Let us petition any and all higher powers we have faith in that this changes very soon. Let us also petition the leaders of our individual nations around the world to exert whatever kind of pressure they can muster upon Washington for these talks to commence. This brinkmanship threatens us all, and the managers of the US empire have no business playing these games with our lives.

    _______________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, buying an issue of my monthly zine, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Whenever it Truly Matters, from Assange to Corbyn, George Monbiot cripples the Left

    Guardian columnist George Monbiot is, by his own admission, a very busy man. Dedicated as he is to issues such as soil loss, he has yet to find the time to throw his weight behind the campaign to free Julian Assange.

    When thousands of supporters poured into London from all over the world at the weekend to besiege the British Parliament, creating a human chain around it, Monbiot, like his newspaper the Guardian, ignored the event.

    Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has been rotting in a UK high-security prison for years, as the United States works through a series of lawfare strategies to extradite him and lock him up indefinitely in a maximum-security jail on the other side of the Atlantic.

    Assange’s crime is doing real journalism: he published incontrovertible evidence of US and British war crimes in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. That kind of journalism has now been reclassified by Washington as espionage and treason, even though Assange is not a US citizen and did none of the work in the US. Plots by the CIA to murder and kidnap Assange have also come to light.

    Should his oppressors succeed, a very clear message will be sent to other journalists around the globe that the US is ready to come after them too if they disclose its crimes. The chilling effect on investigative journalism is already palpable.

    So, you might imagine, even a journalist like Monbiot – one primarily concerned about soil loss and other environmental concerns – should be worried by Assange’s fate. In the circumstances he might consider it worth publicising this threat to the most fundamental of our freedoms: the ability to know what our governments are up to and hold them to account.

    After all, Monbiot’s columns exposing the threats to our soil will be all the poorer if investigative journalism of the kind Assange excelled in before his silencing continues to be snuffed out by the US and UK’s joint terror campaign on whistleblowers and those who offer them a secure platform. How will we ever know what is being done behind our backs by governments and major corporations, or how they are keeping us in the dark about their political and environmental crimes and misdeeds, if fighters for transparency like Assange can simply be disappeared?

    But Monbiot is apparently not persuaded. He is yet to find the space or time for a column on this, the biggest threat to media freedom in our lifetime.

    When the Guardian columnist did take a week off from writing about soil loss and related topics, Assange’s plight, sadly, was still considered of insufficient import. As I have noted before, Monbiot decided it was more important to fill his empty slot in the paper’s commentary pages with denunciations of journalists like John Pilger for failing to be vocal enough in condemning Russia for invading Ukraine.

    Monbiot, it seems, felt he had to prioritise defending journalism from the menace posed by independent journalists on the left over any threat posed by the combined force of the US and British national-security states.

    But maybe the issue for Monbiot really is, as he has openly worried before, that he does not have anything sufficiently interesting to add to the topic because Assange’s persecution is already being detailed so fully by … a handful of independent journalists – those like John Pilger he wishes to bully into silence.

    Monbiot apparently does not need to dedicate a column to Assange, one that might alert millions of Guardian readers to the continuing persecution of a western journalist and the related assault on journalism, because independent left-wing writers – ones being algorithmed into oblivion by social media platforms – are covering the issue already.

    Breaking the rule book

    Those unsure whether Monbiot is arguing in good faith – and whether, aside from matters that touch directly on his environmental brief, he actually represents anything that can be seriously called “the left” – might consider his latest astounding tweet. He issued this one at the weekend, presumably adding so much to the burden of work that he could not find time to express his support for the human chain trying desperately to draw attention to the endless procedural and legal abuses at the heart the Assange case.

    Nonetheless, we should celebrate the fact that Monbiot took time from his busy environmental schedule to watch the first of The Labour Files, Al Jazeera’s explosive four-part documentary. The programmes draw on a huge cache of leaked internal Labour party files that show how the party’s right-wing bureaucracy broke Labour’s own rule book – as well as the law – to surveil, smear, bully and expel members that were seen as left-wing or supporters of Corbyn. Current leader Sir Keir Starmer appears to be colluding with, if not directing, this horror show.

    These Labour officials – who have been regularly termed “whistleblowers” by Monbiot’s employer, the Guardian – worked secretly to sabotage the 2017 election, including by helping to weaponise antisemitism to ensure Corbyn was unelectable, while at the same time demonstrating what looks suspiciously like a deep-seated racism in the treatment of black and Muslim party members, often because the BAME community were seen as stalwart allies of Corbyn, given his long-time activism against racism.

    So how did Monbiot respond to his belated exposure to The Labour Files? He tweeted:

    I’ve just watched Al Jazeera’s The Labour Files: The Crisis, about the handling of anti-semitism allegations. I found it deeply shocking. But I’m very unsure of myself on this issue. Have there been any rebuttals? Is there substantive evidence countering its claims? Thank you.

    Very unsure of himself? What surprising modesty and reticence from a journalist more usually ready with an opinion on a diverse range of topics – many concerning issues where he appears not to have read further than the headlines of his paper, the Guardian. Maybe it is too churlish to remember this 2011 Monbiot tweet on Assange, one that has fared badly with the passing of time:

    Why does Assange still have so much uncritical support? Seems to me he’s acting like a tinpot dictator

    Or how about his sudden and unexpected expertise in tripartite extradition law, between the US, Britain and Sweden? In 2012, he confidently observed:

    Harder to extrad[ite] him [Assange] from Sweden than UK, as US wld then have to go through 2 jurisdictions, not one.

    In fact, as people who know a lot more than Monbiot about such matters pointed out at the time, this was nonsense. Nils Melzer, an international law professor and the former United Nations expert on torture, recently wrote a book that set out good reasons why his lawyers would have assessed he was likely to be in far greater jeopardy in Sweden, where the extradition process was even more politicised than in the UK.

    Similarly, Monbiot has regularly chosen to offer his uninformed opinions on events taking place in far-off lands, from Syria to Ukraine. Why then the sudden loss of confidence when it comes to a matter happening on his doorstep, one that played out over seven years on the front pages of the establishment media, including his own newspaper, and whose evidentiary basis had been aired well before The Labour Files, in a leaked Labour internal report and the Forde inquiry’s report into that leak.

    Al Jazeera’s The Labour Files doesn’t cover much new ground. It deepens and enriches the evidence for abuses that were already in the public domain, including the collusion of newspapers like the Guardian with the Labour party bureaucracy in smearing as antisemites Corbyn and his supporters in the party, including many Jewish members.

    There has long been masses of information for Monbiot to get his teeth into, had he chosen to break with the enforced Guardian and media consensus and look into the matter. But like his colleagues, from the Daily Mail to the Guardian, he remained silent or amplified the lies rather than risk the career damage of challenging them as those independent journalists he so excoriates dared to do.

    Following the herd

    In fact, Monbiot’s seeming good-faith request for more evidence to assess the Al Jazeera documentary is treachery of the worst kind. Had he really wished to be better informed, he could have spoken long ago to Jewish Labour party members like Naomi Wimborne Idrissi who have been vilified and purged from Labour because they disputed the confected political and media narrative that Corbyn was an antisemite.

    Rather than show solidarity with them, or question what was happening, Monbiot once again followed the corporate herd; once again he ensured there was no one defending, let alone representing the views of, the British left as it was being defamed in the establishment media; and once again he helped to provide the veneer a supposed bipartisan consensus that Corbyn and his supporters were beyond the pale.

    In 2018, at the height of the antisemitism witch-hunt, Monbiot tweeted:

    It dismays me to say it, as someone who has invested so much hope in the current Labour Party, but I think @shattenstone is right: Jeremy Corbyn’s 2013 comments about “Zionists” were antisemitic and unacceptable.

    There is a reason that Monbiot suddenly professes to be interested in questioning whether the rampant, evidence-free antisemitism claims against Corbyn and large swaths of the Labour party were valid. Because, with the broadcasting of the Al-Jazeera documentary, he finds himself increasingly cornered. He looks ever more the charlatan, a journalist who withdrew from the struggle, standing silently by while the only chance to stop Britain’s endless political drift rightwards was eviscerated with lies promoted by the corporate media that pays his salary.

    And he did so, of course, in tandem with the campaign cheer-led by his own newspaper, the Guardian, to demonise the Labour left, as Al Jazeera documents.

    Rather than take a stand against the McCarthyism occurring right under his nose, witch-hunts that destroyed the British left’s chances of making the Labour party a meaningful alternative to the Conservatives’ “free market” zealotry, he focused his guns on left-wing journalists. He misrepresented as apologism for Putin their critiques of western hypocrisy and of Nato’s pursuit of a proxy war in Ukraine.

    Monbiot is a bad-faith actor for a further reason. Here is a reminder of his faux-naïve questions about The Labour Files:

    Have there been any rebuttals? Is there substantive evidence countering its claims?

    These hollow concerns should stick in his craw. Monbiot is a journalist. He knows as well as I do that Al Jazeera lawyered its programmes over and over again until it was certain that every part of them could be stood up, knowing that otherwise they would attract law suits like flies to a carcass. The feeding frenzy would have crippled the station.

    Monbiot knows, as I do, that if Al Jazeera had made a single solitary slip-up, the BBC, the Guardian and everyone else would be using it to discredit all the other claims in the four programmes. The noise would drown out every other issue raised in the programme.

    Monbiot knows, as I do, that the blanket silence from a corporate media deeply implicated in the fabrication of the Labour antisemitism narrative is proof alone that Al Jazeera’s claims are true – as are the deceitful responses from senior Labour politicians who, when challenged, profess not to have watched, or in some cases even heard of, the documentary. One doesn’t need to be a veteran poker player to spot the tell in that conspiracy of silence.

    Monbiot knows all of this. He is playing dumb, in the hope that his followers will fall for his act. In asking his questions, he is not trying to shed light on the Al Jazeera revelations. He is trying to keep those revelations obscured, in deep shadow, for a little longer.

    CIA talking points

    There is a pattern with Monbiot, one that he has been repeating for years. His position on every major issue, aside from his genuine passion for the environment, chimes precisely with that of his employer, the Guardian. He goes only as far as he is given licence to. He is not on the left, he is not a dissident, he is not even his own man. He is owned. He is a salary man. He is a corporate stooge.

    Even his environmentalism, invaluable as it invariably is, has been cynically weaponised by the Guardian. It provides a hook to draw in leftists who might stray elsewhere – and thereby help fund genuinely independent outlets – were they not offered a sop to keep them loyal to the Guardian corporate brand. Monbiot is the media equivalent of a promotional line to keep a supermarket’s shoppers satisfied.

    On foreign affairs, he promotes CIA talking points, advancing Washington’s ever expanding, ever more lucrative war on terror – wars that ravage the environment he supposedly cares about and constantly deflect our energies and attention from doing anything to tackle the ever more urgent climate crisis.

    He readily castigates anyone who tries to point this out as a Putin apologist, choking off the ability of the left – the one group equipped to challenge establishment propaganda – to air meaningful foreign policy debates.

    At home, he has equivocated on the biggest, most vital issues of our times.

    He indulged the Corbyn smears, even when it meant ushering in a fanatical right-wing government that is driving the destruction of the environment at break-neck speed. Even now, he professes doubts about the latest weighty evidence from Al Jazeera that confirms the earlier, equally weighty evidence that those smears were never rooted in any kind of reality.

    He has whispered his support for Assange, while doing nothing to galvanise the left into fighting not only for Assange’s personal freedom but for the freedoms of other journalists and the whistleblowers they depend on. In doing so, he has stifled efforts to shine a light into the very darkest corners of the machinery of the security state so that the public can know what is being done in its name. And further, in abandoning Assange he has abandoned the only journalist who had built a counter-weight, in Wikileaks, to take on that machinery.

    Far more is at stake here than simply griping about Monbiot’s failings. Just as Monbiot follows the company line set by the Guardian, never daring to stray far from the path laid down for him, so much of the left all too readily follows Monbiot, taking their cues from his take on events even though all too often he is simply regurgitating the consensus of the liberal wing of the establishment in which the Guardian is embedded.

    Monbiot is treated by much of the left as a figurehead, one whose environmentalism earns him credibility and credit with the left on foreign policy issues, from Syria to Ukraine, in which he echoes the same talking points one hears from Keir Starmer to Liz Truss. While on matters at home, like Assange and Corbyn, he sucks the wind out of the left’s sails.

    As the saying goes, if Monbiot did not exist, the establishment would have had to invent him. Their dirty work looks so much cleaner with him onboard.

    The post Whenever it Truly Matters, from Assange to Corbyn, George Monbiot cripples the Left first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Top Senate Democrat Vows to Block All Future Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia

    The Democratic chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee pledged late Monday to block all future U.S. weapons sales to Saudi Arabia as backlash over OPEC’s decision to cut oil production and push up gas prices continues to grow on Capitol Hill.

    Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who has veto power over foreign arms sales, said in a statement that OPEC’s plan to slash production by two million barrels a day in a bid to prop up oil prices amounts to a “decision to help underwrite Putin’s war.” Russia, an OPEC ally, stands to benefit from higher oil prices without having to reduce its own production.

    “The United States must immediately freeze all aspects of our cooperation with Saudi Arabia, including any arms sales and security cooperation beyond what is absolutely necessary to defend U.S. personnel and interests,” Menendez said Monday. “As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I will not green-light any cooperation with Riyadh until the kingdom reassesses its position with respect to the war in Ukraine. Enough is enough.”

    With his statement, Menendez — a war hawk — joined progressive lawmakers such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) in demanding an end to U.S. military aid to the Saudis, the largest buyer of American weaponry.

    On Sunday, Khanna and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) announced legislation that would “immediately halt all U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia.” Last week, three House Democrats introduced a bill that would require the removal of U.S. troops and missile defense systems from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a leading member of the OPEC cartel.

    Over the past several years, the U.S. has approved tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons sales to the Saudis as they’ve waged a catastrophic war on Yemen, sparking a massive humanitarian crisis. The U.S. has also cooperated with the Saudis militarily in other ways, including by refueling the oil kingdom’s warplanes, supplying fighter jet parts, and teaming up with the country’s murderous leadership to build high-tech bomb parts.

    Recent congressional efforts to block arms sales to the Saudis — including major deals approved by the Biden administration — have fallen short, but the OPEC decision could mark a key turning point as top Democratic lawmakers demand a complete reevaluation of U.S.-Saudi relations.

    Just over a year ago, Menendez notably opposed a Senate resolution that aimed to block a $650 million sale of missiles to the Saudis. The bipartisan resolution ultimately failed to clear the upper chamber.

    In a statement last week, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) — the chamber’s second-ranking Democrat and a supporter of previous attempts to block arms sales to the Saudis — declared that “it’s time for our foreign policy to imagine a world without this alliance with these royal backstabbers.”

    “From unanswered questions about 9/11, the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and the exporting of extremism, to dubious jailing of peaceful dissidents and conspiring with Vladimir Putin to punish the U.S. with higher oil prices, the Saudi royal family has never been a trustworthy ally of our nation,” Durbin said.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Evolving Big Brains Only To Go Extinct From Stupidity: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    It’s really too bad that anyone who thinks it might be a good idea to stop exponentially escalating this proxy war is an evil Nazi Putin propagandist, because things are getting very very dangerous.

    Normal person: I think it would be good if everyone didn’t die in a nuclear holocaust.

    Crazy person: That means you love Vladimir Putin.

    Normal person: No I just think it would be a good idea to try to prevent the horrific death of literally everyone.

    Crazy person: How much is the Kremlin paying you to say that?

    Fucking lunatics.

    Resisting nuclear armageddon is the least partisan position that anyone could possibly have. The least one-sided. The least “campist”. It’s just being a normal human organism with the most normal human impulse you could possibly come up with. It’s absolutely insane that anyone tries to spin it otherwise.

    A society where opposing nuclear armageddon is treated as freakish and evil is the most backwards and insane society imaginable. Seriously, try to imagine anything crazier and more backwards than that. A society where everyone walks and drives backwards? That’s less crazy and backwards. A society where the dogs own the people? That’s less crazy and backwards.

    This is it. This is peak crazy. A thinking species which regards as outrageous heresy any opposition to brinkmanship that can cause its extinction cannot get any more crazy. It’s turned as far away from sanity as any thinking creature could possibly be.

    ❖

    Maybe it would be wise to stop playing the “Let’s cross Putin’s red lines, I bet he’s bluffing this time” game.

    ❖

    People who aren’t gravely concerned about the rapidly escalating brinkmanship between the US and Russia simply have not spent enough time researching the facts and contemplating the reality of what nuclear war would mean. Their composure comes solely from psychological avoidance.

    ❖

    It is a bit hilarious that humans rapidly evolved these massive brains only to become the first species to go extinct due to stupidity.

    ❖

    FYI you should always be less trusting of your government in times of war, not more.

    ❖

    Analysis of the war in Ukraine which does not account for the western provocations which gave rise to it is not analysis at all. It’s propagandistic children’s literature.

    ❖

    If your proxy war demands nonstop PR spin and mass media propaganda at maximum aggression to manufacture public consent for it, maybe your proxy war is immoral and bad.

    ❖

    ❖

    The only way you can believe Russia is threatening with nuclear weapons in a way the US is not would be to think the US has a No First Use nuclear policy. Which would of course be false and silly.

    ❖

    When one side of the new cold war wants multipolarity where world power is much less centralized and the other side wants unipolar planetary domination where the entire world obeys Washington DC and its puppet masters, it’s not hard to figure out which side is the aggressor.

    ❖

    Be completely dismissive of those who object to your criticisms of western imperial aggression. The one and only reason they expect their dopey opinions to be taken seriously is because their position has been artificially normalized by copious amounts of propaganda. That’s it.

    The one and only thing making your worldview look strange and suspicious and the worldview of empire apologists look normal is the fact that we’ve all been swimming in empire propaganda our entire lives. It’s got nothing to do with the factuality or validity of anyone’s position. In reality, focusing one’s criticisms on the most dangerous impulses of the most powerful and destructive power structure on earth is the normal thing to do. It’s not strange and suspicious when you do it, it’s strange and suspicious that everyone else does not.

    ______________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, buying an issue of my monthly zine, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Russian Army Fires Old Sparky: US Loses the Electric War in Ukraine

    Introductory annotation by Patrice Greanville, editor of the Greanville Post:

    As we could reliably predict, the Western media are self-righteously denouncing Moscow and rending their garments in an orgy of hypocrisy over what they frame as an act of “depraved terror”.  Unfortunately, the hundreds of millions in the captive audience have nowhere to turn (or know how) to find out the truth and the proper historical context for the Ukraine war, the first thing the Western media suppressed even before the war formally began last February.

    It must be noted that this sudden “rain of missiles” is virtually inexplicable if we follow Western media reports. The explanation for this contradiction is given by Moon of Alabama, who, with great irony but with 100% accuracy, headlines its 10 October dispatch, “Russia, Having ‘Run Out Of Missiles’, Launches Barrage On Ukraine,” adding,

    Back in March I had warned that Lies Do Not Win Wars. Here is another practical example.
    After allegedly having ‘run out of missiles’ and, more importantly, patience, the leadership of the Russian Federation decided to de-electrify Ukrainian cities with a ‘barrage of missile strikes’.

    MoA then lists no less than 25 examples of Western media proclaiming with great seriousness that Putin was about to run out of missiles. This pathetic campaign (see a sample from MoA below), one of many strands pushed by the West’s Big Lie ministry, which has been simply totalitarian when “covering” the Ukraine conflict,  went on from March to the present. We expect it to now finally halt, if for sheer decency, which they apparently lack, for no other reason than the impossibility of denying the obvious:

    BUT, since objectivity is for Journalism School chumps and not serious matters like imperial propaganda, the press is wasting no time to milk the latest news for maximum Russophobic effect. Unsurprising then to find CBS, a major US engine of shameless disinformation in the global news machinery, covering the story thusly (we have bolded some of the more revoltingly tendentious passages and terms):

    Russia rains missiles down on Ukraine’s capital and other cities in retaliation for Crimea bridge blast
    / CBS/AFP

    President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday people were killed and injured in multiple missile strikes on cities across Ukraine, including the first bombardment of the capital in months. CBS News senior foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata1 said the strikes, which could signal a major escalation in the eight-month-old war, appeared to be entirely punitive — retaliation meant to terrorize Ukrainian civilians2 in densely-populated urban neighborhoods, close to government buildings, with one even hitting a children’s playground.
     
    Ukraine’s national police later said at least 10 people were killed and about 60 others injured by the missile strikes early Monday morning.

     Russia’s strongman leader Vladimir Putin acknowledged the barrage of missiles, which Russia claimed targeted only energy infrastructure, was retaliation for an apparent Ukrainian attack on a key bridge over the weekend. Putin warned Monday that if Ukraine continued to mount “terrorist attacks” on Russia, his regime’s response would be “tough and proportionate to the level of threats.”
     
    “Unfortunately there are dead and wounded. Please do not leave the shelters,” Zelenskyy told Ukraine’s citizens on social media earlier Monday, accusing Russia of wanting to “wipe us from the face of the Earth.”

    APTOPIX Russia Ukraine War

    Rescue workers survey the scene of a Russian attack on Kyiv, Ukraine on Oct. 10, 2022. Several explosions rocked the city early in the morning following months of relative calm in the Ukrainian capital.ADAM SCHRECK / AP

    The explosions in Kyiv and other cities came just a day after Putin blamed Kyiv for a massive explosion on a 12-mile bridge connecting Crimea with Russia. Crimea is a large Ukrainian peninsula that Russia occupied and then unilaterally annexed eight years ago during a previous invasion. The annexation of that territory, like Putin’s recent land grab3 of four Ukrainian regions that he declared Russian soil last week, have been condemned as illegitimate and illegal by Ukraine, the United Nations, the U.S. and other Ukrainian partners.

    The CBS report could not avoid calling the attack a “war crime”, standard appellation for anything done by Russia and Putin in this conflict. They conveniently forget that it is US military doctrine (seen repeatedly in recent Gulf wars, etc.) to attack electricity power grids on the very first day of the onslaught, immediately condemning the country to severe stress due to lack of running water, heat, and the multitude of vital activities that electricity permits in modern society. (See more on this in our attached John Helmer report).The CBS report however grudgingly admitted that Moscow had apparently accomplished its purpose:

    As the European Union condemned Russia’s attack and said the targeting of civilians amounted to “a war crime,” Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed the “massive strike with long-range precision weapons.” It claimed the missiles had targeted “objects of the military command and control, communications and energy systems of Ukraine” and that “all assigned objects were hit.”

    (CBS/AFP News, Oct 10, 2022)

    Meantime, Kiev, who, like the West, places great stock on the wiles of hybrid war, virtually acknowledged its hand in the terrorist strike on the Crimea bridge by circulating a stamp that gloated over the incident. The stamp appeared almost immediately after the bridge was blown up.

    By John Helmer, Moscow
    @bears_with

    In the propaganda war the Ukrainian-supplied western media, led by Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers, have just announced the discovery of a box of gold teeth “in a suspected [sic] Russian torture chamber, prompting claims [sic] they were wrenched from victims [sic] of President Putin’s occupying forces in Kharkov [sic].”

    They are concealing that the Ukrainians of Kharkov whose teeth are fully intact inside their mouths can no longer operate their electric toothbrushes. There’s no electricity. Not for torture. Just enough for the allegations to be fabricated, published, and transmitted on the internet.

    According to Ukrainian sources, about 1,700 cities, towns and villages, with about 1 million consumers, were without power in mid-March; the most seriously affected were the regions of  Sumy, Chernigov, Nikolaev and Donetsk. On May 3, Ukrainian and western media reported a missile strike against power plants in the western Galicia region capital of Lvov; sub-stations supplying electricity to the railway system in the region were also hit.  The biggest of the Russian attacks on Ukrainian electricity plants was reported in the western press, again quoting Kiev sources, on September 11-12.  Power plants in Kharkov, Sumy, Poltava and Dnipropetrovsk regions were stopped.

    A report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), issued on October 6, confirms there was a sharp fall in consumer demand for electricity following these attacks; this appears as a gap in the data chart between September 11 and 13. Kiev officials claimthat the generating plants were  repaired and power restored.   The IEA report,  which relies upon and repeats data provided by the state utility Ukrenergo,  claims that just before the Russian strikes,  demand was running at 9.07 GW on Saturday, September 10, and that by the following Tuesday it was 13.56 GW.

    According to the IEA, “Ukraine’s electricity demand has fallen by about 40% since Russia’s invasion with no sign of recovery. Demand keeps decreasing slowly every week. The resulting decline in power generation has mainly taken place in nuclear. But coal-fired generation has also decreased.”  An IEA chart of power generation figures shows that from a peak of 21.87 GW on January 25, the production of electricity reported on October 5 had fallen to 11.41 GW – a cut of 48%.
     
    However, the same IEA report claims that since a low point was reached on June 26 of 9.13 GW, Ukrenergo has also been managing to restore output by 25%.
     
    A North American military specialist in infrastructure demolition and salvage, now retired, says these data are being faked by Ukrenergo. “The Russian strikes also interrupt data recording and reporting. The Ukrainians are not too keen to show weakness as they are anxious to be seen as a reliable supplier of electricity.”
     
    Slowly but surely, but also secretly, the war is destroying the electric generation on which the Ukraine depends for everything –  trains, water pumps, sewage treatment, light, heat, mobile telephones, refrigerators, radio and television, not to mention production lines in factories, in abattoirs,  sausage making and other farm and food processing.
     
    However, there remains electricity for the Ukrainian military operations to continue on the eastern front, and for cross-border trains to run into Lvov from Poland with fresh arms,  ammunition, and rotating allied military staff advisers, together with NATO politicians and journalists keen to advertise their support.
     
    In the wake of the attack on the Crimean Bridge, the electric war can now be expected to escalate.

    In this Ukrainian report of March 2022,   the “base installed generating capacity” of the country was reported at 56 GW at 2020 —  64% from thermal power plants, 25% nuclear and 10% hydro. The remaining 1%, offset by some hydro storage, was accounted for by solar, wind and other small generators.

    Source:  Olga Sushyk, Deputy Director of the Centre for European Studies at the Educational and Scientific Institute of Law, and Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv: “Ukraine’s Power System: Power and War”, published on March 17, 2022.

    Source for enlarged view: file:///D:/Backups/Downloads/

    Source: Lyudmila Vlasenko, Head of Electricity Sector Development Unit, Ukrainian Ministry of Energy and Coal Sector – report titled “Power System of Ukraine: Today and Tomorrow”, July 2013. Since  July of this year DTEK, the generation company owned by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, has reported that “about 90% of Ukraine’s wind capacity and 30% of solar parks are offline because they are in occupied territories.”

    The Sushyk-Shevchenko report says that “due to damage to the electricity infrastructure, as of March 16, 2022, more than 1,679 Ukrainian localities remained without electricity – that’s about 928,000 consumers. The worst situation with electricity supply is in Sumy, Chernigov, Nikolaev, Kiev, and Donetsk regions.”

     

    An earlier background briefing paper from the International Energy Agency (IEA), dated 2021, confirms the pre-war details.  Here’s IEA’s backgrounder on Ukrainian electricity generation, apparently as of 2018.

     

    The IEA also publishes daily updated charts of the collapse of Ukrainian electricity production; these are based on data supplied by Ukrenergo. These charts show the losses up to October 9.

    The same source also shows this chart of Ukrainian electricity demand; demand responds to the cutoff of coal, gas and nuclear-fired generating plants by increasing use of domestic electrical heaters and back-up electrical generators.

    Since 2014 Ukraine has lost a third of its energy generation which had been located in the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Another 10 power plants were lost in 2014-2015, and seventeen more in 2022, according to a new assessment published last Friday in Vzglyad of Moscow by Nikolai Storozhenko.

     

    “Zaporozhye NPP [Nuclear Power Plant] stands out among them, of course. But this does not mean that the others are not worth attention. For example, the Zaporozhye thermal power plant (Energodar) has an installed capacity of more than 3,500 MW and can potentially produce 23-25 billion kWh (the annual plan for the NPP for 2022 was 37 billion kWh). In other words, the loss of this energy supply is a hole which, practically, the Ukraine can do nothing to close, and which will largely determine the problems of the Ukrainian winter of 2022/23.”

     

    “Ukraine lost another 4% of electricity generation as a result of the fighting from February to September, according to the assessment of the National Council for the Restoration of Ukraine. However, it is obvious that these data do not take into account the blows to the energy infrastructure  which were inflicted on September 11-12 (Kharkov CHPP-5, Zmievskaya CHPP, Pavlodar CHPP-3, Kremenchug CHPP). In general, the damage and reduction in the capacity of the energy system looks enormous for Ukraine and it is not entirely clear how Zelensky manages to sell electricity to Europe against this background.”
     

    “But, firstly, sales [to Europe] will soon stop, which Zelensky has already warned Europe about, declaring recently: ‘We will not have enough volume to heat our homes, and this time is approaching.’ Secondly, Ukraine’s energy system is losing power simultaneously with a decrease in consumption…Yury Korolchuk, an expert at the Institute of Energy Strategies [Kiev],  is urging consumers to be ready for five to six-hour rolling blackouts. Rolling blackouts are not news for Ukraine, but the realities of the last few years. Moreover, this year in the reports on the procurement of fuel for the winter, firewood began to appear…and the mayor of Lvov said in August that the city is buying and stocking wood for fuel.”
     

    “What about gas supply? In the summer, Naftogaz asked for several billion dollars to purchase 5-7 billion cubic meters of gas – to bring reserves to 19 billion cubic meters. But there was no money for this – and to date, only 14 billion cubic meters have been accumulated. On the one hand, the situation for gas is about the same as with electricity: consumption is falling. Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkov regions are either completely written off…, or their supplies will be cut to a minimum. In most cities of Kharkov, Donetsk, Nikolaev,  Sumy, Chernigov regions and Zaporozhye there will be no heating. There will be no gas in winter, there will be light periodically —  such a frightening forecast was published in the Telegram channel…half of this source’s forecasts come true – and they shout loudly about them. The second half does not come true – and no one remembers about them.”
     

    “But in this case, the forecast is not groundless….[Ukrainian state] Naftogaz is delaying the conclusion of gas supply contracts with the gas distribution companies in the Kharkov and Dniepropetrovsk regions. At this point, it is worth remembering how, back in early summer, Zelensky’s office directly told the residents of the Donetsk region: go wherever you want, there will be no heating in winter.”
     

    “In other words, the Ukrainian strategy is something like this. There are the combat areas and those adjacent to them. There the population has already dispersed or has greatly decreased; there is a risk of attacks on the facilities themselves and fuel depots. So, it is in these areas that it will be hardest to winter. It will be more comfortable for Kiev which has its own thermal power plants and there is an opportunity to add power from western Ukrainian nuclear power plants, and for the Galician region of western Ukraine [Lvov]. Also, there are about three to four million internally displaced people  in Ukraine who have resettled mainly in these regions. Who should be kept without electricity and gas: the half-empty areas of the Zaporozhye region or Kiev? The choice is obvious.”
     

    This is how the Ukrainian energy experts view their choice from Kiev. The strategic options for the Russian General Staff and Kremlin remain secret, if not undecided.
     
    In the aftermath of the Crimean Bridge attack, Moscow television figures like Vladimir Soloviev have broadcast calls to extend the military campaign westward to Lvov and the Polish border. “It is obvious,” Soloviev said on Saturday, “that the NATO command took part in the development of this [Crimean Bridge] sabotage… What is our plan? Not to follow the enemy’s scenario, but to disrupt their plans, striking unexpected blows in directions where the enemy is not anticipating them. Ukraine should be plunged into dark times. Bridges, dams, railways, thermal power plants,  and other infrastructure facilities should be destroyed throughout the territory of Ukraine. There should be no administrative office building operating in both Kiev and Lvov. And not only that.”
     

    Left: a screen shot of a Kharkov substation after the September 11-12 attacks. Centre: Vladimir Soloviev, Moscow broadcaster and advocate for escalation. Russian and Crimean government officials are quieting the tone by announcing that train traffic on the Crimean Bridge has already resumed; that one road span is undamaged and will resume operation shortly; and replacement of the damaged road span will follow.
     
    A combined US and European Union (EU) plan to link the Ukrainian electricity grid to the EU system, and thus provide supply back-up in case the Ukrainian grid was attacked by the Russian Army, has already failed. A US publication headlined the attempt “The Race to Rescue Ukraine’s Power Grid From Russia”; click to read.
     
    “The test was years in the making, one of the final rituals in a drawn-out courtship between the Ukrainian and European power grids known as “synchronization.” But before it could join with Europe, Ukrenergo first had to prove it could keep the lights on without its connections to Belarus and Russia—in ‘island mode.’ The plan was to reconnect with its neighbours after a few days. Then in 2023 it would switch on the links with Europe.”
     
    “That’s not what happened. Instead, on February 24, the same day as the test, Russia invaded. Since noon that day, Ukraine—in coordination with its southern neighbour Moldova—has been powering itself solo. It’s a balancing act. Changing where the power comes from and where it goes means some lines suddenly get clogged with electrons while others dry up. It can be difficult to maintain balance for any length of time. So far, the Ukrainian grid is humming along at a frequency of 50 Hertz—stable, in other words—a Ukrenergo spokesperson told WIRED by email. But it’s risky to continue that way indefinitely, especially during a war. When stuff breaks in the power grid, the whole system has to absorb the shock and rebalance. And right now, a lot is breaking across Ukraine…Last week, Kadri Simson, the European commissioner for energy, said  the group representing the region’s transmission operators, will come to the rescue, potentially within weeks.”
     
    This was wishful thinking on the part of the Latvian official in Brussels. For Simson’s record of faking on the EU’s gas substitution schemes, and the Russian response, read this report from October 2021.
     
    The assessment of the North American expert on military operations against energy infrastructure focuses on the Russian side’s strategy until now, before considering the military options for the future. In addition to covering up the evidence of power generation losses by the Ukrainians which the source reports from Urkrenergo and IEA, he says the Russians have limited their attacks until now to “a form of reconnaissance by force. Their purpose”, he believes, ” has been to determine what generating capacity remains, what can be repaired, how to interdict the human repair logistics, what is irreparably lost, and then to attrite the remaining Ukrainian materiel and human resources as the winter season approaches.”
     
    “It appears to me that the Ukrainians are extremely hard-pressed to maintain and restore their electrical grid, most especially in the eastern regions. They are just as concerned to the point of adding and testing back-up generators at key nodes of the grid, especially in Kiev. By the way, the precedent for the Russian General Staff and Kremlin for destroying a country’s electrical grid was set during the NATO bombing of Serbia and then by the US air bombing of Iraq.”
     
    For a history of US Air Force (USAF) strategy in attacking electric generation and distribution grids, read this USAF University thesis, entitled “Strategic Attack of National Electrical Systems”, dated 1994:   “The USAF has long favoured attacking electrical power systems. Electric power has been considered a critical target in every war since World War II, and will likely be nominated in the future… The evidence shows that the only sound reason for attacking electrical power is to affect the production of war materiel in a war of attrition against a self-supporting nation-state without outside assistance.”

    Left: Major Thomas Griffith’s USAF study of 1994. Centre:  Iraqi electric relay unit bombed by the US Air Force in Operation Desert Storm in 1990-91.   Right:  Serbian generating plant damage after the USAF and European bombing campaign of May 1999.

    The western military source again: “War is war, whether you want to use terms like hybrid war or proxy war. It means destroying the enemy’s capacity to make war.  Shutting off the power in the rump Ukrainian state will do just that to the Ukrainians. If they then start to flee for refuge to Poland and Germany, this will be a disaster unparalleled in recent European history. Just the attendant collapse in telecommunications will make the place a madhouse. You can well imagine the rest. Already there are queues for water in Nikolaev, and who knows where else. How does  queueing for water, if there is any, in temperatures of minus-20C to minus-40C sound?  This won’t be like the blackouts from US sanctions and attacks in Cuba or Venezuela – there they didn’t  have to worry about freezing to death, the pipes bursting, or irreparable damage being done to billions of dollars’ worth of pumping, electrical,  and other equipment due to freezing.”
     
    “How many people realize that a sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) circuit breaker,  commonly used in electrical substations, requires an electric heating blanket to be functional in sub-zero weather? Most westerners don’t. They are common in high-voltage substations which ultimately feed the grid lines with power. In the Ukrainian case, I suspect  there is a mixture of those and older style oil circuit breakers (OCB), along with oil-filled large power transformers (LPT),  which are essential to electrical distribution. And guess where most of the oil comes from to fill these devices?”
     
    “I suspect that most of Zelensky’s officials and officials in the supporting EU governments have persuaded themselves with their own propaganda. They aren’t daring to think through these questions, any more than they care to understand that the housing of the pumps delivering their water and treating their sewage will freeze and split apart if they are not heated via electrical means. Even if the gas is on — and it won’t be — electricity is needed to ignite, then control, furnaces. How many of these officials understand the long lead times, compounded by manufacturing shutdowns due to high energy costs, which you must have to replace and restore everything?”
     
    “Who then will ‘stand with Ukraine’ when the gas and electricity rationing and unpayable consumer bills  roll over the Ukrainian border and into Poland, Germany, France, and the UK, as they are already doing?”
     
    “The Russians have been hitting the Ukrainian electrical distribution system for months now. As we know, they started with the rail traction power yards which are largely branches of the wider electric grid. Now they have moved to the substations and so-called ‘thermal power’  plants, hitting them in what seems to be pellmell fashion. I expect that the Russians are gathering intelligence now on repair times, re-equipment availability, deliveries, repair crew composition and coordination.”

    Source: https://transformers-magazine.com

    “So let’s imagine this. Winter arrives. The power is cut in Kharkov, Dniepropetrovsk, Pavlovsk, Nikolaev etc. and due to the unavailability of spares, repair crews, respite from attack, or all three, the outlook for the power outage is indefinite. What do people do? They migrate to where there is power, running water, heat etc… For millions this means west. So off they go. And when enough of them get there, bam! the power goes off there too.”

    Source for enlarged view: https://eneken.ieej.or.jp — page 6.

    Reading the grid maps of the Ukraine,  the source says “it is obvious that the real vulnerability, in my estimation, lies in the approximately 88 substations for 330 kV distribution and 33 substations for 220 kV distribution. Note the nodes or junctions. Those are substations connecting the distribution lines which crisscross the Ukraine. These substations contain large power transformers, switchgear, DCS equipment [Distributed Control System] and other power quality and control equipment, spares etc. Widespread coordinated strikes on these substations will quickly overwhelm the Ukrainian ability to effect repairs and re-balance the loads on the generation stations. This will create a cascade effect whereby overloaded power plants and distribution gear will ‘trip out’ over wide swathes of the country – if the protection between the Ukrainian and EU grids does not operate in time, or there is wild voltage/frequency oscillations there could be large interruptions in the EU countries being fed from Ukrainian sources.”
     
    “Any repair efforts will also be severely hampered, if not crippled, if utility yards where spare cables and other gear, as well as vehicles (bucket and line trucks, cranes, etc.), are stored and parked are struck. Personnel losses among the finite number of utility crew members due to follow-up attacks and the inevitable mishaps that come with interacting with damaged or compromised high voltage electrical equipment, will quickly mount. If the attacks are launched during the hard winter months, the impact will be exponential, increasingly unmanageable and catastrophic as the hours go by.”
     
    The above by Editor — John Helmer on Sunday, October 9, 2022.

    1. A professional disinformer, identical to thousands of colleagues who work on Western media to produce and spread lies according to the given script from the State Dept. or other power centers in the Western ruling class.
    2. The pot calling the kettle black. This from a media platform that like the rest of the US-controlled media around the world, ignored and covered up the deliberate shelling of Donbas cities for eight long years by a Nazi-infested Ukrainian army built, trained and directed by NATO. The dead by now amount to more than 14,000. They are almost all civilians,  including many women and children. Throughout this period, Kiev’s military was also engaged in the deliberate shelling of schools, medical facilities and vital infrastructure: water plants, power stations and so on. Tell us, again, who started this nice clambake? Russia or Washington through its color revolutions and many vassal/accomplices?
    3. Yes, tell us about land grabs, please. More glaring examples of double-standard based on US exceptionalism. Since the turn of the 20th century, the US has invaded and occupied many nations, after subjecting them to brutal military attacks and repression. The annexed regions in Donbas were all heavily Russian, historically and culturally, something we can hardly say about the US grabbing the Philippines in the 1900s, or setting itself up for generations in Korea, or illegally occupying one-third of Syria, a nation Washington has been trying to regime-change now for a generation via dirty war using terrorist proxies. We don’t have to mention here in detail the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, two nations that the US and its NATO vassals invaded, occupied and destroyed for at least 30 years, with untold victims, before liberation came to the former thanks to their unrelenting struggle against the “crusader army”, with Iraq still attempting to get rid of the Washington infection. Of course, no mention is made here that these regions rejoined Russia not as a result of some perverse Putin whim, but after a formal referendum, whose validity is certainly no worse and probably a damn sight better than US elections.
    The post Russian Army Fires Old Sparky: US Loses the Electric War in Ukraine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The U.S. Is Leading the World Into the Abyss

    A few years after WW I, the poet T.S. Eliot opened his famous poem “The Wasteland” with these words: “April is the cruelest month … “  I think he may be wrong, for this October may be the cruelest month of all, followed by November.  Unprecedented.  You can hear the clicking and grating of spades if your antennae are attuned.

    We are on the brink of ominous events created by the U.S. war against Russia.  Yet so many people prefer to turn away and swallow the lies that the U.S. wants peace and not war and is the aggrieved party in the crisis.

    A friend of mine, who is constantly charging me with having turned right-wing because of my writing that accuses many traditional liberal/leftists of buying the national security state’s propaganda on the JFK assassination, “9/11,” Syria, Ukraine, Covid-19, censorship, the “New” Cold War, etc., and whose go-to news sources are The Guardian, CNN, The New York Times, NPR, ABC, seems oblivious to the fact that right and left have become useless terms and that these media are all mouthpieces for the CIA and their intelligence allies in the new Cold War; that the so-called right and left are joined at the hip with their obsession with Pax Americana.

    There are no right and left anymore; there are only free and independent voices or those of the caged parrots repeating what they have been taught to say:

    “Polly wants a war!”  “Polly wants a war.”

    I am afraid that I will never convince this dear friend otherwise and I find that depressing.  Yet I know such views are shared by millions of others and that even if nuclear war breaks out their minds will not change.  Propaganda runs very, very deep into their psyches, and they desperately want to believe.  Hitler said it clearly in Mein Kampf:

    The masses … are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

    Hitler learned so much about “manufacturing consent” from his American teachers Edward Bernays, Walter Lippmann, et al., who accomplished so much brainwashing of the American people.  They were all masters of the lie and millions continue to believe their followers.

    If nuclear weapons are again used (and everyone knows the only country to have used them), these believers will blame their use on Russia, even though Russia has made it very clear that it would only resort to such weapons if the country’s existence were threatened, while the U.S. continues affirming its right to preemptively use nuclear weapons when it so chooses.

    And even if nuclear weapons are not used, the recent sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines and the bombing of the Crimean Bridge, both clearly the work of U.S./NATO/Ukrainian forces, have raised the ante considerably.  The door to hell has just been opened wider, and I suspect not by accident, as the U.S. elections approach.

    In his recent television talk, Vladimir Putin made Russia’s nuclear position very clear, mentioning nuclear weapons only in the context of Western threats of using them, as Moon of Alabama reported.  Putin said:

    They [the U.S./NATO/Ukraine] have even resorted to the nuclear blackmail. I am referring not only to the Western-encouraged shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which poses a threat of a nuclear disaster, but also to the statements made by some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO countries on the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction – nuclear weapons – against Russia.

    I would like to remind those who make such statements regarding Russia that our country has different types of weapons as well, and some of them are more modern than the weapons NATO countries have. In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us. This is not a bluff.

    The citizens of Russia can rest assured that the territorial integrity of our Motherland, our independence and freedom will be defended – I repeat – by all the systems available to us. Those who are using nuclear blackmail against us should know that the wind rose can turn around.

    When the long-planned U.S. war against Russia, so obvious to anyone who sees past the propagandist headlines and studies the matter, soon explodes into full-scale open war for all to see in horror, as it will, these true believers will dig in their heels even more.  They will find new reasons to justify their faith, and it is akin to religious faith.  The infamous Rand Corporation’s 2019 report cited above, “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia,” cites the following as part of the war process, as summarized in the Strategic Culture article, but it will have no impact on the faithful believers:

    • Providing lethal military aid to Ukraine
    • Mobilizing European NATO members
    • Imposing deeper trade and economic sanctions
    • Increasing U.S. energy production for export to Europe
    • Expanding Europe’s import infrastructure to receive U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies

    I keep thinking of the U.S. false flag Gulf of Tonkin “incident” in 1964 and how effective that was in convincing the gullible population and the complicit U.S. Congress – by a vote of 88 to 2 in the Senate and 414 to 0 in the House of Representatives (try to imagine such criminals) – that U.S. destroyers were innocently attacked by the North Vietnamese and that Lyndon Johnson should be given the authority to respond to repel “communist aggression,” which, of course, he did by bombing North Vietnam and sending 500,000 troops to savagely destroy Vietnam and Vietnamese nearly 9,000 miles from the United States.  Johnson simply lied to wage war and Biden is doing the same today.  But far too many people love their leaders’ lies because it allows them to secretly feel justified in the lies they themselves tell in personal matters.  And what may be true of the distant past, can’t be true today.

    In 1965, the folk singer Tom Paxton put Johnson’s lies to music with “Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation“.  In those days, art was used as a weapon against U.S. propaganda.

    Today we can ask: Where have all the artists gone?

    We know that the U.S. has, for the time being, abandoned sending hundreds of thousands of troops into another country; now it is drones, air warfare, special forces, the CIA, mercenaries, terrorists, and intermediaries such as the Ukrainian conscripts, Azov Nazis, and NATO surrogates.  Such was the lesson of Vietnam when the draft led to massive protests and resistance.  Now war is waged less obviously and the propaganda is more extensive and constant as a result of digital media.

    There are many such examples of U.S. treachery, most notably the attacks of September 11, 2001, but such history is only open to those who take it upon themselves to investigate.

    Now there is the corrupt Ukrainian U.S. puppet government, which is nearly 6,000 miles from the United States, and must be defended from Russian “aggression,” just like the corrupt South Vietnamese U.S. puppet government was.

    To those who buy the mass media propaganda, I ask: Why is the U.S.A. always fighting to kill people so far from its shores?  Doesn’t it sound a bit odd that our wonderful leaders destroyed Libya, Vietnam, Serbia, the Philippines, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc., countries so far away, and now that Russia defends itself from U.S./NATO encroachment a few miles from its borders, it is accused of being the evil aggressors and Vladimir Putin called another Hitler like all the leaders of the countries we attacked?  Have you completely lost your ability to think?  Or do you, like little children, actually believe the disembodied newsreaders who deliver your prepackaged television propaganda?

    If I ask such an obvious question, does that make me a “right-winger”?

    If I state two facts: that Donald Trump – whom I consider despicable and part of the divide and conquer game as Biden’s flip side, and have said so – did not start a war against Russia and that Russia-gate was a Democratic propaganda stunt and is false, does that make me a right-winger?  My friend would say so. Do telling facts define your political allegiances, whether they be facts about Republicans or Democrats?

    No.  I will tell you what it makes me: A disgusted human being sickened by all the lies and people’s gullibility after decades of evidence that should have awakened them to the truth about all these politicians and the war against Russia underway.  I have lost patience with it.  For decades I have been writing about such propaganda to no avail.  Yes, those who tended to agree with me might have moved a little closer to my arguments, but the vast majority have not budged an iota.

    I wish it were different. It is my desire. Eduardo Galeano, the Uruguayan sage of the Americas, who knew what was up and what was down when he wrote Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World in 1998, said this about Desire:

    A man found Aladdin’s lamp lying around. Since he was a big reader, the man recognized it and rubbed it right away. The genie appeared, bowed deeply, and said, ‘At your service master. Your wish is my command. But there will be only one wish.

    Since he was a good boy, the man said, ‘I wish for my dead mother to be brought back.’

    The genie made a face. ‘I’m sorry, master, but that wish is impossible. Make another.’

    Since he was a nice guy, the man said, ‘I wish the world would stop spending money to kill people.’

    The genie swallowed. ‘Uhh … What did you say your mother’s name was?’

    The desire for peace and security is a universal dream.  Sometimes it is hidden in people’s hearts because they have swallowed the lies of the evil ones who wish to wage war against those who insist on security for their country, as Russians are demanding today.

    It is very frustrating to try to wake people out of their manufactured consent and the insouciance that follows as we are being led into the abyss.

    But I will not stop trying.  Galeano did not.  He left us these words of universal resistance:

    We shall be compatriots and contemporaries of all who have a yearning for justice and beauty, no matter where they were born or when they lived, because the borders of geography and time shall cease to exist.

    We must save the world before it is too late.

    The post The U.S. Is Leading the World Into the Abyss first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Can Europe Afford to Turn a Blind Eye to Evidence of a US Role in Pipeline Blasts?

    The sabotage of the two Nord Stream pipelines leaves Europeans certain to be much poorer and colder this winter, and was an act of international vandalism on an almost unimaginable scale. The attacks severed Russian gas supplies to Europe and caused the release of enormous quantities of methane gas, the prime offender in global warming.

    This is why no one is going to take responsibility for the crime – and most likely no one will ever be found definitively culpable.

    Nonetheless, the level of difficulty and sophistication in setting off blasts at three separate locations on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines overwhelmingly suggests a state actor, or actors, was behind it.

    Western coverage of the attacks has been decidedly muted, given that this hostile assault on the globe’s energy infrastructure is unprecedented – overshadowing even the 9/11 attacks.

    The reason why there appears to be so little enthusiasm to explore this catastrophic event in detail – beyond pointing a finger in Russia’s direction – is not difficult to deduce.

    It is hard to think of a single reason why Moscow would wish to destroy its own energy pipelines, valued at $20 billion, or allow in seawater, possibly corroding them irreversibly.

    The attacks deprive Russia of its main gas supply lines to Europe – and with it, vital future revenues – while leaving the field open to competitors.

    Moscow loses its only significant leverage over Germany, its main buyer in Europe and at the heart of the European project, when it needs such leverage most, as it faces down concerted efforts by the United States and Europe to drive Russian soldiers out of Ukraine.

    Even any possible temporary advantage Moscow might have gained by demonstrating its ruthlessness and might to Europe could have been achieved just as effectively by simply turning off the spigot to stop supplies.

    Media taboo

    This week, distinguished economist Jeffrey Sachs was invited on Bloomberg TV to talk about the pipeline attacks. He broke a taboo among Western elites by citing evidence suggesting that the US, rather than Russia, was the prime suspect.

    Western media like the Associated Press have tried to foreclose such a line of thinking by calling it a “baseless conspiracy theory” and Russian “disinformation”. But, as Sachs pointed out, there are good reasons to suspect the US above Russia.

    There is, for example, the threat to Russia made by US president Joe Biden back in early February, that “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2” were Ukraine to be invaded. Questioned by a reporter about how that would be possible, Biden asserted: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

    Biden was not speaking out of turn or off the cuff. At the same time, Victoria Nuland, a senior diplomat in the Biden administration, issued Russia much the same warning, telling reporters: “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

    That is the same Nuland who was intimately involved back in 2014 in behind-the-scenes maneuvers by the US to help overthrow an elected Ukrainian government that led to the installation of one hostile to Moscow. It was that coup that triggered a combustible mix of outcomes – Kyiv’s increasing flirtation with NATO, as well as a civil war in the east between Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and ethnic Russian communities – that provided the chief rationale for President Vladimir Putin’s later invasion.

    And for those still puzzled by what motive the US might have for perpetrating such an outrage, Nuland’s boss helpfully offered an answer last Friday. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken described the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, and the consequent environmental catastrophe, as offering “tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come”.

    Blinken set out a little too clearly the “cui bono” – “who profits?” – argument, suggesting that Biden and Nuland’s earlier remarks were not just empty, pre-invasion posturing by the White House.

    Blinken celebrated the fact that Europe would be deprived of Russian gas for the foreseeable future and, with it, Putin’s leverage over Germany and other European states. Before the blasts, the danger for Washington had been that Moscow might be able to advance favorable negotiations over Ukraine rather than perpetuate a war Biden’s defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, has already stated is designed to “weaken” Russia at least as much as liberate Ukraine.

    Or, as Blinken phrased it, the attacks were “a tremendous opportunity once and for all to remove the dependence on Russian energy, and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.”

    Though Blinken did not mention it, it was also a “tremendous opportunity” to make Europe far more dependent on the US for its gas supplies, shipped by sea at much greater cost to Europe than through Russia’s pipelines. American energy firms may well be the biggest beneficiaries from the explosions.

    Meddling in Ukraine

    US hostility towards Russian economic ties with Europe is not new. Long before Russia’s invasion, Washington had been quite openly seeking ways to block the Nord Stream pipelines.

    One of Blinken’s recent predecessors, Condoleezza Rice, expressed the Washington consensus way back in 2014 – at the same time as Nuland was recorded secretly meddling in Ukraine, discussing who should be installed as president in place of the elected Ukrainian government that was about to be ousted in a coup.

    Speaking to German TV, Rice said the Russian economy was vulnerable to sanctions because 80% of its exports were energy-related. Proving how wrong-headed American foreign policy predictions often are, she asserted confidently: “People say the Europeans will run out of energy. Well, the Russians will run out of cash before the Europeans run out of energy.”

    Breaking Europe’s reliance on Russian energy was, in Rice’s words, “one of the few instruments we have… Over the long term, you simply want to change the structure of energy dependence.”

    She added: “You [Germany] want to depend more on the North American energy platform, the tremendous bounty of oil and gas that we’re finding in North America. You want to have pipelines that don’t go through Ukraine and Russia.”

    Now, the sabotage of Nord Stream 1 and 2 has achieved a major US foreign-policy goal overnight.

    It has also preempted the pressure building in Germany, through mass protests and mounting business opposition, that might have seen Berlin reverse course on European sanctions on Russia and revive gas supplies – a shift that would have undermined Washington’s goal of “weakening” Putin. Now, the protests are redundant. German politicians cannot cave in to popular demands when there is no pipeline through which they can supply their population with Russian gas.

    ‘Thank you, USA’

    One can hardly be surprised that European leaders are publicly blaming Russia for the pipeline attacks. After all, Europe falls under the US security umbrella and Russia has been designated by Washington as Official Enemy No 1.

    But almost certainly, major European capitals are drawing different conclusions in private. Like Sachs, their officials are examining the circumstantial evidence, considering the statements of self-incrimination from Biden and other officials, and weighing the “cui bono” arguments.

    And like Sachs, they are most likely inferring that the prime suspect in this case is the US – or, at the very least, that Washington authorized an ally to act on its behalf. Just as no European leader would dare to publicly accuse the US of carrying out the attacks, none would dare stage such an attack without first getting the nod from Washington.

    That was evidently the view of Radek Sikorski, the former foreign and defence minister of Poland, who tweeted a “Thank you, USA” with an image of the bubbling seas where one pipeline was ruptured.

    Sikorski, it should be noted, is as well-connected in Washington as he is in Poland, a European state bitterly hostile to Moscow as well as its pipelines. His wife, Anne Applebaum, is a staff writer at The Atlantic magazine and an influential figure in US policy circles who has long advocated for NATO and EU expansion into Eastern Europe and Ukraine.

    Sikorski hurriedly took down the tweet after it went viral.

    But if Washington is the chief suspect in blowing up the pipelines, how should Europe read its relations with the US in the light of that deduction? And what does such sabotage indicate to Europe’s leaders about how Washington might perceive the stakes in Europe? The answers are not pretty.

    Demand for fealty

    If the US was behind the attacks, it suggests not only that Washington is taking the Ukraine war into new, more dangerous territory, ready to risk drawing Moscow into a round of tit-for-tats that could quickly escalate into a nuclear confrontation. It also suggests that ties between the US and Europe have entered a decisive new stage, too.

    Or put another way, Washington would have done more than move out of the shadows, turning its proxy war in Ukraine into a more direct, hot war with Russia. It would indicate that the US is willing to turn the whole of Europe into a battlefield, and bully, betray and potentially sacrifice the continent’s population as cruelly as it has traditionally treated weak allies in the Global South.

    In that regard, the pipeline ruptures are most likely interpreted by European leaders as a signal: that they should not dare to consider formulating their own independent foreign policy, or contemplate defying Washington. The attacks indicate that the US requires absolute fealty, that Europe must prostrate itself before Washington and accept whatever dictates it imposes.

    That would amount to a dramatic reversal of the Marshall Plan, Washington’s ambitious funding of the rebuilding of Western Europe after the Second World War, chiefly as a way to restore the market for rapidly expanding US industries.

    By contrast, this act of sabotage strangles Europe economically, driving it into recession, deepening its debt and making it a slave to US energy supplies. Effectively, the Biden administration would have moved from offering European elites juicy carrots to now wielding a very large stick at them.

    Pitiless aggression

    For those reasons, European leaders may be unwilling to contemplate that their ally across the Atlantic could behave in such a cruel manner against them. The implications are more than unsettling.

    The conclusion European leaders would be left to draw is that the only justification for such pitiless aggression is that the US is maneuvering to avoid the collapse of its post-war global dominance, the end of its military and economic empire.

    The destruction of the pipelines would have to be understood as an act of desperation: a last-ditch preemption by Washington of the loss of its hegemony as Russia, China and others find common cause to challenge the American behemoth, and a ferocious blow against Europe to hammer home the message that it must not stray from the fold.

    At the same time, it would shine a different, clearer light on the events that have been unfolding in and around Ukraine in recent years:

    • NATO’s relentless expansion across Eastern Europe despite expert warnings that it would eventually provoke Russia.
    • Biden and Nuland’s meddling to help oust an elected Ukrainian government sympathetic to Moscow.
    • The cultivation of a militarized Ukrainian ultra-nationalism pitted against Russia that led to bloody civil war against Ukraine’s own ethnic Russian communities.
    • And NATO’s exclusive focus on escalating the war through arms supplies to Ukraine rather than pursuing and incentivizing diplomacy.

    None of these developments can be stripped out of a realistic assessment of why Russia responded by invading Ukraine.

    Europeans have been persuaded that they must give unflinching moral and military support to Ukraine because it is the last rampart defending their homeland from a merciless Russian imperialism.

    But the attack on the pipelines hints at a more complex story, one in which European publics need to stop fixing their gaze exclusively at Russia, and turn round to understand what has been happening behind their backs.

    The post Can Europe Afford to Turn a Blind Eye to Evidence of a US Role in Pipeline Blasts? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Leftists supporting Putin are ‘idiots’, say anarchists from Ukraine

    Within the Russian population, there’s resistance against Putin’s war. The Canary has tried to highlight this resistance by amplifying grassroots movements. Critically, it’s important that our ‘left’ alliances don’t result in us talking over voices on the ground in Russia.

    Activists in the resistance describe themselves as anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, anarchist-communists, or libertarian socialists/communists. Recent interviews with Russian – and Ukrainian – activists help provide an insight into the resistance, as well as into Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

    Russia or NATO?

    Given Ukraine is backed by NATO, it’s not surprising if many on the left may adopt an ambivalent stance regarding the Russian invasion. But as the Canary’s own Joe Glenton said in an article published just 48 hours after that invasion:

    It’s long past time for some of us to update our software on Russia/NATO antagonism.

    Two Ukrainian anarchists – Anatoliy Dubovikhave and Sergiy Shevchenko – commented on that and other matters concerning the invasion. They were interviewed by Yavor Tarinski of the Greek libertarian journal Aftoleksi, republished in English by the London-based Freedom.

    Dubovikhave and Shevchenko explained that they were members of Revolutionary Confederation of Anarchist-Syndicalists (in Russian, RKAS), which for many years was:

    involved in the labour movement, the student movement, we had a significant influence on the independent trade union movement, especially among the Donbas miners, where RKAS representatives participated in local and regional strike committees. We participated in a pan-Ukrainian movement to protect workers’ rights and oppose the deterioration of labour legislation.

    After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, RKAS had to change tack, adopting armed resistance against the aggressors. Dubovikhave and Shevchenko also train volunteers in “unofficial military organizations, from which territorial defense units later emerged”. Moreover, within the Ukrainian armed forces, soldiers have set up anarchist committees.

    They’re “idiots”

    With regard to those on the left who support Putin, Dubovikhave and Shevchenko explain:

    The left sees Putin’s Russia as an alternative to NATO, as a rival to NATO. In a sense, they are right: Russia is indeed opposed to NATO. But they do not see, and do not want to see, that the Russian alternative means only a desire to pursue its own, independent but equally (if not worse) imperialist policy.

    They say such ‘leftists’ are “idiots”.

    They add:

    It suffices to say that throughout the existence of the independent Ukrainian state, there has not been a single political anarchist prisoner here. At the same time, many dozens of our comrades in Russia ended up in Russian prisons – guilty solely for their anarchist convictions.

    But they remain optimistic, referring to a number of non-state self-organized initiatives in Ukraine:

    They deal with a variety of issues, from helping refugees and guarding small communities to supplying the military with everything they need. In this sense, Ukraine today follows anarchist practices more than many other societies in the world.

    Issues

    Aftoleksi also published a video by film-maker and independent journalist Alexis Daloumis, who interviewed Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Polish anarchists and anti-authoritarians. The main issues addressed include Russia’s claim that the invasion is about ‘denazification’, what’s really happening in Donbas, and the politics surrounding the involvement of NATO:

    Revolutionary Action

    Resistance by its nature comes in various forms. Back in March, the Canary reported that Ukrainian anarchists had set up an “international detachment to resist the Russian invasion”.

    Freedom also published an interview the Polish 161 Crew did with a member of the Ukrainian Operation Solidarity (OS). OS was set up by anarchists and libertarian socialists to support anti-fascists, anti-authoritarian activists, and leftists in their armed struggle against the Russian occupation.

    Like Dubovikhave and Shevchenko, OS made it clear why the left should not support Putin:

    Putin calls his actions “denazification” and “anti-fascism” – that’s absolute bullshit. Anti-fascists don’t bomb children and old people, they don’t throw thermobaric bombs at civilians or use phosphorus, they don’t leave or burn the bodies of soldiers on purpose so as not to have to pay their families any money, they don’t use own people as cannon fodder. We don’t destroy cities and leave scorched ground.

    The Canary has previously published details of mass anti-war protests, cyber attacks on Russian sites, and acts of sabotage.

    History of struggle

    Ukraine is no stranger to armed struggle and has a proud history of resisting totalitarianism. For example, anarchist insurrectionist Nestor Makhno led the 100,000 strong Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (RIAU). The RIAU fought a campaign against the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the Communist revolution.

    In an article in CrimethInc, published before Putin’s invasion, Ukrainian anarchists provided a brief history of resistance in Ukraine. They pointed out how during the occupation of Crimea, Russian authorities detained and tortured several anarchists.

    One anarchist group mentioned – Autonomnyi Opir (Autonomous Resistance) – was inspired by the Zapatistas (Mexican revolutionary anarchists) and the Kurds.

    Prisoner support

    Resistance invariably also means providing prisoner support. Autonomy is the website of Autonomy Action, an organisation of anarchists and libertarian communists that’s now in its 20th year. Since 2007, it has also hosted news and updates from the Moscow section of the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC). The latter provides support to prisoners, such as finding and paying for lawyers, supplying books and food packages, etc.

    In September, Autonomy published an interview with Moscow ABC (who translated it into English). In that interview, Moscow ABC explained how some people are jailed for spreading ‘fakes’, i.e.:

    the dissemination of any information about the actions of the Russian Armed Forces that differs from the official version.

    Moscow ABC also assists Solidarity Zone, an initiative that provides a similar service to that of the ABC. In May, Autonomy published a list of anti-war prisoners supported by Moscow ABC.

    Autonomy also provides updates on anti-war and anti-state prisoners. These include Belarusian anarchists charged on a number of offences, who were sentenced to 5 to 17 years, and the arrest and torture of anti-fascists in the Urals, variously accused of possession of weapons and explosives.

    Another site, Rupression, offers prisoner support specifically on a case involving eight people who were arrested in 2017-18. They were accused of being part of a terrorist organisation and were viciously tortured.

    The International Workers Association in Russia

    In 1989, my partner and I – both members of the London ABC and the UK section of the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers Association (IWA) – took the risk of travelling to the Soviet Union to meet a group of people who wanted to set up a Russian section of the IWA.

    As it was, it turned out to be a fruitful meeting. Some 23 years later, at the commencement of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the IWA in Russia issued a statement urging the Russian military to mutiny and Russian people to take strike action. Mutinies and acts of sabotage were subsequently reported, although there are no reports of strikes. Meanwhile, on-the-ground resistance against Putin’s imperialist aggression continues.

    Featured image via YouTube

    By Tom Coburg

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • Who Deserves a Nobel Peace Prize in Ukraine? 

    In what was described as a harsh rebuke of Russia, the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties, along with Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski and the Russian human rights organization Memorial. While at first glance, the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties might sound like a group that is well deserving of this honor, Ukrainian peace leader Yurii Sheliazhenko wrote a stinging critique.

    Sheliazhenko, who heads up the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement and is a board member of the European Bureau for Conscientious Objection, accused the Center for Civil Liberties of embracing the agendas of such problematic international donors as the U.S. Department of State and the National Endowment for Democracy. The National Endowment for Democracy supports NATO membership for Ukraine; insists that no negotiations with Russia are possible and shames those who seek compromise; wants the West to impose a dangerous no-fly zone; says that only Putin violates human rights in Ukraine; never criticizes the Ukrainian government for suppressing pro-Russian media, parties, and public figures; never criticizes the Ukrainian army for war crimes and human rights violations, and refuses to stand up for the human right, recognized under international law, to conscientious objection to military service.

    Supporting conscientious objectors is the role of Sheliazhenko and his organization, the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement (UPM). While we hear a lot about Russian war resisters, as Sheliazhenko points out even inside Ukraine, which is portrayed in Western media as a country entirely united in its war with Russia, there are men who don’t want to fight.

    The Ukrainian Pacifist Movement was founded in 2019 when fighting in the separatist-ruled Donbas region was at a peak and Ukraine was forcing its citizens to participate in the civil war. According to Sheliazhenko, Ukrainian men were “being given military summonses off of the streets, out of night clubs and dormitories, or snatched for military service for minor infractions such as traffic violations, public drunkenness, or casual rudeness to police officers.”

    To make matters worse, when Russia invaded in February 2022, Ukraine suspended its citizens’ right to conscientious objection and forbade men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country; nevertheless, since February, over 100,000 Ukrainian draft-eligible men managed to flee instead of fight. It’s estimated that several thousand more have been detained while trying to escape.

    International human rights law affirms peoples’ right, due to principled conviction, to refuse to participate in military conflict and conscientious objection has a long and rich history. In 1914, a group of Christians in Europe, hoping to avert the impending war, formed the International Fellowship of Reconciliation to support conscientious objectors. When the U.S. joined WWI, social reformer and women’s rights activist Jane Addams protested. She was harshly criticized at the time but, in 1931, she became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

    In Russia, hundreds of thousands of young men are refusing to fight. According to a source inside Russia’s Federal Security Service, within three days of Russia’s announcement that it was drafting 300,000 more recruits, 261,000 men fled the country. Those who could booked flights; others drove, bicycled, and walked across the border.

    Belarusians have also joined the exodus. According to estimates by Connection e.V., a European organization that supports conscientious objectors and deserters, an estimated 22,000 draft-eligible Belarusians have fled their country since the war began.

    The Russian organization Kovcheg, or The Ark, helps Russians fleeing because of anti-war positions, condemnation of Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, and/or persecution they are experiencing in Russia. In Belarus, the organization Nash Dom runs a “NO means NO” campaign to encourage draft-eligible Belarusians not to fight. Despite refusing to fight being a noble and courageous act for peace – the penalty in Russia for refusing the draft is up to ten years in prison and in Ukraine, it is at least up to three years, and likely much higher, with hearings and verdicts closed to the public – neither Kovcheg, Nash Dom nor the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, were announced as Nobel Peace Prize winners yesterday.

    The U.S. government nominally supports Russia’s war resisters. On September 27, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declared that Russians fleeing the draft were “welcome” in the U.S. and encouraged them to apply for asylum. But as far back as last October, before Russia invaded Ukraine, amid tit-for-tat U.S.-Russia tensions, Washington announced it would henceforth only issue visas to Russians through the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, 750 miles away from Moscow.

    To put a further damper on Russian hopes of refuge in the U.S., on the same day as the White House held its press conference where it encouraged draft-eligible Russians to seek U.S. asylum, the Biden administration announced that it would be continuing into fiscal year 2023 its FY2022 global refugee cap of 125,000.

    You would think that those resisting this war would be able to find refuge in European countries, as Americans fleeing the Vietnam war did in Canada. Indeed, when the Ukraine war was in its early stages, European Council President Charles Michel called on Russian soldiers to desert, promising them protection under EU refugee law. But in August, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked his Western allies to reject all Russian emigres. Currently, all non-visa travel from Russia to EU countries is suspended.

    As Russian men fled after Putin’s draft announcement, Latvia closed its border with Russia and Finland said it was likely going to be tightening its visa policy for Russians.

    Had the Nobel Peace Prize awardees been the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian organizations that are supporting war resisters and peacemakers, it would have drawn global attention to the courageous young men taking this stand and perhaps opened more avenues for them to get asylum abroad. It could have also initiated a much-needed conversation about how the U.S. is supplying Ukraine with an endless flow of weapons but not pushing for negotiations to end a war so dangerous that President Biden is warning of “nuclear Armageddon.” It certainly would have been more in line with Alfred Nobel’s desire to bring global recognition to those who have “done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies.”

    The post Who Deserves a Nobel Peace Prize in Ukraine?  first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Criticizing Kremlin leads to treason charges

    Opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza in Moscow.
    Opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza in Moscow. © 2021 AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko

    On 7 October 2022 Human Rights Watch criticised sharply the Russian charge of high treason against an opposition politician, Vladimir Kara-Murza. It is “a blatant attempt to quash any criticism of the Kremlin and deter contact with the international community“, Human Rights Watch said. 

    This is the third baseless criminal charge against Kara-Murza since he was detained in April 2022. He has already been indicted for spreading “fake news” about the Russian Armed Forces because he publicly criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and for alleged involvement with an “undesirable” foreign organization. He now risks an additional sentence of up 20 years if convicted on high treason charges. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/04/14/human-rights-defender-vladimir-kara-murza-arrested-in-russia/]

    “Vladimir Kara-Murza is a longstanding proponent of democratic values and has been a vocal opponent of Vladimir  Putin and Russia’s war on Ukraine,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “It is painfully obvious that the Kremlin sees Kara-Murza as a direct and imminent threat.  These charges against him and his prolonged detention are a travesty of justice. Russian authorities should immediately and unconditionally free Kara-Murza and drop all charges against him.” See also: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/34e43b60-3236-11ea-b4d5-37ffeeddd006

    Vadim Prokhorov, Kara-Murza’s lawyer, said the high treason charges relate to Kara-Murza’s  public criticism of the Russian authorities in international forums.

    Kara-Murza has called for sanctions against the Kremlin and has spoken in person before national political bodies throughout Europe and in the United States, and at many international and intergovernmental forums, including at the United Nations. He was a key figure advocating for the US Magnitsky Act that gave rise to the Global Magnitsky sanctions regime for serious human rights violations.

    Kara-Murza was also a close friend of the murdered Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov. He survived two near-fatal poisonings, in 2015 and 2017, which Bellingcat investigative journalists reported was most likely orchestrated by the Russian Federal Security Service and which the Russian authorities have failed to investigate. 

    Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine started in February, the Russian authorities have expanded their repressive toolbox. In March, Russian authorities criminalized calls for sanctions against Russia, and in July also criminalized “confidential cooperation” with foreign states, international or foreign organizations as well as public calls for action that are “against national interests.”

    These new provisions cannot be applied retroactively to the years of advocacy by Kara-Murza, Human Rights Watch said, and so he is being charged with high treason under Russia’s criminal code, which was expanded in November 2012. The definition was expanded to include consultations or any other assistance to a foreign state or international or foreign organizations…

    Russia’s rules on prosecution and trial of treason cases also breach human rights safeguards, in particular fair trial guarantees. For example, the criminal case materials in such proceedings are classified so that the defense team may not have access to key pieces of evidence, and the trial takes place behind closed doors, preventing public scrutiny.

    Ivan Safronov, a journalist, was recently convicted of high treason and sentenced to 22 years in maximum security prison and given a substantial fine for his journalistic investigations of defense contracts, spotlighting how treason cases are handled.  He was tried behind closed doors, key evidence obtained by fellow journalists was not accepted by the court, and his defense team came under immense pressure. Two of his lawyers had to flee the country, and a third was detained on accusations of spreading false information and remains in detention.

    “Sadly, it is unrealistic to expect that fair trial standards will be observed in Kara-Murza’s case,” Williamson said. “By jailing leaders like him, Russian authorities are attempting to instill fear in the Russian people and eradicate any opportunity for civil society to mobilize and oppose the Kremlin and its war.” 

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/10/07/russia-first-treason-charges-criticizing-kremlin

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • US Media’s Intellectual No-Fly-Zone on US Culpability in Nord Stream Attack

     

    Multiple explosions last week off the coast of Poland damaged both the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, shutting down one and preventing the other from going online. The pipelines, intended to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany, are critical infrastructure for Europe’s energy markets.

    The explosions triggered a lopsided “whodunnit” in US media, with commentators almost universally fingering Russia as the culprit, despite the lack of a plausible motive. Official US opposition to the pipeline has been well-established over the years, giving Washington ample motive to destroy the pipelines, but most newsrooms uniformly suppressed this history, and attacked those who raised it.

    WaPo: European leaders blame Russian ‘sabotage’ after Nord Stream explosions

    “Only Russia had the motivation,” the Washington Post (9/27/22) claimed—even as it reported that the pipelines “deepened Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas,” which “many [presumably Western] officials now say was a grave strategic mistake.”

    After the explosions, much of the press dutifully parroted the Western official line. The Washington Post (9/27/22) quickly produced an account: “European Leaders Blame Russian ‘Sabotage’ After Nord Stream Explosions,” citing nothing but EU officials who claimed that while they had no evidence of Russian involvement, “only Russia had the motivation, the submersible equipment and the capability.”

    Much of the media cast their suspicions towards Russia, including Bloomberg (9/27/22), Vox (9/29/22), Associated Press (9/30/22) and much of cable news. With few exceptions, speculation on US involvement has seemingly been deemed an intellectual no-fly-zone.

    The idea that only Russia had the means and motivation is clearly false on both counts. Washington has made it clear for years that it doesn’t want the pipeline, and has taken active measures to stop it from coming online. As for the means, it’s patently absurd to suggest that the US doesn’t have the capability to lay explosives in 200 feet of water.

    Even Max Boot, who agreed in his Washington Post column (9/29/22) that only Russia had the means and motive, contradictorily acknowledged that “the means are easy.”

    A long history of opposition

    Any serious coverage of the Nord Stream attack should acknowledge that opposition to the pipeline has been a centerpiece of the US grand strategy in Europe. The long-term goal has been to keep Russia isolated and disjointed from Europe, and to keep the countries of Europe tied to US markets. Ever since German and Russian energy companies signed a deal to begin development on Nord Stream 2, the entire machinery of Washington has been working overtime to scuttle it.

    RAND: Extending Russia

    The RAND report (2019) that recommended “Reduc[ing] [Russian] Natural Gas Exports and Hinder[ing] Pipeline Expansions” now comes with a warning saying it’s been “mischaracterized” by “Russian entities and individuals sympathetic to Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.”

    A 2019 Pentagon-funded study from the RAND Corporation on how best to exploit “Russia’s economic, political and military vulnerabilities and anxieties” included a recommendation to “Reduce [Russian] Natural Gas Exports and Hinder Pipeline Expansions.” The study noted that a “first step would involve stopping Nord Stream 2,” and that natural gas “from the United States and Australia could provide a substitute.”

    This RAND study also prophetically recommended “providing more US military equipment and advice” to Ukraine in order to “lead Russia to increase its direct involvement in the conflict and the price it pays for it,” even though it acknowledged that “Russia might respond by mounting a new offensive and seizing more Ukrainian territory.”

    The Obama administration opposed the pipeline. As part of the major sanctions package against Russia in 2017, the Trump administration began sanctioning any company doing work on the pipeline. The move generated outrage in Germany, where many saw it as an attempt to meddle with European markets. In 2019, the US implemented more sanctions on the project.

    Upon coming into office, President Joe Biden made opposition to the pipeline one of his administration’s top priorities. During his confirmation hearings in 2021, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told Congress he was “determined to do whatever I can to prevent” Nord Stream 2 from being completed. Months later, the State Department reiterated that “any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks US sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline.”

    In July 2021, the sanctions were relaxed only after contentious negotiations with the German government. The New York Times (7/21/21) reported that the administration and Germany still had “profound disagreements” about the project.

    As Russia was gathering troops at Ukraine’s border at the beginning of this year, US administration officials issued threats against the pipeline’s operation in the event of a Russian invasion. In January, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland — one of the main players during the 2014 Maidan Coup in Ukraine and wife of Robert Kagan, the founder of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century — issued a stern warning against the pipeline. “If Russia invades, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 Will. Not. Move. Forward.”

    In February, Joe Biden himself told reporters, “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” After a reporter asked how the US planned to end a project that was under German control, Biden responded, “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

    On February 22, after Russian troops were given orders to enter the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, Germany suspended the pipeline, in a move that was called “remarkable” at the time (New York Times, 2/22/22).

    In sharp contrast to the US’s antagonism, Russia has taken the opposite approach to the pipeline it spent billions of dollars to complete. As recently as three weeks ago, Putin expressed willingness to supply more gas if the EU would lift the sanctions against the newer pipeline. He said: “If things are so bad, just go ahead and lift sanctions against Nord Stream 2, with its 55 billion cubic meters per year — all they have to do is press the button and they will get going.” Diplomatic sources told the Cradle (9/29/22) that Russia and Germany were in talks about both NS1 and NS2 on the day of the explosion.

    The day after the attack, German government sources leaked to the German daily Der Spiegel (9/28/22) that weeks earlier, the CIA warned Germany of a potential attack on the pipeline. However, sources told CNN (9/29/22) that the warnings were “vague” and that “it was not clear from the warnings who might be responsible for any attacks on the pipelines, or when they might occur.” A high-level source in German intelligence told the Cradle (9/29/22) that they were “furious” because “they were not in the loop.”

    After the attack, Blinken called the bombing a “tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy,” and said that this “offers tremendous strategic opportunity for years to come.” On the other hand, Russia has already announced plans to begin repairing the pipeline.

    So contrary to what nearly the US entire media establishment has presented, the US has had ample motive to destroy the pipeline, and is actively celebrating its demise.

    ‘Thank you, USA’

    One event that fueled speculation of US involvement was a tweet from a Polish member of the European Parliament, Radek Sikorski—a one-time Polish Defense minister as well as a former American Enterprise Institute fellow, who was named one of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” in 2012 by Foreign Policy (11/26/12).

    Radosław Sikorski on Twitter: Thank You, USA

    The Washington Post (9/28/22) suggested that by thanking the United States over a picture of the pipeline explosion, Radek Sikorksi may have been “crediting the United States with rendering the pipelines moot by pressuring Europe not to take Russian natural gas.”

    Sikorski tweeted out a picture of the methane leak in the ocean, along with the caption, “As we say in Polish, a small thing, but so much joy.” He later tweeted, “Thank you, USA,” with the same picture.

    He later tweeted against the pipeline, noting that “Nord Stream’s only logic was for Putin to be able to blackmail or wage war on Eastern Europe with impunity.” An hour later he elaborated:

    Now $20 billion of scrap metal lies at the bottom of the sea, another cost to Russia of its criminal decision to invade Ukraine. Someone…did a special maintenance operation.

    The last line was a joke about how Russia classifies its invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation.”

    After these tweets received attention from those who suspected US responsibility, Sikorski deleted them. Business Insider (9/30/22) dishonestly wrote that these latter tweets were actually an “attempt to clarify that the original tweet was a criticism of US support for the pipeline being built in the first place.” Any honest reading of the tweets demonstrates that the opposite is true; presumably this is why Insider didn’t link to any specific text.

    The Washington Post (9/28/22) also offered a twisted interpretation of Sikorski’s tweets:

    His meaning wasn’t entirely clear; it seems possible he was crediting the United States with rendering the pipelines moot by pressuring Europe not to take Russian natural gas. In later tweets, he seemed actually to point to Russian sabotage.

    For the latter claim, the Post cited Sikorski’s joke about the “special maintenance operation,” but the full tweet shows that this is a preposterous interpretation.

    While certainly not a smoking gun, such a high-profile accusation (or expression of gratitude, such as it was) raises eyebrows, especially given Poland’s strenuous opposition to the pipeline, and the recent completion of a Norway/Poland pipeline designed to “cut dependency on Russia.” The circumstances are even more suspicious, given that Sikorski is the husband of the fervently anti-Russian staff writer at The Atlantic Anne Applebaum, who has been a key media figure advancing the pro-NATO narrative in the West.

    Applebaum even sits on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy (a position she once shared with Victoria Nuland before Nuland moved into the Biden administration), a government-funded conduit for US regime change and destabilization projects that was an important driving force behind the 2014 coup that replaced Ukraine’s pro-Russian government with a Pro-Western one. Since then, the NED has funded English-language Ukrainian media like the Kyiv Independent, which, along with commentators like Applebaum herself, are now shaping coverage of the current war for Western audiences.

    The fact that someone as connected as Sikorski would find it appropriate to publicly thank the US for the attack certainly deserves scrutiny. Some US media brought up the tweet, but dismissed it as unimportant (The Hill, 9/30/22).

    ‘A reminder from Moscow’

    Business Insider: The sabotage of gas pipelines were a 'warning shot' from Putin to the West, and should brace for more subterfuge, Russia experts warn

    Business Insider (10/4/22): If Putin is willing to blow up his own pipelines, just think what he might do to yours!

    US media have all but ignored the critical context above. If a case like that existed for the Russia-did-it theory, you can be sure that it would have been spelled out in detail by everyone. But instead, US media direct attention away from the obvious and are left to grasp at straws to find a potential Russian motive. In fact, many outlets readily acknowledged that there was no obvious motive for Russia to bomb its own pipeline. For example, the New York Times (9/28/22) wrote:

    It is unclear why Moscow would seek to damage installations that cost Gazprom billions of dollars to build and maintain. The leaks are expected to delay any possibility of receiving revenue from fuel going through the pipes.

    Vox (9/28/22) reported that “experts emphasized…it may be hard to fully know Moscow’s motivation.” NPR (9/28/22) also couldn’t readily answer “the question as to why Russia would attack its own pipelines.”

    Having admitted that Russia has no readily apparent motive, establishment media are left to stretch. They presented a couple of theories for Putin’s potential motivation, but neither holds up to scrutiny. One, per the Times (9/28/22), is that the leaks “may help Russia by pushing energy prices higher,” since “the natural gas market is spooked.” But this logic makes little sense, as Russia has been pushing for Europe to open the Nord Stream 2 pipeline since it was completed. Higher natural gas prices do Russia little good if it’s unable to deliver its gas to market.

    The Times (9/28/22) put forth another theory: that Putin is just teaching the West some kind of lesson:

    The ruptures could also be a reminder from Moscow that if European countries keep up their support for Ukraine, they risk sabotage to vital energy infrastructure.

    The Washington Post (9/27/22), speaking to “security officials,” cited similar theories:

    One official said it might have been a message to NATO: “We are close.” Another said that it could be a threat to other, non-Russian energy infrastructure.

    Business Insider (10/4/22) published a piece hysterically titled: “The Sabotage of Gas Pipelines Were a ‘Warning Shot’ From Putin to the West, and Should Brace for More Subterfuge, Russia Experts Warn.”

    CNN (9/29/22) also found a US official to tell them that “Moscow would likely view [attacking the pipeline] as worth the price if it helped raise the costs of supporting Ukraine for Europe,” and that “sabotaging the pipelines could ‘show what Russia is capable of.’” Vox (9/28/22) found some “experts” to tell them the same story.

    But the reality is that Russia has done its utmost to discourage NATO from further involvement in the war. A Russian attack on the pipeline would all but guarantee greater NATO involvement in Ukraine. Antagonizing Germany to teach the rest of Europe a lesson—which would only work if Russia was understood to be behind the sabotage—would be the opposite of Russia’s interests. This argument amounts to little more than “Putin is evil and hates Europe.”

    As FAIR (3/30/22) has previously written, this cartoon narrative of Putin as Hitler allows for all logic and reasoning to fall by the wayside. The US behavior with regards to the pipeline is objectively more compelling than the case against Russia, yet the media have dismissed it out of hand.

    A crack in the facade

    One of the cracks in the uniform coverage was a segment on Bloomberg TV (10/3/22). Host Tom Keene brought on Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, who was recently the head of the Lancet’s investigation (9/14/22) into the origin of Covid-19. During the interview, Sachs stated that he “would bet [the attack] was a US action, perhaps US and Poland.”

    Bloomberg host Tom Keene interviewing Jeffrey Sachs

    Bloomberg TV host Tom Keene (10/3/22) takes Jeffrey Sachs to task for questioning the official Nord Stream narrative.

    Keene immediately stopped him and demanded that he lay out evidence for the claim. Sachs cited radar evidence that US helicopters, normally based in Gdansk, had been hovering within the area of the explosion shortly before the attack. This is certainly not a smoking gun, given Western intelligence claims that Russian ships were observed in the area during this same timeframe, though it does add to the case for US responsibility. He also cited the threatening statements from Biden and Blinken as reasons for his suspicion.

    Sachs acknowledged the propaganda system in which he was operating:

    I know it runs counter to our narrative, you‘re not allowed to say these things in the West, but the fact of the matter is, all over the world when I talk to people, they think the US did it…. Even reporters on our papers that are involved tell me, “Of course [the US is responsible],” but it doesn’t show up in our media.

    This was the only time FAIR saw an anchor push back and ask for evidence for guests’ speculation of responsibility—speculation that was usually pointed toward Russia.

    The broken clock

    As illustration of the weirdness that is the US elite’s opportunistic relationship with Russia, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson (9/27/22), the white nationalist who hosts the most popular evening talk show in America, was one of the only media figures to go against the dominant narrative. Carlson certainly overstated the case for US involvement in the pipeline attack, but he asked questions no one else in corporate media would touch.

    WaPo: Russian TV is very excited about Такер Карлсон’s Nord Stream theory

    The Washington Post (9/29/22) printed Tucker Carlson’s name in Cyrillic—implying that only a Russian agent would express doubts about the US’s innocence.

    But rather than dissect Carlson’s case factually, most other media relied purely on redbaiting. The Washington Post (9/29/22) wrote Carlson’s name in Cyrillic —”Russian TV Is Very Excited About Такер Карлсон’s Nord Stream Theory”—to play into the McCarthyite fearmongering of the New Cold War.

    The Post brought up the threatening statements from Nuland and Biden, and even the tweet from Sikorski, but only to dismiss them, because they weren’t a “smoking gun.” Of course, the Post refused to acknowledge that the quotes from administration officials demonstrated a clear opposition to the pipeline, and thus an obvious motive for the attack.

    Despite the fact that Carlson repeatedly claimed that “we don’t know what happened,” the Post declared that “he delivered his speculation as if it were fact and invited his viewers to do the same.” While this is a fair assessment of the tone if not the text of the segment, the Post had nothing to say about the certainty with which others in the media accused Russia.

    The Post’s reporting was picked up by MSNBC Katie Phang (10/1/22), who, also eschewing actual investigation, asked her guest, “How dangerous is it for an American media personality with the kind of reach that Tucker Calrson has to be out there spouting a talking point that ends up on Russian state TV?”

    ‘Baseless conspiracy theory’

    ABC: Russians push baseless theory blaming US for burst pipeline

    AP (via ABC, 9/30/22) accused “Kremlin and Russian state media” of “aggressively pushing a baseless conspiracy theory” in “another effort to split the U.S. and its European allies.”

    The Associated Press (9/30/22) wrote a widely republished story, headlined “Russians Push Baseless Theory Blaming US for Burst Pipeline,” that called the idea the US was responsible for the attacks a “baseless conspiracy theory.”

    Like the other coverage, the AP didn’t evaluate any of the evidence, but called the theory “disinformation” designed to “undermine Ukraine’s allies” and, importantly, painted such speculation as beyond legitimate discussion:

    The suggestion that the US caused the damage was circulating on online forums popular with American conservatives and followers of QAnon, a conspiracy theory movement which asserts that Trump is fighting a battle against a Satanic child-trafficking sect that controls world events.

    Bloomberg (reprinted in the Washington Post, 9/27/22) acknowledged Biden’s threats against the pipeline, but writer Javier Blas dismissed them without actually explaining why:

    Conspiracy theorists always see the hand of the CIA in everything. But that’s nonsense. The clear beneficiary of shutting down the Nord Stream pipelines for good is Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Yes, the “clear beneficiary” of the destruction of the main method Russia could sell billions of dollars worth of natural gas to Europe was…the Russian president. It doesn’t make more sense if you read the whole article.

    The US press produced an overwhelming chorus of articles (e.g., Business Insider, 9/30/22; Vox, 2/28/22; Newsweek, 10/3/22) that deployed the term “conspiracy theory” to discredit the idea of US culpability. Not one of these pieces adequately explored the credible reasons for the suspicion, simply ignoring the body of evidence presented above.

    The Brookings Institution (where Robert Kagan works) published a long article (10/3/22), complete with graphs and charts, that warned of the dangers of podcasters spreading the idea that the US was culpable in the attacks. It dismissed this possibility on the strength of a link to the New York Times (9/28/22), used to substantiate a claim that “experts broadly agree that Russia is the key suspect.” It did not do any investigation of its own.

    When is a theory a ‘conspiracy theory’?

    Caitlin Johnstone: It’s Only A ‘Conspiracy Theory’ When It Accuses The US Government

    Caitlin Johnstone (10/4/22): “If you think the United States could have any responsibility for this attack at all, you’re a crazy conspiracy theorist and no different from QAnoners who think pedophile Satan worshipers rule the world.”

    This use of the term “conspiracy theory” or “conspiracy theorist,” along with the mention of QAnon, has the effect of associating speculation of US involvement in the attack with a class of people that have largely been discredited (with good reason) in the public mind. Once this link has been made, evaluating the evidence is no longer required. It’s a lazy rhetorical trick to marginalize dissent.

    In his book Conspiracy Theory in America, scholar Lance Dehaven Smith examined the way the term is deployed in establishment media:

    What they actually have in mind are suspicions that simply deviate from conventional opinion about the norms and integrity of US officials. In practice, it is not the form or the object of conspiracy theories, or even the absence of official confirmation, that differentiates them from other (acceptable) beliefs; it is their nonconformity with prevailing opinion.

    Writer Caitlin Johnstone (10/4/22) put it succinctly in a piece on the hysteria surrounding the pipeline attacks: “It’s Only a ‘Conspiracy Theory’ When It Accuses the US Government.” She wrote:

    Over and over again we see the pejorative “conspiracy theory” applied to accusations against one nation but not the other, despite the fact that it’s the exact same accusation. They are both conspiracy theories per definition: They’re theories about an alleged conspiracy to sabotage Russian pipelines. But the Western political/media class consistently applies that label to one and never the other.

    At a meeting of the UN Security Council—hastily called by Russia in the wake of the attacks—US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield called the Russian accusations “conspiracy theories,” then went on to accuse Russia of attacking its own pipeline. Reporting on the Security Council meeting, CNN (11/29/22) showed its own conspiratorial thinking, citing US officials who called the meeting itself “suspicious,” because “typically, the official said, Russia isn’t organized enough to move so quickly, suggesting that the maneuver was pre-planned.”

    Of course there are irresponsible, popular conspiracy theories that fail to hold up to scrutiny, and are in fact quite dangerous. The QAnon theory that the world’s elite are harvesting a substance called adrenochrome from trafficked children to gain special abilities and extend their life is absurd. The 2020 election spawned many disproven theories about a stolen Trump victory that ended up leading to the deadly riot at the Capitol on January 6. But just as the existence of websites that fabricate pseudo-news reports for profit gave Donald Trump a label to dismiss any journalism he didn’t like as “fake news,” so to are such fanciful theories based on leaps of logic used to disparage well-documented efforts to peer behind the scenes of US official policy.

    To be sure, we still don’t know for certain who was behind the pipeline bombing, but there is a solid prima facie case for US culpability. The explosion is a watershed moment in the escalation toward a direct confrontation between nuclear powers. Media malfeasance on this topic doesn’t just threaten the credibility of the press, but literally imperils the whole of human civilization.

     

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