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  • Nigerian Student Fleeing War Describes Rampant Racism Against Africans at Border

    “Ukrainians Only”: Nigerian Student Fleeing War Describes Rampant Racism Against Africans at Border

    The United Nations reports more than 800,000 people have fled Ukraine since Russia attacked last week, but many foreign nationals trying to escape have described racist discrimination and abuse, saying they were turned away from buses and at the border, while Ukrainians were welcomed with open arms. We speak with one of the African students who documented their experiences on Twitter with the hashtag #AfricansInUkraine. Nigerian student Alexander Somto Orah says the discriminatory treatment he and other African students faced started at the train station in Kyiv and continued at the border with Poland. “We started protesting and telling them they have to let us go, that this is rubbish. They take in like a hundred Ukrainians and then take in like two Africans. It doesn’t make sense, because there are more Africans there than Ukrainians at the border,” Orah recalls. “So we started pushing, and the police cocked their guns and pointed at us guns and told us that they’re going to shoot us.” Orah eventually made his way to Warsaw and is now helping other students to cross.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

    The United Nations reports more than 800,000 people have fled Ukraine since Russia attacked last week, but many foreign nationals trying to escape have described racist discrimination and abuse, saying they were turned away from buses and at the border, while Ukrainians were welcomed with open arms. India’s government has dispatched ministers to Ukraine’s border with Poland after people from India seeking to cross from Ukraine to Poland reported they were told to go to Romania instead. Citizens of several African countries report they were also pushed back from Poland because they are Black. Some 16,000 African students are thought to have been studying in Ukraine.

    On Tuesday, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted Russia’s invasion had, quote, “affected Ukrainians and non-citizens in many devastating ways,” and said, quote, “Africans seeking evacuation are our friends and need to have equal opportunities to return to their home countries safely.”

    Several African governments also condemned the racism Africans in Ukraine faced while trying to escape, with the African Union calling the treatment a “breach of international law.”

    On Tuesday, Democracy Now! reached 25-year-old Nigerian student Somto Orah after he had reached Warsaw, Poland. He described the discriminatory treatment he and other African students faced as they tried to flee, starting at the train station in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.

    ALEXANDER SOMTO ORAH: The first discrimination started in Kyiv, which is the capital, at the train station. I was trying to enter, and they were telling us it’s only women and children. And they were only picking white women and children. So, when the first train left, the second one came, and they said the same thing. We now asked them, “What do you mean by women and children? Because we are not seeing you taking any Black women here. If you mean white women and children, at least you are being honest. But telling us women and children and not taking African women along is totally rubbish.” So we started shouting and started telling them, “Nobody is going to leave here if dishonest to their words.” So, they asked us, “Where are the African women?” We started showing them the African women and children, and they were able to board.

    So, another train that is going to Poland came in. I jumped in with other two Africans. I was in the cabin, and they called the police on us. The police came and told us to get out of the train. They dragged us out and told us that this train going to Poland is basically for Ukrainians only, so we have to wait for another train that was in the night. That train came, and they told us the train is not going to Lviv, which is the city that has border with Poland. So we copied the train number and sent it to — my friend copied. I copied it, and my friend also copied it and sent it to his girlfriend, who is a Ukrainian. The girlfriend told him that “This train is going to Lviv. Don’t listen to them. Jump in.” The train was about to leave. We jumped in. They were already trying to close the door. We told them, “You either open the door, or you push us on the way.” So they have no other option than to open the door. So, we went in, and we were the only Africans in the train.

    When we got to Lviv, the whole train going — the first train came in, and they told us it’s only Ukrainians, women and children only, and they usually pick more white people than Black people. We started shouting again. So, when the second train came, we have to push the whole white — African women and children to the front so that they are — so they were able to take them. And we had no other option than to look for a taxi that will take us to the border. And we got to a barricade that is 30 minutes away to the border. And the barricade told us that — the soldiers there, with the police there, separated us. They said, “Foreigners go to this side. The Ukrainians go to the other side.” So, I was going. I asked some people there, “How long have you been here?” One said three days. The other one said two days. I was like, “No, I cannot endure this. I have to find a way.”

    So, in the morning, which is the next day, we started protesting and telling them they have to let us go, that this is rubbish. They take in like hundred Ukrainians and then take in like two Africans. It doesn’t make sense, because there are more Africans there than Ukrainians at the border. So, we pushed — we started pushing, and the police cocked their guns and pointed at us gun and told us that they’re going to shoot us. We told them that “We are students. We just want to go home. And if one person gets shot here, that will be never taken lightly. We are thousands here. I don’t think all of them can kill us.” The police came in and drove with speed, parked in our front, brought out gun like the soldiers and told us that they’re going to shoot. We told them, “We don’t care. We have to cross.” So, we started pushing over, pushing over. Before we know, all of us shouting “Yay!” We broke the barricade and started running across towards the border. So, some of them started beating some people with batons.

    Meanwhile, when we were trekking to the border, Ukrainians were helping us. They were giving us foods and water on the road, which is very nice. The only people that discriminated against us were the officials. That’s the law enforcement officers. Then, after the whole day in the night, they started allowing the men because there are only a few women left. So it was pretty easy for us to cross over. And on the Poland side, there was no discrimination.

    So, we want to continue our education. And nobody wants to go back without completing their education. So, we also want the world to know that it is actually not good to be asking the world for help while committing war crime and discriminating against Africans. It never made sense. I was expecting people at war to be more compassionate. I wasn’t expecting them to do such things.

    AMY GOODMAN: That’s Nigerian student Somto Orah speaking with Democracy Now! after he fled to Poland from Ukraine and reached Warsaw. Special thanks to Democracy Now! producer Messiah Rhodes, who reached him for this report. And for the radio listeners, you can go to democracynow.org and see the video, the B-roll that we laid over what Somto was saying. It is his own B-roll. It’s his own video of what took place on his journey.

    Coming up, we talk about Russia’s invasion and President Biden’s State of the Union address with Filipino vice-presidential candidate Walden Bello and Branko Marcetic of Jacobin. Stay with us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Russia Bad, Qatar Good – FIFA’s Hypocrisy

    Since early last Thursday, in what has seemingly finally brought an end to the two-year long COVID-19 corporate media narrative, a Russian military intervention in neighbouring Ukraine, launched in response to almost nine years of NATO provocations following Kiev coming under the rule of the successive pro-Western governments of Petro Poroshenko and Voldymyr Zelensky since the 2014 Euromaidan colour revolution, has dominated media headlines worldwide –with Moscow coming in for levels of global condemnation not seen since the Cold War.

    US President Joe Biden, in tandem with the other G7 members, immediately announced wide-ranging sanctions targeting the Russian economy…

    The post Russia Bad, Qatar Good – FIFA’s Hypocrisy appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Prioritize Peace and Humanitarian Aid for Ukraine Over Weapons, Say Analysts

    rotester in Boston holding up sign against Ukraine invasion

    While unequivocally condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine, some U.S. experts on Tuesday made the case for prioritizing diplomacy and humanitarian assistance over military aid to end the violence, help suffering Ukrainians, and promote long-term peace.

    Their arguments came as Russia held nuclear weapon drills and continued to attack Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities — and as the United Nations refugee agency and other humanitarian groups called for funding to aid the millions who have been displaced by the war.

    Although a plan for donated fighter jets from European nations fell apart this week, various countries have sent or pledged to send arms and other military aid — including ammunition, anti-tank weapons, assault rifles, body armor, helmets, and missiles as well as fuel, medical supplies, and ration packages — to Ukrainians fighting off Russian invaders.

    The Biden administration, which maintains that it won’t send U.S. troops into a war with Russia, has responded to the invasion with economic sanctions and more military aid. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week that over the past year, the United States has committed more than $1 billion in security assistance to Ukraine.

    The White House has asked Congress for at least $6.4 billion — including $3.5 billion for the Pentagon and $2.9 billion for providing European allies with humanitarian and security assistance — but some lawmakers reportedly think the Ukraine package may ultimately top $10 billion.

    Noting plans to include that package in an annual budget Congress has pledged to finish by next week, William D. Hartung — a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft — urged U.S. lawmakers not to cause more global conflict, writing:

    Whatever Congress chooses to do with respect to aid to Ukraine, the military portion should be a carefully circumscribed, not first step towards an open-ended commitment that would boost U.S. military involvement in Europe back towards Cold War levels, or create a loosely regulated slush fund like the account that was used to finance the Iraq and Afghan wars. And given the growing humanitarian crisis sparked by the war, the bulk of new funding should be for humanitarian aid, not guns and troops.

    Beyond the question of the composition of a new aid package, Congress should refrain from promoting steps that could push the current conflict towards a direct military confrontation between the United States and Russia. A shooting war between two nuclear-armed powers would increase the risk of escalation towards a nuclear confrontation. Avoiding that risk means no U.S. or NATO troops in Ukraine, and no imposition of a no-fly zone that would entail aerial combat between NATO and Russian forces. The Biden administration has wisely ruled out either of these options, and it should resist any pressure to pursue either of them.

    While blasting the Russian invasion as “a major war crime, ranking alongside the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Hitler-Stalin invasion of Poland in September 1939,” world-renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky also pointed out that “perhaps Putin meant what he and his associates have been saying loud and clear for years” about the eastward expansion of NATO.

    The current crisis, Chomsky told C.J. Polychroniou in an interview published by Truthout, “has been brewing for 25 years as the U.S. contemptuously rejected Russian security concerns, in particular their clear red lines: Georgia and especially Ukraine.”

    Referencing Moscow’s recent demands that preceded the invasion last week — including the exclusion of Ukraine from NATO — Chomsky said that “there is good reason to believe that this tragedy could have been avoided, until the last minute.”

    Though “it’s easy to understand why those suffering from the crime may regard it as an unacceptable indulgence to inquire into why it happened and whether it could have been avoided,” he continued, “if we want to respond to the tragedy in ways that will help the victims, and avert still worse catastrophes that loom ahead, it is wise, and necessary, to learn as much as we can about what went wrong and how the course could have been corrected.”

    Of the “grim” choices that remain, Chomsky said, “the least bad is support for the diplomatic options that still exist, in the hope of reaching an outcome not too far from what was very likely achievable a few days ago: Austrian-style neutralization of Ukraine, some version of Minsk II federalism within.”

    That is “much harder to reach now,” he added, while also emphasizing that it is necessary to include “an escape hatch for Putin, or outcomes will be still more dire for Ukraine and everyone else, perhaps almost unimaginably so.”

    “Like it or not,” he said, “the choices are now reduced to an ugly outcome that rewards rather than punishes Putin for the act of aggression — or the strong possibility of terminal war.”

    Chomsky also asserted that “we should do anything we can to provide meaningful support for those valiantly defending their homeland against cruel aggressors, for those escaping the horrors, and for the thousands of courageous Russians publicly opposing the crime of their state at great personal risk, a lesson to all of us.”

    In her weekly column for The Washington Post, Katrina vanden Heuvel also encouraged learning from “Putin’s indefensible invasion” that has fueled a “perilous escalation of violence.”

    “Putin has simply (and brutally) reasserted Russia’s role. The old order — with its Cold War attitudes, militaries, alliances, and enmities — is reclaiming center stage,” she wrote. The Nation’s editorial director and publisher continued:

    NATO, adrift since the Soviet Union ended, now claims new purpose and energy. Hawks in Russia and the United States alike are emboldened. Weapons-makers are drawing up plans to profit in the coming arms buildup, and ideologues and demagogues are dusting off familiar rhetoric. China, clearly helping Russia mitigate its sanctions, now weighs heavily in the balance.

    Indeed, we should expect ringing calls to arms for a decadeslong battle against authoritarianism. These cries will emanate from a foreign policy establishment that has been discredited by its serial debacles from Iraq to Libya to Afghanistan, but that will nevertheless seek to consolidate bipartisan and militarized support anew. Already an armchair warrior at the Atlantic Council has called on the United States to prepare to fight Russia and China at the same time — and double our military budget to do so.

    What’s lacking here is any sense of proportion or grasp on reality. The new Cold War will sap resources and attention from pressing dangers we already face.

    “The intense diplomacy spurred by the crisis should also lead to new thinking about security,” she argued. “Could security focus first on building the cooperation needed to address pandemics and climate change? Could it create institutions that divert resources from the entrenched institutions of war?”

    “Rather than build up weaponry in Europe, could the United States initiate negotiations about shared security, disarmament, and a military stand-down?” vanden Heuvel wondered. “Could this war lead us to think more seriously about how to build peace rather than how to build weapons?”

    Calling for a “courageous and transnational citizens’ movement demanding not simply the end of the war on Ukraine but also an end to perpetual wars” as well as “political leaders who will speak out about our real security needs,” she concluded that “by invading Ukraine, Putin demands a return to just that archaic and obsolete Cold War order. The world would be wise not to accede.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Arms Industry Sees Ukraine Conflict as an Opportunity, Not a Crisis

    A Ukrainian Military Forces serviceman stands in front of tanks of the 92nd separate mechanized brigade of Ukrainian Armed Forces, parked in their base near Klugino-Bashkirivka village, in the Kharkiv region on January 31, 2022.

    In February, a photograph of Russian President Vladimir Putin sitting hunched over a 13-foot table with French President Emmanuel Macron circulated the globe. News about their sprawling table and sumptuous seven-course dinner was reminiscent of a Lewis Carroll story. But their meeting was deadly serious. Macron arrived to discuss the escalating crisis in Ukraine and threat of war. Ultimately, their talk foundered over expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), yielding little more than the bizarre photograph.

    Yet the meeting was surreal for another reason. Over the past year, Macron, the leading European Union (EU) peace negotiator, has led an ambitious arms sales campaign, exploiting tensions to strengthen French commerce. The trade press even reported that he hoped to sell Rafale fighter jets to Ukraine, breaking into the “former bastion of Russian industry.”

    Macron is not alone. NATO contractors openly embrace the crisis in Ukraine as sound business. In January, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes cited “tensions in Europe” as an opportunity, saying, “I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit.” Likewise, CEO Jim Taiclet of Lockheed Martin highlighted the benefits of “great power competition” in Europe to shareholders.

    On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine, pounding cities with ordnance and dispatching troops across the border. The sonic boom of fighter jets filled the air, as civilians flooded the highways in Kyiv, attempting to flee the capital. And the stock value of arms makers soared.

    The spiraling conflict over Ukraine dramatizes the power of militarism and the influence of defense contractors. A ruthless drive for markets — intertwined with imperialism — has propelled NATO expansion, while inflaming wars from Eastern Europe to Yemen.

    Selling NATO

    The current conflict with Russia began in the wake of the Cold War. Declining military spending throttled the arms industry in the United States and other NATO countries. In 1993, Deputy Secretary of Defense William Perry convened a solemn meeting with executives. Insiders called it the “Last Supper.” In an atmosphere heavy with misapprehension, Perry informed his guests that impending blows to the U.S. military budget called for industry consolidation. A frantic wave of mergers and takeovers followed, as Lockheed, Northrop, Boeing and Raytheon acquired new muscle and smaller firms expired amid postwar scarcity.

    While domestic demand shrunk, defense contractors rushed to secure new foreign markets. In particular, they set their sights on the former Soviet bloc, regarding Eastern Europe as a new frontier for accumulation. “Lockheed began looking at Poland right after the wall came down,” veteran salesman Dick Pawlowski recalled. “There were contractors flooding through all those countries.” Arms makers became the most aggressive lobbyists for NATO expansion. The security umbrella was not simply a formidable alliance but also a tantalizing market.

    However, lobbyists faced a major obstacle. In 1990, Secretary of State James Baker had promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that if he allowed a reunited Germany to join NATO, the organization would move “not one inch eastward.” Yet lobbyists remained hopeful. The Soviet Union had since disintegrated, Cold War triumphalism prevailed, and vested interests now pushed for expansion. “Arms Makers See Bonanza In Selling NATO Expansion,” The New York Times reported in 1997. The newspaper later noted that, “Expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — first to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic and then possibly to more than a dozen other countries — would offer arms makers a new and hugely lucrative market.”

    New alliance members meant new clients. And NATO would literally require them to buy Western military equipment.

    Lobbyists poured into Washington, D.C. fêting legislators in royal style. Vice President Bruce Jackson of Lockheed became the president of the advocacy organization U.S. Committee to Expand NATO. Jackson recounted the extravagant meals that he hosted at the mansion of the Republican luminary Julie Finley, which boasted “an endless wine cellar.”

    “Educating the Senate about NATO was our chief mission,” he informed journalist Andrew Cockburn. “We’d have four or five senators over every night, and we’d drink Julie’s wine.”

    Lobby pressure was relentless. “The most interested corporations are the defense corporations, because they have a direct interest in the issue,” Romanian Ambassador Mircea Geoană observed. Bell Helicopter, Lockheed Martin, and other firms even funded Romania’s lobbying machine during its bid for NATO membership.

    Ultimately, policy makers reneged on their promise to Gorbachev, admitting Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO in 1999. During the ceremony, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright — who directly cooperated with the Jackson campaign — welcomed them with a hearty “Hallelujah.” Ominously, the intellectual architect of the Cold War, George Kennan, predicted disaster. “Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion,” Kennan cautioned.

    Few listened. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Chas Freeman described the mentality of policy makers: “The Russians are down, let’s give them another kick.” Relishing victory, Jackson was equally truculent: “‘Fuck Russia’ is a proud and long tradition in US foreign policy.” Later, he became chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which paved the way for the 2003 invasion, the biggest industry handout in recent history.

    Within two decades, 14 Central and Eastern European countries joined NATO. The organization originally existed to contain the Soviet Union, and Russian officials monitored its advance with alarm. In retrospect, postwar expansion benefited arms makers both by increasing their market and stimulating conflict with Russia.

    Targeting Ukraine

    Tensions reached a new phase in 2014 when the United States backed the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine. Yanukovych had opposed NATO membership, and Russian officials feared his ouster would bring the country under its strategic umbrella. Rather than assuage their concerns, the Obama administration maneuvered to slip Ukraine into its sphere of influence. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland coordinated regime change with brash confidence. Nuland openly distributed cookies to protesters, and later, capped a diplomatic exchange with “fuck the EU.” At the height of the uprising, Sen. John McCain also joined demonstrators. Flanked by leaders of the fascist Svoboda Party, McCain advocated regime change, declaring that “America is with you.”

    By then, newly minted NATO members had bought nearly $17 billion in American weapons. Military installations, including six NATO command posts, ballooned across Eastern Europe. Fearing further expansion, Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and intervened in the Donbas region, fueling a ferocious and interminable war.

    NATO spokespeople argued that the crisis justified expansion. In reality, NATO expansion was a key inciter of the crisis. And the conflagration was a gift to the arms industry. In five years, major weapons exports from the United States increased 23 percent, while French exports alone registered a 72-percent leap, reaching their highest levels since the Cold War. Meanwhile, European military spending hit record heights.

    As tensions escalated, Supreme Commander Philip Breedlove of NATO wildly inflated threats, calling Russia “a long-term existential threat to the United States.” Breedlove even falsified information about Russian troop movements over the first two years of the conflict, while brainstorming tactics with colleagues to “leverage, cajole, convince or coerce the U.S. to react.” A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution concluded that he aimed to “goad Europeans into jacking up defense spending.”

    And he succeeded. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute registered a significant leap in European military spending — even though Russian spending in 2016 equaled only one quarter of the European NATO budget. That year, Breedlove resigned from his post before joining the Center for a New American Security, a hawkish think tank awash in industry funds.

    The arms race continues. After European negotiations gridlocked, Russia recognized two separatist republics in the Donbas region before invading Ukraine this February. Justifying the bloody operation, Putin wrongly accused Ukrainian authorities of genocide. Yet his focus was geopolitical. “It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries,” he said. “In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns. Its military machine is moving and, as I said, is approaching our very border.”

    In retrospect, three decades of industry lobbying has proved deadly effective. NATO engulfed most of Eastern Europe and provoked a war in Ukraine — yet another opportunity for accumulation. Alliance members have activated Article 4, mobilizing troops, contemplating retaliation and moving further toward the brink of Armageddon.

    Yet even as military budgets rise, European arms makers — like their American counterparts — have required foreign markets to overcome fiscal restraints and production costs. They need clients to finance their own military buildup: foreign wars to fund domestic defense.

    Yemen Burning

    Arms makers found the perfect sales opportunity in Yemen. In 2011, a popular revolution toppled Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had monopolized power for two decades. His crony, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, became president the next year after easily winning the election: He was the only candidate. Thwarted by elite intrigue, another uprising ejected Mansour Hadi in 2015.

    That year, Prince Salman became king of Saudi Arabia, but power concentrated into the hands of his son, Mohammed bin Salman, who feared that the uprising threatened to snatch Yemen from Saudi Arabia’s sphere of influence.

    Months later, a Saudi-led coalition invaded, leaving a massive trail of carnage. “There was no plan,” a U.S. intelligence official emphasized. “They just bombed anything and everything that looked like it might be a target.”

    The war immediately attracted NATO contractors, which backed the aggressors. They exploit the conflict to sustain industrial capacity, fund weapons development and achieve economies of scale. In essence, the Saudi-led coalition subsidizes the NATO military buildup, while the West inflames the war in Yemen.

    Western statesmen pursue sales with perverse enthusiasm. In May 2017, Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia for his first trip abroad as president, in order to flesh out the details of a $110 billion arms bundle. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, arrived beforehand to discuss the package. When Saudi officials complained about the price of a radar system, Kushner immediately called the CEO of Lockheed Martin to ask for a discount. The following year, Mohammed bin Salman visited company headquarters during a whirlwind tour of the United States. Defense contractors, Hollywood moguls and even Oprah Winfrey welcomed the young prince.

    Yet the Americans were not alone. The Saudi-led coalition is also the largest arms market for France and other NATO members. And as the French Ministry of the Armed Forces explains, exports are “necessary for the preservation and development of the French defense technological and industrial base.” In other words, NATO members such as France export war in order to retain their capacity to wage it.

    President Macron denies that the coalition — an imposing alliance that includes Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Sudan and Senegal — uses French weapons. But the statistics are suggestive. Between 2015 and 2019, France awarded €14 billion in arms export licenses to Saudi Arabia and €20 billion in licenses to the United Arab Emirates. CEO Stéphane Mayer of Nexter Systems praised the performance of Leclerc tanks in Yemen, boasting that they “have highly impressed the military leaders of the region.” In short, while Macron denies that the coalition wields French hardware in Yemen, local industrialists cite their use as a selling point. Indeed, Amnesty International reports that his administration has systematically lied about its export policy. Privately, officials have compiled a “very precise list of French materiél deployed in the context of the conflict, including ammunition.”

    Recently, Macron became one of the first heads of state to meet Mohammed bin Salman following the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Like Trump’s trip, Macron’s diplomatic junket was a sales mission. Eventually, Macron clinched a deal with the United Arab Emirates for 80 Rafale fighters. The CEO of Dassault Aviation called the contract “the most important ever obtained by French military aerospace,” guaranteeing six years of work for a pillar of its industrial base.

    French policy is typical of NATO involvement in Yemen. While denouncing the war, every Western producer has outfitted those carrying it out. Spanish authorities massage official documents to conceal the export of lethal hardware. Great Britain has repeatedly violated its own arms embargo. And the United States has not respected export freezes with any consistency.

    Even NATO countries in Eastern Europe exploit the war. While these alliance members absorb Western arms, they dump some of their old Soviet hardware into the Middle East. Between 2012 and July 2016 Eastern Europe awarded at least €1.2 billion in military equipment to the region.

    Ironically, a leading Eastern European arms exporter is Ukraine. While the West rushes to arm Kyiv, its ruling class has sold weapons on the black market. A parliamentary inquiry concluded that between 1992 and 1998 alone, Ukraine lost a staggering $32 billion in military assets, as oligarchs pillaged their own army. Over the past three decades, they have outfitted Iraq, the Taliban and extremist groups across the Middle East. Even former President Leonid Kuchma, who has led peace talks in the Donbas region, illegally sold weapons while in office. More recently, French authorities investigated Dmytro Peregudov, the former director of the state defense conglomerate, for pocketing $24 million in sales commissions. Peregudov resided in a château with rolling wine fields, while managing the extensive properties that he acquired after his years in public service.

    The Warlords

    Kuchma and Peregudov are hardly exceptional. Corruption is endemic in an industry that relies on the proverbial revolving door. The revolving door is not simply a metaphor but an institution, converting private profit into public policy. Its perpetual motion signifies the social reproduction of an elite that resides at the commanding heights of a global military-industrial complex. Leading power brokers ranging from the Mitterrands and Chiracs in France, to the Thatchers and Blairs in Britain, and the Gonzálezes and Bourbons in Spain have personally profited from the arms trade.

    In the United States, the industry employs around 700 lobbyists. Nearly three-fourths previously worked for the federal government — the highest percentage for any industry. The lobby spent $108 million in 2020 alone, and its ranks continue to swell. Over the past 30 years, about 530 congressional staffers on military-related committees left office for defense contractors. Industry veterans dominate the Biden administration, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin from Raytheon.

    The revolving door reinforces the class composition of the state, while undermining its moral legitimacy. As an elite rotates office, members insulate policymaking from democratic input, taint the government with corruption and mistake corporate profit with national interest. By 2005, 80 percent of army generals with three stars or more retired to arms makers despite existing regulations. (The National Defense Authorization Act prohibits top officers from lobbying the government for two years after leaving office or leveraging personal contacts to secure contracts. But compliance is notoriously poor.) More recently, the U.S. Navy initiated investigations against dozens of officers for corrupt ties to the defense contractor Leonard Francis, who clinched contracts with massive bribes, lavish meals and sex parties.

    Steeped in this corrosive culture, NATO intellectuals now openly talk about the prospect of “infinite war.” Gen. Mike Holmes insists that it is “not losing. It’s staying in the game and getting a new plan and keeping pursuing your objectives.” Yet those immersed in its brutal reality surely disagree. The United Nations reports that at least 14,000 people have died in the Russo-Ukrainian War since 2014, and over 377,000 have perished in Yemen.

    In truth, the doctrine of infinite war is not so much a strategy as it is a confession — acknowledging the violent metabolism of a system that requires conflict. As a self-selecting elite propounds NATO expansion, military buildup and imperialism, we must embrace what the warlords most fear: the threat of peace.

    The author would like to thank Sarah Priscilla Lee of the Learning Sciences Program at Northwestern University for reviewing this article.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • MP urges Boris Johnson to donate oligarch-linked donations to Ukrainian charities

    The Conservative Party should give money from a Conservative donor with Russian links to Ukrainian humanitarian causes, Boris Johnson has been told. While the issue of UK politicians accepting donations from Russian oligarchs is nothing new – The Canary having reported on it for years – it has suddenly become advantageous for politicians to acknowledge the issue:

    From Russia with cash

    Lubov Chernukhin, whose husband Vladimir Chernukhin served as Russian president Vladimir Putin’s deputy finance minister before moving to the UK in 2004, has given more than £2m to the Conservative Party since 2016.

    Figures released by the Electoral Commission on Wednesday 2 March show Mrs Chernukhin donated another £80,250 to the party in the final months of 2021. At Prime Minister’s Questions on the same day, Labour MP Bill Esterson asked Boris Johnson if he would instruct the Conservative Party to hand the money to Ukrainian humanitarian causes:

    Esterson said:

    I know he doesn’t want to tar everyone with Russian links with the same brush and neither do I, but leaked documents… show that Vladimir Chernukhin received eight million US dollars from a Russian member of parliament, an ally of Putin who was later sanctioned by the United States.

    This is an opportunity for the Conservative Party and for the Prime Minister to end the suspicion of conflict of interests with Putin whilst showing solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

    Boris Johnson replied:

    It is absolutely vital that if we are to have a successful outcome in what we are trying to do collectively, united with Ukraine, that we demonstrate that this is not about the Russian people, it is about the Putin regime.

    Nothing to see here

    The Tories have previously defended taking money from Mrs Chernukhin and there is no suggestion that Mr and Mrs Chernukhin’s vast fortune – more than a person could earn in several lifetimes – is illegitimate. Mrs Chernukhin is entitled to donate to UK political parties as she is a British citizen.

    Other major donors to the Conservative Party listed in Wednesday’s release from the Electoral Commission, which covers the final three months of 2021, include West End producer John Gore, who donated £350,000 over the period. Gore has donated more than £6m to the Conservative Party since 2017, making him one of the party’s leading donors in recent years.

    In total, the party received almost £5m in donations during the last three months of 2021, an increase of more than £800,000 on the previous three months. The Conservatives received £3.2m from individual donors and another £950,000 from companies.

    Corbyn called it

    While Labour leader in 2018, Jeremy Corbyn called out the issue of politicians accepting donations from Russian oligarchs. At the time, he was roundly criticised by politicians:

    Corbyn isn’t the only figure on the left to go after the oligarchs and the crooked, capitalist system they represent:

    As mentioned, The Canary has published multiple pieces on dodgy oligarch money. It’s nice that politicians seem ready to tackle the issue too. The question is will they still be fighting corruption when it’s no longer politically advantageous to do so?

    Additional reporting by PA

    By John Shafthauer

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Ukraine, Russian climate strikers oppose war

    The Ukrainian arm of the climate movement Fridays for Future has called for global demonstrations to demand an end to Russia’s military assault, reports Andrea Germanos.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • The CIA Propaganda Verse:  Putin’s Ploy in “Context”

    I don’t feel safe in this World no more,
    I don’t wanna die in a nuclear war,
    I wanna sail away to a distant shore
    and live like an Apeman

    — From the song “Apeman” by the Kinks, 1970

    Considering the Chernobyl-like crisis bubbling over Ukraine in recent days, some questions arise like mushroom clouds of steam from tempests in teapots, namely:  Is Vladimir Putin acting like an “Ape, man?”; has this WEF-grad truly gone “rogue”?; and even the “content moderation” set thought that Putin has been –“Horrors!” — ex-communicated from the holier-than-thou Davos Community?  What in the Ukraine is really going on?

    According to all of the usual Western Corporate Media sources, Russia’s “incursion” into Ukraine has caused a noticeable spike-protein in “human interest” stories.  As Western economies collapse, suddenly we are seeing fleeing Ukrainians as images of ourselves displaced, with the only explanation offered:  Why would Putin do this?  The real answer, of course, is that Joe “Malarkey” Biden’s been “doing this” for quite some time now; indeed, “Credit Card Country” Joe was most likely an early fan of Putin’s rise to the top of the post-Soviet oligarchical rubbish heap  I do not have the “receipts” here to “prove” this assertion, but word around the campfire has it that Biden pretty much ruled Ukraine after the Maidan coup orchestrated by the United States of America, under the leadership of Barack O’Bushma.  Some circles are saying:  What took Putin so long?

    To Obama’s credit, he refused to publicly allocate weapons-systems to Ukraine, stating that a direct military confrontation with Russia was a “No Go, Bro” (This is a paraphrase of Obama’s position, but anyone mildly familiar with Obama’s take on Putin’s Crimea-grab knows that Obama knew he’d already gotten away with “Maidan” murder, so he laid off putting further fingerprints on the case in question, just in case someone else came knocking…).  Then Donald J Trump barged in, imagine that!, and all hell almost broke loose.  Except that — it didn’t.  Business-as-usual reigned, with Donald the Duck awkwardly waltzing before Cameras triggered to his appearance, as if nothing else in the World were happening.

    So the “Ukraine Thing” has been going on for a while now, and let’s just give Victoria “Nukeland” her fair share — and balanced — bit of cred in this space. Like Chrystia Freeland in Canada (eh?), “Yats is our guy” Nuland had everything to do with the coup in Kiev in 2014, and she’s now directing U$ foreign relations today “under Biden.”  By the way, for the sake of accuracy, whatever that means anymore, unless you’re a sniper and getting paid for the “kill,” Freeland’s role in the 2014 Ukrainian coup was probably more “spiritual” than anything else; her current activities are much more visceral — and viscerally “twitchy.”  Not to digress, but the recent Canadian Trucker protest was by far the most profound in recent Western history, or:  The Truckers policed their own protest, and didn’t let any “agitators” in.  One wonders:  Where are the LiveStreamers in Ukraine?  Quick answer:  To “Livestream” in Ukraine is to be shot dead, either by invading Russians or neo-nazi-styled Ukrainians.  Putin’s no hero, in case anyone was confused.  He’s just another elite who got caught on the wrong side of a certain “financial” situation.  To date, at least, there is no evidence that Putin was connected to Jeffrey Epstein and his “Lolita Express,” so some of these moral quibbles might be a bit, to say the least, well beyond the realm of Reason.

    As an inherently stupid optimist, as all “optimists” inherently are, I prefer to think that the current Ukrainian kerfuffle will not lead to nuclear annihilation of most life on this planet; in fact, that is why I am writing this message.  However, in case it improbably does, I do not want to go out without a flurry, or fine fury, of my own.  We all “own” this Planet that we’re on, regardless of “allegiance.”  We’re all here Now, and have a voice — so many voices!  The Revolutionary Moment might be happening now, and Vladimir Putin’s “crazy” move on Ukraine might be the latest elite attempt to stop it:  Who knows? Putin knows the Forces he’s up against, and maybe Funeral Home Director Xi will back him, or, maybe he won’t?  In any case, the Weapons Industry is profiteering off of this current crisis, which is obviously covering for the fall of the COVID-19 regime that ruled our World for almost two years.  Yes, COVID-19:  Can you see it receding in your rear-view mirror?

    I’ve been stream-of-consciousnessing for a bit now; however, this piece is not over.  I am appending a thing I wrote and spoke at an Open Mic forum early in March of 2014, which I think reveals my own bona fides on this issue of Ukraine.  I am no longer “in touch” with the mind behind it, if only because I would have to dig up the notebook at that “time” to find what other thoughts I was thinking, etc.  If you’ve read this far, please indulge me a bit further, into our recently lived past…

    Ukraine?  Nyet:  Mykraine! — a Potemkin Village Idiot’s View

    Crimea river, if all of this saber-rattling over Ukraine, the former Soviet Union’s bread basket, isn’t enough to give me a migraine!  Ukraine — oof — my Cranium!  Nevertheless, with cold compress applied to head, I shall attempt to analyze this grain of current contention between our famous former Cold War rivals, USA and Russia, who are still strutting their Super-Chicken feathers across the Global Chicken Coop right here and now, early in the 21st century.  Let’s begin with the U$ response.

    Secretary of State John Kerry has “ramped up” the rhetoric by labeling Russia’s apparent takeover of the autonomous Ukrainian republic of Crimea an “incredible act of aggression.”  Scary words there, Kerry!  So far, however, no shots have been fired during this “incredible act of aggression.”

    And this is not the only barb that Kerry has gotten off his Cold War chest.  On Face the Nation Sunday, Secretary Kerry turned fashion critic, threw down this “barbaric yawp”:

    “You don’t just, in the 21st century, behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext.

    Well, I’ll be WMD’d in a Jonathan Swift-boat if that’s not the damndest thing that John “W” Kerry could have said!  No word from Russia whether or not they consider Kerry’s current excursion to Kiev an incursion, provocation, invasion, or what.

    For their part, the two big Brobdingnaggian states on the scene have held a 90-minute phone conversation on the subject.  Reportedly, president Obama said something like “Vladimir, we must Putin an end to this.”  Ah, yes, Putinenda!  In this context, it occurs to this observer that President Putin could score a serious PR coup by ambassadorizing the heretofore anti-Putin Russian girl band Pussy Riot for the duration of this crisis.  Such a move would certainly throw Secretary “WMD” Kerry a real “Curveball.”  At the inevitable negotiation table, Pussy Riot could simply sing, or say:  “Here’s your old Uncle Charley, Mr Secretary!”– see if he can “Slam Dunk!” that one out of the Park.  (For those who don’t know, “Uncle Charley” is code for the “Curveball” in American baseball; in other words, it’s a wicked pitch, and if you just flailed at it, well, Uncle Charley’s got your number…). By the way, please pardon the mixed metaphor, but they play more basketball than baseball in Russia…

    Meanwhile, at Monday’s press conference, Mr Obama unleashed another bold fashion statement, Neo-conically declaring that “Russia is on the wrong side of history on this.”  Well, I’ll be an Obushma if that ain’t “True!”  There has been some significant Super-Power shrinkage since the “Just Say No!” coke-snorting 1980s, when Ronald Reagan infamously labeled the now former “Soviet Union” an “Evil Empire,” a notorious epithet gamely plucked straight out of New Testament Hollywood’s playbook.  What a Playbook:  Can we have a big round of applause for Jesus, or at least the CIA?

    Unfortunately, we’ve down-morphed a bit since then, from Holy “Caped Crusader” to global traffic cop, slapping on sanctions like parking tickets.  Of course, the threat of the “overwhelming force” is still with the US, that “nuke-you-lar” vision thing.  At least we can say, in light of moving from the Metaphysics of Sheer Evil to the pragmatics of merely being on the “wrong side,” the hopeful twinkle, perhaps, of a thousandth point of light.

    Now, on the behalf of the Congress, House Speaker John Boner (sic — intentionally) has done some chirping, constructively likening the Russian president to a “thug.”  Naturally, many commentators were shocked, and even “awed,” by the Speaker’s concise eloquence here, having pigeon-holed this potential  Presidential-aspirant as a kind of neo-Provincialist unsuited for the rhetorical rigors of the wider international stage.  Au contraire, Mesdames et Messieurs! Way to “thug” up that misperception, M Boner!  As an aside, looking forward, I would like to suggest that House Speaker Boner could further “sex-up” his Street Cred by referring to himself as “J-Bo” from now on.  An obvious campaign slogan:  “It’s Tea Time for J-Bo.”

    In conclusion, I believe that this review of key American statements concerning the ongoing crisis over Ukraine can leave no doubt that the US effort in this arena will be nothing if not nuanced — Fair and Nuanced.  Thank you, and dosvedanya!

    The post The CIA Propaganda Verse:  Putin’s Ploy in “Context” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The CIA Propaganda Verse:  Putin’s Ploy in “Context”

    I don’t feel safe in this World no more,
    I don’t wanna die in a nuclear war,
    I wanna sail away to a distant shore
    and live like an Apeman

    — From the song “Apeman” by the Kinks, 1970

    Considering the Chernobyl-like crisis bubbling over Ukraine in recent days, some questions arise like mushroom clouds of steam from tempests in teapots, namely:  Is Vladimir Putin acting like an “Ape, man?”; has this WEF-grad truly gone “rogue”?; and even the “content moderation” set thought that Putin has been –“Horrors!” — ex-communicated from the holier-than-thou Davos Community?  What in the Ukraine is really going on?

    According to all of the usual Western Corporate Media sources, Russia’s “incursion” into Ukraine has caused a noticeable spike-protein in “human interest” stories.  As Western economies collapse, suddenly we are seeing fleeing Ukrainians as images of ourselves displaced, with the only explanation offered:  Why would Putin do this?  The real answer, of course, is that Joe “Malarkey” Biden’s been “doing this” for quite some time now; indeed, “Credit Card Country” Joe was most likely an early fan of Putin’s rise to the top of the post-Soviet oligarchical rubbish heap  I do not have the “receipts” here to “prove” this assertion, but word around the campfire has it that Biden pretty much ruled Ukraine after the Maidan coup orchestrated by the United States of America, under the leadership of Barack O’Bushma.  Some circles are saying:  What took Putin so long?

    To Obama’s credit, he refused to publicly allocate weapons-systems to Ukraine, stating that a direct military confrontation with Russia was a “No Go, Bro” (This is a paraphrase of Obama’s position, but anyone mildly familiar with Obama’s take on Putin’s Crimea-grab knows that Obama knew he’d already gotten away with “Maidan” murder, so he laid off putting further fingerprints on the case in question, just in case someone else came knocking…).  Then Donald J Trump barged in, imagine that!, and all hell almost broke loose.  Except that — it didn’t.  Business-as-usual reigned, with Donald the Duck awkwardly waltzing before Cameras triggered to his appearance, as if nothing else in the World were happening.

    So the “Ukraine Thing” has been going on for a while now, and let’s just give Victoria “Nukeland” her fair share — and balanced — bit of cred in this space. Like Chrystia Freeland in Canada (eh?), “Yats is our guy” Nuland had everything to do with the coup in Kiev in 2014, and she’s now directing U$ foreign relations today “under Biden.”  By the way, for the sake of accuracy, whatever that means anymore, unless you’re a sniper and getting paid for the “kill,” Freeland’s role in the 2014 Ukrainian coup was probably more “spiritual” than anything else; her current activities are much more visceral — and viscerally “twitchy.”  Not to digress, but the recent Canadian Trucker protest was by far the most profound in recent Western history, or:  The Truckers policed their own protest, and didn’t let any “agitators” in.  One wonders:  Where are the LiveStreamers in Ukraine?  Quick answer:  To “Livestream” in Ukraine is to be shot dead, either by invading Russians or neo-nazi-styled Ukrainians.  Putin’s no hero, in case anyone was confused.  He’s just another elite who got caught on the wrong side of a certain “financial” situation.  To date, at least, there is no evidence that Putin was connected to Jeffrey Epstein and his “Lolita Express,” so some of these moral quibbles might be a bit, to say the least, well beyond the realm of Reason.

    As an inherently stupid optimist, as all “optimists” inherently are, I prefer to think that the current Ukrainian kerfuffle will not lead to nuclear annihilation of most life on this planet; in fact, that is why I am writing this message.  However, in case it improbably does, I do not want to go out without a flurry, or fine fury, of my own.  We all “own” this Planet that we’re on, regardless of “allegiance.”  We’re all here Now, and have a voice — so many voices!  The Revolutionary Moment might be happening now, and Vladimir Putin’s “crazy” move on Ukraine might be the latest elite attempt to stop it:  Who knows? Putin knows the Forces he’s up against, and maybe Funeral Home Director Xi will back him, or, maybe he won’t?  In any case, the Weapons Industry is profiteering off of this current crisis, which is obviously covering for the fall of the COVID-19 regime that ruled our World for almost two years.  Yes, COVID-19:  Can you see it receding in your rear-view mirror?

    I’ve been stream-of-consciousnessing for a bit now; however, this piece is not over.  I am appending a thing I wrote and spoke at an Open Mic forum early in March of 2014, which I think reveals my own bona fides on this issue of Ukraine.  I am no longer “in touch” with the mind behind it, if only because I would have to dig up the notebook at that “time” to find what other thoughts I was thinking, etc.  If you’ve read this far, please indulge me a bit further, into our recently lived past…

    Ukraine?  Nyet:  Mykraine! — a Potemkin Village Idiot’s View

    Crimea river, if all of this saber-rattling over Ukraine, the former Soviet Union’s bread basket, isn’t enough to give me a migraine!  Ukraine — oof — my Cranium!  Nevertheless, with cold compress applied to head, I shall attempt to analyze this grain of current contention between our famous former Cold War rivals, USA and Russia, who are still strutting their Super-Chicken feathers across the Global Chicken Coop right here and now, early in the 21st century.  Let’s begin with the U$ response.

    Secretary of State John Kerry has “ramped up” the rhetoric by labeling Russia’s apparent takeover of the autonomous Ukrainian republic of Crimea an “incredible act of aggression.”  Scary words there, Kerry!  So far, however, no shots have been fired during this “incredible act of aggression.”

    And this is not the only barb that Kerry has gotten off his Cold War chest.  On Face the Nation Sunday, Secretary Kerry turned fashion critic, threw down this “barbaric yawp”:

    “You don’t just, in the 21st century, behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext.

    Well, I’ll be WMD’d in a Jonathan Swift-boat if that’s not the damndest thing that John “W” Kerry could have said!  No word from Russia whether or not they consider Kerry’s current excursion to Kiev an incursion, provocation, invasion, or what.

    For their part, the two big Brobdingnaggian states on the scene have held a 90-minute phone conversation on the subject.  Reportedly, president Obama said something like “Vladimir, we must Putin an end to this.”  Ah, yes, Putinenda!  In this context, it occurs to this observer that President Putin could score a serious PR coup by ambassadorizing the heretofore anti-Putin Russian girl band Pussy Riot for the duration of this crisis.  Such a move would certainly throw Secretary “WMD” Kerry a real “Curveball.”  At the inevitable negotiation table, Pussy Riot could simply sing, or say:  “Here’s your old Uncle Charley, Mr Secretary!”– see if he can “Slam Dunk!” that one out of the Park.  (For those who don’t know, “Uncle Charley” is code for the “Curveball” in American baseball; in other words, it’s a wicked pitch, and if you just flailed at it, well, Uncle Charley’s got your number…). By the way, please pardon the mixed metaphor, but they play more basketball than baseball in Russia…

    Meanwhile, at Monday’s press conference, Mr Obama unleashed another bold fashion statement, Neo-conically declaring that “Russia is on the wrong side of history on this.”  Well, I’ll be an Obushma if that ain’t “True!”  There has been some significant Super-Power shrinkage since the “Just Say No!” coke-snorting 1980s, when Ronald Reagan infamously labeled the now former “Soviet Union” an “Evil Empire,” a notorious epithet gamely plucked straight out of New Testament Hollywood’s playbook.  What a Playbook:  Can we have a big round of applause for Jesus, or at least the CIA?

    Unfortunately, we’ve down-morphed a bit since then, from Holy “Caped Crusader” to global traffic cop, slapping on sanctions like parking tickets.  Of course, the threat of the “overwhelming force” is still with the US, that “nuke-you-lar” vision thing.  At least we can say, in light of moving from the Metaphysics of Sheer Evil to the pragmatics of merely being on the “wrong side,” the hopeful twinkle, perhaps, of a thousandth point of light.

    Now, on the behalf of the Congress, House Speaker John Boner (sic — intentionally) has done some chirping, constructively likening the Russian president to a “thug.”  Naturally, many commentators were shocked, and even “awed,” by the Speaker’s concise eloquence here, having pigeon-holed this potential  Presidential-aspirant as a kind of neo-Provincialist unsuited for the rhetorical rigors of the wider international stage.  Au contraire, Mesdames et Messieurs! Way to “thug” up that misperception, M Boner!  As an aside, looking forward, I would like to suggest that House Speaker Boner could further “sex-up” his Street Cred by referring to himself as “J-Bo” from now on.  An obvious campaign slogan:  “It’s Tea Time for J-Bo.”

    In conclusion, I believe that this review of key American statements concerning the ongoing crisis over Ukraine can leave no doubt that the US effort in this arena will be nothing if not nuanced — Fair and Nuanced.  Thank you, and dosvedanya!

    The post The CIA Propaganda Verse:  Putin’s Ploy in “Context” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • USA Sees Russia’s Operation in Ukraine as Blessing in Disguise

    The United States is now in a state of war with Russia.

    Every country in the NATO military alliance is providing billions in anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to the Ukrainians (of course, every country in the NATO alliance is owned by the United States which has recently coughed up $850 million for the cause). Along with those weapons the alliance has nodded its approval to the world’s mercenaries to descend on Ukraine getting free passage into Western Ukraine and transit through countries who directly border Ukraine. Privatemilitary.org lists all the private military contractors who are likely exploring their options in Ukraine.

    It is also great news for the West’s defense contractors who manufacture anti-tank/aircraft, small arms, landmines, grenades, artillery, radios; in short, billions in profits will be earned off the war in eastern Ukraine: there never seems to be a downside to their businesses.

    With Russia, the world’s 11th largest economy, essentially cut off from the globalized world, the pain level for Russian citizens is sure to rise over time. But if there is any one people whose tolerance to pain is high, it’s the Russians. Their history shows as much. Still, one puzzling aspect of Russia’s peacekeeping operation — that would prolong a war, is its devoting so much effort to taking the two most populous cities in Ukraine: Kiev and Kharkov. It is those two places where mercenaries will alight inevitably prolonging Russia’s effort and its citizen’s economic difficulties. As I mentioned in a piece published at Counterpunch on February 4, Scenario for a War in Eastern Ukraine, the Grozny experience in Chechnya still must linger in the veterans of that epic siege and defense.

    What’s Up with China?

    So, what is China thinking? Their political-military leadership must surely be looking on the scene in Ukraine with great interest. A good guess would be that principals in the Peoples Liberation Army-Navy-Air Force are discussing military operations against Taiwan, which Beijing has always claimed as part of greater China.

    Could there be a better time for a Chinese move on Taiwan? With the USA/NATO totally focused on Russia and Ukraine, they would be hard pressed to mount much resistance to Chinese military forces moving towards Taiwan. If the Chinese did this, how would the USA-NATO and Asian allies respond?

    Taiwan is already afloat in high tech US weaponry: air defenses, aircraft, artillery. The USA has trained its military. Resupplying the island nation during conflict would be difficult by sea or air. US naval forces and those of Taiwan would likely be severely damaged by land based ballistic missiles.

    Cutting China off from SWIFT and barring all USA-Western companies from doing business in China would be a disaster for the citizens of the USA-Europe who have no tolerance for economic pain. Corporations like Walmart and Boeing are so entrenched in the Chinese economy that they could not possibly extract themselves without massive US government financial support. Any and all companies doing business in China would sprint to the US government for cash to support exiting the country.

    The USA would find itself in a two-front economic and military conflict with China and Russia for which it is unprepared. Tactical nuclear weapons would likely come into play.

    It seems that it is time for the world’s elite and their citizens to watch and listen intently to The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara by Erol Morris. McNamara quotes Nikita Khrushchev speaking with John F. Kennedy’s administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His insight is ignored at the world’s peril:

    We and you ought not to pull on the ends of a rope which you have tied the knots of war. Because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied. And then it will be necessary to cut that knot, and what that would mean is not for me to explain to you. I have participated in two wars and know that war ends when it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction. For such is the logic of war. If people do not display wisdom, they will clash like blind moles and then mutual annihilation will commence.

    Media

    Military information support operations (MISO) are in full swing all over the mainstream media and the World Wide Web. Who to believe? It is getting tougher as alternate news sites like Sputnik News and RT News are being censored by the West. Any support aired by anyone on the West for the Russian position gets mauled and derided by pro-West pundits. For example, the US sponsored coup in Ukraine that overthrew an elected government there in 2014 no longer exists or does not matter.  Nor does the long litany of US wars of aggression against — well, pick a nation: Guatemala, Iraq, Vietnam, etc., etc., etc.

    One thing is for sure: self-censorship by Western media will only get more wicked.

    The only way to form an opinion is to view as much from Russian and Western sources as is humanly possible. As examples, on one side is Newsfront, Southfront, Tass, Pravda.ru, Interfax News, Al Jazeera, and, on the other is the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, CBS, Center for Strategic and International Analysis. Apps like Telegram and Twitter sometimes contain commentary and footage from Ukrainian combat zones.

    Relying on one source is not intelligent.

    Dismal Horizon of the Future

    Therefore, I ask myself, can the apocalypse be averted or mastered? As the concept of the Anthropocene implies, it is already too late. “They have planted the wind and will harvest the whirlwind,” the Bible says. The trends of environmental devastation, military destruction and social wreckage have now taken on an irreversible and self-feeding character; they tend to expand their effects and the tend to eliminate possible countermeasures. Brutality is more and more dominating social relations, and the economic machine of production is ruled more and more by inescapable automatisms. The Automaton and the Brute are the two separated forms of existence in our time: neuro-totalitarianisms and global civil war are the forms of life looming on the horizon of the future.

    — Franco Berardi, Breathing: Chaos and Poetry, semiotext (e), MIT Press. 2018

    The post USA Sees Russia’s Operation in Ukraine as Blessing in Disguise first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • USA Sees Russia’s Operation in Ukraine as Blessing in Disguise

    The United States is now in a state of war with Russia.

    Every country in the NATO military alliance is providing billions in anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to the Ukrainians (of course, every country in the NATO alliance is owned by the United States which has recently coughed up $850 million for the cause). Along with those weapons the alliance has nodded its approval to the world’s mercenaries to descend on Ukraine getting free passage into Western Ukraine and transit through countries who directly border Ukraine. Privatemilitary.org lists all the private military contractors who are likely exploring their options in Ukraine.

    It is also great news for the West’s defense contractors who manufacture anti-tank/aircraft, small arms, landmines, grenades, artillery, radios; in short, billions in profits will be earned off the war in eastern Ukraine: there never seems to be a downside to their businesses.

    With Russia, the world’s 11th largest economy, essentially cut off from the globalized world, the pain level for Russian citizens is sure to rise over time. But if there is any one people whose tolerance to pain is high, it’s the Russians. Their history shows as much. Still, one puzzling aspect of Russia’s peacekeeping operation — that would prolong a war, is its devoting so much effort to taking the two most populous cities in Ukraine: Kiev and Kharkov. It is those two places where mercenaries will alight inevitably prolonging Russia’s effort and its citizen’s economic difficulties. As I mentioned in a piece published at Counterpunch on February 4, Scenario for a War in Eastern Ukraine, the Grozny experience in Chechnya still must linger in the veterans of that epic siege and defense.

    What’s Up with China?

    So, what is China thinking? Their political-military leadership must surely be looking on the scene in Ukraine with great interest. A good guess would be that principals in the Peoples Liberation Army-Navy-Air Force are discussing military operations against Taiwan, which Beijing has always claimed as part of greater China.

    Could there be a better time for a Chinese move on Taiwan? With the USA/NATO totally focused on Russia and Ukraine, they would be hard pressed to mount much resistance to Chinese military forces moving towards Taiwan. If the Chinese did this, how would the USA-NATO and Asian allies respond?

    Taiwan is already afloat in high tech US weaponry: air defenses, aircraft, artillery. The USA has trained its military. Resupplying the island nation during conflict would be difficult by sea or air. US naval forces and those of Taiwan would likely be severely damaged by land based ballistic missiles.

    Cutting China off from SWIFT and barring all USA-Western companies from doing business in China would be a disaster for the citizens of the USA-Europe who have no tolerance for economic pain. Corporations like Walmart and Boeing are so entrenched in the Chinese economy that they could not possibly extract themselves without massive US government financial support. Any and all companies doing business in China would sprint to the US government for cash to support exiting the country.

    The USA would find itself in a two-front economic and military conflict with China and Russia for which it is unprepared. Tactical nuclear weapons would likely come into play.

    It seems that it is time for the world’s elite and their citizens to watch and listen intently to The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara by Erol Morris. McNamara quotes Nikita Khrushchev speaking with John F. Kennedy’s administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His insight is ignored at the world’s peril:

    We and you ought not to pull on the ends of a rope which you have tied the knots of war. Because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied. And then it will be necessary to cut that knot, and what that would mean is not for me to explain to you. I have participated in two wars and know that war ends when it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction. For such is the logic of war. If people do not display wisdom, they will clash like blind moles and then mutual annihilation will commence.

    Media

    Military information support operations (MISO) are in full swing all over the mainstream media and the World Wide Web. Who to believe? It is getting tougher as alternate news sites like Sputnik News and RT News are being censored by the West. Any support aired by anyone on the West for the Russian position gets mauled and derided by pro-West pundits. For example, the US sponsored coup in Ukraine that overthrew an elected government there in 2014 no longer exists or does not matter.  Nor does the long litany of US wars of aggression against — well, pick a nation: Guatemala, Iraq, Vietnam, etc., etc., etc.

    One thing is for sure: self-censorship by Western media will only get more wicked.

    The only way to form an opinion is to view as much from Russian and Western sources as is humanly possible. As examples, on one side is Newsfront, Southfront, Tass, Pravda.ru, Interfax News, Al Jazeera, and, on the other is the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, CBS, Center for Strategic and International Analysis. Apps like Telegram and Twitter sometimes contain commentary and footage from Ukrainian combat zones.

    Relying on one source is not intelligent.

    Dismal Horizon of the Future

    Therefore, I ask myself, can the apocalypse be averted or mastered? As the concept of the Anthropocene implies, it is already too late. “They have planted the wind and will harvest the whirlwind,” the Bible says. The trends of environmental devastation, military destruction and social wreckage have now taken on an irreversible and self-feeding character; they tend to expand their effects and the tend to eliminate possible countermeasures. Brutality is more and more dominating social relations, and the economic machine of production is ruled more and more by inescapable automatisms. The Automaton and the Brute are the two separated forms of existence in our time: neuro-totalitarianisms and global civil war are the forms of life looming on the horizon of the future.

    — Franco Berardi, Breathing: Chaos and Poetry, semiotext (e), MIT Press. 2018

    The post USA Sees Russia’s Operation in Ukraine as Blessing in Disguise first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Defending Freedom And Democracy Sure Requires An Awful Lot Of Censorship

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    Kremlin-backed media outlets have been banned throughout the European Union, both on television and on apps and online platforms. RT has lost its Sky TV slot in the UK, where the outlet is also blocked on YouTube. Australian TV providers SBS and Foxtel have dropped RT, and the federal government is putting pressure on social media platforms to block Russian media in Australia.

    In the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Latvia, speaking in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will get you years in prison.

    Twitter, historically the last of the major online platforms to jump on any new internet censorship escalation, is now actively minimizing the number of people who see Russian media content, saying that it is “reducing the content’s visibility” and “taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter”. This censorship-by-algorithm tactic is exactly what I speculated might emerge after former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey resigned back in November, due to previous comments supportive of that practice by his successor Parag Agrawal.

    Twitter is also placing warnings labels on all Russia-backed media and delivering a pop-up message informing you that you are committing wrongthink if you try to share or even ‘like’ a post linking to such outlets on the platform. It has also placed the label “Russia state-affiliated media” on every tweet made by the personal accounts of employees of those platforms, baselessly giving the impression that the dissident opinions tweeted by those accounts are paid Kremlin content and not simply their own legitimate perspectives. Some are complaining that this new label has led to online harassment amid the post-9/11-like anti-Russia hysteria that’s currently turning western brains into clam chowder.

    This is all on top of all the other drastic escalations in censorship which came roaring in at the beginning of the Ukraine war, and I personally find it a bit scary how fast it’s all happening, how fine people are with it, and how much worse it seems likely to get.

    Others agree.

    “The purge of RT and other Russian media outlets in the US and Europe is 100% censorship,” tweets journalist Michael Tracey. “Go ahead and argue it’s justified, but at least don’t be a coward and admit you are advocating censorship.”

    “The western world believes that it has a monopoly on what constitutes ‘political truth’ and that their ideological worldview is the only correct, valid and authoritative one,” writer and analyst Tom Fowdy observed. “They preach freedom of speech and the press to other countries, but exempt themselves from it.”

    And I can’t help but find it odd that the fight for freedom and democracy should require such copious amounts of censorship. You’d think a free society would have no objection to people trying to learn the other side of the debate about a war which NATO powers very plainly had a hand in starting, rather than being forced to consume only western mass media narratives which tell us this is happening exclusively because Vladimir Putin is evil and Hitlery and hates freedom.

    You’d think a society devoted to truth and freedom, the kind of society western powers purport to be trying to defend in Ukraine, would not require a Ministry of Truth to protect us from “disinformation” about a government long targeted by the US-centralized empire, or from trying to seek out alternative perspectives beyond the homogeneous blanket of authorized mainstream narratives.

    You’d think the truth would be more robust than that. You’d think freedom would extend farther than that. You’d think democracy would be more tolerant of dissent than that.

    Almost like this has nothing to do with freedom, or truth, or democracy.

    Almost like it never has.

    Kind of makes you wonder if perhaps rallying behind the idea that it’s fine to censor people to preserve the establishment narrative about things, like Covid-19 and vaccines for example, was every bit the slippery slope that everyone warned it would be. If perhaps we have foolishly consented to a reality where the most powerful people in the world get to control the information people consume in order to shut down dissent against a murderous and oppressive globe-spanning oligarchic empire.

    And it kind of makes you wonder, as we watch the same empire that just destroyed Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen being entrusted to carefully navigate extremely delicate nuclear brinkmanship escalations without ending the world, if we might perhaps be better off with a lot more dissent, rather than a lot less.

    _________________________________

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Amid Nuclear Crisis, US Officials Reluctant To Pursue Ceasefire In Russia-Ukraine War

    This article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter Newsletter. Become a monthly subscriber to help us continue our independent journalism.

    The world is in a nuclear crisis, and instead of strongly supporting ceasefire talks to end the Russia-Ukraine war, Western countries are pouring gasoline on the fire.

    On February 24, delegations from Ukraine and Russia met on the Ukraine-Belarus border near the Pripyat river. It was the first round of negotiations since Russian military forces invaded Ukraine.

    No breakthrough occurred during the meeting, which lasted nearly five hours. Yet the two delegations agreed to meet again on March 2 near the border between Poland and Belarus.

    According to Al Jazeera English, Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, said there were “certain points on which common positions could be foreseen.” Ukraine’s delegation was not as optimistic.

    “The talks were taking place against the backdrop of bombing and shelling of our territory, our cities. Synchronizing of the shelling with the negotiating process was obvious. I believe Russia is trying to put pressure [on Ukraine] with this simple method,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared in his evening address on February 28.

    Prior to the talks, French President Emmanuel Macron was urged by Ukraine to speak to Russia President Vladimir Putin. The Guardian reported that he asked “Putin to ensure that for the duration of the negotiations all strikes and attacks on civilians and their homes would be halted, civilian infrastructure would be preserved, and all main roads—particularly the road south out of Kiev—would remain safe to use.” Putin reportedly agreed.

    Videos of Russia attacking Kharkiv with “short- to medium-range, truck-mounted multiple-rocket launchers” known as “Grads” were posted to Telegram the day of talks, leading numerous media outlets to report on the shelling as a violation of Putin’s pledge to Macron. Yet it was unclear if Russian military forces “synchronized” the attack with negotiations.

    Putin told Macron a ceasefire would be possible if there was “unconditional consideration of Russia’s legitimate security interests,” such as: Ukraine staying out of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the demilitarization and “de-Nazification” of Ukraine, and “recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea.” He was open to negotiate with Ukraine’s representatives on these terms.

    While there are armed neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine, perceived as a problem in recent years, Putin has exaggerated their influence over Ukraine’s government. Zelenskyy’s election diminished the mobilization of the far right (though generally they have enjoyed a resurgence during the war). Of course, Ukraine’s delegation demands Russia withdraw all of their military forces and respect Ukraine’s sovereignty.

    ‘Diplomacy At The Barrel Of A Gun’

    State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters at a briefing that Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba consulted with G7 ministers ahead of the negotiations. Zelenskyy spoke to President Joe Biden, and Biden talked with Kuleba. U.S. officials compared notes and coordinated closely.

    This may explain the U.S. State Department’s skepticism. It does not appear the U.S. has advised Ukraine to offer Russia an offramp, even though Putin ordered his nuclear forces into “special combat readiness.”

    “You would be right to color us skeptical of what it is that Moscow intends. What we’ve said before, including last week, applies equally today. Diplomacy at the barrel of a gun, diplomacy at the turret of a tank – that is not real diplomacy,” Price stated.

    In fact, the U.S. is a hegemon that uses its vast military power to advance a worldwide agenda. Alexander L. George, who was globally renowned for his work on international relations, argued, “The proposition that force and threats of force are a necessary instrument of diplomacy and have a role to play in foreign policy is part of the conventional wisdom of statecraft.”

    “Diplomacy is not an alternative to military force; it is the use of all elements of U.S. force in a coordinated, cumulative way to achieve our results in other countries,” former U.S. ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey told Defense One in 2014. Jeffrey was a diplomat in Iraq after President George W. Bush preemptively invaded Iraq in 2003.

    Cheering President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Jeffrey said, “I saw them do major groundbreaking diplomatic initiatives that were revolutionary, but those guys were kicking ass and deploying military forces as an integral part of their diplomacy.” “That is why they were successful in their diplomacy, and I don’t see any difference between the two—negotiating agreements and threatening force, and when necessary delivering on the threat,” Jeffrey added.

    Elementary school children in the United States are taught the concept of “Big Stick Diplomacy,” which was promoted by President Theodore Roosevelt. He relied on the military strength of the U.S. to seize land and build the Panama Canal. He had the Great White Fleet travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean in a show of force to deter Japan from expanding their dominance in Asia.

    The reality is the U.S. may pursue peace by flaunting its monopoly on violence, but any adversarial power will be condemned for acting similarly.

    “We are ready and willing, just as our Ukrainian partners are, just as our European allies are, to engage in real, in substantive, in genuine diplomacy in order to see if we can find a way out of what is a needless, brutal conflict,” Price said. “But that diplomacy is highly unlikely to bear fruit, to prove effective, in the midst of not only confrontation but escalation.”

    It is absurd to spell this out, but ceasefires are only necessary during conflicts that involve confrontations and escalations of violence. Diplomats negotiate to establish a stoppage in warfare so that a political agreement or peace treaty may be established.

    An Offramp For Russia

    Diplomats may pursue a ceasefire to prevent catastrophic events that could result in a substantial amount of death. Preventing further death does not necessarily equal appeasement.

    Nevertheless, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss parroted the U.S. State Department’s talking point the day before the talks. “[Ukraine] cannot negotiate with a gun to the head of Ukrainians…So frankly, I don’t trust these so-called efforts of negotiations.”

    The same day Truss expressed absolute support for Britons, who would like to travel to Ukraine and become foreign fighters.

    Russia’s act of aggression has been met with economic warfare in the form of harsh sanctions from the U.S. and European countries, including the removal from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging system that allows for international banking; barring Russian financial institutions from transactions with currencies other than the ruble; export “restrictions on semiconductors, telecommunication, encryption security, lasers, sensors, navigation, avionics, and maritime technologies”; asset freezes; and cutting off 13 state-owned companies from “raising money” in the United States.

    British Prime Minister Boris Johnson proclaimed, “We will continue on a remorseless mission to squeeze Russia, from the global economy, piece by piece. Day by day, and week by week.”In this context, supporting a ceasefire would not be capitulating to Russia’s invasion.

    The Western world is inflicting lasting damage on Russia that will make it a pariah state for the foreseeable future—and collectively punish Russia’s population of 144 million.

    Sanctions could be wielded to force Putin to negotiate a ceasefire and withdraw forces, however, there is no indication that leaders from any NATO country are leveraging them by offering to rescind certain sanctions if Russia reverses course.

    Norman Eisen, the former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic, appeared on CNN and was asked about the talks. He said it was too early for Ukraine and the West to give Russia a “diplomatic way” out of the nuclear crisis.

    “I’m extremely dubious, like President Zelensky, about the negotiations that have started. But I do think over time, particularly as—remember, we’re only five days into the conflict. I think as the situation on the ground evolves there will be opportunities over time for offramps, things like discussing a Ukrainian pledge never to be a part of NATO,” Eisen answered.

    Retired military general David Petraeus played a key role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that destroyed the two countries. But stunningly, in his appearance on CNN, he showed more humanity than Eisen and contemplated why the U.S. should not merely accept that the war may drag on.

    “We have to start thinking through how do we provide Russia an out. You never want to put a guy who has nuclear weapons truly in a corner, where he feels that he has nothing left to lose,” Petraeus said.

    “So as the weight of the world is coming down on [Putin], on his economy, on his financial institutions, and the forces in the field,” Petraeus suggested we need to think about how he gets out of this but not capitulate to demands that he has placed on Ukraine or on NATO and the European Union.

    China, India, Pakistan, and Turkey all seem to recognize the extraordinary threat posed by the crisis, and they encouraged Russia to engage in ceasefire talks. They were even willing to mediate.

    Meanwhile, the interests of the U.S. military industrial-complex, which profits off NATO’s alignment against Russia, has surged. The U.S. approved $350 million in additional weapons for Ukraine, and other European countries, particularly Germany, followed suit.

    With Russia’s advance on Kiev momentarily stalled, the west has had ample opportunity to recognize the devastation that could come with a nuclear war and make a deal. It will not be long before Russian air strikes pummel targets in Kiev and drive more Ukrainians to flee their country.

    The State Department claims de-confliction channels remain open with Moscow, but funneling weapons to Ukraine won’t save Ukrainians. It will only increase the chance that Ukraine becomes a quagmire.

    The post Amid Nuclear Crisis, US Officials Reluctant To Pursue Ceasefire In Russia-Ukraine War appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • US Rejects Ukrainian Call For No-Fly Zone

    On Monday, February 28, the US rejected the Ukrainian demand to impose a no-fly zone over the country to prevent Russian airstrikes. Replying to a specific question in an interview to an American news channel, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the move would be escalatory as it will “potentially put us in a place in a military conflict with Russia.”

    A day earlier, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had asked the US and other NATO countries to implement a no-fly zone policy over Ukraine to prevent Russian air strikes.

    The talks which had started between Russian and Ukrainian delegates on Monday at Gomel in Belarus ended without any agreement. However, both sides agreed to hold a second round of talks soon.

    The post US Rejects Ukrainian Call For No-Fly Zone appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • US Rejects Ukrainian Call For No-Fly Zone

    On Monday, February 28, the US rejected the Ukrainian demand to impose a no-fly zone over the country to prevent Russian airstrikes. Replying to a specific question in an interview to an American news channel, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the move would be escalatory as it will “potentially put us in a place in a military conflict with Russia.”

    A day earlier, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had asked the US and other NATO countries to implement a no-fly zone policy over Ukraine to prevent Russian air strikes.

    The talks which had started between Russian and Ukrainian delegates on Monday at Gomel in Belarus ended without any agreement. However, both sides agreed to hold a second round of talks soon.

    The post US Rejects Ukrainian Call For No-Fly Zone appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Ukraine Crisis With Dan Cohen And Scott Ritter

    As the Ukraine crisis escalates, correspondent Dan Cohen is joined by former United Nations Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter. They contextualize the history of NATO deceptions, provocations, and the 7-year war on Donbas that led up to Russia’s invasion to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Ritter compares the military capabilities of the US, NATO, and Russia, and explains how the US has armed neo-Nazi militias.

    The post The Ukraine Crisis With Dan Cohen And Scott Ritter appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Ukraine Crisis With Dan Cohen And Scott Ritter

    As the Ukraine crisis escalates, correspondent Dan Cohen is joined by former United Nations Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter. They contextualize the history of NATO deceptions, provocations, and the 7-year war on Donbas that led up to Russia’s invasion to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Ritter compares the military capabilities of the US, NATO, and Russia, and explains how the US has armed neo-Nazi militias.

    The post The Ukraine Crisis With Dan Cohen And Scott Ritter appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Rand Report – Overextend And Destabilize Russia

    Bruce Gagnon explains how the Rand Corporation (Pentagon Papers) outlined very clearly that the end, the goal of US foreign policy, is to overextend and destabilize Russia resulting in regime change and then the rape and pillaging of Russia’s vast natural resources.

    The post Rand Report – Overextend And Destabilize Russia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Rand Report – Overextend And Destabilize Russia

    Bruce Gagnon explains how the Rand Corporation (Pentagon Papers) outlined very clearly that the end, the goal of US foreign policy, is to overextend and destabilize Russia resulting in regime change and then the rape and pillaging of Russia’s vast natural resources.

    The post Rand Report – Overextend And Destabilize Russia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • UN Admits Refugees Have Faced Racism At Ukraine Borders

    The United Nations has admitted that some non-Europeans refugees have faced discrimination while trying to flee to safety at Ukraine borders after their experiences were dismissed as lies and “Russian disinformation” by online commentators.

    Filippo Grandi, the organization’s High Commissioner for Refugees, acknowledged their plight during a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.

    The post UN Admits Refugees Have Faced Racism At Ukraine Borders appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Regardless of What Biden Says, the Real State of the Union Is Perilous

    President Joe Biden delivers remarks in the East Room of the White House on February 24, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

    I’m still trying to figure out what to make of President Joe Biden. He wasn’t my first choice for the office, or even my fourth, so I can’t sit here and prattle about being disappointed. At this point in the Obama administration, I felt entirely betrayed, which is what happens when you get your hopes up around big-time politicians, I suppose.

    After more than four years of Trump, one thing I do appreciate about Biden is his relative patience and stillness; the man’s demeanor is like a lava lizard, breathing once every two minutes, unblinking eyes taking it all in. I’m not sure if its eerie or soothing, but it’s quiet.

    I hope these traits serve him tonight upon the occasion of his first State of the Union speech. Biden spent 36 years in the Senate and tried for the White House three times before finally breaking through. “Always” by Atlantic Starr was #1 on the pop charts the day he declared his candidacy for president the first time in 1987. If you don’t remember the song, that’s OK; nobody remembers that campaign, either.

    Twenty years later, Beyonce owned the top slot with “Irreplaceable” the day Biden went for the White House again. The voters found him entirely replaceable, and his second presidential campaign was done in a year. Seven months later, President Barack Obama tapped him for the vice presidency, and Biden spent eight State of the Union speeches ceremoniously clapping and standing at all the proper moments, possibly wondering all the while what it must be like to be commandeer that middle-front podium in front of the largest shark tank in the world.

    Tonight, he finds out. Writing politics these days too often lends itself to excessive overstatement, so I will carefully state that as far as I can remember, no president has ever been as deep in the hurt locker as Biden is today. His predecessors have dealt with a few of the life-and-death dragons breathing down on him, but not so many at once. For God’s sake, some of the voters who supported Biden’s opponent in the general election stormed the Capitol building — arm in arm with a number of GOP congresspeople who will be in the room tonight — trying to keep him out of office. That hasn’t been on anyone’s bingo card since the disgraceful Hayes/Tilden crunch in 1876, and it’s just one item on the list.

    The climate is collapsing, but Biden can’t do anything about it because one West Virginia coal Democrat won’t let him. The same goes for a whole kaleidoscope of domestic issues Joe Manchin has put the hammer to, leaving Biden’s first-year scorecard unsettlingly barren of accomplishments.

    Vladimir Putin has unleashed an unjustifiable, horrific and devastating invasion of Ukraine. Some fear it may expand into a daunting nuclear showdown between the U.S. and Russia. Biden gets to stand there all high and mighty about Putin’s criminality while hoping nobody notices the ashes of Afghanistan and Iraq clinging to his trouser cuffs.

    Year three of the COVID-19 pandemic is still infecting more than 60,000 people a day, and killing almost 2,000 more, while a quarter of the country disdains science in order to own the libs. The economy is doing pretty well unless you ask actual people about it; no credit for Joe there, either. Roe v. Wade is about to disappear, and Mr. Manchin just did his part to further denude the right to choose. Many schools are being forbidden from teaching history because it might make white kids feel bad, and books are being stripped from library shelves.

    This is a nation on the brink. Of what, I would not dare to say. The best lack all integrity, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity, and the lies get halfway around the world on social media before the truth can tie its shoes. The people are in a fearful crouch, waiting for the 17th damn shoe to drop, they are angry, they are frightened, and nobody thinks clearly toting that volume of emotional baggage.

    That is who Biden has to reach tonight, who he has to find across a gauzy ocean of mistrust and resentment and deep-seated despair. Some pundits believe tonight will provide him an opportunity to reset and restart his presidency, and bully for him if he pulls it off. He has waited decades for this moment, and now it is upon him. May the road rise to meet him, because at this point, not much else has except trouble.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Will Ukraine See the Light and Return into Russia’s Orbit?

    Potential hotspots between Russia and Ukraine, 2021. Panther Media GmbH / Alamy Stock Vector

    Wars are never a solution to resolve a conflict. They only escalate misery and the killing of innocent people. But the west should not hypocritically forget when it now condemns Russia, that it accepted, even supported, or at best, remained silent, when the US directly or via proxy, invaded and devastated – unprovoked – Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Yugoslavia, Haiti, Somalia, Vietnam and many more…

    One might argue that Russia is fighting for self-preservation after 8 years of relentless US / NATO-led western aggressions since February 22, 2014 (the US-organized Maidan coup and massacre against a democratically elected Ukrainian President and his regime), with steady threats of establishing yet another NATO base on Moscow’s doorsteps.

    Yet, war is not the solution. But what is? – Negotiations? – President Putin had numerous times proposed talks, negotiations, and set out Russia’s conditions, the first and simplest one is – NO NATO base in Ukraine. The current US Biden Administration as well as all the previous ones, have rejected that simple condition.

    Just imagine, Russia setting up a military base in Mexico or in a Central American Country – or, God forbid, in the Caribbean!

    What has the west done for Ukraine, other than organized the bloody Maidan Color Revolution in February 2014? – Nothing. The West never had an interest in Ukraine, other than using and abusing this richest of all former Soviet Republics for its own evil western / NATO purposes? – Building one or several NATO bases on Ukraine’s grounds to get closer to Moscow’s doorsteps and exploiting the country’s enormously rich natural resources and her fertile agricultural land.

    Maybe this latest crisis will be the trigger for Ukraine’s true leaders to see the light – and “surrender”, or in more accurate terms – to depart from the deceiving west and re-associate with Russia. After eight years of western abuse, stopping and reflecting may yield plenty of not even far-fetched reasons for such a move.

    Not for nothing Ukraine was called the Soviet Union’s Bred Basket. In addition to making Ukraine as a key NATO base in front of Russia’s doorsteps, Ukraine may also be useful for Europe’s food supply and territory for minerals and other natural resources exploitation. Belonging to “The West” seemed to be an easy sell to the Nazi-infested Kiev government. With the future prospective to become a European Union member, and, in the meantime being protected by NATO from evil Russia.

    Since the Maidan coup, the vast majority of Ukrainians got poorer and poorer and more and more indebted, and so did the entire Ukraine, and ever increasingly dependent on western lies and promises, thereby losing ever more of her sovereignty.

    For eight years the west has used Ukraine to provoke Russia, to threaten Russia, and within Ukraine, especially the eastern Donbas Region, the Donetsk (pop. 2.0 million) and Luhansk (pop. 1.5 million) republics, representing about 8% of Ukraine’s total population (41.65 million, 2021). More than 90% of the Donbas population is Russian.

    Ever since the 2014 western planned and executed Maidan coup – remember Mme. Nuland, Deputy Secretary of State …”F*ck the EU”? – Donbas declared independence from the Nazi-dominated Kiev government. The region’s independence was however not recognized by anyone, until on 22 February 2022, when President Putin passed a Resolution through Duma (the Russian Parliament) to officially recognize the Donbas region as independent from the Kiev Government.

    This was ultimately a move to save lives. The western NATO countries armed Ukraine and provided them with “technical military advisors”. All for the west’s own purpose, none to help the Ukrainian population that was cut off by Russia, after having allowed and facilitated the western led Maidan coup in February 2014. Russia’s intervention was a natural consequence to Kiev’s missiles and rockets aggression on the Donbass region that resulted in several casualties.

    After numerous warnings and failed attempts to dialogue with Kiev, Russia launched its ‘special military operation’ with the stated aim to “demilitarize” Ukraine on February 24. It means primarily, no NATO base, EVER. No western military intervention in Ukraine. Period. The western-funded Kiev puppet government did not comply and was not interested in a dialogue. To the contrary, its unprovoked aggressions towards Donbas escalated to the point where a Russian action was necessary to hopefully prevent an all-out war.

    Similarly, in May 2020 western / NATO organized infiltrations in Belarus were attempted, but failed, to prevent President Alexander Lukashenko from running again for reelection. The idea was to replace Lukashenko with a pro-western leader to gain access to Belarus for yet another NATO base at Russia’s doorstep. Despite all the high-paid propaganda through corrupted western news media several months of attempts and protests failed. President Lukashenko was re-elected in August 2020.

    In Ukraine, western aggression through the Nazi-led puppet Kiev Government amassed some 150,000 Kiev-Ukrainian troops at the eastern Russian and Donbas order. But western media reported only on the Russian response to post some 100,000 troops in the area, to be prepared, if necessary for an intervention in the Russian populated Donbas area.

    “Recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and ratification of treaties on friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance should stop the slaughter, the death of our citizens and compatriots living there,” the speaker of the lower house, Mr. Vyacheslav Volodin, wrote in his Telegram channel.

    The Kiev shelling of Donbas targets continued after Moscow’s declaring recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), had caused at least four deaths and many injured, plus destruction of the infrastructure. It was a stark provocation of the Bear.

    Clearly, without Russia’s intervention, the situation for Donbas was fast becoming a humanitarian crisis.

    This was the moment the west was waiting for to scream about Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, as usual, of course, without providing any precedents to this event. The western anti-Russia lie-propaganda was and still is – now ever more – running on overdrive and on steroids.

    An entire western sanctions program has been put in place, led of course, as always by Washington, the zombie-empire, followed by its European puppets, who seemed rather wanting to commit suicide, than recognizing that it is high time to see reality and ally with the east, with Eurasia, the huge contiguous continent, where the future lays.

    The sanctions are sheer propaganda for the ignorant western population. For example, blocking President Putin’s and Foreign Minister Lavrov’s assets in the west. It’s ridiculous to even think that they have assets in the west. Or to block them from traveling to the US. Why would they want to travel to the heartland of their aggressors?

    The latest sanction is – which is still being considered at the time of this writing – taking Russia off SWIFT. SWIFT is the privately out of Belgium-managed international monetary transfer program. If the west is hesitant to make that decision, it is for their own interests. For example, how would Russia be able and willing to settle outstanding obligations to western creditors or suppliers?

    Russia has longstanding and close relationships with China and with other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which controls about 30% of the world’s GDP. Other than that, foreseeing this type of ultimate western “sanctions” aggression, Russia has fully de-dollarized her economy and reserves.

    Russia’s central bank reoriented her economic activities towards the east, primarily China and the SCO; and in a larger sense throughout Eurasia, comprising about 55 million km2 – with some 70% of the world’s population and controlling about two thirds of the world’s GDP. In addition, Eurasian countries are the first beneficiaries of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). See here.

    One of the most incredible sanctions, includes the stop or non-acceptance by Germany under pressure from Washington, of the Nordstream 2 Pipeline from Russia to Germany which is close to 70% dependent on Russian gas for her energy requirements. Incredible, because Germany accepts the imposition of such Washington/NATO imposed sanctions. Germany may suffer at least temporary energy shortages and eventually be supplied with gas from the US at about double the price and from possibly other sources.

    Russia, on the other hand has plenty of takers for her gas, not least China, with whom there are already vast energy trade agreements in place.

    *****

    Back to the Ukraine conflict, President Putin has offered and maintains his offer to negotiate and talk with Ukraine’s leadership.

    As reported by RT (26 February), the latest news is that after having first declined the Russian offer, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday (25 February) that he was ready to sit down for talks with Russia in order to end hostilities between the countries. The same day, President Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that Moscow was ready to hold talks in Minsk, Belarus. He later claimed that the Ukrainian side first offered to move the meeting to Warsaw, Poland, and then stopped responding.

    Russian-Ukrainian relations went downhill after the 2014 coup in Kiev. The Russian leader said Moscow aims to defend the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as to carry out “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine. President Putin further asserted that Ukraine must never join NATO, whose military infrastructure Moscow sees as a threat.

    Talks between Russia and Ukraine started on Monday 28 February 2022 in Minsk, Belarus.

    An interesting and logical thought is – what if a sovereign-thinking, forward-looking Kiev Government would decide to “surrender” – meaning to rejoin the Russian orbit? After all, it is obvious that being associated with the east and being an ally of Russia, offers almost an unlimited array of opportunities for growth and development, for recovery after the 8 years under the west’s exploitative knell. The west would and could never offer Ukraine anything of the sort.

    Just considering the measures and actions, including military, Russia is taking to protect Donbas from western-led Kiev aggressions, an enlightened Ukrainian Government might opt for the promising future associating with Russia and Eurasia, with the opportunity to benefit from the Belt and Road, rather than with an almost dead empire and its European puppet allies.

    Just a thought to reflect about.

    A peaceful solution with a bright future.

    The post Will Ukraine See the Light and Return into Russia’s Orbit? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ukrainian Activist Condemns Russia’s Violence and Ukraine’s Ban on Men Fleeing

    Reckless Militarization Led to This War. All Sides Must Recommit to Peace

    Russia has escalated attacks against Ukraine, launching a missile strike hitting a government building and shelling civilian areas in Kharkiv, reportedly targeting civilians with cluster and thermobaric bombs, and killing more than 70 Ukrainian soldiers at a military base in Okhtyrka. Meanwhile, the U.S. rejected Ukrainian President Zelensky’s demand for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, saying it could lead to a war between the U.S. and Russia. This comes as Ukrainian and Russian negotiators failed to reach an agreement on Monday and the European Union approved Ukraine’s emergency application to be a candidate to join the union. We go to Kyiv to speak with Yurii Sheliazhenko, executive secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, who says “support of Ukraine in the West is mainly military support” and reports that his country “focuses on warfare and almost ignores nonviolent resistance to war.” He also discusses Zelensky’s response to the crisis, the European Union’s approval of Ukraine’s emergency application, and whether he plans to leave the war-torn city of Kyiv soon.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: The Russian invasion of Ukraine has entered its sixth day, with Russia escalating its bombardment. Satellite images show up to a 40-mile convoy of Russian armored vehicles, tanks and artillery heading to Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Earlier today, a Russian missile hit a government building in Kharkiv, causing a huge explosion in Ukraine’s second-largest city. Civilian areas in Kharkiv have also been shelled. Ukrainian authorities also reported more than 70 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the eastern city of Okhtyrka after a Russian missile strike on a military base.

    On Monday, Ukraine and Russia held five hours of talks near the Belarus border, but no agreement was reached. The two sides are expected to meet again in the coming days. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, but the United States and its allies have ruled out the idea, saying it could lead to a broader war.

    Ukraine and human rights groups have also accused Russia of targeting civilians with cluster and thermobaric bombs. Those so-called vacuum bombs are the most powerful non-nuclear explosives used in warfare. Russia has denied targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure. Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court has announced plans to investigate war crimes in Ukraine.

    At the United Nations, the General Assembly held an emergency meeting Monday to discuss the crisis. This is Ukraine’s Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya.

    SERGIY KYSLYTSYA: If Ukraine does not survive, international peace will not survive. If Ukraine does not survive, the United Nations will not survive. Have no illusions. If Ukraine does not survive, we cannot be surprised if democracy fails next. Now we can save Ukraine, save the United Nations, save democracy and defend the values we believe in.

    AMY GOODMAN: And just before we went to broadcast, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the European Parliament by video. At the end, the Parliament gave him a standing ovation.

    We go now to Kyiv, where we’re joined by Yurii Sheliazhenko. He is the executive secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement and a board member of the European Bureau of Conscientious Objection. Yurii is also a member of the board of directors at World BEYOND War and a research associate at KROK University in Kyiv.

    Yurii Sheliazhenko, welcome back to Democracy Now! We spoke to you just before the Russian invasion. Can you talk about what’s happening on the ground right now and what you are calling for as a pacifist?

    YURII SHELIAZHENKO: Good day. Thank you for balanced journalism and covering peace protest as part of pains and passions of war.

    Military politicization between the East and West went too far, with reckless military operations, NATO expansion, Russian invasion to Ukraine and nuclear threats to world, militarization of Ukraine, with exclusion of Russia from international institutions and expulsions of Russian diplomats literally pushing Putin from diplomacy to escalation of war. Instead of breaking the last bonds of humanity out of rage, we need more than ever to preserve and strengthen venues of communication and cooperation between all people on Earth, and each individual effort of that sort has a value.

    And it is disappointing that support of Ukraine in the West is mainly military support and the imposition of painful economic sanctions on Russia, and reporting on conflict focuses on warfare and almost ignores nonviolent resistance to war, because brave Ukrainian civilians are changing street signs and blocking streets and blocking tanks, just staying in their way without weapons, like tank men, to stop the war. For example, in Berdyansk city and Kulykіvka village, people organized peace rallies and convinced the Russian military to get out. Peace movement warned for years that reckless militarization will lead to war. We were right. We prepared many people for peaceful dispute resolution or for nonviolent resistance to aggression. We upheld human rights, universal obligations to help refugees. It helps now and gives hope for a peaceful solution, which exists always.

    I wish to all people for universal peace and happiness, no wars today and forever. But, unfortunately, while the most of people, most of time, in most of places, live in peace, my beautiful city of Kyiv, capital of Ukraine, and other Ukrainian cities are targets of Russian bombardments. Just before this interview, I heard again distant sounds of explosions from windows. Sirens howl many times during day, last several days. Hundreds of peoples are killed, including children, because of Russian aggression. Thousands are injured. Hundred thousands of people are displaced and seeking refuge abroad, additionally to millions internally displaced persons and refugees in Russia and in Europe after eight years of war between the Ukrainian government and Russia-backed separatists in Donbas.

    All males in the age from 18 to 60 are restricted in freedom of movement abroad and called to participate in war effort, without exceptions to conscientious objectors to military service and those who are fleeing from war, too. War Resisters’ International strongly criticized this decision of Ukrainian government to prohibit all male citizens in age 18 to 60 to leave the country and demanded a withdrawal of these decisions.

    I admire massive antiwar rallies in Russia, courageous peaceful citizens who nonviolently oppose Putin’s war machine under threats of arrest and punishment. Our friends, conscientious objection movement in Russia, also members of European Bureau for Conscientious Objection, condemns the Russian military aggression and calls on Russia to stop the war, calls all recruits to refuse military service and apply for alternative civilian service or claim exemption on medical grounds.

    And there are peace rallies around the world in support of peace in Ukraine. Half-million of people in Berlin hazard to protest against war. There are antiwar actions in Italy, in France. Our friends from Gensuikyo, the Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, responded to Putin nuclear threats with protest rallies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I invite you to seek for recent international and United States antiwar events at the website WorldBeyondWar.org, to participate in the global day of action to stop the war in Ukraine on March 6 under a slogan, “Russian troops out. No NATO expansion,” organized by CodePink and other peace groups.

    It is a shame that Russia and Ukraine up to now fail to negotiate ceasefire and failed even to agree on safe humanitarian corridors for evacuation of civilians. Negotiations between the Ukraine and Russia didn’t achieve a ceasefire. Putin needs neutral status of Ukraine, denazification, demilitarization of Ukraine and the approval that Crimea belongs to Russia, which is contrary to international law. And he told it to Macron. So, we renounce these demands of Putin. Ukrainian delegation on negotiations was ready to discuss only ceasefire and Russian troops leaving Ukraine, because, of course, territorial integrity matters of Ukraine. Also, Ukraine continued shelling of Donetsk while Russia bombarded Kharkiv and other cities. Basically, both parties, Ukraine and Russia, are belligerent and not willing to calm down. Putin and Zelensky should engage in peace talks seriously and in good faith as responsible politicians and representatives of the people, on the basis of common public interest, instead of fighting for mutually exclusive positions. I hope that there is a —

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Yurii, Yurii Sheliazhenko, I wanted to ask you — you mentioned President Zelensky. He’s being hailed in many of the Western media as a hero since the invasion. What is your assessment of how President Zelensky has been functioning in this crisis?

    YURII SHELIAZHENKO: President Zelensky is totally surrendered to war machine. He pursues military solution, and he fails to call Putin and ask directly to stop the war.

    And I hope that with the help of all people in the world telling the truth to power, demanding to stop shooting and start talking, aiding those who need it and investing into the peace culture and education for nonviolent citizenship, we could together build a better world without armies and borders, a world where truth and love are great powers, embracing East and West. I believe that nonviolence is a more effective and progressive tool for global governance, social and environmental justice.

    The delusions about systemic violence and war as panacea, a miraculous solution for all social problems, are false. The sanctions with which the West and the East are imposing on each other as a result of a battle for control over Ukraine between the United States and Russia may weaken but will not split the global market of ideas, labor, goods and finances. So, the global market will inevitably find a way to satisfy its need in global government. Question is: How civilized and how democratic will be the future global government?

    And military alliances’ aim to uphold absolute sovereignty are promoting despotism rather than democracy. When NATO members provide military aid to support sovereignty of Ukrainian government, or when Russia sends troops to fight for self-proclaimed sovereignty of Donetsk and Luhansk separatists, you should remember that unchecked sovereignty means bloodshed, and sovereignty is — sovereignty is definitely not democratic value. All democracies emerged from resistance to bloodthirsty sovereigns, individual and collective. War profiteers of the West are the same threat to democracy as the authoritarian rulers of the East. And their attempts to divide and rule the Earth are essentially similar. NATO should step back from conflict around Ukraine, escalated by its support to war effort and aspirations of membership of Ukrainian government. And ideally, NATO should dissolve or transform into alliance of disarmament instead of military alliance. And, of course —

    AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you something, Yurii. We just got this word in. You know, Zelensky has just addressed by video the European Parliament. They gave him a standing ovation after, and the European Parliament has just approved Ukraine’s application to join the European Union. What is your response to that?

    YURII SHELIAZHENKO: I feel proud for my country that we are joined to alliance of Western democracies, European Union, which is a peaceful union. And I hope that all the world in the future will be peaceful union. But, unfortunately, European Union, as well as Ukraine, have a similar problem of militarization. And it looks like a dystopian Ministry of Peace in Orwell’s novel 1984, when European peace facility provides military assistance to Ukraine, but there is almost absent assistance to nonviolent solution to current crisis and to demilitarization. I hope, of course, Ukraine belongs to Europe. Ukraine is a democratic country. And it is great that the Ukrainian application to join European Union is approved, but I think that this consolidation of West should not be consolidation against so-called enemy, against the East. East and West should find the peaceful reconciliation and should pursue global governance, unity of all people in the world without armies and borders. This consolidation of West should not lead to a war against East. East and West should be friends and live peacefully and demilitarized. And, of course, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is one of venues of total demilitarization which are needed desperately.

    You know, now we have a problem of archaic governance based on sovereignty of nation-states. When, for example — when Ukraine prohibits many citizens to participate in public life speaking Russian, it seems like normal. It seems like sovereignty. It is not, of course. It is not a just cause for invasion and military aggression, of course, as Putin claims, but it is not right. And, of course, the West many time should say to Ukraine that human rights is a very important value, and freedom of expression, including linguistic rights, matter, and the representation of pro-Russian people, Russian-speaking people in political life is important thing. And the oppression of culture of our neighbor and their diaspora in Ukraine, of course, will infuriate Kremlin. And it infuriated. And indeed this crisis should be deescalated, not escalated. And this indeed great day when Ukraine was recognized a European nation should not be the prelude for opposition, military opposition, between Europe and Russia. But I hope that Russia, too, will head out with their military forces from Ukraine and will also join European Union, and European Union and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and other regional alliances, African Union and so on, in future will be parts of a united global political entity, global governance, as Immanuel Kant in his beautiful pamphlet, Perpetual Peace, envisaged, you know? A plan of Immanuel Kant for —

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Yurii, Yurii Sheliazhenko, I wanted to ask you — in terms of the issue of deescalating the situation and seeking to achieve peace, Ukraine has requested a no-fly zone over certain areas of Ukraine. That would obviously have to be enforced by the militaries of the European Union and the United States. What do you feel about this issue of a call for a no-fly zone over Ukraine?

    YURII SHELIAZHENKO: Well, it is continuation of this line to escalation, to engage whole West, united in military aspect, to oppose Russia. And Putin already responded to this with nuclear threats, because he is infuriated because he is, of course, scared, as well as we are scared today in Kyiv, and the West are scared about the situation.

    Now we should stay calm. We should think rationally. We should unite indeed, but not unite to escalate conflict and give military response. We should unite pursuing peaceful solution of conflict, negotiations between Putin and Zelensky, presidents of Russia and Ukraine, between Biden and Putin, between the United States and Russia. Peace talks and things about future are the key, because people start war when they lose hopes in future. And today we need revived hopes in future. We have a peace culture, which are starting to develop throughout the world. And we have old, archaic culture of violence, structural violence, cultural violence. And, of course, the most of people are not trying to be angels or demons; they are drifting between culture of peace and culture of violence.

    AMY GOODMAN: Yurii, before we go, we just wanted to ask you, since you are in Kyiv, the military convoy is just outside of Kyiv: Are you planning to leave, like so many Ukrainians have tried to leave and have left, something like estimates of half a million Ukrainians over the borders into Poland, Romania and other places? Or are you staying put?

    YURII SHELIAZHENKO: As I said, there is no safe humanitarian corridors agreed by Russia and the Ukraine for leaving civilians. It is one of failures in the negotiations. And as I said, our government thinks that all males should participate in war efforts, and blatantly violates human right to conscientious objection to military service. So, it is no way for pacifists to flee, and I stay with peaceful Ukraine here, and I hope that peaceful Ukraine will not be destroyed by this polarized, militarized world.

    AMY GOODMAN: Yurii Sheliazhenko, we want to thank you so much for being with us. Yes, males between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave Ukraine. Yurii is the executive secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, board member of the European Bureau for Conscientious Objection, also member of the board of directors at World BEYOND War and research associate at KROK University in Kyiv, Ukraine.

    Coming up, we look at the roots of the crisis in Ukraine. We’ll be joined by Andrew Cockburn of Harper’s magazine and Yale University professor Timothy Snyder. Stay with us.

    [break]

    AMY GOODMAN: “Try to Remember,” Harry Belafonte. He turns 95 years old today. Happy Birthday, Harry! If you want to see our interviews over the years with Harry Belafonte, you can go to democracynow.org.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Noam Chomsky: US Military Escalation Against Russia Would Have No Victors

    200 U.S. soldiers, who are being transferred from Nuremberg, Germany, to the 7th Army Training Command in Grafenwöhr, Germany, land in Nuremberg from the U.S. on March 1, 2022.

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine took much of the world by surprise. It is an unprovoked and unjustified attack that will go down in history as one of the major war crimes of the 21st century, argues Noam Chomsky in the exclusive interview for Truthout that follows. Political considerations, such as those cited by Russian President Vladimir Putin, cannot be used as arguments to justify the launching of an invasion against a sovereign nation. In the face of this horrific invasion, though, the U.S. must choose urgent diplomacy over military escalation, as the latter could constitute a “death warrant for the species, with no victors,” Chomsky says.

    Noam Chomsky is internationally recognized as one of the most important intellectuals alive. His intellectual stature has been compared to that of Galileo, Newton and Descartes, as his work has had tremendous influence on a variety of areas of scholarly and scientific inquiry, including linguistics, logic and mathematics, computer science, psychology, media studies, philosophy, politics and international affairs. He is the author of some 150 books and the recipient of scores of highly prestigious awards, including the Sydney Peace Prize and the Kyoto Prize (Japan’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize), and of dozens of honorary doctorate degrees from the world’s most renowned universities. Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT and currently Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona.

    C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has taken most people by surprise, sending shockwaves throughout the world, although there were plenty of indications that Putin had become quite agitated by NATO’s expansion eastward and Washington’s refusal to take seriously his “red line” security demands regarding Ukraine. Why do you think he decided to launch an invasion at this point in time?

    Noam Chomsky: Before turning to the question, we should settle a few facts that are uncontestable. The most crucial one is that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a major war crime, ranking alongside the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Hitler-Stalin invasion of Poland in September 1939, to take only two salient examples. It always makes sense to seek explanations, but there is no justification, no extenuation.

    Turning now to the question, there are plenty of supremely confident outpourings about Putin’s mind. The usual story is that he is caught up in paranoid fantasies, acting alone, surrounded by groveling courtiers of the kind familiar here in what’s left of the Republican Party traipsing to Mar-a-Lago for the Leader’s blessing.

    The flood of invective might be accurate, but perhaps other possibilities might be considered. Perhaps Putin meant what he and his associates have been saying loud and clear for years. It might be, for example, that, “Since Putin’s major demand is an assurance that NATO will take no further members, and specifically not Ukraine or Georgia, obviously there would have been no basis for the present crisis if there had been no expansion of the alliance following the end of the Cold War, or if the expansion had occurred in harmony with building a security structure in Europe that included Russia.” The author of these words is former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Jack Matlock, one of the few serious Russia specialists in the U.S. diplomatic corps, writing shortly before the invasion. He goes on to conclude that the crisis “can be easily resolved by the application of common sense…. By any common-sense standard it is in the interest of the United States to promote peace, not conflict. To try to detach Ukraine from Russian influence — the avowed aim of those who agitated for the ‘color revolutions’ — was a fool’s errand, and a dangerous one. Have we so soon forgotten the lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis?”

    Matlock is hardly alone. Much the same conclusions about the underlying issues are reached in the memoirs of CIA head William Burns, another of the few authentic Russia specialists. [Diplomat] George Kennan’s even stronger stand has belatedly been widely quoted, backed as well by former Defense Secretary William Perry, and outside the diplomatic ranks by the noted international relations scholar John Mearsheimer and numerous other figures who could hardly be more mainstream.

    None of this is obscure. U.S. internal documents, released by WikiLeaks, reveal that Bush II’s reckless offer to Ukraine to join NATO at once elicited sharp warnings from Russia that the expanding military threat could not be tolerated. Understandably.

    We might incidentally take note of the strange concept of “the left” that appears regularly in excoriation of “the left” for insufficient skepticism about the “Kremlin’s line.”

    The fact is, to be honest, that we do not know why the decision was made, even whether it was made by Putin alone or by the Russian Security Council in which he plays the leading role. There are, however, some things we do know with fair confidence, including the record reviewed in some detail by those just cited, who have been in high places on the inside of the planning system. In brief, the crisis has been brewing for 25 years as the U.S. contemptuously rejected Russian security concerns, in particular their clear red lines: Georgia and especially Ukraine.

    There is good reason to believe that this tragedy could have been avoided, until the last minute. We’ve discussed it before, repeatedly. As to why Putin launched the criminal aggression right now, we can speculate as we like. But the immediate background is not obscure — evaded but not contested.

    It’s easy to understand why those suffering from the crime may regard it as an unacceptable indulgence to inquire into why it happened and whether it could have been avoided. Understandable, but mistaken. If we want to respond to the tragedy in ways that will help the victims, and avert still worse catastrophes that loom ahead, it is wise, and necessary, to learn as much as we can about what went wrong and how the course could have been corrected. Heroic gestures may be satisfying. They are not helpful.

    As often before, I’m reminded of a lesson I learned long ago. In the late 1960s, I took part in a meeting in Europe with a few representatives of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (“Viet Cong,” in U.S. parlance). It was during the brief period of intense opposition to the horrendous U.S. crimes in Indochina. Some young people were so infuriated that they felt that only a violent reaction would be an appropriate response to the unfolding monstrosities: breaking windows on Main Street, bombing an ROTC center. Anything less amounted to complicity in terrible crimes. The Vietnamese saw things very differently. They strongly opposed all such measures. They presented their model of an effective protest: a few women standing in silent prayer at the graves of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam. They were not interested in what made American opponents of the war feel righteous and honorable. They wanted to survive.

    It’s a lesson I’ve often heard in one or another form from victims of hideous suffering in the Global South, the prime target of imperial violence. One we should take to heart, adapted to circumstances. Today that means an effort to understand why this tragedy occurred and what could have been done to avert it, and to apply these lessons to what comes next.

    The question cuts deep. There is no time to review this critically important matter here, but repeatedly the reaction to real or imagined crisis has been to reach for the six-gun rather than the olive branch. It’s almost a reflex, and the consequences have generally been awful — for the traditional victims. It’s always worthwhile to try to understand, to think a step or two ahead about the likely consequences of action or inaction. Truisms of course, but worth reiterating, because they are so easily dismissed in times of justified passion.

    The options that remain after the invasion are grim. The least bad is support for the diplomatic options that still exist, in the hope of reaching an outcome not too far from what was very likely achievable a few days ago: Austrian-style neutralization of Ukraine, some version of Minsk II federalism within. Much harder to reach now. And — necessarily — with an escape hatch for Putin, or outcomes will be still more dire for Ukraine and everyone else, perhaps almost unimaginably so.

    Very remote from justice. But when has justice prevailed in international affairs? Is it necessary to review the appalling record once again?

    Like it or not, the choices are now reduced to an ugly outcome that rewards rather than punishes Putin for the act of aggression — or the strong possibility of terminal war. It may feel satisfying to drive the bear into a corner from which it will lash out in desperation — as it can. Hardly wise.

    Meanwhile, we should do anything we can to provide meaningful support for those valiantly defending their homeland against cruel aggressors, for those escaping the horrors, and for the thousands of courageous Russians publicly opposing the crime of their state at great personal risk, a lesson to all of us.

    And we should also try to find ways to help a much broader class of victims: all life on Earth. This catastrophe took place at a moment where all of the great powers, indeed all of us, must be working together to control the great scourge of environmental destruction that is already exacting a grim toll, with much worse soon to come unless major efforts are undertaken quickly. To drive home the obvious, the IPCC just released the latest and by far most ominous of its regular assessments of how we are careening to catastrophe.

    Meanwhile, the necessary actions are stalled, even driven into reverse, as badly needed resources are devoted to destruction and the world is now on a course to expand the use of fossil fuels, including the most dangerous and conveniently abundant of them, coal.

    A more grotesque conjuncture could hardly be devised by a malevolent demon. It can’t be ignored. Every moment counts.

    The Russian invasion is in clear violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of another state. Yet Putin sought to offer legal justifications for the invasion during his speech on February 24, and Russia cites Kosovo, Iraq, Libya and Syria as evidence that the United States and its allies violate international law repeatedly. Can you comment on Putin’s legal justifications for the invasion of Ukraine and on the status of international law in the post-Cold War era?

    There is nothing to say about Putin’s attempt to offer legal justification for his aggression. Its merit is zero.

    Of course, it is true that the U.S. and its allies violate international law without a blink of an eye, but that provides no extenuation for Putin’s crimes. Kosovo, Iraq and Libya did, however, have direct implications for the conflict over Ukraine.

    The Iraq invasion was a textbook example of the crimes for which Nazis were hanged at Nuremberg, pure unprovoked aggression. And a punch in Russia’s face.

    In the case of Kosovo, NATO aggression (meaning U.S. aggression) was claimed to be “illegal but justified” (for example, by the International Commission on Kosovo chaired by Richard Goldstone) on grounds that the bombing was undertaken to terminate ongoing atrocities. That judgment required reversal of the chronology. The evidence is overwhelming that the flood of atrocities was the consequence of the invasion: predictable, predicted, anticipated. Furthermore, diplomatic options were available, [but] as usual, ignored in favor of violence.

    High U.S. officials confirm that it was primarily the bombing of Russian ally Serbia — without even informing them in advance — that reversed Russian efforts to work together with the U.S. somehow to construct a post-Cold War European security order, a reversal accelerated with the invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Libya after Russia agreed not to veto a UN Security Council Resolution that NATO at once violated.

    Events have consequences; however, the facts may be concealed within the doctrinal system.

    The status of international law did not change in the post-Cold War period, even in words, let alone actions. President Clinton made it clear that the U.S. had no intention of abiding by it. The Clinton Doctrine declared that the U.S. reserves the right to act “unilaterally when necessary,” including “unilateral use of military power” to defend such vital interests as “ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources.” His successors as well, and anyone else who can violate the law with impunity.

    That’s not to say that international law is of no value. It has a range of applicability, and it is a useful standard in some respects.

    The aim of the Russian invasion seems to be to take down the Zelensky government and install in its place a pro-Russian one. However, no matter what happens, Ukraine is facing a daunting future for its decision to become a pawn in Washington’s geostrategic games. In that context, how likely is it that economic sanctions will cause Russia to change its stance toward Ukraine — or do the economic sanctions aim at something bigger, such as undermining Putin’s control inside Russia and ties with countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and possibly even China itself?

    Ukraine may not have made the most judicious choices, but it had nothing like the options available to the imperial states. I suspect that the sanctions will drive Russia to even greater dependency on China. Barring a serious change of course, Russia is a kleptocratic petrostate relying on a resource that must decline sharply or we are all finished. It’s not clear whether its financial system can weather a sharp attack, through sanctions or other means. All the more reason to offer an escape hatch with a grimace.

    Western governments, mainstream opposition parties, including the Labour Party in U.K., and corporate media alike have embarked on a chauvinistic anti-Russian campaign. The targets include not only Russia’s oligarchs but musicians, conductors and singers, and even football owners such as Roman Abramovich of Chelsea FC. Russia has even been banned from Eurovision in 2022 following the invasion. This is the same reaction that the corporate media and the international community in general exhibited towards the U.S. following its invasion and subsequent destruction of Iraq, wasn’t it?

    Your wry comment is quite appropriate. And we can go on in ways that are all too familiar.

    Do you think the invasion will initiate a new era of sustained contestation between Russia (and possibly in alliance with China) and the West?

    It’s hard to tell where the ashes will fall — and that might turn out not to be a metaphor. So far, China is playing it cool, and is likely to try to carry forward its extensive program of economic integration of much of the world within its expanding global system, a few weeks ago incorporating Argentina within the Belt and Road initiative, while watching rivals destroy themselves.

    As we’ve discussed before, contestation is a death warrant for the species, with no victors. We are at a crucial point in human history. It cannot be denied. It cannot be ignored.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • UN Diplomats Walk Out as Russian Foreign Minister Addresses Human Rights Council

    Ambassadors and diplomats walkout while Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov addresses the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva with a prerecorded video message on March 1, 2022.

    To protest Moscow’s war on Ukraine, roughly 100 diplomats from countries around the globe walked out of a speech by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday.

    Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Yevheniia Filipenko, led the walkout, which left a mostly empty conference hall to hear Lavrov’s pre-recorded video message during the council’s meeting on disarmament.

    The Ukrainian envoy said that this action “sends a very strong signal” to Moscow that the Russian military’s ongoing invasion and assault is “not acceptable.”

    Lavrov said that he had planned to attend the session in person but was unable to travel to Switzerland after the European Union banned flights from Russia.

    According to the New York Times:

    He accused Ukraine of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, an unsubstantiated claim that Moscow has used as one of the justifications for its invasion. Ukraine gave up its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal in 1994 in exchange for security guarantees.

    Mr. Lavrov repeated the Kremlin’s assertions that Ukraine had “made territorial claims against the Russian Federation, threatened to use force and acquire a military nuclear capability.” In earlier comments to the Conference on Disarmament, he said that Ukraine still possessed Soviet-era technology that would enable it to deliver such weapons, adding: “We cannot fail to respond to this real danger.”

    Speaking just two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin put his country’s nuclear forces on special alert and one day after Belarus agreed to host Russian nuclear weapons, Lavrov said that the Kremlin believes a “nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought” — repeating a phrase adopted by Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden at a July 2021 summit.

    However, the Times reported:

    Lavrov added that the United States should pull its nuclear weapons out of Europe and dismantle the associated infrastructure.

    The current “hysteria” in NATO and the European Union confirmed that “it was and still is the aim of the U.S. and all its allies built by Washington to create an ‘anti-Russia,’” he said.

    Lavrov’s remarks came just before the Russian Defense Ministry warned Kyiv residents to leave their homes immediately as Russia’s forces advanced on the Ukrainian capital and announced plans to bomb targets in the city.

    Earlier on Tuesday, a Russian missile struck the main square of Kharkiv, killing at least seven people, injuring dozens, and damaging an administrative building in Ukraine’s second-largest city.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Activists Push Biden to Expand Renewables for Energy Independence From Russia

    Activists dressed in chemical protection costumes hold a banner reading "What's in the Transneft pipeline?," during a protest demanding an international audit of Russian oil extraction near the Embassy of Germany in Kiev, Ukraine, on May 13 2019.

    On the heels of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a dire new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate justice activists are pressuring President Joe Biden to do whatever he can to accelerate a just transition to renewable energy through more aggressive executive action ahead of this evening’s State of the Union address.

    They’re also pushing back against the oil and gas industry lobby and Republicans, who have pounced on the Ukraine crisis to push for expansion of fracked gas, so-called liquified natural gas (LNG), exports and infrastructure buildout under the guise of “energy independence.”

    The American Petroleum Institute (API), a powerful industry lobbying group, joined gas giant Cheniere Energy CEO Jack Fusco last week in arguing that fighting in Ukraine is likely to spur increases in medium and long-term extraction contracts. News outlets, conservative commentators and lawmakers piled on, blaming Russia’s Ukraine invasion on modest shifts to renewable energy and likewise calling for increased fracking — despite the fact that extraction rates in the United States are already nearing their limit.

    Pointing to the ways in which Big Oil has helped fuel and profit off the conflict in Ukraine, climate activists are countering that true energy independence also means independence from fossil fuel companies that, historically, have been more than eager to support petrostate autocrats like Russian President Vladimir Putin. While BP and Shell recently dumped decades-long Russian investments, ExxonMobil continues to have a 30 percent stake in an oil and gas project it operates alongside two affiliates of Russia’s largest oil company, Rosneft — the main fuel supplier for tanks and airplanes currently being used to invade Ukraine.

    White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki laid out the administration’s response to the right-wing narrative pushing oil and gas expansion on ABC News’s “This Week” Sunday, saying that the crisis in Ukraine instead shows the necessity of President Biden’s plans to massively increase clean energy and characterizing calls to lift restrictions on oil drilling on federal lands or build the Keystone XL pipeline a “misdiagnosis.”

    But Oil Change International Senior Campaigner Collin Rees told Truthout that while Psaki’s rhetoric and President Biden’s warning to oil and gas companies last week to “not exploit this moment to hike their prices to raise profits,” was solid messaging, it’s also likely a political calculation based on current gas prices being “exceptionally unpopular.” Rees says when it comes to the question of whether the Biden administration will follow its rhetoric with real action, “the proof will be in the pudding.”

    Moreover, the fact that Biden strategically avoided certain oil and gas assets when targeting sanctions against the Russian government further highlights the U.S. and Europe’s energy vulnerability. Asked on ABC’s “This Week” whether Biden would be open to lifting restrictions on U.S. oil extraction, Psaki again emphasized Biden’s “carefully crafted sanctions” that “maximize the impact” and consequences for Putin, while “minimizing the impact” on Americans and the rest of the world — namely by not targeting Russian oil and gas.

    While Rees and other environmental activists don’t anticipate that the climate emergency will play a central role in tonight’s State of the Union address, they will be monitoring Biden’s address for mention of the latest IPCC report, as well as his messaging on foreign policy and Ukraine to see whether he gives a nod to energy independence, and if so, in what way.

    “When there are moments of national crisis, there’s often a bit of a rally-around-the-flag moment. There’s a recognition that the president of the United States has a lot of power to do things, and there are many demands being made of the administration,” Rees tells Truthout. “One thing we want to do is to emphasize that that’s true on climate as well as national security and conflict…. [The Ukraine conflict] cannot be an excuse to lock in [fossil fuel expansion], or you’re just going to lock in future conflict like this.”

    Climate activists are seizing on this week’s IPCC report to reinforce their point. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres called the report, written by more than 270 researchers from 67 countries, “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” The report finds that the Earth’s temperature has already risen by 1.09 degrees Celsius and is on track to blow past the Paris Agreement limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next few decades.

    The latest IPCC report also comes on the heels of another analysis from the International Energy Agency (IEA) showing that emissions of planet-warming methane from fossil fuel extraction are 70 percent higher than the official figure provided by governments worldwide. The IPCC and IEA reports underscore the dire need to drastically reduce fracked gas extraction operations, which routinely emit methane, a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

    Yet, the U.S. oil and gas industry has long sought to promote U.S.-sourced LNG as a “solution” to Europe’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels — a strategy that has found allies in the U.S. State Department, including former LNG executive and oil lobbyist Amos Hochstein, the State Department’s top international energy diplomat. In a February 17 post at API, for instance, API blogger Mark Green outlines how U.S. LNG exports to Europe at the start of 2022 were higher than those from Russia, a stat he calls “significant — for Europe’s safety and global stability.”

    But approving more LNG export infrastructure is unlikely to have any direct effect on the current conflict as construction of additional terminals would take years and billions of dollars, while also locking the U.S. into increased rates of extraction. There’s also no guarantee U.S. fracked gas will go to Ukraine or any European country, as it frequently fetches a higher price in Asia.

    “There’s been a narrative here pushed by the U.S. fracking industry that American gas, which they dubbed ‘freedom gas’ under the previous administration, is going to come to Europe’s rescue and deliver it from depending on Putin,” says Zorka Milin, a senior advisor at Global Witness focusing transparency and accountability in fossil fuel extraction in Europe and the U.S. The global LNG market’s volatility and soaring prices show that the best way to stand up to Putin, Milin says, “is really to end reliance on gas altogether, not just to swap it with … gas that’s shipped on tankers from the U.S.”

    Moreover, as The Intercept reports, Moscow’s partnership with Saudi Arabia has grown dramatically in recent years, giving the world’s the two largest oil producers an unprecedented ability to collude in oil export decisions, further driving up market volatility and prices, as the Russian state profits from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s refusal to increase oil extraction. In September 2016, Saudi Arabia signed an agreement with Russia that paved the way for the country to eventually join the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Plus, a major economic victory for Putin’s government. The moves have given the Russian state economic advantages that have factored into its decision invasion of Ukraine.

    The Russian state isn’t the only interest profiting from high oil and gas prices. Such market manipulation by OPEC Plus also benefits U.S. oil giants like ExxonMobil, which continues to generate billions for Russia as one of its largest foreign investors, belying the narrative that what’s good for the U.S. fracked gas industry is also necessarily good for U.S. energy security and “independence.”

    Some members of Congress have also profited from this narrative. Several Congress members who backed the same story line during Putin’s play for the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and introduced bills to expedite approval of LNG export permits have received large amounts of campaign cash from the oil and gas industry.

    “We’ve been told repeatedly by API that the boom in American fracked gas was going to be a powerful weapon against Putin, when in fact, it turns out quite the opposite,” Milin tells Truthout. “Far from being a strong point, it’s actually a weak point in the U.S. foreign policy arsenal. The role that U.S. fracked gas plays and the partnerships that some of these companies have in Russia are actually weakening the hand that the U.S. and other Western countries have at the moment.”

    Moreover, the U.S. effort to bolster fossil fuel infrastructure in Europe that provides alternatives to Russian gas routes, like the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, so far has proved an ineffective counter to Moscow’s LNG prowess, since Russia can also use European LNG terminals for its own exports. The efforts have also proved counterproductive to the U.S. objectives and the European Union’s bid to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 in creating devalued, or “stranded” gas assets that will eventually provide no economic return in Europe amid falling rates of consumption.

    In fact, energy analysts point to the European Commission’s non-confrontational, bureaucratic approach and competition rules as more effective ways to curb Moscow’s oil and gas dominance in Europe, since they played a significant role in helping stop Russia’s South Stream pipeline and forcing Russian oil giant Gazprom to offer market rates to still-dependent European countries.

    The industry’s push to expand fracking, Oil Change’s Rees tells Truthout, “is about an extremely cynical ploy [on the part of Big Oil] to essentially save themselves from the graveyard and save themselves from a fossil fuel era which is rapidly ending, and I think it’s really important that neither the U.S. and Europe gets caught in that trap.”

    Energy analysts are cautiously optimistic that Europe won’t get caught in Big Oil’s trap, forecasting that the conflict could serve as a major catalyst for Europe’s decarbonization efforts by forcing governments to ramp up investments in renewable energy sources. This is especially likely, analysts argue, after gas prices nearly tripled last year following the end of pandemic lockdowns. With back-to-back energy crises brought on or exacerbated by market volatility, the writing may be on the wall for oil and gas.

    In fact, it’s already happening. Under pressure from other Western nations to become less dependent on Russian gas, Germany is accelerating its transition to renewable energy, now aiming to fulfil all its electricity needs with renewable sources by 2035, compared to its previous target to do so “well before 2040,” according to a government draft paper obtained by Reuters on Monday.

    Yet, Global Witness’s Milin points out that even as Germany suspended certification of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline after Moscow recognized of two separatist-held regions in eastern Ukraine, the project’s sister pipeline, Nord Stream I, continues to carry Russian gas to Germany. Moreover, Germany’s suspension of Nord Stream 2 may ultimately end up being temporary, as the pipeline is already fully constructed. That’s a contradiction in terms for a country with aspirations to be seen as an international climate leader, she says.

    “We are in a momentous climate emergency, and we shouldn’t forget that, even as all eyes are on Ukraine and the horrors and tragedies that we see unfolding there,” Milin says.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Russian Missile Strikes Main Square of Ukraine’s Second-Largest City

    This general view shows the damaged local city hall of Kharkiv on March 1, 2022, destroyed as a result of Russian troop shelling.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday accused Russia of engaging in “frank, undisguised terror” after a missile struck the main square of Ukraine’s second-largest city, killing at least seven people, injuring dozens, and damaging an administrative building.

    “They are using terror trying to break us,” Zelenskyy said in an address to the European Parliament on day six of Russia’s deadly assault on Ukraine.

    The missile attack on Kharkiv was seen as part of Russia’s intensifying effort to overcome strong resistance from Ukrainian military forces and volunteers who have taken up arms in response to the invasion, which Ukrainian officials say has killed at least 130 civilians thus far.

    The Wall Street Journal reported that Russian forces on Monday “unleashed a barrage of multiple-launch rocket fire against residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv, killing at least 10 civilians, including three children and their parents who were incinerated in a car struck by a Russian projectile, and injuring at least 40, according to Kharkiv officials.”

    “Some 87 Kharkiv apartment buildings have been damaged, and several parts of Kharkiv no longer have water, electricity or heating, Mayor Ihor Terekhov told Ukrainian TV channels,” the Journal noted. “Kharkiv, which served as the capital of Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s, is home to some 1.4 million people.”

    Ekaterina Babenko, a Kharkiv resident, told the Associated Press that the ongoing attack “is a nightmare, and it seizes you from the inside very strongly.”

    “This cannot be explained with words,” said Babenko, who has been taking shelter in a basement with neighbors for several consecutive days. “We have small children, elderly people and frankly speaking it is very frightening.”

    An International Criminal Court prosecutor said Monday that he intends to launch an investigation into alleged war crimes in Ukraine as Russian forces face accusations of deploying unlawful cluster munitions and targeting civilian areas. Russia has denied that it is deliberately attacking civilians.

    Terekhov warned Tuesday that Russian troops have surrounded Kharkiv as Ukrainian forces and residents brace for more attacks on the city as well as a large-scale assault on the capital Kyiv, which has thus far beaten back Russian incursion efforts. Satellite imagery shows a 40-mile convoy of Russian tanks and armored vehicles advancing toward Kyiv.

    “Kharkiv and Kyiv are currently the most important targets for Russia,” Zelenskyy said in a video posted to Facebook on Tuesday. “Terror is meant to break us. To break our resistance. They are heading to our capital, as well as to Kharkiv.”

    On Monday, Russian and Ukrainian officials held an initial round of talks just over the border of Belarus, with additional negotiations expected in the coming days. Ukraine’s leadership is demanding an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of all Russian troops, while Russia’s leaders are calling for the “demilitarization” of Ukraine and a guarantee that the country will not join NATO.

    Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that there are currently no plans for Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin to speak directly.

    “Direct talks are underway between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations,” said Peskov.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Every US Enemy Is Hitler: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    It’s just incredible how even after all this time, after all those wars, after all those lies, it’s not even occurring to most mainstream westerners to investigate whether the US could possibly have had anything to do with starting the war in Ukraine.

    There’s one asshole in the room who always starts shit. Any time any shit has started he’s always been involved. And hardly anyone’s even looking at him thinking, “I wonder if that shit-starting guy has anything to do with this?”

    ❖

    I am convinced that mainstream culture’s fascination with World War II has made us all dumber. Everyone just lives in this dopey children’s cartoon now where every US enemy is Hitler and they’re the brave hero who is fighting Hitler.

    ❖

    Ukraine has no chance of winning this war alone, no matter how many weapons are sent to it. All weapons can do is make the war more costly for Russia, which it’s in the US empire’s interests to do. Stop pretending your calls for more weapons are anything more noble than that.

    You’re not trying to save lives; only the negotiation of a ceasefire can do that. All you’re doing with your calls to arm Ukraine is helping the most powerful empire that has ever existed make this war more expensive for Moscow and hurt Putin’s popularity at home and abroad.

    This was the USA’s strategy in arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan during the first cold war; to give the Soviets their own Vietnam. A costly quagmire that consumed their wealth and military focus for years, contributing to their downfall. They’ve already re-employed this strategy in Syria, where a US official openly admitted they worked to create a “quagmire” for Moscow:

    Now they’re hoping to pull off the same trick again, to any extent possible. That’s all this is. It’s not about saving lives or stopping a war, it’s about grand chessboard maneuverings to maintain US planetary domination.

    This will not save lives. In fact if it is successful it will ensure the loss of a great many more as an unwinnable war drags on long after it could have been over. This doesn’t benefit Ukrainians. It doesn’t benefit Americans. It doesn’t benefit Europeans. It only benefits the unipolarist agendas of a few powerful psychopaths.

    If you still want to support arming Ukraine on the basis that it will benefit the unipolar hegemony of a globe-spanning empire because you believe that empire’s continued dominance is a good thing, be my guest. But again, don’t pretend what you’re cheering for is anything nobler than that.

    ❖

    After 9/11 we were intensively bombarded with messaging about a sinister foreign leader, creating an environment of shrill hysteria that was very hard to stand up against. This was used to whip up support for pre-existing objectives of US geostrategic dominance.

    Sound familiar?

    Would people have consented to two back-to-back full-scale ground invasions without 9/11 and the aggressive narrative management campaign which followed? Would people have consented to economic warfare that could hurt us all and nuclear brinkmanship that could get us all killed without the Ukraine invasion and the aggressive narrative management campaign accompanying it?

    It’s times like these where it’s most important to be intensely, aggressively skeptical of the agendas of our rulers, and unfortunately it’s also times like these where you’ll get yelled at the most forcefully for doing so. But we know better than to be shouted into silence now.

    ❖

    More concerning than backing Nazi militias in Ukraine is the far more widespread, far more deadly, and equally white supremacist belief we’re seeing throughout the western world that invading a nation of white people is horrific while invading a nation of brown people is normal.

    ❖

    There are those who think maintaining a hostile client state on Russia’s border is worth any amount of brinkmanship to accomplish, and then there are those who understand what nuclear war is.

    ❖

    If these insane escalations between the US and Russia don’t scare the shit out of you it’s either because you don’t understand them or because you are psychologically compartmentalizing away from what you do understand. It’s one or the other.

    We are far, far too close to the brink of an unthinkable series of events from which there is no return. And none of the loudest voices are calling for it to be scaled back. They’re calling for it to escalate further. Sometimes a lot further.

    Many influential pundits and politicians are now calling for a NATO no-fly zone in Ukraine, which would require directly attacking the Russian air force and Russian air defenses.

    We’re speeding toward a cliff and nobody in charge has a foot anywhere near the brake pedal. If anything, the political/media class is demanding the gas pedal be pushed to the floor.

    Is what the US and its allies are trying to accomplish in Ukraine worth continually risking nuclear armageddon for? This is the single most important question in the world right now, and hardly anyone seems to be asking it.

    Our rulers are rolling the dice on the life of every terrestrial organism, and people are still babbling about whether Democrats or Republicans are harder on Russia and trying to score political points. Hardly anyone has their head up and their eyes fixed on what may be coming.

    ❖

    If you heard something, looked outside, and saw a mushroom cloud growing in the distance, how much thought do you imagine you’d be having about the importance of NATO’s open-door policy with Ukraine?

    ❖

    Everyone’s freaking out about RT when all they’d have to do to kill it is simply allow leftist and antiwar opinions on western mass media. You’d steal their entire audience. But we all know that’s never going to happen because it was never actually about Russian state media; it’s about silencing opponents of the official imperial narrative.

    ❖

    Dear shitlibs,

    Saying that hawkish escalations spearheaded by the most powerful empire in history led to undesirable consequences in Ukraine is not actually the same as an abuser saying “look what you made me do” and does not have “what-was-she-wearing energy.”

    Love, Caitlin

    This criticism shows up in my online notifications literally every single time I talk about the role of the US empire in paving the way to the Ukraine invasion, and to be clear, the battered spouse and rape victim in their analogy is not Ukraine but the US empire. The poor widdle US empire. They’re literally demanding that no one on the internet criticize the most dangerous actions of the most powerful and destructive government on the face of this planet. At all. It’s just unbelievable that they think this is a normal and acceptable thing to do.

    It’s simply forbidden to talk about the role the world’s largest power structure had in this conflict. You’re only allowed to say it’s happening solely because Putin is evil and hates freedom.

    ❖

    “You can criticize the US empire AND Russia, Caitlin.”

    One of those is already being criticized at fever pitch by literally all government and mainstream media institutions in the entire western world, while the other is almost never criticized by those institutions in any meaningful way.

    ❖

    I saw someone in the comments of a post about nuclear war say “it would be Putin’s fault” if one happens. Like that would be any consolation to anyone on earth when the bombs go off. People still think about this thing in terms of political point-scoring, that’s how fucked we are.

    ❖

    Deteriorating material conditions can cause people to rise up against their government. Imperialists understand this, which is why they work to foment unrest with starvation sanctions in empire-targeted nations while at home keeping people fed just enough to prevent an uprising.

    _________________________

    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, 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. 

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Ukraine: visually documenting violations

    Witness stands with the victims of Russia’s unlawful attacks. In a conflict that is rife with disinformation, false narratives, and manipulated media, the importance of capturing and preserving trusted, authentic accounts of human rights crimes cannot be underestimated.   They are sharing resources for those on the ground in Ukraine and Russia – who are navigating immense risks as they capture and share video documentation of potential human rights violations and war crimes. And, they are sharing resources for those of us witnessing from a distance, so that we amplify grassroots truths and decrease the spread of mis/disinformation. 

    Guidance for Frontline Documenters working with and learning from activists documenting and preserving visual evidence of war crimes and human rights violations from Syria and Yemen to Brazil, it developed its peer-reviewed and field tested Video As Evidence Field Guide. Earlier they also worked with Ukrainian civil society and human rights groups during the 2014-15 conflict to prepare versions in Ukrainian and Russian

    In Ukrainian: ПОЛЬОВИЙ ПОСІБНИК “ВІДЕО ЯК ДОКАЗ” Field Guide: Video as Evidence wit.to/VAE-UA  

    In Russian: ПОЛЕВОЕ ПОСОБИЕ «ВИДЕО КАК ДОКАЗАТЕЛЬСТВО» Field Guide: Video as Evidence wit.to/VAE-RU  

    https://www.witness.org/

     

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

  • Russian Military Expert: We Can Choose Peace Or Risk A Nuclear War

    On Feb. 24, Clearing the FOG spoke at length with Dr. Vladimir Kozin, a Russian military and global security expert. That happened to be the day that Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine. Dr. Kozin explains the goals of the mission and the events that led to it. He describes the eight year assault on ethnic Russians living in Eastern Ukraine that caused more than 14,000 deaths. He also describes how the current conflict can be resolved and the risk of a major, and possibly nuclear war, if a diplomatic solution is not achieved. March 1 to 7 is an international week of action to say No Wars! No Sanctions! No NATO! Click here for more information.

    The post Russian Military Expert: We Can Choose Peace Or Risk A Nuclear War appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Foreign Agents Designation Causes Media Cold War

     

    Politico: U.S. to treat 5 Chinese media firms as 'foreign missions'

    The US government in 2020 declared five Chinese media entities to be “not independent news organizations” but rather “effectively controlled by the [Chinese] government” (Politico, 2/18/20).

    Most nations have some form of state media. These days, it’s pretty easy for Americans to access any number of foreign state media outlets, and many of them have journalists covering US affairs. Some of those journalists must register as “foreign agents” with the US government. But others don’t have to—a distinction that has more to do with geopolitics than with journalism.

    The Trump administration mandated “five Chinese state-run media organizations to register their personnel and property with the US government”: Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International and the parent companies of the China Daily and People’s Daily newspapers (Politico, 2/18/20). The administration also “limited to 100 the number of Chinese citizens who may work in the United States” for those organizations (New York Times, 3/2/20).

    The privately owned Hong Kong newspaper Sing Tao was forced to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act because it “is viewed as a pro-Beijing outlet” (South China Morning Post, 8/26/21). US state media organ Radio Free Asia (8/27/21) trumpeted the “foreign agent” designation for Sing Tao, quoting one Hong Kong journalist saying that it is “a fairly open secret that it is an underground CCP [Chinese Communist Party] organization.”

    Russia’s RT registered in 2017, as US intelligence agencies claimed it “contributed to the Kremlin’s campaign to interfere with [the 2016] presidential election in favor” of Donald Trump (Reuters, 11/13/17). Qatari-owned Al Jazeera was forced to register (New York Times, 9/15/20) because content “designed to influence American perceptions of a domestic policy issue or a foreign nation’s activities or its leadership qualifies as ‘political activities,’” according to one US official. Relations between Qatar and the US are complex, as they had strained during the Trump administration (NBC, 6/9/17) and have improved under President Joe Biden (NBC, 9/13/21), although the oil-rich nation is accused of funding Palestinian terror operations, adding to tensions (Washington Post, 12/15/20; Jerusalem Post, 2/17/22).

    But other state-owned outlets, like the BBC, CBC and Deutsche Welle, do not register as foreign agents in the US. Clearly, the standard is that the “foreign agent” label applies when an outlet’s government owner has rocky relations with Washington. And for many press advocates, that’s causing problems.

    Not just symbolic

    American Prospect: Congress Proposes $500 Million for Negative News Coverage of China

    The US government is proposing to spend half a billion dollars on “independent” anti-China media (American Prospect,  2/9/22).

    The designation isn’t just symbolic: Through FARA enforcement, the government can keep a closer eye on these outlets’ activities. US state media network Voice of America (5/12/21) reported that CGTN “spent more than $50 million on its US operations last year, accounting for nearly 80% of total Chinese spending on influencing US public opinion and policy,” while China Daily “reported more than $3 million in spending last year, including expenses related to advertising in American newspapers.”

    VoA called this a “propaganda spending spree,” as China wanted to “burnish its global image,” but even if that’s true, there’s plenty of evidence suggesting the US does the same thing. The US has looked to invest half a billion dollars into media organizations that counter the Chinese narrative (American Prospect, 2/9/22), causing the South China Morning Post (4/28/21) to scoff: “When the Chinese do it, it’s propaganda. When Washington does it, it’s ‘investing in our values.’” Xinhua (2/23/22) went further, saying that America’s move to fund journalism in Asia for political purposes makes the world “wonder how the self-styled ‘beacon of press freedom’ dares to openly manipulate media in an attempt to squeeze China out of what it calls a ‘Great Power Competition.’”

    In a statement to the Department of Justice concerning the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the Committee to Protect Journalists (2/11/22) noted that not all state-owned media outlets are the same, but “the glaring difference in the way these media outlets are treated under FARA raises questions about the fairness of its implementation.” CPJ called for “the end of compelling media outlets to register, which impacts their operations and their ability to engage in journalism freely.”

    It went on:

    The inconsistent application of FARA has created the appearance that the act is a foreign policy tool, and has provided justification for foreign governments to use similar labeling against news organizations that receive funding from within the United States. Countries including Hungary, Israel, Russia and Ukraine have all cited the US use of FARA when they passed legislation requiring civil society organizations to register with the government.

    Even the Council on Foreign Relations (8/24/20), which wields enormous pressure on US foreign policy and press coverage of foreign affairs, sees a problem, saying that “such tough measures against Chinese state media could backfire.” By using FARA against these outlets, the US government “potentially overstates the influence of China’s state media outlets, and rather than modeling an open society, it risks appearing as if it does not care about press freedom.”

    Politicized applications

    Guardian: Putin’s crackdown: how Russia’s journalists became ‘foreign agents’

    Forcing journalists with overseas ties to register is an “oppressive new law” (Guardian, 9/11/21)—when Moscow does it.

    Indeed, the choice by these countries to register each other’s journalists is a part of a brewing media cold war. Russia acted in kind when it decided to list journalists working there as foreign agents (NPR, 7/31/21; Guardian, 9/11/21), and Russia added to its foreign agents list Bellingcat, which is highly critical of Russia, and the US-run Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is specifically meant to counter Russian-government narratives in Eastern Europe (RFE/RL, 10/9/21).

    The Chinese government showed its might during these escalating tensions when it expelled New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post journalists and “demanded that those outlets, as well as the Voice of America and Time magazine, provide the Chinese government with detailed information about their operations” (New York Times, 3/17/20). Both countries eventually eased “restrictions on access for journalists from each other’s countries” (Reuters, 11/16/21), but foreign reporters continue to complain of stifling working conditions in China (Wall  Street Journal, 1/30/22; CNN, 1/31/22). China is ranked 177th on the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, beating out North Korea, Eritrea and Turkmenistan.

    Not all state broadcasters are the same, but even the venerated BBC, whose journalists do not have to register under FARA in the US, isn’t free from the idea that it works in the service of the state.

    One study by Cardiff University researchers, looking at “BBC news coverage from 2007 and 2012, concluded that conservative opinions received more airtime than progressive ones” (The Week, 11/26/21). Journalist Peter Oborne (Guardian, 12/3/19) sees the BBC not as a partisan news agency, but as one that favors the state generally: “The BBC does not have a party political bias: It is biased towards the government of the day,” he said. And as one former BBC journalist put it, staffers at the broadcaster’s BBC Monitoring program, which collects and re-reports from global media, historically were “working for…the Ministry of Defense,” specifically for the purposes of foreign intelligence (Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 10/26/13).

    This isn’t an argument for forcing the BBC to register under FARA. It is an argument that the application of FARA to foreign journalists is politicized and should be stopped, as it only makes it harder for all journalists to do their jobs.

     

    The post Foreign Agents Designation Causes Media Cold War appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.