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Category: Russia

  • Foreign Agents Law now also threatens to come to El Salvador

    Devon Kearney in NPQ of 8 February 2022, reports on a worrying legislative development in El Salvador….

    It has been nearly a decade since the Russian government passed its “foreign agent law,” a measure that requires nonprofit groups that engage in political activity to register with the government if they receive money from overseas. Russia justified the bill by saying it was based on a U.S. law—a statute from the lead-up to World War II that many of us came to know only after Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was accused of being an unregistered foreign agent. Putin’s message was that this was just an ordinary, even boring regulatory measure.

    But it is more than that. Initial concerns focused on the stigma of being branded a foreign agent, but the law has sharper teeth, allowing the government to fine or even ban organizations that do not accept being branded as foreign agents. For example, on December 28, 2021, the government presented its case for disbanding the storied human rights organization Memorial for failing to include the disclaimer “produced by a foreign agent” on a few of its web pages. At the end of the hearing, the court ordered the Memorial to shut down. See: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/12/29/russias-supreme-court-orders-closure-emblematic-memorial/

    The sinister brilliance of the foreign agent law is twofold. First, it targets human rights NGOs’ supply lines, as it were, making it difficult to accept the funds they need to survive. In much of the world, human rights defenders rely on support from global philanthropies like the Open Society Foundations for the funding they need to operate. By the standards of Russia’s law, most would be required to register as foreign agents. Groups that take foreign money would be subject to government meddling and harassment; those that opted to do without would struggle to keep their doors open.

    Second, the law accomplishes this by co-opting legitimate regulatory functions of the state to crush dissent. Setting the rules for nonprofits—along with corporations, lobbyists, and a wide range of activities that impact the public good—is something governments are supposed to do. The great innovation of Putin and the autocrats that followed him was to turn regulatory schemes into instruments of their own political dominance. By obviating the need for violence against opponents, these methods may avoid the consequences of harsher exercises of state power. They are key to creating, in the words of Hungarian semi-dictator Viktor Orbán, an “illiberal democracy,” a state where elections continue but the rights and liberties of the people are curtailed.

    The world took notice when the Russian foreign agent law passed and, today, more than fifty countries have adopted laws based on the Russian example. One of the latest, introduced in November 2021 and still under debate, has an ominous twist. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/10/17/nicaragua-things-getting-worse-and-worse-for-human-rights-defenders-covid-19-and-foreign-agents/ as well as https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2016/06/17/un-rapporteurs-urge-india-to-repeal-law-restricting-human-rights-defenders-access-to-foreign-funding/

    Under 38-year-old President Nayib Bukele, a charismatic young politician, El Salvador has taken a sharp turn toward authoritarianism. Bukele made headlines in February 2020 when he brought armed soldiers into Congress to stand behind him as he demanded funding for the military. He has since fired prosecutors and judges in order to pack the legal system with loyalists. Bukele is the latest in a growing number of modernized dictators who adopt the tactics but not the swagger of their forebears. But his style is distinctive. In the Journal of Democracy, Salvadoran political scholar Manuel Meléndez-Sánchez writes: “Bukele relies on millennial authoritarianism, a distinctive political strategy that combines traditional populist appeals, classic authoritarian behavior, and a youthful and modern personal brand built primarily via social media.”

    Bukele’s authoritarian moves have raised alarms among Salvadoran civil society and around the world. The US has expressed its concern by hitting the government in the pocketbook: in May 2021, the United States Agency for International Development announced that it would pull funding from the Salvadoran police and other national agencies, instead directing the funds to civil society groups carrying out local development projects. More recently, USAID Administrator Samantha Power said the agency would commit $300 million for direct civil society funding in Central America, and promised to increase the amount of funding bypassing national governments to 50 percent within 10 years.

    All of this is in keeping with Power’s stated intention to provide aid to developing nations with a local, “bottom up” approach that prioritizes small businesses over big international contractors, and local civil society groups over national governments—“[t]o engage authentically with local partners and to move toward a more locally led development approach,” as she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July 2021.

    But in a region where US interference has long rankled rulers and their people, the move may be seen as ham-fisted—taking aid money to support opponents of a duly-elected government brings to mind the ways in which our country funded proxy wars that killed hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans and left a bloody trail in Nicaragua and Guatemala, as well. More recently, in 2019 the Trump Administration slashed hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the region in the hopes that by increasing financial pain it could pressure countries to take harsher measures to prevent their people from fleeing to the U.S.

    With this history as a pretext, and perhaps stinging at this new reduction in aid funding, Bukele’s government struck back. On November 9, 2021, the government introduced a bill to require domestic nonprofits or social enterprises (solely commercial enterprises are exempted) to register as foreign agents if they “respond to the interests of, or are directly or indirectly funded by, a foreigner.”

    “That the Legislative Assembly is even considering such a restrictive bill sends a chilling message to human rights groups and organizations fighting against impunity and corruption,” says Ricardo González Bernal, the Fund for Global Human Rights’ Program Director for Latin America. The Fund supports grassroots human rights defenders and independent journalism in El Salvador, across Central America, and throughout the world.

    https://nonprofitquarterly.org/salvadoran-foreign-agent-law-threatens-human-rights-movements/

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

  • Memo to Congress: Diplomacy for Ukraine Is Spelled M-i-n-s-k

    Peace protest at the White House – Photo credit: iacenter.org

    While the Biden administration is sending more troops and weapons to inflame the Ukraine conflict and Congress is pouring more fuel on the fire, the American people are on a totally different track.

    A December 2021 poll found that a plurality of Americans in both political parties prefer to resolve differences over Ukraine through diplomacy. Another December poll found that a plurality of Americans (48 percent) would oppose going to war with Russia should it invade Ukraine, with only 27 percent favoring U.S. military involvement.

    The conservative Koch Institute, which commissioned that poll, concluded that “the United States has no vital interests at stake in Ukraine and continuing to take actions that increase the risk of a confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia is therefore not necessary for our security. After more than two decades of endless war abroad, it is not surprising there is wariness among the American people for yet another war that wouldn’t make us safer or more prosperous.”

    The most anti-war popular voice on the right is Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has been lashing out against the hawks in both parties, as have other anti-interventionist libertarians.

    On the left, the anti-war sentiment was in full force on February 5, when over 75 protests took place from Maine to Alaska. The protesters, including union activists, environmentalists, healthcare workers and students, denounced pouring even more money into the military when we have so many burning needs at home.

    You would think Congress would be echoing the public sentiment that a war with Russia is not in our national interest. Instead, taking our nation to war and supporting the gargantuan military budget seem to be the only issues that both parties agree on.

    Most Republicans in Congress are criticizing Biden for not being tough enough (or for focusing on Russia instead of China) and most Democrats are afraid to oppose a Democratic president or be smeared as Putin apologists (remember, Democrats spent four years under Trump demonizing Russia).

    Both parties have bills calling for draconian sanctions on Russia and expedited “lethal aid” to Ukraine. The Republicans are advocating for $450 million in new military shipments; the Democrats are one-upping them with a price tag of $500 million.

    Progressive Caucus leaders Pramila Jayapal and Barbara Lee have called for negotiations and de-escalation. But others in the Caucus–such as Reps. David Cicilline and Andy Levin–are co-sponsors of the dreadful anti-Russia bill, and Speaker Pelosi is fast-tracking the bill to expedite weapons shipments to Ukraine.

    But sending more weapons and imposing heavy-handed sanctions can only ratchet up the resurgent U.S. Cold War on Russia, with all its attendant costs to American society: lavish military spending displacing desperately needed social spending; geopolitical divisions undermining international cooperation for a better future; and, not least, increased risks of a nuclear war that could end life on Earth as we know it.

    For those looking for real solutions, we have good news.

    Negotiations regarding Ukraine are not limited to President Biden and Secretary Blinken’s failed efforts to browbeat the Russians. There is another already existing diplomatic track for peace in Ukraine, a well-established process called the Minsk Protocol, led by France and Germany and supervised by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

    The civil war in Eastern Ukraine broke out in early 2014, after the people of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces unilaterally declared independence from Ukraine as the Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) People’s Republics, in response to the U.S.-backed coup in Kiev in February 2014. The post-coup government formed new “National Guard” units to assault the breakaway region, but the separatists fought back and held their territory, with some covert support from Russia. Diplomatic efforts were launched to resolve the conflict.

    The original Minsk Protocol was signed by the “Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine” (Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE) in September 2014. It reduced the violence, but failed to end the war. France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine also held a meeting in Normandy in June 2014 and this group became known as the “Normandy Contact Group” or the “Normandy Format.”

    All these parties continued to meet and negotiate, together with the leaders of the self-declared Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) People’s Republics in Eastern Ukraine, and they eventually signed the Minsk II agreement on February 12, 2015. The terms were similar to the original Minsk Protocol, but more detailed and with more buy-in from the DPR and LPR.

    The Minsk II agreement was unanimously approved by the U.N. Security Council in Resolution 2202 on February 17, 2015. The United States voted in favor of the resolution, and 57 Americans are currently serving as ceasefire monitors with the OSCE in Ukraine.

    The key elements of the 2015 Minsk II Agreement were:

    –           an immediate bilateral ceasefire between Ukrainian government forces and DPR and LPR forces;

    –           the withdrawal of heavy weapons from a 30-kilometer-wide buffer zone along the line of control between government and separatist forces;

    –           elections in the secessionist Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) People’s Republics, to be monitored by the OSCE; and,

    –           constitutional reforms to grant greater autonomy to the separatist-held areas within a reunified but less centralized Ukraine.

    The ceasefire and buffer zone have held well enough for seven years to prevent a return to full-scale civil war, but organizing elections in Donbas that both sides will recognize has proved more difficult.

    The DPR and LPR postponed elections several times between 2015 and 2018. They held primary elections in 2016 and, finally, a general election in November 2018. But neither Ukraine, the United States nor the European Union recognized the results, claiming the election was not conducted in compliance with the Minsk Protocol.

    For its part, Ukraine has not made the agreed-upon constitutional changes to grant greater autonomy to the separatist regions And the separatists have not allowed the central government to retake control of the international border between Donbas and Russia, as specified in the agreement.

    The Normandy Contact Group (France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine) for the Minsk Protocol has met periodically since 2014, and is meeting regularly throughout the current crisis, with its next meeting scheduled for February 10 in Berlin The OSCE’s 680 unarmed civilian monitors and 621 support staff in Ukraine have also continued their work throughout this crisis. Their latest report, issued February 1, documented a 65% decrease in ceasefire violations compared to two months ago.

    But increased U.S. military and diplomatic support since 2019 has encouraged President Zelensky to pull back from Ukraine’s commitments under the Minsk Protocol, and to reassert unconditional Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimea and Donbas. This has raised credible fears of a new escalation of the civil war, and U.S. support for Zelensky’s more aggressive posture has undermined the existing Minsk-Normandy diplomatic process.

    Zelensky’s recent statement that “panic” in Western capitals is economically destabilizing Ukraine suggests that he may now be more aware of the pitfalls in the more confrontational path his government adopted, with U.S. encouragement.

    The current crisis should be a wake-up call to all involved that the Minsk-Normandy process remains the only viable framework for a peaceful resolution in Ukraine. It deserves full international support, including from U.S. Members of Congress, especially in light of broken promises on NATO expansion, the U.S. role in the 2014 coup, and now the panic over fears of a Russian invasion that Ukrainian officials say are overblown.

    On a separate, albeit related, diplomatic track, the United States and Russia must urgently address the breakdown in their bilateral relations. Instead of bravado and one upmanship, they must restore and build on previous disarmament agreements that they have cavalierly abandoned, placing the whole world in existential danger.

    Restoring U.S. support for the Minsk Protocol and the Normandy Format would also help to decouple Ukraine’s already thorny and complex internal problems from the larger geopolitical problem of NATO expansion, which must primarily be resolved by the United States, Russia and NATO.

    The United States and Russia must not use the people of Ukraine as pawns in a revived Cold War or as chips in their negotiations over NATO expansion. Ukrainians of all ethnicities deserve genuine support to resolve their differences and find a way to live together in one country – or to separate peacefully, as other people have been allowed to do in Ireland, Bangladesh, Slovakia and throughout the former U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia.

    In 2008, then-U.S. Ambassador to Moscow (now CIA Director) William Burns warned his government that dangling the prospect of NATO membership for Ukraine could lead to civil war and present Russia with a crisis on its border in which it could be forced to intervene.

    In a cable published by WikiLeaks, Burns wrote, “Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.”

    Since Burns’s warning in 2008, successive U.S. administrations have plunged headlong into the crisis he predicted. Members of Congress, especially members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, can play a leading role in restoring sanity to U.S. policy on Ukraine by championing a moratorium on Ukraine’s membership in NATO and a reinvigoration of the Minsk Protocol, which the Trump and Biden administrations have arrogantly tried to upstage and upend with weapons shipments, ultimatums and panic.

    OSCE monitoring reports on Ukraine are all headed with the critical message: “Facts Matter.” Members of Congress should embrace that simple principle and educate themselves about the Minsk-Normandy diplomacy. This process has maintained relative peace in Ukraine since 2015, and remains the U.N.-endorsed, internationally agreed-upon framework for a lasting resolution.

    If the U.S. government wants to play a constructive role in Ukraine, it should genuinely support this already existing framework for a solution to the crisis, and end the heavy-handed U.S. intervention that has only undermined and delayed its implementation. And our elected officials should start listening to their own constituents, who have absolutely no interest in going to war with Russia.

    The post Memo to Congress: Diplomacy for Ukraine Is Spelled M-i-n-s-k first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Wanting Peace With Russia To Focus Aggressions On China Is Just Being An Imperialist Warmonger

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz criticized the Biden administration’s dangerous escalations against Russia on the House floor on Monday, not because he thinks needlessly ramping up cold war brinkmanship with a nuclear-armed nation is an insane thing to do, nor because he believes the US government should cease trying to dominate the world by constantly working to subvert and undermine any nation who disobeys its commands, but because he wants US aggressions to be focused more on China.

    “While the Biden administration, the media, and many in congress beat the drums of war for Ukraine, there is a far more significant threat to our nation accelerating rapidly close to home,” Gaetz said. “Argentina, a critical nation and economy in the Americas, has just lashed itself to the Chinese Communist Party, by signing on to the One Belt One Road Initiative. The cost to China was $23.7 billion — a mere fraction of a rounding error when compared to the trillions of dollars our country has spent trying to build democracies out of sand and blood in the Middle East.”

    “China buying influence and infrastructure in Argentina to collaborate on space and nuclear energy is a direct challenge to the Monroe Doctrine and far more significant to American security than our latest NATO flirtation in the plains of Eastern Europe,” Gaetz continued. “China is a rising power. Russia is a declining power. Let us sharpen our focus so that we do not join them in that eventual fate.”

    For those who don’t know, the “Monroe Doctrine” refers to a decree put forward by President James Monroe in 1823 asserting that Latin America is off limits to European colonialist and imperialist agendas, effectively claiming the entire Western Hemisphere as US property. It essentially told Europe, “Everything south of the Mexican border is our Africa. It’s ours to dominate in the same way you guys dominate the Global South in the Eastern Hemisphere. Those are your brown people over there, these are our brown people over here.”

    That this insanely imperialist and white supremacist doctrine is still being cited by high-profile politicians to this day says so much about what the US government is and how it operates on the world stage. This is especially true given that Biden himself just articulated the same idea in so many words last month when he declared that “Everything south of the Mexican border is America’s front yard.”

    So on one hand Gaetz is opposing warmongering against Russia and condemning the trillions spent on US wars in the Middle East, which by itself would normally be a good thing. But the fact that he only opposes doing that because he wants to focus imperialist aggressions on another part of the world to preserve US unipolar planetary domination completely nullifies any good which could come from his opposition to aggressions somewhere else.

    This is a very common phenomenon on the right end of the US political spectrum; you’ll hear a politician or pundit saying what appear to be sane things against the agendas of DC warmongers, but if you pay attention to their overall commentary it’s clear that they’re not opposing the use of mass-scale imperialist aggression to preserve planetary domination, they’re just quibbling about the specifics of how it should be done.

    Tucker Carlson has been making this argument for years, claiming that the US should make peace with Russia and scale back interventionism in the Middle East not because peace is good but because it needs to focus its aggressions on countering China. He inserts this argument into many of his criticisms of US foreign policy on a regular basis; he did it just the other day, criticizing the Biden administration’s insane actions in Ukraine and then adding “Screaming about Russia, even as we ignore China, is now a bipartisan effort.”

    Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp summarized this dynamic well in response to a recent Reason article making the same “Make peace with Russia to focus on taking down China” argument, tweeting “Unfortunately, a lot of the opposition to war with Russia is rooted in this idea that the US needs the resources to eventually fight China. We need more people to view war for Taiwan as dangerous and foolish as war for Ukraine.”

    Do you see how this works? Do you see how wanting to refocus US firepower on a specific target is not actually better than keeping that firepower diffuse? The difference between “Let’s have peace” and “Let’s have peace with Russia and stop making wars in the Middle East so that we can focus on bringing down China” is the difference between “Stop massacring civilians” and “Stop massacring these civilians because you’ll need your ammunition to massacre those other civilians over there.”

    And it’s especially stupid because it’s the exact same agenda. One imperial faction believes it’s best to preserve US hegemony by focusing on bringing down the nations which support and collaborate with China, while the other imperial faction wants to go after China itself more directly. They both support using the US war machine to keep the planet enslaved to Washington and the government agency insiders and oligarchs who run it, they just manufacture this debate about the specifics of how that ought to happen.

    This is what Noam Chomsky was talking about when he said, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

    That strictly limited spectrum of debate is known as the Overton window, and imperial narrative managers work very hard to keep shoving that window further and further in the favor of the oligarchic empire they serve. In order to prevent us from arguing about whether there should be a globe-spanning capitalist unipolar empire in the first place, they keep us arguing about how that empire’s interests should best be advanced.

    The longer the drivers of empire can keep us debating the details of how we should serve them, the longer they can keep us from turning toward them and asking why we should even have them around at all.

    _______________________

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Memo To Congress: Diplomacy For Ukraine Is Spelled M-i-n-s-k

    A December 2021 poll found that a plurality of Americans in both political parties prefer to resolve differences over Ukraine through diplomacy. Another December poll found that a plurality of Americans (48 percent) would oppose going to war with Russia should it invade Ukraine, with only 27 percent favoring U.S. military involvement. 

    The conservative Koch Institute, which commissioned that poll, concluded that “the United States has no vital interests at stake in Ukraine and continuing to take actions that increase the risk of a confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia is therefore not necessary for our security. After more than two decades of endless war abroad, it is not surprising there is wariness among the American people for yet another war that wouldn’t make us safer or more prosperous.”

    The post Memo To Congress: Diplomacy For Ukraine Is Spelled M-i-n-s-k appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Russia, Ukraine And The US: The Background They’re Not Telling You

    In the winter of 2022, the news is dominated by growing tensions  between Russia and Ukraine. Reports that Russia has amassed some  100,000 troops on its border with neighboring Ukraine have brought  charges from the United States and NATO that Russia is planning to  invade its neighbor, with whom it has had increasingly tense relations.

    Will Russia invade Ukraine? And if it does, how will the United  States and NATO react? Already, the U.S. and its allies are threatening new sanctions against Russia, sending massive amounts of military  equipment to Ukraine and beefing up their military presence in bordering countries.

    How close are we to war in the region? And how would the U.S. be  involved?

    The post Russia, Ukraine And The US: The Background They’re Not Telling You appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • President JFK’s Murder Is Graphic Proof of Entrenched Cold War Ideology and Why Peace Eludes U.S.-Russia Relations

    The Cold War is back with a vengeance. The current impasse between the United States and Russia over the Ukraine crisis is running the risk of an all-out war in Europe, a war that could escalate into nuclear Armageddon. The crisis is wholly manufactured by Washington’s geopolitical power calculations – claims made against Russia about planning to invade Ukraine are baseless if not absurd. The impasse reflects an impoverishment of diplomacy and respect for international law, and a reckless tendency to militarize bilateral relations. This is the manifestation of Cold War thinking, primarily on the U.S. side.

    In the following interview, Martin Schotz, a respected Massachusetts-based author on the assassination of President John F Kennedy, explores the systematic basis for Cold War logic. He contends that the United States’ political class is locked in an entrenched Cold War mentality that serves its hyper-militarized economy. Cold War politics necessitates conflict and war in international relations, which is all too clearly demonstrated by the present crisis over Ukraine between the U.S. and Russia.

    The depth of this Cold War logic of the accompanying national security state is illustrated by the shocking murder of President John F Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. His murderers and the institutional coverup that followed were motivated by Kennedy’s growing opposition to the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The fact of JFK’s murder and the systematic denial by media is an indication of how deeply engrained Cold War thinking is in the American political establishment. That embedded logic explains why U.S. relations with Russia continue to be dominated by seemingly irrational hostility. Why do peaceful relations seem so elusive, so relentlessly thwarted? Is it really because of malign Russians?

    The inability of the Biden administration, or any U.S. administration for that matter, to conduct normal, peaceful, diplomatic relations with Russia within the bounds of the UN Charter and international law is down to the intransigent Cold War logic of the American imperial state. More than 58 years after the brutal murder of Kennedy, the imperial state persists more than ever as can be seen in the reckless hostility by Washington towards Moscow, as well as towards Beijing, Tehran, Havana, Bogota and others designated as “enemies” of presumed U.S. hegemony.

    Martin Schotz co-authored the seminal book History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy (1996). It is widely acclaimed as a definitive record of how and why the state murdered Kennedy.

    Schotz, MD, retired, previously practiced psychiatry in Boston. He has a BA in Mathematics from Carleton College, and an MD from the University of Pennsylvania. Following training in Adult and Child Psychiatry at Boston University Medical Center, he was a graduate student in the University Professors Program at Boston University. In addition to practicing psychiatry, he is a playwright, essayist, short story writer, and amateur jazz drummer.

    He writes for the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord, as well as Massachusetts Peace Action. A recent article is entitled “Understanding and Resisting the New Cold War”.

    An important theme for Schotz is the political and societal effects on the United States from the mass denial that continues in relation to Kennedy’s murder. From his 1996 book cited above is this profound insight which is as relevant today as it ever was:

    As citizens who have turned away for thirty years [now nearly sixty years] from the truth of the murder of our elected head of state, we should not be surprised that today we find our nation in intellectual, political, and moral chaos. Confronting the truth of President Kennedy’s assassination and its coverup is but one small step on a long path out of that chaos and toward healing, a path along which we must confront the true nature of our democracy and the reality of what our nation has become for its own citizens and for people throughout the world. Such a process of healing is not pleasant. It is a difficult and painful path, but it is a necessary one. History will not absolve us.

    Interview

    Finian Cunningham: You are a long-time observer of Cold War politics between the United States and the former Soviet Union. How would you compare the current deterioration and tensions in relations between the U.S.-led Western states and Russia?

    Martin Schotz: I’m afraid, if anything, I would say matters are worse because of the deterioration of conditions in the United States. On the one hand, we have the ever-growing control of the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Think Tank Complex. Both major parties are wedded to the military establishment and espouse Cold War propaganda with little dissent. When you combine this with the weakening influence of the liberal establishment and the growing openly fascist movement that combines the Republican Party and white supremacy there seems to be tremendous potential for instability in this country. The peace movement, such as it is, needs to reach out for support and allies wherever it can. And we need to keep in mind Martin Luther King Junior’s concept of “agape”, that is, faith in the capacity of your enemy to be transformed.

    FC:  The Cold War was supposed to have ended nearly 30 years ago with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Why do you think it persists three decades on in the form of fraught and hostile relations between Washington and Moscow?

    MS: In my opinion, it is a myth that the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Cold War from the beginning was always about U.S./Western hegemony. No other system can be permitted to exist that might be an alternative to the capitalist system. When the Soviet Union collapsed, somehow Cuba didn’t. And because Cuba represents another way – another economic and political system, true national sovereignty, etc., – the U.S. continued to demonize Cuba and kept its embargo intact. To me, this is evidence that the Cold War didn’t end. At the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, it wasn’t so clear what direction China would be moving in. And the Cold Warriors probably thought they might be able to bring China into the U.S.-dominated capitalist system. Of course, they assumed that Russia would be part of the system with Yeltsin and his successors. But when China decided to pursue its own course and Russia re-emerged under Vladimir Putin, the Cold War, which had been up to then somewhat quiet, suddenly flared up again. There is a quote from prominent Cold War diplomat and historian George Kennan from the 1980s in which he deplored the establishment’s negative view of the USSR that could be written today. All you have to do is take the passage and substitute “Russia” for “Soviet Union”. Here is a long quote from Kennan’s book The Nuclear Delusion: Soviet-American Relations in the Atomic Age (1982):

    I find the view of the Soviet Union that prevails today in large portions of our governmental and journalistic establishments so extreme, so subjective, so far removed from what any sober scrutiny of external reality would reveal, that it is not only ineffective but dangerous as a guide to political action.

    This endless series of distortions and oversimplifications; this systematic dehumanization of the leadership of another great country; this routine exaggeration of Moscow’s military capabilities and of the supposed iniquity of Soviet intentions: this monotonous misrepresentation of the nature and the attitudes of another great people – and a long-suffering people at that, sorely tried by the vicissitudes of this past century; this ignoring of their pride, their hopes – yes, even of their illusions (for they have their illusions, just as we have ours, and illusions too, deserve respect); this reckless application of the double standard to the judgment of Soviet conduct and our own, this failure to recognize, finally, the communality of many of their problems and ours as we both move inexorably into the modern technological age: and the corresponding tendency to view all aspects of the relationship in terms of a supposed total and irreconcilable conflict of concerns and of aims; these, I believe, are not the marks of the maturity and discrimination one expects of the diplomacy of a great power; they are the marks of an intellectual primitivism and naivety unpardonable in a great government. I use the word naivety, because there is the naivety of cynicism and suspicion, just as there is the naivety of innocence.

    And we shall not be able to turn these things around as they should be turned, on the plane of military and nuclear rivalry, until we learn to correct these childish distortions – until we correct our tendency to see in the Soviet Union only a mirror in which we look for the reflection of our own virtue – until we consent to see there another great people, one of the world’s greatest, in all its complexity and variety, embracing the good with the bad, a people whose life, whose views, whose habits, whose fears and aspirations, whose successes and failures, are the products, just as ours are the products, not of any inherent iniquity but of the relentless discipline of history, tradition, and national experience. If we insist on demonizing these Soviet leaders – on viewing them as total and incorrigible enemies, consumed only with their fear and hatred of us and dedicated to nothing other than our destruction – that, in the end, is the way we shall assuredly have them, if for no other reason than that our view of them allows for nothing else, either for them or for us.

    FC: As the author yourself of a ground-breaking book on the assassination of President John F Kennedy, you argue that he was murdered by powerful U.S. state elements precisely because Kennedy was beginning to seriously challenge Cold War policies. Can you elaborate on some of the peace initiatives that he was embarking on with his Soviet counterparts?

    MS: Kennedy went through a gradual and ultimately radical transformation over the three years of his presidency. He initially as a senator had made a speech against colonialism that had raised some eyebrows, but during the campaign for the presidency, he seemed to be attacking Nixon from the right. Eisenhower as he was leaving office had warned of the growing influence of the military-industrial complex, and once Kennedy was in office it didn’t take long before he began to tangle with the CIA and the military. His refusal to allow U.S. forces to rescue the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961 was the first example. He tried to fire Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA, over Dulles’ deceit in the incident. But as David Talbot’s book on Dulles, The Devil’s Chessboard, demonstrates in great detail Dulles, in fact, continued to meet with his associates even though Kennedy had officially removed him as director of the agency. Then you had a little-known agreement signed between a representative of Kennedy and a representative of then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev known as the McCloy-Zorin Agreement. This outlined a plan for complete worldwide disarmament in stages. It was brought to the UN and unanimously endorsed by the UN General Assembly. At the time, I am not sure how seriously Kennedy took this agreement. But you also have at this time the private correspondence that Kennedy and Khrushchev were conducting, which allowed them to get a better understanding of each other out of public view. Then you have the Cuban Missile Crisis during October 1962. The pressure on Kennedy to launch a war against Cuba and possibly a first strike on the Soviet Union was enormous. But he resisted, showing great independence, and was able to resolve the crisis by negotiating with Khrushchev. That crisis was a real turning point. Kennedy saw how callous his military advisors were to the possibility of millions of deaths in a war. The turning point was quite radical. At this stage, I think the McCloy-Zorin Agreement really started to mean something. Kennedy was reportedly pressing his aides for plans for general disarmament in stages. Then in June 1963, you have the American University speech. This speech was a profound attempt on the part of the president to start educating the American people on the subject of world peace. To me it is perhaps the greatest speech by an American president and the principles articulated in that speech are universal and eternal. Those principles of mutual peace and coexistence, disarmament and an end to militarism, are as relevant today as ever.

    FC: You have pointed to the bold declaration of peace by Kennedy in the American University speech in Washington DC on June 10, 1963, as a watershed moment. In that 27-minute address, President Kennedy talked about the pursuit of peace and an end to futile Cold War animosity. Do you think that was the moment he signed his own death warrant in the eyes of U.S. political enemies?

    MS: After the speech was delivered, Khrushchev was so impressed by it that he had it reprinted throughout the Soviet Union, so virtually every Soviet citizen knew about it. That is something that needs to happen in the United States today. Amongst other things, Kennedy announced in the speech a moratorium on nuclear testing in the atmosphere and followed it by negotiating a test ban treaty. Though the U.S. public opinion was initially solidly against the treaty, Kennedy’s organizing and speeches won people over and the treaty was approved by the Senate. So you have here a leader, the president of the United States who is really part of the establishment and has someone like John McCloy working on the one hand and he has Norman Cousins working with him on the other hand. McCloy was as establishment as you can get, and Cousins was one of the founders of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. Cousins was Kennedy’s personal emissary between himself, Pope John XXIII and Khrushchev. Cousins’ book, The Improbable Triumvirate, is an important record of what was going on in 1963. Cousins was a co-author of the American University speech. Well, you can see what a radical turn was being taken against the Cold War. And the CIA and the Military establishment were not about to have it. You know if Kennedy had been given more time and the American people had really gotten more of a taste for peace, a certain momentum might have developed.

    FC: The JFK assassination is a profoundly shocking revelation of U.S. state power; that an elected American president was murdered by agents of the state on the grounds that he wanted to normalize bilateral relations with the Soviet Union and genuinely end the Cold War. Does that shocking, brutal elimination of a U.S. president by his own state explain why bilateral relations have remained dominated and distorted ever since by Cold War dogma?

    MS: Well, we not only have the president murdered by his own national security state, but we have the government issue an obviously fraudulent report, the Warren Report. We also have the established institutions of society, the media, the universities, and so on, they all turn away and ignore the fact that this has happened. The President is murdered and the government issues an obviously fraudulent report that is accepted. What does that say about our society? John McCloy, one of the Warren Commission members, was quoted as saying: “The primary purpose of the Warren Commission was to prove that the United States was not a banana republic, where a government could be changed by conspiracy.”

    FC: Was there something of an echo of this systematic hostility when former President Donald Trump vowed to pursue more normal relations with Russia? His official encounters with President Putin elicited howls of condemnation across the U.S. media. On the surface, this disapproval of Trump’s outreach was said to be due to “Russiagate” and alleged Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 presidential election, but would you agree that it was more due to a deeper American state intransigence simply towards any kind of normalization of relations between Washington and Moscow?

    MS: Nothing that Trump says means anything as far as I am concerned. From my point of view, he can hardly keep an idea in his head for more than a few minutes. So I don’t want to give him any attention. “Russiagate” was a Democratic Party concoction that was aimed at distracting from serious attention to how Hillary Clinton had managed to lose to an imbecile. The real reason for her loss was the abandonment over decades by the Democratic Party of its working-class base. “Russiagate”, as Putin himself said, was really a matter of U.S. domestic politics in which Russia was being used as a scapegoat.

    FC: It seems the United States’ modern political formation is inherently and relentlessly driven by Cold War thinking. Russia, China and other foreign states are designated enemies by Washington often without credible justification. There seems to be a permanent ideology of hostility and war in the U.S. as a nation-state. What are the underlying causal reasons for this systematic mindset?

    MS: Over the years, the U.S. economy has been increasingly militarized. So there needs to be a narrative that justifies this war economy and that’s what we have. Military spending is everywhere. It is in Hollywood. It is “defense contractors”, aka “merchants of death”, buying congressional representatives. Then the service that the military performs is to make the world safe for unbridled corporate activity. It is a very daunting problem.

    FC: Do you ever see the U.S. transcending its fixation on Cold War politics? What needs to change to make that happen?

    MS: What needs to happen is the political leadership coming to the conclusion that we cannot dominate the world, that we need the United Nations and we need international law. Can they come to understand that none of the problems that are facing humanity can be solved with military weapons? It is not beyond the realm of possibility that sanity could reign. And it is the task of the peace movement to reach as many people at all levels with this message.

    The post President JFK’s Murder Is Graphic Proof of Entrenched Cold War Ideology and Why Peace Eludes U.S.-Russia Relations first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Antiwar Groups Rally To Stop Us From Being Lied Into War With Russia

    Clearing the FOG provides excerpts from the speakers at the National Online Rally to stop war with Russia over Ukraine that was held on Feb. 5 as part of the national actions that took place in about 70 cities in Hawaii and coast to coast. The rally and actions were organized based on a unified call to action issued by 12 national and international antiwar organizations, which was endorsed by more than 200 more organizations. The demands include stopping the war with Russia, stopping the supply of weapons to Nazis in Ukraine, ending NATO, de-escalating the threat of nuclear war and resolving the current conflict within the framework of international law. Speakers include Alice Loazia from Task Force on the Americas, David Swanson of World Beyond War, Sara Flounders of International Action Center, Ann Wright of CODEPINK, Rafiki Morris of Black Alliance for Peace, Leela Anand of ANSWER Coalition, Henry Lowendorf of the US Peace Council, Bruce Gagnon of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Susan Schnall of Veterans For Peace and Joe Lombardo of the United National Antiwar Coalition. You can view the entire rally here.

    The post Antiwar Groups Rally To Stop Us From Being Lied Into War With Russia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Casual Racism and the New Cold War

    A quick Google search of “Russia” or “China” is all that is needed to identify the casual racism of the corporate media and its central role in the U.S.’s New Cold War. Add the word “fear” to the search and the agenda becomes even clearer. In a search for mainstream media articles on Russia conducted on January 26th, nine of the first ten articles that appeared contained the word “fear” in the headline. China fared a bit better than Russia, but not by much. Better than half of the headlines referenced the word “fear” or “worried” to describe affairs relating to the world’s second largest economy.

    The post Casual Racism and the New Cold War appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • NY Times, Washington Post Driving US To War With Russia Over Ukraine

    Amid tough talk from European and American leaders, a new MintPress study of our nation’s most influential media outlets reveals that it is the press that is driving the charge towards war with Russia over Ukraine. Ninety percent of recent opinion articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have taken a hawkish view on conflict, with anti-war voices few and far between. Opinion columns have overwhelmingly expressed support for sending U.S. weapons and troops to the region. Russia has universally been presented as the aggressor in this dispute, with media glossing over NATO’s role in amping tensions while barely mentioning the U.S. collaboration with Neo-Nazi elements within the Ukrainian ruling coalition.

    The post NY Times, Washington Post Driving US To War With Russia Over Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Peace Groups Say No To War Between U.S. And Russia Over Ukraine

    Groups opposed to war rallied outside the White House to condemn the Administration’s role in a military buildup in Europe and warned war between superpowers would come at great cost. Speakers questioned why the U.S. is involved in yet another conflict less than a year after the end of the Afghanistan War — its most recent and the longest war it ever fought — while many families can not afford adequate housing, food and healthcare, and communities buckle under crumbling infrastructure.

    The post Peace Groups Say No To War Between U.S. And Russia Over Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Is Russia-NATO Brinksmanship Over Ukraine Thwarting Diplomatic Resolution?

    Is Russia-NATO Brinksmanship Over Ukraine Thwarting Diplomatic Resolution?

    The U.S. warns Russia could soon invade Ukraine, as diplomatic talks continue in Moscow and Washington and the U.S. sends more military equipment to Ukraine. We look at the potential of war from the seldom-discussed perspective of citizens of Ukraine. “This Russian brinkmanship is having a devastating effect on the Ukrainian economy, even without an invasion,” says Russian American journalist Masha Gessen, who just returned from reporting in Ukraine. Foreign policy expert Anatol Lieven says that while a Russian invasion of Ukraine remains a possibility, “there clearly is a desire in Moscow to pursue a diplomatic path” to resolve the crisis without war.

    TRANSCRIPT

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

    AMY GOODMAN: Top-level diplomatic talks are continuing in an attempt to defuse the crisis over Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron is meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow today. Macron will then head to Kyiv and meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Tuesday. On Friday, Putin traveled to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and attend the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. The two leaders signed a joint statement calling on the United States and other Western nations to, quote, “abandon the ideologized approaches of the Cold War.” They also called for no more expansion of NATO. Meanwhile, Germany’s new Chancellor Olaf Scholz will meet with President Biden at the White House today.

    Over the weekend, U.S. officials claimed Russia now has in place 70% of the forces it needs to invade Ukraine. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to send military equipment and munitions to Ukraine. CNN reports an 80-ton shipment of military aid arrived recently. It’s the eighth U.S. shipment in recent days. U.S. intelligence assessments reportedly predict a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine could lead to 50,000 civilian deaths in Ukraine. President Putin has denied claims he plans to invade Ukraine.

    For more, we’re joined by two guests. Anatol Lieven is senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, author of numerous books on Russia and the former Soviet republics, including “Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry. We are also joined in New York by Masha Gessen, award-winning Russian American journalist and staff writer at The New Yorker, where their most recent piece is headlined “How a City Close to the Ukraine-Russia Border Has Been Shaped by War.”

    Masha, let’s begin with you. You’re just back from Kyiv. Can you just describe the scene on the ground, the people you spoke to, how people are preparing, or not, for a confrontation?

    MASHA GESSEN: Thank you, Amy. And thank you for having me.

    So, I spent some time in Kyiv and also in Kharkiv, which is a city close to the Russian-Ukrainian border. I’d say the situation in those places is a little bit different. People in Kharkiv have been living close to the war, right? And it’s important to remember that when we talk about Russia invading Ukraine, well, that happened eight years ago. We’re actually coming up on an anniversary. We’re talking — so, what they’ve had for the last eight years is a simmering armed conflict that continues to claim lives on a daily basis, right? Every day people die in what Ukrainians refer to as the ungoverned territories, which are the two self-proclaimed republics, the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic in the east of Ukraine, which is where Russia invaded eight years ago. Kharkiv is right next to those places. Kharkiv knows what it’s like to be in that state of simmering conflict and, more important, I think, in a state of total lawlessness and ongoing violence that people in those places are experiencing.

    And this is something that I think Russians don’t quite understand, that over the eight years of that conflict, people in Kharkiv have really forged a Ukrainian identity that is entirely separate — and this is what Americans fail to understand — entirely separate from their linguistic identity — right? — but a very strong national identity. And there’s a kind of fortification of patriotic feeling that always happens in wartime. We know this. And you feel it very strongly in Kharkiv. So, a lot of people are kind of saying, “OK, bring it on. We’ve known for a long time this was going to happen.” Obviously, this is bravado in a lot of ways. Obviously Russia is capable of using overwhelming force that would lead to an incredible amount of bloodshed. But I think people there are very far from where they were eight years ago, which was caught unawares, where something like the Russian invasion was just unimaginable eight years ago. These days I think they feel like they know what it’s like, and they’re prepared, as awful as it’s going to be.

    Kyiv is a different story. In Kyiv, people, I think, are living sort of on two tracks. One, they think it’s completely — you know, it is unimaginable to them. They haven’t been living next a war zone for eight years. So, the possibility of bombing of Kyiv, which is part of what, unfortunately, is predicted by some analysts, just seems absurd to them. And at the same time, they’re thinking, yeah, there’s nothing you can — they can’t plan for next week, because you have been in this — you’re placed in a state of suspended animation. So there’s a real sense of doublethink in Kyiv.

    AMY GOODMAN: And then talk about the people that you spoke to and how, in everyday life, men, women, children are planning. I mean, from the United States’ perspective, the U.S. pulled back the word “imminent” invasion, but they are suggesting that’s the case every day. But I got the sense from your pieces, and especially the piece you wrote, “How a City Close to” — the piece that you wrote on —

    MASHA GESSEN: On Kharkiv.

    AMY GOODMAN: On Kyiv. You know, people are taking different approaches, whether —

    MASHA GESSEN: Right.

    AMY GOODMAN: — to flee or to stay and fight.

    MASHA GESSEN: So, the Ukrainian government, understandably, has been trying to project a sort of sense of calm, because part of what’s happening is this Russian brinkmanship is having a devastating effect on the Ukrainian economy. Even without an invasion, it’s an incredibly destructive thing for the country. So, the president of Ukraine has been — and some of his ministers have been saying, “Look, what we’re seeing now is not substantially different than anything that we saw over the course of 2021. They keep amassing troops on the border. They keep pulling them up, then pulling them back. We can’t react to every one of those fluctuations as though war were imminent. We have to keep living our lives; otherwise, this is incredibly destructive.”

    And I think, to some extent, he has succeeded in projecting a sort of calm. And people are really saying, you know, “Why, what’s all this talk of war, is this is so media-driven.” It’s amazing. I have dozens of interviews in the course of my time in Ukraine, and I don’t think there was a single person who didn’t use the phrase “wag the dog” in describing what they were experiencing. And at the same time, they understand that the threat is real.

    AMY GOODMAN: Explain that, for people who aren’t familiar with that reference, Masha.

    MASHA GESSEN: The reference is to the film Wag the Dog, where a U.S. administration, a fictional U.S. administration, sort of manufactures of war in Albania, I believe, which I think people in the administration don’t even realize is a real country, and it’s a completely media-driven phenomenon. And the war is sort of the side effect of a media controversy. I’m summing it up from memory. It’s been a long time, more than 20 years. But that’s the movie. And so, a lot of people are perceiving it as a media-driven phenomenon, something that’s happening in a kind of virtual space, except it’s going to affect them physically and tragically.

    So, the mayor of Kyiv — or, a deputy mayor of Kyiv said last month — or, actually, in December now, said, “Look, you should have a go bag. You should be prepared.” And that was a first wave of panic. So people have been stocking up on supplies. People have made contingency plans. Some people are planning to go west, to western Ukraine, which they assume is not going to be affected by warfare. Some people are planning to leave the country. Some people are planning to send their kids out of the country. Some people are stocking up on gasoline for generators and planning maybe communal living so they can help each other in case there’s no electricity, there’s no internet, there are food shortages, etc. I mean, we’re still talking about winter — right? — so people are very concerned about being able to heat their homes.

    And there’s also a real mobilization effort. There’s a thing called territorial defense, which is a kind of civilian/military reserve that is part of the military chain of command. They have had an extraordinary number of people signing up just in the last weeks and couple of months. So they’re training every weekend.

    And you really do have a sense of — on the one hand, you’re sort of walking around Kyiv. It’s a beautiful, vibrant city, with lots of great food. People are sitting around in restaurants. It’s very easy to forget about COVID there. And at the same time, every conversation turns to subjects of preparedness. And a lot of people are actually actively either taking — training militarily or thinking of at least taking up arms.

    AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Anatol Lieven into the conversation, of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. You’ve got Macron in Moscow today, then headed to Kyiv to meet with the Ukrainian president, meeting with Putin today. You’ve got the new German chancellor, Scholz, in Washington, D.C., meeting with Biden. Your sense of what could happen right now?

    ANATOL LIEVEN: Well, I think there is a good deal of room, actually, for diplomatic progress and at least a sort of interim diplomatic agreement around issues that have been either raised or left open by the American response to Russia’s démarche — in other words, arms limitation agreements, especially on the stationing of missiles, a resumption of nuclear arms reduction talks, and perhaps at least an informal agreement on a moratorium or delay on NATO membership for Ukraine, which actually sacrifices nothing, because nobody thinks that Ukraine can join NATO in the foreseeable future anyway, so this is a point of principle rather than a point of actual reality. And then, beyond that, there is the issue that was also raised both by the American response and by President Macron, but somewhat vaguely, which is the possibility of some kind of new European security architecture in which Russia would have at least more of a consultative role. So I think that there is a diplomatic way forward.

    And I myself would actually follow what the Ukrainian government has been saying and say that a Russian invasion is not imminent, because a good many people said that the Russian demands were pitched so high that Moscow must have known that they couldn’t be accepted, and this was simply a pretext for Russian invasion, but I think if that was true, then the Russians would have invaded already. There clearly is a desire in Moscow to pursue a diplomatic path. Now, where that will lead, we don’t know. And, of course, war remains a distinct possibility, but I would not myself say that we need to be immediately afraid of it.

    AMY GOODMAN: You’ve written a piece, “How Emmanuel Macron can end the threat of war in Europe: The French president can borrow a phrase from Charles de Gaulle and say ‘non’ to Ukraine joining NATO.” Do you think it’s that simple, Anatol?

    ANATOL LIEVEN: Well, it’s not simple for Macron. Obviously, he is under multiple different pressures. France is highly dependent, for example, on the United States to support its efforts against some Islamist revolt in western Africa.

    But in one way, it is simple, because, as I said, it’s not actually possible for Ukraine to join NATO, not merely in the next few years but basically ever. And the reason for that is very simple: Ukraine, as Dr. Gessen said, is involved in a frozen de facto conflict with Russia, and bringing Ukraine into NATO would imply NATO sending very serious numbers of troops, Cold War numbers, 100,000 American troops, to defend Ukraine against Russia. Well, that is simply not going to happen. You know, apart from everything else, nobody wants war with Russia, and nobody wants that kind of distraction from China. And NATO’s European members are most certainly not going to send troops to defend Ukraine. So, the whole issue of Ukraine’s NATO membership is in fact purely theoretical, so that, in some respects, this whole argument is an argument about nothing — on both sides, it must be said, Russian as well as the West.

    AMY GOODMAN: Masha Gessen, your response?

    MASHA GESSEN: I agree with Anatol, but we have to think about why, when it’s a debate about nothing. When Russia is perfectly well aware that the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO is zero, why is Russia raising this topic? And why is Russia demanding guarantees — and Russia is demanding guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO — guarantees of something that is not going to happen? So, I agree that it’s a pretext, but it’s also a demand for something bigger, right? And it’s a demand for exactly the kind of attention that Russia is getting right now, which is, you know, the whole world is swirling — the whole Western world is swirling around Russia, trying to convince Vladimir Putin to step back.

    The danger here is that considering that Russia’s demands will never be fully met, I don’t think it’s going to get a guarantee, even though, again, it would change nothing in the real state of things, because it’s not going to get a complete guarantee. And at a certain point, it’s going to lose the world’s attention. That’s when I think the danger point comes, because the purpose of this is not — again, because we know this is a pretext, the purpose is to do something else. And what is the something else? A large part of it is creating a sense among Russians that Russia matters, that Vladimir Putin is a world leader, that he says something and the whole world gets moving, and that he can command the world’s attention. It taps into feelings of resentment and a sense of being left out and diminished, that Putin’s politics consistently tap into. And when he loses that opportunity, I think that’s when it becomes really risky. So, I don’t think there’s an imminent invasion, but I also don’t see how, in the long term, this game of brinkmanship can end with anything but a big war.

    AMY GOODMAN: Anatol Lieven, let me ask you about the German chancellor meeting with Biden in Washington and what you feel should happen there, and also the meeting of Xi and Putin, the Chinese and Russian leaders, in Beijing last week, which was highly significant, the first time Xi met with a world leader in two years, since the pandemic, and that kind of alliance forming, even if they have plenty of differences, the U.S. pushing and NATO pushing, essentially, them together.

    ANATOL LIEVEN: Well, I mean, Scholz in Washington is, of course, very anxious to present a united front to Russia as a deterrent to any Russian action, while at the same time praying, frankly, that Russia, of course, will not invade and that no massive NATO sanctions will be necessary, because, let’s not forget, talking about intensified sanctions for an American is very cheap, because America has very little trade with Russia and, of course, does not — hasn’t investment in Russia and does not depend on Russia for energy imports. Massive sanctions against Russia, for Germans, is very expensive, so, of course, the German government is hoping that it will not have to impose them. But for the moment, the stress is obviously on a combination of a united Western front but also, as I say, this fairly hopeful diplomatic process with Moscow.

    As far as Putin and Xi, or rather Russia and China, are concerned, obviously they have a great many interests in common in pushing back against the West. But this is not going to be an alliance. China is not offering to fight for Russia in Ukraine. China has not recognized the Russian annexation of Crimea. And Russia is certainly not offering to fight for China over Taiwan. The biggest question is: If Russia does invade Ukraine and if massive Western economic sanctions are imposed, how far will China go in supporting the Russian economy? We don’t know. My sense, however, is that so far China has been fairly cautious about this, apart from anything else, because, of course, a war in Ukraine, with massive economic sanctions, would be extremely disruptive of the world economy, of world energy prices, and, at least in the short term, would be very damaging for China. So, this remains a partnership but, I think, well short of an alliance.

    But if I could just push back a little on what Masha said, I think it is, partly at least, mistaken to talk about Putin’s domestic agendas and Russian feelings here. There are core Russian national security interests held by the Russian establishment as a whole and by a large part of the Russian people, which are, in certain respects, extremely close to those of the United States, you know, when it comes to its own backyard in Central America. Now, those are interests that America expects to be taken very seriously in its case, and, well, so does Russia.

    AMY GOODMAN: Masha Gessen?

    MASHA GESSEN: Well, I think that Putin’s primary concern is not strategic. But, you know, obviously, we can argue about what’s in that man’s head ’til the cows come home. And that’s part of the problem with dealing with a closed, secretive regime, especially one that has been in power for so long.

    But I think what Putin is seeing is that his — he’s getting old. His regime is showing signs of wear. His popularity has waned. And the models available for either a safe retirement or continuing his rule in perpetuity are not encouraging for him. He has seen neighboring Belarus, which sustained the regime basically through consistent political repression, erupt in mass protests in August of 2020, and the only way that Alexander Lukashenko has been able to sustain the regime is with Russia’s help and the brutal use of force. He saw neighboring Kazakhstan attempt a sort of soft fake transfer of power with guarantees of security for the outgoing president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and break into what appeared to be mass protests and, again, the use of force. And, in fact, the only use of military power by the post-Soviet security organization occurred in Kazakhstan earlier this year.

    And so, it has to be going through Putin’s mind: How is going to sustain his personal power and the durability of his regime going forward? And I think that that’s — the only model that has worked for him is a model of sustaining his legitimacy through sort of pumping up his popularity, and that happens by showing that he’s a powerful man on the world stage. But also the biggest boost to his popularity ever was the annexation of Crimea in 2014. He can’t recreate it, but I think he keeps looking in the direction of Ukraine to see what he could do that will be at least somewhat like it.

    And this is another, I think, very important consideration, which is sanctions. From Putin’s point of view, sanctions that were imposed on Russia in 2014 by both Western European countries and the United States were ultimately a net profit. Yes, the Russian economy — looking from the West, you would say the Russian economy took a huge hit. Looking from Russia, it spurred domestic production. It mobilized the population. It secured his political popularity. It was an all-around win. And so, thinking of sanctions as a deterrent, I think, has to be at least complicated. We can’t possibly assume that he thinks about sanctions as a net loss.

    AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Anatol Lieven, isn’t Trump — and I do mean President Trump — actually getting what he wants? He was pushing for NATO countries spending 4% of their GDP on military weapons. The countries aren’t near there. The goal written — the goal was 2%. But it is increasing dramatically. What about who is ultimately winning here, the weapons manufacturers?

    ANATOL LIEVEN: Yes, well, of course, it’s not just Trump who’s called for Europe to increase its military spending. I think every U.S. president has done that since Eisenhower. But let’s keep something in mind here. However much Europeans spend on defense, European soldiers will not fight Russia to defend Ukraine. They just won’t. I mean, that’s been made clear again and again. Nor most probably will U.S. soldiers. Therefore, I mean, two things to keep in mind. First, sanctions may not be very effective, or possibly at all effective, as Masha has said, but they are the only deterrent that we’ve got, because we won’t fight. The soldiers being sent to Eastern Europe are purely symbolic, because Russia does not have the slightest intention of attacking NATO. It would be a crazy thing to do.

    MASHA GESSEN: Thank you.

    ANATOL LIEVEN: But, by the way, Russia has repeatedly denied that it’s going to attack Ukraine. So, a great deal of this is, I’m afraid, theatrics on the part of the West.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us, Anatol Lieven, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, speaking to us from Britain, and Masha Gessen, award-winning Russian American journalist, staff writer at The New Yorker. We’ll link to your latest pieces, “How a City Close to the Ukraine-Russia Border Has Been Shaped by War,” as well as your other piece that you wrote from Ukraine, from Kyiv.

    Next up, we will talk about the Winter Olympics. As China hosts the Olympics, we speak to Human Rights Watch and a former member of the U.S. Olympic soccer team. Stay with us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Liz Truss’s Russian sanctions plan fails to address how Tories are financially implicated

    On 31 January, foreign secretary Liz Truss outlined to the House of Commons her plan to impose sanctions against Russia should it invade Ukraine. But she was heavily criticised over her failure to comprehensively deal with money laundering by Russian-linked oligarchs in the UK.

    Truss also failed to address the large donations given to her Conservative Party colleagues by some of those oligarchs.

    Money laundering rife

    Sanctions have been known to crush the poorest populations while having little impact on the leaders of their respective countries. Although shadow foreign secretary David Lammy welcomed the sanctions, he commented on how:

    London is the destination of choice for the world’s kleptocrats. We are home to the services and enablers who help corrupt elites to hide their ill-gotten wealth

    He also pointed out that legislation to prevent such money laundering was lacking:

    Where is the economic crime Bill that the Government have just pulled? Where is the comprehensive reform of Companies House? Where is the register of overseas entities Bill? Where is the foreign agent registration law? Where are the new counter-espionage laws? Where are the new rules on political donations? Where is the reform of tier 1 golden visas? Where is the replacement of the outdated Computer Misuse Act 1990? Where is the reform of the Electoral Commission, and why does the Government’s Elections Bill make these problems worse by enabling political donations from donors based overseas?

    Tories accused of complicity

    Labour’s Anna McMorrin pointed out that:

    More than £4 million has been donated to Tory MPs, including to a quarter of the current Cabinet, by Russian-linked individuals

    Meanwhile Labour’s Ben Bradshaw commented on how the US is saying “any new sanctions would be worthless as long as London remains the main international laundromat for dirty Russian money”.

    But it was left to Green Party MP Caroline Lucas to go for the jugular:

    The Government’s attempt to claim some kind of moral high ground on Russian sanctions is sheer hypocrisy when the right hon. Lady’s party has accepted donations from oligarchs and her Government have turned a blind eye to the Kremlin meddling in our democracy and have held open the door to Putin’s cronies to have their money laundered in London.

    Money laundering the “new normal”

    The Intelligence & Security Committee’s (ISC) much-delayed Russia report, published in July 2020, described “ideal mechanisms” by which:

    illicit finance could be recycled through what has been referred to as the London ‘laundromat’. …

    In brief, Russian influence in the UK is ‘the new normal’, and there are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business and social scene, and accepted because of their wealth.

    The report added:

    It is not just the oligarchs either: the arrival of Russian money resulted in a growth industry of enablers – individuals and organisations who manage and lobby for the Russian elite in the UK. Lawyers, accountants, estate agents and PR professionals have played a role, wittingly or unwittingly, in the extension of Russian influence which is often linked to promoting the nefarious interests of the Russian state. A large private security industry has developed in the UK to service the needs of the Russian elite, in which British companies protect the oligarchs and their families, seek kompromat on competitors, and on occasion help launder money through offshore shell companies and fabricate ‘due diligence’ reports, while lawyers provide litigation support.

    Lords implicated

    The ISC press release that accompanied the report referred to members of the House of Lords who “have business interests linked to Russia, or work directly for major Russian companies linked to the Russian state”.

    Moreover, leaked testimony (redacted by The Canary) by anti-corruption campaigner Bill Browder to the Home Affairs Select Committee named UK firms, with connections to peers, that were hired by Russians to advise on avoiding sanctions.

    Browder added:

    These UK-based commercial organisations have derived financial benefit from alleged Russian criminals, and have potentially received proceeds of crime as remuneration for their advisory services

    One firm named was CTF Corporate and Financial Communications (CTFCFC). This firm was co-founded by Lynton Crosby, who worked on Conservative Party election campaigns.

    Tory donors

    In November 2019, The Canary published names of Russia-linked oligarchs who donated funds to Tories or their constituencies and the amounts donated. They included: Lubov Chernukhin, George Piskov, and Alexander Knaster.

    openDemocracy claimed that the Tories had received more than £3.5m from Russian funders since 2010 as of 2019.

    And Reuters reported that according to the Electoral Commission records, Alexander Temerko and UK companies linked to him made:

    donations to 11 individual MPs, including [then Conservative Party chair Brandon] Lewis, the chairman of the Tory Party, while helping fund as many as 27 local branches of the Conservative Party in areas where Tory MPs won election in the north of England, Wales and London.

    Temerko made 69 donations to Tory MPs and Conservative Party central office. Furthermore, Temerko and Chernukhin made donations of £23k and £25k respectively to Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis.

    In another article, The Canary published details of leaked files that showed Russian oligarch and Putin ally Suleyman Kerimov donated millions of pounds to Chernukhin’s husband. Searches conducted by The Canary showed Chernukhin donated 43 separate sums, mostly to Conservative Party central office. The total came to over £1.2m from April 2012 to July 2019.

    Suspicious activities

    Reuters further asserted that a “senior Conservative Party member” claimed Temerko was “very much behind the attempt to oust” Theresa May as prime minister. Moreover, Reuters suggested there was a coup led by “Temerko’s allies” who “are at the helm of Johnson’s campaign”. This reportedly included former defence secretary Gavin Williamson, Crosby, and “a group of East European businessmen”.

    Temerko is known to be a good friend of Johnson, and it’s claimed he has financed the Conservative Party by more than £1m. Reuters claimed Temerko financed Johnson’s allies too, including James Wharton, who ran Johnson’s leadership campaign.

    And then there’s Russian Embassy senior diplomat Sergey Nalobin. His father worked for the KGB and his brother for its successor the FSB. Nalobin arranged the launch of the Conservative Friends of Russia (CFR) group, of which Pro-Brexit MP John Whittingdale was honorary vice-president. Additionally, Matthew Elliott, who launched Brexit Central, was a founding member of CFR.

    Dirty money

    It’s all about dirty money and how those at the centre of power are benefiting, says Browder:

    London is one of the main outposts for Russian financial and political influence programmes in the west. It’s floating on a tide of dirty money. All the oligarchs have bases there. They all have homes. All the professional service firms are in London – lawyers, investigations agencies – all running private influence ops on behalf of the oligarchs who are working on behalf of Putin. There’s a huge reluctance in Britain to strangle the golden goose. Because a lot of people very close the centre of power are financially benefiting.

    A diplomatic source in Washington told the Times on 4 February:

    The fear is that Russian money is so entrenched in London now that the opportunity to use it as leverage against Putin could be lost.

    Whether or not Russia invades Ukraine, the question remains: will sanctions be applied against these and other oligarchs? If not, arguably the threat is empty. Though if Truss really does follow the money, she will undoubtedly find it leads to some very uncomfortable places.

    Meanwhile the standoff between NATO forces and the Russian Federation remains, with the prospect of war still threatened. And if there is war, there will be no winners.

    the Government’s Elections Bill make these problems worse by enabling political donations from donors based overseas?

    Featured image via YouTube

    By Tom Coburg

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Nigeria Is Planning A False Flag In Switzerland: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    I’m declassifying evidence that Nigeria is planning a false flag operation in Switzerland. Are you ready? Here it is:

    Nigeria is planning a false flag operation in Switzerland.

    See, the evidence is me asserting it. If you doubt this evidence, you’re a propagandist for Nigeria.

    What? You want proof? I just gave you the proof. I gave you my declassified intelligence assessment.

    I mean obviously I can’t give you the raw intelligence you’re asking me for without revealing sources and methods and compromising intelligence officers in the field. Is that what you want? For me to compromise intelligence officers in the field? Do you work for Nigerian intelligence?

    The evidence is secret. It’s secret evidence. What I can give you is the information we’ve obtained through thorough intelligence gathering methods in which our intelligence agencies have a degree of confidence. You’re free to doubt it and believe Nigerian propaganda instead, if that’s the sort of person you are.

    ❖

    Making your whole thing about opposing a rival political party is what people do when they lack the integrity to oppose the murderous empire that’s fully backed by both parties.

    ❖

    That saying “They got you fighting a culture war to stop you fighting a class war” is something you’ve got to take seriously. You can’t just dismiss it. Because if it’s at all true, even somewhat, then discourse on today’s left is completely fucked and ultimately power-serving.

    Certainly you can’t reduce everything to class. Racial and sexual power dynamics are of course very real. The problem would be if those in power kept everyone focused on culture war dynamics instead of class, and kept the discourse from threatening real power. Is that happening? Is it happening at all? To any extent? Because to any extent that it is happening, power is being served and our own interests are being undermined.

    You can’t just leave this question unanswered and unaddressed. It needs to be sincerely grappled with.

    ❖

    Whenever your anger is focused on any figure besides the western empire and its facilitators, the propagandists have succeeded in doing their job.

    ❖

    ❖

    It’s obvious that the Iraq invasion was facilitated by propaganda. It should be equally obvious that the powers who pushed that propaganda would have developed and refined their methods and learned new techniques since 2002, and that they would be using those tricks in today’s world.

    Any time there’s a new escalation against an imperial target you’ll get people comparing the propaganda to the lead-up to Iraq, and then you get people pushing back with “This isn’t Iraq! It’s different in X ways!” But it wouldn’t look exactly the same. The science of propaganda has advanced a lot since that time.

    There’s always some reason why this or that act of militarism or interventionism is completely different from its disastrous predecessors. Always. It’s all just bullshit designed to throw off our basic sense of pattern recognition.

    ❖

    I’m a tankie, but only because that word now means “Anyone who focuses their criticisms on the most murderous power structure on earth.”

    ❖

    Anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to fight the Russians hasn’t watched enough MMA.

    ❖

    Someone who wants to make peace with Russia in order to focus on ramping up aggressions against China is as worthless to anti-imperialists as someone who wants to legalize drugs so that law enforcement can focus on locking up gay people would be to civil libertarians. Being dovish on Russia but hawkish on China is not better than being hawkish on both; you’re pushing the same amount of aggression toward what is ultimately the same imperialist agenda, you’re just doing it a little differently.

    ❖

    The trouble with social media hate mobs is they don’t work on the people you want them to work on. Being subjected to a bunch of people yelling at you online can ruin your day if you’re a caring person who’s affected by how people feel about you, but if you’re a sociopathic politician, pundit or celebrity it’ll just be funny to you. So if you’re a healthy person you can be easily silenced and shut down by a few aggressive social media accounts, while if your brain has a missing or malfunctioning empathy center you’re guaranteed to keep your voice. It’s one of the many ways our setup uplifts sociopaths.

    Until we find a way for healthy people to be as comfortable in the spotlight as sociopaths are, they’ll always have a massive advantage over us. So many aspects of our society are tilted to the advantage of people with no empathy, like the way capitalism rewards anyone who’s willing to do whatever it takes to out-compete everyone else and climb to the top. In a sense that’s the source of all our major problems.

    ❖

    If you want to have integrity you want your personal psychology to line up with your political ideals. Plenty of leftist men harbor deep-seated misogyny. Many libertarians who promote personal responsibility blame their personal problems on others. You want it all to line up.

    It’s nothing to be ashamed of if your psychological landscape doesn’t match your ideals; that’s pretty normal. It’s just a matter of patiently doing the inner work necessary for your mind to match your ideals, your speech to match your mind, and your actions to match your speech.

    ____________________

    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.

  • Crisis or Confusion? A Brief Guide for Black Folk on the Situation in Ukraine

    Within large sectors of the U.S. left, including many elements of the Black left, there is widespread confusion related to the Ukraine “crisis.” Years of anti-Russia propaganda from the US and its NATO allies, and the tendency to abstract the current Ukrainian situation from its historical and geo-strategic context, have created a climate of confusion. This climate has played into the hands of state propagandists and democratic party activists eager to use the Ukraine situation to deflect attention from Biden’s disastrous domestic agenda. The situation with Ukraine did not just fall out of the sky in 2021. It has a long history.

    The post Crisis or Confusion? A Brief Guide for Black Folk on the Situation in Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Untold History Of NATO And Case For Its Abolition

    NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is moving ever closer to Russia’s border. Russia views this as an existential threat – and a historic betrayal of key guarantees it was given by the west as the Soviet Union disintegrated. As Biden sends thousands of additional troops to Eastern Europe, the threat of war is growing by the day.

    The post The Untold History Of NATO And Case For Its Abolition appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Trapped In IMF Debt, Argentina Turns To Russia And Joins China’s Belt & Road

    Argentina is trapped in $44 billion of IMF odious debt taken on by corrupt right-wing regimes. Seeking alternatives to US hegemony, President Alberto Fernández traveled to Russia and China, forming an alliance with the Eurasian powers, joining the Belt and Road Initiative.

    The post Trapped In IMF Debt, Argentina Turns To Russia And Joins China’s Belt & Road appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Claims Over Broken Promises About NATO Simmer at the Heart of the Ukraine Crisis

    U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet during the U.S.-Russia summit at Villa La Grange on June 16, 2021, in Geneva, Switzerland.

    In the continuing conflict between the United States and Russia, the central issue has always been the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from its original boundaries in Central Europe during the Cold War. Recent efforts to incorporate Ukraine into NATO have greatly aggravated Russian suspicions, contributing to Russia’s rationale for their massing of troops on Ukrainian borders.

    It is true that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a repressive leader with a poor human rights record, but that is no reason for the U.S. to risk undertaking a war. On the issue of NATO expansion, Putin has a legitimate complaint. If Ukraine were to join NATO, it would establish a U.S. ally on Russia’s southern border with the potential of U.S. military bases being aimed against Russia. We must consider this counterfactual: How would the U.S. respond if Russia were planning a military alliance with Mexico or Canada? There is no way of getting around the fact that NATO’s expansion has been profoundly destabilizing.

    It is important to consider the historical context of Russian grievance: It is a matter of record that in 1990, the U.S. Secretary of State James Baker promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that it would not expand NATO into the formerly communist states of Eastern Europe. In exchange, Gorbachev agreed not to oppose the upcoming reunification of Germany. Gorbachev fulfilled his part of the deal — Germany was reunified without Soviet objection — but then the U.S. promptly began laying plans to expand NATO. By 1999, the former communist states of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic all joined NATO, disregarding the promises made to Gorbachev. Then, NATO continued expanding into most of Eastern Europe, as well as three former Soviet states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Russian officials have repeatedly objected to what they describe as U.S.’s bad faith regarding its past promises not to expand NATO.

    Some former officials contest this history. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently stated: “The idea that we somehow crossed some line with the Russians, I think, is a figment of Vladimir Putin’s imagination, just like the idea that somehow Jim Baker, all the way back in 1990, said we would never move east. What we were talking about at the time was East Germany… Nobody was even imagining Czechoslovakia or Poland or Hungary at that time.” These claims are very doubtful. The National Security Archive at George Washington University has released a large number of previously classified documents that strongly suggest that — as Russian leaders have argued — the U.S. did indeed promise not to expand NATO, and that this promise extended beyond East Germany. I will quote from the summary of the documents, written by Archive staff:

    The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels. [Emphasis added.]

    Clearly, present-day Russian complaints about U.S. deceptions regarding NATO’s expansion have a foundation in the historical record.

    The U.S. expansion of NATO reflected an attitude of recklessness and hubris. According to former Defense Secretary William Perry, the predominant view of Russia in the Clinton administration was: “Who cares what they think? They’re a third-rate power.”

    At least some senior figures were alarmed by the U.S.’s arrogance. Former CIA Director Robert Gates later criticized NATO’s eastward expansion, arguing that it was a bad move since Gorbachev was “led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”

    In 1995, 20 former U.S. officials wrote an open letter stating that NATO’s planned expansion risked “convincing most Russians that the United States and the West are attempting to isolate, encircle, and subordinate them.” The letter also stated that the Russians “pose no threat to any state to the west, nor is there any evidence of an imperialistic surge among the Russian people.” Even Paul Nitze — an architect of the Cold War and a longstanding anti-Soviet hardliner — signed the letter. Then in 1997, veteran Soviet expert George F. Kennan declared, “Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the post-Cold War era.” U.S. policymakers were warned about the likely consequences of their actions.

    Given the central importance of NATO in the current conflict, one might wonder: Why was the alliance even necessary after the end of the Cold War? During the early 1990s, no one really knew what NATO was for, and the whole alliance was becoming a bit of a joke. It was a “security” organization in search of a mission, without any real security threat. In 1992, a headline in Jane’s Defense Weekly declared, “NATO Seeks Significance in a Post-Cold War Climate.”

    The real reason for preserving NATO — and ultimately expanding it — was to promote U.S. prestige and power, and also to benefit vested interests associated with what President Dwight D. Eisenhower once termed the military-industrial complex. In 1993, retired U.S. Admiral Eugene Carroll spoke with remarkable frankness about NATO’s real purpose:

    Let me tell you one of the reasons you keep hearing so many contrived arguments for continuing the NATO alliance. It has been very, very good for the militaries of the countries involved…. If NATO goes away, all those jobs go away; all those lovely chateaus, and chauffeurs and railroad cars go away. It’s something that has been very enjoyable for a good many years, and the fact that there is no longer any requirement for it doesn’t mean they don’t want to keep a good thing going.

    NATO’s expansion benefited the U.S. military, U.S. weapons manufacturers, and their counterparts in Western Europe. Eastern European states were eager to join what many viewed as a “prestigious” organization as a symbol that they had finally arrived on the world stage.

    None of this had anything to do with security in any meaningful sense, since Russia was, for the most part, acting in accord with U.S. and Western interests. Indeed, Boris Yeltsin, the Russian president at the time, was widely viewed as a pro-U.S. stooge. U.S. officials were so appreciative of Yeltsin that they intervened in Russia’s 1996 election to ensure that Yeltsin won. Time magazine even produced a caricature of Yeltsin on the cover, holding a U.S. flag, under the title “Yanks to the Rescue.” The Time subtitle read: “The Secret Story of How American Advisors Helped Yeltsin Win.” Russians have long resented this U.S. interference in their electoral processes.

    In undertaking these interventions, the U.S. was laying the groundwork for future conflicts with Russia. If U.S. officials were looking for trouble and seeking to increase global insecurity, they could not have done a better job.

    Given all these historical affronts, it should come as no surprise that the Russian people longed for a more authoritarian leader — like Putin — who would stand up to the increasingly distrusted U.S. Despite his authoritarian style, Putin has been inarguably popular and has dominated Russian politics since first coming to power in 2000.

    U.S. officials cannot go back in time to correct past mistakes; in all probability, they will never regain Russia’s trust. However, we do have an opportunity to deescalate tensions. The key Russian demand is a firm U.S. guarantee that Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO. U.S. officials should be open to this demand, as a basis for a full settlement, and should forgo their obsession with relentlessly projecting U.S. power through NATO. Surely this outcome would be better than a new Cold War with a nuclear-armed Russia, which is becoming a serious risk.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Taiwan and Ukraine: How United States foreign policy operates in the service of capitalism

    The sabre rattling of the United States and its allies grows as capitalism’s crisis sharpens, writes William Briggs. 

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Renaissance Woman Sylvia Pankhurst: Feminist, Artist, Council Communist, Anti-Imperialist


    Why Sylvia Matters

    How many of you about to read this have heard of Sylvia Pankhurst? Our guess is, not many. She seems to have fallen through the cracks of socialist and suffragette movement literature. Her mother, Emmeline Pankhurst and sister, Christabel Pankhurst are still looked up to as leaders in the suffragette movement. What is overlooked is the fact that they only supported suffrage for women who had property. This, of course, completely eliminates women in the working class and women who are poor. Sylvia, on the other hand, devoted her life to supporting those women and giving them a voice. We find it ironic that Emmeline and Christabel were considered rebels even though later in life both became pro-war, conservative and religious fundamentalists. However, it was Sylvia who was the true revolutionary. Her name and work should become familiar to all socialists, and especially feminist socialists. Sylvia is an important woman to know about for all women – and men – who want to learn about the history of significant women in the struggle for socialism and women’s equality.

    Sylvia lived a life of courage, strength, and conviction. Born in 1882 into an upper middle-class family in Manchester, England, her parents were founding members of the Independent Labor Party. Both Richard and Emmeline Pankhurst were firm supporters of women’s rights. Sylvia grew up attending public talks, demonstrations and surrounded by friends of her parents who were considered radicals.

    We learned all this from reading Rachel Holmes’s book Natural Born Rebel: Sylvia Pankhurst.

    Political Work

    In her long years as a socialist and feminist she never stopped working, whether in the arts or in politics. Her early years until the Russian Revolution were dominated by the Suffrage movement. After the Russian Revolution she devoted herself strictly to socialism and supported the Russian Revolution for the first four years. However, she ultimately split with Lenin over his reinstitution of a partly capitalist economy. Sylvia became associated with the Soviets, or workers’ councils, and advocated for them as political bodies over parliaments. She opposed fascism in both the 1920s and 1930s and supported Ethiopia against both Italian and English imperialism.

    Sylvia moved to Bow in the East End of London in 1912 when she was 30, a traditionally working-class neighborhood. It was here that she set up the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Emmeline and Christabel did not approve. She did many things to support working women and women whose husbands were away at war. She established a café that was free, called Cost Price Restaurant. She also put women to work by organizing a cooperative toy factory. She established The Mother’s Arms, a school for toddlers whose mothers were working. At this school the children were taught according to the Montessori method. When the children arrived in the morning in dirty and torn clothing, they would be given uniforms to wear while their clothes were washed and mended.

    Sylvia was extremely imaginative in her strategies and tactics in agitating and organizing as a suffragette. She regularly gave public talks and handed out pamphlets, often on the streets, agitating and encouraging women to fight back against the oppressive system in which they lived. She marched in more demonstrations than she could count. In fact, she said later in life that she didn’t like to go on walks unless they were marches of protest. She constantly outfoxed the police who tried to shut these events down and arrest her, smuggling herself into meetings where she was banned. She hid inside furniture, and impersonated a pregnant woman by stuffing newspapers down her dress. She was full of surprises.

    Sylvia was arrested 15 times in her life campaigning for the rights of women. It’s been said that the 19th century – extending into the early 20th century – was the century of the penitentiary. Over one 18-month period she was imprisoned 13 times. This had adverse effects on her health throughout her life. In fact, it’s remarkable that she lived to be 78. The first time Sylvia was arrested, for yelling and causing a ruckus in court in defense of other women being sentenced in 1906, when she was only 24, she was placed in the harshest division, the third division. In the third division the women were denied their own clothing, reading, and writing materials, and were fed rotten food. She endured torture through force-feeding because of her fasting as a means of rebellion. All of this changed her life – physically and politically.

    She took part in demonstrations where women were dragged down side streets, beaten up, and sexually assaulted by the police, as they were on Black Friday, November 18, 1910. In 1913 the government passed a bill called Temporary Discharge for Ill Health because they feared that too many women would die, turning the public against them. The suffragettes called this bill “The Cat and Mouse Act”. They were released on the terms that they would be returned to prison when they had regained their strength. However, most of them went to “safe houses” till they were stronger, then promptly returned to militancy. They were awarded medals by other suffragettes when they were released which they wore with pride. Emmeline was never subjected to force-feeding because she was too high-profile among the middle and upper-middle classes. Sylvia was subjected to it repeatedly.

    Sylvia had constant fights with her mother and sister over her desire to combine feminism with work in the Labor Party. As a result, she was driven to the margins of the suffragette movement in Britain. The gap between she, her sister and her mother widened when she campaigned against British involvement in World War I. The differences became an abyss when Sylvia supported the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution.

    As early as 1921, Sylvia understood the dangers of fascism and though her involvement in socialist parties waned, she was a life-long fighter against fascism. During the 1930s she became involved in the cause of Ethiopia and its fight against Italian fascism. She defended Ethiopia against all imperialist stirrings, including that of Great Britain. By the end of 1950s, with her 30-year soulmate Silvio Corio dead and constant harassment from the British government, there wasn’t much left for her in England. She was invited by the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie to move to Ethiopia. She spent the last four years of her life there involved in plans for improving their educational and health care systems. She was beloved by Ethiopians and when she died in 1960 she was honored and buried along with all the other Ethiopian fighters against fascism.

    Skill in the arts

    She was multi-talented in the creative arts. She was a good enough artist to receive a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in 1900.  Her drawings and paintings were rooted in the experience of the working class. She created portraits of workers both on and off the job, as well as of women in prison. She used her skills to design leaflets, posters and banners for up-coming protests and strikes. She was conflicted throughout her life about whether or not to focus on her art or to focus on her political activism. In fact, she managed to incorporate both into her work.

    She also wrote plays and as she got older, she wrote mammoth sized books on the suffragette movement as well as the cultural history of Ethiopia. She regularly wrote articles for her own and other publications. The first newsletter she published after she moved to the East End of London was the Women’s Dreadnought, which later became the Worker’s Dreadnought. The tile came from a type of rope with a knot at the end of it that women used to protect themselves from attacks by the police and others during demonstrations.

    Personal Life

    Sylvia’s father, Richard was a radical lawyer whom she loved dearly and who was a significant influence in her life. Her father gave her a great deal of intellectual support and their home was filled with books along with a revolving door of guests from all kinds of social movements.  He was a suffragette from before Sylvia was born. Her father was an atheist. He led Sylvia to agnosticism through reading and rational argument.  She later became an atheist as well. She met Eleanor Marx, Wilhelm Liebknecht, many revolutionaries, and radicals, and listened to discussions on Fabianism, socialism, and Marxism in their home.

    Sylvia’s relationship with her mother and older sister was stormy from early on. She spent many long years trying to gain her mother’s approval despite their deep political differences during and after the Russian Revolution.

    Sylvia had two major loves in her life. The first was a long affair with socialist Keir Hardie that lasted for about 15 years. Hardie was committed to staying with his wife, and Sylvia grew impatient with his being on the road constantly and his affairs with other women. They were great political collaborators when they worked together and Hardie looked after her when he was in town. He was probably her greatest political influence. However, she had to keep their love for each other secret from the rest of the world. Her second major love was an Italian anarchist named Silvio Corio. Silvio moved in with her and supported her work during the 30 years they were together. He cooked, did carpentry, and they collaborated in the production of newspapers Sylvia founded and wrote for. They never married but had a child, Richard Pankhurst, born in 1927.

    Shortcomings

    Sylvia had many of the quirks that are all too typical of socialists. Her eating habits were terrible and erratic until Silvio started cooking. Her clothes were terribly out of date, and she walked around at times with her blouses inside out. She did not have good boundaries and she went to prison too many times for her to not pay for it with her health. In spite of plenty of positive feedback from all those whom she encountered throughout her life, Sylvia wasted way too much time trying to get her mother’s and sister’s approval. We found ourselves hoping for her mother to die so Sylvia would stop obsessing about her. Despite that, she charmed everyone and her house in East London was a popular watering hole for socialists and Pan Africanists. She created in her home a similar atmosphere as her father Richard created for her growing up.

    In reading her biography, we realized we have mixed feelings about her. There are obviously things we love about her. We love her move towards socialism and even militancy. Her refusal to remain attached to the original suffragette mantra or votes for middle and upper-middle class women took tremendous courage, particularly as it meant going against what her mother and older sister promoted. She steadfastly rejected the institution of marriage, and while she had two great loves in her life she never married. She was brave to have a child out of wedlock in moralistic Britain in 1927. Her artistic skills and how she used them in the service of promoting issues she valued were considerable. She had the ability to move people and be persuasive with her speeches. Her speech impediment, which made her pronounce her ‘r’s as ‘w’s – she talked about “wevolution” and the “misewies of the industwial worker”, only made her more human and lovable.  She was an excellent, indefatigable writer, and spread the value of socialism and equality in her own publications and those of others. Her relationship with her son, Richard was a strong one, and she led by example, helping him to grow into as much of an activist as she was. She even went on Richard’s honeymoon with his wife Rita (with Rita’s permission). They moved with her to Ethiopia and are all buried in the same sacred place in Ethiopia.

    We also were impatient with the amount of time Sylvia spent focusing on the suffragette movement before she moved closer to socialism and anti-militarism. While she supported the working and lower classes, she did not spend time systemically organizing the entire working class, not just women. Even though she knew socialists like Eleanor Marx, Karl Liebknecht,

    Alexandra Kollontai, Rosa Luxembourg, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn she never committed fully to being part of a socialist organization after she lost interest in the Russian Revolution. Instead, she wasted her time dogging the likes of Winston Churchill, writing letters, and sending petitions for change in parliament. What does this have to do with socialism? Britain has consistently proven itself to be extremely conservative and reactionary. Why couldn’t she understand that?

    Finally, her insistence on going on hunger strikes, water strikes, even sleep strikes while in prison – all of which ruined her health, was hard to read. This, to us, smacks of martyrdom. We believe that in order to be effective in creating change, the individual must take care of themselves. It’s much more difficult to lead a revolution if you are strong in spirit but weak in flesh.

    Quality of the book

    Size of the book

    Sylvia Pankhurst had a long and eventful life, so it is understandable that her biography would be a big book. What do we mean by big? Between 400-600 pages. Rachel Holmes’ book is 976 pages. There is just too much unnecessary detail, such as the names of every person she engaged with and every event she took part in. One of us had to have her book broken down and bound into 3 separate books so she could more easily hold it.

    Jumping around within a single chapter

    A second problem is that the chapters don’t stick with simple chronology. For example, a chapter roughly covering the period of 1917-1918 will have references to events that happened ten years before and 10 years after. We were constantly trying to figure out exactly what period the author was describing.

    Lack of structure within or across chapters

    When we read, we like to see the skeleton of a chapter in the form of subheadings that are clear and not cutesy. In other words, within a 20-page chapter there might be five subheadings. That way, before reading the chapter we tie the subheadings together so we can say to ourselves, “Ah – so this is where this is going”. There was none of that.

    We also would have really appreciated a list of her milestones – bullet points of years and events that might cover 3 or 4 pages. Is it too much to ask to be given a map before beginning the journey? We don’t like mysteries. We want to know where we are going to determine if we want to go there at all.

    The distribution of focus

    We felt there was way too much time spent on the suffragette movement for the first half or more of the book. We also felt there was too much time spent on Sylvia’s relationship with her mother and sister. We found it surprising that the life of Sylvia’s romantic companion of thirty years, Silvio, was given so little time. Lastly, Sylvia’s relationship with socialism was essentially dropped after about 1927. Surely Sylvia has opinions about what became of the Soviet Union. What did she think about the Spanish Civil War and the anarchist collectives and the workers councils in Spain which lasted for 3 years and involved millions of people? Would she not care about worker self-organization which was like the Soviets on a much grander scale? How she might have felt about Khrushchev’s revelations?

    In spite of these criticisms Rachel Holmes is a good writer and kept us engaged. We were very happy and pleased to learn about the life of a wonderful heartful revolutionary as Sylvia Pankhurst. She was, indeed, a natural born rebel.

    The post Renaissance Woman Sylvia Pankhurst: Feminist, Artist, Council Communist, Anti-Imperialist first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The U.S. Black Political Class and War

    The United States is determined to have hegemony, full spectrum dominance, over the entire world. This simple fact means that U.S. hands are never clean and Ukraine is no exception. There is no reason to expect a Russian invasion of Ukraine. The threat is as real as Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. If nothing else, memories must be long enough to recall the war propaganda used in the past. To sum up, Black people should know that the U.S. has instigated this entire affair and any statements made by Joe Biden, his spokespeople, or his foreign policy team must be disregarded.

    The post The U.S. Black Political Class and War appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Illegality Of NATO

    In recent years, participation in NATO has made European countries accomplices in US efforts to achieve global hegemony by means of military force, in violation of international law, and especially in violation of the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles.

    Former UN Assistant Secretary General Hans Christof von Sponeck used the following words to express his opinion that NATO now violates the UN Charter and international law: “In the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, the Charter of the United Nations was declared to be NATO’s legally binding framework. However, the United-Nations monopoly of the use of force, especially as specified in Article 51 of the Charter, was no longer accepted according to the 1999 NATO doctrine. NATO’s territorial scope, until then limited to the Euro-Atlantic region, was expanded by its members to include the whole world”

    The post The Illegality Of NATO appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Specious Reasoning Behind Claims That The US Thwarted An Invasion Of Ukraine

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    Back in November The Military Times published a Ukrainian intelligence claim, which was picked up and repeated by numerous other mainstream publications, alleging that Russia was going to invade Ukraine by the end of January.

    Then in late January when the calendar debunked the Military Times incendiary headline “Russia preparing to attack Ukraine by late January”, that same outlet ran a much less viral story with the headline “Russia not yet ready for full-scale attack says Ukraine“.

    Now here in early February, the Murdoch press has put out a spin piece of a sort we’re likely to see more of in coming days claiming that Russia has not invaded because the US and its allies have “ruined” Moscow’s plans by telling everyone the invasion is coming. In an article titled “Ukraine-Russia tensions: Moscow’s plans ‘ruined’ after US and Britain call out possible invasion“, Ukraine’s defense minister Hanna Maliar tells Sky News that Putin has not yet invaded because his murderous plot was thwarted by a plucky band of imperial states who would not be prevented from speaking their truth.

    “It’s important to understand that when we or our western partners name the date of the possible invasion, we are ruining their plans,” Maliar told Sky News. “And the dates that were already told in public – it’s ruined plans, nothing will happen in these days. But the danger still exists.”

    In the same piece Ukraine’s information minister Oleksandr Tkachenko was asked if he believed Russia would already have invaded if not for all the western talk of an imminent attack, to which he replied, “As a typical robber, if he does not see defence or at least does not see talking, he will act.”

    At no time in the article is any consideration given to the possibility of a far simpler explanation for the missing Russian invasion: that Russia never intended to invade. That possibility is just skimmed right over in favor of the seemingly far less likely scenario that the Russian government thought it could orchestrate a massive invasion without anybody saying anything about it and was forced to abandon its plans in disappointment when that nonsensical gamble failed to pay off.

    And now we’ve already got western media publishing other Ukrainian military claims that the real invasion will be coming on February 20th.

    “February 20 is noted as a potential start date for the invasion: that is when the Winter Olympics ends in Beijing, and President Putin, 69, eager to woo the Chinese, may not wish to tarnish the event,” The Times wrote in late January.

    As February 20th comes and goes without an invasion and predictions of false flag operations and Kremlin-backed coups fail to pan out, we will likely be seeing more such spin jobs from the western media claiming that those things did not happen because of measures that were taken by the US and its allies to prevent it. It may be used to score political points by claiming Biden “prevented” a Ukraine invasion with his willingness to stand up to Putin by pouring weapons into Ukraine and sending troops to Eastern Europe.

    These claims will be built entirely on specious reasoning.

    The fallacious nature of the narrative that western powers are thwarting diabolical plots from the Kremlin with their cold war aggressions is best illustrated in this short clip from The Simpsons in which Homer believes that bears are being kept out of a generally bear-free neighborhood by the newly invented “bear patrol”.

    “Ah, not a bear in sight! The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm,” says Homer.

    “That’s specious reasoning, Dad,” Lisa replies, picking up a stone from the ground. “By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.”

    “Oh, how does it work?” asks her father.

    “It doesn’t work,” says Lisa. “It’s just a stupid rock. But I don’t see any tigers around, do you?”

    At which point Homer offers to buy Lisa’s rock from her, because he’s a fuckin’ idiot.

    The logical fallacy that has afflicted both Homer Simpson and those who claim the US power alliance is preventing a Russian invasion of Ukraine is known as cum hoc ergo propter hoc (“with this, therefore because of this”), which is the fallacy that correlation implies causation. It’s when someone puts forward the claim that because two things happened concurrently (or failed to happen as in the examples we’re looking at here), one must have caused the other. Homer’s bear patrol kept the bears away. Lisa’s anti-tiger rock kept the tigers away. The west’s shrieking about an imminent Russian invasion kept the Russian invaders away.

    Alternatively, it’s possible that there were no bears or tigers threatening the streets of Springfield, and that there was no Russian invasion threatening Ukraine. That this was all a narrative used to ramp up cold war escalations, move some expensive military inventory, manufacture the global consensus that Putin is a Hitler-like menace who must be aggressively checked at all times by all nations, or potentially heaven forbid to lay the groundwork for aggressions from US/Ukraine/NATO powers.

    However this thing unfolds, it’s a safe bet that the rhetoric won’t be getting any more logically sound any time soon. So keep that Simpson’s clip handy.

    ______________________

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Popular Resistance Newsletter: Stop the War with Russia Weekend Actions!

    Once again, the people of the United States are being lied into a war – this time with Russia over Ukraine. The corporate media echo chamber’s warning of an “imminent Russian invasion” is the equivalence of the “Iraq has WMD’s” lie used to justify a US invasion there in 2003.

    We are in an urgent situation. To stop a war with Russia, antiwar groups from across the country are working together in a powerful way to organize actions, webinars and a national online rally this weekend.

    Read the Call to Action: Stop War with Russia over Ukraine, which was convened by 12 national and international organizations, and now has been endorsed by nearly 200 groups. So far there are actions in more than 40 cities in 26 states and the list is growing. See the list of actions at the end of this email.

    Over 700 people have signed the petition telling President Biden and United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres to resolve the conflict within the framework of international law through the UN Security Council. CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION.

    Joe Lauria of Consortium News reported on the UN Security Council meeting early this week. The United States repeated its lies at the meeting. In response, the Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia replied, “Our Western colleagues say that de-escalation is needed, but they are the first to build up tension, enhance rhetoric and escalate the situation. Talks about an imminent war are provocative per se. It might seem you call for it, want it and wait for it to come, as if you wanted your allegations to come true.”

    Indeed, it is clear the United States is provoking war. As people who live in the US, we have a responsibility to show the government and the world that we do NOT support this.

    The national online rally is one way you can do that no matter where you are. It will be held on Saturday, February 5 at 12:00 noon Eastern/9:00 am Pacific. Speakers from the initial signatories of the call to action include: David Swanson of World Beyond War, Col. Ann Wright of CODEPINK, Rafiki Morris of Black Alliance for Peace, Joe Lombardo of the United National Antiwar Coalition, Leela Anand of the ANSWER Coalition, Sara Flounders of the International Action Committee, Cherrill Spencer of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Susan Schnall and Gerry Condon of Veterans for Peace, Bruce Gagnon and Lisa Savage of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Alice Loazia of Task Force on the Americas, and Henry Lowendorf of the US Peace Council. Ben Grosscup of the People’s Music Network will perform and Margaret Flowers will moderate. Register for the online rally at Bit.ly/StopWarWithRussia.

    On Sunday, February 6 at 12:00 noon Eastern, the United National Antiwar Coalition will host a webinar featuring activists from the United States, Russia and Ukraine. Speakers include Ajamu Baraka, National Organizer, Black Alliance for Peace, Larissa Shessler, Chair, Union of Political Emigrants & Political prisoners of Ukraine, Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Joe Lombardo, Coordinator, United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), Vladimir Kozin, Correspondent member, Russian Academy of Military Science and Leonid Ilderkin, Coordinating Council of the Union of Political Emigrants & Political Prisoners of  Ukraine. Register for that event here.

    In this time of crisis of US Empire, the power structure will do whatever it can get away with to try to hold onto its position as a dominant force in the world. This includes spending unprecedented amounts of money on the US military while domestic needs for basics such as healthcare, housing, education, public infrastructure and economic security are unmet. It incudes flagrant violation of international laws. As Ajamu Baraka explains in this week’s Clearing the FOG, the United States is a rogue nation wreaking havoc globally.

    It is up to us to reverse the current course. That will take a popular movement opposed to war and imperialism and demanding a political and economic system that serves people and planet over profit. We are building that movement together. Show up this weekend and be a part of turning the tide to a better world.

    List of actions:

    Alaska

    Kodiak – Saturday from 10:00 to 11:00 am. Post Office Kodiak, AK. Hosted by CODEPINK.

    Arizona

    Phoenix – Saturday from 12:00 to 1:00 pm. Rep.  Rueben Gallego’s Office: 1601 N 7th St, #310, Phoenix, AZ 85006. Sponsored by Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) & Phoenix Anti War Coalition.

    Tucson – Saturday from 12:00 to 1:00 pm. Davis Monthan Air Force Base entrance Golf Links and Craycroft intersection
    Tucson, AZ.

    California

    Bay Area – Saturday at 12 noon, Rally, Grand Lake Theater, Oakland – Fund Education, Healthcare/COVID Relief not War.

    Berkeley – Saturday from 2:00 to 3:00 pm. Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, MLK Jr. Way & Center St., Berkeley, CA.

    Los Angeles – Saturday from 3:00 to 4:30 pm. Wilshire Federal Building, 11000 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90024.

    Santa Cruz –  Saturday from 12:00 to 2:00 pm. The Town Clock, Santa Cruz, CA.

    Florida

    Wildwood – Saturday from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon. No War! World Beyond War and Veterans For Peace-Central Florida Chapters. Gold Dome Building, 7375 Powell Rd, Wildwood, FL 34785. Host Contact Info: moc.liamgnull@0591yttyma

    Georgia

    Atlanta – Saturday at 12:3o PM at Freedom Parkway and Moreland.

    Illinois

    Carbondale – Saturday from 12:00 to 2:00 pm. Town Square Pavilion corner of Main and Illinois Ave, Carbondale, IL 62901. Hosted by CODEPINK.

    Chicago – Saturday from 1:00 to 2:00 pm. In front of the Art Institute: 111 S. Michigan Avenue.

    Louisiana

    New Orleans – Saturday at 2 pm. Speak out and leaflet distribution. Broad and Canal St.  Workers Voice Socialist Movement. See Facebook event page.

    Maine

    Portland, ME – Saturday, Feb 5 at 3:00 pm. In response to a national call for protests on February 5 against a possible US-UK-NATO war with Russia we will be holding a vigil in the Midcoast. All are invited – please bring appropriate signs that are large enough to be read by cars at a busy intersection. Our spot will be the four corners of the big intersection in Topsham that connects Main St from Brunswick and Hwy 196 near the Topsham mall. Lee Toyota is on the corner. This protest is being supported by Maine Natural Guard, Peace Action Maine, PeaceWorks, WILPF Maine and Maine Veterans for Peace.

    Maryland

    Baltimore – Saturday at 12 noon at North Ave. and Charles St. with an optional car caravan. Sponsored by Peoples Power Assembly, Baltimore Peace Action , Ujima Peoples Power Party, Veterans for Peace.

    Massachusetts

    Boston, MA – Saturday at 1:00 pm, Park Street Station, downtown Boston.

    Michigan

    Ann Arbor – Saturday from 12:00 to 1:00 pm. Corner of Fourth Ave. and Catherine St. Ann Arbor, MI.

    Minnesota

    Minneapolis – NO War with Russia!  Funds for human needs, not another war! Anti-war protest: Saturday at 11:00 am Mayday Plaza, 301 Cedar Ave South West Bank, Minneapolis. Join a visible anti-war presence to say NO to another war. Neighborhood march will include a stop at the office of U.S. Senator Amy Kobuchar. For more info see: http://antiwarcommittee.org/event/no-war-with-russia-funds-for-human-needs-not-another-war/

    Montana

    Missoula – Saturday from 12:00 to 1:00 pm. South end of the Higgins Street Bridge, Missoula, MT.

    New York

    New York City – Saturday at 3:00 pm. Gather at Father Duffy Square / intersection of 7th Ave and Broadway, W. 47th St to oppose war in Ukraine. 

    Setauket – Saturday from 11:00 am to 12:30 pm. Corner of Rt. 25A & Bennetts Road Setauket, NY. Hosted by CODEPINK.

    Woodstock, NY – Saturday at 11:00 am at the Woodstock Town Green in opposition to war in Ukraine to make our voices, banners and signs heard and seen.

    North Carolina

    Asheville – Saturday from 4:00 to 5:30 pm. Pack Square, Biltmore Ave, Asheville, NC.

    Raleigh, NC – Saturday at 12 noon Federal Bldg 310 New Bern Ave, Raleigh, NC.

    Oregon

    Portland – Saturday from 12:00 to 1:00. 911 NE 11th Ave (In front of Senator Wyden’s office) Portland, OR.

    Portland – Saturday starting at 11:30 am and will join the action listed above after an hour. At the Hawthorn Fred Meyers, corner of Hawthorn and Ceasar Chavez blvd, Portland Oregon.

    Pennsylvania

    Philadelphia – Saturday from 4 to 6 pm. Entrance to Ben Franklin Bridge Philadelphia Side. By Peace, Justice, Sustainability NOW.

    Rhode Island

    Providence – Saturday from 1:00 to 2:00 pm. Rhode Island State House– Mall Side Gaspee St & Francis St, Providence, RI 02903.

    Tennessee

    Nashville – Saturday from 2:00 to 4:00 pm. Federal Building Broadway & 8th Ave S, Nashville, TN 37203.

    Texas

    Dallas  – Saturday from 3:00 to 4:00 pm. Grassy Knoll, 411 Elm St Dallas, TX 75202.

    San Antonio – Saturday at 4:30pm at  New Braunfels Gate of Fort Sam Houston  to say No to NATO and US aggression towards Russia! Endorsed by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, ANSWER Coalition, About Face Veterans Against the War South Texas, National Nurses United, Workers World Party, FIRE (Fight for Migrants Everywhere), and Veterans for Peace (San Antonio).

    Vermont

    Manchester Center – Saturday from 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm Eastern. large roundabout near Langway. Manchester Center, VT 05255. Hosted by CODEPINK.

    Washington, DC

    WDC – Saturday at 2:00 pm in Lafayette Square. Abolish NATO. No war with Russia.

    Washington State

    Bothell – Saturday from 1:00 to 2:00 pm. Intersection of Routes 527 & 522, Bothell, WA.

    Seattle – Saturday from 1:00 to 2:00 pm. MLK & Rainier Ave. S, Seattle, WA 98144.

    Wisconsin

    Milwaukee, WI – No War with Russia over the Ukraine Rally. Saturday, Noon-1 PM. Capitol and Teutonia, Milwaukee, WI.

    The post Popular Resistance Newsletter: Stop the War with Russia Weekend Actions! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • What’s behind US-NATO warmongering against Russia?

    The current United States-Russia crisis has its roots in Washington’s betrayal of its well-documented promise to Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in the early 1990s to not move NATO eastward, write Malik Miah and Barry Sheppard.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Argentina To Russia: We Want To End Dependency On US

    The President of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, today visited the Kremlin and told President Vladimir Putin that his country wants to end “dependency” on the US and strengthen economic ties with Russia instead.

    Fernández told Putin “Argentina, in particular, is experiencing a very special situation as a result of its indebtedness and the economic situation that I had to inherit. From the 1990s onwards, Argentina has always looked towards the United States. Now, the Argentinian economy depends a lot on the debt it has with the United States, with the IMF, and the role that the US has within the IMF.”

    The post Argentina To Russia: We Want To End Dependency On US appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • “I Remember WMDs in Iraq”: Reporter Grills US Official on Russian Intel Claims

    U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price speaks during a briefing at the State Department in Washington, D.C., on January 31, 2022.

    Veteran Associated Press reporter Matt Lee grilled a State Department spokesperson Thursday over the U.S. government’s refusal to provide direct evidence for its claim that Russia is planning to fabricate a mass casualty event as a pretext to invade Ukraine, an allegation that the Pentagon said is backed up by intelligence.

    During a press briefing, Lee asked the State Department’s Ned Price — a former CIA official — to furnish concrete proof of the government’s accusation, which suggests Russia is plotting an elaborate false flag attack involving a graphic “propaganda video… depicting corpses, crisis actors pretending to be mourners, and images of destroyed locations or military equipment.”

    Lee said he has every reason to be skeptical of U.S. government assertions, given the lies that the Bush administration used to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

    “I remember WMDs in Iraq,” said Lee.

    Watch the exchange:

    After Price outlined the U.S. government’s allegations, Lee noted that the Biden administration has “shown no evidence to confirm” the alleged plot. As the New York Times reported earlier Thursday, “Officials would not release any direct evidence of the Russian plan or specify how they learned of it, saying to do so would compromise their sources and methods.”

    But Price insisted during Thursday’s briefing that the Biden administration’s decision to go public with the false flag accusation constitutes, in and of itself, evidence that Russia is planning such an operation.

    “This is derived from information known to the U.S. government, intelligence information that we have declassified,” Price said.

    “Okay, well, where is it?” Lee asked in response. “Where is this information?”

    “I just delivered it,” the State Department spokesperson said.

    When Lee continued to press the matter, noting that “a series of allegations and statements” is not evidence, Price accused the longtime journalist of wanting “to find solace in information that the Russians are putting out.”

    The exchange circulated rapidly and widely on social media, with observers applauding Lee for his persistent and straightforward questioning and arguing that Price’s responses were indicative of the U.S. government’s intolerance of skeptical inquiry.

    “This is wild,” NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, tweeted in response to the back-and-forth. “The State Department’s spokesman can’t comprehend why the Associated Press feels the need to distinguish between a claim and a fact, and becomes visibly offended — and then angered — by the suggestion that his claims may require evidence to be accepted as credible.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Chomsky: US Approach to Ukraine Has “Left the Domain of Rational Discourse”

    U.S. troops deploy for Europe from Pope Army Airfield at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on February 3, 2022. The U.S. plans to deploy 3,000 troops to fortify NATO forces in Eastern Europe amid fears Russia could invade Ukraine, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

    The Russia-Ukraine crisis continues unabated as the United States ignores all of Russian President Vladmir Putin’s security demands and spreads a frenzy of fear by claiming that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent.

    In a new exclusive interview for Truthout on the ongoing Russia-Ukraine crisis, world-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky outlines the deadly dangers of U.S. intransigence over Ukrainian membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) even when key Western allies have already vetoed earlier U.S. efforts in that direction. He also seeks to shed some light on the reasons why Republicans today seem to be divided on Russia.

    Chomsky — whose intellectual contributions have been compared to those of Galileo, Newton and Descartes — 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 recipient of scores of highly prestigious awards including the Sydney Peace Prize and the Kyoto Prize (Japan’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize), as well as dozens of honorary doctorate degrees from the world’s most renowned universities. Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and currently Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona.

    The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

    C.J. Polychroniou: Tensions continue to escalate between Russia and Ukraine, and there is little room for optimism since the U.S. offer for de-escalation fails to meet any of Russia’s security demands. As such, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that the Russia-Ukraine border crisis stems in reality from the U.S.’s intransigent position over Ukrainian membership in NATO? In the same context, is it hard to imagine what might have been Washington’s response to the hypothetical event that Mexico wanted to join a Moscow-driven military alliance?

    Noam Chomsky: We hardly need to linger on the latter question. No country would dare to make such a move in what former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Secretary of War Henry Stimson called “Our little region over here,” when he was condemning all spheres of influence (except for our own — which in reality, is hardly limited to the Western hemisphere). Secretary of State Antony Blinken is no less adamant today in condemning Russia’s claim to a “sphere of influence,” a concept we firmly reject (with the same reservation).

    There was of course one famous case when a country in our little region came close to a military alliance with Russia, the 1962 missile crisis. The circumstances, however, were quite unlike Ukraine. President John F. Kennedy was escalating his terrorist war against Cuba to a threat of invasion; Ukraine, in sharp contrast, faces threats as a result of its potentially joining a hostile military alliance. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s reckless decision to provide Cuba with missiles was also an effort to slightly rectify the enormous U.S. preponderance of military force after JFK had responded to Khrushchev’s offer of mutual reduction of offensive weapons with the largest military buildup in peacetime history, though the U.S. was already far ahead. We know what that led to.

    The tensions over Ukraine are extremely severe, with Russia’s concentration of military forces at Ukraine’s borders. The Russian position has been quite explicit for some time. It was stated clearly by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at his press conference at the United Nations: “The main issue is our clear position on the inadmissibility of further expansion of NATO to the East and the deployment of strike weapons that could threaten the territory of the Russian Federation.” Much the same was reiterated shortly after by Putin, as he had often said before.

    There is a simple way to deal with deployment of weapons: Don’t deploy them. There is no justification for doing so. The U.S. may claim that they are defensive, but Russia surely doesn’t see it that way, and with reason.

    The question of further expansion is more complex. The issue goes back over 30 years, to when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was collapsing. There were extensive negotiations among Russia, the U.S. and Germany. (The core issue was German unification.) Two visions were presented. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proposed a Eurasian security system from Lisbon to Vladivostok with no military blocs. The U.S. rejected it: NATO stays, Russia’s Warsaw Pact disappears.

    For obvious reasons, German reunification within a hostile military alliance is no small matter for Russia. Nevertheless, Gorbachev agreed to it, with a quid pro quo: No expansion to the East. President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker agreed. In their words to Gorbachev: “Not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well, it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.”

    “East” meant East Germany. No one had a thought about anything beyond, at least in public. That’s agreed on all sides. German leaders were even more explicit about it. They were overjoyed just to have Russian agreement to unification, and the last thing they wanted was new problems.

    There is extensive scholarship on the matter — Mary Sarotte, Joshua Shifrinson, and others, debating exactly who said what, what they meant, what’s its status, and so on. It is interesting and illuminating work, but what it comes down to, when the dust settles, is what I quoted from the declassified record.

    President H.W. Bush pretty much lived up to these commitments. So did President Bill Clinton at first, until 1999, the 50th anniversary of NATO; with an eye on the Polish vote in the upcoming election, some have speculated. He admitted Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to NATO. President George W. Bush — the lovable goofy grandpa who was celebrated in the press on the 20th anniversary of his invasion of Afghanistan — let down all the bars. He brought in the Baltic states and others. In 2008, he invited Ukraine to join NATO, poking the bear in the eye. Ukraine is Russia’s geostrategic heartland, apart from intimate historic relations and a large Russia-oriented population. Germany and France vetoed Bush’s reckless invitation, but it’s still on the table. No Russian leader would accept that, surely not Gorbachev, as he made clear.

    As in the case of deployment of offensive weapons on the Russian border, there is a straightforward answer. Ukraine can have the same status as Austria and two Nordic countries throughout the whole Cold War: neutral, but tightly linked to the West and quite secure, part of the European Union to the extent they chose to be.

    The U.S. adamantly rejects this outcome, loftily proclaiming its passionate dedication to the sovereignty of nations, which cannot be infringed: Ukraine’s right to join NATO must be honored. This principled stand may be lauded in the U.S., but it surely is eliciting loud guffaws in much of the world, including the Kremlin. The world is hardly unaware of our inspiring dedication to sovereignty, notably in the three cases that particularly enraged Russia: Iraq, Libya and Kosovo-Serbia.

    Iraq need not be discussed: U.S. aggression enraged almost everyone. The NATO assaults on Libya and Serbia, both a slap in Russia’s face during its sharp decline in the ‘90s, is clothed in righteous humanitarian terms in U.S. propaganda. It all quickly dissolves under scrutiny, as amply documented elsewhere. And the richer record of U.S. reverence for the sovereignty of nations needs no review.

    It is sometimes claimed that NATO membership increases security for Poland and others. A much stronger case can be made that NATO membership threatens their security by heightening tensions. Historian Richard Sakwa, a specialist on East Europe, observed that “NATO’s existence became justified by the need to manage threats provoked by its enlargement” — a plausible judgment.

    There is much more to say about Ukraine and how to deal with the very dangerous and mounting crisis there, but perhaps this is enough to suggest that there is no need to inflame the situation and to move on to what might well turn out to be a catastrophic war.

    There is, in fact, a surreal quality to the U.S. rejection of Austrian-style neutrality for Ukraine. U.S. policy makers know perfectly well that admission of Ukraine to NATO is not an option for the foreseeable future. We can, of course, put aside the ridiculous posturing about the sanctity of sovereignty. So, for the sake of a principle in which they do not believe for a moment, and in pursuit of an objective that they know is out of reach, the U.S. is risking what may turn into a shocking catastrophe. On the surface, it seems incomprehensible, but there are plausible imperial calculations.

    We might ask why Putin has taken such a belligerent stance on the ground. There is a cottage industry seeking to solve this mystery: Is he a madman? Is he planning to force Europe to become a Russian satellite? What is he up to?

    One way to find out is to listen to what he says: For years, Putin has tried to induce the U.S. to pay some attention to the requests that he and Foreign Minister Lavrov repeated, in vain. One possibility is that the show of force is a way to achieve this objective. That has been suggested by well-informed analysts. If so, it seems to have succeeded, at least in a limited way.

    Germany and France have already vetoed earlier U.S. efforts to offer membership to Ukraine. So why is the U.S. so keen on NATO expansion eastward to the point of treating a Russian invasion of Ukraine as imminent, even when Ukrainian leaders themselves don’t seem to think so? And since when did Ukraine come to represent a beacon of democracy?

    It is indeed curious to watch what is unfolding. The U.S. is vigorously fanning the flames while Ukraine is asking it to tone down the rhetoric. While there is much turmoil about why the demon Putin is acting as he is, U.S. motives are rarely subject to scrutiny. The reason is familiar: By definition, U.S. motives are noble, even if its efforts to implement them are perhaps misguided.

    Nevertheless, the question might merit some thought, at least by “the wild men in the wings,” to borrow former National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy’s phrase, referring to those incorrigible figures who dare to subject Washington to the standards applied elsewhere.

    A possible answer is suggested by a famous slogan about the purpose of NATO: to keep Russia out, to keep Germany down and to keep the U.S. in. Russia is out, far out. Germany is down. What remains is the question whether the U.S. will be in Europe — more accurately, should be in charge. Not all have quietly accepted this principle of world affairs, among them: Charles de Gaulle, who advanced his concept of Europe from the Atlantic to the Ural’s; former German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik; and French President Emmanuel Macron, with his current diplomatic initiatives that are causing much displeasure in Washington.

    If the Ukraine crisis is resolved peacefully, it will be a European affair, breaking from the post-World War II “Atlanticist” conception that places the U.S. firmly in the driver’s seat. It might even be a precedent for further moves toward European independence, maybe even moving toward Gorbachev’s vision. With China’s Belt-and-Road initiative encroaching from the East, much larger issues of global order arise.

    As virtually always in the past when it comes to foreign affairs, we see a bipartisan frenzy over Ukraine. However, while Republicans in Congress are urging President Joe Biden to adopt a more aggressive stance toward Russia, the proto-fascist base is questioning the party line. Why, and what does the split among Republicans over Ukraine tell us about what is happening to the Republicans?

    One cannot easily speak of today’s Republican Party as if it were a genuine political party participating in a functioning democracy. More apt is the description of the organization as “a radical insurgency — ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” This characterization by political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise is from a decade ago, pre-Donald Trump. By now it’s far out of date. In the acronym “GOP,” what remains is “O.”

    I don’t know whether the popular base that Trump has whipped up into a worshipful cult is questioning the aggressive stance of Republican leaders, or if they even care. Evidence is skimpy. Leading right-wing figures closely associated with the GOP are moving well to the right of European opinion, and of the stance of those who hope to retain some semblance of democracy in the U.S. They are going even beyond Trump in their enthusiastic support for Hungarian President Viktor Orban’s “illiberal democracy,” extolling it for saving Western civilization, no less.

    This effusive welcome for Orban’s dismantling of democracy might bring to mind the praise for Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini for having “saved European civilization [so that] the merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history”; the thoughts of the revered founder of the neoliberal movement that has reigned for the past 40 years, Ludwig von Mises, in his 1927 classic Liberalism.

    Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson has been the most outspoken of the enthusiasts. Many Republican senators either go along with him or claim ignorance of what Orban is doing, a remarkable confession of illiteracy at the peak of global power. The highly regarded senior Sen. Charles Grassley reports that he knows about Hungary only from Carlson’s TV expositions, and approves. Such performances tell us a good deal about the radical insurgency. On Ukraine, breaking with the GOP leadership, Carlson asks why we should take any position on a quarrel between “foreign countries that don’t care anything about the United States.”

    Whatever one’s views on international affairs, it’s clear that we’ve left the domain of rational discourse far behind, and are moving into territory with an unattractive history, to put it mildly.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘We want the truth’: families of ethnic Pamiris killed in Tajikistan call for justice as tensions rise

    Urgent protection for minority groups facing increased repression needed in crisis connected to escalating clashes across central Asian ex-Soviet region, say human rights groups

    Parents of men killed by Tajikistan forces have called on the international community to step in and urgently protect ethnic groups being targeted by the Tajik regime.

    In a rare interview, families from the Pamiri ethnic minority have demanded that soldiers who killed their sons be brought to justice and urged the UN to prevent a new phase of conflict in Tajikistan, a landlocked country in central Asia.

    Continue reading…

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

  • US Again Tries To Pass Off Government Assertions As Evidence

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    The western media are blaring headlines today about a “revelation” by the US government which does not actually reveal anything because it contains nothing but empty narrative fluff.

    “U.S. reveals Russian plot to use fake video as pretense for Ukraine invasion,” reads a headline from CBS News.

    “US reveals Russia may plan to create fake pretext for Ukraine invasion,” claims another from The Hill.

    The claim is that the Russian government is plotting to fabricate a false flag operation using a graphic video with crisis actors in order to manufacture a pretense for a full-scale military invasion. State Department Spokesman Ned Price and AP reporter Matt Lee had an exchange about this claim at a Thursday press conference that you simply must watch if you haven’t already.

    Lee pointed out that claims about false flags and crisis actors were “getting into Alex Jones territory” and asked for the evidence for these extraordinary claims, which one would think is reasonable since extraordinary claims are generally considered to require extraordinary evidence. Price said that the evidence is “intelligence information that we have declassified,” and when Lee asked where the declassified information was Price looked at him like he just asked the stupidest question in the world and said “I just delivered it.”

    The exchange goes on to reveal that Price really did mean that the completely unverified government assertion he’d just regurgitated is the evidence for the claim being made, meaning the evidence of the government assertion is that assertion itself.

    Refusing to relent, Lee kept hammering the point that a completely unsubstantiated assertion is not the same as evidence especially given all the government assertions that have proved not to be true over the years.

    “Matt, you said yourself you’ve been in this business for quite a long time,” Price replied. “You know that when we make information, intelligence information public, we do so in a way that protects sensitive sources and methods.”

    Ahh, so the evidence is secret. It’s top secret evidence, to protect “sensitive sources and methods”. It sure is convenient how all the evidence of immensely consequential claims made by a government with an extensive history of lying is always far too sensitive for the public to be permitted to scrutinize.

    This is the kind of evidence you can’t see. The evidence is invisible.

    “You also know that we do so, we declassify information only when we’re confident in that information,” Price continued. “If you doubt the credibility of the U.S. government, of the British government of other governments and wanna, you know, find solace in information that the Russians are putting out, that’s for you do to.”

    So if you doubt the credibility of governments with a very well-documented history of lying about exactly this sort of thing, you’re at best a useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and at worst a Kremlin operative yourself.

    Yep, sounds legit. That’s definitely the sort of thing government officials say when they feel like they’re being truthful.

    NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted about the exchange, “This is wild. The State Department’s spokesman can’t comprehend why the Associated Press feels the need to distinguish between a claim and a fact, and becomes visibly offended—and then angered—by the suggestion that his claims may require evidence to be accepted as credible.”

    Wild indeed. Assertions are not evidence. A government declassifying itself making an unsubstantiated assertion is not “declassifying” anything. This is not the sort of behavior anyone would accept from anyone else, except perhaps a televangelist or a cult leader, but it’s already being treated as truth by US and British politicians.

    If I got on here for example and began drumming up publicity with claims that I have evidence that extraterrestrials are visiting this planet, and then after racking up millions of views and lots of publicity my evidence turned out to be a video clip of me saying “Extraterrestrials have been visiting this planet,” I would be called a liar, a scammer, and a clickbait grifter, and rightly so. I could then claim that I can’t provide any further evidence beyond my own assertion without compromising my sensitive sources and methods, but I’d still quite rightly be called a liar, a scammer, and a clickbait grifter.

    But if I’m the most powerful institution in the world and have an extensive history of lying about exactly the sort of claim I just made, that’s considered fine and normal within the mainstream western orthodoxy.

    Wild. Just wild.

    _______________________________

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Russia Accuses US And NATO Of Provoking War In Ukraine

    On Monday, January 31, at a UN Security Council (UNSC) meeting called to discuss the situation in Ukraine, the Russian envoy to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, accused the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of whipping up war hysteria in eastern Europe.

    Nebenzya was responding to the US permanent representative at the UN, Linda Thomas Greenfield, who reiterated her country’s claims of an imminent threat of Russian invasion of Ukraine. She called on the UN to take urgent steps to prevent the war, saying that failure to do so will lead to “horrible consequences.” She claimed that deployment at the Russian border is the “largest in decades” and that “diplomacy will not succeed in an atmosphere of threat and military escalation.”

    The post Russia Accuses US And NATO Of Provoking War In Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.