As Ukraine continues to fight against Russian forces, experts warned of potential fallout for the U.S. agriculture industry. The same day as Putin’s announcement, Ukraine’s military halted all commercial activities at its ports in the Black Sea. Also that day, a missile struck a ship chartered by Cargill, according to Reuters. Multinational agricultural corporations stopped operations in Ukraine as farmers expect the Russian invasion of the country — and the subsequent economic sanctions — to drive up already high prices for fertilizer, a key input for U.S. growers, according to interviews and company statements.
At the end of 2021, the global refugee population reached an unprecedented 26.6 million, with 68 percent of refugees coming from five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has forced more than 4.3 million people in Ukraine to flee the country within just several weeks, making the exodus the largest movement of people in Europe since World War II.
Many large nongovernmental organizations are focusing on supporting the millions of refugees who are entering Poland. While the Polish government has been hospitable toward many white Ukrainians, it is holding some refugees of color who are fleeing Ukraine in detention camps. Meanwhile, governments and organizations in Romania and Moldova, both smaller and relatively lower-income countries compared to Poland, are scrambling to accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees with little outside support.
“It feels like the eye of the storm right now,” said Walker Frahm, chief operations officer of Lifting Hands International, an aid organization helping refugees achieve stability and self-sufficiency. Frahm, who had spent a week and a half in Moldova and Romania in mid-March, told Truthout that about a quarter of the 400,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine who had entered Moldova remain in the country of just 2.6 million. Since the country is unable to provide shelter space to all but a fraction of refugees, Moldovan families have generously volunteered their private homes to accommodate the vast majority of them. Frahm said he had heard reports of discrimination toward refugees from Ukraine who are of Indian, Roma and African descent in the countries, although he said he didn’t witness discrimination firsthand.
Frahm said most people fleeing Ukraine did not understand why the Russian government was bombing them, and saw their stay as short-term. “They don’t consider themselves refugees,” he said. “They say, ‘Yes, I’ve been forced from my home because of war, but we’re going to go back as soon as it settles down.’”
But as Putin’s invasion drags on, grassroots networks are making plans to support people for the long haul.
There is generally an outpouring of international support when crises emerge, with piles of aid accumulating at border crossings. On-the-ground organizations can quickly become overwhelmed unless they have proper places to store items. To solve this problem, an informal, loosely connected grassroots aid network of about a dozen groups is working on establishing supply chains and long-term warehouse aid hubs in Moldova, Romania and Slovakia, and hope to set up hubs at halfway points in places like the Netherlands and Germany.
“We could just hop around from crisis to crisis, chasing the news cycle, but from a human perspective, from an impact perspective, we want to make sure that we don’t disappear as soon as the news goes away,” Frahms explained. “We want to be able to continue meeting needs as long as they’re there.”
Before collecting aid, Lifting Hands International conducted an on-the-ground needs assessment to ensure refugees are receiving items that they actually want and need. Then, they advertised the needs through social media and an app called JustServe. People can purchase requested items and send them directly to Lifting Hands International’s warehouse in Utah or drop them off to about 60 drop-off points throughout the state — a network that Lifting Hands International had established while supporting Afghan, Syrian, and other refugees for years. Lifting Hands International volunteers pick up aid from the drop-off points, which are mostly volunteers’ homes, and bring it to the warehouse.
Once upon a time, we thought it might be hard to fill our humanitarian aid warehouse in Utah. Now we're afraid it isn't big enough!
THANK YOU to our Utah program staff, volunteers, drop-off locations representatives, donors, and partner orgs for keeping this warehouse full! pic.twitter.com/62ZwMmLUC7
Another group called Distribute Aid — a Swedish nonprofit that has specialized in providing logistical support for humanitarian relief in the U.K., France, Lebanon, Greece, the U.S., and elsewhere — coordinates shipments for grassroots organizations, including Lifting Hands International. “We have the time and the resources to actually look at what the import and export requirements are, to make sure that people are ready to get the cheapest shipping possible for them,” Nicole Tingle, Distribute Aid’s regional director for Europe, told Truthout. “And then they can focus on running their collections, doing fundraisers, making sure that they’re building out their programs and projects to the best of their abilities.”
Lifting Hands International and Distribute Aid will be sending their first joint aid shipment container with hygiene supplies and other nonfood items from Utah to an aid hub that had been a decommissioned event center in Iași, Romania. “Our aid that is going there will support some longer-term shelters where the initial support from community members is starting to peter out and they’re anticipating there will be many unmet needs as the war drags on,” Frahm said. They’ll be sending a container to Moldova soon, where the situation is increasingly desperate.
To minimize emissions, maximize efficiency and cut shipping delivery times, Distribute Aid is also developing a supply chain visibility tool that will take stock of what items grassroots groups have and need. “With our needs assessment surveys, we ask each group what they have too much of,” said Taylor Fairbank, Distribute Aid’s operations director, “and instead of every group having to contact every other group to figure it out, they just have to fill out our one survey, and then we can do the matching on the back end and suggest trades to them.”
But they are also connecting disparate groups with each other directly. “We’ve put a lot of groups that are in countries bordering Ukraine in contact with each other in WhatsApp group chats,” said Tingle.
Black Women for Black Lives is providing direct financial support to Black people fleeing Ukraine in the face of so-called “Ukrainians First” policies, whereby members of the African diaspora who were living in Ukraine when the war started are now being held hostage in the war-torn country while white Ukrainians are allowed to flee. “In just 5 short weeks, we’ve been able to help evacuate people out of Ukraine, help them pay for food when their city was under siege and even help them afford accommodation, transportation and medical aid,” the organization wrote on its fundraiser page. After raising more than £326,000 across several platforms and helping more than 2,000 people, BW4BL stopped raising funds on April 5.
Outright International, a global LGBTQ+ human rights organization headquartered in New York City, is accepting donations for local, vetted organizations that are helping LGBTQ+ people who are fleeing Ukraine to find safe shelter.
And while the refugee solidarity movement has been delighted to see a flood of solidarity for refugees fleeing Ukraine, they note that millions of Black and Brown refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, South Sudan, and elsewhere are still being detained in horrendous conditions across the world. A harrowing new investigative report by ProPublica, for example, revealed that U.S. shelters holding Afghan child refugees have been ill-equipped to provide them with culturally appropriate care. Some children are attempting to commit suicide, starting fights and running away, according to the report.
“These conditions are a choice that has been made again and again by political actors for their own gain — whether that be in attempting to unite voters against a common ‘enemy’ or using displaced people as bargaining chips in political disputes,” Tingle said.
In an op-ed for Al Jazeera, South Sudanese refugee, activist and writer Nhial Deng, wrote that he was pleased to see the world unite to support Ukrainians, but questioned where these world leaders, corporations and universities were when armed invaders attacked and burned his village 11 years ago. “Where were the people of goodwill offering for me to stay with them instead of being stuck in a refugee camp for a decade?” he wrote. “People can — when they want — respond to refugees at their countries’ borders with compassion and love, rather than suspicion, fear and indifference.”
Distribute Aid, Lifting Hands International, and others in the refugee solidarity movement hope that newly galvanized activists will make connections between the plights of Ukrainians and others who are forced to flee their homes.
While compassionate disaster relief efforts can make refugees’ lives easier, on their own, they ultimately won’t prevent the next mass forced displacement.
“People are fleeing climate change driven by for-profit companies, or wars driven by interests of imperialist governments,” said Fairbank. “The West is especially complicit in outsourcing the violence that is driving its economic growth on to poor Black and Brown countries and then punishing those who dare flee to safety. So not only do we have to create a welcoming atmosphere to those who make it to our borders, but we have to support grassroots movements in our own countries and around the world that are fighting back against politicians and companies who capitalize off these harmful conditions.”
According to the Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS), however, a number of countries are “reluctant” to do so. It seems that when it comes to countries agreeing vital steps to meaningfully address the environmental costs of war, might continues to trump what’s right.
Environmental damage
As of 11 April, the UN said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had caused 4,335 civilian casualties, with 1,842 people killed. As the Independent reported, the invasion has also significantly damaged and polluted various aspects of the country’s environment. This includes the air, waterways, and wild spaces, posing a threat to people and other animals. At the beginning of March, the Environmental Peacekeeping Association wrote an open letter warning of the “potentially catastrophic environmental impacts” of the aggression, which it said posed:
immediate and long-term threats to human rights, health, welfare, and livelihoods.
According to the International Rescue Committee, Saudi Arabia’s years-long war on Yemen had caused, by March, the death or injury of over 19,000 civilians from airstrikes alone. CEOBS has also highlighted that the conflict has negatively impacted its protected areas. This comes alongside the degradation of agricultural land and its waste management system. Poor waste management has implications for both human health and the environment. Yemen is also on the brink of a conflict-related ecological disaster due to roughly one million barrels of oil being sat on an unserviced tanker on its coast since the war began in 2015.
War destroys infrastructure, destroys biodiversity and piles up toxic and specialized wastes. When I look at pictures of the carnage from warfare I see ecocide. I see a rapid loss of our collective humanity.
Bassey also pointed out that “carbon emissions from the machines of war” and emissions resulting from military actions, such as bombing fossil fuelstorage facilities, aren’t:
accounted for as emissions from the combatant nations.
Serious opposition
Efforts to address the climate and biodiversity crises must be comprehensive. Given the environmental impact of war, it merits inclusion in efforts to tackle them. The ILC’s project – titled Protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts – aims to firm up combatants’ obligations and would go some way towards addressing this impact.
merging principles of international humanitarian law with those from environmental and human rights law
The principles include issues such as the protection of indigenous lands, states considering the environment when deciding what is proportionate and necessary military action, and corporate liability in conflict zones. The principles span conflicts’ lifecycles as a whole. This means before, during and after war, and both international and internal conflicts.
Humanitarian Law and Policy highlighted that, while the principles aren’t likely to culminate in a treaty, the UN General Assembly is expected to adopt them in the autumn. Widespread support of the standards among UN member states is seen as key to securing their successful implementation.
According to CEOBS, however, there’s “considerable reluctance” from some countries to strengthen and codify the rules. In March, it analysed written responses to the ILC’s work from 24 governments in a feedback round in 2021. The observatory found that “many of the principles face serious opposition from states”. Those focused on rules during conflict, rather than before or after, faced “particular criticism”, it said.
CEOBS named Canada, the US, Israel and France specifically as raising “serious objections” to the project. Most of these are countries whose involvement in conflict isn’t typically on their own soil. This means that the immediate environmental impacts of their militarism, such as pollution and degradation of natural spaces, doesn’t afflict them but civilians in the places they target.
However, as the climate crisis has shown, there are worldwide – albeit heavily imbalanced – repercussions of environmentally-damaging actions because we live on a shared planet.
Status quo
Russia wasn’t among the nations that offered feedback on the ILC project in 2021. However, CEOBS has highlighted that its previous statements indicate it’s satisfied with the status quo. It’s not hard to see why it favours the way things currently are. As Open Democracy reported, although the International Criminal Court (ICC) could theoretically prosecute a state over launching an attack that it knew would cause “widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment”, it never has.
CEOBS’ research and policy director, Doug Weir, has described the ILC project as:
the biggest step forward in legal protection for the environment in conflicts since the 1970s.
For the many countries looking to inhibit Russia’s ability to wage destructive wars, it would arguably be a good idea to back it fully. However, as Weir told Open Democracy, some influential countries, including the UK, have routinely challenged principles of international humanitarian law related to the environment:
because they want the freedom to use nuclear weapons.
In essence, the status quo isn’t just Russia’s preference. Other nations also favour keeping things the way they are. They don’t want environmental concerns to interfere with their ability to wage war either.
Out of step
Ring-fencing war in this way is out of step with our times. While civil society is getting behind efforts to widen protections for the natural environment, such as the push to make ecocide a crime prosecutable at the ICC, some nations are effectively trying to preserve the destructive status quo. This will make tackling the climate and biodiversity crises harder in multiple ways, as HOMEF director Bassey highlighted:
War takes away finance that could have been used for climate change mitigation and resilience building efforts. It diminishes and sometimes erases capacity of nations to withstand the ravages of global heating.
Genevieve Guenther, founding director of End Climate Silence, also pointed out that:
Putin’s war in Ukraine is roiling methane-gas markets and upending national energy policies.
Highlighting the media’s role in making the public aware of the climate implications of war, she told The Canary that – aside from detailed stories by climate journalists – there have been:
almost no mentions in the mainstream press of the ways these developments might make global heating better or worse.
As Guenther stressed, this is indicative of a wider issue with the media:
still failing to connect the dots between human activities and the accelerating climate crisis.
She argued that “we need sustained pressure” on news executives, who fear that climate reporting “will alienate their fossil-fuel and automotive advertisers”, to let journalists “keep the climate crisis in the foreground of the stories they’re reporting”. News executives in New York City will feel that pressure on 15 April, with direct action planned at their media offices.
Eclipsing commonsense
The End Climate Silence founder characterised the media’s failure to “connect Putin’s war to the danger of climate change” as “inexcusable”, in light of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recent report. As the Union of Concerned Scientists said, that report concluded that “sharp cuts” in fossil fuels and emissions are an immediate and urgent priority if the world is to have any hope of keeping global warming in line with the Paris Agreement goals.
Brief summary of the new IPCC report: We know what to do, we know how to do it, it requires taking toys away from the rich, and world leaders aren't doing it.
Meaningfully addressing the implications that war has for the environmental emergencies we’re living through is another thing a number of world leaders aren’t doing. Conflict has devastating consequences for people, other animals and the environment. Bassey described it as an “evil distraction” that “eclipses” the increasingly dire warnings of the IPCC and “commonsense”.
Action on the climate and biodiversity crises must include tackling the scourge of war, and putting the brakes on the military-industrial complex that enables it. If world leaders fail to do so, they are prioritising might over what is right, and what is essential to secure a liveable planet.
Featured image via manhhai /Flickr, credited to Fadel Senna/Agence France-Presse, cropped to 770×403, licensed under CC BY 2.0
“Harris Tells Americans They Will Have to Pay More for Gas To Punish Russia,” proclaimed the New York Timesheadline recently. So spoke no less an authority on economics than the Vice President of the United States. Harris was on a visit to Poland to reassure a nervous NATO member and to egg on the war in Ukraine at the cost of ever more Ukrainian and Russian lives and higher inflation in the US and the world.
Inflation, Already Bad, Will be Worsened by the War in Ukraine.
The Times’s report on Harris’s declaration, however, concluded with this sobering reminder:
The sanctions could also complicate the political situation back in the U.S., where Americans have for months grappled with growing inflation, which has driven down the approval ratings of the Biden presidency.
The Consumer Price Index rose by 7.9 percent through February, the fastest pace of inflation in 40 years. The average price for a gallon of gas was $4.32 on Thursday, according to AAA. Economists say because of those record gas prices, inflation is expected to climb even more.
To be clear, the extraordinary 7.9% inflation increase predates the crisis in Ukraine although Joe Biden has attempted to blame it all on the thoroughly demonized Putin. But unless cause can come after effect, Joe has a tough argument to make there. However, it is clear that the war and the sanctions that go with it are accelerating inflation. And it is also clear from every poll that inflation (and the pandemic) are very much on the minds of Americans. Political analysts tell us that the 2022 Congressional elections and probably the 2024 elections will turn in large part on the issue of inflation.
A grassroots approach to stopping the war in Ukraine.
It is clear that the public is very likely to oppose US sanctions on Russia and US involvement in Ukraine IF either proves to drive up gas prices, food prices and other items in an accelerated inflationary spiral.
Our strategy should be to link the inflation with prolonging a war in a far-away land which has little to do with US security and risks a nuclear confrontation with Russia.
We should have rallies opposing ALL US involvement in Ukraine by tying them to gas prices, food prices, rents and other items.
Let us have demonstrations, not at the US Congress and not at military bases, but at gas stations and supermarkets. Especially highly visible gas stations; there is surely one near you.
Let us hold up placards with a simple message:
Biden’s arms to Ukraine = Longer War.
Longer War = Higher Gas Prices.
Ukraine is not our biz.
Come Home, America.
Ukraine as US proxy war against Russia to be fought to the last Ukrainian.
The war in Ukraine is a US war with Russia, with Ukraine as a US proxy. So we in the US can stop it by getting one of the parties, the US, to end its involvement. That is the right and moral responsibility of those in the US. And it is the action that we as citizens are best positioned to do. The effective action.
If, in the face of facts, one believes that this is not a US proxy war but a war between the US and Ukraine, then it is none of our business. But the course of action is the same. We should still call for an end to sending weapons, materiel and “advisors” to Ukraine and its environs. We should stay out it and avoid foreign entanglements in European disputes – the very thing that the Founders warned us about. That course is anti-interventionism as opposed to pursuing imperial or dubious ideological agendas.
The best way to stop escalation of the war is to take the offensive.
The Biden administration is getting a lot of credit for refusing to be part of a no-fly zone and turning thumbs down on US troops on the ground in Ukraine. But as time goes by, pressure is building for escalation. At a recent press briefing we saw a number of reporters from the White House press core badgering Jen Psaki and inquiringly petulantly why the President has not done more. And on top of that we have Biden embarrassing himself by making statements contrary to his own policy – either out of confusion or as a way of telling people what the real policy is. Dangerous escalation is waiting just around the corner.
The best way to stop this vehicle from going forward is to apply the brakes, put it in reverse and leave the question of escalation in the rearview mirror. Let us make de-escalation not escalation the question of the day. Let us push escalation off the table altogether.
Let’s go out to our local gas station or supermarket to stop the war in its tracks and not only avoid escalation but save countless lives. As I finish here, I just heard Max Blumenthal on the Jimmy Dore show suggest something along the same lines, signage at gas stations linking the war and inflation. Let’s try it.
No weapons to Ukraine. No sanctions on the world. End the war and stop the inflation.
Interesting Teach-in, well, discussion, with the speakers below. You will hear Scott Ritter divert from some of these speakers saying that the actions by Russia in Ukraine are legal, ethical and necessary.
Here is Ritter, just interviewed, Strategic Culture. Note that Ritter is called a traitor (for looking at the Russian military and political angles) and a Putin Stooge (this is it for Western Woke Culture) and he’s been banned on Twitter for a day, and then back up, and the seesaw of social media continues (more McCarthy: The New Democratic Opperative). You do not have to agree with militarism, but here we are, so the Western Woke Fascist Media and the Mendacious Political Class want nothing to do with, well, military minds looking at Russia (Ritter studied Russia big-time, and studied their military big time, both Soviet Union and Russia). He also is married to a Georgian. But again, this is it for the Western Intellect (sic).
Like we can’t watch Graham Phillips work, without being called, well, Russian Stooges. The Mainlining Mendacious Media calls him a Russian Sympathizer. Imagine that. For years,, he’s been a sympathizer (he is British, speaks Russian and goes to the actual places with camera in hand. Look at the one on Ossetia, the breakaway republic of Georgia. It is delightful (note the dinner he is served by the typical family):
Here, from, “The Ukrainian Conflict Is a U.S./NATO Proxy War, but One Which Russia Is Poised to Win Decisively – Scott Ritter” by Finian Cunningham, April 9, 2022
Question: Do you think that Russia has a just cause in launching its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24?
Scott Ritter: I believe Russia has articulated a cognizable claim of preemptive collective self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. The threat posed by NATO expansion, and Ukraine’s eight-year bombardment of the civilians of the Donbass fall under this umbrella.
Question: Do you think Russia has legitimate concerns about the Pentagon sponsoring biological weapons programs in laboratories in Ukraine?
Scott Ritter: The Pentagon denies any biological weapons program, but admits biological research programs on Ukrainian soil. Documents captured by Russia have allegedly uncovered the existence of programs the components of which could be construed as having offensive biological warfare applications. The U.S. should be required to explain the purpose of these programs.
Question: What do you make of allegations in Western media that Russian troops committed war crimes in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities? It is claimed that Russian forces summarily executed civilians.
Scott Ritter: All claims of war crimes must be thoroughly investigated, including Ukrainian allegations that Russia killed Ukrainian civilians in Bucha. However, the data available about the Bucha incident does not sustain the Ukrainian claims, and as such, the media should refrain from echoing these claims as fact until a proper investigation of the evidence is conducted, either by the media, or unbiased authorities.
While one may be able to mount a legal challenge to Russia’s contention that its joint operation with Russia’s newly recognized independent nations of Lugansk and Donetsk constitutes a “regional security or self-defense organization” as regards “anticipatory collective self-defense actions” under Article 51, there can be no doubt as to the legitimacy of Russia’s contention that the Russian-speaking population of the Donbass had been subjected to a brutal eight-year-long bombardment that had killed thousands of people.
Moreover, Russia claims to have documentary proof that the Ukrainian Army was preparing for a massive military incursion into the Donbass which was pre-empted by the Russian-led “special military operation.” [OSCE figures show an increase of government shelling of the area in the days before Russia moved in.]
Finally, Russia has articulated claims about Ukraine’s intent regarding nuclear weapons, and in particular efforts to manufacture a so-called “dirty bomb”, which have yet to be proven or disproven. [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a reference to seeking a nuclear weapon in February at the Munich Security Conference.]
The bottom line is that Russia has set forth a cognizable claim under the doctrine of anticipatory collective self defense, devised originally by the U.S. and NATO, as it applies to Article 51 which is predicated on fact, not fiction. (Ritter, Russia, Ukraine & the Law of War: Crime of Aggression)
[Nuremberg Trials. 1st row: Hermann Göring, Rudolf Heß, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel. 2nd row: Karl Dönitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel. (Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality/Still Picture Records LICON, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S)]
All the speakers, except maybe excluding John Kiriakou, have great points to make: Andrei Martyanov, expert on Russian military affairs, author The Real Revolution in Military Affairs; Chris Kaspar de Ploeg, author Ukraine in the Crossfire; James Carden, Adviser U.S.-Russia bilateral commission during the Obama administration & Ex. Editor of The American Committee for East-West accord; Scott Ritter, former U.S. Marine Intelligence officer, UN Arms Inspector, exposed WMD lie in U.S. push to invade Iraq; John Kiriakou, CIA whistleblower and Radio Sputnik host; Ron Ridenour, peace activist, author The Russian Peace Threat; Gerald Horne, historian, author, Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston; Jeremy Kuzmarov, CAM Managing Editor and author of The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce.
Imagine, the provocations.
The US government invoked self-defense as a legal justification for its invasion of Panama. Several scholars and observers have opined that the invasion was illegal under international law.
Oh, those Freedom Fighters, the back-shooting, civilian-killing, village-burning Contras:
Appendix A: Background on United States Funding of the Contras
In examining the allegations in the Mercury News and elsewhere, it is important to understand the timing of funding of the Contras by the United States. The following dates explain the periods during which the United States government provided funding to the Contras or cut off such funding.
Anastasio Somoza Debayle was the leader of Nicaragua from 1967 until July 1979, when he was overthrown by the Sandinistas. When President Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981, he promptly canceled the final $15 million payment of a $75 million aid package to Nicaragua, reversing the Carter administration’s policy towards Nicaragua. On November 17, 1981, President Reagan signed National Security Directive 17, authorizing provision of covert support to anti-Sandinista forces. On December 1, 1981, Reagan signed a document intending to conceal the November 17 authorization of anti-Sandinista operations. The document characterized the United States’ goal in Nicaragua as that of interdicting the flow of arms from Nicaragua to El Salvador, where leftist guerrillas were receiving aid from Sandinista forces.
In late 1982, Edward P. Boland, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, introduced an amendment to the Fiscal Year 1983 Defense Appropriations bill that prohibited the CIA, the principal conduit of covert American support for the Contras, from spending funds “for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua.” However, the CIA could continue to support the Contras if it claimed that the purpose was something other than to overthrow the government. In December 1983, a compromise was reached and Congress passed a funding cap for fiscal year 1984 of $24 million for aid to the Contras, an amount significantly lower than what the Reagan administration wanted, with the possibility that the Administration could seek supplemental funds later.
This funding was insufficient to support the Administration’s “Contra program” and the decision was made to approach other countries for monetary support. In April 1984, Robert McFarlane convinced Saudi Arabia to contribute $1 million per month to the Contras through a secret bank account set up by Lt. Col. Oliver North.
In October 1984, the second Boland amendment took effect. It prohibited any military or paramilitary support for the Contras from October 3, 1984, through December 19, 1985. As a result, the CIA and Department of Defense (DOD) began withdrawing personnel from Central America. During this time, however, the National Security Council continued to provide support to the Contras.
In August 1985, Congress approved $25 million in humanitarian aid to the Contras, with the proviso that the State Department, and not the CIA or the DOD, administer the aid. President Reagan created the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office (NHAO) to supply the humanitarian aid. In September 1985, Oliver North began using the Salvadoran air base at Ilopango for Contra resupply efforts.
On October 5, 1986, a plane loaded with supplies for the Contras, financed by private benefactors, was shot down by Nicaraguan soldiers. On board were weapons and other lethal supplies and three Americans. One American, Eugene Hasenfus, claimed while in custody that he worked for the CIA. The Reagan Administration denied any knowledge of the private resupply efforts.
On October 17, 1986, Congress approved $100 million in funds for the Contras. In 1987, after the discovery of private resupply efforts orchestrated by the National Security Council and Oliver North, Congress ceased all but “non-lethal” aid in 1987. The war between the Sandinistas and the Contras ended with a cease-fire in 1990.
Although the Contras were often referred to as one group, several distinct factions made up the Contras.
In August 1980, Colonel Enrique Bermudez, a former Colonel in Somoza’s National Guard, united other former National Guard officers and anti-Sandinista civilians to form the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN). This group was known as the Northern Front because it was based in Honduras. In February 1983, Adolfo Calero became the head of the FDN.
In April 1982, Eden Pastora split from the Sandinista regime and organized the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE) and the Sandinista Revolutionary Front (FRS), which declared war on the Sandinista regime. Pastora’s group was based in Costa Rica and along the southern border of Nicaragua, and therefore became known as the Southern Front. Pastora refused to work with Bermudez, claiming that Bermudez, as a member of the former Somoza regime, was politically tainted. The CIA decided to support the FDN and generally declined to support the ARDE.
Again, let’s think about what is actually happening in Ukraine, and where the country is, and what the Russians in that country are facing, and, gulp, where is Ukraine? Thousands of miles away, like Panama and Nicaragua are from USA?
As the war in Ukraine rages on, I visited the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk as an embedded reporter with the Russian army.
Both of the republics are the trigger of the current conflict.
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared their independence on February 24, 2022, something a lot of people were waiting for since the CIA backed coup in Ukraine of February 2014. That coup had resulted in the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and new laws forcing the Ukrainian language on Russian-speaking residents. Luhansk and Donetsk consequently voted on their independence and Ukraine attacked them, precipitating the war.
European support for the so-called Maidan coup was considerable: the Dutch MP Hans van Baalen from the ruling Dutch VVD party (Mark Rutte), for example, was at the protests that helped trigger the coup, as was the former Prime Minister of Belgium Guy Verhofstadt. Both were seen cheering on the crowds, surrounded by right-extremists on the stage, shouting “democracy.”
So what is preemptive defense? Right to Protect? What is big ugly history of Nazi’s in Poland and Ukraine? What is that all about, uh, Americanum?
So, plans by ZioLensky for Dirty Bombs from the wasteland of Chernobyl, not a provocation?
How many were immolated in Waco? Why? Mount Carmel Center became engulfed in flames. The fire resulted in the deaths of 76 Branch Davidians, including 25 children, two pregnant women, and David Koresh himself.
Oh, the impatience of the USA, FBI, ATF, Attorney General, Bill Clinton, the lot of them.
Or, dropping bombs on Philly, to kill, well, black people:
How many died, and what happened to the city block? Bombs dropped on our own people, again! Police dropped a bomb on a West Philly house in 1985. The fire caused by the explosion killed 11 people, an atrocity that Philadelphia still grapples with today.
Oh, the irony.
Black Lives Do Not Matter, here, or in Ukraine. Below, representation of those lives killed by cops, of all races, in one year. Many of these in a year, 60 percent, did not involve a person with a gun, and a huge number, 40 percent, involved people going throug mental health crises.
[Foreign students trying to reach the Ukrainian border said they were thrown off trains, not allowed on buses, and made to wait hours in the cold before crossing over.]
Yes, the first casualty of war is truth, and with the USA as the Empire of Lies and Hate, the casualty is now a larger framework of a Zombie Nation of virtue signalers and those who want the fake news to be real, please!
So far as I know, this is the first war in modern history with no objective, principled coverage in mainstream media of day-to-day events and their context. None. It is morn-to-night propaganda, disinformation and lies of omission — most of it fashioned by the Nazi-infested Zelensky regime in Kiev and repeated uncritically as fact.
There is one thing worse than this degenerate state of affairs. It is the extent to which the media’s malpractice is perfectly fine to most Americans. Tell us what to think and believe no matter if it is true, they say, and we will think and believe it. Show us some pictures, for images are all.
There are larger implications to consider here. Critical as it is that we understand this conflict, Ukraine is a mirror in which we see ourselves as we have become. For more Americans than I wish were so, reality forms only in images. These Americans are no longer occupants of their own lives. Risking a paradox, what they take to be reality is detached from reality.
This majority — and it is almost certainly a majority — has no thoughts or views except those first verified through the machinery of manufactured images and “facts.” Television screens, the pages of purportedly authoritative newspapers, the air waves of government-funded radio stations — NPR, the BBC — serve to certify realities that do not have to be real, truths that do not have to be true.
Before proceeding to Bucha, the outrage of the moment, I must reproduce a quotation from that propaganda-is-O.K. piece The Times published in its March 3 editions. It is from a Twitter user who was distressed that it became public that the Ghost of Kiev turned out to be a ghost and the Snake Island heroes didn’t do much by way of holding the fort.
‘Why can’t we just let people believe some things?’ this thoughtful man or woman wanted to know. What is wrong, in other words, if thinking and believing nice things that aren’t true makes people feel better? (Patrick Lawrence, Special to Consortium News)
Daniel Boorstin’s The Image: A Guide to Pseudo- Events in America, has been cited by yours truly several times. It is a completely amazing work, sixty years ahead of its time, and it is almost completely ignored!.
I describe the world of our making, how we have used our wealth, our literacy, our technology, and our progress to create the thicket of unreality which stands between us and the facts of life. …. The reporter’s task is to find a way to weave these threads of unreality into a fabric the reader will not recognize as entirely unreal. (Boorstin)
“Find a way to be against the war in Ukraine, please.” That was the subject line of one of my recent hate emails. “If you look through Mr. Rall’s cartoons for the past month, there isn’t a single one condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” an anonymous online commenter chided. “There’s plenty of ones based around whataboutism condemning us for condemning them but not a single one that just comes right out and says what Russia is doing now is wrong.”
The Right — in the U.S. that includes Republicans, Democrats and corporate media — has set a clever trap for the anti-war Left. The rhetoric in this essay’s first paragraph is an example. If the Left were to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Right would portray us as Russia-loving hypocrites who only oppose wars when the United States starts them. If the Left backed Ukraine, they’d be joining an unholy alliance with a government installed in a CIA-backed coup that pointlessly provoked Russia by asking to join NATO and is so tolerant of neo-Nazism that it allows soldiers wearing Nazi insignia in its military and seems to be trying to set some sort of record for building statues to World War II Nazi collaborators and antisemites. Plus, they’d be helping the Right distract people from the murderous sins of American imperialism, which are ongoing.
So, again, the offensive weapons industry, from the grenade to the guzzling B-1 bomber, from the pant zipper to the propelled hand-held rockets, from the Meals Ready to Eat to the Missiles from the Drones’ Mouth, all of those shell casings and depleted uranium bullet heads, all of that, including Burger Kings for Troops to the Experimental Anthrax Vaccines, all of that, and all the paper-mouse pushers, all the middlewomen and middlemen, all the folks in this military everything industrial complex, that is what the Russian Right to Stop Extremists/Murderers/ Nazis in Ukraine is all about. USA/UK/EU can take out wedding parties, but Russia can’t take out Nazi’s.
So, we have Angela Davis (throw away your blackness black panther card) and Chomsky and Sean Penn and every manner of woke and wise idiot calling Putin a dictator, a thug, an authoritarian leader. Oh, the authoritarian BlackRock and Raytheon and Biden Administration and USA Lobbying Network, and on and on, so, again, tenured professors with book contracts and speaking (paid big bucks) engagements, forget about them.
This is the American Way — Making Money on/off of WAR. The Racket that General Butler talked about is so so more complicated than his experiences in the 1890s through 1940s. These times are filled with buckets of DNA we might think have zero to do with war, but are so attached to the inbreeding of the war machines that every nanosecond of business and every transaction in this society is all tied to WAR. Like embedded energy and life cycle analysis, the military complex, if we really did the true cost of war/warring, the one or six trillion dollars that Brown University comes up with would be factored up by 10 or more.
The 2022 spending bill, which passed both chambers with gleeful bipartisan support last week, included billions of dollars for ships and planes that the Pentagon didn’t ask for, a common occurrence in Congress. Then, here it is — just one angle. Congress authorized $27 billion for Navy ships, including $4 billion for several vessels the Navy didn’t ask for, and $900 million for additional Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets the Navy had hoped to phase out. The bill also provides billions to purchase 20 more Lockheed Martin C-130J transport planes than the Pentagon requested.
And, the details are in the sausage making, from scarred land for corn, to the poisons to grow the corn, to the ponds of pig blood and guts, to the butchering of antibiotic-filled and toxin-laden pigs, to the transportation of poisoned meat, to sausage warehouses, to all of the packaging and happy meal advertisements, and then, of course, the cost of clogged arteries and obesity and colon cancers, all of that, well, figure in a similar cost analysis for every Hellfire missile produced for the profits of the offensive weapons Mafia.
Since the start of the new year, Lockheed Martin’s stock has soared nearly 25 percent, while Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman each saw their stock prices rise by around 12 percent.
In a January earnings call, Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet said that the “renewed great power competition” would lead to inflated defense budgets and additional sales. On the same day, Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes told investors that the company expected to see “opportunities for international sales” amid the Russian threat.
“The tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there,” Hayes said. “So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.”
The defense lobbyist also predicted a major gain for U.S. defense firms thanks to increased European defense spending.
“As much as many countries have their own defense industrial base, they don’t make everything they need themselves. So they are going to rely on us in many cases for missiles, for aircraft, for ground vehicles,” they said. (source)
These are sociopaths. Read it again and again if you are dense. “…. thanks to increased EU spending . . . .” Or, “. . . . fully expect we’re going to see … benefit from it (wars) . . . ” These are golf course dealing misanthropes. Their kids go to Yale, and they have two or four homes around the country. They attend $500 a ticket Hamilton galas. They are the Titans of Terror.
Alas, the offensive weapons-equipment-PSYOPS-marketing-financing INDUSTRY is the gift (poison, PTSD, maiming, mauling, murdering) that keeps on giving. The sacking of our own personal and collective agency, that is, where is the fight for our poor, for our huddled masses, for our general anxiety disordered citizens? Where are those bandaids and nurses staffing those free drop-in clinics? Where are those hefty checks for clean water systems, R & R-ing lead pipes? Where are those insulating old homes programs? Where are those funds for aging in place programs? Where are the deals for the poor and struggling to get into national parks free? Where are those used tires for aging cars that take mother and daughter to their fast-food/child care/adult care jobs? Where are those food vouchers even the French are handing out? Where is all that help, uh?
Over decades of brainwashing and history scrubbing and agnotology and consumerism and propaganda and plain bad PK12 education. After years of mediocre college degrees, and after throwing money at computer engineers, the AI Hole in the Autism Wall Gang, and after so much celebrity pimping, the American public will pull out a yellow and blue hanky and smear their crocodile tears for a billionaire lying comic ZioLenskyy and wax nostalgic for those Nazi-loving Ukrainians, but never a word for fellow human beings in, well, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Russia.
We wonder about Word Press — a non-profit (sic) that takes $100 a year just for this little shit show? Will the site be hacked, cut, or disengaged because of Russia’s flag above and the UkiNazi image below?
Oh, the stories over at Grayzone or Consortium News or Mint Press or Covert Action Magazine, or . . . .
‘Gods of War’: How the US weaponized Ukraine against Russia TJ COLES
And the evil is the shutdown of discourse. True evil. Makes Mossad and CIA and Stasi and KGB look like Keystone Cops:
And, so, Zelenskyy wants hundreds and hundreds of billions in weapons and aid and for his padded luxurious life. Yep, a failure to communicate — the US of A! But there is still some sanity — Black Agenda Report:
Left Voices are Censored
Censorship is supposed to happen in other places, not in the U.S. But big tech, in alliance with the state, is silencing Black and other left voices in the media. The war in Ukraine is bringing this process into high relief and making a mockery of claims of freedom of expression. Jacqueline Luqman, co-host of the Sputnik program, By Any Means Necessary , explains.
The U.S. Crisis Plays Out in Ukraine
Joe Biden travelled to Europe for NATO and G7 meetings one month after Russian troops entered Ukraine. Biden predictably condemned Russia but also suggested he was seeking regime change against Vladimir Putin. Dr. Gerald Horne , author and historian who currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, analyses US policy in Ukraine.
The end game is lies, all the spin, the tens of thousands of outlets, the social media monsters, all of the PSYOPS, all the roots of Edward Bernays, Milton Friedman, Madmen, the entire suite of propaganda tools. A failure to communicate is now an avalanche of lies, as in the Empire of Lies. Russia loses that war — information 5.0 USA style, is Russia 1.0. Honesty is a crutch.
We’ve studied this system of propaganda, and it is sophisticated, way before Goebbels, but still, he is the master 2.0. Israel is a killer of a liar. Britain. USA.
Russia’s approach to the Ukraine question is remarkably different from the West’s. As far as Russia is concerned Ukraine is not a pawn on the chessboard but rather a member of the family with whom communication has become impossible due to protracted foreign interference and influence operations. According to Andrei Ilnitsky, an advisor to the Russian Ministry of Defence, Ukraine is the territory where the Russian world lost one of the strategic battles in the cognitive war. Having lost the battle, Russia feels all the more obliged to win the war — a war to undo the damage to a country that historically has always been part of the Russian world and to prevent the same damage at home. It is rather telling that what US-NATO call an “information war” is referred to as “mental’naya voina”, that is cognitive war, by this prominent Russian strategist. Being mainly on the receiving end of information/influence operations, Russia has been studying their deleterious effects. (source)
Marketing 101 is now hyperspace marketing, and the tools of bots, AI, algorithms, etc., they are like neutron info bombs.
Bandwagon propaganda
Card Stacking propaganda
Plain Folk Propaganda
Testimonial Propaganda
Glittering Generality Propaganda
Name Calling Propaganda
Transfer Propaganda
Ad nauseam propaganda
Stereotyping propaganda
Appeal to prejudice propaganda
Appeal to fear propaganda
So therefore, this relentless manipulation of people’s emotions and coginitive disassociation and associative thinking has unleashed a dangerous whirlwind of mass insanity.
There are times when I want to scream out: “F*** this entire indifferent, hypocritical and violent world!”
My desire to scream comes from a place of deep outrage, sickness, anger and frustration as I tarry with the suffering to which I try to bear witness. To bear witness means to carry the weight, the load, of a truth. And there are times when the weight of certain truths feels so heavy that my outrage succumbs to despair, a place where I feel disempowered, incapable of doing anything because the social injustices are just too pervasive, too vast, too intractable and too complex to address with any substantial results. So, we must face the weight of such social evils and be prepared to also face the ways in which we are complicit with them, especially when we are often indifferent.
As scholar of theology Elisabeth T. Vasko writes, “We are not very good at sitting with pain. We tend to engage in a politics of distraction, to shy away from making the really hard decisions (after all, isn’t there an app for that?).” It is hard to sit with pain, to tarry with what is really being asked of us by those who suffer.
How in the hell do we go on when we face such horrid realities, such as the lynching of Black bodies, the killing of George Floyd, the killing of Breonna Taylor, the death of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi, the killing of innocent Palestinian children, the brutal murder of Black transgender women, the killing of civilians in Yemen, and the inhumane treatment of those imprisoned?
The fact that I get to write about these things is not lost on me. This relates to the relative privilege that I possess because I can sit and write. I must write, as this is a form of protest for me, of speaking some truth to forms of injustice. However, the aporia, the internal contradiction, is still jarring.
In the face of so much suffering, perhaps the privilege of writing ought to be forfeited. Think about it this way: At a demonstration against the Vietnam War, Abraham Joshua Heschel was asked by a journalist why he came to protest. Heschel’s daughter, Susannah, relates that her father said he was there because he could not pray. One can only imagine the confused look on the face of the journalist who asked for clarification.
“Whenever I open the prayerbook, I see before me images of children burning from napalm,” Heschel replied.
This is what it means to tarry with the suffering of others. It means to hear their cries, to listen to their lament, and to be driven outside of our sites of comfort (temples, churches, mosques, synagogues, homes, classrooms, universities, colleges, boardrooms, ourselves) and refuse to take refuge until the last one of us is free from the pain, hurt and violence of injustice.
Martin Luther King Jr. was correct when he said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Capturing the entwinement of our human existence, Judith Butler writes, “It is not as if an ‘I’ exists independently over here and then simply loses a ‘you’ over there, especially if the attachment to ‘you’ is part of what composes who ‘I’ am.”
When one dares to look at the world in this way, one is called upon to do something more than pray, something more than donate money, something more than remain abreast of the latest breaking news with its accompanying images of human suffering. Perhaps “the more” doesn’t have a grammar yet to express it, perhaps we are still too attached to how we feel concern about them, even if that feeling of concern is truly about them. There is distance, after all, in the relation of “feeling concern for or about.”
Perhaps the goal is to abandon our safety altogether vis-a-vis those who suffer. We will need to think critically, though, about how the process of abandoning our safety — who does it, when and where — can be distributed in ways that doesn’t require more from those who are always already in situations of structural violence.
I also want to bring attention to those moments of feeling concern where one might come to the difficult realization regarding the extent to which one’s kindness, concern and sympathy can obfuscate the degree of one’s own complicity.
For example, I said to my partner as she and I watched images on the news, “We get to watch the news of these horrible images coming out of Ukraine in our home as over 4 million Ukrainians are forced to leave their homes.” We imagined what it would be like for the two of us, along with our youngest sons, to flee our house, seeing it blown-up, torn to bits, and our precious memories of home overshadowed by the violence of war, military invasion, totalitarian chaos.
Yet, looking at those images, as writer and philosopher Susan Sontag powerfully reminds us, “is one more mystification of our real relations to power.” Sontag continues, “So far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence.”
So many in this country, and around the world, I would argue, miss (or even willfully ignore) this connection, and thereby fail to interrogate their own complicity. Sontag wants us to see not just how our wealth is linked to “the destitution of others,” but how what we do and don’t do within our own situation of relative privilege is “linked to their suffering.” Being aware of this keeps me honest, angry and haunted.
The desire to scream is a manifestation that I have not become numb regarding those who suffer.
Daily, I agonize (and must do so) over my own children’s lives when faced with the hard reality that over 100 children have been killed and more wounded since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But you see, it isn’t just about my children; it is about all children and how so many of their precious lives are not deemed precious and grievable.
According to reports, an estimated 1,000 civilians have died in Ukraine. Of course, these numbers will no doubt rise as the rubble is literally cleared. The extent of the horror is yet to be told. And as the trauma holds captive the psyche and the body, the personal horrors will continue to unfold. There are reports of Russian soldiers raping Ukrainian women and then murdering them. At such moments as these, the words pour out of me: “F*** this entire indifferent, hypocritical and violent world.”
When I heard and read that Vladimir Putin had put Russian nuclear forces on high alert, I found it hard to sleep because I thought about the possibility of nuclear weapons being dropped on the Ukrainian people or dropped over U.S. cities. And we mustn’t forget about those bombs that would be dropped over Russian cities which would instantly kill tens of thousands of innocent people.
There was the flood of terrifying realities that came to mind, such as the blinding flash of light of a nuclear explosion, the peeling of human skin, thermal burns, severe bloody diarrhea, the death of tens of thousands of people instantaneously, and the loss of my children, and your children — those who are innocent and just want to live. And this also includes exposure to eventual radioactive fallout, and the violent devastation of our planet’s ecosystems.
After hearing about the news of the high alert, I didn’t get the sense that anything had changed. People were going about their daily routines as if there had not been a threat of ending the world as we know it. I’m not saying that there should have been mass panic, but what the hell? I’m not an alarmist, but rather I am someone who, as Rabbi Heschel says, “feels fiercely.” He also says that “what we need is restlessness, a constant awareness of the monstrosity of injustice.” Well, I’m restless when I think about the monstrosity of nuclear annihilation.
Around our “dinner table,” which is certainly a perk of class privilege, I could tell that my sons had a sense of fear that was repressed and covered over by lightly joking about “WWIII.”
How else can children face and talk about such a global nightmare? I am outraged by the fact that we exist within a world where such destructive weapons exist, where a small miscalculation — because of ideological differences, mistrust, hatred, the breaching of “sacred” geopolitical boundaries and manufactured airspaces — could mean the end of us all.
Within this context, talk of nuclear war games is absurd. How do you calculate the risk of losing millions of lives and saving others? In a nuclear war, zero-sum scenarios are useless. We all lose. We’re talking mutually assured destruction. Even if some survive, we lose.
Bear in mind that Donald Trump, when asked directly in 2016, refused to take the use of nuclear weapons off the table. Who thinks and talks like this? Well, those who have fantasies of complete mastery.
According to Julietta Singh, mastery “also turns inward to become a form of self-maiming, one that involves the denial of the master’s own dependency on other bodies.” That is partly the trick and yet the tragedy of mastery — to deny one’s own sense of being interdependent. In this way, one is “untouchable,” living a life filled with pretentiousness and self-deception, where one believes in their historical destiny, their inherent “genius,” to lead the world into a “new age,” one where dissenters are murdered, where truths are lies and lies are truths, and where those most loyal must be prepared to sacrifice their friends, their families and their ethical compasses for a mess of pottage. We’ve seen this before where the obdurate desire for maintaining mastery has led to forms of enslavement, colonial domination and the death of millions.
As we are now 100 seconds to midnight, where “midnight” is that moment where humanity ends as we know it because of some catastrophic moment due to a nuclear war or a devasting climate event, the danger of that form of mastery should give us pause. Think about it: just 100 seconds.
It is at times like these that I watch my sons with greater loving care. I allow myself to feel the air within my lungs. I remain mindful of the trees and nonhuman animal life around me. During such moments, I feel a sudden response of outrage, teetering on despair. Again, the images resurface, and I cannot get them out of my head: the skin peels off, tens of thousands dying within an instant. The smell of burned and burning flesh, death and dying are in the air.
I imagine the devastating nuclear winter caused by the firestorms that would lead to the sunlight being blocked. I hear the voices screaming in my head, and the heaviness of dread and gloom. I imagine witnessing the burned flesh of others. This is the stuff of science fiction only, yes? Read the words of witnesses within Nagasaki, Japan, after “we” dropped a weapon of mass destruction:
There were no air raid alarms on the morning of August 9, 1945. We had been hiding out in the local bomb shelter for several days, but one by one, people started to head home. My siblings and I played in front of the bomb shelter entrance, waiting to be picked up by our grandfather.
Then, at 11:02 am, the sky turned bright white. My siblings and I were knocked off our feet and violently slammed back into the bomb shelter. We had no idea what had happened.
As we sat there shell-shocked and confused, heavily injured burn victims came stumbling into the bomb shelter en masse. Their skin had peeled off their bodies and faces and hung limply down on the ground, in ribbons. Their hair was burnt down to a few measly centimeters from the scalp. Many of the victims collapsed as soon as they reached the bomb shelter entrance, forming a massive pile of contorted bodies. The stench and heat were unbearable.
Have we not learned from this great horror? For some (many?), there seems to be no limit to their tolerance for existential devastation, unethical ineptitude and imperial lust. Once Putin (yet again) invaded Ukraine, my outrage for the cowardice of totalitarians was reanimated with a fierceness. You see, I absolutely despise bullies and their underlings. As Putin’s “special military operation” was revealed as a military invasion, and war was being waged, Trump loyalist Sean Hannity suggested that Putin should be assassinated. What, for Hannity, should we do with aspiring authoritarians within the U.S.? One senses the contradiction and problematic slippery slope implications of Hannity’s reasoning.
And then there was Tucker Carlson (a junior partner of Trump’s white nationalist worldview) who made light of Putin’s intentions and despotic character by saying, among other things, that Putin never called him a racist, that he never threatened to get him fired for disagreeing with him or attempted to teach his children to embrace racial discrimination.
Unabashedly ridiculous and feeding the echo chamber of conversative white reactionary grievances, Carlson would have white Americans believe that because I teach about white privilege, white supremacy, anti-Blackness and the systemic racist structure of the U.S., I am to be feared, loathed and hated more than a murderous tyrant who silences (some for good) his rivals.
Other right-wing conservatives who supported Trump lambasted Putin’s lies about “denazification.” Come on? Talk about the putrid smell of mendacity. To castigate Putin as a vicious totalitarian who lies to his people, and yet to embrace Trump, the aspirant dictator of the Republican Party, smacks of muddled thinking and hypocrisy. Trump lied and continues to lie about voter fraud regarding the 2020 election. In fact, it has been said that Trump, over the four years of his presidency, made 30,573 false and misleading claims.
Putin’s “denazification” justification is equivalent to Trump’s “Big Lie” and there are gullible followers who accept the lies of both men out of fear. And the lies of both have led to the death of human beings, though thus far, Putin’s lies have apparently taken a greater existential toll.
The January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which was a direct attack on the legitimate exercise of democratic voting rights, was the manifestation of Trump’s lie and those who helped to perpetuate it. That lie led to neofascist and white supremacist violence, disinformation and the pitiful collapse of critical thought. Unable to distinguish truth from lies, those (predominantly white) individuals attacked “our” fragile democracy with threats, violence, urine and feces. The attempted coup led to the death of five people and resulted in the injury of more than 140 police officers. And let’s not forget the pipe bombs that were found near the Capitol or those who came armed.
What I find so extraordinary is the fact that so many white people, in this case, were furious based upon a lie. Their anger and fury were predicated on vacuous claims. Storming the Capitol wasn’t a show of strength or courage; it was a show of fanaticism driven by a sense of white entitlement, and the fear that they, white people, will lose their “sacred” place of hegemony within the U.S. polity. All of that also sickens me. Those individuals are not just a threat to democracy, but I see them as a personal existential threat to me.
It is not hard for me to imagine that Trump, who may become the 47th president of the U.S., is more than able and willing to unleash so much divisiveness, so many lies, and to encourage so much white nationalist loyalty, that we might find ourselves armed in the streets of this nation fighting, like those in Ukrainian cities, to secure our freedoms and rights (even as they are tenuous for so many already).
The distressing and frightening part of this is that I can imagine this without feeling delusional, without laughing — no tongue in cheek. The questions that we may one day face are: Do I take up arms against my neighbors because of their political party affiliation? Do I turn them over to the thought police because I overheard one of them say something about systemic racism or critical race theory? Do I help ban (and perhaps burn) “dangerous” historical books on the reality of white supremacy? Do I call the department of heteronormative homeland security because someone said “gay”? Do I follow (in lockstep) the orders of a pathological liar, and subordinate my freedom and my conscience to his will?
Does this sound dystopic or perhaps apocalyptic? If there is any doubt, keep in mind that Trump basks in messianic grandeur. After all, he has referred to himself as “the chosen one” and adopted the moniker “King of Israel.” We should keep in mind that Adolf Hitler was apparently a staunch “Christian.” Needless to say (or perhaps not), this is not Christian theology, but a form of anti-theology turned into a weapon of white supremacist hatred.
I began this article with the desire to scream. It is a desire to lament. But it is not just about me; it can’t be. Vasko argues, “Through lamentation, voice is given to pain.” It is a foregrounding and rendering explicit “the anguish and passionate protest of those who have suffered injustice.”
The desire to scream is a manifestation that I have not become numb regarding those who suffer. As philosopher Alison Bailey writes, “Anesthesia is part of the master’s tool kit.” To forget, like political and historical anesthesia, helps to maintain the status quo, helps to “assure” us that there is nothing to see, nothing to witness, nothing to bear — no suffering and no injustice. As philosopher Alexis Shotwell reminds us, “Political forgetting names an epistemology — a way of knowing — and an ontology — a way of being.” Hence, my desire to scream is insurgent, an act of refusal, reminding me that there are new ways of knowing and new ways of being.
And yet, the despair continues to haunt. Rabbi Heschel writes, “We have relinquished our role as educators. We surrender, we abandon, we forget.” I have not forgotten and will fight to my last breath not to forget. So, let’s scream together: F*** this entire indifferent, hypocritical and violent world!
The humanitarian group Oxfam International warned Monday that wheat flour reserves in the occupied Palestinian territories could run out within the next three weeks as Russia’s assault on Ukraine continues, pushing prices to all-time highs and throwing the global grain market into chaos.
Prior to the war, Russia and Ukraine together supplied nearly 30% of the world’s wheat, with a large portion of its exports going to the Middle East.
The Palestinian Authority, which governs part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, imports around 95% of its wheat, according to Oxfam. Israel, which oftenthrottlesthe occupied territories’ trading and restricts their agricultural development, imports half of its grain and cereals from Ukraine.
If Russia’s war on Ukraine continues, Oxfam noted, experts believe the Palestinian territories’ diminishing wheat stocks could be exhausted in two to three weeks.
“Palestinian households are being hit hard by rising global food prices, and many are struggling to meet their basic needs,” said Shane Stevenson, Oxfam’s country director in the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. “The reliance on imports and the constraints forced upon them by Israel’s continuing military occupation, settler violence, and land grabs are compounding the food crisis.”
Most households in the #Gaza Strip are now buying food on credit. Many families are eating less and lower quality of food items. Families are cutting out more expensive food such as fruit, meat and chicken that are necessary for a healthy diet. More: https://t.co/tTHVXAmIDq
Oxfam reported that food insecurity across the Palestinian territories has jumped to 31.2%, and roughly 2.1 million people there will require humanitarian assistance this year.
To prevent the hunger crisis in the territories from intensifying, Oxfam called on the international community to “urgently adopt a common and coordinated economic and diplomatic position that challenges Israel’s restrictive policies and allows Palestinians to invest in local food production and infrastructure.”
“Every day we meet people who are searching for jobs and money just to feed their children. We feel very stuck at this stage,” Najla Shawa, Oxfam’s head of food security in Gaza, said in a statement Monday. “How can we draw attention from the international community to the deteriorating socio-economic situation in Gaza?”
“Our work in Gaza is becoming increasingly challenging,” Shawa added. “It is difficult to describe the true level of damage that all this is causing on people’s lives — it is devastating.”
Last week, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)saidthat global food prices soared to record levels in March, driven by the rising costs of cereals and vegetable oils. Ukraine is the world’s largest exporter of sunflower oil.
Price surges and war-inducedsupply chain disruptionsare endangering the food supply of millions of people in Yemen and other nations ravaged by years of military conflict.
The World Food Programme, which purchases half of its grain from Ukraine,notedin March that “imports from Ukraine account for 31% of the wheat arriving in Yemen in the past three months — prices are suddenly seven times higher than they were in 2015.”
In order to scuttle the Russian peace initiative to Ukraine announced at the Istanbul talks on March 29, halting Russian military campaign north of the capital and focusing on liberating Russian-majority Donbas in east Ukraine, practically spelling an end to Russia’s month-long offensive in the embattled country, NATO powers have announced transferring heavy weapons, including tanks and S-300 air defense system, to Ukraine to further escalate the conflict.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, April 7, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley revealed that US and NATO countries have collectively provided roughly 60,000 anti-tank weapons and 25,000 anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.
If you’ve got a gut feeling that your rulers are working to control your perception of the war in Ukraine, it is safe to trust that feeling.
If you feel like there’s been a concerted effort from the most powerful government and media institutions in the western world to manipulate your understanding of what’s going on with this war, it’s because that’s exactly what has been happening.
If you can’t recall ever seeing such intense mass media spin about a war before, it’s because you haven’t.
If you get the distinct impression that this may be the most aggressively perception-managed and psyop-intensive war in human history, it’s because it is.
If it looks like Silicon Valley platforms are controlling the content that people see to give them a perspective on this war that is wildly biased in favor of the US narrative, it’s because that is indeed the case.
If it seems like a suspicious coincidence that Russiagate manufactured mainstream consent for all the same shady agendas we’re seeing ramped up now like cold war brinkmanship against Moscow, internet censorship, and being constantly lied to by the mass media for the greater good, it’s because it is a mighty suspicious coincidence.
If it seems weird to you that so many self-styled leftists are responding to this war by fanatically supporting the extremely dangerous unipolarist geostrategic agendas of the most powerful empire that has ever existed, that’s because it is weird. Really, really, really weird.
If it seems a bit hypocritical to you that the empire is blasting us in the face all day with narratives alleging Russian war crimes while that same empire is imprisoning a journalist for exposing its war crimes, that’s because it absolutely is hypocritical.
If something looks wrong about the fact that we’re about to watch a judge sign off on Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States for practicing journalism while that same United States keeps pushing out narratives about the need to protect Ukraine’s freedom and democracy, that’s because it should.
If you’re beginning to get the nagging sense that the mainstream consensus worldview is a construct manufactured by the powerful, for the powerful and everything you were taught about your nation, your government and your world is a lie, that’s definitely a possibility worth considering.
If it’s starting to seem like we’re all being manipulated at mass scale to think, act and vote in a way which benefits a vast power structure that rules over us while hiding its true nature, I’d say that’s a thread worth pulling.
If you’ve a sneaking suspicion that the lies might go even deeper than that, right down to deceptions about who you fundamentally are and what this life is actually about, that suspicion is probably worth exploring.
If you’re feeling a bit like Keanu Reeves in the beginning of The Matrix right before the veil gets ripped away, I’d recommend following the white bunny and seeing how deep that rabbit hole goes.
If it has occurred to you that humanity needs to wake up from the matrix of illusion before our sociopathic rulers drive us to extinction via environmental catastrophe or nuclear armageddon, then your notes match my own.
If you believe it’s possible that these existential crises we’re fast approaching may be the catalyst we need to collectively rip the blindfold from our eyes and begin moving in a truth-based way upon this earth and creating a healthy world, then we are on the same page.
If there’s something in you that whispers there’s a good chance we make it despite the long odds we appear to be facing, I will tell you a secret: I hear it too.
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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.
When Russian and Ukrainian delegations meeting in Turkey on March 29 reached an initial understanding regarding a list of countries that could serve as security guarantors for Kyiv should an agreement be struck, Israel appeared on the list. The other countries included the US, the UK, China, Russia, France, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Italy and Poland.
One may explain Israel’s political significance to the Russian-Ukrainian talks based on Tel Aviv’s strong ties with Kyiv, as opposed to Russia’s trust in Israel. This is insufficient to rationalize how Israel has managed to acquire relevance in an international conflict, arguably the most serious since World War II.
Immediately following the start of the war, Israeli officials began to circumnavigate the globe, shuttling between many countries that are directly or even nominally involved in the conflict. Israeli President Isaac Herzog flew to Istanbul to meet with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The outcome of this meeting could usher in “a turning point in relations between Turkey and Israel,” Erdogan said.
Though “Israel is proceeding cautiously with Turkey,” Lavan Karkov wrote in the Jerusalem Post, Herzog hopes that “his meeting with .. Erdogan is starting a positive process toward improved relations.” The ‘improved relations’ are not concerned with the fate of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation and siege, but with a gas pipeline connecting Israel’s Leviathan offshore gas field in the eastern Mediterranean, to southern Europe via Turkey.
This project will improve Israel’s geopolitical status in the Middle East and Europe. The political leverage of being a primary gas supplier to Europe would allow Israel even stronger influence over the continent and will certainly tone down any future criticism of Tel Aviv by Ankara.
That was only one of many such Israeli overtures. Tel Aviv’s diplomatic flurry included a top-level meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and a succession of visits by top European, American, Arab and other officials to Israel.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Israel on March 26 and was expected to put some pressure on Israel to join the US-led western sanctions on Russia. Little of that has transpired. The greatest rebuke came from Under-Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, when, on March 11, she called on Israel not to become “the last haven for dirty money that’s fueling Putin’s wars”.
For years, Israel had hoped to free itself from its disproportionate reliance on Washington. This dependency took on many forms: financial and military assistance, political backing, diplomatic cover and more. According to Chuck Freilich, writing in Newsweek, “by the end of the ten-year military-aid package agreed (between Washington and Tel Aviv) for 2019-28, the total figure (of US aid to Israel) will be nearly $170bn.”
Many Palestinians and others believe that, if the US ceases to support Israel, the latter would simply collapse. However, this might not be the case, at least not in theory. Writing in March 2021 in the New York Times, Max Fisher estimated that US aid to Israel in 1981 “was equivalent to almost 10 percent of Israel’s economy,” while in 2020, the nearly $4 billion of US aid was “closer to 1 percent.”
Still, this 1 percent is vital for Israel, as much of the funds are funneled to the Israeli military which, in turn, converts them to weapons that are routinely used against Palestinians and other Arab countries. Israeli military technology of today is far more developed than it was 40 years ago. Figures by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) place Israel as the world’s eighth-largest military exporter between 2016-2020, with an estimated export value of $8.3 billion in 2020 alone. These numbers continue to grow as Israeli military hardware is increasingly incorporated into many security apparatuses across the world, including the US, the EU and also in the Global South.
Much of this discussion is rooted in a document from 1996, entitled: “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”. The document was authored by Richard Perle, former US Assistant Secretary of Defense, jointly with top leaders in the neoconservative movement in Washington. The target audience of that research was none other than Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then the newly-elected Israeli Prime Minister.
Aside from the document’s detailed instructions on how Israel can use some of its Arab neighbors, in addition to Turkey, to weaken and ‘roll back’ hostile governments, it also made significant references to future relations Tel Aviv should aspire to develop with Washington.
Perle urged Israel to “make a clean break from the past and establish a new vision for the U.S.-Israeli partnership based on self-reliance, maturity and mutuality – not one focused narrowly on territorial disputes.” This new, ‘self-reliant Israel’ “does not need U.S. troops in any capacity to defend it.” Ultimately, such self-reliance “will grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever of pressure used against it in the past.”
An example is Israel’s relations with China. In 2013, Washington was outraged when Israel sold secret missile and electro-optic US technology to China. Quickly, Tel Aviv was forced to retreat. The controversy subsided when the head of defense experts at the Israeli Defense Ministry was removed. Eight years on, despite US protests and demands that Israel must not allow China to operate the Israeli Haifa port due to Washington’s security concerns, the port was officially initiated in September 2021.
Israel’s regional and international strategy seems to be advancing in multiple directions, some of them directly opposing those of Washington. Yet, thanks to continued Israeli influence in the US Congress, Washington does little to hold Israel accountable. Meanwhile, now that Israel is fully aware that the US has changed its political attitude in the Middle East and is moving in the direction of the Pacific region and Eastern Europe, Tel Aviv’s ‘clean break’ strategy is moving faster than ever before. However, this comes with risks. Though Israel is stronger now, its neighbors are also getting stronger.
Hence, it is critical that Palestinians understand that Israel’s survival is no longer linked to the US, at least not as intrinsically as in the past. Therefore, the fight against Israeli occupation and apartheid can no longer be disproportionately focused on breaking up the ‘special relationship’ that united Tel Aviv and Washington for over 50 years. Israel’s ‘independence’ from the US entails risks and opportunities that must be considered in the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been making a virtual world tour with video hookups to parliaments around the globe, as well as to the Grammy Awards and the U.N. Security Council, sometimes with troublesome results.
On Thursday a major row erupted when Zelensky brought along a Ukrainian soldier of Greek heritage from the city of Mariupol, who just happened to be a member of the ne0-Nazi Azov Regiment. Greece was under Nazi occupation during World War II and fought a bitter partisan war against Nazism (later to be betrayed by Britain and the United States.)
As the Russian attack on Ukraine has come to dominate global news feeds, so has a previously little-known outlet called The Kyiv Independent. Since its inception in November of last year, the Independent’s profile has risen rapidly and has been promoted and endorsed by both social media giants and the corporate press.
The Kyiv Independent has become the toast of the town. It seems virtually impossible to turn on cable news without seeing its reporters on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, or other networks. Its staff has been given the opportunity to write multiple op-eds in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, something considered the ultimate seal of approval by many journalists. NPR listeners might also have heard interviews with reporters from the Independent.
Since The US-Engineered 2013-14 Coup In Ukraine, American Forces Have Taught Ukrainians, Including Neo-Nazi Units, How To Fight In Urban And Other Civilian Areas. Weaponizing Ukraine Is Part Of Washington’s Quest For What The Pentagon Calls “Full Spectrum Dominance.” “[I]f you can learn all modalities of war, then you can be the god of war,” so said a Ukrainian artillery commander in 2016 while receiving training from the US Army.
Since the pandemic began in early 2020, the weapons industry has argued that shutdowns and supply chain disruptions have put the “defense industrial base” in peril, compromising the national security and military “readiness” of the United States. Now, that same industry is using Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and NATO’s subsequent military buildup to double down on the argument, demanding rapid, public investments in the weapons industry to bolster the capacity of the United States and NATO for “deterrence.”
A New Zealand aid worker in Kyiv says the ReliefAid group he leads was one of the first to provide food in the suburb of Bucha — northwest of Kyiv — where Russian troops are alleged to have executed 150 civilians.
New Zealand donations in the Ukraine War have so far helped the aid group deliver more than six tonnes of food to survivors, and take medical supplies to hospitals around Kyiv.
ReliefAid executive director Mike Seawright arrived in Kyiv this weekend after driving in from the western side of Ukraine — “down some roads that have seen a lot of intense fighting, burnt out buildings, warehouses completely flattened, family homes destroyed and lots of military hardware burnt out.
“It was an interesting if not somewhat chilling drive.”
He has been in the country for a month after crossing the border on foot.
In Kyiv, “the fighting may have stopped … but the destruction of family homes is still there. People are living in the rubble of what was their normal lives with nothing to their name, faced with cold, harsh conditions, with little or no food. So humanitarian support such as we are providing … is essential.”
But while fighting there may have stopped, missiles were still “raining down” on the city, making it unsafe.
Management on the fly
Seawright said that with many trucks bringing aid into the country — and at least one plane of medical supplies — a lot of organisation was involved.
“It also takes a lot of management on the fly. So we’ve predefined plans … but of course what happens on the day is entirely dependent on checkpoints we can’t control, road conditions on roads that have been severely damaged … and a security situation that is extremely volatile. So this is our number eight wire – managing all of this.”
ReliefAid’s Mike Seawright … “So this is our number eight wire – managing all of this.” Image: RNZ/ReliefAid
His team also wants to deliver aid to people in the besieged city of Mariupol.
“We are standing by to get in there as soon as conditions allow. We pride ourselves on being at the forefront of humanitarian action. ReliefAid is a warzone specialist humanitarian aid organisation but I have to say, even we can’t get access to Mariupol at the moment.”
As soon as an access corridor was established, they would be in, Seawright said.
Being on the ground was key to working effectively, he said.
A lot of hard work
“It takes a lot of hard working, a lot of networking, a lot of managing logistics, but I’m proud to say we’ve got an incredible team here in Ukraine allowing us to do that.
“The most important thing you need to do when engaging with a new environment is see what is happening on the ground. We’ve got to know who we are supporting. We have got to make sure we know what their needs are and therefore we need to make sure the support that we receive by generous kiwis in New Zealand and across the world is going to the right place.
“You can’t do this from a desk in New Zealand, you can’t do this by reading a report. You have to get on the ground and see it yourself.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Of note is that so far all Russian attacks on train junctions were reported to have happened at night time.
As Russia has already interrupted the train lines west of Kramatorsk, and thereby stopped resupplies to it, it has no need to attack Kramatorsk station at all.
It is therefore almost assured that it was a Ukrainian missile that today hit Kramatorsk station. It was either aimed badly, went off course or was intentionally aimed at it for propaganda purposes. (The ‘for the children’ marking in Russian on the booster section may point to the later cause.)
We have no further information for us to decide which is the case.
The gruesome atrocities, posted on social media by groups like the Nazi Azov Regiment and the Georgian Militia, are a direct result of the UK and US pushing for more militarism in Ukraine, endorsing hostility towards Russians and extending the conflict by pouring the arms into the hands of these very groups.
The long standing US/UK/NATO project of destabilising the region with the purpose of bringing down the Russian state has actually brought about conditions in which these horrific incidents can occur.
I see clearly that no-one can support the West in the Ukraine conflict without supporting the war there and the ghastly consequences of that war. It is not good enough for liberals and so called socialists to bleat the “aid” mantra when part of that package is “lethal aid”!
The most powerful empire that has ever existed, which is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and continuously works to destroy any nation who challenges its global dominion, claims that it is in a global power struggle against “authoritarianism”.
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Russia will lose the propaganda war on every front, at least in the west. It will lose every narrative dispute about alleged war crimes in the court of public opinion, whether those allegations are true or not. The US military is beatable, the US dollar is beatable, but the US propaganda machine is an unstoppable juggernaut.
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Can’t believe we’ve been watching people lose their social media accounts for posting “misinformation” this whole time only for US officials to come right out and admit that they’ve been running an active disinformation campaign where they knowingly circulate lies about Russia.
A random guy says something on social media that differs from mainstream consensus? That’s misinformation; he needs to be de-platformed. The most powerful government in the world uses the most powerful media institutions in the world to circulate disinfo? That’s just fine normal stuff.
It’s actually really disturbing that US empire managers now feel comfortable just leaking the fact that they are blatantly lying to the public to win a psywar against Putin. It means they’re confident they can get the public to consciously consent to their rulers lying to them for their own good.
Three U.S. officials tell NBC News that U.S. claims based on “intelligence” on Russia were made up simply to “preempt the Russians”
One U.S. official: “It doesn’t have to be solid intelligence when we talk about it..” pic.twitter.com/Yv9udq05ex
Don’t take life advice from unhappy people, don’t take creative advice from people who don’t create, don’t take career advice from people whose careers aren’t where you want yours to be, don’t take advice on the Ukraine war from people who supported the Iraq invasion.
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People tell me, “Talk to Ukrainians!”
No matter how many Ukrainians I talk to, it will still be an objective fact that the US government and western media have a well-documented history of lying about every war, and that wanting direct hot warfare between nuclear superpowers is fucking insane.
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It’s amazing how many arguments I run into that essentially boil down to “Your opinion is Russian.” It’s like the word “Russian” stopped referring to a nation and its population and now refers to some sort of metaphysical quality of one’s soul, similar to the word “Satanic”.
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The other day a longtime lefty follower called me a bootlicker for saying the US military should not directly attack the Russian military in Ukraine. Opposing US military interventionism and World War 3 is bootlicking now. War propaganda is turning people’s brains into soup.
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The agenda to create a one world government is not some hidden conspiracy involving secret societies and shadowy figures with Jewish surnames. The US empire is openly working to unite the planet under a single power structure which effectively functions as one government.
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Washington DC is the hub of the imperial political machine, Virginia is the hub of the imperial war machine, California is the hub of the imperial propaganda machine.
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In the end we’re just a confused species who entered into an awkward developmental transition phase because our brains evolved too fast.
We wound up with the ability to think abstract thoughts but without the wisdom to refrain from identifying with them. With the ability to invent nuclear weapons but without the wisdom to refrain from building them. The ability to conquer our ecosystem without the wisdom to refrain from doing so. To write vast tomes of philosophy that contain not one line telling us how to feel content in our own bodies, on our own home planet. To construct entire belief systems that are utterly useless for living in harmony with what is.
I’m sure birds and whales went through awkward evolutionary transition phases as well before they turned into the graceful flyers and swimmers they are today. Their early ancestors probably looked downright ridiculous for a while. It’s just that their transitions didn’t involve giant prefrontal cortices in their skulls that make childbirth painful and could easily give rise to the end of all life on earth.
The birth of a human baby is difficult due to the size of our enormous, rapidly evolved brains relative to the more slowly evolved pelvic bone. The birth of a sane humanity will be difficult for similar reasons.
I do believe we have the ability to make the jump from this awkward transition phase to become a truly conscious species. But it looks like if we make it, it’s going to be by the skin of our omnivore teeth.
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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.
Controversy gripped the Greek political scene on April 7 as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was invited by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to speak before Greece’s parliament in a virtual address, appeared alongside two fighters of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. Although the Greek government and its media arms attempted to whitewash the Azov Battalion in the first weeks of the war in Ukraine, which failed, it actually ended up being counterproductive as it made Greek civilians aware to the fact that the neo-Nazi group were oppressing the 100,000+ ethnic Greeks living in Mariupol and its surrounding villages like Sartana.
Zelensky’s invitation to speak to the Greek Parliament was already mired in controversy as the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), left-wing MeRA25 and right-wing Hellenic Solution boycotted parliament that day. The appearance of the Azov fighters prompted MPs from the official opposition SYRIZA to storm out of parliament, despite the party initially being enthusiastic for Zelensky to speak before parliamentarians.
With Greek media and opposition parties, even those who supported Zelensky, blowing up at the appearance of the Azov Battalion, it took the Greek government almost three hours to try and distance themselves from the debacle, with government spokesperson Yiannis Economou saying: “including a message from an Azov Battalion member was wrong and inappropriate.
For their part, Mitsotakis and President Katerina Sakellaropoulou highlighted Zelensky’s speech but made no reference to the appearance of the Azov Battalion. SYRIZA, MeRA25 and fellow left-wing party KINAL (third largest party in Greece) are demanding explanations from the ruling New Democracy government. Even former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of the New Democracy party characterised the speech from the Azov Battalion fighter as “a big mistake.”
This scandal is now being moved to the forthcoming Conference of [Party] Presidents, and the opposition are seeking explanations as to whether the government was aware or agreed with Zelensky to give the floor to Azov Battalion fighters.
The appearance of the Azov Battalion in the Greek parliament should not be surprising when the Greek mainstream media were whitewashing the group to the point of even lionising them in interviews and claiming they had “nothing to do with the Ukrainian government” despite being a unit of the Republican Guard, which falls under the command of the Interior Ministry.
In addition, Manolis Androulakis, the last EU diplomat to evacuate Mariupol, deliberately lied to the Greek public and claimed in an interview that the “Azov do not kill their own”; i.e., civilians. This not only contradicts all available evidence from Mariupol civilians themselves, including from ethnic Greeks, but even contradicts Western liberal human rights organizations who have documented Azov Battalion crimes since 2014.With a Greek diplomat and mainstream media whitewashing the Azov Battalion, it is little wonder why Zelensky had the audacity to play a video message from the two Azov Battalion fighters claiming to be ethnic Greeks from Mariupol.
One of the biggest questions being raised in Greece at the moment is why did the two Azov Battalion fighters appear in Zelensky’s virtual address to the Greek Parliament to begin with when the Ukrainian president has always appeared alone during his tour of receiving the applause and adulation of European parliaments.
One of the supposed ethnic Greek fighters of the Azov Battalion identified himself as Mikhail. The other kept his face hidden. Speculation is rife whether the Azov Battalion member, who spoke in Ukrainian to the Greek parliament, is actually an ethnic Greek or not – but at this time it is impossible to verify, and more importantly, irrelevant to the fact that the Greek government has exposed itself to a massive humiliation at a time when its popularity is already dropping due to the declining economic situation and decision to send weapons to Ukraine.
As the Azov Battalion has the disdain of all Greeks – from liberals to the Far Right and the Far Left, except from the most radical neoliberal circles, it can be assumed that Zelensky attempted to foster a good image for the neo-Nazi group. The beginning of the war in Ukraine saw the pro-government Greek media engage in a massive whitewashing of the Azov Battalion, but as the weeks passed on, more and more testimonies from Greeks in Mariupol revealed the suffering they had endured under the Kiev regime and the Azov Battalion.
More revealing, ethnic Greeks from Essentuki, Chechnya and other parts of Russia were joining the Russian military to fight against the Azov Battalion in Mariupol, especially after news filtered that one ethnic Greek in the Russian military was killed, public opinion towards the Azov Battalion began to sway significantly. It can only be assumed that Zelensky attempted to restore the image of the Azov Battalion by presenting their own alleged ethnic Greek fighters.
What began as an exercise to tick off the Greek Parliament’s participation in Zelensky’s tour of Europe’s Parliaments, has now turned into a massive debacle. As Greece has a special responsibility for the 100,000+ Greeks in Mariupol, the country should not just blindly follow Western interests who have been silent about Donbass’ suffering since 2014. But alas, as New Democracy serve the interests of NATO and the West rather than Greek citizens and diaspora Greeks, it will once again have to deal with another blow to its already diminishing popularity.
Ukrainian and Western media outlets have accused Russian troops of killing civilians in Bucha and other towns around Ukraine’s capital, Kiev in the past month. Excerpts of phone calls obtained by RT, however, appear to contradict some of the allegations and seem to paint a different picture of the situation on the ground.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed, on Thursday, that the situation in settlement of Borodyanka is “much more disastrous” than that reported in Bucha, about 25 kilometers (15.5 miles), to the southeast. Moscow has strongly denied the allegations and accused Ukraine, and its Western backers of trying to “frame” its personnel.
RT was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the recordings. In what appears to be an excerpt from a satellite phone call, an alleged reporter identified only as ‘Simon’ tells his colleagues he visited Borodyanka and found that “there’s no bodies in the streets at all,” contrary to what he was led to expect.
The town has been “shelled to pieces,” he outlines, “but there’s no evidence of any rights abuses here at all.” Simon claims that he and his crew interviewed multiple residents who said the Russian troops had been very friendly and gave them food and water and other supplies. “And we got quotes on camera for that,” he adds.
“I don’t know what the prosecutor was talking about, but we have seen nothing like that at all. It’s a completely different picture,” he continues, adding that a French journalist may have seen the body of someone killed by shelling, but “no executions.”
The alleged reporter ends the call by saying he was going back to Bucha, to “try and find some more evidence of extrajudicial killings there, but there’s no sign of any of that here.”
Ukraine accused Russia of murdering over 400 civilians in Bucha before retreating from the town near Kiev last week. The US and its allies have backed Kiev’s claims, citing them as reasons to impose more sanctions against Russia.
Moscow has categorically denied the accusations, saying that Russian troops pulled out of the town on March 30, and that claims of killings appeared only four days later – after Ukrainian security forces and TV cameras arrived in the town.
Another recording obtained by RT seems to depict a conversation between two Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) officials. The SBU is the local successor agency to the Soviet KGB.
They discuss the situation in Kukhari, a town about 60 kilometers (37 miles) northwest of Bucha, and seem to contradict the prevailing media narrative coming from Kiev and the NATO capitals.
“From March 24 to April 3, after we pushed the ‘orcs’ away from here,” says a person only identified as Sergey Anatolyevich, speaking to someone named Lesogor and using a derogatory Ukrainian term for Russians. “After the unit that pushed them out moved on, the territorial defense came from Malin … and marauded during that time. Looted everything they could. Broke down doors, everything. Safes were opened, cars were stolen. They stuffed the cars with everything worth anything and took it away,” he adds.
“It turns out the ‘Moskals’ took nothing, but ours went in and looted everything,” Sergey Anatolyevich adds, using another derogatory term for Russians. Malin is a nearby town southwest of Kukhari, held by the Ukrainian military.
When Lesogor asks which unit was looting, Sergey Anatolyevich replies that no one really knows. “Some say Volhynian, others say someone else,” he says, referring to a region in western Ukraine.
Moscow attacked the neighboring state in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements signed in 2014, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French brokered Minsk Protocol was designed to regularize the status of the regions within the Ukrainian state.
Russia has now demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two regions by force.
It was big news that Russia was stripped of its seat in the Un human Rights Council.
In March 2014 in one of my first blog posts I argued for making better use of the possibility to suspend member states (be it in the context of reprisals): “The resolution establishing the new Human Rights Council – replacing the previous Commission – states that “members elected to the Council shall uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights.” And one of the novelties touted was that the General Assembly, via a two-thirds majority, can suspend the rights and privileges of any Council member that it decides has persistently committed gross and systematic violations of human rights during its term of membership.
The chilling effect that reprisals can have – especially when met with impunity – is potentially extremely damaging for the whole UN system of human rights procedures and will undo the slow but steady process of the last decades. Taken together with the above-mentioned seriousness of the aggravating character of reprisals, a powerful coalition of international and regional NGOs could well start public hearings with the purpose of demanding that States that commit reprisal be suspended.
UN members voted on Thursday 7 April to strip Russia from its seat at the Human Rights Council, over alleged civilian killings in the region around Kyiv, Ukraine. The proposal, presented at a UN General Assembly emergency session in New York, was backed by 93 countries. Russia, China, Belarus, Syria and Iran were among the 24 countries to vote against, while 58 countries, including India, Brazil and South Africa abstained.
Introducing the US-led resolution, Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, Sergiy Kyslytsya, told fellow members that suspending Russia’s right to sit on the Council, was “not an option, but a duty”.
This is the first time a permanent member of the UN Security Council has been removed from any UN body.
Countries react
Taking the floor, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba, echoed Russia’s comments and said the move was politically driven. Belarus dubbed it an attempt to “demonise” Russia. Warning that they would abstain, several countries including India, Egypt, Senegal, Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, argued it was too soon to vote on such a proposal and that investigations into the allegations should be conducted beforehand.
In a statement published on its website, Russia’s permanent mission in Geneva called the decision “an unlawful and politically motivated step, the sole purpose of which – to exert pressure on a sovereign state that pursues an independent domestic and foreign policy”.
Russia’s deputy ambassador, Gennady Kuzmin, said after the vote that Russia had already withdrawn from the council before the assembly took action, apparently in expectation of the result. By withdrawing, council spokesman Rolando Gomez said Russia avoided being deprived of observer status at the rights body.
The UK is considering supplying more military equipment to Ukraine. This time it is armoured vehicles, as the war moves towards what foreign secretary Liz Truss has said is a “new and different” phase. And she may be right. But a word of caution here. History tells us many things and one of them is this: weapons aren’t static. They move, they vanish, and they reappear – often in the hands of people that shouldn’t have them.
Sierra Leone
In 1999, following an intervention in Sierra Leone, eight soldiers from the Royal Irish Regiment were captured by a violent militia named the West Side Boys. They were eventually rescued by troops from The Parachute Regiment and the SAS – one of the latter was killed in the raid.
And what did they find in the militia’s ruined camp? A British Self Loading Rifle (SLR), once standard issue to the UK military, which had been used in the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry in 1972. Declared destroyed many years before, the rifle had somehow found its way into the hands of an obscure West African insurgent group. By what route, nobody seems to know. But it shows us how arms are much harder to keep track of then we might think. It was reportedly identified by its serial number.
As one of the officers in charge of the rescue operation said in his subsequent memoir:
It was used on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972 when 13 protestors had been shot — and it had been declared destroyed when the Saville Inquiry into the shootings had asked for it.
This was a single weapon. But there are many examples of complete arsenals going missing – and turning up where they shouldn’t.
Gaddafi’s armouries
Let’s take a look at the effects of NATO’s 2011 war in Libya. As early as 2013, experts and NGOs were reporting that military weapons from Gaddafi’s armouries were making their way across the Sahel. For example, arms were transported all the way to Mali, where an insurgency still rages fuelled by Libyan military hardware.
A UN panel warned that the “proliferation of weapons from Libya continues at an alarming rate”:
Cases, both proven and under investigation, of illicit transfers from Libya in violation of the embargo cover more than 12 countries and include heavy and light weapons, including man-portable air defense systems, small arms and related ammunition and explosives and mines.
But the US also has a habit of losing substantial amounts of arms. In fact, it lost billions of dollars worth just last year.
The Taliban
The West finally pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021. Or, more accurately, they cut and run, leaving the country they had occupied for 20 years to the Taliban. But they didn’t take everything with them.
The figures are hard to pin down but the implications are clear. As The BBC reported in August 2021:
Between 2003 and 2016, the US unloaded a huge amount of military hardware on the Afghan forces it fought alongside: 358,530 rifles of different makes, more than 64,000 machine guns, 25,327 grenade launchers and 22,174 Humvees (all-terrain vehicles), according to the US Government Accountability Report.
This is before we count transport aircraft, attack helicopters, and fixed-wing aircraft. Some estimates of the value of the equipment now in the hands of the Taliban run into billions of dollars.
Daesh in Iraq
The spectacular advance of Daesh (ISIS/Isil) in Iraq and Syria in 2014 captured the world’s attention. Parts of the Iraqi army simply collapsed. It left behind US-supplied military equipment which the insurgent group then commandeered. By 2015, reports were suggesting that Daesh had even acquired US tanks and armoured personnel carriers, as well as Humvees and artillery pieces.
In 2017, Newsweek reported that large parts of the ISIS arsenal had been been taken from US shipments to other rebel groups In Syria.
Newsweek cited a report from the NGO Conflict Armament Research:
The United States and Saudi Arabia supplied most of this materiel without authorization, apparently to Syrian opposition forces. This diverted materiel, recovered from IS forces, comprises exclusively Warsaw Pact–caliber weapons and ammunition, purchased by the United States and Saudi Arabia from European Union (EU) member states in Eastern Europe.
doubling our support with a further 6,000 missiles, including next-generation light anti-tank weapons, and Javelin anti-tank weapons.
She continued:
We are equipping our Ukrainian friends with anti-aircraft Starstreak missiles. We are also strengthening NATO’s eastern flank, deploying troops to Bulgaria, and doubling the numbers of troops in Poland and Estonia.
Flooding Ukraine with arms and military equipment carries a certain appeal for a particular kind of politician. Governments can be seen to be doing something. Funnelling arms seems like a good option which sits below the threshold of nuclear escalation.
Post-war
But that does not mean there aren’t risks. And Ukraine is different to Iraq and Afghanistan in an important respect. In the latter countries weapons fell to people who they weren’t intended for. In Ukraine, evidence suggests we are placing weapons into the hands of units like the Azov Battalion. A unit which contains card-carrying Neo-Nazis and is integrated into the national military.
This is not an argument against a degree of military support. I, for one, recognise the right of Ukrainians and other occupied people to resist. But the character of the Ukrainian resistance is complex and multi-faceted. When the war ends, and we all hope that will be soon, what happens to the weapons? Do they come to be a decisive factor in a post-war Ukraine?
When we decide to send additional arms to a war-zone, we need to think about repercussions. Because more often than not these decisions come back to haunt us down the line.
A Russian missile attack on Friday reportedly killed more than 30 people at a train station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, where civilians gathered to flee escalating violence in the region.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the regional governor of Donetsk, said in a statement that “thousands of people were at the station during the missile strike, as residents of Donetsk region are being evacuated to safer regions of Ukraine.”
Horrific photos and video footage from the scene show bodies and luggage strewn on the pavement and emergency officials working to transport those wounded by the strike, which came as Russia faced growing accusations of war crimes. One photo appeared to show the missile that landed near the train station.
The Financial Timesreported that the Russian Defense Ministry “initially said it had used high-precision rockets to attack three Ukrainian railway stations in the Donbas that it claimed were hosting ‘Ukrainian reserves’ armaments and military equipment.’”
“But after the scale of the civilian casualties became clear, Russia denied any involvement in the attack, which it said was a ‘provocation’ that ‘has nothing to do with reality,’” FT added. “The defense ministry said: ‘Russia’s forces had no plans to fire on targets in Kramatorsk on April 8.’ It claimed that the missiles used in the attack were used solely by Ukrainian forces.”
In the wake of the attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russian forces of “cynically destroying the civilian population” because they are “lacking the strength and courage to stand up to us on the battlefield.”
“This is an evil that has no limits,” he added. “And if it is not punished, it will never stop.”
The latest reported atrocity comes as Western officials say that Russia, having failed to seize Kyiv and other major cities, is shifting its focus to eastern Ukraine, where Moscow-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces have been fighting for years.
In recent days, Ukrainian officials have implored residents in the eastern region to evacuate ahead of potential Russian offensive. According to the Washington Post, local officials on Wednesday “reported renewed Russian shelling in the eastern Donetsk region, killing at least five people, and as many as 10 high-rise apartment buildings on fire in Severodonetsk, in the neighboring Luhansk district.”
Since Russia launched its invasion in late February, more than 11 million Ukrainians — around a quarter of the pre-war population — have been forced to flee their homes to escape airstrikes and ground fighting.
On Thursday, NATO member countries agreed to provide Ukraine with more advanced weaponry despite mounting concerns that Western arms shipments are hampering the ongoing peace talks and potentially prolonging the war. Weeks of tense negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian delegations have yet to produce a lasting ceasefire or a broader breakthrough, despite some reports of progress from both sides.
Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, toldSky News ahead of the train station attack that “we’re trying to build up a very, very uneasy [and] very, very difficult, compromise.”
“Many Ukrainians are not happy with the attempts of the government to find some ground with Russia,” said Prystaiko. “People, in most of the cases, don’t even understand how can we sit at the table with those who are just killing each and every day our people. But that’s the nature of any war. They will have to come to an end and we will.”
This story has been updated to include new comments from the Russian Defense Ministry.
Margaret Flowers and Joe Lombardo of the United National Antiwar Coalition host a conversation with Scott Ritter regarding the situation in Ukraine and its broader implications for the realignment of global power, security and economic structures. Ritter discusses the provocations that led Russia to launch a military operation, the humanitarian situation, including what happened in Bucha, how Russia is winning, and the propaganda being used to build popular support for war.
Scott Ritter was the UN weapons inspector who, during the Iraq War told the truth that we found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He became outspoken about this, which undercut the main reason the US used to invade and occupy Iraq. As with the Iraq War, Scott Ritter is outspoken about the present war in Ukraine, in which we are again hearing US lies about the reasons for, and the events happening in the Ukraine War.
It is hard to fathom the depths of our time, the terrible wars, and the confounding information that whizzes by without much wisdom. Certainties that flood the airwaves and the internet are easy to come by, but are they derived from an honest assessment of the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russian banks (part of a broader United States sanctions policy that now afflicts approximately thirty countries)? Do they acknowledge the horrific reality of hunger that has increased due to this war and the sanctions? It appears that much of the ‘certainties’ are caught up in the ‘Cold War mentality’, which views humanity as irreversibly divided on two opposing sides. However, this is not the case; most countries are struggling to craft a non-aligned approach to the US-imposed ‘new Cold War’. Russia’s conflict with Ukraine is a symptom of broader geopolitical battles that have been waged over decades.
On 26 March, US President Joe Biden defined some certainties from his perspective at the Royal Castle in Warsaw (Poland), calling the war in Ukraine ‘a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force’. These binaries are wholly a fantasy of the White House, whose attitude towards ‘rules-based order’ is not rooted in the UN Charter but in ‘rules’ that the US pronounces. Biden’s antinomies culminated in one policy objective: ‘For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power’, he said, meaning Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. The narrowness of Biden’s approach to the conflict in Ukraine has led to a public call for regime change in Russia, a country of 146 million people whose government possesses 6,255 nuclear warheads. With the US’s violent history of controlling leadership in several countries, reckless statements about regime change cannot go unanswered. They must be universally contested.
The principal axis of Russia’s war is not actually Ukraine, though it bears the brunt of it today. It is whether Europe can be permitted to forge projects independently of the US and its North Atlantic agenda. Between the fall of the USSR (1991) and the world financial crisis (2007–08), Russia, the new post-Soviet republics (including Ukraine), and other Eastern European states sought to integrate into the European system, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Russia joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace process in 1994, and seven Eastern European countries (including Estonia and Latvia that border Russia) joined NATO in 2004. During the global financial crisis, it became evident that integration into the European project would not be fully possible because of vulnerabilities in Europe.
At the Munich Security Conference in February 2007, President Vladimir Putin challenged the US’s attempt to create a unipolar world. ‘What is a unipolar world?’, Putin asked. ‘No matter how we beautify this term, it means one single centre of power, one single centre of force, and one single master’. Referring to US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 (which he had criticised at that time) and the US’s illegal Iraq War in 2003, Putin said, ‘Nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law’. Later, at the 2008 NATO Summit in Bucharest (Romania), Putin warned about the dangers of NATO’s eastward expansion, lobbying against the entry of Georgia and Ukraine into the military alliance. The next year, Russia partnered with Brazil, China, India, and South Africa to form the BRICS bloc as an alternative to Western-driven globalisation.
Yang Fudong (China), Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest, Part IV, 2006.
For generations, Europe has relied on imports of natural gas and crude oil first from the USSR and then from Russia. This dependence on Russia has increased as European countries have sought to end their use of coal and nuclear energy. At the same time, Poland (2015) and Italy (2019) signed onto the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Between 2012 and 2019, the Chinese government also formed the 17+1 Initiative, linking seventeen central and Eastern European countries in the BRI project. The integration of Europe into Eurasia opened the door for its foreign policy independence. But this was not permitted. The entire ‘global NATO’ feint – articulated in 2008 by NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer – was part of preventing this development.
Fearful of the great changes occurring in Eurasia, the US acted on commercial and diplomatic/military fronts. Commercially, the US tried to substitute European reliance on Russian natural gas by promising to supply Europe with Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from both US suppliers and Gulf Arab states. Since LNG is far more expensive than piped gas, this was not an enticing commercial deal. Challenges to Chinese advancements in high-tech solutions – particularly in telecommunications, robotics, and green energy – could not be sustained by Silicon Valley firms, so the US escalated two other instruments of force: first, the use of War on Terror rhetoric to ban Chinese firms (claiming security and privacy considerations) and second, diplomatic and military manoeuvres to challenge Russia’s sense of stability.
Sadamasa Motonaga (Japan), Red and Yellow, 1963.
The US’s strategy was not entirely successful. European countries could see that there was no effective substitute for both Russian energy and Chinese investment. Banning Huawei’s telecommunications tools and preventing NordStream 2 from certification would only hurt the European people. This was clear. But what was not so clear was that the US concurrently began to dismantle the architecture that held in place confidence that no country would begin a nuclear war. In 2002, the US unilaterally abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and, in 2018–19, they left the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. European countries played a key role in establishing the INF Treaty in 1987 through the ‘nuclear freeze’ movement, but the abandonment of the treaty in 2018–19 was met with relative silence from Europeans. In 2018, US National Security Strategy shifted from its focus on the Global War on Terror to the prevention of the ‘re-emergence of long-term, strategic competition’ from ‘near-peer rivals’ such as China and Russia. At the same time, European countries began to carry out ‘freedom of navigation’ exercises through NATO in the Baltic Sea, the Arctic Sea, and South China Sea, sending threatening messages to China and Russia. These moves effectively brought China and Russia very close together.
Russia indicated on several occasions that it was aware of these tactics and would defend its borders and its region with force. When the US intervened in Syria in 2012 and Ukraine in 2014, these moves threatened Russia with the loss of its two main warm water ports (in Latakia, Syria and Sebastopol, Crimea), which is why Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and intervened militarily in Syria in 2015. These actions suggested that Russia would continue to use its military to protect what it sees as its national interests. Ukraine then shut down the North Crimean canal that brought the peninsula 85% of its water, forcing Russia to supply the region with water over the Kerch Strait Bridge, built at enormous cost between 2016 and 2019. Russia did not need ‘security guarantees’ from Ukraine, or even from NATO, but it sought them from the United States. There was fear in Moscow that the US would place intermediate range nuclear missiles around Russia.
Evgeny Trotsky (Russia), Rest, 2016.
In light of this recent history, contradictions rattle the responses of Germany, Japan, and India, amongst others. Each of these countries needs Russian natural gas and crude oil. Both Germany and Japan have sanctioned Russian banks, but neither German Chancellor Olaf Scholz nor Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida can cut energy imports. India, despite being part of the US-backed Quad along with Japan, has refused to join the condemnation of Russia and the sanctions on its banking sector. These countries have to manage the contradictions of our time and weigh up the uncertainties. No state should accept the so-called ‘certainties’ that reinforce Cold War dynamics, nor should they neglect the dangerous outcomes of externally influenced regime change and chaos.
It is always a good idea to reflect on the quiet charm of the poems of Tōge Sankichi, who watched the atomic bomb fall on his native Hiroshima in 1945, and then later joined the Japanese Communist Party to fight for peace. In his ‘Call to Action’, Sankichi wrote:
stretch out those grotesque arms
to the many similar arms
and, if it seems like that flash might fall again,
hold up the accursed sun:
even now it is not too late.
British politician and broadcaster George Galloway has made headlines in the UK with his threat to press legal action against Twitter for designating his account “Russia state-affiliated media”, a label which will now show up under his name every time he posts anything on the platform.
“Dear @TwitterSupport I am not ‘Russian State Affiliated media’,” reads a viral tweet by Galloway. “I work for NO Russian media. I have 400,000 followers. I’m the leader of a British political party and spent nearly 30 years in the British parliament. If you do not remove this designation I will take legal action.”
Galloway argues that while his broadcasts have previously been aired by Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik, because those outlets have been shut down in the UK by Ofcom and by European Union sanctions he can no longer be platformed by them even if he wants to. If you accept this argument, then it looks like Twitter is essentially using the “state-affiliated media” designation as a marker of who Galloway is as a person, rather than as a marker of what he actually does.
Dear @TwitterSupport I am not “Russian State Affiliated media”. I work for NO #Russian media. I have 400,000 followers. I’m the leader of a British political party and spent nearly 30 years in the British parliament. If you do not remove this designation I will take legal action.
Regardless of whether you agree with Galloway’s argument or not, this all overlooks the innate absurdity of a government-tied social media corporation like Twitter labeling other people “state-affiliated media”. Twitter is state-affiliated media. It has been working in steadily increasing intimacy with the United States government since the US empire began pressuring Silicon Valley platforms to regulate content in support of establishment power structures following the 2016 election.
In 2020 Twitter was one of the many Silicon Valley corporations who coordinated directly with US government agencies to determine what content should be censored in order to “secure” the presidential election. In 2021 Twitter announced that it was orchestrating mass purges of foreign accounts on the advice of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), which receives funding from many government institutions including the US State Department.
“ASPI is the propaganda arm of the CIA and the U.S. government,” veteran Australian diplomat Bruce Haigh told Mintpress News earlier this year. “It is a mouthpiece for the Americans. It is funded by the American government and American arms manufacturers. Why it is allowed to sit at the center of the Australian government when it has so much foreign funding, I don’t know. If it were funded by anybody else, it would not be where it is at.”
Twitter has also coordinated its mass purges of accounts with a cybersecurity firm called FireEye, which this 2019 Sputnik article by journalist Morgan Artyukhina explains was “founded in 2004 with money from the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel.”
[Thread] Twitter is partnering with a crazy, hawkish, US-govt & arms industry funded think tank to regulate false info online.
This should be alarming to anyone who cares about truth, free speech or peace, as my new @MintPressNews investigation explains:https://t.co/8Wi11qfpf3
It has been an established pattern for years that whenever Twitter reports that it has purged thousands of accounts which it suspects of inauthentic behavior on behalf of foreign governments, you know it’s never going to be accounts from US-aligned countries like the UK, Israel or Australia, but consistently from US-targeted nations like Russia, China, Venezuela or Iran. You can choose to believe that’s because the US only aligns with saintly governments who would never dream of engaging in unethical online behavior, but that would be an infantile position which defies all knownevidence.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Twitter has been aggressively boosting US narratives about the war by frequently showing users a Twitter Topic without their having subscribed to it which is full of imperial spinmeisters, including The Kyiv Independent with all its shady CIA-affiliated origins.
Twitter also promotes US narratives about the war by keeping a “War in Ukraine” section perpetually on the right-hand side of the screen for desktop users, which runs stories that are wildly biased toward the US/NATO/Ukraine alliance. There was a full day last month where any time I checked Twitter on my laptop I was informed that “Russia continues to strike civilian targets in Kyiv and across Ukraine.” The claim that Russia had been “targeting” civilians during that time was dismissed as nonsense shortly thereafter by US military experts speaking to Newsweek.
This is the message desktop Twitter users are receiving at the top right of their screen. We talk a lot about Silicon Valley's role in facilitating US government censorship, but we should probably talk a lot more about its role in facilitating US government propaganda as well. pic.twitter.com/PL9ms8gVU7
When the invasion began Twitter also started actively minimizing the number of people who see Russian media content, saying that it is “reducing the content’s visibility” and “taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter”. It also began placing warning labels on all Russia-backed media and delivering a pop-up message informing you that you are committing wrongthink if you try to share or even ‘like’ a post linking to such outlets on the platform.
Twitter also began placing the label “Russia state-affiliated media” on every tweet made by the personal accounts of employees of Russian media platforms, baselessly giving the impression that the dissident opinions tweeted by those accounts are paid Kremlin content and not simply their own legitimate perspectives. This labeling has led to complaints of online harassment as propaganda-addled dupes seek out targets to act out their media-instilled hatred of all things Russian.
As more and more people find themselves branded with the “Russia state-affiliated media” label, Twitter has concurrently announced that it will be hiding the visibility of any account that wears it, announcing on Tuesday that the platform “will not amplify or recommend government accounts belonging to states that limit access to free information and are engaged in armed interstate conflict.” Which is a bit rich, considering the fact that the US does both of those things.
“This means these accounts won’t be amplified or recommended to people on Twitter, including across the Home Timeline, Explore, Search, and other places on the service. We will first apply this policy to government accounts belonging to Russia,” Twitter said.
This diminished visibility has been verified by people who’ve been slapped with the “Russia state-affiliated media” label. So you can understand why imperial narrative managers whose job is to quash dissent want that designation applied to as many critics of the US empire as possible.
Incredible. It appears every account hit w/ the “Russian state-affiliated media” label is not only shadow banned from Twitter but banned from appearing in searches by new users—all in the name of protecting free speech and democracy.@HelenaVillarRT@rachblevins@afshinrattansipic.twitter.com/U9xb78U1FZ
If you are curious why the “state-affiliated media” label has not been applied to Twitter accounts associated with government-funded outlets of the US and its allies like NPR and the BBC, it’s because Twitter has explicitly created a loophole to exclude those outlets from such a designation.
“State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy,” Twitter’s rules say.
Which is of course an absurd and arbitrary distinction. Whether you like George Galloway or not, I think anyone who’s familiar with his personality would agree that if anyone ever tried to take away his editorial independence and tell him what he is or isn’t permitted to say, it would take an entire team of surgeons to remove Galloway’s footwear from their personal anatomy. Many people who’ve worked with Russian media have said they’ve never been told what to say, and Galloway is surely one of them.
The audacity of a social media company which works hand-in-glove with the most powerful government on earth to go around branding people “state-affiliated media” is appalling. Twitter is state-affiliated media. It is an instrument of imperial narrative control, just like all the other billionaire Silicon Valley megacorporations of immense influence. Putin could only dream of having state media that effective.
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It is hard to fathom the depths of our time, the terrible wars, and the confounding information that whizzes by without much wisdom. Certainties that flood the airwaves and the internet are easy to come by, but are they derived from an honest assessment of the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russian banks (part of a broader United States sanctions policy that now afflicts approximately thirty countries)? Do they acknowledge the horrific reality of hunger that has increased due to this war and the sanctions? It appears that much of the ‘certainties’ are caught up in the ‘Cold War mentality’, which views humanity as irreversibly divided on two opposing sides. However, this is not the case; most countries are struggling to craft a non-aligned approach to the US-imposed ‘new Cold War’. Russia’s conflict with Ukraine is a symptom of broader geopolitical battles that have been waged over decades.
The United Nations General Assembly voted 93-24 with 58 abstentions to drop the Russian Federation from membership on the UN Human Rights Council, based on allegations and grisly videos and photos appearing to show execution-style slayings of civilians in Ukraine by Russian troops.
While there are calls for independent investigations into those allegations, the US and NATO member state governments have been pushing the claim that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine including the major war crime of invading another country, the unasked question in the US media is: Why hasn’t the US been kicked out of the Human Rights Council for similar war crimes that aren’t at all allegations, but are well documented fact? Why indeed, for all the accusations that Russian President Vladimir Putin is himself a war criminal responsible for all these crimes, haven’t a number of US presidents still living been accused of war crimes?
As war rages across Ukraine, farmers have been busy towing captured Russian tanks, artillery, and downed helicopters. In addition to their new calling, is the planting of the spring crop.
It’s another reminder that Russia’s illegal invasion is occurring in one of the world’s major bread baskets, with consequences for food security in Asia and beyond.
What’s at stake? In 2021, Ukraine was the third largest producer of wheat, exporting 60 million of its 80 million-ton harvest. That accounted for 17 percent of global exports. In addition, Ukraine was the second largest producer of barley, the fourth largest producer of corn, and the largest producer of sunflower oil.
Both Ukraine and Russia are major players in global markets. But they have a greater role in the developing world and in humanitarian disasters: Half of the World Food Program’s grain is purchased in the Ukraine. In 2021, Ukraine exported U.S. $2.9 billion in wheat toAfrica.
Since the war began the price of wheat, which was already at a historic high, has increased by30 percent.
Ukraine, along with Russia, is an important provider of grain and food staples to Southeast Asia. In 2020, Ukraine exported $708 million to Indonesia, accounting for 25 percent of imports; $92 million to Malaysia, 23 percent of imports; and $131 million to Thailand, around 17 percent of imports.
But Indonesia and the Philippines – Southeast Asia’s most food insecure nations – will be hit particularly hard. Almost 75 percent of Indonesia’s imports from Ukraine consists of cereals, including wheat. In 2021, Indonesia imported 3.07 million tons of wheat from Ukraine. In 2020, Ukraine was the single largest source of grain for the most populous Southeast Asian nation, and the largest in 2021.
And in both Indonesia and the Philippines, demand for wheat is growing.
According to the Philippine statistics agency, in 2021 imports of cereals increased by nearly 48 percent over 2020. In Indonesia, flour consumption increased by almost5 percentin 2021.
At the same time, the populations of the neighboring countries are growing.
Indonesia’s population is increasing by 1.1 percent per annum and the Philippines’ at 1.3 percent – making it the fastest growing population in Southeast Asia. In both countries, food production has never kept pace with population growth. And both governments are very sensitive to inflation in food commodities.
Fighting spreads to farm fields
Meanwhile, in the middle of Ukraine’s sowing season, the war has shifted from north of Kyiv, to the eastern part of the country. The fighting is now taking place in some of Ukraine’s most productive farmland.
In places where it is not too dangerous to farm, the physical infrastructure has been destroyed. Able-bodied men and women are serving in the military or territorial defense forces. The Ukrainian government is expecting a30 percent declinein agricultural production this year because of the war. Dire warnings by the government suggest that exports in 2022 could plummet to 15 to 20 percent of 2021’s exports.
Even if the farmers are able to grow crops, there are questions about theirability to get the grains to global markets. The Russians razed Mariupol and have devastated the physical infrastructure and depopulated most of the other of Ukraine’s ports on the Sea of Asimov. Odessa is the last major port that Russia has not attacked, but Russian forces are blockading it.
For the time being, Ukrainian grain exports are only leaving the country by train or truck, but if the Russians target logistic nodes in western Ukraine even those exports could be dented. Local farmers are also vulnerable to a liquidity crisis, unable to get the loans they need to cover operations in the first half of the season.
That’s not suggest that there is a shortage of sources of wheat outside Ukraine.
Last year, Indonesia imported4.69 million tonsfrom Australia. In 2020, it imported2.63 million tonsfrom Argentina. Having suppliers in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres is essential for the steady importation of food stuffs. And next to Russia, the United States, and Canada, Ukraine is the largest exporter in the Northern Hemisphere.
Without a doubt, the war is bad news for global food markets.
Prices for cereals have beenclimbing steadilyin the past few years at a time when most countries have experienced economic slowdowns, the loss of income, and climbing poverty rates due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic. Inflation in energy markets and food staples is hitting consumers hard the world over.
Other uncertainty in food markets
Beyond the Russian invasion of Ukraine there are other factors unsettling global food markets.
China’s winter wheat harvest was described by their agriculture minister as “the worst in history.”
A decline in water levels along the Mekong River due to damming has increased salt intrusion into the Mekong Delta, leading to a smaller harvest. According to theStimson Center, the delta accounts for 50 percent of Vietnam’s rice crop, but 90 percent of rice exports. In 2020, Vietnam’s exports accounted for 7.4 percent of the global supply. Indonesia and the Philippines are amongst Vietnam’s top export markets.
The economic fallout from Myanmar’s coup d’état is another factor.
The kyat lost 60 percent of its value since the February 2021 military takeover, prompting ashortage of U.S. dollarsand makingimports of pesticides and fertilizersexorbitant.
While Myanmar itself will remain food secure, the expected diminished crop will impact global markets. Myanmar is the seventh largest exporter of rice in the world. In 2020 it accounted for 3.2 percent of global exports. Optimistic estimates suggest that exports will be around 2 million tons in 2022, down from their normal export of 2.5 to 3 million tons.
With the exception of Singapore, countries in Southeast Asia have been reluctant to criticize Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and none have been willing to impose sanctions, professing a desire to be neutral. But most countries in Southeast Asia will be feeling the economic pain cause by Russia’s military strike on its neighbor next-door.
As this year’s president of the G-20, Indonesia is causing controversy by inviting President Putin to the Bali summit, arguing that the forum is really about economic matters and not political or security concerns. Yet the cause of commodity inflation – and potential political unrest – will be President Widodo’s invited guest.
Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or BenarNews.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Commentary by Zachary Abuza.
(@LeilaniDowding) 
