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Category: Ukraine

  • Stop war in Ukraine, fight like hell for peace


    This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Ukraine: Mykolaiv multiple cluster attacks leave dead and injured #Short


    This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • UNDP Suggests Temporary Basic Income in Ukraine as 90% of Population Faces Poverty

    By: Stephanie Nebehay.

    Original Post: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/ninety-percent-ukrainian-population-could-041213757.html?guccounter=1.

    Nine out of 10 Ukrainians could face poverty and extreme economic vulnerability if the war drags on over the next year, wiping out two decades of economic gains, the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) said on Wednesday.

    Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator, said that his agency was working with the Kyiv government to avoid a worst case scenario of the economy collapsing. It aimed to provide cash transfers to families to buy food to survive and keep them from fleeing while propping up basic services.

    “If the conflict is a protracted one, if it were to continue, we are going to see poverty rates escalate very significantly,” Steiner told Reuters.

    “Clearly the extreme end of the scenario is an implosion of the economy as a whole. And that could ultimately lead to up to 90% of people either being below the poverty line or being at high risk of (poverty),” he said in a video interview from New York.

    The poverty line is generally defined as purchasing power of $5.50 to $13 per person per day, he added in a video interview from New York. Before Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24, an estimated 2% of Ukrainians lived below the $5.50 line, he said.

    Ukraine’s top government economic adviser Oleg Ustenko said last Thursday that invading Russian forces have so far destroyed at least $100 billion worth of infrastructure and that 50% of Ukrainian businesses had shut down completely.

    “We estimate that up to 18 years of development gains of Ukraine could be simply be wiped out in a matter of 12 to 18 months,” Steiner said.

    CASH TRANSFERS

    UNDP is looking at “tried and tested” programmes that it has used in other conflict situations, he said.

    “Cash transfers programmes particularly in a country such as Ukraine where the financial system and architecture is still functional, where ATMs are available, a critical way in which to reach people quickly is with cash transfers or a temporary basic income,” he said.

    The logistical challenges were significant but “not insurmountable”, he said.

    “Clearly some of the recent announcements by World Bank and International Monetary Fund in terms of credit lines and funding that is being made available will obviously assist Ukrainian authorities to be able to deploy such a programme,” he said.

    The UNDP report said that an emergency cash transfer operation, costing about $250 million per month, would cover partial income losses for 2.6 million people expected to fall into poverty. A more ambitious temporary basic income programme to provide $5.50 per day per person would cost $430 million a month.

    Ukraine’s economy is expected to contract by 10% in 2022 as a result of Russia’s invasion, but the outlook could worsen sharply if the conflict lasts longer, the IMF said in a staff report released on Monday.

    The World Bank on Monday approved nearly $200 million in additional and reprogrammed financing to bolster Ukraine’s support of vulnerable people. The funding comes on top of $723 million approved last week and is part of a $3 billion package of support that the World Bank is racing to get to Ukraine and its people in coming weeks.

    Steiner emphasized Ukraine’s importance to the economies of other nations, especially a group of African nations who he said get a third of their wheat supplies from Ukraine and Russia.

    “We are also trying to stabilise an economy that is for 45 African nations, least developed countries, the breadbasket for them,” Steiner said.

    The post UNDP Suggests Temporary Basic Income in Ukraine as 90% of Population Faces Poverty appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • US Peace Activists Must Keep Pressure on Biden to Prevent No-Fly Zone in Ukraine

    President Biden announced $800 million in new military aid for Ukraine on Wednesday, just days after Congress cleared a $1.5 trillion spending bill that included nearly $14 billion for Ukrainian humanitarian aid and security assistance. Experts warn that sending more lethal weapons could escalate war and result in more losses for Ukraine. “The cost on civilian lives is horrific,” says Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, who says increasing military aid in Ukraine could thwart peace talks between Russia and Ukraine — which appeared to be making progress in the past few days. Her latest piece is headlined “The Best Way to Help Ukraine Is Diplomacy, Not War.”

    TRANSCRIPT

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

    AMY GOODMAN: As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth week, President Biden has announced $800 million in new military aid for Ukraine. According to the White House, the package will include over 20 million rounds of ammunition, 100 unmanned drones, 2,000 Javelin anti-armor missiles and 800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems. Biden spoke at the White House Wednesday.

    PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Our new assistance package also includes 9,000 anti-armor systems. These are portable, high — high accurately — high-accuracy shoulder-mounted missiles that the Ukrainian forces have been using with great effect to destroy invading tanks and armored vehicles. It’ll include 7,000 small arms — machine guns, shotguns, grenade launchers — to equip the Ukrainians, including the brave women and men who are defending their cities as civilians, and they’re on the countryside, as well. And as well as the ammunition, artillery and mortar rounds to go with small arms, 20 million rounds in total. Twenty million rounds. And this will include drones, which — which demonstrates our commitment to sending our most cutting-edge systems to Ukraine for its defense.

    AMY GOODMAN: Biden’s remarks came hours after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, gave a virtual address to Congress. While repeating his call for a NATO no-fly zone, Zelensky invoked the attacks on 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. While most of Zelensky’s speech was in Ukrainian, he delivered part in English directly to President Biden.

    PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY: As the leader of my nation, I am addressing the President Biden. You are the leader of the nation, of your great nation. I wish you to be the leader of the world. Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

    AMY GOODMAN: While the Biden administration has so far rejected calls for a no-fly zone, more details are emerging of how the U.S. has covertly aided Ukraine. Yahoo News is reporting a small group of veteran CIA paramilitaries helped train Ukrainian special forces prepare for fighting against Russian forces.

    As the United States is pouring arms into Ukraine, there are signs that progress is being made on the diplomatic front to end the war. The Financial Times is reporting that Ukrainian and Russian delegates have discussed a 15-point deal under which Russia would withdraw troops in exchange for Ukraine renouncing its ambitions to join NATO and agreeing not to host foreign military bases or weapons — to remain neutral.

    To talk more about these latest developments, we’re joined by Phyllis Bennis, author and fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, her recent piece headlined “The Best Way to Help Ukraine Is Diplomacy, Not War.”

    So, Phyllis, thanks so much for rejoining Democracy Now! to talk about this issue now. Can you respond to what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine and what President Biden announced yesterday, the massive infusion of weapons to Ukraine?

    PHYLLIS BENNIS: Well, you know, Amy — and good morning to you both — the $800 million that was just announced in new weapons comes on top of an almost $15 billion aid package that has — much of which will go to Ukraine for a combination of humanitarian and military support. So this is something that’s been going on for several months now, the massive arming of Ukraine in this war.

    And I think that what we’re seeing in terms of the diplomatic possibilities is very much a way to see what — the term they like to use is an “off-ramp,” an off-ramp for Russia, but also an off-ramp for the Ukrainian authorities to get out from under this constant escalation that we’re seeing, that the cost on civilian lives is horrific. And although we don’t have good numbers, it does seem clear that the numbers of Russian troops that are being killed is also rising at a very, very fast rate. And both of these leaders are going to have a hard time continuing that level of casualties. So the question of whether this will be the beginning of an actual diplomatic solution becomes very, very important.

    The new weapons obviously could shift somewhat the conditions on the ground. As we’ve all seen, the Russian military assault has not played out the way Biden — sorry, the way Putin presumably intended it to. The Russian troops have been bogged down, partly physically bogged down in a number of parts of the convoys trying to get to take over Kyiv. But, on the other hand, the attacks, the continuing bombings, missile attacks, has created enormous civilian casualties, and the ability of the Ukrainian forces, both the military and the volunteer forces, to protect civilians is somewhat limited in that context. So the deal becomes very, very important.

    What we’re hearing about this deal is not different than what has been anticipated in recent days, that a deal would have to include a Russian withdrawal and, of course, a ceasefire, that Ukraine would have to give up its claim to be intending to join NATO. The language that we’re hearing now may be included is some definition of a separate protection, a Ukrainian protection alliance, which would essentially allow an official legal treaty to be signed between Ukraine and a number of other countries, probably including the U.S., the U.K., Turkey, maybe a couple of other European countries, who would agree that if Ukraine were to be invaded or threatened again, they would come directly to the aid of Ukraine. So it would almost be like a sort of NATO countries lite, without the official political consequences of being an official member of NATO. And the theory is — and this may well work — that for the political goals that Putin has had, he would be able to say, “I won. I got what I wanted. I got what I wanted when I sent in the troops. This is what they were sent in for, to be sure that Ukraine does not join NATO and that it emerges as a neutral country.”

    So, the question of Ukraine being neutral is apparently on the agenda. It’s not one of the items that at least the initial reporting is saying Ukraine has already agreed to, but it’s a likely possibility. There are different versions of neutrality. There’s the existing European versions in Finland, Switzerland, Norway, and they all differ somewhat in what kind of militaries they can have, what kind of relationships they can have with other military forces. The Ukrainian authorities who have been involved in the diplomacy have said that the issue of maintaining a separate, independent military is not up for grabs, that that’s a definite commitment that they will have, that they will have a Ukrainian military, and that the question of not allowing any foreign bases or foreign troops to be stationed in the country is not an issue because those are already prohibited under the Ukrainian Constitution. So, what’s changed is not so much the terms of a possible agreement, but the fact that both sides — and most notably Russia, which has been much more resistant to a diplomatic solution — appears to be moving closer to that possibility.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Phyllis, could you respond specifically — to go back to the question of the U.S. sending arms to Ukraine — the provision, in particular, of these 100 so-called killer drones, Switchblade drones? This is the first time since the Russian invasion that the U.S. will be providing drones, though Ukraine has been using, apparently to great effect, Turkish — armed drones provided by Turkey. Could you speak specifically about these drones that the U.S. is going to supply?

    PHYLLIS BENNIS: Yeah, this is a serious escalation of what the U.S. is sending. As you say, Nermeen, the Turkish drones have been in use by the Ukrainians for some time now. But these drones are significantly more powerful, and the expectation is that they would be used against groupings of Russian soldiers on the ground. And they could result in the deaths of large numbers of soldiers if they were used effectively.

    The question of drone extension, where drones are being used, is a very serious global question as we look at the militarization that is increasing in the context of this war. Countries across Europe are talking about remilitarizing. Germany, in particular, is saying they are going to spend a lot more money on their military, that they’re going to start spending 2% of their GDP on military forces, something that has been a goal of NATO, that has so far has only been reached by about 10 European countries, not including Germany, which is of course the wealthiest country in Europe. So, this is a very serious level of escalation. Whether it will have a qualitative shift in the battlefield situation in terms of the balance of forces, I don’t think we know yet, but it does represent a serious U.S. commitment.

    It’s important, I think, to keep it in the context of what we’re so far seeing as a continued commitment by the Biden administration to say no to the continued call for a no-fly zone. And this is important, because after President Zelensky’s speech yesterday at the joint session of Congress — that was a major focus of his demand, although his language, I think, indicated some recognition that he’s really not likely to get that. But it is something that he has called for continuously, and I think he, presumably, felt that he had to continue to call for this kind of support, for a no-fly zone, because it’s such a popular demand inside Ukraine. And that’s absolutely understandable. People in Ukraine are desperate with these attacks from the air. Most of the attacks so far have not come from Russian planes. Some have. And a no-fly zone, in theory, would be able to stop some of that. But most of the air attacks are coming from missiles and rockets that are coming from other ground-launched and other Russian military forces.

    The other thing that we have to keep in mind here is what the cost would be of a no-fly zone. This is something that I think sounds so intriguing. It sounds like such a great idea. It sounds like something out of Star Wars, that it’s sort of a magical shield that will protect people on the ground. And it leaves out the reality of: How does a no-fly zone start? We can remember back a decade ago in the Libya crisis when U.S. diplomats — it was centered in the State Department. There was a call for a no-fly zone. The opposition came from the secretary of defense, came from the Pentagon, ironically enough, saying — and this was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who said, “We should be clear that a no-fly zone in Libya starts with attacking Libya.” It starts with, you have to take out the anti-aircraft forces on the ground; you have to take out the Russian, in this case, planes that are flying around, potentially dropping bombs. So it’s a major attack by the United States directly on Russia: the two most powerful nuclear-armed countries going to war with each other. That’s the beginning. That’s just the beginning of a no-fly zone.

    So, it’s very, very important that the pressure remain on the Biden administration to maintain the opposition to a no-fly zone. It’s going to be increasingly difficult, I think, because in Congress there is — there’s certainly not a majority, thankfully, but there are increasing members of Congress that are calling for a no-fly zone. Some of that is presumably political posturing. But if that rises and if there’s a public call because there’s this sense of, “Well, let’s just do that, let’s just have a no-fly zone,” as if it was this magical shield, I think that it will become increasingly difficult for the Biden administration. So that becomes increasingly important.

    It’s taking place, this debate is taking place, in the context of what I mentioned earlier, the increasing militarization that is one of the consequences of this war. We’re seeing that certainly across Europe, but we’re also seeing it in the United States — the new $800 billion [sic], parts of the $14.5 billion — sorry, the $800 million for the new package, the $14.5 billion package that has already been underway for Ukraine. The arms dealers are the ones who are thrilled with this war. They’re the ones that are making a killing. And that will continue. That will continue with a newly militarized Europe in the aftermath of this war. So the consequences are going to be very, very severe.

    And the potential, if there is anything remotely resembling a no-fly zone, not only holds the threat of escalation, up to and including a nuclear exchange — not something that I think the main forces on either side want, but is something that might be impossible to prevent if there were to be an escalation in a direct conflict between the U.S. and Russia. And in that context, again, the call may return for European countries to want U.S. nuclear arms in their countries. Right now there are five NATO nations that host nuclear weapons, that are under the control of the United States. That’s in complete violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. None of the nonproliferation and abolition treaties across Europe are working right now. There needs to be new arms control treaties. And right now the trajectory is in the opposite direction.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: Phyllis, on the question of, you said, increasing pressure, that there may be increasing pressure on the U.S. to impose a no-fly zone, one question: Is it possible for the U.S. to become involved in imposing a no-fly zone without the consent of NATO countries? Because so far it’s not just the U.S., the Biden administration, that’s ruled that out, but also the EU, also NATO countries. And then, second, despite the fact that there may have been progress in these negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, there’s been a simultaneous escalation of rhetoric, with Biden calling Putin a war criminal, and Putin, in a televised speech yesterday, talking about scum and traitors in Russia, those who are pro-Western, who are not patriots, and rooting them out. Could you talk about both these issues?

    PHYLLIS BENNIS: Yeah. On your first point, Nermeen, you know, the question of “Could the U.S. do something that the other NATO members don’t like?” the answer is, of course, they could. They are by far the most powerful part of NATO, and the notion that NATO members are somehow equal within NATO is almost as absurd as the notion that members of the U.N. Security Council are somehow all equal, or members of the General Assembly are all equal. The realities of world politics, that includes military strength, economic clout, all of those things, obviously play a role here.

    Now, the question of “Would the U.S. engage in creation of a no-fly zone with the significant opposition of their allies?” I think is unlikely, but I think it’s unlikely the U.S. wants to do it anyway. I think that people in Washington, particularly in the Pentagon, recognize what the dangers might be of this. But it’s also — it’s certainly possible that the U.S. could move unilaterally to engage in Ukraine. Ironically, it would presumably have the permission, or even a request, as it’s already had, from the government of Ukraine. So, the governments of surrounding countries would not be in that position, unless they were prepared to say that they were going to deny their airspace to the United States, which is simply not a reasonable thing to anticipate. So I don’t think that NATO opposition in the face of a U.S. determination is likely to work. But again, I don’t think that the U.S., at this stage at least, is intending to move towards a no-fly zone.

    I’m sorry, and I’m forgetting what the second question was.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: [inaudible] negotiations to succeed, given the escalating rhetoric.

    PHYLLIS BENNIS: Yeah. On the one hand, you know, this would not be the first time that escalations, both, unfortunately, on the ground, as we’re seeing in this horrific attack on the theater in Ukraine — escalation in force before negotiations succeed is a common reality. Escalation in rhetoric before negotiations succeed is even more common. So, on a certain perverse level, this might actually be a good sign.

    One of the challenges that we’re facing here is that these negotiations that are underway are direct bilateral talks between the two major parties, Russia and Ukraine. The U.S. has not engaged yet and said explicitly what would they be willing to accept in a deal, what would they be willing to give up. The U.S. has said, in the past, that it wants Ukraine to be a member of NATO. It has also said — government officials have also said, quietly, privately, that they have no intention of allowing Ukraine to become a member of NATO, because they know what a provocation that would be on Russia. But they have not said explicitly, “We are taking that off the table.” Are they prepared to do that? Are they prepared to back a Ukrainian concession on that issue? That would be very important for the Biden administration to make clear, what the U.S. is prepared to give up in its own positioning and, crucially, what it’s prepared to accept from Ukraine. Is it prepared to accept all concessions that are made by Ukraine, whether it involves Ukraine as a neutral country, Ukraine permanently staying out of NATO?

    The possibility — the two tricky issues, I would say, that are not yet — there’s not even a report that they might be resolved — they might be put off — is the recognition of Crimea as belonging to Russia, something that Russia says it’s insisting on — in the past, the Ukrainian government has said that’s not acceptable — and also the question of the status, whether independence, autonomy or something else, of the eastern provinces in Donbas. Both of those seem to be unresolved, but there is an indication that they might agree to put those off and not resolve those in the midst of a broader — this 15-point agreement that we’re hearing about being underway, that would, crucially, begin with a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian forces. So those remain uncertain, but they may not ultimately prevent some kind of an agreement from being reached, hopefully soon.

    AMY GOODMAN: Phyllis Bennis, we want to thank you for being with us, author and fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. We’ll link to your piece, “The Best Way to Help Ukraine Is Diplomacy, Not War.”

    Coming up, we talk to a Syrian filmmaker about how many of Russia’s military tactics in Ukraine resemble what she witnessed in her home city of Aleppo. Stay with us.

    [break]

    AMY GOODMAN: John Lennon’s “Imagine,” performed in Russian by Nailskey. Interestingly, Russia’s prima ballerina Olga Smirnova has quit Moscow’s world-renowned Bolshoi Ballet after denouncing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Oil, tanks, and a 2am tweet: what the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe affair tells us

    Six years after it started, the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe affair has come to a close. Sort of. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a dual-citizen of Iran and Britain, was first arrested in April 2016. Since then she has spent periods both in jail and under house arrest accused of espionage by the Iranian authorities. She denied the charges.

    Insiders have long claimed that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s imprisonment was less about espionage and more about debt. Specifically a long-running row between the British and Iranian governments about an arms deal for British tanks dating back to the 70s.

    Richard Ratcliffe, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, fought a long public campaign for her release. On 16 March 2022 she was finally released and flown home alongside another released prisoner, Anoosheh Ashoori.

    The current foreign secretary Liz Truss was on hand for a photo opportunity. Perhaps tellingly, the image was tweeted from her account at 2.16am. Hardly ‘Prime Time’ – but then the Tories have a lot to hide when it comes to this case:

    Foreign Office

    It’s not clear if the Ratcliffe’s will meet the prime minister Boris Johnson too. Any such gathering would likely be emotionally charged. The Tories – and the Foreign Office in particular – have good reason to avoid too much scrutiny. It was, after all, during the prime minister’s stint as foreign secretary that Johnson made Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s situation much worse.

    In 2017, Johnson made comments that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been in Tehran training journalists. A suggestion which the Iranians claimed supported their view that she was a spy.

    It was suggested, including by her husband, that Johnson’s comments directly compounded her predicament. During his hunger strike outside the Foreign Office in 2021, Richard Ratcliffe told the press that Johnson’s words were used by Iran to propagandise against his jailed wife.

    Debt

    Context matters here. The images of the Ratcliffe’s reunited are heartwarming. But there have to be questions about timing. For one thing, it appears the UK has finally paid its debt to Iran. The Guardian reports that £394m was paid on Monday

    The debt related to a £650m order for Chieftain tanks and support vehicles by the Shah of Iran ahead of the 1979 revolution. These were never delivered. According to the Commons Library the UK recognised the debt was owed:

    The UK Government accepts liability for an estimated £400 million debt owed to Iran. The debt is for undelivered armoured vehicles and tanks, originally ordered by the Shah but cancelled by the UK in response to his overthrow in the Iranian revolution of 1979.

    But, they rejected the claim that the detention of Zaghari-Ratcliffe was linked to the deal:

    However, the Government argues this is a separate issue to the detention of British-Iranian dual nationals and also rejects any link between detainees and the nuclear talks.

    Now it seems that the UK has accepted that without payment, its highest profile detainees were going nowhere.

    A danger to us all

    Richard Ratcliffe himself wrote last year that Britain’s highly unaccountable arms trade is a danger to all citizens. He told Declassified UK in May 2021 that:

    the money withheld by the British government is the reason Nazanin has been detained in Iran since her arrest in 2016 while on a family holiday with our then 22-month old daughter, Gabriella.

    He claims the Iranian authorities themselves said so:

    A few weeks after she was arrested, Nazanin was told by her interrogators from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that while there was “nothing in her case”, she was going to be held for leverage with the UK. Gradually they revealed she was being held to recover a debt.

    That someone can be held for leverage in an arms deal that went sour decades ago should concern us all. And the UK’s arms trading is highly indiscriminate. We sell to virtually anyone: be they authoritarian allies like Saudi Arabia and notional enemies like Russia.

    Oil politics

    Yet payment of the debt is only part of the story. And a glance at the headlines will tell you why. Russian oil is going to be less accessible as sanctions pile up following the Putin regime’s invasion of Ukraine. Other sources must be found. It follows that a thaw between the West and Iran is on the cards.

    Certainly, Iranian politicians seem to think so. A statement published by Al Jazeera Wednesday, and signed by 160 parliamentarians, said due to Ukraine, Iran had the upper hand:

    Now that the Ukraine crisis has increased the West’s need for the Iranian energy sector, the US need for reduced oil prices must not be accommodated without considering Iran’s righteous demands.

    The sense seems to be that Iran is now well positioned to push for, and benefit from, refreshed nuclear talks with the US and others.

    Pawns in a game

    It is heartening to see Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe back home with her family. And her story can tell us much about geopolitics today. Hers is an extreme example of how all ours fates turn on the whims of global capital – in this case, the fossil fuel and arms trades – and of a set of blundering ruling class buffoons, for whom we are all just pawns in a game.

    Featured image via screenshot/On Demand News, cropped to 770×403

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Ukrainian journalist Oleh Baturyn missing since March 12

    Paris, March 17, 2022 – Anyone with information about the whereabouts of missing journalist Oleh Baturyn must come forward and aid in finding him, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday.

    On the afternoon of Saturday, March 12, Baturyn, a reporter with the Ukrainian newspaper Novyi Den, went to meet an acquaintance at a bus station near his home in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Kakhovka, in the Kherson region, and never returned, according to the journalist’s wife, who spoke with CPJ on the condition that her name not be disclosed, and statements by the Institute of Mass Information, a Ukrainian press freedom group, and the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, a local trade group of which Baturyn is a member.

    Baturyn received a phone call from an acquaintance in the nearby town of Novaya Kakhovka, whom he did not identify to his wife; he went to meet that person without bringing his phone or any documents, his wife said, adding that he said he would be gone for about 20 minutes, but was still missing as of Thursday.

    Baturyn’s wife told CPJ that he had recently covered the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    “We are deeply concerned about the disappearance of Ukrainian journalist Oleh Baturyn, and call on anyone with information on his whereabouts to come forward at once,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Journalists should be able to cover the Russian invasion of Ukraine without fear of retribution or abduction, and authorities should work to ensure their safety.”

    Baturyn’s wife and local news reports said that, around the time the journalist went missing, cars labeled with the letter “Z,” commonly seen on vehicles affiliated with the Russian invasion, were seen near the bus station.

    There are no Russian forces permanently stationed in Kakhovka, but Russian forces have occupied Novaya Kakhovka, according to reports.

    The journalist’s wife said that, since the Russian invasion, there was no functioning Ukrainian police or military presence in Kakhovka, so she was unable to seek help from Ukrainian authorities.

    “Only his colleagues and journalist friends are helping [to look for Baturyn],” his wife told CPJ. She added that her husband knows her telephone number by heart and would have called her if he was given the opportunity.

    “There is nothing official, he has not called, we do not know if he is dead or alive,” she told CPJ, adding that her husband has an eye condition that requires daily care. “He wears lenses, when he takes them out, he is almost blind. He needs eye drops.”

    According to media reports, multiple activists and human rights defenders have recently gone missing in southern Ukraine, and their whereabouts remain unknown.

    Kakhovka Mayor Vitaly Nemerets was quoted in those reports as saying that he believed Russian forces had taken Baturyn to Novaya Kakhovka; however, Novaya Kakhovka Mayor Vladimir Kovalenko was also quoted as saying that authorities had searched for Baturyn in the city and concluded that he was not there.

    On March 13, five Ukrainian members of parliament demanded the release of Baturyn, whom they believe to have been captured by Russian forces. 

    CPJ emailed the Russian Ministry of Defense and Main Directorate of the Ukrainian National Police in the Kherson region; the Russian ministry’s email returned an error message, and the Ukrainian police did not respond.

    Previously, in July 2017, Ukrainian journalist Stanyslav Aseyev went missing in the eastern city of Donetsk; about two weeks later Russian-backed militants announced that he was in their custody, as CPJ documented at the time.

    Those militants subsequently said that Aseyev, who contributed to the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Ukrainian Service, would be held for 15 years for alleged espionage, but then released him in a 2019 prisoner swap, according to news reports and CPJ research. During his time in custody, Aseyev gave a forced confession on Russian state television.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • PRESS AVAILABILITY: Experts from CPJ, Human Rights Watch discuss Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis

    New York, March 17, 2022 — On Friday, March 18 at 9:00am ET/1:00pm GMT, experts from the Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch will be on hand to field questions from reporters about the war in Ukraine, ongoing human rights violations, disinformation and the dangers facing journalists on the frontlines of history.

    Access to credible, reliable information is integral to survival and decision making, and any attack directed towards journalists and their work — be it direct violence or impeding the public’s ability to access it — is an attack on the public itself. Experts on hand will address these matters and answer reporter questions via Zoom.

    Simultaneous interpretation will be available in Russian.

    Please register for the briefing here.

    WHO:

    Gulnoza Said, Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator, Committee to Protect Journalists

    Colin Pereira, Journalist Safety Specialist, Committee to Protect Journalists

    Frederike Kaltheuner, Director of Technology and Human Rights, Human Rights Watch

    Rachel Denber, Deputy Director of Europe and Central Asia, Human Rights Watch

    Q&A availability also with:

    Lucy Westcott, Emergencies Director, Committee to Protect Journalists

    Lou Charbonneau,  United Nations Director, Human Rights WatchElisabet Cantenys, Executive Director, ACOS Alliance

    WHAT: Press availability to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

    WHERE: Register via Zoom here or by navigating to this URL: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_H2Xjkd8RSD66tanLczBLhA

    WHEN: Friday, March 18, 2022, 13:00 / 9:00am ET / 1:00pm GMT / 2:00pm CET


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Rebecca Redelmeier.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • UN Says 3.1 Million Ukrainians Have Become Refugees Since Start of War

    People cross a destroyed bridge as they evacuate the city of Irpin, northwest of Kyiv, during heavy shelling and bombing on March 5, 2022, 10 days after Russia launched a military invasion on Ukraine.

    As of Thursday, more than 3.1 million Ukrainian refugees have left the country since the Russian invasion ordered by President Vladimir Putin began, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

    Most refugees have fled the country to Poland, but large numbers of Ukrainians have also sought refuge from the conflict in Romania, Moldova, Hungary and Slovakia.

    Children make up almost half of all the refugees counted, the agency overseeing the refugee crisis said. More than 1.5 million children have left Ukraine since February 24, the UN said, amounting to around 75,000 kids fleeing the country daily on average.

    “Every single minute, 55 children have fled their country. That is, a Ukrainian child has become a refugee almost every single second since the start of the war,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder noted.

    Other UN officials recognized the large number of refugees leaving Ukraine.

    “Today we have passed another terrible milestone: three million refugees have fled from Ukraine,” Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, tweeted earlier this week. “The war has to stop. Now.”

    “The people of Ukraine desperately need peace,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said on Wednesday. “And the people around the world demand it. Russia must stop this war now.”

    In addition to the 3.1 million who have left the country, there are an estimated 2 million Ukrainians who have been internally displaced. The UN is working “to ensure safe passage from besieged areas, and to provide aid where security permits,” Guterres said in a separate statement.

    Still, as of Monday, only around 600,000 Ukrainian refugees have received some form of aid from the UN. To increase that number, Guterres announced that the UN would release $40 million from the organization’s Central Emergency Response Fund.

    The international community’s response to the refugee crisis has generally been positive, with several neighboring nations welcoming Ukrainians at their borders. In the United States, politicians from all political stripes have expressed the need to help and welcome Ukrainian refugees, leading some to point out the disparity in the treatment of refugees from Ukraine and from the Global South.

    “How the world treats Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees should be how we are treating all refugees in the United States,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said earlier this month, “especially when you look at such stark juxtapositions where so many of the factors are in common.”

    Refugee aid workers from around the world have also noted the hypocrisy in how different peoples have been treated.

    “The situation is very different,” compared to previous years, Warsaw-based human rights lawyer Marta Górczyńska said to Al Jazeera. In 2021, for instance, while trying to help Iraqi refugees enter Poland, “you had to deal with the hostility from the authorities, harassing and intimidating you, telling you that actually, it’s not legal to help people who are crossing the border from Belarus to Poland.”

    “There was a state of emergency introduced and a ban of entry to the border area, which meant that no humanitarian organizations, human rights organizations, or even journalists were allowed to enter,” Górczyńska added. “[Now], the Polish authorities [are] welcoming refugees fleeing Ukraine with open arms and providing them with assistance.”

    The refugee crisis is also highlighting hypocrisy and racism in a different way: nonwhite refugees from Ukraine say they’re being treated much differently than their white counterparts. African students attempting to flee Ukraine noted that white residents got preferential treatment as they crossed the Ukraine border, CBS News reported.

    “Mostly they would, they would consider White people first. White people first, Indian people, Arabic people before Black people,” a student from Ghana, Ethel Ansaeh Otto, said.

    “We went to the train station and they will not let us in,” said Selma El Alaui, a student from Morocco. “And when they did let us in, they were like, ‘You have to give us money because this is, this is not for free for you because you are foreign. This is not free for you.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Criticism of Russia, support for Ukraine surface on Chinese social media

    Cracks have started to appear in the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s online censorship of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with social media users posting video footage showing downed Russian aircraft, Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian troops, and Russian soldiers requisitioning food from local stores to stave off hunger in recent days.

    In defiance of CCP propaganda directives banning anti-Russian content from Chinese social media platforms, the Weibo account Ukraine Super Chat on Thursday reposted a subtitled video clip of a Ukrainian man warning Russians not to come and join the war, following the death of his 23-year-old son in Kharkiv.

    “Boys, don’t come here,” the man says, facing to camera, addressing Russians. “You will die. You killed my son. I will kill your son.”

    The Weibo user who posted the video commented: “A father’s heartbreak … That’s why nobody should start a war casually; there is no way to control the monster once it is out of the box.”

    User @Xiaoqiwj commented on the repost: “Shouldn’t we be condemning the aggressors and murderers [not] the other people who are staying in their homes to protect their homes!”

    @Jun Weitonghui added: “Curse the evil spirit[s] who started and instigated this war!,” while @Yueying_R wrote: “Kill the common thief.”

    “Justice must prevail! Ukraine must win!” @Willing 07621 wrote, while @Ping_Ping_An_Jing_Jing_Huang_Huang wanted to know if Russian president Vladimir Putin would be prosecuted at the International War Crimes Tribunal, asking: “When does Putin go to The Hague?”

    Strict guidelines on coverage

    Internet censors in China ordered news outlets and social media accounts to avoid posting anything critical of Russia or favorable to NATO after Russia began moving troops across the border into Ukraine last week.

    All copy about the war is to be approved by the CCP’s propaganda department prior to posting, while social media platforms are required to delete “inappropriate” comments about the situation in Ukraine.

    A current affairs commentator surnamed Jiang said pro-CCP Little Pink commentators are still trying to “guide public opinion” on such videos.

    “A large number of people are applauding the invader Russia,” Jiang said. “They are ridiculing and even gloating over the Ukrainian people who were invaded, which made me very sad to see.”

    Some are establishment intellectuals who should know better, Jiang said, while the rest are just following the crowd.

    “There is a group who don’t know much, and just follow the guidance of the government to root for Russia,” he said.

    Biased but truthful

    Former journalist Zhao Ping said he was taught that most journalism is biased, but should still be truthful.

    “Someone once said when I was a journalism student … [that we] report the truth, but only the truth that we choose to report,” Zhao said. “This was a saying that was very popular in journalism training back then in China.”

    “But that meant that we were still reporting the truth, even though we were choosing it. Nowadays, we don’t report the truth at all,” he said. “Now, even the official media is tampering with the truth.”

    He said state media in China had cut out certain qualifiers from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s remarks regarding NATO membership.

    “President Zelenskyy said [Ukraine] would have to face up to the fact that it can’t be a member of NATO in the near future … but [Chinese state media] cut the part about the near future out,” he said.

    “Chinese news is basically a joke.”

    At risk of greater isolation

    Wang Jiahao, a doctoral student at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, said whether or not Beijing actually provides Russia with military aid as reportedly requested, will depend on how the situation develops.

    “If Russia is successful in taking Kyiv, it would show that they are capable of completing military operations without China’s help, so the logic would be that China doesn’t need to provide assistance to Russia,” Wang said.

    “But if Russia fails to capture Kyiv, there will be a situation of relative stalemate,” he said, adding that China would then have to figure out whether its help would reverse the situation.

    Wang said China, in making its allegiance to Moscow, risks greater isolation in the international community.

    “If Sino-Russian ties continue to get closer, it will get linked with anti-Russian sentiment, and the European Union will take tougher measures against China,” he said, warning that the war could undermine CCP leader Xi Jinping’s international infrastructure and influence project.

    “This will have a huge impact on Chinese investments in Europe, including the Belt and Road initiative,” Wang said.

    “Chinese leaders at the National People’s Congress annual session [earlier this month] were very nervous about the impact of the situation in Russia and Ukraine on global economic recovery,” he added.

    Chinese journalist Lu Nan said China is unlikely to rethink its relationship with Russia, however.

    “Their position isn’t going to change, regardless of whether they support this war implicitly or explicitly,” Lu said. “The Chinese government and Russia are in this together, with this unlimited cooperation agreement, which includes military cooperation.”

    Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Calling Ukraine “Relatively Civilized” Invokes a Racist Ranking of Europeanness

    Ukrainian displaced civilians wait in the train station as they flee from the war in Lviv, Ukraine, on March 15, 2022.

    CBS senior foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata’s contrast of Ukraine, which he described as “relatively civilized, relatively European,” with Iraq and Afghanistan, where “conflict has been raging for decades,” went viral and offended millions around the globe. This dangerous comment was a sobering reminder of the persisting racism, Islamophobia and colonial mentalities still propagated by mainstream media. While people from the Middle East expressed their shock and disappointment at being labeled uncivilized, I want to focus on the “relatively” part of “relatively civilized, relatively European” and illustrate the danger — historical and lingering — in concrete, regional, Eastern European terms. Bulgaria provides an illuminating example of a country with inhumane policies for acceptance as “fully” European by a xenophobic, Islamophobic Western Europe.

    Since the end of the nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule in 1878, a central component of building what we recognize today as modern Bulgaria was coming to terms with being “relatively civilized, relatively European.” According to Bulgarian intellectuals at the time of founding and socialism later (1944-1989), the Ottoman Empire had interrupted Bulgarian “natural” European cultural development. Thus, cleansing all vestiges of Islam and the Ottoman Empire was vital in affirming Bulgarian national identity as a European country with modern European potential. These ideas led to horrific consequences for the tangible, living vestiges of the Ottoman Empire: my Turkish community.

    Bulgarian national identity construction during socialism was based on the “Turkish yoke.” Historians and media framed the former Ottoman rulers in classic orientalist terms: Muslim, backward and barbaric. Hostile stereotypes were reproduced in many Bulgarian television productions about the history of Bulgarian plight under Ottoman domination. Additionally, the television productions were harnessed to legitimize a forced assimilation campaign that targeted Muslim communities, including my own. Every Turkish and Muslim person in Bulgaria was forced to change their mostly Arabic-origin name to a Bulgarian one. My mother still has the proof of her name-change document, which she had to present at work to be given her salary. Practicing Islam and associated clothing (veils, shalwar) were banned, speaking Turkish was illegal and Prime Minister Todor Zhivkov declared, “There are no Turks in Bulgaria” after the name-changing campaign was complete. In the late 20th century. In Europe.

    Following my father’s escape to Turkey and a lengthy ordeal with the government, my mother managed to get my brother and I out of Bulgaria shortly before the largest act of ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II, when 360,000 Turks were expelled from Bulgaria in 1989. Following Bulgaria’s transition to democracy later that year, ethnic minority rights were promised and restored, and many expellees returned. However, as elsewhere, despite a democratically elected government and European Union (EU) membership, ethnic minority rights leave much to be desired in Bulgaria, demonstrating how empty terms such as “European” are. For example, Bulgarian authorities’ “failure to tackle entrenched prejudice against asylum seekers, migrants, Muslims and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is fuelling further violence and discrimination,” Amnesty International notes, leading to a “climate of fear.”

    Recently, at the prospect of an onslaught of Ukrainian refugees following the Russian attack on Ukraine, Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov — much like Charlie D’Agata — stated that no European country is afraid of the Ukrainian refugees, because Ukrainians are “intelligent,” “educated” and “European,” in contrast to the prior (Syrian) refugee waves of “people with unclear pasts, who could have been terrorists.” This empathy toward Ukrainian refugees is indeed a stark contrast to Bulgarian policies and practices toward Syrian refugees. During the Syrian refugee waves, instead of protecting Syrian refugees, Bulgaria fortified its borders to keep Syrian refugees out of the country. Though overt xenophobia is ostensibly against EU values, a xenophobic, Islamophobic climate reverberated throughout Bulgarian public discourse and, as we witness again, it is ongoing. Indeed, this xenophobic climate is pervasive in the EU more broadly.

    Statements such as “relatively civilized, relatively European” only fuel xenophobia and racism in countries described as such, because elites aspire to full Europeanness, at all costs. In our effort to combat xenophobia, racism and Islamophobia, we must remember that terms such as “civilized” and “European” are nothing but a colonial fantasy peddled as human rights and justice for all.

    Edward Said asserted that orientalism says more about “our” world than the Orient itself. The reactions to Ukrainian refugees and characterizing countries in Europe as “relatively civilized” does indeed continue to remind us that the scope, institutions and influence of orientalism are still with us, as they were when Said wrote Orientalism in the 1970s. Yet, I have witnessed the power of the media in toppling elite discourses and promoting intercultural understanding and remain hopeful for the future. Despite the Herculean effort by Bulgarian elites to instill animosity toward Turks and Turkey, Turkish TV series are adored by Bulgarians and have been running on primetime television for more than a decade in Bulgaria. Bulgarian viewers, at first surprised that the Turks in the TV series did not look like the Turks in Bulgarian productions, increasingly recognized the cultural proximity between the two countries and saw Turks for what they are: human beings.

    As a former refugee, I can attest: Refugees are in fact human beings — human beings seeking refuge from danger. Who would want to leave their place of birth, comfort and community for an entirely new life, unless they didn’t absolutely have to? A Syrian refugee living in Istanbul told me a few years ago that he wished that people would understand that war could happen anywhere. “Today it’s us. Tomorrow it might be you,” he said. This crystallized for Europeans with Russia’s attack on Ukraine, expressed with shock and open arms to Ukrainian refugees. This support for “relatively European” refugees is most admirable and welcome. Now, let’s extend this humanity to all refugees and remember that tomorrow it might be us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • U.S. Accuses Russia of Using Cluster Bombs in Ukraine as Both Refuse to Endorse International Ban


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Phyllis Bennis: The Best Way to Help Ukraine Is Diplomacy, Not War & Increased Militarization


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • U.S. Accuses Russia of Using Cluster Bombs in Ukraine as Both Refuse to Endorse International Ban

    Seg3 new split

    President Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal for the first time Wednesday for atrocities in Ukraine, as the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on whether Russian forces have been using cluster munitions in populated areas in Ukraine. Cluster bombs explode in midair and spew hundreds of smaller “bomblets.” The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said the use of cluster munitions in Ukraine may amount to war crimes. We speak to Stephen Goose, director of Human Rights Watch’s Arms Division, about the use of cluster bombs in the war in Ukraine and how Russia, Ukraine and the United States are not signatories to the international treaty banning cluster bombs. “It’s willing to criticize other peoples’ use but insists on the right to use them itself,” Goose says of the U.S.

    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

  • Phyllis Bennis: The Best Way to Help Ukraine Is Diplomacy, Not War & Increased Militarization

    Seg1 guest zelensky split

    President Biden announced $800 million in new military aid for Ukraine on Wednesday, just days after Congress cleared a $1.5 trillion spending bill that included nearly $14 billion for Ukrainian humanitarian aid and security assistance. Experts warn that sending more lethal weapons could escalate war and result in more losses for Ukraine. “The cost on civilian lives is horrific,” says Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, who says increasing military aid in Ukraine could thwart peace talks between Russia and Ukraine — which appeared to be making progress in the past few days. Her latest piece is headlined “The Best Way to Help Ukraine Is Diplomacy, Not War.”


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • War and a “Hurricane of Hunger”: Transforming Food Systems  

    On Monday, 14 March, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of the global food system” in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine.

    Guterres said:

    Food, fuel and fertilizer prices are skyrocketing. Supply chains are being disrupted. And the costs and delays of transportation of imported goods – when available – are at record levels.

    He added that this is hitting the poorest the hardest and planting the seeds for political instability and unrest around the globe.

    Poorer countries had already been struggling to recover from the lockdowns and the closing down of much of the global economy. There is now rising inflation and interest rates and increased debt burdens.

    Ukraine is the world’s largest exporter of sunflower oil, the fourth largest exporter of corn and the fifth largest exporter of wheat. Together, Russia and Ukraine produce more than half of the world’s supply of sunflower oil and 30% of the world’s wheat. Some 45 African and least-developed countries import at least a third of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia with 18 of them importing at least 50%.

    Prior to the current crisis, prices for fuel and fertilizer had been rising. It was clear before COVID and the war in Ukraine that long global supply chains and dependency on (imported) inputs and fossil fuels made the prevailing food system vulnerable to regional and global shocks.

    The coronavirus lockdowns disrupted transport and production activities, exposing the weaknesses of the system. Now, due to a combination of supply disruption, sanctions and Russia restricting exports of inorganic fertilisers, the global food regime is again facing potential turmoil, resulting in food price increases and possible shortages.

    Aside from it being a major producer and exporter of natural gas (required for manufacturing certain fertilizers), Russia is the world’s third-largest oil producer and the world’s largest exporter of crude.

    The fragility of an oil-dependent globalised food system is acutely apparent at this particular time, when Russian fossil-fuel energy supplies are threatened.

    Writing in 2005, Norman J Church stated:

    Vast amounts of oil and gas are used as raw materials and energy in the manufacture of fertilisers and pesticides and as cheap and readily available energy at all stages of food production: from planting, irrigation, feeding and harvesting, through to processing, distribution and packaging. In addition, fossil fuels are essential in the construction and the repair of equipment and infrastructure needed to facilitate this industry, including farm machinery, processing facilities, storage, ships, trucks and roads.

    The Russia-Ukraine conflict has also affected global fertilizer supply chains, with both countries moving to suspend their fertilizer exports. The major markets for Russian fertilizers include Brazil and the EU and US. In 2021, Russia was the largest exporter of urea, NPKs, ammonia, urea/ammonium nitrate solution and ammonium nitrate and the third-largest potash exporter. Fertilizer prices for farmers have spiked and could lead to an increase in food costs.

    It all indicates that regional and local community-owned food systems based on short(er) food supply chains that can cope with future shocks are required. How we cultivate food also needs to change.

    A recent article on the Agricultural and Rural Convention website (ACR2020) states:

    What we urgently need now to invest in is a new local and territorial infrastructure for food production and processing which transforms the agro-industrial food system into a resilient decentralized food supply system. The war in Ukraine reveals the extreme vulnerability of food supply, far from the food security of actual food sovereignty.

    The agri-food and global trade system is heavily reliant on synthetic fertilizers and fossil fuels. However, agroecological and regionally resilient approaches would result in less dependency on such commodities.

    The 2017 report Towards a Food Revolution: Food Hubs and Cooperatives in the US and Italy offers some pointers for creating sustainable support systems for small food producers and food distribution. These systems would be based on short supply chains and community-supported agriculture. This involves a policy paradigm shift that prioritises the local over the global: small farms, local markets, renewable on-farm resources, diverse agroecological cropping and food sovereignty.

    An approach based on local and regional food self-sufficiency rather than dependency on costly far away imported supplies and off-farm (proprietary) inputs.

    The 2020 paper Reshaping the European Agro-food System and Closing its Nitrogen Cycle says an organic-based, agri-food system could be implemented in Europe that would reinforce the continent’s autonomy, feed the predicted population in 2050 and allow the continent to continue to export cereals to countries which need them for human consumption.

    The question is how can this be achieved, especially when influential agribusiness and retail conglomerates regard such an approach as a threat to their business models.

    The 2021 report A Long Food Movement: Transforming Food Systems by 2045 offers useful insights. Authored by ETC Group and the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES), the document says grassroots organisations, international NGOs, farmers’ and fishers’ groups, cooperatives and unions need to collaborate more closely to transform financial flows, governance structures and food systems from the ground up.

    During times of war, sanctions or environmental disaster, systems of production and consumption often undergo radical transformation. If the past two years have told us anything, it is that transforming food systems is required now more than ever.

    Colin Todhunter’s new e-book Food, Dependency and Dispossession: Resisting the New World Order can be read for free here

    The post War and a “Hurricane of Hunger”: Transforming Food Systems   first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Weathering the Global Storm: Why Neutrality is Not an Option for Palestinians

    A new global geopolitical game is in formation, and the Middle East, as is often the case, will be directly impacted by it in terms of possible new alliances and resulting power paradigms. While it is too early to fully appreciate the impact of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war on the region, it is obvious that some countries are placed in relatively comfortable positions in terms of leveraging their strong economies, strategic location and political influence. Others, especially non-state actors, like the Palestinians, are in an unenviable position.

    Despite repeated calls on the Palestinian Authority by the US Biden Administration and some EU countries to condemn Russia following its military intervention in Ukraine on February 24, the PA has refrained from doing so. Analyst Hani al-Masri was quoted in Axios as saying that the Palestinian leadership understands that condemning Russia “means that the Palestinians would lose a major ally and supporter of their political positions.” Indeed, joining the anti-Russia western chorus would further isolate an already isolated Palestine, desperate for allies who are capable of balancing out the pro-Israel agenda at US-controlled international institutions, like the UN Security Council.

    Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of its Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s, Russia was allowed to play a role, however minor, in the US political agenda in Palestine and Israel. It participated, as a co-sponsor, in the Madrid peace talks in 1991, and in the 1993 Oslo accords. Since then a Russian representative took part in every major agreement related to the ‘peace process,’ to the extent that Russia was one of the main parties in the so-called Middle East Quartet which, in 2016, purportedly attempted to negotiate a political breakthrough between the Israeli government and the Palestinian leadership.

    Despite the permanent presence of Russia at the Palestine-Israel political table, Moscow has played a subordinate position. It was Washington that largely determined the momentum, time, place and even the outcomes of the ‘peace talks.’ Considering Washington’s strong support for Tel Aviv, Palestinians remained occupied and oppressed, while Israel’s colonial settlement enterprises grew exponentially in terms of size, population and economic power.

    Palestinians, however, continued to see Moscow as an ally. Within the largely defunct Quartet – which, aside from Russia, includes the US, the European Union and the United Nations – Russia is the only party that, from a Palestinian viewpoint, was trustworthy. However, considering the US near complete hegemony on international decision-making, through its UN vetoes, massive funding of the Israeli military and relentless pressure on the Palestinians, Russia’s role proved ultimately immaterial, if not symbolic.

    There were exceptions to this rule. In recent years, Russia has attempted to challenge its traditional role in the peace process as a supporting political actor, by offering to mediate, not just between Israel and the PA, but also between Palestinian political groups, Hamas and Fatah. Using the political space that presented itself following the Trump Administration’s cutting of funds to the PA in February 2019, Moscow drew even closer to the Palestinian leadership.

    A more independent Russian position in Palestine and Israel has been taking shape for years. In February 2017, for example, Russia hosted a national dialogue conference between Palestinian rivals. Though the Moscow conference did not lead to anything substantive, it allowed Russia to challenge its old position in Palestine, and the US’ proclaimed role as an ‘honest peace broker.’

    Wary of Russia’s infringement on its political territory in the Middle East, US President Joe Biden was quick to restore his government’s funding of the PA in April 2021. The American President, however, did not reverse some of the major US concessions to Israel made by the Trump Administration, including the recognition of Jerusalem, contrary to international law, as Israel’s capital. Moreover, under Israeli pressure, the US is yet to restore its Consulate in East Jerusalem, which was shut down by Trump in 2019. The Consulate served the role of Washington’s diplomatic mission in Palestine.

    Washington’s significance to Palestinians, at present, is confined to financial support. Concurrently, the US continues to serve the role of Israel’s main benefactor financially, militarily, politically and diplomatically.

    While Palestinian groups, whether Islamists or socialists, have repeatedly called on the PA to liberate itself from its near-total dependency on Washington, the Palestinian leadership refused. For the PA, defying the US in the current geopolitical order is a form of political suicide.

    But the Middle East has been rapidly changing. The US political divestment from the region in recent years has allowed other political actors, like China and Russia, to slowly immerse themselves as political, military and economic alternatives and partners.

    The Russian and Chinese influence can now be felt across the Middle East. However, their impact on the balances of power in the Palestine-Israel issue, in particular, remains largely minimal. Despite its strategic ‘pivot to Asia’ in 2012, Washington remained entrenched behind Israel, because American support for Israel is no longer a matter of foreign policy priorities, but an internal American issue involving both parties, powerful pro-Israel lobby and pressure groups, and a massive right-wing, Christian constituency across the US.

    Palestinians – people, leadership and political parties – have little trust or faith in Washington. In fact, much of the political discord among Palestinians is directly linked to this very issue. Alas, walking away from the US camp requires a strong political will that the PA does not possess.

    Since the rise of the US as the world’s only superpower over three decades ago, the Palestinian leadership reoriented itself entirely to be part of the ‘new world order’. The Palestinian people, however, gained little from their leadership’s strategic choice. To the contrary, since then the Palestinian cause suffered numerous losses – factionalism and disunity at home, and a confused regional and international political outlook, thus the hemorrhaging of Palestine’s historic allies, including many African, Asian and South American countries.

    The Russia-Ukraine war, however, is placing the Palestinians before one of their greatest foreign policy challenges since the collapse of the Soviet Union. For Palestinians, neutrality is not an option since the latter is a privilege that can only be obtained by those who can navigate global polarization using their own political leverage. The Palestinian leadership, thanks to its selfish choices and lack of a collective strategy, has no such leverage. 

    Common sense dictates that Palestinians must develop a unified front to cope with the massive changes underway in the world, changes that will eventually yield a whole new geopolitical reality.

    The Palestinians cannot afford to stand aside and pretend that they will magically be able to weather the storm.

    The post Weathering the Global Storm: Why Neutrality is Not an Option for Palestinians first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Homicidal Drives: US Dreams of Killing Putin

    Wars disturb and delude.  The Ukraine conflict is no exception.  Misinformation is cantering through press accounts and media dispatches with feverish spread.  Fear that a nuclear option might be deployed makes teeth chatter.  And the Russian President Vladimir Putin is being treated as a Botox Hitler-incarnate, a figure worthy of assassination.

    The idea of forcing Putin into the grave certainly tickled South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.  Liberated by more generous rules regarding hate speech (freedom in Silicon Valley is fickle), Graham took to Twitter to ask whether Russia had its own calculating Brutus willing to take the murderous initiative.  Moving forward almost two millennia for a historical reference, the Senator pinched an example from the Second World War (when else?). “Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?”  The only way to conclude the conflict was “for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.”

    In support of the proposition came Fox News host Sean Hannity, using long discredited logic in dealing with the leaders of a country.  “You cut off the head of the snake and you kill the snake.  Right now, the snake is Vladimir Putin.”

    Armchair psychologist types tend to suggest that homicidal fantasies are fairly common.  Julia Shaw of University College London told those attending the Cheltenham Science Festival in 2019 that this was to be expected from humans, enabling them to think through “the consequences” of their actions, obey a moral code and “develop our empathy.”

    Shaw might have missed a beat on this one, especially regarding the harm wished upon the Russian leader from a certain number in self-declared Freedom’s Land.  Empathy has been in short supply, and the moral code, if it can be called that, has gone begging.

    Graham’s homicidal call did bring out its critics, but the outrage was far from unconditional.  To have shown balance would have betrayed the cause and revealed solidarity for wickedness.  There were the mild, spanking rebukes from Democrat Congresswoman Ilhan Omar from Minnesota.  “As the world pays attention to how the US and its leaders are responding, Lindsey’s remarks and remarks made by some House members aren’t helpful.”

    Republican Senator Ted Cruz thought it “an exceptionally bad idea”, preferring “massive economic sanctions”, boycotts of Russian oil and gas, and the provision of military aid to Ukraine.  Democratic Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz, Chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, wondered if a certain number of people had lost their minds.  “I have seen at least a half a dozen insane tweets tonight.  Please everyone keep your wits about you.”

    Billionaire financier Bill Browder, the inspiration behind the Magnitsky Act of 2012, preferred to diminish Putin as “a very little man.  He’s very scared of everybody, and he’s very vindictive.  And so he’s constantly looking around for betrayal.”  Hardly worth assassinating, it would seem.

    One should give Graham some leeway here, despite the flat assertion by White House press secretary Jen Psaki that assassination was “not the policy of the United States.”  Given that the US has not been averse to assassinating leaders or prominent figures, why be squeamish now?  President Abraham Lincoln thought it morally appropriate to condone the assassination of leaders who had caused suffering for an extended period of time, and could not be ousted by peaceful or legal means.  With Cleo’s irony, he would himself be assassinated along the lines of such logic by thespian John Wilkes Booth.

    For decades, Washington wished to do away with Cuba’s obstinately resilient Fidel Castro, bumbling along and eventually failing.  (Such oafish, nursery incompetence surely demands a Netflix production.)

    With the People’s Republic of China starting to make its mark in the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower thought it appropriate that a blow be struck by singling out one of the Communist state’s brighter lights, Premier Zhou Enlai.  The Central Intelligence Agency’s murderous effort involved blowing up an Air India flight for Bandung in 1955, killing 16 passengers.  Zhou never boarded the flight.  A second effort at attempted poisoning was aborted.

    The CIA did not always fail, even if it gave an excellent impression of doing so.  There was more success in operations against Congo’s Patrice Lumumba and the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo.

    During the absurdly named “Global War On Terror”, drones became the weapon of choice to target high profile figures, a murderous policy given a bubble wrapping of weasel words.  As recently as January 2020, President Donald Trump went so far as to order the killing of one of Iran’s most popular figures, the legendary leader of the Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani.

    At stages, US officials have shown remarkable candour on the policy of targeting heads of state, despite the existence of Executive Order 12333 which states that, “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.”

    In 1990, Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael Dugan promised that, in the event of war between the two countries, US planes would make a special point of targeting Saddam Hussein, his family and his mistress.  It must have then come as a surprise to him that a certain Secretary of Defense, the usually amoral Dick Cheney, would sack him for making comments possibly in violation of the assassination ban.  Dugan should have stuck to generalities, such as targeting the country’s leadership.  It’s all in the presentation.

    What of the point of assassination, that most severe form of censorship?  Stephen Kinzer is solid in pointing out that liquidating that man in the Kremlin will hardly guarantee a more accommodating replacement.  “No one who hopes to secure power in Moscow […] could ever accept Ukraine’s entry into NATO or the presence of hostile troops on Ukrainian soil.”  But Kinzer is even more on the mark for pointing out that US efforts tend to be hallmarks of stunning failure.

    All this chat about purported tyrannicide should not detract from the pattern of US history, which has affirmed that the imperium will dispose of leaders and prominent figures it does not like, even if it fails along the way.  Little wonder that Graham and his ilk are urging Russians to fulfil their blood-soaked fantasies.

    The post Homicidal Drives: US Dreams of Killing Putin first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • International Law Is A Meaningless Concept When It Only Applies To US Enemies

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    Australian whistleblower David McBride just made the following statement on Twitter:

    “I’ve been asked if I think the invasion of Ukraine is illegal.

    My answer is: If we don’t hold our own leaders to account, we can’t hold other leaders to account.

    If the law is not applied consistently, it is not the law.

    It is simply an excuse we use to target our enemies.

    We will pay a heavy price for our hubris of 2003 in the future.

    We didn’t just fail to punish Bush and Blair: we rewarded them. We re-elected them. We knighted them.

    If you want to see Putin in his true light imagine him landing a jet and then saying ‘Mission Accomplished’.”

    As far as I can tell this point is logically unassailable. International law is a meaningless concept when it only applies to people the US power alliance doesn’t like. This point is driven home by the life of McBride himself, whose own government responded to his publicizing suppressed information about war crimes committed by Australian forces in Afghanistan by charging him as a criminal.

    Neither George W Bush nor Tony Blair are in prison cells at The Hague where international law says they ought to be. Bush is still painting away from the comfort of his home, issuing proclamations comparing Putin to Hitler and platforming arguments for more interventionism in Ukraine. Blair is still merily warmongering his charred little heart out, saying NATO should not rule out directly attacking Russian forces in what amounts to a call for a thermonuclear world war.

    They are free as birds, singing their same old demonic songs from the rooftops.

    When you point out this obvious plot hole in discussions about the legality of Vladimir Putin’s invasion you’ll often get accused of “whataboutism”, which is a noise that empire loyalists like to make when you have just highlighted damning evidence that their government’s behaviors entirely invalidate their position on an issue. This is not a “whataboutism”; it’s a direct accusation that is completely devastating to the argument being made, because there really is no counter-argument.

    The Iraq invasion bypassed the laws and protocols for military action laid out in the founding charter of the United Nations. The current US military occupation of Syria violates international law. International law only exists to the extent to which the nations of the world are willing and able to enforce it, and because of the US empire’s military power — and more importantly because of its narrative control power — this means international law is only ever enforced with the approval of that empire.

    This is why the people indicted and detained by the International Criminal Court (ICC) are always from weaker nations — overwhelmingly African — while the USA can get away with actually sanctioning ICC personnel if they so much as talk about investigating American war crimes and suffer no consequences for it whatsoever. It is also why Noam Chomsky famously said that if the Nuremberg laws had continued to be applied with fairness and consistency, then every post-WWII U.S. president would have been hanged.

    This is also why former US National Security Advisor John Bolton once said that the US war machine is “dealing in the anarchic environment internationally where different rules apply,” which “does require actions that in a normal business environment in the United States we would find unprofessional.”

    Bolton would certainly know. In his bloodthirsty push to manufacture consent for the Iraq invasion he spearheaded the removal of the director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a crucial institution for the enforcement of international law, using measures which included threatening the director-general’s children. The OPCW is now subject to the dictates of the US government, as evidenced by the organisation’s coverup of a 2018 false flag incident in Syria which resulted in airstrikes by the US, UK and France during Bolton’s tenure as a senior Trump advisor.

    The US continually works to subvert international law enforcement institutions to advance its own interests. When the US was seeking UN authorization for the Gulf War in 1991, Yemen dared to vote against it, after which a member of the US delegation told Yemen’s ambassador, “That’s the most expensive vote you ever cast.” Yemen lost not just 70 million dollars in US foreign aid but also a valuable labor contract with Saudi Arabia, and a million Yemeni immigrants were sent home by America’s Gulf state allies.

    Simple observation of who is subject to international law enforcement and who is not makes it clear that the very concept of international law is now functionally nothing more than a narrative construct that’s used to bludgeon and undermine governments who disobey the US-centralized empire. That’s why in the lead-up to this confrontation with Russia we saw a push among empire managers to swap out the term “international law” with “rules-based international order”, which can mean anything and is entirely up to the interpretation of the world’s dominant power structure.

    It is entirely possible that we may see Putin ousted and brought before a war crimes tribunal one day, but that won’t make it valid. You can argue with logical consistency that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is wrong and will have disastrous consequences far beyond the bloodshed it has already inflicted, but what you can’t do with any logical consistency whatsoever is claim that it is illegal. Because there is no authentically enforced framework for such a concept to apply.

    As US law professor Dale Carpenter has said, “If citizens cannot trust that laws will be enforced in an evenhanded and honest fashion, they cannot be said to live under the rule of law. Instead, they live under the rule of men corrupted by the law.” This is all the more true of laws which would exist between nations.

    You don’t get to make international law meaningless and then claim that an invasion is “illegal”. That’s not a legitimate thing to do. As long as we are living in a Wild West environment created by a murderous globe-spanning empire which benefits from it, claims about the legality of foreign invasions are just empty sounds.

    ____________________

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Ukraine, Russian Negotiators Say They’re Inching Closer to Peace Deal

    A girl with an anti-war message takes part in a protest in support for Ukraine following Russia's invasion of the country, in Zagreb's main city square on March 5, 2022.

    Negotiators said they’ve made progress on a potential peace deal to end the war in Ukraine.

    The deal would require a number of concessions from both Ukraine and Russia — chief among them, Ukraine would have to agree to drop any intention of joining the NATO military alliance, and would also have to agree to not host any foreign military bases or foreign-based weapons within its borders.

    In exchange, Russia will withdraw from Ukraine and accept new military agreements between Ukraine and the U.S. and European nations to ensure Kyiv is protected against the threat of future invasions.

    There are still some major bumps in the road before a peace deal is brokered. Russian negotiators had also wanted Ukraine to declare itself a “neutral” nation, a proposition that Ukrainian leaders have rejected. But with guarantees of western protection pacts, the idea is now being “seriously discussed,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

    Earlier this week, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky also described the talks as progressing and becoming “more realistic” for reaching a deal. Wednesday also marks the third straight day of negotiations — the first time they’ve lasted more than one day since the conflict began.

    But other sticking points remain unresolved — the status of Crimea, a peninsula formerly under the control of Ukraine that was annexed by Russia in 2014. Continued requests from Zelensky for military assistance and a “no-fly zone,” as well as weapons pledges from other nations, could also disrupt negotiations.

    On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced $800 million in military aid to Ukraine — including hundreds of anti-aircraft systems, thousands of anti-armor systems, more than 7,000 weapons (such as guns and grenade launchers), as well as military drones.

    Many pundits and hawks are also calling on Washington to help create a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine, an action that antiwar groups and experts say would be an extremely dangerous escalation. CODEPINK, a women-led grassroots group dedicated to expanding human rights and ending U.S. wars and militarism, protested against an increase in U.S. militarized involvement at steps of Capitol building on Wednesday — including urging Biden to reject calls for a “no-fly zone,” which the group said could lead to World War III.

    “A No-Fly Zone would only exacerbate this conflict ten-fold, putting all of humanity at risk of annihilation,” the organization said.

    While many are critical of militarization-based solutions, others are calling on the U.S. to participate in peace negotiations. In a recent Truthout interview, Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT and currently Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona, explained that Washington needed to take part in those talks in order for them to succeed.

    “Negotiations will get nowhere if the U.S. persists in its adamant refusal to join,” Chomsky said.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • No-Fly Zone in Ukraine Would Be “Direct Involvement in the War,” Experts Warn

    A NATO No-Fly Zone in Ukraine Would Be “Direct Involvement in the War Against Russia,” Experts Warn

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky continues to demand the U.S. and NATO allies impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, an idea that President Biden has rejected even as a growing number of Republicans embrace the idea despite the risk it could draw the U.S. directly into the war against Russia and possibly spark a nuclear confrontation. Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, co-authored an open letter signed by foreign policy experts who oppose a no-fly zone over Ukraine. It urges leaders to continue diplomatic and economic measures to end the conflict. “As you start thinking about how a no-fly zone would actually unfold, it becomes very obvious this would be direct involvement in the war against Russia, and rather than end the war, a no-fly zone would enlarge the war and escalate the war,” says Wertheim.

    TRANSCRIPT

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

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

    The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is giving a virtual address to both chambers of the U.S. Congress today. He is expected to repeat his call for NATO to impose a no-fly zone. President Biden has so far rejected his request, but some in Congress and former officials have embraced the idea.

    Meanwhile, a group of foreign policy experts have signed on to an open letter opposing a no-fly zone. The letter was co-written by our next guest, Stephen Wertheim. He’s senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of the book Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy.

    Stephen, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Talk about what it means to impose a no-fly zone and why you’re opposed, what this letter is all about.

    STEPHEN WERTHEIM: Well, a no-fly zone strikes many people as a humanitarian measure or a technical measure. Our experience with no-fly zones comes from the last three decades, in which a small number of no-fly zones have been imposed against much weaker enemies than Russia. But what it means is that the United States and NATO forces would commit to shoot down enemy planes, any enemy plane that enters the zone. It’s quite clear Russia would not voluntarily comply with our verbal declaration of a no-fly zone, so we’d have to shoot those planes down. And to do that, we’d have to patrol the area with our own planes to gain supremacy in the skies over Ukraine. And to do that safely, we would have to destroy the enemy’s air defense systems on the ground, as well. Many of those are located in Belarus, and some potentially may be located in Russia. Indeed, Russians could fire at U.S. and NATO forces from Russia.

    And then the question would become: Would we go to war, go to war and exchange fire with Russians who are located inside Russian territory? So, as you start thinking about how a no-fly zone would actually unfold, it becomes very obvious this would be direct involvement in the war against Russia. And rather than end the war, a no-fly zone would enlarge the war and escalate the war. And that’s why the Biden administration has, rightly, been very clear throughout this conflict that a no-fly zone would be escalatory and is not something that it wants to do.

    AMY GOODMAN: And we’re talking about a war between nuclear powers, and what Putin has said is clearly suggesting people should be very careful about moving forward — threatening, in fact.

    STEPHEN WERTHEIM: And as President Obama himself noted as he prepared to leave office, that with respect to Ukraine, Russia would have escalation dominance, meaning because the value of Ukraine to Russia is so much higher than it is to the West, that Putin would be prepared to go much further. This would be a kind of existential struggle for him. And now it is even more so than when he initially invaded, given the sanctions that have been imposed on Russia.

    AMY GOODMAN: And can you —

    STEPHEN WERTHEIM: So, he may resort to nuclear use.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you address the suggestion of a, quote-unquote, “limited” no-fly zone?

    STEPHEN WERTHEIM: It’s hard to know what that would mean exactly. One has to specify where a limited no-fly zone would be imposed. But, again, there is no really limited no-fly zone. A no-fly zone means a commitment not just to declare something, but to enforce it, by making sure that Russian planes cannot fly within that zone. And so, it would clearly be viewed as an act of war and an escalation by Russia. Russia wouldn’t be wrong to view it that way. And in every case, the basically three cases in which no-fly zones have been imposed in recent decades — and again, imposed against enemies much, much weaker than Russia — the mission has expanded.

    For example, if we impose a no-fly zone, whether it’s called limited or not, and our pilots actually do gain superiority in the air, and they’re watching Russians inflict terrible violence on Ukrainians below them, then we’re faced with a question: Should we actually attack Russian forces on the ground? And if not, what was the point of establishing a no-fly zone, if it’s making little difference in the war itself? So, a no-fly zone would not, in and of itself, do very much to alleviate the suffering that Ukrainians are experiencing at the hands of Russian aggression. What it really would be is an intermediate step toward a much wider war.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, I wanted to ask you about the state of negotiations to end this war. The Ukrainian President Zelensky suggested earlier today that Russian demands are becoming more realistic.

    PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY: [translated] Everyone should work, including our representatives, our delegation, for negotiations with the Russian Federation. It is difficult but important, as any war ends with an agreement. The meetings continue, and I am informed the positions during the negotiations already sound more realistic. But time is still needed for the decisions to be in the interests of Ukraine.

    AMY GOODMAN: Zelensky’s remarks came a day after he acknowledged he doesn’t expect Ukraine to join NATO anytime soon, which is very significant. And during a news conference yesterday, The Intercept’s Ryan Grim asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki what the U.S. is doing to advance peace negotiations and whether the U.S. would lift its sanctions on Russia if it reached a peace deal with Ukraine. This is just a small part of what she said.

    RYAN GRIM: Aside from the request for weapons, President Zelensky has also requested that the U.S. be more involved in negotiations toward a peaceful resolution to the war. What is the U.S. doing to push those negotiations forward?

    PRESS SECRETARY JEN PSAKI: Well, one of the steps we’ve taken, a significant one, is to be the largest provider of military and humanitarian and economic assistance in the world, to put them in a greater position of strength as they go into these negotiations.

    AMY GOODMAN: That’s a part of what Jen Psaki — that’s a part of what Jen Psaki said. Your response to this, Stephen?

    STEPHEN WERTHEIM: Well, it is encouraging that President Zelensky is now being even more explicit, continuing a string of remarks over the past week or so in which he has expressed a real openness to making a settlement to the war, suggesting that he’s open to committing to neutrality for Ukraine with respect to NATO. And that has been a core demand of Russia, a consistent demand going back a long time.

    And there are also some encouraging words coming out of the Biden administration, as well. Secretary of State Tony Blinken just recently suggested that the sanctions that have been imposed on Russia were not intended to be permanent. And what that signals is perhaps a willingness on the part of the United States to drop some of the most draconian sanctions on Russia if that becomes necessary in order to secure a peace settlement that the legitimate government of Ukraine, led by Zelensky, would desire. And so, that’s the key. If the Zelensky government believes it’s in the interest of Ukraine to stop the bloodshed, accept what will surely be some painful concessions, but nevertheless preserve the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine in a peaceful way, what I think will be important from the United States and its allies is to be able to be part of those negotiations and make certain concessions with respect to sanctions, that would be surely necessary to reach a peaceful resolution to the war.

    AMY GOODMAN: One of —

    STEPHEN WERTHEIM: Whether —

    AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead.

    STEPHEN WERTHEIM: Whether we’re at the point where in fact Russia is willing to make an agreement, that is hard to judge. But we may get there in the coming weeks.

    AMY GOODMAN: One of the key demands from Russia so far has been no intermediate- or shorter-range missiles deployed close enough to hit the territory of the other side. Explain this. And we just have 30 seconds.

    STEPHEN WERTHEIM: Actually, prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion several weeks ago, it seemed as though the United States and Russia were making some progress in diplomacy on issues like the one you mentioned, on arms control agreements, which would involve reciprocal measures whereby NATO forces in the east of NATO and Russia would both seek to revive the kinds of limitations on their armaments, that were built up actually during the Cold War, were built up a little bit after the Cold War, but have atrophied over the last several decades. So this is also —

    AMY GOODMAN: We just have 10 seconds.

    STEPHEN WERTHEIM: This is also something that could be part of an ultimate peace agreement.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, Stephen Wertheim, we’re going to do Part 2 of our conversation with you and post it online at democracynow.org. Stephen Wertheim is senior fellow at the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He’s a visiting fellow at Yale Law School and author of the book Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy.

    That does it for our show. Democracy Now! is produced with a remarkable group of people. I’m Amy Goodman. Stay safe.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The US, NATO & The Article IV Trap In Ukraine

    The ongoing Russian invasion has torn asunder whatever passed for geopolitical stability in Eastern Europe in the years since NATO expansion brought Poland and the three former Soviet Baltic Republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into its membership. While peeved, Russia had accepted the resulting equilibrium with stoic grace, bristling at every NATO effort at muscle flexing, but not overreacting. The Russo-Ukrainian War has changed this equation, with Poland and the three Baltic States using the conflict as an excuse to trigger Article IV of the NATO Charter to call for consultations among the NATO membership regarding a situation the four Eastern European nations view as a pressing national security matter.

    The post The US, NATO & The Article IV Trap In Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Marina Ovsyannikova Refuses to Retract Antiwar Statements in Moscow Court

    Marina Ovsyannikova, the editor at the state broadcaster Channel One who protested against Russian military action in Ukraine during the evening news broadcast at the station, speaks to the media as she leaves the Ostankinsky District Court after being fined for breaching protest laws in Moscow on March 15, 2022.

    Marina Ovsyannikova, a former employee of the state-run Channel One television station in Russia who protested the invasion of Ukraine by holding up a “No War” sign on the air, was offered the chance to retract her antiwar statements in a Moscow court on Tuesday.

    She refused to do so, and pleaded not guilty to administrative law charges that were filed against her.

    Those charges did not stem from her protest, but from the content of a pre-recorded video she made ahead of her action, in which she explained her antiwar views and how she was “embarrassed” for being part of the propaganda machine on Channel One.

    “What’s happening in Ukraine right now is a true crime. And Russia is the aggressor,” she said in that video. “And the responsibility for this crime lies only on the conscience of one person, and that person is [Russia President] Vladimir Putin.”

    Ovsyannikova was found guilty of violating the administrative law and fined 30,000 rubles (the equivalent of $280 USD). She could face future criminal charges for her on-air protest.

    Ovsyannikova’s lawyers pointed out that her rights were being denied to her during her detainment — under Russian law, women who have children under the age of 14 cannot be detained for violating administrative laws (Ovsyannikova has two children under that age limit).

    In addition to refusing to retract her statements and pleading not guilty, Ovsyannikova reiterated her viewpoints on the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine to the judge overseeing her case.

    “I still believe that Russia committed a crime by attacking Ukraine,” she said. “I do not retract any of my words, it was indeed an antiwar statement.”

    Speaking outside of the courthouse after being fined, Ovsyannikova shared her experience in detention, during which her lawyers presumed she was missing due to the fact that she wasn’t allowed to contact them. The dissident, whose father is Ukrainian and mother is Russian, explained that she was interrogated for more than 14 hours while under arrest, and wasn’t allowed to call any of her family to tell them what was going on.

    “I spent two days without sleep,” she added.

    Ovsyannikova’s protest is but one example out of thousands of Russians in the country speaking out against the Putin-ordered invasion of Ukraine. Protests have sprung up in dozens of cities across the nation, with dissidents risking their livelihoods to showcase their opposition to the war.

    Earlier this month, the Kremlin made it illegal to independently report on the war or for citizens to protest against it, threatening those who violated the law with up to 15 years in prison if found guilty.

    As of last week, more than 13,000 Russians have been arrested for protesting the invasion of Ukraine, according to a protest monitoring group called OVD-Info.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Former Top Pentagon Advisor Col. Doug Macgregor On Russia-Ukraine War

    Former senior advisor the Secretary of Defense Col. Doug Macgregor joins Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate for a candid, live discussion of the Russia-Ukraine war and his time in the Trump administration when an Afghan withdrawal was sabotaged and conflict with Iran and Syria continued.

    The post Former Top Pentagon Advisor Col. Doug Macgregor On Russia-Ukraine War appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • NATO Is Not A Defensive International Organization But Was Founded To Threaten The USSR

    Reading US reports on the deadly Russian rocket attack on the so-called International Peacekeeping and Security Center in western Ukraine, one could be excused for thinking that the Russians might have been destroying some UN peacekeeping base.

    In fact, the deceptively named target, as a few US news reports on the attack did note, is actually a joint NATO/Ukrainian military base near the border of NATO member Poland that has specifically long been where US and NATO military trainers have worked with Ukrainian troops, teaching them the finer points of handling the lethal equipment being supplied to them by the US and some NATO nations like France, Germany, Britain and Turkey.

    The post NATO Is Not A Defensive International Organization But Was Founded To Threaten The USSR appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Biden Calls Out Oil and Gas Companies as Oil Prices Drop But Gas Remains High

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

    As crude oil prices are dropping, President Joe Biden is demanding that gas prices be lowered to ease the impact on the public.

    On Wednesday, Biden tweeted a chart showing the current discrepancy between oil price and gas price trends. “Oil prices are decreasing, gas prices should too,” Biden said. “Last time oil was $96 a barrel, gas was $3.62 a gallon. Now it’s $4.31. Oil and gas companies shouldn’t pad their profits at the expense of hardworking Americans.”

    Crude oil prices have been dropping over the past week after hitting highs of over $120 a barrel in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the past few days, they’ve dipped below $100 – but, while gas prices had climbed in tandem with rising crude oil prices, they haven’t lowered at the same pace. Instead, according to AAA, gas prices are still around $4.31 a gallon on average.

    Biden is echoing progressive lawmakers’ recent cries to hold oil and gas companies accountable for jacking up prices in response to the current crisis. The fossil fuel industry is “profiteering,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) wrote on Monday. “And there should be consequences for it.”

    If gas prices were to remain high, CNN reports, the average household would spend $1,300 more a year on gas, spending a collective $165 billion more on gas than consumers did in 2019. Gas prices are currently about $1.50 higher per gallon than pre-pandemic levels.

    A lag between crude oil prices and gas prices is common in the oil and gas industry, experts say, and is typically called “rockets and feathers” – gas prices rocket on the way up, but fall back down like feathers.

    Biden doesn’t think it should be this way.

    “Try explaining how it’s just rockets and feathers to President Biden, and you’d better be ready to hear, ‘That’s a bunch of malarkey’ coming back at you,” a senior White House official said to CNN. “The president is very much within his rights to point out that if you’re going to have rockets on the way up, you need to have rockets on the way down, not feathers.”

    When the Ukraine crisis first began, gas prices had already been creeping up as inflation rose and the industry padded its profits. Biden warned companies against using the crisis to raise prices. “American oil and gas companies should not exploit this moment to hike their prices to raise profits,” Biden said as Russian forces began the invasion of Ukraine.

    Biden has already put oil and gas companies on notice. In November, he directed the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether or not oil and gas companies are artificially boosting gas prices while using inflation as a cover. A recent poll found that most voters think that corporations are using the pandemic in order to increase their profits.

    Republicans have been blaming Biden for the gas price increases, but in reality, Biden exercises little to no control over gas prices.

    Experts say that profit-seeking is at least part of the reason that gas prices are high. Wall Street investors are insisting that dividends and profits stay high amid several ongoing crises, and high gas prices can maintain payouts for them and executives. Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry is pushing for subsidies like tax breaks as customers are fleeced at the gas station.

    Last week, Democrats introduced legislation to tax barrels of oil produced or imported by large oil and gas companies in order to discourage profiteering. The revenue raised from the tax would be given back to consumers in the form of quarterly checks under the bill.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Western Double-Standards – Russian Oil Bad, Saudi Oil Good

    On Monday it was reported that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson would travel to the oil-rich desert kingdom in order to seek new supply deals following last week’s announcement that Britain would phase out oil imports from Russia by the end of the year in response to Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine – similar to the United States’ recent announcement that Russian oil imports would immediately be banned outright, with US President Joe Biden also seeking an increase in supply from Saudi Arabia and its’ Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) partner, the UAE; a request that has apparently been snubbed by both Kingdoms.

    To even request an increase in oil supply from Riyadh and Abu Dhabi in the first place however, demonstrates the hollowness of the United States and Britain’s assertions that their suspension of oil imports from Russia is due to human rights concerns amidst the current military operation in Ukraine…

    The post Western Double-Standards – Russian Oil Bad, Saudi Oil Good appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • CNN Unintentionally Confirms Major Russian Accusation against Zelensky

    One of the Russian Government’s main accusations against the Government of Ukraine’s President Volodmyr Zelensky is that Zelensky’s forces are using Ukraine’s civilians as “human shields” in order to prevent Russian forces from bombing Ukrainian Government forces: in other words, Russia says that a major reason for civilian casualties in this war is the Ukrainian Government’s using its own citizenry as hostages to the conflict, so as to rely upon the non-brutality of Russia’s forces in order to protect Ukraine’s own forces.

    On Tuesday, March 15th, CNN headlined “Mariupol deputy mayor says Russian troops are destroying his city” and reported that “Sergei Orlov, deputy mayor of Mariupol, said Russian forces are ‘destroying’ the besieged Ukrainian city and that patients in a hospital were used as captives.”

    CNN wasn’t intentionally confirming a Russian-Government accusation, but merely reported what their source, Orlov, had said. No context was provided for his statement which would call attention to the fact that Orlov was actually confirming what Russia’s Government has been saying about this war. The CNN report didn’t even so much as just mention that Mr. Orlov is an official of the existing Ukrainian government in Mariupol, and that the Russian forces are trying to take over the city from that government — the government of which he is an official.

    The CNN report went on to quote Orlov as saying, “the Russian army used doctors and patients as hostages in this building,” but that is obviously false, because the attacking forces there are the Russian soldiers, and the defending forces there are the Ukrainian soldiers — and, consequently, any “human shields” there would be used as “shields” BY the Ukrainian soldiers. The report went on to assert that “A Ukrainian official has also accused Russian troops of holding people captive at the hospital,” and this is yet more of the Ukrainian government’s assumption that CNN’s audience are incredibly stupid — stupid enough to think that “human shields” are used by attacking forces instead of by only the most despicable type of defending forces: ones that protect themselves at the expense of the civilians they’re supposed to be protecting.

    Mariupol happens to be a city just outside the Donbass breakaway region from Ukraine in Ukraine’s southeast, and its citizenry were publicly protesting against the February 2014 forced overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych, for whom Mariupol’s residents had overwhelmingly voted in the latest Ukrainian Presidential election, which was in 2010. U.S. President Barack Obama’s Administration had hired Ukraine’s highly organized racist-fascist anti-Russian “Right Sector” and other far-right forces to prepare and lead the 2013 “Maidan” demonstrations against Yanukovych and subsequently to be appointed themselves to the top national-security positions in the new, U.S.-installed, post-coup Ukrainian government. Here is a video, on 9 May 2014, showing Mariupol residents protesting peacefully against the overthrow of their President, and being shot by the newly installed government’s police:

    The pro-coup-regime (i.e., pro-U.S.) national Ukrainian newspaper Kyiv Post headlined “Avakov says 21 dead in Mariupol after clashes between police and separatists” and reported violent actions by the opponents of this new government:

    Kremlin-backed “terrorists” kidnapped Mariupol police chief Valeriy Androshchuk during today’s firefight over the local police headquarters, said lawmaker Oleh Liashko on his Facebook page who is in the Donetsk Oblast city at the moment.

    He “fought until the end” but “terrorists” took him from the “burning police station in a car that was cut off by a sports utility vehicle,” wrote Liashko. “The fighters stabbed the jeep driver with a knife and placed Androshchuk inside the car trunk and drove off in an unknown direction.”

    Liashko was one of Ukraine’s leading far-right politicians and a strong backer of the U.S.-installed government; so, Liashko called the protesters “terrorists‘; and, soon thereafter, the Ukrainian government officially introduced what they called an “Anti Terrorist Operation” in order to kill as many resisting people as possible anywhere in the country. (To resist the coup-installed government was to be a ‘terrorist’.) This was virtually the beginning of Ukraine’s civil war. But, even earlier, on 2 May 2014, the new government’s murderous character was displayed in Odessa (in south-central Ukraine), where Right Sector forces trapped an unknown number of protesters in the Trade Unions Building — and burned them alive in it. The most heart-rending compendium of videos of that was shown here. This horrific event immediately sparked the protests throughout Ukraine’s southeast, which started on May 9th, which began the civil war.

    So, it’s not surprising that, in the current battles, between the invading Russian soldiers and the soldiers of today’s Ukraine (the defenders of the U.S.-imposed Ukrainian regime), human shields are being used for protecting (‘shielding’) the latter (America’s proxy-forces in Ukraine).

    The post CNN Unintentionally Confirms Major Russian Accusation against Zelensky first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • We need a peoples’ solidarity with Ukraine and against war

    Shaun Matsheza and Nick Buxton from the Trans National Institute spoke with social researcher Denys Gorbach and Denis Pilash a poitical scientist and activist involved in Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement), about the situation in Ukraine.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Ukraine and Catalonia: using Putin’s aggression to help Spain’s

    In the context of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, supporters of Spanish unionism are taking every opportunity to attack independentist figures, reports Dick Nichols.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • The Huge Gap Between How Serious Nuclear War Is And How Seriously It’s Being Taken

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    Sometimes I’m not sure what presents a greater threat to humanity, nuclear war or the colossal stupidity that has made it possible.

    Due to the skyrocketing risk of a world-ending confrontation between the United States and Russia, World Socialist Website is re-releasing a series of interviews it conducted in 2017 with experts on the subject of nuclear war. One of them is with a senior scientist at Physicians for Social Responsibility named Steven Starr, which WSWS has titled “Nuclear winter—the long-suppressed reality of nuclear war”.

    Starr discusses the research which has shown that in addition to the unthinkable horrors of flattened cities and nuclear fallout we’ve all been told about, “a war fought with existing US and Russian nuclear arsenals is predicted to make agriculture impossible for a decade or longer, dooming most people to die from a nuclear famine.”

    Starr says a false narrative has been spun that the science behind nuclear winter theory is weak, a narrative I’ve had parroted at me from time to time in my commentary on this subject. He says the science is in fact peer-reviewed and robust, and actually makes very conservative estimates of the environmental havoc that would be unleashed by black carbon soot thrown into the stratosphere by a large nuclear exchange. But this science has been actively suppressed and marginalized by a junk science smear campaign and the slashing of research funding.

    “After the success of the smear campaign against nuclear winter, most people eventually accepted this narrative and funding for new research dried up,” Starr said. “This had a big impact on the public, who got the impression that the nuclear winter theory had been disproven. As a result, this issue is hardly ever talked about now in the mainstream media.”

    “One of the reasons for this is that over the years, trillions of dollars have been spent on nuclear weapons,” Starr adds. “If the conclusions of the nuclear winter research—that nuclear war is suicide for all peoples and nations—had gained widespread acceptance and understanding, it is likely that the whole nuclear weapons industry would have been shut down.”

    Indeed, when you’re talking about the movement of trillions of dollars (Obama committed $1 trillion to modernizing America’s nuclear arsenal for the explicit purpose of better confronting Russia), you’re talking about the kind of money that any amount of underhanded gangster tactics would be employed to secure.

    But I think another major part of it is the much more basic fact that if people truly understood how dangerous nuclear war is for everyone on this planet, nobody would consent to the kinds of cold war games that the drivers of empire have been intending to play with these weapons.

    If people truly understood that their life and the lives of everyone they love are being gambled like poker chips in nuclear brinkmanship maneuvers geared toward securing unipolar planetary hegemony for an undeclared empire loosely centralized around the United States, those few empire architects would soon find themselves on the losing end of a tooth-and-claw fight against the entire human species. The ability to win cold war power struggles is dependent on the mainstream public not thinking too hard about what nuclear war is and why it is being risked.

    So I think we’re seeing a broad lack of awareness among the general public of just how close to the precipice we are for the same reason nuclear winter theory has been suppressed: because if everyone deeply understood how dangerous these unipolarist grand chessboard power plays are, and how they deliver no real benefit to ordinary people, they wouldn’t permit them to happen.

    A responsible news media would be educating the public about things like nuclear winter, and how easy it would be for a nuclear war to be triggered by a malfunction, miscommunication, misunderstanding, or miscalculation in the chaos and confusion of soaring cold war escalations as nearly happened many times during the last cold war. A “news” media whose job is not to report the news but to manufacture consent for imperial agendas will do everything it can to prevent people from paying attention to those things.

    This is why, if you really understand nuclear war and what it means and how close we are to its emergence, it feels so surreal and dissonant looking around at the things people are talking about today. How ungrounded in reality it all is, how unseriously people are taking this thing, how willing they are to consent to things like no-fly zones and other direct military action against Russia. It’s because people are prevented from seeing and understanding this reality. You can’t have the riff raff interfering in the mechanics of the imperial machine. Unipolar hegemony is too important to be left to democratic processes. Keep the local fauna confused and distracted while you roll the dice on nuclear armageddon with the hope of ruling the world.

    These people are like mobsters, knowing they’ll probably die a violent death but willing to risk it all for a chance at living the high life. There’s not the slightest iota of wisdom guiding their actions. Just the primitive impulse to dominate and control. They’re living their lives and making their decisions essentially on autopilot, guided by unconscious impulses they themselves don’t understand.

    In the aforementioned interview Starr also touches on the ease with which a nuclear war could be set off by a technical malfunction, and what the earliest moments of a nuclear war will likely look like:

    If the US early warning systems detect a missile launch, the President can order a launch of retaliatory nuclear strike before incoming nuclear warheads take out communication systems and weapons. Of course, if this is a false warning of attack, then the “retaliatory” strike becomes a first-strike and a nuclear war has started.

     

    Moreover, if somebody has launched a nuclear strike against the silos in which your nuclear weapons are housed in, you don’t retaliate by targeting their empty silos. You target their cities. Russia only has about 230 cities with a population greater than 100,000 and the US has 312. So it’s not that hard to wipe out a couple hundred cities in an initial salvo.

    Starr also discusses the insane belief that Russia will probably back down when threatened with the possibility of nuclear war, a line of thinking that’s becoming so common today that it’s almost its own genre of natsec punditry:

    The strategists often say, “Oh, well, Russia will back down.” What if they don’t? And why would they back down on their own border? Any US/NATO-Russian direct military conflict will very likely lead to a full-scale nuclear war.

    In another 2017 World Socialist Website interview, this one with Los Alamos Study Group secretary and executive director Greg Mello, we get some more insight into the reality of the nuclear threat:

    To a first approximation, in a nuclear war between the US and Russia, everybody in the world would die. Some people in the southern hemisphere might survive, but probably not even them.

    …

    The imagination cannot encompass nuclear war. Nuclear war means nuclear winter. It means the collapse of very fragile electronic, financial, governmental, administrative systems that keep everyone alive. We’d be lucky to reboot in the early 19th century. And if enough weapons are detonated, the collapse of the Earth’s ozone layer would mean that every form of life that has eyes could be blinded. The combined effects of a US-Russian nuclear war would mean that pretty much every terrestrial mammal, and many plants, would become extinct. There would be a dramatic biological thinning.

    The gulf between these expert analyses and what people are consuming in the news could not possibly be wider. People simply don’t understand what’s being done with their lives by powerful people who care only about imperial domination, and the powerful intend to keep it that way.

    It doesn’t need to be like this. There’s no reason our planet needs to be dominated by any one single power structure, especially if doing so means risking complete annihilation. We should all be pushing for de-escalation, diplomacy and detente, and for the nations and peoples of this world to begin working together for the good of everyone.

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.