OMNI
RUSSIA NEWSLETTER #9,
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.
(#1 March 21, 2014; #2 April 10, 2014; #3 May 16, 2014; #4 July 22, 2014; #5 March 10, 2015; #6 Sept. 1, 2016; #7, October 3, 2017; #8, Nov. 10, 2021)
CONTENTS RUSSIA NEWSLETTER #9
WAYS US WARRIORS GO TO WAR
Bruce Gagnon. What is the US Agenda? NATO Expansion And Regime Change in Russia
George Paulson. Russophobia
Biden. Putin a Killer
John Pilger. “In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia.”
Matt Taibbi. “10 Ways to Call Something Russian Disinformation Without Evidence.”
Alan MacLeod. False Bounty Claim.
McGovern, Russiagate
Boyd-Barrett, Russiagate as “puerile narrative.”
Galloway. Macron: the Problem is USA
Russia’s 100,000 Troops
Grossman. NATO Maneuvers.
WAYS TO PEACE
Hobson. Reverse NATO Expansion and US Leave NATO
Dick. Critical Thinking Through Language
TEXTS #9
Bruce Gagnon, The US Agenda
Clinton violated U.S. promise to Mikhail Gorbachev that after the fall of the former Soviet Union, NATO would not expand ''one centimeter' eastward toward Russia.
This recent meeting between Russia and U.S. in Geneva proved to me that Washington does not recognize Russia as an equal bargaining entity. Instead the US arrogantly believes it can pre-determine its policy - in this case aggressive NATO expansion and regime change in Russia. This is clearly the US agenda.
Washington and Brussels (and London of course) can't afford to recognize Russia as an equal. They must keep demonizing Moscow and Putin to stay 'relevant' in the world today as the west declines and China, Russia, Iran and others in the global south rise.
Plus we must always remember that there is big money at stake for the military industrial complex as they believe they can ride this aggressive wave another 50 years. So what if it leads to WW III and nuclear Armageddon.
Thus the US delegation left the meeting on January 11 and said, "We have your demands. We'll let you know in a week our response." I don't expect much.
Just so we all remain clear, these so-called 'unreasonable' demands by Russia (listed below) are quite rational and appropriate when you consider that the US-NATO are deep in the process of creating a Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse for the Russian Federation.
Russian demands in negotiations with US:
·NATO will cease all efforts to expand eastward, notably into Ukraine and Georgia.
·NATO guarantees that it will not deploy missile batteries in nations bordering Russia.
·An end to NATO military and naval exercises in nations and seas bordering Russia.
·The effective restoration of the treaty covering intermediate-range nuclear weapons. The U.S. abandoned the INF pact in August 2019.
·An ongoing East-West security dialogue.
I went looking for some comments on this current situation and of course the Washington Post and New York Times buried the story. So the only thing the people in the US know is that Joe Biden sent his team to Geneva to threaten Russia not to invade Ukraine.
Below are some good comments that I think cover many elements of this story. First though we must hear from Washington officialdom.
| 5:34 PM (2 hours ago) |
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Hello Dick,
I’m a big fan of Taibbi, and read this article [below] earlier today.
The Russia-hysteria, embraced by most Democrats, especially the more rabid members of the Hillary Clinton Fan Club, functions, for all practical purposes, as a religion. It explains the otherwise unexplainable—how else could Hillary, with her famed resume, lose to an openly corrupt, vulgar, politically inexperienced game show host? It is, to steal a line from my late father in law, the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever seen, in all its glory, from Adam Schiff telling us that we need to arm Ukraine so we can fight nuclear-armed Russia “over there” rather than over here, to the non-existent pee tape based on the fictitious Steele dossier, to the Washington Post telling us that the vegan website nutritionfacts.org is doing the Kremlin’s bidding. Think of it as a Red Scare, just without any Reds. The chief purpose of the Russia-hysteria seems to be to deflect attention from the fact that it was the collective failure of the Democratic party—especially since Bill Clinton’s abandonment of the New Deal and embrace of Wall Street-friendly neoliberal economic policies--that gave us Donald Trump. Of course, it’s also great for the military industrial complex.
Be well, George
Putin a Killer
Calling Putin a ‘killer’ with ‘no soul’ is not exactly diplomatic
finesse. Mronline.org (3-22-21). Eds.
Meanwhile, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the “killer” jab a “very bad statement by the U.S. president,” that indicated “he doesn’t want to normalize relations.”
MR Online |March 22, 2021 | Newswire
Let’s go back a few years to 2014
RUSSIA IS GOING TO INVADE? Article by John Pilgerforwarded by Abel Tomlinson:
Dear friends, 1-17-22
My mom sent me a message this morning, "Russia is going to invade Ukraine!". I thought, "great, The US political & media Establishment are banging their satanic war drums louder & louder, even my mom is worried (for inverted reasons). Their ocean of lies about Ukraine are immense & their escalations toward war with Russia are f**king apex insanity. To help dispel their lies, I refer my mom to journalists with integrity, like John Pilger here:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger
“In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia” by John Pilger. Washington's role in Ukraine, and its backing for the regime's neo-Nazis, has huge implications for the rest of the world
The Ruskies and the USies Are Up to Their Old Tricks? US Disinformation Alleges Russian Disinformation
principles of American Newspeak, vol. 1
10 Ways to Call Something Russian Disinformation Without Evidence
How do you call something “Russian disinformation” when you don’t have evidence it is? Let’s count the ways. We don’t know a whole lot about how the New York Post story about Hunter Biden got into print. There are some reasons to think the material is genuine (including its cache of graphic photos and some apparent limited confirmation from people on the email chains), but in terms of sourcing, anything is possible. This material could have been hacked by any number of actors, and shopped for millions (as Time has reported), and all sorts of insidious characters - including notorious Russian partisans like Andrei Derkach - could have been behind it. None of these details are known, however, which hasn’t stopped media companies from saying otherwise. Most major outlets began denouncing the story as foreign propaganda right away and haven’t stopped. A quick list of the creative methods seen lately of saying, “We don’t know, but we know!”: MORE |
HOSTILE, BIASED REPORTING BY US MEDIA
In ‘Russian Bounty’ story, evidence-free claims from nameless spies became fact overnight.
Posted Jul 06, 2020 by Alan MacLeod
Empire , Inequality , Media , Strategy Russia , United States Newswire
Originally published: FAIR (July 3, 2020) |. Monthly Review Essays mronline.org (7-6-20)
The New York Times (6/26/20) front-paged what “intelligence says”—while offering very little explanation of why they say they believe it, or why we should believe them.
Based upon a bombshell New York Times report (6/26/20), virtually the entire media landscape has been engulfed in the allegations that Russia is paying Taliban fighters bounties to kill U.S. soldiers.
The Washington Post (6/27/20) and the Wall Street Journal (6/27/20) soon published similar stories, based on the same intelligence officials who refused to give their names, and did not appear to share any data or documents with the news organizations. “The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have confirmed our reporting,” tweeted the Times article’s lead author, Charlie Savage. The Post’s John Hudson seemed to back him up: “We have confirmed the New York Times scoop: A Russian military spy unit offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan,” he responded. . . .
The information on the Russian bounties appears to have been both minimal and vague, with officials refusing to show any corroborating evidence or the documents they claimed to have, and were unable to link the accusations to any concrete, real-world events. MORE https://fair.org/home/in-russian-bounty-story-evidence-free-claims-from-nameless-spies-became-fact-overnight/
Russiagate’s last gasp. Mronline.org (7-5-20).
One can read this most recent flurry of Russia, Russia, Russia paid the Taliban to kill GIs as an attempt to pre-empt the findings into Russiagate’s origins. | more…
Originally published: Consortium News by Ray McGovern (June 29, 2020 ) | - Posted Jul 04, 2020. On Friday The New York Times featured a report based on anonymous intelligence officials that the Russians were paying bounties to have U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan with President Donald Trump refusing to do anything about it. Over the weekend, the Times’ dubious allegations grabbed headlines across all media that are likely to remain indelible in the minds of credulous Americans–which seems to have been the main objective.
Jeremy Kuzmarov’s reply to my query regarding the allegations of Russia paying Afghans to kill US troops in Afghanistan 7-2-20:
“I don't think the allegations with regards to Russia have been proven. It’ probably designed to deflect attention away from the war in Afghanistan and question of why the US is stlll there after 19 years, and also to channel popular sentiment against a foreign enemy rather than in supporting of a revolution against the ruling elite.”
Russiagate as organized distraction. Mronline.org (8-2-19).
Oliver Boyd-Barrett looks at who benefits from having the corporate media suffocate their public with a puerile narrative for over two years.
Macron Knows: For Europeans the ‘Problem’ Country Is Not Russia but USA
George Galloway – RT TMS WeeklyDigest, 9-2/8-19
28 Aug 2019 – ‘The End Times of Western Hegemony’, I wish this were written by Macron although it might as well have been. He said exactly this after the G7 gathering which could be summed up in Shakespeare’s words as “much ado about nothing.”
RUSSIA HAS 100,000 TROOPS INSIDE ITS BORDER WITH UKRAINE?
HOW MANY US/NATO TROOPS ARE OUTSIDE RUSSIA’S ENCIRCLED BORDERS?
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SOLUTION TO COLD WAR II: REVERSE NATO EXPANSION EASTWARD AND US GET OUT OF NATO
“America is too pushy in Eastern Europe”
Russian fear of NATO is legitimate
Art Hobson, ahobson@uark.edu NWADG, 11 January 2022
As I've said before in these pages, U.S. global "leadership" is overly aggressive and militaristic. America cannot run the world.
NATO expansion into Eastern Europeposes a threat to Russia that could develop into a confrontation similar to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. NATO began in 1949 as a military alliance between several Western European nations, the U.S., and Canada that would provide security in the event of invasion by the Soviet Union. Throughout the Cold War, NATO forces, including hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops stationed in Europe, faced off against NATO's eastern counterpart, the Warsaw Pact military alliance. The Cold War ended in 1989 as Eastern European nations rebelled against Soviet dominance. Although the Warsaw Pact collapsed, NATO's military alliance persisted and even expanded to include Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary. It then continued, over the years, into Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
This expansion flies in the face of the advice of the first NATO supreme commander, General (and U.S. President) Dwight D. Eisenhower. He stated in February 1951: "If in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project [NATO] will have failed."
Other Cold War participants voiced similar views. George Kennan, the American diplomat and historian who formulated the policy of "containment" that was our basic strategy for fighting the Cold War, stated in 1997: "Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the post cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected...to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking."
President Eisenhower's granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, sent an open letter to President Clinton in 1997 that described plans to expand NATO as "a policy error of historic proportions." The letter was co-signed by an impressive group of 49 military, political and academic leaders.
There is good reason for this advice. Russia's greatest fear is Western aggression. Russia suffered invasions by Turkey (1571), Poland (1605), Sweden (1610), France (1812), and Ukraine/Belarus (1814). This fear was re-confirmed in spades when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, initiating World War II, and then invaded the Soviet Union in June, 1941. 24 million Russians--10 percent of the Russian population including at least 12 million civilians--died in that war.
Today, Russia finds itself largely surrounded by a hostile NATO military alliance. Now Ukraine, a large nation that has received significant U.S. military assistance and that shares a long border with Russia, seeks membership in NATO. It was entirely predictable that Russia, fearing above all the possible placement of offensive missiles at Ukraine's border, would view this as an existential crisis and vehemently resist.
A similar situation developed just after World War II. Finland, a democratic Western nation with a free economy, felt threatened by the huge Soviet Union to its immediate east. Amid postwar tensions, Finland signed a Treaty of Friendship with the Soviets, declaring neutrality in superpower politics and guaranteeing that the USSR need not fear attack from or through Finnish territory. This preserved peace.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has submitted a statement of security measures it wants to negotiate with the U.S. and NATO. These measures include guaranteed Ukrainian neutrality, precluding it's membership in NATO. Putin warns that mounting tensions could push Russia into a showdown similar to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that put the world on the verge of nuclear war. The comparison is apt: In 1962, the Soviet Union had secretly stationed intermediate-range nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba. When informed of this by American intelligence agencies, President John Kennedy vehemently opposed such missiles near the U.S. border and resolved to remove them despite the inevitable risk of nuclear war arising from this decision. Putin today voices a concern similar to Kennedy's concern. A hostile Ukraine, allied militarily with the West, could place offensive missiles at Russia's border, five minutes from Moscow. A pledge of neutrality from Ukraine, similar to Finland's 1947 pledge, is reasonable and desirable for all sides.
The U.S. has long overplayed its hand in NATO and in the world. Last September, the French Foreign Minister suggested Europeans need to define their own strategic interests relative to nations such as China (and, by implication, Russia). I agree, and have a modest suggestion: America should withdraw from NATO and allow Europe to follow its own strategic interests.
Revised bio for this week only:
Art Hobsonis a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Arkansas, also co-author and co-editor of The Future of Land-Based Strategic Missiles published by the American Institute of Physics. Email him at ahobson@uark.edu
References:
• Guterres at the United Nations: NWADG 22 Sep 2021, page 5.
• NATO history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO#History.
• Quotes from Eisenhower and Kennan, letter from Eisenhower's granddaughter: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-jul-07-me-10464-story.html.
• Deaths in World War II: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war.
• Western invasions of Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Russia,
• Finland history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Finland.
• Putin's desire for security, and fear of missiles placed in Ukraine. NWADG 10.12.21, page 8. Also NWADG 17.12.21, page 6.
• France needs to define its own strategic interests: NWADG 22 Sep 2021, page 5.
Editorial. “Cooking the Numbers.” NADG(3-25-20).
The Editor alleges that “Tsar Vladimir the Permanent” is a gigantic liar about Russia’s covid cases, and those lies typify everything he says. “That is, he appears to be just as honest about this crisis as anything else. More’s the pity. More’s the deadly.”
That Putin is 100% untrustworthy is what’s deadly, since it casts doubt on all previous agreements and poisons every future effort. It’s a type of the informal fallacy of over-generalization and more specifically of poisoning the well, where adverse information about an opponent is alleged with the intention of discrediting something that the target person is about to say or do. Poisoning the well can be a special case of argumentum ad hominem, of which the US is expert in dealing with Russia ever since the Russian Revolution (with only 2 or 3 brief reliefs). --D
The Fuller Story: OMNI’s 8 newsletters on Russia. The first four were titled Russia and Ukraine. Nos. 5-9 are Russia (and recently back to Ukraine).
#5 http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2017/03/russia-newsletter-5-from-violence-to.html
END RUSSIA NEWSLETTER #9, 1-20-22