OMNI
RUSSIA/UKRAINE NEWSLETTER #13,
March 12, 2022
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
Omnicenter.org/donate/
PitytheNation
Pitythenationwhosepeoplearesheep
Andwhoseshepherdsmisleadthem…
– Lawrence Ferlinghetti
THE BIASES BY US LEADERS, MEDIA, AND PUBLIC AGAINST RUSSIA AND ITS LEADER PUTIN HAD BECOME SO EXTREME BY FEBRUARY 2022 THAT WE MIGHT FORGIVE THE AVERAGE CITIZEN FOR THINKING THEY KNEW THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH. Here are some questions and corrections:
WHAT MOTIVATED RUSSIA’S ATTACK ON UKRAINE? In What Ways and to what Extent Was It Provoked by the US and the West? What are the consequences of US bigotry against Russia and Putin? What did the US contribute to the rise of right wing in Ukraine? Many other questions are raised and answered by the following critics.
CONTENTS RUSSIA’S INVASION OF UKRAINE #13
Abel Tomlinson, Ukraine Peace Protest Follow-Up
Bryce Greene, Russia Was Provoked
Scott Ritter, Harms of US Russophobia
Attempt to Shut up Prof. Mearsheimer at U of Chicago
Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, US Support for Ukrainian Neo-
Nazis
Lucas Leiroz, Understanding Ukrainian Nazism
Steven Starr, Russia’s Fear of NATO’s Encroachment and Nuclear
Weapons
Ben Burgis, No to No-Fly Zone
March 1 to 7: International Week to Stop War with Russia
Moon of Alabama, Disarming Ukraine, Day 7
Oliver Boyd Barrett, Ukraine, Planetary Crisis, Threatening Nuclear War
Rachel Hu and Chris Garaffa, Ukraine, US, NATO Expansion, China,
Russophobia
Contents Russia and Ukraine #12
TEXTS, RUSSIA (UKRAINE) NEWSLETTER #13
(In some texts I have highlighted key words or points. –Dick)
WAR PROTESTS IN FEBRUARY
From Antiwar Activist Abel Tomlinson
Ukraine Peace Protest Follow Up
Dear friends,
Our protest to Stop Ukraine War & Stop World War 3 went well. Here are some pictures from the protest .
Below are three great media reports from our protest on Saturday, including more detailed information about the causes of the war, NATO, and the consequences of potential world war, specifically the threat of nuclear winter. The first three are from our Northwest Arkansas television stations (KNWA, Channel 5 & 40/29 News), and the last is from the University of Arkansas student newspaper. The Democrat Gazette and also covered it, but I cant find published links online.
Also, below is a speech I wrote for the protest, but couldn't deliver due to a steady stream of cars Honking for Peace! I included many hyperlinked sources within the text, and urge everyone to investigate this issue much further.
Take care,
Abel Tomlinson
KNWA: Peaceful protest on Ukraine War in Fayetteville
https://www.nwahomepage.com/news/peaceful-protest-on-ukraine-war-in-fayetteville/
5 NEWS: War protest takes place in Washington Co.
40/29 News: Fayetteville, Arkansas protesters demonstrate against war in Europe
https://www.4029tv.com/article/arkansas-anti-war-protest-ukraine-russia/39353007#
UA Traveler: Small group of locals protests perceived U.S. escalation of war in Ukraine
https://www.uatrav.com/news/article_baa2cd7c-9d90-11ec-8adf-affe5b40d06b.html
Speech I wrote for the Peace Protest:
Stop All Wars from Ukraine to the Middle East & Stop WWIII
It is self evident that we must call for a stop to Russia’s invasion, and all the ongoing Western invasions across the Middle East as well. The Russian invasion is a war crime, just as the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a war crime, as were the dozens of US invasions and bombings of millions of mostly non-white people over the last several decades.
As you know, mainstream media is bombarding the public with endless stories about Russian invasion, and but have never done the same for endless & ongoing Western invasions of the Middle East. The same week as the Russian invasion, the U.S. carried out bombings in Somalia, the U.S.-backed Saudi dictatorship launched dozens of airstrikes in Yemen, and the U.S.-backed Israeli government bombed Syria.
The U.S. has dropped 337,000 bombs, an average of 46 bombs per day, on the Middle East for the last 20 years, but mainstream media barely covered the horror of it. As the Monthly Review reported, “In the (last week of February), Fox News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC ran almost 1,300 separate stories on the Ukraine invasion, two stories on the Syria attack, one on Somalia, and none at all on the Saudi-led war on Yemen.”
Mainstream Western media never encourages mass public sympathy for victims of Western wars, and never encourages people to wave flags for Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia or Palestine. Despite what our media tells us, we must condemn all this illegal invasion of sovereignty as well, in addition to Russia’s.
You might ask yourself why the discrepancy in media coverage? We have the answer. In numerous recent instances, mainstream Western media has explained their racist justification. A great example is when a CBS news reporter said about the Russian invasion, “This isn’t a place…like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European city where you wouldn’t expect that…to happen.”
An NBC News reporter said “these are not refugees from Syria, these are refugees from Ukraine…They’re Christian, they’re white, they’re very similar.” Speaking of refugees, we must also recognize how Western nations are appropriately welcoming in Ukrainian war refugees, but in many cases are building walls or other severe barriers to the 37 million refugees that Western nations have created via their endless invasions of the Middle East. This racist double standard is not lost on the millions of suffering non-white people.
The media is also stoking excessive hatred toward Russians, reminiscent of the pro-war propaganda run up to the Iraq War. They are using initial sympathy for Ukrainians, and twisting it into anti-Russia war fervor. Scores of individuals and organizations are sounding increasingly bellicose, strongly supporting various forms of warfare against Russia. Due to this, Russian artists and athletes are being unfairly punished for things their government did, being banned from participation in film festivals, sporting events, and so forth.
But most importantly, we must recognize the strong possibility of this war escalating into a nuclear World War 3. Indeed, the Russian invasion has vastly increased the probability of world war, and the Western response has compounded that probability. Instead of vigorously seeking serious peace talks and an understanding of Russian grievances, the West is waging wholesale economic warfare, trying to collapse most of the Russian economy, which will harm poor civilians most. The West is also continuing to send massive arms shipments to Ukraine, and has been working on sending warplanes to the Ukrainian government. Many top governmental officials are calling for a No Fly Zone and to kill Putin. All this is a massive escalation toward nuclear world war and is stark raving insanity of the highest order!
As we speak, and I say this without hyperbole, we are at the most dangerous moment in human history. Even during the height of the previous Cold War, all the leaders and public understood the extreme danger of nuclear war. Today, it seems like far too many suffer from total ignorance or amnesia, and act as if going to war against Russia is acceptable. Nobody wins nuclear war!
We must recognize that there is an easy way to Stop the War, which starts by understanding what really provoked the war. If we’re honest, we must accept that this conflict started when the US broke its promise not to expand NATO forces “one inch” Eastward beyond West Germany, after the fall of USSR. Many of our nation’s foremost Russia and foreign policy experts, George Kennan, Stephen Cohen, John Mearsheimer, and many others warned us precisely about NATO expansion leading to this very conflict. Russia also explicitly warned the West for many years that there would be a severe problem if they continued pushing NATO to their doorstep, especially in Ukraine. How did the USA feel when Soviets put missiles in Cuba?
If we are serious about peace, we also must tell the truth about the violent U.S.-backed Ukraine coup in 2014, when Senator John McCain and others went to coup protests in Ukraine and proclaimed U.S. support for overthrowing Ukrainian democracy. And following that coup, the U.S. armed and supported a proxy war in that nation, including working with neo-Nazis as they waged war on ethnic minority Russians in the East, killing around 14,000 people. Interestingly, the very credible independent media watchdog journal Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) gave a great summary of what mainstream media is not telling the public. This war did not start last week.
If we’re serious about peace and avoiding nuclear war, we must acknowledge the Western role in provoking the conflict, and call for peace negotiations for Ukraine to remain neutral in terms of NATO, and for U.S. and Russian forces and weapons to be withdrawn from Ukraine. Peace is simpler than pro-war profiteer media would like us to comprehend.
Abel Tomlinson
OMNI Peace Action Committee, Chair
Arkansas Nonviolence Alliance, Founder
(479)283-5762
Shorter version of speech published in ADG
Abel’s Guest Column on Ukraine War was published in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette 3-10-22 https://nwa.pressreader.com/article/282265258899875
a MAJOR, COMPREHENSIVE ARTICLE
rUSSIA pROVOKED: US BROKEN PROMISE, nato expansion, GEORGE KENNAN, coup, Civil War, Minsk Accords, MISSILES IN NATO AND UKRAINE/THREAT OF NUCLEAR OMNICIDE, rUSSIAN iNVASION
BRYCE GREENE. Calling Russia’s Attack ‘Unprovoked’ Lets US Off the Hook. MARCH 4, 2022.
https://fair.org/home/calling-russias-attack-unprovoked-lets-us-off-the-hook/
Featured image: Wikimedia map of NATO expansion since 1949 (creator:Patrickneil).
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can fairly be called many things, but “unprovoked” (Roll Call, 2/24/22) is not one of them.
Many governments and media figures are rightly condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine as an act of aggression and a violation of international law. But in his first speech about the invasion, on February 24, US President Joe Biden also called the invasion “unprovoked.”
It’s a word that has been echoed repeatedly across the media ecosystem. “Putin’s forces entered Ukraine’s second-largest city on the fourth day of the unprovoked invasion,” Axios (2/27/22) reported; “Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine entered its second week Friday,” said CNBC (3/4/22). Vox (3/1/22) wrote of “Putin’s decision to launch an unprovoked and unnecessary war with the second-largest country in Europe.”
The “unprovoked” descriptor obscures a long history of provocative behavior from the United States in regards to Ukraine. This history is important to understanding how we got here, and what degree of responsibility the US bears for the current attack on Ukraine.
Ignoring expert advice
The story starts at the end of the Cold War, when the US was the only global hegemon. As part of the deal that finalized the reunification of Germany, the US promised Russia that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.” Despite this, it wasn’t long before talk of expansion began to circulate among policy makers.
In 1997, dozens of foreign policy veterans (including former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and former CIA Director Stansfield Turner) sent a joint letter to then-President Bill Clinton calling “the current US-led effort to expand NATO…a policy error of historic proportions.” They predicted:
In Russia, NATO expansion,which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition, undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West [and] bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement.
Diplomat George Kennan (New York Times, 5/2/98) said NATO expansion would be “a tragic mistake.”
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (5/2/98) in 1998 asked famed diplomat George Kennan—architect of the US Cold War strategy of containment—about NATO expansion. Kennan’s response:
I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.
Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are—but this is just wrong.
Despite these warnings, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were added to NATO in 1999, with Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia following in 2004.
US planners were warned again in 2008 by US Ambassador to Moscow William Burns(now director of the CIA under Joe Biden). WikiLeaks leaked a cable from Burns titled “Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines” that included another prophetic warning worth quoting in full (emphasis added):
Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests.
Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.
A de facto NATO ally
As Russia threatened to invade Ukraine over the threat of NATO expansion, NATO’s response was to emphasize that Ukraine would some day join the alliance (New York Times, 12/16/21).
But the US has pushed Russia to make such a decision. Though European countries are divided about whether or not Ukraine should join, many in the NATO camp have been adamant about maintaining the alliance’s “open door policy.” Even as US planners were warning of a Russian invasion, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated NATO’s 2008 plans to integrate Ukraine into the alliance (New York Times, 12/16/21). The Biden administration has taken a more roundabout approach, supporting in the abstract “Kyiv’s right to choose its own security arrangements and alliances.” But the implication is obvious.
Even without officially being in NATO, Ukraine has become a de facto NATO ally—and Russia has paid close attention to these developments. In a December 2021 speech to his top military officials, Putin expressed his concerns:
[Integration of Ukraine forces into NATO’s] Over the past few years, military contingents of NATO countries have been almost constantly present on Ukrainian territory under the pretext of exercises. The Ukrainian troop control system has already been integrated into NATO. This means that NATO headquarters can issue direct commands to the Ukrainian armed forces, even to their separate units and squads….
Kiev has long proclaimed a strategic course on joining NATO. Indeed, each country is entitled to pick its own security system and enter into military alliances. There would be no problem with that, if it were not for one “but.” International documents expressly stipulate the principle of equal and indivisible security, which includes obligations not to strengthen one’s own security at the expense of the security of other states….
In other words, the choice of pathways towards ensuring security should not pose a threat to other states, whereas Ukraine joining NATO is a direct threat to Russia’s security.
In an explainer piece, the New York Times (2/24/22) centered NATO expansion as a root cause of the war. Unfortunately, the Times omitted the critical context of NATO’s pledge not to expand, and the subsequent abandonment of that promise. This is an important context to understand the Russian view of US policies, especially so given the ample warnings from US diplomats and foreign policy experts.
The Maidan Coup of 2014
A major turning point in the US/Ukraine/Russia relationship was the 2014 violent and unconstitutional ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych,elected in 2010 in a vote heavily split between eastern and western Ukraine. His ouster came after months of protests led in part by far-right extremists (FAIR.org, 3/7/14). Weeks before his ouster, an unknown party leaked a phone call between US officials discussing who should and shouldn’t be part of the new government, and finding ways to “seal the deal.” After the ouster, a politician the officials designated as “the guy” even became prime minister. [Yanukovych now lives in exile in Russia.]
The US involvement was part of a campaign aimed at exploiting the divisions in Ukrainian society to push the country into the US sphere of influence, pulling it out of the Russian sphere (FAIR.org, 1/28/22). In the aftermath of the overthrow, Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine, in part to secure a major naval base from the new Ukrainian government.
The New York Times (2/24/22) and Washington Post (2/28/22) both omitted the role the US played in these events. In US media, this critical moment in history is completely cleansed of US influence, erasing a critical step on the road to the current war.
Keeping civil war alive
In another response to the overthrow, an uprising in Ukraine’s Donbas region grew into a rebel movement that declared independence from Ukraine and announced the formation of their own republics. The resulting civil war claimed thousands of lives, but was largely paused in 2015 with a ceasefire agreement known as the Minsk II accords.
Anatol Lieven (The Nation, 11/15/21): “US administrations, the political establishment, and the mainstream media have quietly buried…the refusal of Ukrainian governments to implement the solution and the refusal of the United States to put pressure on them to do so.”
The deal, agreed to by Ukraine, Russia and other European countries, was designed to grant some form of autonomy to the breakaway regions in exchange for reintegrating them into the Ukrainian state. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian government refused to implement the autonomy provision of the accords. Anatol Lieven, a researcher with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in The Nation (11/15/21):
The main reason for this refusal, apart from a general commitment to retain centralized power in Kiev, has been the belief that permanent autonomy for the Donbas would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and the European Union, as the region could use its constitutional position within Ukraine to block membership.
Ukraine opted instead to prolong the Donbas conflict, and there was never significant pressure from the West to alter course. Though there were brief reports of the accords’ revival as recently as late January, Ukrainian security chief Oleksiy Danilov warned the West not to pressure Ukraine to implement the peace deal. “The fulfillment of the Minsk agreement means the country’s destruction,” he said (AP, 1/31/22). Danilov claimed that even when the agreement was signed eight years ago, “it was already clear for all rational people that it’s impossible to implement.”
Lieven notes that the depth of Russian commitment has yet to be fully tested, but Putin has supported the Minsk accords, refraining from officially recognizing the Donbas republics until last week.
The New York Times (2/8/22) explainer on the Minsk accords blamed their failure on a disagreement between Ukraine and Russia over their implementation. This is inadequate to explain the failure of the agreements, however, given that Russia cannot affect Ukrainian parliamentary procedure. The Times quietly acknowledged that the law meant to define special status in the Donbas had been “shelved” by the Ukranians, indicating that the country had stopped trying to solve the issue in favor of a stalemate.
There was no mention of the comments from a top Ukrainian official openly denouncing the peace accords. Nor was it acknowledged that the US could have used its influence to push Ukraine to solve the issue, but refrained from doing so.
Ukrainian missile crisis
The Washington Post‘s Hitler analogy (2/24/22) is a bit much, considering that the Ukrainian government provides veterans benefits to militias that actually participated in the Holocaust (Kyiv Post, 12/24/18).
One under-discussed aspect of this crisis is the role of US missiles stationed in NATO countries. Many media outlets have claimed that Putin is Hitler-like (Washington Post, 2/24/22; Boston Globe, 2/24/22), hellbent on reconquering old Soviet states to “recreat[e] the Russian empire with himself as the Tsar,” as Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbot told Politico (2/25/22).
Pundits try to psychoanalyze Putin, asking “What is motivating him?” and answering by citing his televised speech on February 21 that recounted the history of Ukraine’s relationship with Russia.
This speech has been widely characterized as a call to reestablish the Soviet empire and a challenge to Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign nation. Corporate media ignore other public statements Putin has made in recent months. For example, at an expanded meeting of the Defense Ministry Board, Putin elaborated on what he considered to be the main military threat from US/NATO expansion to Ukraine:
It is extremely alarming that elements of the US global defense system are being deployed near Russia. The Mk 41 launchers, which are located in Romania and are to be deployed in Poland, are adapted for launching the Tomahawk strike missiles. If this infrastructure continues to move forward, and if US and NATO missile systems are deployed in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be only 7–10 minutes, or even five minutes for hypersonic systems. This is a huge challenge for us, for our security.
The United States does not possess hypersonic weapons yet, but we know when they will have it…. They will supply hypersonic weapons to Ukraine and then use them as cover…to arm extremists from a neighbouring state and incite them against certain regions of the Russian Federation, such as Crimea, when they think circumstances are favorable.
Do they really think we do not see these threats? Or do they think that we will just stand idly watching threats to Russia emerge? This is the problem: We simply have no room to retreat.
Having these missiles so close to Russia—weapons that Russia (and China) see as part of a plan to give the United States the capacity to launch a nuclear first-strike without retaliation—seriously challenges the cold war deterrent of Mutually Assured Destruction, and more closely resembles a gun pointed at the Russian head for the remainder of the nuclear age. Would this be acceptable to any country?
Media refuse to present this crucial question to their audiences, instead couching Putin’s motives in purely aggressive terms.
Refusal to de-escalate
As the threat of war loomed, Secretary of State Antony Blinken (Twitter, 1/27/22) framed the issue of NATO expansion as “Kyiv’s right to choose its own security arrangements and alliances”—as though NATO were a public accommodation open to anyone who wanted to join.
By December 2021, US intelligence agencies were sounding the alarm that Russia was amassing troops at the Ukrainian border and planning to attack. Yet Putin was very clear about a path to deescalation: He called on the West to halt NATO expansion, negotiate Ukrainian neutrality in the East/West rivalry, remove US nuclear weapons from non proliferating countries, and remove missiles, troops and bases near Russia. These are demands the US would surely have made were it in Russia’s position.
Unfortunately, the US refused to negotiate on Russia’s core concerns. The US offered some serious steps towards a larger arms control arrangement (Antiwar.com, 2/2/22)—something the Russians acknowledged and appreciated—but ignored issues of NATO’s military activity in Ukraine, and the deployment of nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe (Antiwar.com, 2/17/22).
On NATO expansion, the State Department continued to insist that they would not compromise NATO’s open door policy—in other words, it asserted the right to expand NATO and to ignore Russia’s red line.
While the US has signaled that it would approve of an informal agreement to keep Ukraine from joining the alliance for a period of time, this clearly was not going to be enough for Russia, which still remembers the last broken agreement.
Instead of addressing Russian concerns about Ukraine’s NATO relationship, the US instead chose to pour hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine, exacerbating Putin’s expressed concerns. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t help matters by suggesting that Ukraine might begin a nuclear weapons program at the height of the tensions.
After Putin announced his recognition of the breakaway republics, Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled talks with Putin, and began the process of implementing sanctions on Russia—all before Russian soldiers had set foot into Ukraine.
Had the US been genuinely interested in avoiding war, it would have taken every opportunity to de-escalate the situation. Instead, it did the opposite nearly every step of the way.
In its explainer piece, the Washington Post (2/28/22) downplayed the significance of the US’s rejection of Russia’s core concerns, writing: “Russia has said that it wants guarantees Ukraine will be barred from joining NATO—a non-starter for the Western alliance, which maintains an open-door policy.” NATO’s open door policy is simply accepted as an immutable policy that Putin just needs to deal with. This very assumption, so key to the Ukraine crisis, goes unchallenged in the US media ecosystem.
‘The strategic case for risking war’
John Deni (Wall Street Journal, 12/22/21): “There are good strategic reasons for the West to stake out a hard-line approach, giving little ground to Moscow.”
It’s impossible to say for sure why the Biden administration took an approach that increased the likelihood of war, but one Wall Street Journal piece from last month may offer some insight.
The Journal (12/22/21) published an op-ed from John Deni, a researcher at the Atlantic Council, a think tank funded by the US and allied governments that serves as NATO’s de facto brain trust. The piece was provocatively headlined “The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine.” Deni’s argument was that the West should refuse to negotiate with Russia, because either potential outcome would be beneficial to US interests.
If Putin backed down without a deal, it would be a major embarrassment. He would lose face and stature, domestically and on the world stage.
But Putin going to war would also be good for the US, the Journal op-ed argued. Firstly, it would give NATO more legitimacy by “forg[ing] an even stronger anti-Russian consensus across Europe.” Secondly, a major attack would trigger “another round of more debilitating economic sanctions,” weakening the Russian economy and its ability to compete with the US for global influence. Thirdly, an invasion is “likely to spawn a guerrilla war” that would “sap the strength and morale of Russia’s military while undercutting Mr. Putin’s domestic popularity and reducing Russia’s soft power globally.”
In short, we have part of the NATO brain trust advocating risking Ukrainian civilians as pawns in the US’s quest to strengthen its position around the world.
‘Something even worse than war’
What would be worse than thousands of Ukrainians dying? According to this New York Times op-ed (2/3/22), “a new European security architecture that recognizes Russia’s sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space.”
A New York Times op-ed (2/3/22) by Ivan Krastev of Vienna’s Institute of Human Sciences likewise suggested that a Russian invasion of Ukraine wouldn’t be the worst outcome:
A Russian incursion into Ukraine could, in a perverse way, save the current European order. NATO would have no choice but to respond assertively, bringing in stiff sanctions and acting in decisive unity. By hardening the conflict, Mr. Putin could cohere his opponents.
The op-ed was headlined “Europe Thinks Putin Is Planning Something Even Worse Than War”—that something being “a new European security architecture that recognizes Russia’s sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space.”
It is impossible to know for sure whether the Biden administration shared this sense that there would be an upside to a Russian invasion, but the incentives are clear, and much of what these op-eds predicted is coming to pass.
None of this is to say that Putin’s invasion is justified—FAIR resolutely condemns the invasion as illegal and ruinous—but calling it “unprovoked” distracts attention from the US’s own contribution to this disastrous outcome. The US ignored warnings from both Russian and US officials that a major conflagration could erupt if the US continued its path, and it shouldn’t be surprising that one eventually did.
Now, as the world once again inches toward the brink of nuclear omnicide, it is more important than ever for Western audiences to understand and challenge their own government’s role in dragging us all to this point.
End Bryce Greene
Pity the Nation By Scott Ritter. Special to Consortium News
March 7, 2022 https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/07/pity-the-nation/
Russophobia has cancelled Russia from the free debate necessary for reality and truth.
Fact-based arguments Scott Ritter made challenging the case for war against Iraq were effectively silenced. Today he sees the same template in play towards anyone challenging the dogma of “Putinism.”
Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 2012. (Cmichel67 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Pity the Nation
Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them…
Pity the nation oh pity the people
Who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away
– Lawrence Ferlinghetti
No more.
In the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russophobia which had taken grip in the United States since Russia’s first post-Cold War president, Boris Yeltsin, handed the reins of power over to his hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, has emerged much like the putrid core of an over-ripe boil. That this anti-Russian trend existed in the United States was, in and of itself, no secret. Indeed, the United States had, since 2000, pushed aside classic Russian area studies in the pursuit of a new school espousing the doctrine of “Putinism,”centered on the flawed notion that everything in Russia revolved around the singular person of Vladimir Putin.
The more the United States struggled with the reality of a Russian nation unwilling to allow itself to be once again constrained by the yoke of carpetbagger economics disguised as “democracy” that had been prevalent during the Yeltsin era, the more the dogma of “Putinism” took hold in the very establishments where intellectual examination of complex problems was ostensibly transpiring — the halls of academia which in turn produced the minds that guided policy formulation and implementation.
Outliers like Jack Matlock, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Cohen were cashiered in favor of a new breed of erstwhile Russian expert, led by the likes of Michael McFaul, Fiona Hill and Anne Applebaum. Genuine Russian area studies was supplanted by a new field of authoritarian studies, where the soul of a nation that once was defined by the life and works of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, Lenin, Stalin, Sakharov, and Gorbachev was distilled into a shallow caricature of one man — Putin.
We had seen this play before, in the buildup to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, when the national identity of a people who traced their heritage back to the Biblical times of Babylon was encapsulated in the person of one man, Saddam Hussein. By focusing solely on a manufactured narrative derived from a simplistic understanding of one man, the United States papered over the complex internal reality of the Iraqi nation and its people, and in doing so set itself up for defeat. It was if Iraq’s long and storied history ceased to exist.
The impact this erasure of context and relevance from the national discourse was felt in the lead up to the decision to initiate what was, by all sense and purposes, an illegal war of aggression — the greatest war crime of all, according to U.S. Supreme Court justice and U.S. chief prosecutor during the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal, Robert H. Jackson.
My own personal experience serves as witness to this reality. As a former chief weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-1998, I was uniquely positioned to comment on the veracity of the claims made by the United States that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction capability in violation of its obligation to be disarmed of such. When my stance was deemed convenient to a narrative attacking a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, I was readily embraced. However, when my fact-based narrative ran afoul of the regime-change policies of Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, I was cast aside as a pariah.
Politics of Personal Destruction
The politics of personal destruction were employed in full, and I was attacked for being a shill of Saddam and, perhaps worst of all for someone who served his nation proudly and honorably as an officer of U.S. Marines, anti-American. It didn’t matter that, without exception, the fact-based arguments I made challenging the case for war with Iraq proved to be accurate — at the time and place where the arguments could have, and should have, resonated greatest (during the buildup to the invasion) — that my voice had been effectively silenced.
I see the same template in play again today when it comes to the difficult topic of Russia. Like every issue of importance, the Russian-Ukraine conflict has two sides to its story. The humanitarian tragedy that has befallen the citizens of Ukraine is perhaps the greatest argument one can offer up in opposition to the Russian military incursion. But was there surely a viable diplomatic off ramp available which could have avoided this horrific situation?
To examine that question, however, one must be able and willing to engage in a fact-based discussion of Russian motives. The main problem with this approach is that the narrative which would emerge is not convenient for those who espouse the Western dogma of “Putinism,” based as it is on the irrational proclivities and geopolitical appetite of one man — Vladimir Putin.
The issue of NATO expansion and the threat it posed to Russian national security is dismissed with the throw-away notion that NATO is a defensive alliance and as such could pose no threat to Russia or its leader. The issue of the presence of the cancer of neo-Nazi ideology in the heart of the Ukrainian government and national identity is countered with the “fact” that Ukraine’s current president is himself a Jew. The eight-year suffering of the Russian-speaking citizens of the Donbass, who lived and died under the incessant bombardment brought on by the Ukrainian military, is simply ignored as if it never happened.
The problem with the pro-Ukrainian narrative is that it is at best incomplete, and worse incredibly misleading. NATO expansion has been consistently identified by Russia as an existential threat. The domination of the hate-filled neo-Nazi ideology of the Ukrainian far-right is well documented, up to and including their threat to kill the incumbent president, Volodymyr Zelensky, if he did not do their bidding. And the fact that the former president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, promised to make the Russian-speaking population of the Donbass cower in the basements under the weight of Ukrainian artillery fire is well documented.
Unfortunately for those seeking to have an informed, fact-based discussion, dialogue, and debate about the complex problem that is Ukraine-Russian relations is the reality that facts are not conducive to the advancement of the “Putinism” dogma that has gripped American academia, government, and mainstream media today.
The Saddam-era tactics of smearing the character of anyone who dares challenge what passes for conventional wisdom when it comes to Russia and its leader is alive and well and living in the land of the free and the home of the brave. The age-old tactic of boycotting such voices by the mainstream media is in full-swing — the so-called news channels are flooded with the acolytes of “Putinism,” while anyone who dares challenge the officially sanctioned narrative of “Ukraine good, Russia bad” is excluded from participating in the “discussion.”
‘Russian Misinformation’
And, in this age where social media has, in many ways, supplanted the mainstream media as the source of choice for most Americans, the U.S. government has colluded with the commercial providers of the major platforms used to share information to label anything that deviates from the official line as “Russian misinformation,” going so far as to label data derived from Russian sources as “state-sponsored,” along with a warning that supposes the information within is somehow flawed and dangerous to normal democratic discourse.
The ultimate sanction, however, came when the U.S. government pressured the corporate internet providers to shut down all Russian-affiliated media, leading to the closure of RT America and other media outlets whose accuracy and impartiality, upon examination, far exceeded that of their American counterparts.
Now America is taking it to the next level when it comes to the pandemic of Russophobia that is sweeping across the country, purging everything Russian from the national discourse and experience. Russian books are being banned and Russian restaurants boycotted and worse, attacked. The massive economic sanctions enacted against Russia and the Russian people has extended to what amounts to an erasure of all things Russian from the American experience.
Where will this stop? History shows that America is capable of healing itself — the national shame that was the treatment of Japanese- Americans during World War II is a clear demonstration of this phenomenon. However, the politics of cancellation which has emerged in the American body politic has never carried with it the kind of potential blow-back that exists in the case of Russia.
In the pell-mell rush toward cancelling Russia in the name of defeating Putin, emotion has replaced common sense, to the point that people are ignoring the fact that Russia is a nuclear power willing and able to use its Armageddon-inducing arsenal in defense of what it views as its legitimate national security interests.
There has never been a time when a national discussion has been more essential to the continued survival of the American people and all humanity. If this discussion could occur armed with the full range of facts and opinions relating to Russia, there might be hope that reason would prevail, and all nations would walk away from the abyss of our collective suicide. Unfortunately, the American experiment in democracy is not conducive for such near-term embrace of sanity and reason.
“Pity the nation,” Ferlinghetti wrote, “whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced, and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.”
Pity America.
Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.
Closing debate, attempts to Shut up mearsheimer
U Chicago students demand political science professor Mearsheimer change his views on Russia v. Ukraine
https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/621316813-u-chicago-students-demand-political-science-professor-mearsheimer-change-his-views-on-russia-v-ukraine
The University of Chicago, Mar 5, 2022
A group of University of Chicago students are circulating a letter demanding the school force political science Professor John Mearsheimer to change his views on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. . . . "Although members of the University community are free to criticize and contest the views expressed on campus... they may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe. To this end, the University has a solemn responsibility not only to promote a lively and fearless freedom of debate and deliberation, but also to protect that freedom when others attempt to restrict it." "Without a vibrant commitment to free and open inquiry, a university ceases to be a university,"
UKRAINIAN NAZISM
| ||||
Medea Benjamin. Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.How the U.S. Has Empowered and Armed Neo-Nazis in Ukraine. World. 10/03/2022.
Ukraine’s far right Azov Battalion (Getty Images)
Russian President Putin has claimed that he ordered the invasion of Ukraine to “denazify” its government, while Western officials, such as former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, have called this pure propaganda, insisting, “There are no Nazis in Ukraine.”
In the context of the Russian invasion, the post-2014 Ukrainian government’s problematic relations with extreme right-wing groups and neo-Nazi parties has become an incendiary element on both sides of the propaganda war, with Russia exaggerating it as a pretext for war and the West trying to sweep it under the carpet.
The reality behind the propaganda is that the West and its Ukrainian allies have opportunistically exploited and empowered the extreme right in Ukraine, first to pull off the 2014 coup, and then by redirecting it to fight separatists in Eastern Ukraine. And far from “denazifying” Ukraine, the Russian invasion is likely to further empower Ukrainian and international neo-Nazis, as it attracts fighters from around the world and provides them with weapons, military training and the combat experience that many of them are hungry for.
Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and its founders Oleh Tyahnybok and Andriy Parubiyplayed leading roles in the U.S-backed coup in February 2014. Assistant Secretary Nuland and Ambassador Pyatt mentioned Tyahnybok as one of the leaders they were working with on their infamous leaked phone call before the coup, even as they tried to exclude him from an official position in the post-coup government. MORE https://countercurrents.org/2022/03/how-the-u-s-has-empowered-and-armed-neo-nazis-in-ukraine/
Understanding Ukrainian Nazism
Editor. Mronline.org (3-6-22)
In the West, media outlets are claiming that Russia’s agenda to “denazify” Ukraine is unfounded. At the same time, public opinion in Western countries is totally alienated from the Ukrainian reality, tending to believe only what is reported by the hegemonic media.
Originally published: Struggle La Lucha by Lucas Leiroz (February 26, 2022 ) | - Posted Mar 05, 2022. Lucas Leiroz, researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
Movements, StrategySpain, UkraineNewswireNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
In the West, media outlets are claiming that Russia’s agenda to “denazify” Ukraine is unfounded. At the same time, public opinion in Western countries is totally alienated from the Ukrainian reality, tending to believe only what is reported by the hegemonic media. The result of this is strong disapproval of the Russian attitude based on the lie that there is no trace of Nazism in contemporary Ukraine. In this sense, it is urgent that quality information be disseminated to the Western audience to avoid the proliferation of lies about the Ukrainian reality.
On almost every TV channel and newspaper in the West, Ukrainian Nazism is questioned with the worst possible arguments: Zelensky is Jewish, and the Ukrainian state is democratic. This kind of superficial thinking prevents a detailed analysis of the catastrophic situation in Kiev since the Maidan, when, through a coup d’état, an anti-Russian junta took power and institutionalized a racist and anti-Russian ideology, which remains until the current days.
When we talk about “Ukrainian Nazism” we are not saying that Kiev is a contemporary copy of Hitler’s Berlin, but that the neo-Nazi element is a fundamental point of post-2014 Ukraine. The Maidan coup was openly supported and financed by NATO as a way of undermining any Russian influence in Moscow’s own strategic environment. The aim was to make Ukraine a puppet state, commanded from Washington, ending any link with Russia. There was not only the objective to annihilate political, economic, and diplomatic relations between Kiev and Moscow, but also to eliminate cultural, ethnic, religious, and linguistic ties between both nations.
Since then, anti-Russian plans have been implemented. Ethnic Russians have been persecuted for the past eight years–even through systematic extermination in some regions. The Russian language has been criminalized in entire cities where the population does not speak Ukrainian. Schisms in the Orthodox Church have been supported to form a Ukrainian “national church” out of the Moscow Patriarchate. But the question remains: how has this been possible if Ukrainians and Russians are such close peoples? Many Ukrainians speak Russian and marry ethnic Russians, in addition to the fact that most of the country’s population follows the Orthodox Church. So how was it possible to initiate such a successful racist policy?
This was certainly one of the biggest concerns of the Maidan planners. And the answer lies in the Nazi element, which was very well worked out by Arsen Avakov, Minister of the Interior during the Poroshenko government. Avakov initiated a process of instrumentalizing neo-Nazi militias that had supported Maidan, making these extremist groups key points in the defense of the new Ukrainian regime. In the West, due to collective ignorance about Slavic history, many people think that Nazi racism was restricted to Jews, but in fact, anti-Russian hatred was one of the biggest locomotives of WWII, having led Hitler to the irrational decision to invade and try to annex the USSR. This sentiment is alive in these neo-Nazi militias, who are literally ready to do anything to annihilate the Russians, being much more fanatical in their racist convictions than the Ukrainian armed forces.
Groups such as the Azov Battalion, C14 and the armed militias of rightist parties such as Pravyy sektor and Svoboda operate freely in Ukraine and are most responsible for the extermination of ethnic Russians in the Donbass. These groups act with more violence and using more sophisticated equipment than the Ukrainian armed forces themselves, being the real face of Kiev’s anti-Russian brutality. As neo-Nazis, these militias have no obstacles in complying with the government’s objective of destroying any ties between Russians and Ukrainians, thus being the main allies of the Maidan era.
In a 2020 Freedom House’s report, “A new Eurasian far right rising”, it is said that the far right is one of the strongest and most influential elements in Ukrainian society today, being a sophisticated, highly professionalized, and visible political force. In other words, what would be violent and criminal urban groups elsewhere on the planet have been converted by Kiev into a pro-Maidan parallel armed force. The inspiration for this model of action comes from the original Nazism: the Schutzstaffel (SS) was one of the largest German armed political forces during the 1930s and 1940s, but the group was not part of the German Armed Forces, but a paramilitary militia instrumentalized by the government apart from the official troops. There was a major strategic objective with this: while the German military was commanded by the government, the SS fought for the Nazi Party and for Hitler–that is, if Germany surrendered, the SS would declare war on the German military. This type of “double-shielded” military system is the same one that Kiev has implemented: if one day a pro-Russian government is elected, the neo-Nazi militias will declare war on Kiev–and will be strong enough to defeat the official troops in the same way as the SS was stronger than the German armed forces.
It is necessary to note that these groups operate not only in the sphere of military force, but also in the cultural field, fomenting anti-Russian hatred among ordinary Ukrainians. The exaltation of Stepan Bandera (Ukrainian anti-Soviet nationalist leader who collaborated with Nazi Germany) is one of the symptoms of this. Before the Maidan, Bandera was a name like any other in Ukrainian history, but he came to be remembered and venerated as a national hero by neo-Nazis and anti-Russian politicians. In the same sense, these groups vandalize parishes and monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church and are responsible for the consolidation of a Ukrainian mentality entirely hostile to Russia, which is gradually permeating the local population.
Ukraine is in fact ruled by a Jew and the country’s power structure is indeed publicly “democratic”, despite being internally authoritarian and corrupt. But the Nazi element is not in these aspects, but in the structure of protection of the post-Maidan Ukrainian state, which is supported by a national coalition of neo-Nazi militias whose objective is simply to persecute and kill Russians, regardless of who is in power in Kiev. It does not matter to these militias if the President of the Republic is a Jew–what matters is that Russians are dying, which favors both neo-Nazis and the pro-NATO politicians they protect. In other words, the Western media’s arguments to deny Putin’s claims about Ukrainian Nazism are weak and superficial.
Moscow is right in its concern to denazify Ukraine. It is a measure that should be taken in coalition by several countries. All over the world, Nazism is “condemned”, but only when it benefits the West. The closest political experience to Nazism in the present days has been seen and peacefully tolerated by liberal governments that claim to be defenders of human rights and democracy. Russia is simply no longer willing to put up with crimes being committed by neo-Nazis against its people and there is nothing wrong with that decision.
Monthly Review does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished at MR Online. Our goal is to share a variety of left perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful. —Eds.
Also: Facebook Allows Praise of Neo-Nazi Ukrainian Battalion If It Fights Russian Invasion. Sam Biddle
Ukraine & Nukes
Editor. Mronline.org (3-6-22).
After a New York Times reporter grossly distorted what Putin and Zelensky have said and done about nuclear weapons, Steven Starr corrects the record and deplores Western media, in general, for misinforming and leading the entire world in a dangerous direction.
Originally published: Consortium News by Steven Starr (March 3, 2022 ).| - Posted Mar 05, 2022. Inequality, Media, Strategy, WarRussia, Ukraine, United StatesNewswireMedia misdirection, Nuclear Weapons
Analyzes why Russia and Putin fear NATO, NATO’s possession of nuclear weapons, and Ukraine’s increasing role in NATO’s planning. Part of Starr’s conclusion: 30 Years Ago--Sanger states that today Russia takes a “starkly different from the tone Moscow was taking 30 years ago, when Russian nuclear scientists were being voluntarily retrained to use their skills for peaceful purposes.”
Russians would reply that 30 years ago NATO had not moved to Russian borders and was not flooding Ukraine with hundreds of tons of weapons and the U.S. had not yet overthrown the government in Kiev to install an anti-Russian regime.
Steven Starr is the former director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program, and former board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. His articles have been published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Federation of American Scientists and the Strategic Arms Reduction website of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He maintains the Nuclear Famine website.
NO TO NO-FLY ZONE
A No-Fly Zone in Ukraine Would Start World War III. It’s the Worst Idea Possible BY BEN BURGIS. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/03/no-fly-zone-ukraine-russia-us-war
A growing chorus of voices is calling for Joe Biden to establish a no-fly zone — an action that would risk the future of human civilization.
US servicemen stand in front of F-15 fighters during NATO military exercises in Ukraine in 2018. (GENYA SAVILOV/AFP via Getty Images)
I’m not much of an R.E.M. fan, but I’ve had “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” stuck in my head for days. A disturbing number of high-profile voices have been calling for President Joe Biden to establish a no-fly zone in Ukraine. To his credit, he’s steadfastly refused to do so. But these forces are only going to get louder as the Russian invasion drags on. My boiling-hot take is that — and hear me out on this — starting World War III would be a bad thing.
Biden’s State of the Union was interrupted by chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” A member of the US House of Representatives has proposed deporting all Russian students from the United States. A prominent United States senator has publicly urged the assassination of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The political atmosphere in the United States has quickly turned xenophobic, bloodthirsty, and dark.
While the United States has provided a great deal of military aid to Ukraine, direct action by the American government has so far been mostly restricted to economic sanctions. It’s worth noting that not all sanctions are the same. Putin’s government is waging a monstrous imperial war. While we should oppose any sanctions that add to the misery of working-class Russians, targeted sanctions against individual Russian oligarchs are a different issue — just as it would have been hard to object if other powers had responded to the invasion of Iraq with targeted sanctions on politically connected American billionaires.
But there’s a pervasive atmosphere of jingoistic fervor, a sense of urgency that the United States “do something.” On the level of civil society, this has expressed itself through absurdities like the International Cat Federation banning Russian-bred cats from competition and petty or not-so-petty cruelties ranging from calls in the mixed martial arts world to ban Russian fighters to the Oncology Network pulling out of Russia. I guess if you can’t punish Vladimir Putin, you can at least punish cancer patients who live in his country.
Most disturbing, though, has been the parade of calls for American military intervention. In most cases, this takes the form of calls for the United States to set up a no-fly zone in Ukraine. A sitting US congressman has made that call. So has a senator. Dan Hodges of the Mail on Sunday, the biggest-selling Sunday paper in the UK, has said that not establishing a no-fly zone would be “an act of appeasement no different to our appeasement of Hitler in 1938.”
Calls for a no-fly zone are calls for a warbetween the United States and Russia.
A few prominent figures have gone even further. Former world chess champion and fierce Putin critic Garry Kasparov breezily explained that World War III has “already” started, so direct NATO fighting in Ukraine would be fine. NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel publicly mused that it might be a good idea for “the US/NATO” to “destroy” Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine.
Given how much of the twentieth century was defined by collective terror about the likely consequences of a war between the United States and Russia, it’s remarkable how cavalier all these commentators and politicians have been about starting one now. And make no mistake: calls for a no-fly zone are calls for a war between the United States and Russia.
It could be argued that the Russian government would simply make a rational calculation and back off in the face of direct American military intervention. But the invasion of Ukraine was itself a wildly irrational act. And I wouldn’t trust the American government not to engage in potentially catastrophic future escalation if the Russian military directly involved itself in a war against American forces.
In a just released poll, 74 percent of American respondents said they would support a no-fly zone. I hope most of them don’t understand what that would actually mean.
“No-fly zone” is a combination of words that might not sound innately alarming. If Russian planes are participating in a horrific war of aggression, what’s wrong with prohibiting them from doing so?
As George Carlin liked to emphasize, euphemistic language is an enemy of both clarity and basic humanity. Let’s call things what they are. Calls for a “no-fly zone” are calls for the United States to shoot down Russian planes.
Take a beat to really think about how the phrase “the United States shooting down Russian planes” would have sounded during the decades of the Cold War. And then remember that the two nations’ gigantic nuclear stockpiles, enough to blow up the entire world multiple times over, haven’t gone anywhere.
Starting a war with Russia could indeed be the end of the world as we know it. As the world confronts that slim but real possibility, I don’t trust anyone who feels fine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben Burgis is a Jacobin columnist, an adjunct philosophy professor at Morehouse College, and the host of the YouTube show and podcast Give Them An Argument. He’s the author of several books, most recently Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters.
MARCH 1 TO 7: INTERNATIONAL WEEK OF ACTIONS TO STOP WAR WITH RUSSIA By AntiWar Organizations, Popular Resistance. February 23, 2022. | RESIST!,
Leer en español.
Leia em português.
Lire en français.
No Wars! No Sanctions! No NATO!
The conflict in Ukraine has escalated to a dangerous level between two nuclear armed states. The United States and its allies continue to portray the current situation as one of Russian aggression without acknowledging that US-backed Ukrainian forces are attacking the Eastern region of the country and killing citizens of Russian ethnicity.
This current escalation is a serious threat to world peace and requires a unified and rapid response by anti-war organizations from around the globe to stop a major war.
To that end, we, the undersigned groups, have agreed to support a week of international action from March 1 to 7 with the following demands on our governments:
— No war with Russia
— Stop the NATO expansion
— No more weapons to Ukraine and the European Union
— Obey international laws and the UN Charter
— Resolve the current conflict within the United Nations Security Council
— Restore the Minsk Agreements
— De-escalate the threat of a nuclear war
Initial Signatories. . . .
Popular Resistance.org, Daily movement news and resources
DISARMING UKRAINE – DAY SEVEN By Moon of Alabama. March 2, 2022. | EDUCATE!
The crisis, and especially the reaction of the ‘west’ to it, is much worse than I had feared. The U.S. government and ‘western’ media claim that the World condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That is however far from reality. It is only true if true if you believe ‘the world’ solely exists of the 5-eye spying cooperation (U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), the European Union, Switzerland, Japan and Singapore.
The view differs when you zoom out.
The much bigger ‘rest of the world’ has not condemned Russia but understands how the conflict came about. They blame, like political scientist John Mearsheimer, the U.S. for causing the crisis. This includes, as far as I can tell, all of Africa (54 states), South America, Central America, the Middle East, and all of Asia ex Japan and Singapore.
This rest of the world that did not condemn Russia includes several notable U.S. allies and ‘partners’ like Turkey (Nato’s second biggest army!), India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel.
The case shows how much the standing of the once unilateral superpower has been diminished.
Since 2014 the war in east Ukraine against the people of the Donbas regions has cost more than 14,000 lives. Some 10,000 of those were civilians on the Donbas side. The dying there continues as the Ukrainian army and its nazi battalions continue to shell the cities of Donetzk and Luhansk:
At least 136 civilians have been killed, including 13 children, and 400 have been injured since Russia invaded Ukraine last week, a United Nations agency said on Tuesday.
“The real toll is likely to be much higher,” Liz Throssell, a spokesperson for the U.N. human rights office (OHCHR), told a briefing, adding that 253 of the casualties were in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine.
Over the last days I also read several commentators claiming that that the Russian ‘regime change’ incursion into Ukraine would not have the support of the Russian people and would set them up against their president. Here is news for them. . . .
The Crisis in Ukraine is a Planetary Crisis Provoked by the U.S. that Threatens Nuclear War
By Oliver Boyd-Barrett on Mar 07, 2022 02:35 pm
Let us begin a conversation in response to what currently qualifies as the most profound question, the one that needs most urgently to be addressed if we are to have any chance of understanding what we conveniently refer to as the “Ukraine crisis.” This is, more accurately, a planetary crisis—close in magnitude to the near-certainty of species extinction within the next century, but in some ways ahead of secondary catastrophes such as the obscene, raging inequality between peoples and nations unleashed by President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s, and the global conglomerations of immense corporate and plutocratic power.
Why is it, then, that the three most important power alliances of the Western and Eurasian worlds—North America, led by the United States alongside its “Trudeauesque” poodle and with the problematic connivance of Mexico’s López Obrador; the European Union and post-Brexit UK; and the Russian Federation, in wobbly alliance with China—consider it worthwhile to suffer intensification of the risks of nuclear annihilation? This, in the face of an abundance of routes available for peaceful settlement, given a minimum of goodwill and genuine humanitarian concern?
In the case of Russia, we know very well what these reasons are because Russia has told us—clearly, consistently, loudly, and transparently—for more than 15 years. First and foremost, Russia resents the West’s violation of its unmistakable and supremely important pledge to President Gorbachev in 1990 that the power of NATO would not move one further inch eastward. Secretary of State James Baker gave this commitment at least three times on February 9 that year. This was in return for Russian acquiescence to the tragic error of German reunification, paving the way for an accelerating renaissance of an aggressively militarized and potentially neo-Nazi European hegemon. […]
The post The Crisis in Ukraine is a Planetary Crisis Provoked by the U.S. that Threatens Nuclear War appeared first on CovertAction Magazine.
CovertAction Bulletin Podcast: Ukraine Crisis Fueled by U.S. and NATO Expansion
By Rachel Hu and Chris Garaffa on Mar 08, 2022 01:44 am
Every Wednesday at 9AM EST they will release a weekly episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music and many other podcast platforms.
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Last Week's Episode—Ukraine Crisis Fueled by U.S. and NATO Expansion
The outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine did not come out of nowhere. Fundamental to understanding the current crisis is the history of U.S. and NATO expansion in Europe—which the U.S. repeatedly promised Russia would not happen.
Richard Becker of the ANSWER Coalition discusses the events in Ukraine and Russia from 2014 leading up to the current crisis and addresses the question, what should the U.S. anti-war movement demand?
Also, Jeremy Kuzmarov, the Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine, discusses his recent article entitled, “As U.S. Threatens War with Russia, Biden Administration Unveils Imperial Strategy for Indo-Pacific That Could Lead to War with China.”
Jeremy provides an in-depth analysis of U.S. and NATO expansion into Ukraine and the geopolitics of Russia-China relations, a context that sheds light on the roots of the crisis.
Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music and other podcast platforms. For the full episode, visit the CovertAction Bulletin at our patreon site: https://www.patreon.com/CovertActionMagazine and select a membership level.
This Week's Episode—War Fever and Russophobia Spreading Across U.S.
The offices of RT America were suddenly and abruptly shut down amid war fever and Russophobia spreading across the country.
Lee Camp, the former host of RT's Redacted Tonight joins us to share his experience of censorship. In addition to the shut down of Reacted Tonight, Lee's independent podcast, "Moment of Clarity" has been removed from Spotify. Social media platforms have begun the witch hunt of discrediting and silencing anti-war journalists.
Stay tuned! The episode will go live on Wednesday, March 9, at 9am on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music and other podcast platforms.
Or better yet! Become a patron and you will get exclusive access to the full episode late this evening! As a patron, you can also take advantage of our interactive component and submit questions for our interviews.
The post CovertAction Bulletin Podcast: Ukraine Crisis Fueled by U.S. and NATO Expansion appeared first on CovertAction Magazine.
Notes from the Editors for the April 2022 issue of Monthly Review. Eds. mronline.org (3-8-2022).
As we write these notes at the beginning of March 2022, the eight-year limited civil war in Ukraine has turned into a full-scale war. This represents a turning point in the New Cold War and a great human tragedy. By threatening global nuclear holocaust, these events are also now endangering the entire world. To understand the origins of the New Cold War and the onset of the current Russian entry into the Ukrainian civil war, it is necessary to go back to decisions associated with the creation of the New World Order made in Washington when the previous Cold War ended in 1991.
NOTES FROM THE EDITORS
April 2022 (Volume 73, Number 11)
by The Editors
(Mar 07, 2022)
Topics: Empire History Imperialism War Places: Americas Asia Europe Russia Soviet Union (USSR) Ukraine United States
In light of the current events in Ukraine we have decided to make the Notes From the Editors for the April 2022 issue of Monthly Review immediately available. —Eds.
As we write these notes at the beginning of March 2022, the eight-year limited civil war in Ukraine has turned into a full-scale war. This represents a turning point in the New Cold War and a great human tragedy. By threatening global nuclear holocaust, these events are also now endangering the entire world. To understand the origins of the New Cold War and the onset of the current Russian entry into the Ukrainian civil war, it is necessary to go back to decisions associated with the creation of the New World Order
made in Washington when the previous Cold War ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Within months, Paul Wolfowitz, then under secretary of defense for policy in the George H. W. Bush administration, issued a Defense Policy Guidance stating: “Our policy [after the fall of the Soviet Union] must now refocus on precluding the emergence of any potential future global competitor.” Wolfowitz emphasized that “Russia will remain the strongest military power in Eurasia.” Extraordinary efforts were therefore necessary to weaken Russia’s geopolitical position permanently and irrevocably, before it would be in a position to recover, bringing into the Western strategic orbit all of those states now surrounding it that had formerly either been parts of the Soviet Union or that had fallen within its sphere of influence (“Excerpts from Pentagon’s Plan: ‘Preventing the Re-Emergence of a New Rival’,” New York Times, March 8, 1992). MORE https://monthlyreview.org/2022/03/07/mr-073-11-2022-04_0/
END NATO, RUSSIA/UKRAINE #13