OMNI
US-NATO-UKRAINE-RUSSIA
WAR #25
AUGUST 7,
2022
Compiled by
Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
Omnicenter.org/donate/
CONTENTS
Causes of the War
Gerald
Sussman. The Long CIA Propaganda War
Bryce
Greene. “What’s Missing from Corporate
Media’s [MSM] Ukraine Coverage?” 2022.
Patrick
Lawrence. “The Great Acquiescence—Glory
to Ukraine.” 2022.
Michael
Welton. “”…How John Mearsheimer and
Stephen Cohen Challenged the Dominant Narrative.” 2022.
Kit
Klarenburg. “How CIA Front Laid
Foundations for Ukraine War.”
More
on Nazis in Ukraine (see Anthology #24)
Sonja Van den Ende. “Ruins of Azov Steel
Factory Display Nazi Insignia. “
Gregory
Shupak. “Pushing for War Over Ukraine
While Ignoring Its Nazi Ties.”
Sustaining the War
George
Paulson. “The Politics of Biden’s
Escalation.”
Amy Goodman. “Western Mass Media.”
Ben
Norton. NATO Sacrificing Ukrainians.
Jeff Abramson. The US, Lethal Weapons,
and Russia.
Jeremy Kuzmarov. Brzezinski, Poland, US
Baltic Sea Base.
Ben Norton. “CIA and Western Special Ops
Are in Ukraine.”
Dave DeCamp. Biden: US Increasing
Military Presence in Europe.
Peace
Richard
Falk. “A European Call for an End to the
Ukrainian War.”
Rick Sterling. “Handling International
Crises from JFK to Biden.”
Kathy Kelly and Matt Gannon. “To Heal.
We Must Cultivate Hope.”
Jim Chambers. “Resisting the ‘Collective
West.’”
TEXTS
Causes
Sustaining the War
Peace
CAUSES OF THE WAR
WE’RE GETTING ONLY ONE SIDE OF THE CONFLICT
“Gerald Sussman. Russia-Ukraine conflict: the propaganda war.” Mronline.org (7-31-22).
What the mainstream media fail to see in the
coverage of the current Ukraine crisis is that there is no text (narrative)
without context. Long before the mainstream U.S. (and UK) media launched a
worldwide propaganda war against the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February,
the CIA had laid the foundations of the conflict in the early years following
the Second World War–the Cold War.
BRYCE GREENE. “What's
Missing From Corporate Media's Ukraine Coverage.” Common
Dreams. [This is necessarily long, for it offers a coherent,
supported etiology alternative to the US/NATO/Ukraine Gov./Western MSM “dominant
narrative” of the Ukraine War. –Dick]
Most
reporting in the current conflict leaves out the crucial role the U.S. has
played in escalating tensions in the region.
January 30, 2022 by Fairness and
Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/01/30/whats-missing-corporate-medias-ukraine-coverage
As
tensions began to rise over Ukraine, US media produced a stream of articles
attempting to explain the situation with headlines like “Ukraine Explained” (New
York Times, 12/8/21) and “What You Need to Know About Tensions Between
Ukraine and Russia” (Washington Post, 11/26/21). Sidebars would
have notes that tried to provide context for the current headlines. But to
truly understand this crisis, you would need to know much more than what these
articles offered.
These
“explainer” pieces are emblematic of Ukraine coverage in the rest of corporate
media, which almost universally gave a pro-Western view of US/Russia relations
and the history behind them. Media echoed the point of view of those who
believe the US should have an active role in Ukrainian politics and enforce its
perspective through military threats.
The
official line goes something like this: Russia is challenging NATO and the
“international rules-based order” by threatening to invade Ukraine, and the
Biden administration needed to deter Russia by providing more security
guarantees to the Zelensky government. The official account seizes on Russia’s
2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula as a starting point for
US/Russian relations, and as evidence of Putin’s goals of rebuilding Russia’s
long-lost empire.
Russia’s
demand that NATO cease its expansion to Russia’s borders is viewed as such an
obviously impossible demand that it can only be understood as a pretext to
invade Ukraine. Therefore, the US should send weapons and troops to Ukraine,
and guarantee its security with military threats to Russia (FAIR.org, 1/15/22).
The Washington
Post asked: “Why is there tension between Russia and Ukraine?”
Its answer:
In March
2014, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. A month later, war erupted between
Russian-allied separatists and Ukraine’s military in the eastern Ukrainian
region of Donbas. The United Nations human rights office estimates that more
than 13,000 people have been killed.
But that
account is highly misleading, because it leaves out the crucial role the US has
played in escalating tensions in the region. In nearly every case we looked at,
the reports omitted the US’s extensive role in the 2014 coup that preceded
Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Focusing on the latter part only serves to
manufacture consent for US intervention abroad.
The West
Wants Investor-Friendly Policies in Ukraine
The
backdrop to the 2014 coup and annexation cannot be understood without looking
at the US strategy to open Ukrainian markets to foreign investors and give
control of its economy to giant multinational corporations.
A key
tool for this has been the International Monetary Fund, which leverages aid
loans to push governments to adopt policies friendly to foreign investors. The
IMF is funded by and represents Western financial capital and governments and
has been at the forefront of efforts to reshape economies around the world for
decades, often with disastrous results. The civil war in Yemen and the coup in
Bolivia both followed a rejection of IMF terms.
In
Ukraine, the IMF had long planned to implement a series of economic reforms to
make the country more attractive to investors. These included cutting wage
controls (i.e., lowering wages), “reform[ing] and reduc[ing]” health and
education sectors (which made up the bulk of employment in Ukraine), and
cutting natural gas subsidies to Ukrainian citizens that made energy affordable
to the general public. Coup plotters like US Assistant Secretary of State
Victoria Nuland repeatedly stressed the need for the Ukrainian government to
enact the “necessary” reforms.
In 2013,
after early steps to integrate with the West, Ukrainian President Viktor
Yanukovych turned against these changes and ended trade integration talks with
the European Union. Months before his overthrow, he restarted economic
negotiations with Russia, in a major snub to the Western economic sphere. By
then, the nationalist protests were heating up that would go on to topple his
government.
After the
2014 coup, the new government quickly restarted the EU deal. After cutting
heating subsidies in half, it secured a $27 billion commitment from the IMF.
The IMF’s goals still include “reducing the role of the state and vested
interests in the economy” in order to attract more foreign capital.
The IMF
is one of the many global institutions whose role in maintaining global
inequities often goes unreported and unnoticed by the general public. The US
economic quest to open global markets to capital is a key driver of
international affairs, but if the press chooses to ignore it, the public debate
is incomplete and shallow.
The US
Helped Overthrow Ukraine’s Elected President
During
the tug of war between the US and Russia, the Americans were engaged in a
destabilization campaign against the Yanukovych government. The campaign
culminated with the overthrow of the elected president in the Maidan
Revolution—also known as the Maidan Coup—named for the Kiev square that hosted
the bulk of the protests.
As
political turmoil engulfed the country in the leadup to 2014, the US was
fueling anti-government sentiment through mechanisms like USAID and National
Endowment for Democracy (NED), just as they had done in 2004. In December 2013,
Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European affairs and a long-time
regime change advocate, said that the US government had spent $5 billion
promoting “democracy” in Ukraine since 1991. The money went toward supporting
“senior officials in the Ukraine government…[members of] the business community
as well as opposition civil society” who agree with US goals.
The NED
is a key organization in the network of American soft power that pours $170
million a year into organizations dedicated to defending or installing
US-friendly regimes. The Washington Post‘s David Ignatius (9/22/91)
once wrote that the organization functions by “doing in public what the CIA
used to do in private.” The NED targets governments who oppose US military or
economic policy, stirring up anti-government opposition.
The NED
board of directors includes Elliott Abrams, whose sordid record runs from the
Iran/Contra affair in the ’80s to the Trump administration’s effort to overthrow
the Venezuelan government. In 2013, NED president Carl Gershman wrote a piece
in the Washington Post (9/26/13) that described Ukraine
as the “biggest prize” in the East/West rivalry. After the Obama
administration, Nuland joined the NED board of directors before returning to
the State Department in the Biden administration as undersecretary of state for
political affairs.
One of
the many recipients of NED money for projects in Ukraine was the International
Republican Institute. The IRI, once chaired by Sen. John McCain, has long had a
hand in US regime change operations. During the protests that eventually
brought down the government, McCain and other US officials personally flew into
Ukraine to encourage protesters.
US
Officials Were Caught Picking the New Government
On
February 6, 2014, as the anti-government protests were intensifying, an
anonymous party (assumed by many to be Russia) leaked a call between Assistant
Secretary of State Nuland and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. The two
officials discussed which opposition officials would staff a prospective new
government, agreeing that Arseniy Yatsenyuk—Nuland referred to him by the
nickname “Yats”—should be in charge. It was also agreed that someone “high
profile” be brought in to push things along. That someone was Joe Biden.
Weeks
later, on February 22, after a massacre by suspicious snipers brought tensions
to a head, the Ukrainian parliament quickly removed Yanukovych from office in a
constitutionally questionable maneuver. Yanukovych then fled the country,
calling the overthrow a coup. On February 27, Yatsenyuk became prime minister.
At the
time the call leaked, media were quick to pounce on Nuland’s saying “Fuck the
EU.” The comment dominated the headlines (Daily Beast,
2/6/14; BuzzFeed, 2/6/14; Atlantic, 2/6/14; Guardian,
2/6/14), while the evidence of US regime change efforts was downplayed. With
the headline “Russia Claims US Is Meddling Over Ukraine,” the New York
Times (2/6/14) put the facts of US involvement in the mouth of
an official enemy, blunting their impact on the audience. The Times (2/6/14)
later described the two officials as benignly “talking about the political
crisis in Kiev” and sharing “their views of how it might be resolved.”
The Washington
Post (2/6/14) acknowledged that the call showed “a deep degree of US
involvement in affairs that Washington officially says are Ukraine’s to
resolve,” but that fact rarely factored into future coverage of the
US/Ukraine/Russia relationship.
Washington
Used Nazis to Help Overthrow the Government
The
Washington-backed opposition that toppled the government was fueled by
far-right and openly Nazi elements like the Right Sector. One far-right group
that grew out of the protests was the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary militia of
neo-Nazi extremists. Their leaders made up the vanguard of the anti-Yanukovych
protests, and even spoke at opposition events in the Maidan alongside US regime
change advocates like McCain and Nuland.
After the
violent coup, these groups were later incorporated into the Ukrainian armed
forces—the same armed forces that the US has now given $2.5 billion. Though
Congress technically restricted money from flowing to the Azov Battalion in
2018, trainers on the ground say there’s no mechanism to actually enforce the provision.
Since the coup, the Ukrainian nationalist forces have been responsible for a
wide variety of atrocities in the counterinsurgency war.
Far-right
influence has increased across Ukraine as a result of Washington’s actions. A
recent UN Human Rights council has noted that “fundamental freedoms in Ukraine
have been squeezed” since 2014, further weakening the argument that the US is
involved in the country on behalf of liberal values.
Among
American neo-Nazis, there’s even a movement aimed at encouraging right-wing
extremists to join the Battalion in order to “gain actual combat experience” in
preparation for a potential civil war in the US.
In a
recent UN vote on “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other
practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism,” the US and
Ukraine were the only two countries to vote no.
As FAIR
(1/15/22) has reported, between December 6, 2021, and January 6, 2022,
the New York Times ran 228 articles that refer to Ukraine, but
none of them reference the pro-Nazi elements in Ukraine’s politics or
government. The same can be said of the Washington Post’s 201
articles on the topic.
There’s a
Lot More to the Crimean Annexation
The facts
above give more context to Russian actions following the coup, and ought to
counter the caricature of a Russian Empire bent on expansion. From Russia’s
point of view, a longtime adversary had successfully overthrown a neighboring
government using violent far-right extremists.
The
Crimean peninsula, which was part of Russia until it was transferred to the
Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954, is home to one of two Russian naval bases
with access to the Black and Mediterranean seas, one of history’s most
important maritime theaters. A Crimea controlled by a US-backed Ukrainian government
was a major threat to Russian naval access.
The
peninsula—82% of whose households speak Russian, and only 2% mainly
Ukrainian—held a plebiscite in March 2014 on whether or not they should join
Russia, or remain under the new Ukrainian government. The Pro-Russia camp won
with 95% of the vote. The UN General Assembly, led by the US, voted to ignore
the referendum results on the grounds that it was contrary to Ukraine’s
constitution. This same constitution had been set aside to oust President Yanukovych
a month earlier.
All of
this is dropped from Western coverage.
The US
Wants to Expand NATO
In
addition to integrating Ukraine into the US-dominated economic sphere, Western
planners also want to integrate Ukraine militarily. For years, the US has sought
the expansion of NATO, an explicitly anti-Russian military alliance. NATO was
originally billed as a counterforce to the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War, but
after the demise of the Soviet Union, the US promised the new Russia that it
would not expand NATO east of Germany. Despite this agreement, the US continued
building out its military alliance,growing closer and closer to Russia’s
borders and ignoring Russia’s objections.
This
history is sometimes admitted but usually downplayed in corporate media. In an
interview with the Washington Post (12/1/21), professor
Mary Sarotte, author of Not One Inch: America, Russia and the Making of
Post-Cold War Stalemate, recounted that after the Soviet collapse,
“Washington realized that it could not only win big, but win bigger. Not one
inch of territory needed to be off-limits to full NATO membership.” The US
“all-or-nothing approach to expansionism…maximized conflict with Moscow,” she
noted. Unfortunately, one interview does little to cut through the drumbeat of
pro-NATO talking points.
In 2008,
NATO members pledged to extend membership to Ukraine. The removal of the
pro-Russian government in 2014 was a giant leap towards the pledge becoming a
reality. Recently, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg announced that the alliance
stands by plans to integrate Ukraine into the alliance.
Bret
Stephens in the New York Times (1/11/21) maintained
that if Ukraine wasn’t allowed to join the organization, it would “break the
spine of NATO” and “end the Western alliance as we have known it since the
Atlantic Charter.”
The US
Wouldn’t Tolerate What Russia Is Expected to Accept
Much has
been written about the Russian buildup on the Ukraine border. Reports of the
buildup have been intensified by US intelligence officials’ warnings of an attack.
Media often echo the claim of an inevitable invasion. The Washington
Post editorial board (1/24/22) wrote that “Putin can—and will—use any
measures the United States and its NATO allies either take or refrain from
taking as a pretext for aggression.”
But Putin
has been clear about a path to de-escalation. His main demand has been for
direct negotiations to end the expansion of the hostile military alliance to
his borders. He announced, “We have made it clear that NATO’s move to the east
is unacceptable,” and that “the United States is standing with missiles on our
doorstep.” Putin asked, “How would the Americans react if missiles were placed
at the border with Canada or Mexico?”
In
corporate media coverage, no one bothers to ask this important question.
Instead, the assumption is that Putin ought to tolerate a hostile military
alliance directly across its border. The US, it seems, is the only country
allowed to have a sphere of influence.
The New
York Times (1/26/22) asked: “Can the West Stop Russia From
Invading Ukraine?” but shrugs at the US dismissal of Putin’s terms as
“nonstarters.” The Washington Post (12/10/21) reported: “Some
analysts have expressed worry that the Russian leader is making demands that he
knows Washington will reject, possibly as a pretext for military action once he
is spurned.” The Post quoted one analyst, “I don’t see us
giving them anything that would suffice relative to their demands, and what
troubles me is they know that.”
Audiences
have also been assured that Putin’s reaction to Western expansionism is
actually a prelude to more aggressive actions. “Ukraine Is Only One Small
Part of Putin’s Plans,” warned the New York Times (1/7/22).
The Times (1/26/22) later described Putin’s Ukraine policy as
an attempt at “restoring what he views as Russia’s rightful place among the
world’s great powers,” rather than an attempt to avoid having the US military
directly on its border. USA Today (1/18/22) warned
readers that “Putin ‘Won’t Stop’ with Ukraine.”
But
taking this view is diplomatic malpractice. Anatol Lieven (Responsible
Statecraft, 1/3/22), an analyst at the Quincy Institute, wrote that US
acquiescence to a neutral Ukraine would be a “golden bridge” that, in addition
to reducing US/Russia tensions, could enable a political solution to Ukraine’s
civil war. This restraint-oriented policy is considered fringe thinking in the
Washington foreign policy establishment.
The
Memory Hole
All of
this missing context allows hawks to promote disastrous escalation of tensions.
The Wall Street Journal (12/22/21) published an opinion piece
trying to convince readers there was a “Strategic Advantage to Risking War In
Ukraine.” The piece, by John Deni of the US Army War College, summarized the
familiar hawkish talking points, and claimed that a neutral Ukraine is
“anathema to Western values of national self-determination and sovereignty.”
In a
modern rendition of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Afghan Trap, Deni asserted that war
in Ukraine could actually serve US interests by weakening Russia: Such a war, however
disastrous, would “forge an even stronger anti-Russian consensus across
Europe,” refocusing NATO against the main enemy, result in “economic sanctions
that would further weaken Russia’s economy” and “sap the strength and morale of
Russia’s military while undercutting Mr. Putin’s domestic popularity.” Thus
escalating tensions is a win/win for Washington.
Few of
the recent wave of Ukraine pieces recount the crucial history given above.
Including the truth about US foreign policy goals in the post-Cold War era
makes the current picture look a lot less one-sided. Imagine for one second how
the US would behave if Putin began trying to add a US neighbor to a hostile
military alliance after helping to overthrow its government.
The
economic imperative for opening foreign markets, the NATO drive to push up
against Russia, US support for the 2014 coup and the direct hand in shaping the
new government all need to be pushed down the memory hole if the official line
is to have any credibility. Absent all of that, it is easy to accept the
fiction that Ukraine is a battleground between a “rules-based order” and
Russian autocracy.
Indeed,
the Washington Post editorial board (12/8/21) recently
compared negotiating with Putin to appeasing Hitler at Munich. It called on
Biden to “resist Putin’s trumped-up demands on Ukraine,” “lest he destabilize
all of Europe to autocratic Russia’s advantage.” This wasn’t the only time the
paper has made the Munich analogy; the Post (12/10/21)
ran a piece by former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen headlined “On
Ukraine, Biden Is Channeling His Inner Neville Chamberlain.”
In the New
York Times (12/10/21), Trump NSC aide Alexander Vindman told
readers “How the United States Can Break Putin’s Hold on Ukraine,” and urged
the Biden administration to send active US troops to the country. A “free and
sovereign Ukraine,” he said, is vital in “advancing US interests against those
of Russia and China.” Times reporter Michael Crowley
(12/16/21) also framed the Ukraine standoff as another “Test of US Credibility
Abroad,” after that credibility was supposedly damaged after ending the war in
Afghanistan.
In a New
York Times major feature (1/16/21) on Ukraine, the US role in bringing
tensions to this point was completely omitted, in favor of exclusively blaming
“Russian Belligerence.”
As a
result of this coverage, the interventionist mentality has trickled down to the
public. One poll found that, should Russia actually invade Ukraine, 50% of
Americans support embroiling the US in yet another quagmire, up from just 30%
in 2014. Biden, however, has said that no US troops will be sent to Ukraine.
Instead, the US and EU have threatened sanctions or support for a rebel
insurgency should Russia invade.
The past
few weeks have seen several failed talks between the US and Russians, as the US
refuses to alter its plans for Ukraine. The US Congress is rushing a
“lethal aid” package to send more weapons to the troubled border. Perhaps if
the public were better informed, there would be more domestic pressure on Biden
to end the brinkmanship and seek a genuine solution to the problem.
© 2021 Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
BRYCE GREENE is a
student at Indiana University/Bloomington.
Patrick Lawrence. “The great acquiescence — Glory to Ukraine.” Editor. Mronline.org (5-14-22). Americans don’t merely
acquiesce to the imperium’s wars, interventions, collective punishments and
assorted other deprivations. They actively embrace them.
Originally published: Consortium
News on April 16, 2022
(more by Consortium News) (Posted May
13, 2022).
Media, State Repression, StrategyAmericas,
United StatesNewswire“bubble
of pretend”, Aldous Huxley, Brave
New World, CIA, Great
Barrington, Iris Murdoch, National Committee for a Free Europe, NATO,
New
Deal, Patrick Lawrence, President
Joe Biden, President Vladimir Putin, Radio
Free Europe, Russia-Ukraine
War, Steve Fraser
The other day I ventured forth from my
remote village to a lively market town called Great Barrington to shop for
Easter lunch–spring lamb, a decent bottle of Bourgogne. Easter is much marked
in my household, one of the few feasts we allow ourselves, and it is a reminder
this year of a truth that could scarcely be more pertinent to our shared circumstances:
After all our small and large crucifixions, there is new life to come.
Great Barrington lies in the Berkshire
Hills of western Massachusetts, a fashionable little burg dense–as you can tell
simply by walking around in it —with righteous liberals. No place, you remind
yourself, is perfect.
And there along the streets and avenues
as I arrived were what I had anticipated: Ukrainian flags hanging off front
porches, in shop windows, on flagpoles just below the Stars and Stripes.
Somebody has painted the bit of board displaying their house number in the blue
and yellow we all now recognize. Father, forgive them, I thought, for they know
not what blood-soaked horrors and hate-filled killers they enthusiastically
endorse.
Not in my lifetime have Americans,
purporting to be thoughtful, intelligent people, been so wide-eyed, so
stupefied as those who are pretending to lead them and to inform them by
seeking to bury them in ignorance.
We now read that investigators are diligently “documenting the
catalog of inhumanity perpetrated by Russia’s forces in Ukraine”–a U.S.
diplomat’s remark. Nobody stops to think the investigators are all from nations
that are acting against Russia.
“Where else should they come from?” they
shrug in Great Barrington.
Nobody notes that the essential question
has been crudely removed from public discourse as these sham investigations get
under way. The atrocities in Bucha, Mariupol and elsewhere are beyond all
dispute, but we must never ask who is responsible for them.
I hear the good citizens of Great
Barrington quaking with rage as The New York Times convicts
the Russian leadership, as our president describes the Bucha tragedy as a
Russian war crime not two hours after it came to light.
We now read, in Friday’s editions of the Times,
all about the joint American–Ukrainian campaign to
inundate Russian discourse with propaganda intended to demoralize the public.
The government-supervised Times explains,
Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, a U.S.–funded but independent news organization founded decades ago,
is trying to push its broadcasts deeper into Russia.
U.S.–funded but independent. Priceless, and don’t miss the slide into passive voice to
avoid the truth, a recurrent Times trick I have grown very
fond of–“founded decades ago.”
Radio Free Europe was founded by a
C.I.A. front Allen Dulles cooked up in 1949, the National Committee for a Free
Europe. It received agency funding until at least the 1970s, when the funding
function was transferred elsewhere in the Washington bureaucracy for the sake
of appearances.
What RFE/RL is doing in Russia today is exactly
what American liberals, in paroxysms of horror, accused Russians of doing
during the 2016 election campaigns. But it is O.K. because we’re doing it, they
say in the charming bistros along Railroad Street. We must fight for democracy.
Brute Censorship
We are not reading in the corporate press, by contrast,
that a new wave of brute censorship is
now upon us, as social media such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube “suspend,”
“cancel,” “de-platform”–whatever this radically antidemocratic business is
called–dissenting writers and
analysts who have taken the trouble to examine the facts on the ground in
Ukraine such as we have them with professional disinterest.
We must defend democracy at home, the
good of Great Barrington insist, just as we must in Ukraine.
Since the Russiagate farrago overcame
liberal America in 2016, there has been much debate as to whether our
McCarthyesque circumstances are as bad as, similar to, or not as bad as things
got during the Cold War decades.
This no longer seems to me the useful
question. In various important ways we have passed beyond even the worst of the
Cold War’s many dreadful features.
Our better reference is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World,
wherein the English novelist pictured a society of incubated beings–programmed
from birth, hooked on a happiness-inducing drug called soma, devoid of
everything we now consider human, wholly incapable of connection, of
responsibility, and, indeed, desiring neither. Infantile gratification is all
that matters to those populating the World State Huxley imagined–such as
anything matters.
We are not there yet, let’s not
exaggerate. But we ought to honor Huxley for his prescience, for we are heading
in the direction of his unlivable world of mind-deprived children watched over
by a small, chosen, diabolic elite.
I am not surprised that it is Ukraine that brings us to
what I consider a collective psychological crisis. After 30 years of post–Cold
War triumphalism, Washington has decided to use Ukraine and its people in a
go-for-broke attempt finally to subvert Russia. Stepping back for a better
look, this is the decisive event in the imperium’s confrontation with the 21st century–its grand roll of the
dice, its now-or-never moment.
Broke it will be when all this is over,
however far in the future that will prove. A little like Cú Chulainn, the Irish
hero who drowned swinging his sword in a rage against the incoming tide, we
cannot win this one. And we are falling apart as the realization of our loss
arrives subliminally among us.
Whoever wins the war in Ukraine, the non–West will win.
Whoever wins, the 21st century will win, burying the
mostly awful 20th at last. As for Americans, we have
already lost.
Our Condition
What of our condition, then? What has
become of us, why, and what shall we do about it? If I am correct about
America’s psychological crisis, its connection to the on-the-ground,
in-our-faces crisis in Ukraine is not immediately apparent.
Huxley wrote Brave New World in
1931 and published it a year later. Let us take the cue. Let’s look back to consider
the thoughts of a few people who, unlike most of us, took life seriously and so
applied themselves to an understanding of their time.
Steve
Fraser brought
out The Age of Acquiescence in
2015. Fraser is among the best labor economists now active, an honorable man of
the 1960s, and his subtitle tells us his line of inquiry: The Life and
Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power. Why and when,
Fraser wanted to discover, had American workers rolled over in surrender? What
happened to all those fine New Dealers who, with good minds, fought hard for
the kind of society they knew was possible?
Labor isn’t our topic, but his book has
implications far beyond his specific interests.
The Age
of Acquiescence
Fraser situates himself “peering back into
the past at a largely forgotten terrain of struggle.” The New Deal years, the
battles waged against the anti–Communist paranoia of the postwar decades, the
antiwar movement of the 1960s and early 1970s: The people animating these
movements had memories and experience.
They remembered what American society
could be in its potential because they had lived for and acted on that
potential. They knew another kind of America was possible.
Most of us have forgotten all that.
Younger people never shared that consciousness in the first place. Very few of
us have any memory or experience of living under anything other than pervasive
corporate domination and a government, in its profound corruption, that serves
corporate capital and does as little as it can otherwise.
There is nothing to wage struggle for,
in other words. Our relations with those who hold power over us are not very
different from the relations Huxley’s children had with the sequestered elites
who controlled their lives. This is the root of our prevalent assumptions.
The work of any social or political
campaign worth mounting is now rendered too imposing even to attempt. It is
best to acquiesce to power, contenting ourselves–as if we all live in Great
Barrington–with finding the best olive oil.
Mass
acquiescence largely
leads us to an explanation of the preposterous support most Americans have for
the criminal regime in Kiev. But we’re beyond Steve Fraser’s Age of Acquiescence now. Americans don’t
merely acquiesce to all that the imperium imposes on the world–wars,
interventions, collective punishments, assorted other deprivations. Americans
actively embrace the conduct of empire.
MORE https://mronline.org/2022/05/13/the-great-acquiescence/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-great-acquiescence&mc_cid=b8acdfc159&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e
Patrick Lawrence,
a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist,
author and lecturer. His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After
the American Century.
Critique
of US-NATO narrative that led to the war and fuels it.
Date: Thu, May 5, 2022 at
9:32 AM
“Taking Aim at Ukraine: How John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Cohen Challenged the Dominant Narrative.” From Sonny San Juan, Jr
MAY 5, 2022
MICHAEL WELTON. “Taking Aim at
Ukraine: How John Mearsheimer and Stephen Cohen Challenged the Dominant
Narrative.” Interfering
in another state is tricky business
Interfering in another state is tricky business – so says the
gutsy University of Chicago international relations scholar John Mearsheimer (The
great delusion: liberal dreams and international realities [2018]. It
is tricky – and dangerous – and the exceptional nation, the US, may think
pushing NATO (with its missile sites and troop placement) to Russia’s borders
is benign. But another state – Russia – thinks it is threatening. Mearsheimer
admits that great powers may follow “balance of power” logic, but they can also
embrace “liberal hegemony.” When they do, “they may cause a lot of trouble for
themselves and other states. The ongoing crisis over Ukraine is a case in
point” (p. 171).
It sure is—and very few citizens in Canada and the US have a
clue about what this crisis is about: they just assume, saturated in decades of
various forms of anti-Russian propaganda, that the military operation launched
by Russia on February 24th was, pure and simple, the logical
extension of an evil leader, Vladimer Putin. In other words, Ukraine is mere
“worthy victim” – and the propaganda machine in the West don’t miss a chance to
display images (often false) of the destruction of buildings and people by evil
Putin and his military. Evidence is not necessary to substantiate any claims
fed to us by the mass media. Images will do because they arouse emotions.
Putin is to blame; Zelensky is the noble defender of Ukrainian nationality.
Mearsheimer informs us that: “According to the prevailing wisdom
in the West, this problem [i.e. the crisis] is largely the result of Russian
aggression. President Vladimer Putin, the argument goes, is bent on creating a
greater Russia akin to the former Soviet Union, which means controlling the
governments in its ‘near abroad’—its neighbouring states—including Ukraine, the
Baltic states, and possibly other Eastern European countries. The coup against
Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych on February 22, 2014, provided Putin with
a pretext for annexing Crimea and starting a war in eastern Ukraine” (ibid.).
Putin as instigator. Blame him, and him alone!
Flatly, Mearsheimer states: “This account is false. The United
States and its European allies are mainly responsible for the crisis. The
taproot of the trouble is NATO expansion, the central element in a larger
strategy to move all of Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, out of Russia’s
orbit and integrate it into the West” (p. 172). Mearsheimer claims that the
West’s strategy was based on liberal principles – the “aim was to integrate
Ukraine into the ‘security community’ that had developed in western
Europe during the Cold War and had been moving eastward since its conclusion.
But the Russians were using a realist playbook. The major crisis that resulted
left many Western leaders feeling blindsided” (ibid.). One wonders – really,
could they have been that clueless or deluded?
The US and allies strategy for
making Ukraine part of the West
Mearsheimer provides us with a helpful framework to see how the
US and allies could rip Ukraine out of the Russian orbit: “NATO enlargement, EU
expansion, and the Orange Revolution, which aimed at fostering democracy and
Western values in Ukraine and thus presumably produce pro-Western leaders in
Kiev” (p. 172). But Moscow was “deeply opposed to NATO enlargement.” In fact,
Russian leaders believed that, when the Soviet Union disintegrated, NATO would
not move an inch toward Russia’s borders. They believed that “no enlargement”
had been promised, but were deceived by the Clinton administration.
Ordinary citizens probably have no understanding that, in
eminent Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen’s analysis (in War with Russia:
from Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate [2022], since the “end
of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington had treated post-Communist Russia as a
defeated nation with inferior legitimate rights at home and abroad. The
triumphalist, winner-take-all approach has been spearheaded by the expansion of
NATO—accompanied by non-reciprocal zones of national security while excluding
Moscow from Europe’s security systems. Early on, Ukraine and, to a lesser
extent, Georgia were Washington’s ‘great prize’” (p. 16).
With the Russian bear in miserable condition (it lost its cubs)
through the 1990s—Solzhenitsyn thought his country at this time was living
“literally amid ruins”–NATO expansion, in 1999, brought Poland, Hungary, and
the Czech Republic into the alliance. The second component of the expansion
occurred in 2004, which included Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the
three Baltic countries. “Russian leaders complained bitterly from the start.”
The inept Boris Yeltsin saw fire on the horizon when NATO bombed Serbia
in 1995. “When NATO comes right up to the Russian Federation’s borders … The
flame of war could burst out across the whole of Europe” (p. 172) Too weak to
derail these developments, Russia could take small comfort that only the tiny
Baltic countries shared their border.
But all hell broke loose at the NATO summit in Bucharest in
April 2008, when Ukraine’s and Georgia’s membership came up for discussion.
Both Germany and France had qualms, but the Bush administration wanted these
countries inside their security zone. The final announcement proclaimed that
Geogia and Ukraine were welcomed for membership. Putin, Mearsheimer maintained,
“that admitting those two countries would represent a ‘direct threat’ to
Russia. If anybody had any doubts about Russia’s seriousness regarding
accepting Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, the Russia-Georgia war in August 2008
should have dispelled those deluded thoughts.
Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s president, who was deeply
committed to drawing his own country into the NATO circle, had first to resolve
the disputes with two separatist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Putin
prevented this from occurring – and invaded Georgia, gaining control over
Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Saakashvili was left in the lurch by the West.
“Russia had made its point,” Mearsheimer observes, “yet NATO refused to give up
on bringing Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance” (p. 173). We need to be
reminded that the Georgian war was “financed, trained and minded by American
funds and personnel” (Cohen, 2022, p. 187).
The EU expanded eastward. “Austria, Finland and Sweden joined
the EU in 1995, and eight Central and Eastern European countries (Czech
Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia)
joined in May 2004 along with Cyprus and Malta. Bulgaria and Romania joined in
2007” (p. 174). These developments were a stick poke to the Russian bear’s
eyes. This Eastern Partnership was perceived as hostile to their country’s
interests. “Sergei Lavrov, complained bitterly that the EU was trying to create
a “sphere of influence” in Eastern Europe and hinted that it was engaging in
‘blackmail’” (ibid.). Who can deny that Moscow correctly sees EU membership as
a “stalking horse for NATO enlargement” (ibid.)?
The final, and third, tool for “peeling Ukraine away from Russia
was the effort to promote the Orange Revolution” (ibid.). The US and European
allies endeavoured to foster social and political change in countries formerly
under Soviet control. Essentially, the aim was to spread Western “values” and
promote “liberal democracy” – efforts funded by NGOs and official governments.
That sounds innocent enough: but it isn’t. The underlying geopolitical agenda
was clear: to foment hostility to Russia and to execute the “final break with
Moscow” and to “accelerate” Kiev’s membership in NATO (Cohen, 2022, p. 24).
The crisis of the Ukrainian coup
Now we enter the great quagmire of conflicting interpretations
of the events of 2014. The fateful crisis began in late November 2013, when
President Yanukovych “rejected a major economic deal he had been negotiating
with the EU and decided instead to accept a Russian counteroffer” (p. 174).
Over the next three months there were protests against the government, and on
January 22, 2014, two protestors were killed. By mid-February one hundred more
died. Hurriedly flown in, Western emissaries tried to resolve the crisis, so
claims Mearsheimer, by striking a deal on February 21 that permitted Yanukovych
to “stay in power until new elections were held sometime before year’s end” (p.
175).
But protesters didn’t permit him to stay in office—on February
22 Yanukovych fled to Russia. The new government in Kiev “was thoroughly
pro-Western and anti-Russian. Moreover, the US government backed the
coup, although the full extent of its involvement is unknown” (ibid.). Perhaps
– but we do know that the Maidan protests were “strong influenced by extreme
nationalist and even semi-fascist street forces, turned violent” (Cohen [2022],
p. 17). Snipers killed scores of protestors and policeman on Maidan Square in
February 2014. The neo-fascist organization Right Sector (and its
co-conspirators) played a key role in bringing to power a virulent
anti-Russian, pro-American regime.
Cohen counters the prevalent narrative that Putin bribed and
bullied Yanukovych to reject the “reckless provocation” of the EU proposal –
forcing a “deeply divided country to choose between Russia and the West” (p.
17). Further, Cohen argues that the EU proposal would have imposed harsh
measures on Ukraine and, significantly, “curtail longstanding and essential
economic relations with Russia” (ibid.). There was nothing approaching benign
in the EU’s proposal. Mearsheimer states that the US backed the coup , and the
egregious “Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and
Eurasian Affairs, and Senator John McCain (R-AZ), for example, participated in
anti-government demonstrations, while the US ambassador in Kiev
proclaimed after the coup that it was a ’day for the history books’” (p, 175).
A day of infamy for lovers of a peaceable world order. Don’t ask me to “please,
have a cookie or two.”
“A leaked transcript of phone conversation,” Mearsheimer tells
us, “revealed that Nuland advocated regime change and wanted Arseniy (“Yats”)
Yatsenyuk, who was pro-Western, to become prime minister in the new government,
which he did. It is hardly surprising that Russians of all persuasions think
Western provocateurs, especially the CIA, helped overthrow Yanukovych” (ibid.).
“Fuck the EU”—Nuland’s vulgar rallying cry stills rings in our ears to this
day. Cohen comments: “Europe’s leaders and Washington did not defend their own
diplomatic accord. Yanukovych fled to Russia. Minority parliamentary parties
representing Maidan and, predominantly, western Ukraine—among them Svoboda, an
ultranationalist movement previously anathematized by the European Parliament
as incompatible with European rulers—formed a new government” (p. 17).
Ominously, Washington and Brussels “endorsed the coup and have supported the
outcome ever since. Everything that followed, from Russia’s annexation of
Crimea and the spread of rebellion in southeastern Ukraine to the civil war and
Kiev’s ‘anti-terrorist operation,’ was triggered by the February coup” (p. 18).
What ordinary citizens do not understand, to say the least, is
that the coup was cultivated by the US and allies, thus triggering Russian
responses. And they do not understand that, from February 2014 until the
present military conflict in Ukraine in 2022, that the West (including the
Russophobic Canadian Liberal Party) have been training military in Ukraine and
turning a knowing blind-eye to the neo-Nazi militia, who have played a key role
in attacking Russians and everything “Russian” in the country: The
“anti-terrorist” military campaign against its own citizens in Luhansk and
Donetsk is the “essential factor escalating the crisis” (p. 18). Well-over
10,000 citizens have died; and millions of refugees created. The crisis cannot
be laid at Putin’s feet.
The western press has blanked out accounts of events such as the
“pogrom-like burning to death of ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking
Ukrainians in Odessa shortly later in 2014.” This action “reawakened memories
of Nazi extermination squads in Ukraine during World War II.” The Azov
Battalion of 3,000 soldiers—a neo-fascist militia (as evidence by regalia,
slogans, and programmatic statements)—has played a “major combat role in the
Ukrainian civil war.” Most Canadian citizens would be astonished to hear this –
that must be propaganda from the evil tyrant Putin. Sorry: it isn’t. Nor are
the “storm troop-like assaults on gays, Roma, women feminists, elderly ethnic
Russians, and other ‘impure’ citizens are wide-spread throughout Kiev-ruled
Ukraine.”
The neo-fascist militia have also desecrated a sacred Holocaust
gravesite in Ukraine – with legal authorities doing nothing in response. Most
disturbingly, Kiev has systematically begun “rehabilitating and even
memorializing leading Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi German extermination
pogroms during World War II” (p. 180).
Putin’s response to the coup MORE https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/05/05/taking-aim-at-ukraine-how-john-mearsheimer-and-stephen-cohen-challenged-the-dominant-narrative/
Michael Welton retired from Athabasca University. His
recent books include Unearthing Canada’s Hidden Past: a Short History of
Adult Education and Adult Education a Precarious Age: The Hamburg Declaration
revisited.
“How CIA Front Laid Foundations
For Ukraine War”
CAUSES: MORE ON NAZIS IN UKRAINE (see Anthology #24). [A motive of the Russian invasion of
Ukraine is Russian fear and loathing of Nazis.
–D]
Ruins of Azov Steel Factory Display
Nazi Insignia and Signs of NATO Support By Sonja Van den Ende on
Jul 08, 2022 08:16 am
Owner of plant,
Rinat Akhmetov, is allegedly connected to organized crime.
[This article is written by a reporter embedded in Ukraine with the Russian
army. We believe that if people want to understand the war in Ukraine, they
need to read widely about it, from different perspectives, including the
Russian one, to try and discern the truth about what is going on for
themselves.—Editors = A good statement of purpose for these
anthologies. –Dick.]
The Azov Steel factory was an important propaganda tool of the Western media
since the Azov Battalion occupied the factory in March this year. In the
official narrative, there were “good fellows” inside the factory, defending
Mariupol and its citizens. The “good fellows” surrendered last May 2022.
When I visited Mariupol, I got a totally
different story from the remaining citizens inside the city, and from the sight
of the Azov Steel factory, where much paraphernalia was laying around.
What I saw, especially in the catacombs that
are said to go about five to ten stories below the ground, says a lot about
what must have happened there.
The Russian army cleared the first floor so
that we could take a look there. It was furnished and appeared like a military
headquarters, with (bunk) beds. There were also many books, such as Mein
Kampf, and the flags of Azov with the “Wolfsangel” emblem, which were used
by the “Schutz Staffel” SS battalions of Nazi Germany.
The Azov Battalion, which was founded in
Mariupol in May 2014, is a Ukrainian far-right militia formed from so-called
Patriots of Ukraine and the Social-National Assembly, both led by Andriy
Biletsky (a far-right extremist).
Funded by the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky who
has close ties to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the militia was
established at the beginning of the war in the Donbas and has since terrorized
the people in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).
In the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), there
is a similar battalion with a different name, called Aidar, which also
terrorizes the inhabitants of the LPR. […]
The post Ruins of Azov Steel Factory Display
Nazi Insignia and Signs of NATO Support appeared first
on CovertAction Magazine.
Gregory Shupak. “Pushing for War Over
Ukraine While Ignoring Its Nazi Ties.” Extra! The Newsletter of FAIR. March 2022. The Nazi current in the Ukrainian gov. and
armed forces is not well-reported by US MSM. (FAIR also sponsors a weekly radio
show: CounterSpin.)
Putin’s
Perspective
Roger Annis. “Denunciation of Vladimir Putin’s Essay on History of Russia and Ukraine
is Unwarranted.” CovertAction Magazine. Jun
20, 2022.
Far from condemning the national aspirations
of Ukrainians, Putin defends them
In July 2021, Vladimir Putin published a
historical essay on Russia and Ukraine on the website of the President of
Russia.
The essay is a very informative read, written
by someone with a deep knowledge of the subject. It is titled
“On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” and
was published in Russian, English and Ukrainian.
The essay’s appearance occasioned a round of
gratuitous condemnations by Western media and pro-Western academics. The
pro-NATO think tank Atlantic Council, for example, published a series of short comments on the essay that carefully
avoided any substantive reporting of the essay content.
A member of the Ukrainian Rada (legislature)
is quoted:
"Ukraine holds the key to Putin’s dreams
of restoring Russia’s great power status. He is painfully aware that without
Ukraine, this will be impossible." He continues, "[The current
conflict] is a war for the whole of Ukraine. Putin makes it perfectly clear
that his goal is to keep Ukraine firmly within the Russian sphere of influence
and to prevent Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration."
There is nothing new or informative here. The Russian government warned NATO and the
world back in December 2021 that a “Euro-Atlantic integration” of Ukraine and
the accompanying political and military measures constitute a further
escalation of threats against the Russian people and their sovereignty that
would not go unanswered. That month, the government published the text of a proposed treaty with the U.S. aimed
at resolving the conflict over Ukraine’s future. So, again, the MP is telling
us nothing new.
A member of the “Kyiv Security Forum” is also
cited by the Atlantic Council survey. He states,
“Putin understands that Ukrainian statehood
and the Ukrainian national idea pose a threat to Russian imperialism.”
Here we have an example of the gratuitous
term “Russian imperialism” used as an epithet in place of political analysis.
The term is more commonly seen or heard from
the Western “leftists’ suffering self-inflicted amnesia over NATO’s
decades-long, expansionist aggression against Russia. They are calling for a
Russian withdrawal” from Ukraine, which amounts to a call to bow to
Ukrainian and NATO aggression. […]
The post Denunciation of Vladimir Putin’s
Essay on History of Russia and Ukraine is Unwarranted appeared first
on CovertAction Magazine.
SUSTAINING THE WAR AGAINST RUSSIA
PROMOTING WAR AND ARMING NATO and UKRAINE
GEORGE PAULSON.
THE POLITICS OF BIDEN’S ESCALATION OF THE WAR
Hi friends, 6-1-22
I don’t know if you’ve you seen the latest news
about the Ukraine War. I’m referring to the Biden administration’s
recent decision to continue escalating the war by providing Ukraine with even
more advanced weaponry:
https://news.antiwar.com/2022/05/31/biden-says-he-doesnt-seek-nato-russia-war-or-regime-change-in-moscow/
This is on top of the $40 billion that Congress
recently earmarked to send to Ukraine (supported by every Democrat in the
House, including the DSA-aligned Squad and every Democrat in the Senate,
including Bernie Sanders).
This latest escalation by the Biden
administration, outlined in an op-ed in the NYTimes
“written” by the gaffe-prone occupant of the Oval Office, should be
seen in the context of another piece published by our nation’s “paper of
record” less than a week ago:
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/05/27/the-new-york-times-shift-on-victory-in-ukraine/
The official western narrative of an imminent
and humiliating Russian defeat in Ukraine is starting to crumble. Reality
is starting to set in, and I suspect that the Biden Administration, having bet
the farm on their failing Ukraine policy, in a desperate attempt to try to
improve their prospects in November’s mode-term election, is further escalating
this proxy war against nuclear-armed Russia.
Peace,
George Paulson
Criticism
of Western mass media on Ukraine: Amy Goodman
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Attachments area
AS. Funnels Money to Ukraine, Independent Media Faces Pressure to Parrot
Official Narrative
NATO
PURPOSE OF WAR TO NATO
“NATO admits it wants ‘Ukrainians to keep dying’ to bleed Russia, not
peace.”
Editor. Mronline.org
(4-13-22).
NATO sees Ukrainians as mere cannon fodder in its imperial
proxy war on Russia.
By Ben Norton (Posted Apr
13, 2022)
Originally published: Al Mayadeen on April 8, 2022 (more by Al Mayadeen) |
Imperialism,
Inequality, Strategy, WarEurope, Russia, Ukraine, United StatesNewswireNorth Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO)
The US-led
NATO military alliance has made it clear that it is willing to fight to the
last Ukrainian in order to bleed Russia and advance Western geopolitical
interests.
In a shockingly blunt
admission, The Washington Post acknowledged that some
NATO member states want “Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying” in order to
prevent Russia from making political gains.
In an April 5 report on peace talks between
Ukraine and Russia, the major US newspaper disclosed that NATO is afraid that
Kiev may give in to some of Moscow’s demands.
The Washington Post wrote explicitly:
“For some in NATO, it’s better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying
than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high a cost to Kyiv and
the rest of Europe.”
Anonymous
Western diplomats emphasized that “there are limits to how many compromises
some in NATO will support to win the peace,” and that they would rather prolong
the war in Ukraine if they can prevent Russia from having its security concerns
met.
The newspaper said that NATO members are
desperate not to give “Russian President Vladimir Putin any semblance of
victory,” and are more than willing to force Ukrainians into the meat grinder to
do so. MORE https://mronline.org/2022/04/13/nato-admits-it-wants-ukrainians-to-keep-dying-to-bleed-russia-not-peace/
The US Won't Ban the Same Lethal Weapons It's
Criticizing Russia for Using. JEFF ABRAMSON America's UN mission was forced
to amend its ambassador's comments because of its own refusal to ban such
weapons. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/03/05/us-wont-ban-same-lethal-weapons-its-criticizing-russia-using
March 5, 2022 by Responsible Statecraft
In an
impassioned address Wednesday at
a special United Nations meeting on Ukraine, U.S. Ambassador Linda
Thomas-Greenfield drew attention to
"videos of Russian forces moving exceptionally lethal weaponry into
Ukraine, which has no place on the battlefield. That includes cluster
munitions." These weapons, which are notorious for leaving small bomblets
behind that later kill and injure civilians, are one of a small number of
indiscriminate weapons that have infamous global recognition as markers of the
horror of war—recently also used in
Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as Syria, garnering international
disgust.
As many human rights groups
are now doing, the United States was right to point to cluster munitions in
criticizing Russia. However, within hours of Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield's
comments, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations edited the
transcript, striking out that the weapons have no place on the battlefield, as
indicated below.
The new
formulation, which only expresses concern if these weapons are "directed
against civilians," undermines U.S. opprobrium of Russian behavior. So too
does the fact that the United States has refused to
abandon cluster munitions—despite functionally not using the weapons itself in
nearly two decades and no longer having a domestic manufacturer of them.
Today,
110 countries, including more than two-thirds of NATO member states, are
parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the weapons. The
United States worked against the
creation of the Convention, and continues to eschew its meetings. By doing so,
Washington keeps itself outside the growing norm that
it could use more fully to condemn Russian aggression.
Tragically,
cluster munitions are not the only weapons the United States is clinging to
that undermine its ability to call Russia, and others, to account. In his State
of the Union address Tuesday
night, President Biden referred to "the battle between democracy and
autocracies," framing Ukraine as the stand-in for democracy and Russia for
autocracy. He would be wise to heed that framing when it comes to
landmines. MORE https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/03/05/us-wont-ban-same-lethal-weapons-its-criticizing-russia-using
© 2021 Responsible Statecraft
JEFF ABRAMSON is
a senior fellow for arms control and conventional arms transfers at the
Washington DC-based Arms Control Association and also directs the Forum on the
Arms Trade. Prior to re-joining the Arms Control Association in September 2019,
he managed the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, the de facto monitoring
regime for the Mine Ban Treaty and Convention on Cluster Munitions.
Jeremy
Kuzmarov. “Russian-Hating Dream of
Brzezinski Clan Nears Fulfillment as Poland Agrees to Host Permanent U.S. Base
and Turn Baltic Sea into NATO Lake.”
Mark Brzezinski, the
U.S. Ambassador to Poland, is the son of the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, a
descendent of Polish aristocrats and mastermind of U.S. foreign policy for
decades, whose dream was to use Poland as a base to try to weaken and destroy
Russia. Mark is now at the center of
the implementation of his dad’s plans.
In late
June, President Joe Biden announced before
a NATO summit that the United States would establish a permanent
military base in Poland, the first time the U.S. would have one on NATO’s
eastern flank. The base will provide a permanent headquarters in
Poland for the U.S. Army’s V Corps. At the moment there are already approximately
10,000 U.S. soldiers in Poland, which has provided a hub for U.S. and other
Western countries’ arms shipments to Ukraine.
[photo omitted]Members of
the Polish 18th Mechanized Division and the U.S.
82nd Airborne Division participate in a
joint military training in Nowa Deba, Poland, on April 8, 2022. [Source: reuters.com]
In April,
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III agreed to accelerate delivery of
U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems, HIMARS rocket launchers, F-35 combat
aircraft and Abrams tanks to Poland and to help its military become “one of the most
capable in Europe.”
|
CIA And Western Special Ops
Commandos Are In Ukraine
By Ben
Norton, Multipolarista. Popular Resistance.org (7-6-22). The CIA and special operations forces from NATO members Britain, France, Canada,
and Lithuania are physically in Ukraine, helping direct the proxy war on
Russia, according to a report in The New
York Times. These Western forces are on the ground training and advising
Ukrainian fighters, overseeing weapons shipments, and managing intelligence. At least 20 countries are part of a US
Army-led coalition, guiding Ukraine in its fight against Russian troops.
Some Ukrainian combatants are even using US flag patches on their
equipment. -more-
Biden Says US Will Beef Up Military
Presence In Europe
LEADING TO PEACE
A European Call for an End to the Ukraine War.
Richard
Falk |
Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service
5 Jul 2022 –
This piece appeared in the prominent German weekly, ZEIT, last week. It is
written from a European perspective, calling for a ceasefire followed by bilateral
negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. Read more...
Handling International Crises: From JFK to Biden
Rick
Sterling –
TRANSCEND Media Service
There are
significant parallels between the international crises in Cuba in 1962 and
Ukraine today. Both involved: intense confrontations between the USA and
the Soviet Union or Russia, and third party countries on the doorstep of a
major power. The Cuban Missile Crisis threatened to lead to
WW3, just as the Ukraine crisis does today.
War Scars the Earth. To Heal, We Must Cultivate Hope, not Harm. Kathy Kelly and Matt Gannon. TRANSCEND Media Service. 8
Jul 2022. The persistence of militarism is promoted by so-called “realists.”
Nuclear armed opponents push the world closer and closer to annihilation.
Sooner or later these weapons are bound to be used. Cooperation is the only way
forward. The “realist” option leads to collective suicide. Read more...
Resisting the “collective
west.”
“’Stay safe’: the whole world is in harms’ way.”
Originally
published: Internationalist 360 on May 11, 2022 by Jim “Fergie” Chambers (more by Internationalist
360) (Posted May 13, 2022). [I went to this link thinking to learn more
about Fergie Chambers, but instead I received maybe a dozen articles with a
viewpoint similar to Chambers’. –Dick]
Human Rights,
Inequality, Movements, WarAmericas, Asia, China, Europe, Israel, Latin America, Middle East, Palestine, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, United StatesNewswireNazi, North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Resistance, Russia-Ukraine War
In short,
those of us who have any means to contribute to the international struggle of
humanity against the great vampire that is the collective west, whether in
Donbas, Palestine, Latin America, or Detroit, ought to do so tirelessly, and we
ought to go far beyond petitions, posts and marches. This is the most responsible
choice, until sovereignty, prosperity and peace is a reality for everyone on
earth.
This is
not a dispatch, editorial, or an article, but a brief note.
On an
almost daily basis, I hear from well-meaning comrades or acquaintances back in
the West who urge me to “stay safe;” some even question whether I’ve been
irresponsible in my decision to come to Donbas, given that I have children at
home. Of course, anyone existing in a war zone ought to be prudent in their
actions, and keep their eyes open at all times. This should go without
saying. But it occurs to me that there
is a real disconnect in the imperial core, when it comes to the realities that
billions of people on earth face every day, those under the yoke of
imperialism, whether directly due to war and occupation, or indirectly, by way
of sanctions, economic or political plunder.
Yes, myself and many of my comrades who are doing our best to shed a
tiny ray of light on the true nature of the U.S.-sponsored civil war in Ukraine
are constantly surrounded by shelling; indeed, we may be under greater threat
from our own governments, which are increasingly hostile to journalists and
activists who dare push back against the prevailing narratives about Russia,
Syria, “Israel,” China, and so forth. MORE https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/11/stay-safe-the-whole-world-is-in-harms-way/
Only Four Of 55 African Leaders
Attend Zelensky Call
By Ben Norton, Multipolarista. Popular
Resistance.org (6-24-22). Western
governments have tried to rally the nations of Africa to join their war on
Russia. But the vast majority of the continent has ignored their pressure
campaign. For months, Ukraine attempted to organize a video conference between
the African Union and Western-backed leader Volodymyr Zelensky. France and
Germany put heavy pressure on African governments to attend the Zoom call,
which was held on June 20. The conference ended up being a total failure,
however. The heads of state of just four of the 55 members of the African Union
joined the meeting. -more-
CONTENTS
US-NATO-UKRAINE-RUSSIA WAR ANTHOLOGY #24
CAUSES of the WAR #24
Mark Rolofson. A Brief History
Shapiro.
President Clinton and NATO Expansion.
Carey.
Western (Sovietphobia) Russophobia:
United Kingdom.
Krieger. “Putin’s Offer to Negotiate on
Nukes” Rejected.
Kuzmarov. MIC War Profiteering.
Lauria. Censorship: Nulan-Pyatt Tape,
Smoking Gun of Kiev Coup 2014.
Kuzmarov. Propaganda: US National Endowment for
Democracy Awards
to anti-Russian NGOs.
Norton.
Conspiracy: “U.S. Government Plots to Break Up Russia in Name
of ‘Decolonization.’”
McCoy.
Another Cold War = Nuclear Threat, US $2 Trillion.
Hornberger. “What If the U.S. Had Invaded the Ukraine?”
Chomsky and Barsamian. War and Warming, and Orwell’s Doublethink.
CONSEQUENCES
Moon of Alabama. US Escalation.
Brenner. World Has Changed Opposite to
Plans.
Al Mayadeen Net. Censorship: Stone’s Film Ukraine on Fire.
Steve Sweeney. Ukrainian Crackdown on Left and other Opponents.
Ritter.
“Lithuania’s Brinkmanship.”
UN WIRE.
Casualties in the War.
Johnstone. CIA in Ukraine.
Moon of Alabama. Zelensky Lied re Burned Shopping Center.
Salami.
Egypt’s Tightrope Neutrality.
Knight.
“Joe Biden’s saber-rattling threatens World War III—with China and Russia.”
CONCORD
Hixson.
Principal Needs for Peace, to
prevent and stop wars.
Kuzmarov and Brown. End False Ukrainian Reports of Russian
atrocities.
World Beyond War, Code Pink, and
International Peace Bureau. “Peace
Wave” International Appeal for End to the War.
United for Peace and Justice: 4
International Reports.
Ukraine [Anti-] War Resources
US Conference of Mayors Adopts Peace Resolution
Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons First Meeting in Vienna
Condemnation of Nuclear Threats (Abolish Nuclear Weapons)
UFPJ Peace Petition
Paul Ingram. “Russia’s Nuclear Threat.”
Lynch.
Conflict Transformation.
Koehler.
“Embracing the Complexity of Peace.”
Contents of #23
END UKRAINE WAR ANTHOLOGY #25
8-7-22
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