OMNI
US, NATO, RUSSIA,
UKRAINE war, ANTHOLOGY #20, mAY 6, 2022.
Consequences of War,
Control OF INFORMATION and CENSORSHIP,
and seeking PEACE
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
What’s at Stake: Wartime State, Corporate Rapacity and Repression,
and Populist Patriotism v. Free Speech and Peace.
CONTENTS #20,
CONSEQUENCES OF WAR (10): CONTROL OF INFORMATION/CENSORSHIP. RESISTANCE: PEACEMAKING.
Patrick
Lawrence. “The US Bubble of Pretend.”
George
Paulson. Scott Ritter and President
Poroshenko.
Glenn
Greenwald. “The Censorship Campaign against
Western Criticism of
NATO….”
Evan
Reif. War of Repression against “anyone
who dares to speak against the
Kyiv regime.”
Jeremy
Kuzmarov. “Ukraine Hunts Down Traitors
Helping Russia.”
Chris
Hedges. “American Commissars.”
Caitlin
Johnstone. “Pay Pal Blocks [Criticism]
of U.S.”
Margaret
Kimerley. “Obama Wants Censorship.”
Johnstone. “Being Anti-War Isn’t Easy.”
CPNN. Russian Nobel Laureate Attacked in Russia.
Silencing Occurring Also in
Russia.
PEACE (3)
Art Hobson.
“Why must we make war? The frailties of Homo sapiens.”
UN’s
Guterres
Ukraine
Pacifist Movement
Medea
Benjamin and Nicolas Davies. “This Is
How the US Could Help Bring Peace to Ukraine”
TEXTS
“The U.S. bubble of pretend.” Editor.
Mronline.org (4-29-22).
The lack of objective, principled
coverage of the war in Ukraine is a degenerate state of affairs. The one thing
worse is the extent to which it’s perfectly fine with most Americans.
Originally
published: Consortium News on April 5, 2022 by
Patrick Lawrence. (Posted Apr 28, 2022)
Media, State Repression, Strategy,
WarAmericas, Europe,
Russia,
Ukraine,
United StatesNewswireNorth Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), Russia-Ukraine War
This is the first of an occasional series, to appear in four
parts, considering various aspects of our “bubble of pretend,” that protective
membrane within which most Americans prefer to reside, safely removed from the
realities of our circumstances, the disorders of our time, and, of course, the
responsibilities we share for these circumstances and disorders. My concern as
I began these pieces, sometimes tipping into morbid fascination, was that our
collective psychology, as I understand the term, has deteriorated these past
few years to such an extent it calls into question the survival of our polity,
if not our republic. — P.L.
It is
perfectly obvious by now, to anyone who cares to look, that mainstream media in
America and the other Western powers are not reporting the Ukraine crisis
accurately.
Let me try
that another way: The government-supervised New York Times and
the rest of the corporate-owned media on both sides of the Atlantic lie
routinely to their readers and viewers as to why Russia intervened in Ukraine,
the progress of its military operation, the conduct of Ukrainian forces, and
America’s role in purposely provoking and prolonging this crisis.
So far as
I know, this is the first war in modern history with no objective, principled
coverage in mainstream media of day-to-day events and their context. None. It
is morn-to-night propaganda, disinformation and lies of omission—most of it
fashioned by the Nazi-infested Zelensky regime in Kiev and repeated
uncritically as fact.
There is one thing worse
than this degenerate state of affairs. It is the extent to which the media’s
malpractice is perfectly fine to most Americans. Tell us what to think and
believe no matter if it is true, they say, and we will think and believe it.
Show us some pictures, for images are all.
MORE https://mronline.org/2022/04/28/the-u-s-bubble-of-pretend/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-u-s-bubble-of-pretend&mc_cid=5360602604&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e
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Hello friends,
I wasn't planning on writing to you this weekend but I just
encountered an example of what may be an example of the kind of censorship that
is now taking place all across the internet and social media when it comes to
the war in Ukraine. As many, if not all of you know, sites that present a
counter-narrative to the one coming out of Washington are being
suppressed. One of the sources I sometimes follow for news on the
Ukraine war has been former Marine-intelligence analyst and weapons inspector Scott Ritter (some of you will remember
RItter during the lead up to the Iraq war when he very publicly told the
world that Iraq possessed no WMDs). During an interview Ritter gave not
long after the Russian invasion, he mentioned something that
former Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko had once said in a speech. Specifically, the Ukrainian
President--according to Ritter--claimed that Ukraine would prevail
against the inhabitants of the breakaway region because, to paraphrase,
Ukrainian children would go about their lives and go to school while the
children of the Donbas would spend their lives cowering in fear in bomb
shelters (because of the shelling by the Ukrainian military). So, today I
decided to independently confirm if Ritter's allegation about what the
Ukrainian President said was correct, and, after a little internet searching,
discovered a documentary video on YouTube about the Donbas made in 2016
that looked promising. After clicking on the link, I was prevented from
viewing the documentary--called simply "Donbas" by someone named
Anne-Laure Bonnel--because of age-appropriate concerns. I was eventually
able to get around the age-appropriate restrictions and began watching the
documentary. It began with Poroshenko giving a speech--the subtitles were in
French, but I can read French--and, indeed, the Ukrainian President was talking
about children cowering in "caves." I appeared to have
found just what I had been looking for! I then attempted to
switch to English subtitles, in case I wanted to share it later with my
mostly anglophone friends, but was unable to. So, I started watching
the documentary again, from the beginning, with my eyes focused on reading
French, and my ears honed in on the actual words of the Ukrainian President (I
know a little bit of Russian, which has come in handy several times while
watching documentaries on Ukraine). Well, less than a minute in, the
documentary abruptly stopped and the following warning appeared:
"the following content has been identified by the YouTube community
as inappropriate or offensive to some audiences." I tried every
trick I could think of, but I was unable to continue watching the documentary.
By the way, if any of you are wondering about
Ritter, he was permanently banned from Twitter a couple of weeks ago. [War Watch Wednesdays will soon include
a list of]
Peace, George
From
the editor:
Former OMNI US-NATO-Ukraine-Russia Anthologies citing Scott
Ritter:
Anthology #2: SCORPION KING: America's
Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons.
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/12/war-watch-wednesdays-www.html
Anthology #11: Ritter: The Case for
Neutrality to Defuse Crisis With Russia. https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/02/omni-russia-newsletter-11-february-24.html
#13:
Harms of US Russophobia https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/03/omni-russiaukraine-newsletter-13-march.html
#18:
Scott Ritter. “Pity the Nation.”
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/04/omni-us-russia-ukraine-war-anthology-18.html
Also
Ritter,
Scott. Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change.
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-democracy-roman-or-british-empire.html
OMNI Constitution Day
SCOTT RITTER’S WAGING PEACE: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement.
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2008/09/omnis-constitution-day.html
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HUMAN RIGHTS |
Glenn Greenwald. “The Censorship
Campaign against Western Criticism of NATO’s Ukraine Policy Is Extreme.” An article
by Glenn Greenwald in Scheerpost.
If one wishes to be
exposed to news, information or perspective that contravenes the
prevailing US/NATO view on the war in Ukraine, a rigorous search is required.
And there is no guarantee that search will succeed. That is because the state/corporate censorship regime that
has been imposed in the West with regard to this war is stunningly aggressive,
rapid and comprehensive.
On a virtually daily
basis, any off-key news agency, independent platform or individual citizen is
liable to be banished from the internet. In early March, barely a week after Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine, the twenty-seven nation European Union — citing
“disinformation” and “public order and security” — officially
banned the Russian state-news outlets RT and Sputnik from being
heard anywhere in Europe. In what Reuters called “an unprecedented move,” all
television and online platforms were barred by force of law from airing content
from those two outlets. Even prior to that censorship order from the state,
Facebook and Google were already banning those outlets, and Twitter immediately
announced they would as well, in compliance with the new EU law.
But what was
“unprecedented” just six weeks ago has now become commonplace, even normalized.
Any platform devoted to offering inconvenient-to-NATO news or alternative
perspectives is guaranteed a very short lifespan. Less than two weeks after the
EU’s decree, Google announced that it was
voluntarily banning all Russian-affiliated media worldwide, meaning Americans
and all other non-Europeans were now blocked from viewing those channels on
YouTube if they wished to. As so often happens with Big Tech censorship, much
of the pressure on Google to more aggressively censor content about the war in
Ukraine came from its own workforce: “Workers across Google had been urging
YouTube to take additional punitive measures against Russian channels.”
So prolific and
fast-moving is this censorship regime that it is virtually impossible to count
how many platforms, agencies and individuals have been banished for the crime
of expressing views deemed “pro-Russian.” On Tuesday, Twitter, with no
explanation as usual, suddenly banned one of the most informative, reliable and
careful dissident accounts, named “Russians With Attitude.” Created in late
2020 by two English-speaking Russians, the account exploded in
popularity since the start of the war, from roughly 20,000 followers
before the invasion to more than 125,000 followers at the time Twitter banned
it. An accompanying podcast with the same name also exploded in popularity and,
at least as of now, can still be heard
on Patreon.
What makes this outburst
of Western censorship so notable — and what is at least partially driving it —
is that there is a clear, demonstrable hunger in the West for news and
information that is banished by Western news sources, ones which loyally and
unquestioningly mimic claims from the U.S. government, NATO, and Ukrainian
officials. As The Washington Post acknowledged when reporting Big
Tech’s “unprecedented” banning of RT, Sputnik and other Russian sources of
news: “In the first four days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, viewership of
more than a dozen Russian state-backed propaganda channels on YouTube spiked to
unusually high levels.”
Note that this censorship
regime is completely one-sided and, as usual, entirely aligned with U.S.
foreign policy. Western news outlets and social media platforms have been flooded with pro-Ukrainian propaganda
and outright lies from the start of the war. A New York Times article from
early March put it very delicately in its headline: “Fact and
Mythmaking Blend in Ukraine’s Information War.” Axios was similarly understated
in recognizing this
fact:
“Ukraine misinformation is spreading — and not just from Russia.” Members
of the U.S.
Congress have gleefully
spread fabrications that went viral to millions of people, with
no action from censorship-happy Silicon Valley corporations. That is not a
surprise: all participants in war use disinformation and propaganda to
manipulate public opinion in their favor, and that certainly includes all
direct and proxy-war belligerents in the war in Ukraine.
Yet there is little to no
censorship — either by Western states or by Silicon Valley monopolies — of
pro-Ukrainian disinformation, propaganda and lies. The censorship goes only in
one direction: to silence any voices deemed “pro-Russian,” regardless of
whether they spread disinformation.
MORE https://cpnn-world.org/new/?p=27096
Evan
Reif. “Nazis and The Beast: The Arrest
of Gonzalo Lira.” CovertAction Magazine (May 1, 2022).
Are American journalists collaborating with
Nazi terrorists to silence dissent?
There is another war going on in
Ukraine. A war of repression is being waged on journalists, political
dissidents and anyone who dares to speak against the Kyiv regime. It has been going on uninterrupted since the
Maidan coup of 2014. It is not being fought on the battlefield, but rather in
the press, online and in the diabolic black sites of
the Ukrainian secret police.
The list of those who have been detained,
repressed or even killed has grown as this crisis wears on. To name a few [...]
The post Nazis and The Beast: The Arrest of
Gonzalo Lira appeared first on CovertAction Magazine. Read in browser »
Jeremy Kuzmarov. “ Ukraine Hunts
Down ’Traitors Helping Russia.’”
CovertAction
Magazine
(May 01, 2022).
State terror operations that follow from CIA
playbook contradict saintly image of Zelensky promoted in the U.S. media.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s saintly image in the
media is contradicted by state terror operations being conducted under his
orders against political dissidents and Ukrainian civilians accused of
collaboration with Russia.
The Associated Press reported last week that
nearly 400 people in the northeastern city
of Kharkiv alone have been detained under anti-collaboration laws enacted by Ukraine's
parliament and signed by Zelensky after Russia's February 24 invasion.
A YouTube video accompanying the
short article juxtaposed a speech by Zelensky saying that “collaborators
will be brought to justice” with the arrest of a middle-aged Kharkiv man named
Viktor by the Ukrainian Security Services (SBU) because of a social media post
praising Vladimir Putin, calling for secession and insulting the Ukrainian
flag—which Viktor called a “symbol of death.”
The SBU agent showed Viktor his social media post and asked: “You
supported Putin? Are you supporting the Russian army. You are not speaking very
nicely about the Ukrainian flag, are you?”
Viktor responded, before being taken away: “I am sorry. Yes I commented
a lot. I told you. I changed my mind.” […]
The post Ukraine Hunts Down “Traitors Helping
Russia” appeared first on CovertAction Magazine. Read in browser »
The
next 3 items were forwarded by Abel.
Chris Hedges. “American Commissars.” April 18, 2022. Original to ScheerPost
https://scheerpost.com/2022/04/18/hedges-american-commissars/
Social
media platforms are aggressively censoring all who challenge the dominant
narrative on Ukraine, the ruling Democratic Party, the wars in the Middle East
and the corporate state
“Enough Said.” [Original illustration
by Mr. Fish]
The ruling class, made up of the traditional
elites that run the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, is employing
draconian forms of censorship on its right-wing and left-wing critics in a
desperate effort to cling to power. The traditional elites were discredited for
pushing through a series of corporate assaults on workers, from
deindustrialization to trade deals. They were unable to stem rising inflation,
the looming economic crisis and the ecological emergency. They were incapable
of carrying out significant social and political reform to ameliorate
widespread suffering and refused to accept responsibility for two decades of
military fiascos in the Middle East. And now they have launched a new and sophisticated McCarthyism. Character
assassination. Algorithms. Shadow banning. De-platforming.
Censorship is the last resort of desperate and
unpopular regimes. It magically appears to make a crisis go away. It comforts
the powerful with the narrative they want to hear, one fed back to them by
courtiers in the media, government agencies, think tanks and academia. The
problem of Donald Trump is solved by censoring Donald Trump. The problem of
left-wing critics, such as myself, is solved by censoring us. The result is a
world of make-believe.
YouTube disappeared six years of my RT show, “On
Contact,” although not one episode dealt with Russia. It is not a secret as to
why my show vanished. It gave a voice to writers and dissidents, including Noam
Chomsky and Cornel West, as well as activists from Extinction Rebellion, Black
Lives Matter, third parties and the prison abolitionist movement. It called out
the Democratic Party for its subservience to corporate power. It excoriated the
crimes of the apartheid state of Israel. It covered Julian Assange in numerous
episodes. It gave a voice to military critics, many of them combat veterans,
who condemned US war crimes.
It no longer matters how
prominent you are or how big a following you have. If you challenge power, you are at risk of being censored. Former
British MP George Galloway detailed a similar experience during an April 15
panel organized by Consortium News in which I took part:
I have been threatened with
travel restrictions were I to continue the television broadcast I had been
doing for almost an entire decade. I have been stamped by the false label
‘Russian State Media,’ which I never had, by the way, when I was presenting a
show on Russian state media. It was only given after I ceased to have a show on
Russian state media, ceased because the government made it a crime for me to do
so.
My 417,000 Twitter followers had been gaining a thousand a day, going like a
runaway train, then suddenly it hit the buffers when the Elon Musk story
emerged. I expressed the view that oligarch that he no doubt is, I prefer Elon
Musk to the kings of Saudi Arabia, who it turns out are presently major
shareholders in the Twitter company. As soon as I joined that fight, my numbers
literally crashed to a halt, with shadow bans and all the rest of it…
All of
this is happening before the consequences of the economic crash brought about by western policy and our misnamed
leaders has really hit yet. When economies begin to not just slow down, not
just hiccup, not just experience levels of inflation not seen for years, or
decades, but becomes a crash, as well it might, there will be even more for the
state to suppress, especially any alternative analysis as to how we got here
and what we must do to get out of it.
Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in
Iraq and Marine Corp intelligence officer, called out the lie about weapons of
mass destruction prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Recently, he was banned from Twitter for offering a
counter narrative about dozens of killings in the Kyiv western suburb of Bucha.
Many of the victims in Bucha were found with gunshot wounds to the head
and with their hands tied behind their back. International observers and
eyewitnesses have blamed Russia for the killings. Ritter’s alternative
analysis, right or wrong, saw him silenced.
Ritter lamented the Twitter ban
at the forum:
It took me three years to get
4,000 followers on Twitter. I thought that was a big deal. Then this Ukraine
thing comes up. It exploded. When I got suspended for the first time for
questioning the narrative in Bucha my account had just gotten over 14,000. By
the time my suspension was lifted I was up to 60,000. By the time they
suspended me again I was close to 100,000. It was out of control, which is why
I am convinced the algorithm said: You must delete. You must delete. And they
did. The excuse they gave was absurd. I was abusive and I was harassing by
telling what I thought was the truth.
I don’t
have the same insight in the Ukraine I had in Iraq. Iraq, I was on the ground
doing the job. But the techniques of observation and evaluation that you are
trained as an intelligence officer to apply to any given set apply to Ukraine
today. Simply looking at the available data set, you cannot help but draw the
conclusion that it was Ukrainian national police, mainly because you have all
the elements. You have motive. They don’t like Russian collaborators. How do I
know? They said so on their website. You have the commander of the national
police ordering his people to shoot people in Bucha on the day in question. You
have the evidence. The dead bodies on the street with white armbands carrying
Russian food packets. Could I be wrong? Absolutely. Could there be data out
there I am not aware of? Absolutely. But it is not there. As an intelligence
officer I take the available data. I access the available data. I provide
assessments based on that available data. And Twitter found that objectionable.
Two pivotal incidents
contributed to this censorship. The first was the publication of classified
documents by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. The second was the election of
Donald Trump. The ruling class was unprepared. The exposure of their war
crimes, corruption, callous indifference to the plight of those they ruled and
extreme concentration of wealth shredded their credibility. The election of
Trump, which they did not expect, made them afraid they would be supplanted.
The Republican Party establishment and the Democratic Party establishment
joined forces to demand greater and greater censorship from social media.
Even marginal critics suddenly
became dangerous. They had to be silenced. Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party
presidential candidate in 2016, lost about half her social media following
after mysteriously going offline for 12 hours during the campaign. The discredited
Steele dossier, paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, charged Stein, along
with Trump, with being a Russian asset. The Senate Intelligence Committee spent
three years investigating Stein, issuing five different reports before
exonerating her.
Stein spoke of the threat to
freedom of speech during the forum:
We are in
an incredibly perilous moment. It’s not
only freedom of the press and freedom of speech, but it is really democracy in
all its dimensions that is under threat. There are all these draconian laws now
against protest. There are 36 that have been passed that are as bad as a
10-year prison sentence for demonstrating on a sidewalk without a permit. They
differ state by state. You need to know the laws in your state if you protest.
Drivers have been given license to kill you if you are out in the street in
some states as part of a protest. MORE [numerous
discoveries try to find time –D] https://scheerpost.com/2022/04/18/hedges-american-commissars/
[Hedges’ conclusion]
There are many similarities to the 1930s, including the power of predatory
international banks to consolidate wealth into the hands of a few oligarchs and
impose punishing austerity measures on the global working class. “More
than anything else, the Nazis were a nationalist protest movement against
globalization,” notes Benjamin Carter Hett in The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and The Downfall of the
Weimar Republic.
Shutting down critics in a
decayed and corrupt society is equivalent to turning off the oxygen on a
seriously ill patient. It hastens mortality rather than delaying or preventing
it. The convergence of a looming economic crisis, fear by a bankrupt ruling
class that they will soon be banished from power, the growing ecological
catastrophe and the inability to thwart self-destructive military adventurism
against Russia and China, have set the stage for an American implosion.
Those of us who see it coming,
and who desperately seek to prevent it, have become the enemy.
Caitlin
Johnstone. “PayPal Blocks Multiple Alternative Media Figures Critical Of US Empire
Narratives.” Apr 28, 2022
(Update:
Consortium News has also had its
access to PayPal cut off)
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https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/paypal-blocks-multiple-alternative |
In what appears to be yet another escalation in Silicon Valley's
redoubled efforts to quash dissident voices since the beginning of the Ukraine
war, PayPal has just blocked the accounts of multiple alternative media voices
who've been speaking critically against official US empire narratives. These
include journalist and speaker Caleb Maupin, and Mnar Adley and Alan MacLeod
of MintPress
News.
Just the other day MintPress published an excellent article by
MacLeod titled "An
Intellectual No-Fly Zone: Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the
New Norm" documenting the many ways skepticism of the US
government's version of events in this war is being suppressed by Silicon
Valley megacorporations, including financial censorship via the demonetization
of YouTube videos that don't regurgitate the imperial line on Ukraine. Today, both MintPress and MacLeod have
been banned from using the payment service that many online content
creators have come to rely on to help crowdfund their work.
BREAKING: MintPress News & @AlanRMacLeod has
been banned from PayPal for unspecified reasons. Help us fight back against
this onslaught of censorship: indiegogo.com/projects/let-s…
Mnar Adley@MnarMuh
URGENT:
My PayPal account for @MintPressNews has been banned from PayPal without any
reason. This is blatant censorship of dissenting journalists & outlets.
Please help us fight back so we can continue to expose the permanent war state.
https://t.co/nmp4xlZ0HD https://t.co/5rQnzZQxaj April 28, 2022.
MintPress News happens
to have published critical journalism about PayPal itself in the past, like
the articles it published in 2018 by Whitney
Webb documenting the way shady PayPal-linked billionaires Peter Thiel and
Pierre Omidyar have advanced the interests of the US empire and facilitated
imperial narrative control, or this
one from 2016 on how the company blocks Palestinians from opening
accounts while showing no such bias against illegal Israeli settlers.
I asked MintPress News Executive Director Mnar Adley for comment
on PayPal's move. Here is her response in full: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/paypal-blocks-multiple-alternative [ Continued…don’t
miss it –D]
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A Similar Silencing of Dissent is Occurring in Russia
“
Russian
Nobel Laureate Muratov Doused With Red Paint By Unknown Attacker.” CPNN:
Culture of Peace News Network.
FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION
An
article from Radio Free Europe (Copyright (c)2020
RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,
1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.) Dmitry
Muratov, the editor in chief of one of Russia’s leading independent
newspapers, Novaya gazeta, said he was attacked by an assailant who threw a
mixture of red paint and acetone on him.
(Editor’s note: So far Muratov has avoided assassination, but when he
received the Nobel Peace Prize last year, he said the prize was for his
colleagues at Novaya Gazeta who had
been assassinated. Muratov, co-winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize with Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, was on
a train bound from Moscow to Samara on April 7 when the attack occurred. Muratov said the attacker shouted, “Muratov,
here’s to you for our boys.” He told the
new European edition of Novaya gazeta
about the attack, saying that his eyes were burning badly. Novaya
gazeta, a leading independent Russian newspaper, suspended operations last month after it
said it received warnings from Russian authorities. April 19, 2022
MORE https://cpnn-world.org/new/?p=27093
PEACE
Why must we make war?
The frailties of Homo sapiens
Art Hobson,
ahobson@uark.edu
NWADG, 26
April 2022
Since Russia's immoral and foolish
invasion, the world has been all too "interesting." This
is my sixth (and hopefully last) consecutive column about Ukraine. I'd rather write about science, global
warming, or the frailties of American culture.
On the theory that it's better to
recall history rather than condemned to repeat it, let's review warfare during this century and the
last. An excess of weapons and alliances
plus one random assassination generated the Great War of 1914-1918. Afterward, lingering hostility toward Germany
provoked that nation's re-armament, leading to the second act of what historian
Niall Ferguson calls "The War of the World." Like WW1, WW2 created a bitter aftermath--a 45-year
"Cold War" between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. A sword of Damocles hung over the planet as
each nation amassed some 30,000 nuclear weapons, each far larger than the two
nuclear bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. .
In 1986 the world nearly banished
nuclear weapons. Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev publicly proposed a plan for abolishing all nuclear weapons by the
end of the 20th century and met with U.S. President Ronald Reagan to discuss
this. Reagan agreed that nuclear weapons
should be banned, but he foolishly wanted to retain his program to provide an
impenetrable shield against nuclear weapons.
Most scientists thought this was a technological fantasy that would only
weaken our only real defense against nuclear war, namely deterrence by the
threat of mutual annihilation. This
disagreement doomed Gorbachev's proposal--a historic missed opportunity.
By 1989, civil discontent destabilized
many nations of the Warsaw Pact (the Soviet-led military alliance of East
European states), leading to the Soviet Union's breakup in 1991. The
Button, a history of nuclear weapons diplomacy, co-authored by
former U.S. Secretary of Defense (under President Bill Clinton) William Perry,
is my source for an inside look at what happened next.
The end of the Cold War brought a rare
opportunity to transform U.S.-Russia relationships. NATO, established in 1949 to keep the Soviets
out of Western Europe, sought a new partnership with Russia. Newly independent Eastern European nations
sought NATO membership but NATO, realizing that this could destroy the
opportunity to cooperate with Moscow, wisely ignored this. In 1990, President George H. W. Bush's
administration assured Russia that NATO would expand "not one inch eastward." Russian President Gorbachev only accepted
reunification of East and West Germany because of assurances from western
leaders that NATO would not expand after he withdrew Russian forces from
Eastern Europe.
U.S.-Russia
cooperation was remarkable during this difficult period. America did not go so far as to offer NATO
membership to Russia, but Russia did agree to join a new NATO auxiliary called
Partnership For Peace, which former Warsaw Pact states were also invited to
join.
Russia cooperated remarkably in joint
PFP military exercises in the United States and Ukraine, and hosted exercises
that included troops from the USA, other NATO nations, and Ukraine. This training turned out to be valuable when
NATO deployed troops in Bosnia in 1995.
Russia sent its best paratrooper brigade to join that effort, which was
led by an American General. Yet Russia
still saw NATO as a threat.
In 1996, the Clinton Administration
decided, despite Russian misgivings, to expand
NATO by offering membership to Hungary, Czech Republic, and Poland. In an open letter to Clinton, more than 40
experienced foreign policy experts expressed concern about NATO expansion,
especially since there was no Russian threat at that time. The U.S. architect of the Cold War, George Kennan,
stated, "I think [NATO expansion] is the beginning of a new Cold War. ...The Russians will gradually react quite
adversely and it will affect their policies.
...It is a tragic mistake."
After that, NATO was standoffish toward
Russia and expanded right up to Russia's border. NATO acted as if Moscow's concerns did not
matter.
Today, Ukraine is paying the price for
these mistakes while the West continues acting as if Moscow's concerns do not
matter. Prior to President Putin's
invasion, Secretary of State Blinken said the U.S. is leaving "no stone
unturned" in the search for a peaceful resolution. Yet Blinken has always rejected as a
"non-starter" the only stone that interests Putin: neutral status for Ukraine.
And
so it goes. As World War I poet Wilfred
Owen put it, both sides repeat "the old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria
mori." The Latin phrase is from
the Roman poet Horace: "It is sweet
and fitting to die for one's country."
Art
Hobson is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Arkansas. He worked at the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute and co-authored "The Future of Land-Based
Strategic Missiles" (Am. Inst. of Physics, 1989). Email him at ahobson@uark.edu.
References:
•
Reykjavik meeting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Gorbachev#German_reunification_and_the_Gulf_War
•
End of cold war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact#End_of_the_Cold_War
•
The material from "The Button" about the aftermath of the collapse of
the Soviet Union can be found Chapter 9, the Section titled "Fumbling the
end of the Cold War."
|
|
|
DISARMAMENT
& SECURITY |
Here is a passage from the Statement:
“We
condemn military actions on both sides, the hostilities which harm civilians.
We insist that all shootings should be stopped, all sides should honor the
memory of killed people and, after due grief, calmly and honestly commit to
peace talks. We condemn statements on
the Russian side about the intention to achieve certain goals by military means
if they cannot be achieved through negotiations. We condemn statements on the Ukrainian side
that the continuation of peace talks depends on winning the best-negotiating
positions on the battlefield. We
condemn the unwillingness of both sides to a ceasefire during the peace talks.”
MEDEA BENJAMIN, NICOLAS J.S. DAVIES. “This Is
How the United States Could Help Bring Peace to Ukraine.” Common
Dreams (April 28, 2022). [This
essay was forwarded to me by Art Hobson, who endorses its concrete, realistic
plan to end the war. It’s long and every
step in the argument is important, so I have included only its Conclusion, but
I urgently urge all to read the entire essay and to communicate its
recommendations to our congressional representatives: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/04/28/how-united-
states-could-help-bring-peace-ukraine ]
Conclusion
How the
United States and its NATO allies act now and in the coming months will be
crucial in determining whether Ukraine is destroyed by years of war, like
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen—or whether this war ends
quickly through a diplomatic process that brings peace, security, and stability
to the people of Russia, Ukraine, and their neighbors.
If the United States wants
to help restore peace in Ukraine, it must diplomatically support peace
negotiations and make it clear to its ally, Ukraine, that it will support any
concessions that Ukrainian negotiators believe are necessary to clinch a peace
agreement with Russia.
Whatever mediator Russia
and Ukraine agree to work with to try to resolve this crisis, the United States
must give the diplomatic process its full, unreserved support, both in public
and behind closed doors. It must also ensure that its own actions do not
undermine the peace process in Ukraine as they did the 2012 Annan plan in
Syria.
One of the most critical
steps that U.S. and NATO leaders can take to provide an incentive for Russia to
agree to a negotiated peace is to commit to lifting their sanctions if and when
Russia complies with a withdrawal agreement. Without such a commitment, the
sanctions will quickly lose any moral or practical value as leverage over
Russia and will be only an arbitrary form of collective punishment against its
people, and against poor people everywhere who can no longer afford food to
feed their families. As the de facto leader of the NATO military alliance, the
U.S. position on this question will be crucial.
So policy decisions by the
United States will have a critical impact on whether there will soon be peace
in Ukraine, or only a much longer and bloodier war. The test for U.S.
policymakers, and for Americans who care about the people of Ukraine, must be
to ask which of these outcomes U.S. policy choices are likely to lead to.
MEDEA BENJAMIN Medea Benjamin,
co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace, is the
author of the 2018 book, "Inside Iran: The
Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran." Her
previous books include: "Kingdom of the
Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection"
(2016); "Drone Warfare:
Killing by Remote Control" (2013); "Don’t Be Afraid
Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart"
(1989), and (with Jodie Evans) "Stop the Next War Now (Inner Ocean Action Guide)"
(2005).
NICOLAS J.S. DAVIES Nicolas J. S.
Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK
and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American
Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/04/28/how-united-states-could-help-bring-peace-ukraine
Related: The claim that this is a free country must be
accompanied by considerable qualification:
James R. Bennett. Control
of Information in the United States: An Annotated Bibliography. 1987.
(2943 entries).
James R. Bennett. Control of the Media in the
United States: An Annotated Bibliography.
1992. (4749 entries).
CONTENTS OF US, NATO, RUSSIA,
UKRAINE war ANTHOLOGY #19 4-29-2022
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/04/omni-us-nato-russia-ukraine-war.html
ORIGINS, CAUSES OF THE WAR
Should
NATO Exist? Klion Yes. Madar No.
Hawes, “History Returns Again,” Historical Background of the War
Guy Mettan, “Zelenskymania,” Inevitable and Improvised,
Winners and Losers, Switzerland
Ruined, CyberWar, “Stratcom”
Alastair Crooke, “War It Is—and Escalation Is Coming”
John Ross, “What Is Propelling the U.S. into Increasing
International Aggression?”
Ivan
Eland, “’Unprovoked Attacks’ from 1812 to 9-11.”
Richard Falk. “Why Ukraine?”
Ukrainian
Nazis
Evan Reif, “NED Finances Key Ukrainian
Propaganda….” and a
Journalist
“Russian Abhorrence of Nazi Influence
in Ukraine”
US
Biological Warfare Labs in Ukraine?
Bhadrahumar, “Migratory Birds of Mass
Destruction”
Whitney, “…Possible U.S. Preparations
for Biological Warfare”
Bruce Gagnon, Interview on U.S. Goal of Russian Regime Change
CONSEQUENCES OF THE WAR
Civilian
Deaths
Tomgram/TomDispatch,
“Nick Turse, Bodies Beyond Bucha”
Nick Turse, “The Civilian Deaths You
Haven’t Heard About”
Arms
Proliferation
Branko
Marcetic, “The U.S. Has No Idea Where Its Ukrainian
Military Aid is Going”
Censorship (see #20)
Washington Post Calls for Censoring
Chinese Media, Praises
Purge of Russian Outlets
Media Bias (see #20)
Jeff Cohen, Corporate Media and Official
Enemies
Caitlin Johnstone, Corporate Media Control
of Public’s
Perception
New
Cold War, WWIII
Michael
Klare, A more dangerous world
Guterres,
UN Wire
Displaced People, Refugees Increasing
PEACE
WWIII? West’s War on Russia
Abby
Martin, FCNL, “Questions for the US Anti-War Movement”
Rafaela
Demerath, Congress Must Invest in Peacemaking
Tomgram,
Tom Dispatch, “Andrew Bacevich, American Militarism
A Persistent Malady.”
Bacevich, “Putin Changed the Subject,
But Confronting MLKJr’s
‘Giant Triplets’ Is More
Urgent.” What would Martin Say?
Vijay
Prashad, “We Want a World Without Walls”
Chris
de Ploeg, “Weapons Are Not Helping”
Jeffrey
Knopf, The Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, Abolish Nuclear
Weapons
BAS on Nuclear Arms
Control
War
Abolition 101
Contents
#18
END US,
NATO, RUSSIA, UKRAINE war ANTHOLOGY #20
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