OMNI
US-NATO-UKRAINE-RUSSIA
WAR ANTHOLOGY
UKRAINE WAR #29,
Compiled by
Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
What’s at stake: The
UN Charter, which the US helped to write and Congress ratified overwhelmingly,
declares that UN members not only must refrain in their international
relations from the use of force against the territorial integrity or political
independence of any state, but it must not threaten the use of force. The authors of this series of anthologies
perceive the eastward movement of US/NATO as threatening the use of force
against first the Soviet Union and now against Russia. But if you have lived in the West (US and
its allies), you would seldom hear these perceptions of threat and
aggression. In these 29 anthologies,
you can read some of them now, with a special, selective focus. This anthology concentrates on efforts to
prevent the Ukraine War, then to stop it, and, throughout, efforts to protect
and sustain the victims. The essays composed
after February 24, 2020 are direct or indirect replies to President Biden’s “Russia’s
Unprovoked and Unjustified” speech on that day.
CONTENTS UKRAINE ANTHLOGIES, #29 (17 essays),
PEACEMAKING
Introductory
Abel
Tomlinson. Note on Ukraine.
Art
Hobson. Ukraine sought NATO membership
instead of neutrality.
John Mearsheimer. We must first decide what
caused the crisis; then we can make
sense deciding how to solve it.
2014 (14 essays)
Robert Parry. “Who’s Telling the ‘Big Lie’ on Ukraine?”
John Pilger. “In Ukraine, the
US is dragging us towards war with Russia.”
ETC.
2022 (14 essays)
Who Started the War?
President Biden on “Russia’s Unprovoked and
Unjustified Attacks on Ukraine.”
Bryce Green. “Calling Russia’s Attack ‘Unprovoked’
Lets US Off the Hook.”
John Mearsheimer. Video. “Why Is the Ukraine the West’s Fault?”
ETC.
2023 (3 essays)
Jaqueline Luqman. “Why and How
to End the War in Ukraine.”
China’s Peace Plan
Hanna Arhirova. “Xi Jimpng Speaks with Zelensky….”
David Swanson/World Before War’s Plan.
PEACE,
STOPPING THE WAR
HISTORICAL
CONTEXT, Local Conversation
No Tactical Nuke
threat, Fmr US Ambassador to USSR & Peace Protest
Great analysis George, thank you. One small rebuttal to a
comment Art made about tactical nukes. Although our Mainstream Corporate
Media & Corporate Politicians keep saying Putin has threatened to use
tactical nukes, former weapons inspector Scott Ritter et al report there is no
evidence Putin said that. It appears it’s yet another propaganda
lie. https://consortiumnews.com/2022/10/19/scott-ritter-nuclear-high-noon-in-europe/
Also, check out this powerful piece by the former US ambassador
to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock: “if Ukraine had been willing to abide by the
Minsk agreement, recognize the Donbas as an autonomous entity within Ukraine,
avoid NATO military advisors, and pledge not to enter NATO,” war “probably
would have been prevented.” Yet another powerful voice conflicting the
Big Lie mainstream narrative that the conflict was "unprovoked".
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/10/17/on-ukraine-the-us-is-on-the-hook-to-find-a-way-out/
Unfortunately, the entire Democratic Party in D.C. & most
Republicans keep voting for tens of billions in bombs & war machines,
escalation of proxy war with Russia. Unfortunately, Peace (or No Nuclear War)
is not on the November ballot. I was thinking of organizing another No Nuke
War demonstration on election day or the Saturday before. What do yall think?
Abel
On Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 2:45 PM George Paulson <gppaulson2@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Art & Abel & friends,
First, Abel’s point about propaganda is well taken. I
especially like the fact that he mentioned Goebbels. Goebbels learned the
art of propaganda—particularly war propaganda—from the masters themselves,
meaning the British in WWI. They may not have invented the atrocity story
but they took it to an entirely new level, and no warring belligerent since has
ever looked back. Anyone interested in truly understanding the history of
war reporting should read Phillip Knightley’s masterful “The First Casualty.” The
big takeaway is--surprise, surprise—that all belligerents always have a vested
interest in lying and diseminating propaganda. They disseminate their
propaganda/control of the narrative either through a press that is overtly
censored or chooses, much like our msm, to self-censor. “The First
Casualty” was first published in 1975 and then updated to include chapters on
both our wars in Serbia and Iraq.
I agree that Russian nationalists are displeased by the slow
pace of Russia’s war, and I agree that Putin is aware of this. To what
extent their feelings are influencing how the Kremlin is conducting this war is
anyone’s guess. I do not stay up worrying about a desperate, cornered
Putin (with no “off ramp!”) resorting to nuclear weapons in order to ward off a
humiliating military defeat. This is only credible if you buy the narrative
that Vlad is mad and that Ukraine is winning the war. Russia went into
Ukraine soft, but has now taken off the gloves. If things things do go
pear shaped, it will most likely be because of a miscalculation, an accident, a
mistake. The longer this war goes on, the greater the risk.
The people pulling Biden’s strings—neocons such as Victoria
Nuland, Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan—are all true believers in American
Exceptionalism and maintaining at seemingly any cost American global
dominance. The idea of a multi-polar world is anathema to them.
Their Ukraine project is very near and dear to their hearts. Regime
change in Moscow is their goal. Unfortunately for them, they are no
longer dealing with a third rate rag-tag third world military.
Unfortunately for all of us who don’t want to end up with a 5,000 degree
suntan, they are dealing with a nuclear-armed power which regards the Ukraine
war as existential. How far they are willing to go is anyone’s
guess. If the recent destruction of the two Nord Stream pipelines is any
indication, the answer is: very far. Would this involve the direct
use of a nuclear weapon? I doubt it. But maybe an indirect use of a
nuclear weapon, maybe a “dirty bomb,” by fanatical Banderite Ukrainian
nationalists facing the certainty of a crushing military defeat? Who
knows? What we do know, however, is that none other that the Ukrainian
president himself, Vlodomyr Zelensky--whom the western press has turned into an
amalgam of Spartan King Leonidas of 300 fame and Winston Churchill—recently did
call for a preemptive nuclear strike on Russia. Zelensky’s handlers
quickly walked back his remarks—we Americans have gotten used to that sort of thing
every other day, it seems—but still. Again, the longer this war goes on,
the greater the risk. We should be doing everything we can to facilitate
a negotiated end to this conflict, not doing everything we can to escalate
it. Unfortunately, the people running the show in Washington have no
reverse gear.
Peace,
George Paulson
From Art Hobson:
I sure wish Ukraine had sought neutrality
because would probably have avoided the invasion and the war. But Ukraine
sought NATO membership well before the invasion. Here is the introduction
to the Wiki article titled “Ukraine-NATO relations”:
Relations between Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
started in 1992.[1] Ukraine
applied to integrate with a NATO Membership
Action Plan (MAP) in 2008.[2][3] Plans
for NATO membership were shelved by Ukraine following the 2010 presidential election in
which Viktor
Yanukovych, who preferred to keep the country non-aligned, was
elected President.[4][5] Amid
the unrest, caused by the Euromaidan protests,
Yanukovych fled Ukraine in February 2014.[6] The
interim Yatseniuk
Government which came to power initially said, with reference to the
country's non-aligned status, that it had no plans to join NATO.[7] However,
following the Russian
military invasion in Ukraine and parliamentary elections in
October 2014, the new government made joining NATO a priority.[8] On
21 February 2019, the Constitution of
Ukraine was amended, the norms on the strategic course of Ukraine
for membership in the European Union and NATO are enshrined in the
preamble of the Basic Law, three articles, and transitional provisions.[9][10]
At
the June
2021 Brussels summit, NATO leaders reiterated the
decision taken at the 2008 Bucharest summit that
Ukraine would become a member of the Alliance with the MAP as an integral part
of the process and Ukraine's right to determine its future and foreign policy,
of course without outside interference.[11] NATO Secretary
General Jens Stoltenberg also
stressed that Russia will not be able to veto Ukraine's accession to NATO
"as we will not return to the era of spheres of interest when
large countries decide what smaller ones should do."[12] Before
further actions on NATO membership were taken, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on
24 February 2022.
According
to polls conducted between 2005 and 2013, Ukrainian public support of NATO
membership remained low.[13][14][15][16][17][18][19] However,
since the Russo-Ukrainian
War and the annexation of Crimea, public
support for Ukrainian membership in NATO has risen greatly. Since June 2014,
polls showed that about 50% of those asked supported Ukrainian NATO membership.[20][21][22][23] Some
69% of Ukrainians want to join NATO, according to a June 2017 poll by the
Democratic Initiatives Foundation, compared to 28% support in 2012 when
Yanukovych was in power.[24] On
30 September 2022, Ukraine formally applied to join NATO, following Russia's annexation of Southern and Eastern Ukraine.[25][26 Peace – Art
[I tried to shorten several of the longer essays, but Microsoft
Word replied it was unable to open them, so I kept the originals. –D]
BEFORE
FEBRUARY 24, 2022: Search for the Causes of the War
UnCommon
Core: The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison
Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science and Co-director of the
Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, assesses the causes of the present Ukraine crisis, the best way to
end it, and its consequences for all of the main actors. A key assumption is
that in order to come up with the optimum plan for ending the crisis, it is
essential to know what caused the crisis. Regarding the all-important question
of causes, the key issue is whether Russia or the West bears primary
responsibility.
Robert Parry and John Pilger in 2014
Who’s
Telling the ‘Big Lie’ on Ukraine? Consortium News.
September
2, 2014
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/09/02/whos-telling-the-big-lie-on-ukraine/
Exclusive: Official Washington
draws the Ukraine crisis in black-and-white colors with Russian
President Putin the bad guy and the U.S.-backed leaders in Kiev the good guys.
But the reality is much more nuanced, with the American people consistently
misled on key facts, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry.
If you wonder how the world could stumble into World War III
much as it did into World War I a century ago all you need to do is look at the
madness that has enveloped virtually the entire U.S. political/media structure
over Ukraine where a false narrative of white hats vs. black hats took hold
early and has proved impervious to facts or reason.
The original lie behind Official Washington’s latest “group
think” was that Russian President Vladimir Putin instigated the crisis in
Ukraine as part of some diabolical scheme to reclaim the territory of the
defunct Soviet Union, including Estonia and other Baltic states. Though not a
shred of U.S. intelligence supported this scenario, all the “smart people” of
Washington just “knew” it to be true.
Russian
President Vladimir Putin addresses a crowd on May 9, 2014, celebrating the 69th
anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany and the 70th anniversary of the
liberation of the Crimean port city of Sevastopol from the Nazis. (Russian
government photo)
Yet, the once-acknowledged though soon forgotten reality
was that the crisis was provoked last year by the European Union proposing an
association agreement with Ukraine while U.S. neocons and other hawkish
politicos and pundits envisioned using the Ukraine gambit as a way to undermine
Putin inside Russia.
The plan was even announced by U.S. neocons such as National
Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman who took to the op-ed page of
the Washington Post nearly a year ago to call Ukraine “the biggest prize” and
an important interim step toward eventually toppling Putin in Russia.
Gershman, whose NED is funded by the U.S. Congress, wrote:
“Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of
Russian imperialism that Putin represents. Russians, too, face a choice,
and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but
within Russia itself.”
In other words, from the start, Putin was the target of the
Ukraine initiative, not the instigator. But even if you choose to ignore
Gershman’s clear intent, you would have to concoct a bizarre conspiracy theory
to support the conventional wisdom about Putin’s grand plan.
To believe that Putin was indeed the mastermind of the
crisis, you would have to think that he somehow arranged to have the
EU offer the association agreement last year, then got the International
Monetary Fund to attach such draconian “reforms” that Ukrainian President
Viktor Yanukovych backed away from the deal.
Then, Putin had to organize mass demonstrations at Kiev’s Maidan
square against Yanukovych while readying neo-Nazi militias to act as the muscle
to finally overthrow the elected president and replace him with a regime
dominated by far-right Ukrainian nationalists and U.S.-favored technocrats.
Next, Putin had to get the new government to take provocative actions against
ethnic Russians in the east, including threatening to outlaw Russian as an
official language.
And throw into this storyline that Putin all the while was
acting like he was trying to help Yanukovych defuse the crisis and even
acquiesced to Yanukovych agreeing on Feb. 21 to accept an agreement brokered by
three European countries calling for early Ukrainian elections that could vote
him out of office. Instead, Putin was supposedly ordering neo-Nazi
militias to oust Yanukovych in a Feb. 22 putsch, all the better to create the
current crisis.
While such a fanciful scenario would make the most extreme
conspiracy theorist blush, this narrative was embraced by prominent U.S.
politicians, including ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and
“journalists” from the New York Times to CNN. They all agreed that
Putin was a madman on a mission of unchecked aggression against his neighbors
with the goal of reconstituting the Russian Empire. Clinton even compared
him to Adolf Hitler.
This founding false narrative was then embroidered by a
consistent pattern of distorted U.S. reporting as the crisis unfolded.
Indeed, for the past eight months, we have seen arguably the most one-sided
coverage of a major international crisis in memory, although there were other
crazed MSM stampedes, such as Iraq’s non-existent WMD in 2002-03, Iran’s
supposed nuclear bomb project for most of the past decade, Libya’s “humanitarian
crisis” of 2011, and Syria’s sarin gas attack in 2013.
But the hysteria over Ukraine with U.S. officials and
editorialists now trying to rally a NATO military response to Russia’s alleged
“invasion” of Ukraine raises the prospect of a nuclear confrontation that could
end all life on the planet.
The ‘Big Lie’ of the ‘Big Lie’
This madness reached new heights with a Sept. 1
editorial in the neoconservative Washington Post, which led
many of the earlier misguided stampedes and was famously wrong in asserting
that Iraq’s
concealment of WMD was a “flat fact.” In its new
editorial, the Post reprised many of the key elements of the false Ukraine
narrative in the Orwellian context of accusing Russia of deceiving its own
people.
The “through-the-looking-glass” quality of the Post’s editorial
was to tell the “Big Lie” while accusing Putin of telling the “Big Lie.” The
editorial began with the original myth about the aggression waged by Putin
whose “bitter resentment at the Soviet empire’s collapse metastasized into
seething Russian nationalism.
“In prosecuting his widening war in Ukraine, he has also
resurrected the tyranny of the Big Lie, using state-controlled media to twist
the truth so grotesquely that most Russians are in the dark, or profoundly
misinformed, about events in their neighbor to the west.
“In support of those Russian-sponsored militias in eastern
Ukraine, now backed by growing ranks of Russian troops and weapons, Moscow has
created a fantasy that plays on Russian victimization. By this rendering, the
forces backing Ukraine’s government in Kiev are fascists and neo-Nazis, a
portrayal that Mr. Putin
personally advanced on Friday, when he likened the
Ukrainian army’s attempts to regain its own territory to the Nazi siege of
Leningrad in World War II, an appeal meant to inflame Russians’ already
overheated nationalist emotions.”
The Post continued: “Against the extensive propaganda
instruments available to Mr. Putin’s authoritarian regime, the West can promote
a fair and factual version of events, but there’s little it can do to make
ordinary Russians believe it. Even in a country with relatively unfettered
access to the Internet, the monopolistic power of state-controlled media is a
potent weapon in the hands of a tyrant.
“Mr. Putin’s Big Lie shows why it is important to support a free
press where it still exists and outlets like Radio Free Europe that bring the
truth to people who need it.”
Yet the truth is that the U.S. mainstream news media’s
distortion of the Ukraine crisis is something that a real
totalitarian could only dream about. Virtually absent from major U.S. news
outlets across the political spectrum has been any significant effort to tell
the other side of the story or to point out the many times when the West’s
“fair and factual version of events” has been false or deceptive, starting with
the issue of who started this crisis.
Blinded to Neo-Nazis
In another example, the Post and other mainstream U.S. outlets
have ridiculed the idea that neo-Nazis played any significant role in
the putsch that ousted Yanukovych on Feb. 22 or in the Kiev regime’s
brutal offensive against the ethnic Russians of eastern Ukraine.
However, occasionally, the inconvenient truth has slipped
through. For instance, shortly after the February coup, the BBC described how
the neo-Nazis spearheaded the violent seizure of government buildings to drive
Yanukovych from power and were then rewarded with four ministries in the regime
that was cobbled together in the coup’s aftermath.
When ethnic Russians in the south and east resisted the edicts
from the new powers in Kiev, some neo-Nazi militias were incorporated into the
National Guard and dispatched to the front lines as storm troopers eager to
fight and kill people whom some considered “Untermenschen” or sub-human.
Even the New York Times, which has been among the most egregious
violators of journalistic ethics in covering the Ukraine crisis, took note of
Kiev’s neo-Nazi militias carrying Nazi banners while leading attacks on
eastern cities albeit with this embarrassing reality consigned to the last
three paragraphs of a long Times story on a different topic. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Discovers
Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis at War.”]
Later, the conservative London Telegraph wrote a much more
detailed story about how the Kiev regime had consciously recruited these
dedicated storm troopers, who carried the Wolfsangel symbol favored by
Hitler’s SS, to lead street fighting in eastern cities that were first softened
up by army artillery. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ignoring
Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers.”]
You might think that unleashing Nazi storm troopers on a
European population for the first time since World War II would be a big story
given how much coverage is given to far less significant eruptions of neo-Nazi
sentiment in Europe but this ugly reality in Ukraine disappeared quickly into the
U.S. media’s memory hole. It didn’t fit the preferred good guy/bad guy
narrative, with the Kiev regime the good guys and Putin the bad guy.
Now, the Washington Post has gone a step further dismissing
Putin’s reference to the nasty violence inflicted by Kiev’s neo-Nazi battalions
as part of Putin’s “Big Lie.” The Post is telling its readers that any
reference to these neo-Nazis is just a “fantasy.”
Even more disturbing, the mainstream U.S. news media and
Washington’s entire political class continue to ignore the Kiev government’s
killing of thousands of ethnic Russians, including children and other
non-combatants. The “responsibility to protect” crowd has suddenly lost its
voice. Or, all the deaths are somehow blamed on Putin for supposedly having
provoked the Ukraine crisis in the first place.
A Mysterious ‘Invasion’
And now there’s the curious case of Russia’s alleged “invasion”
of Ukraine, another alarmist claim trumpeted by the Kiev regime and echoed by
NATO hardliners and the MSM.
While I’m told that Russia did provide some light weapons to the
rebels early in the struggle so they could defend themselves and their
territory and a number of Russian nationalists have crossed the border to
join the fight the claims of an overt “invasion” with tanks, artillery and
truck convoys have been backed up by scant intelligence.
One former U.S. intelligence official who has examined the
evidence said the intelligence to support the claims of a significant Russian
invasion amounted to “virtually nothing.” Instead, it appears that the ethnic
Russian rebels may have evolved into a more effective fighting force than many
in the West thought. They are, after all, fighting on their home turf for their
futures.
Concerned about the latest rush to judgment about the “invasion,”
the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of former U.S.
intelligence officials and analysts, took the unusual step of sending a memo to
German Chancellor Angela Merkel warning her of a possible replay of the false
claims that led to the Iraq War.
“You need to know,” the group wrote, “that accusations of a
major Russian ‘invasion’ of Ukraine appear not to be supported by reliable
intelligence. Rather, the ‘intelligence’ seems to be of the same dubious,
politically ‘fixed’ kind used 12 years ago to ‘justify’ the U.S.-led attack on
Iraq.”
But these doubts and concerns are not reflected in the Post’s
editorial or other MSM accounts of the dangerous Ukraine crisis. Indeed,
Americans who rely on these powerful news outlets for their information are as
sheltered from reality as anyone living in a totalitarian society.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the
Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can
buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or
as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
John Pilger. “In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war
with Russia.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger Washington's role in Ukraine,
and its backing for the regime's
neo-Nazis, has huge implications for the rest of the world
(Photo
omitted of a a pro-Russian activist with a shell casing and a US-made meal pack
that fell from a Ukrainian army APC in an attack on a roadblock on 3 May in
Andreevka, Ukraine. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty. Tue
13 May 2014 15.30 EDT.)
Why
do we tolerate the threat of another world war in our name? Why do we
allow lies that justify this risk? The scale of our indoctrination, wrote Harold Pinter, is a "brilliant, even
witty, highly successful act of hypnosis", as if the truth "never
happened even while it was happening".
Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his
"updated summary of the record of US foreign policy" which shows
that, since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many
of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30
countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and
biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.
In many cases Britain has been a collaborator. The degree of
human suffering, let alone criminality, is little acknowledged in the west,
despite the presence of the world's most advanced communications and nominally
most free journalism. That the most numerous victims of terrorism –
"our" terrorism – are Muslims, is unsayable. That extreme jihadism,
which led to 9/11, was nurtured as a weapon of Anglo-American policy (Operation
Cyclone in Afghanistan) is suppressed. In April the US state
department noted that, following Nato's campaign in 2011, "Libya has become a terrorist safe haven".
The name of "our" enemy has changed over the years,
from communism to Islamism, but generally it is any society independent of
western power and occupying strategically useful or resource-rich territory, or
merely offering an alternative to US domination. The leaders of these
obstructive nations are usually violently shoved aside, such as the
democrats Muhammad Mossedeq in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala
and Salvador Allende in Chile, or they are murdered
like Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic
Republic of Congo. All are subjected to a western media campaign of
vilification – think Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, now Vladimir Putin.
Washington's role in Ukraine is different only in
its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years,
the US is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the
Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last "buffer state"
bordering Russia – Ukraine – is being torn apart by fascist forces unleashed by
the US and the EU. We in the west are now backing neo-Nazis in a country where
Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.
Having masterminded the coup in February against the
democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington's planned seizure of
Russia's historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The
Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and
invasion from the west for almost a century.
But Nato's military encirclement has accelerated, along with
US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked
into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained "pariah" role will justify
a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.
Instead, Putin has confounded the war party by seeking an
accommodation with Washington and the EU, by withdrawing Russian troops from
the Ukrainian border and urging ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon
the weekend's provocative referendum. These Russian-speaking
and bilingual people – a third of Ukraine's population – have long sought a
democratic federation that reflects the country's ethnic diversity and is both
autonomous of Kiev and independent of Moscow. Most are neither
"separatists" nor "rebels", as the western media calls
them, but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland.
Like the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine has been turned
into a CIA theme park – run personally by CIA director John Brennan in Kiev,
with dozens of "special units" from the CIA and FBI setting up a
"security structure" that oversees savage attacks on those who
opposed the February coup. Watch the videos, read the eye-witness reports from
the massacre in Odessa this month. Bussed fascist thugs burned the trade union headquarters, killing 41 people
trapped inside. Watch the police standing by.
A doctor described trying to rescue people, "but I was
stopped by pro-Ukrainian Nazi radicals. One of them pushed me away rudely,
promising that soon me and other Jews of Odessa are going to meet the same
fate. What occurred yesterday didn't even take place during the fascist
occupation in my town in world war two. I wonder, why the whole world is
keeping silent." [see footnote]
Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting for survival. When
Putin announced the withdrawal of Russian troops from the border, the Kiev
junta's defence secretary, Andriy Parubiy – a founding member of the fascist
Svoboda party – boasted that attacks on "insurgents" would continue.
In Orwellian style, propaganda in the west has inverted this to Moscow "trying
to orchestrate conflict and provocation", according to
William Hague. His cynicism is matched by Obama's grotesque congratulations to
the coup junta on its "remarkable restraint" after the Odessa
massacre. The junta, says Obama, is "duly elected". As Henry Kissinger once said: "It is not a matter
of what is true that counts, but what is perceived to be true."
In the US media the Odessa atrocity has been played down as
"murky" and a "tragedy" in which "nationalists"
(neo-Nazis) attacked "separatists" (people collecting signatures for
a referendum on a federal Ukraine). Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal damned
the victims – "Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government
Says". Propaganda in Germany has been pure cold war, with the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warning its readers of Russia's "undeclared
war". For the Germans, it is a poignant irony that Putin is the only
leader to condemn the rise of fascism in 21st-century Europe.
A popular truism is that "the world changed" following
9/11. But what has changed? According to the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a silent coup has taken
place in Washington and rampant militarism now rules. The Pentagon currently
runs "special operations" – secret wars – in 124 countries. At home,
rising poverty and a loss of liberty are the historic corollary of a perpetual
war state. Add the risk of nuclear war, and the question is: why do we tolerate
this? www.johnpilger.com
2022
(12 essays)
“Remarks by President Biden on Russia’s Unprovoked and Unjustified
Attack on Ukraine.”
THE PRESIDENT: Sorry to keep you waiting. Good
afternoon. The Russian military has begun a brutal assault on the people
of Ukraine without provocation, without justification, without necessity. For the entire speech: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/02/24/remarks-by-president-biden-on-russias-unprovoked-and-unjustified-attack-on-ukraine/
DIRECT AND
INDIRECT REPLIES TO PRESIDENT BIDEN’S FEBRUARY 24, SPEECH
UnCommon Core: The Causes and
Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis
John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in
Political Science and Co-director of the Program on International Security
Policy at the University of Chicago, assesses
the causes of the present Ukraine crisis, the best way to end it, and its
consequences for all of the main actors. A key assumption is that in order to
come up with the optimum plan for ending the crisis, it is essential to know
what caused the crisis. Regarding the all-important question of causes, the key
issue is whether Russia or the West bears primary responsibility.
MARCH 4, 2022
“Calling Russia’s Attack ‘Unprovoked’ Lets US
Off the Hook.”
BRYCE GREENE. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).
Click Link for Source & Important Relevant Images: https://fair.org/home/calling-russias-attack-unprovoked-lets-us-off-the-hook/
Many governments and media figures are rightly condemning Russian
President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine as an act of aggression and a
violation of international law. But in his first speech about the invasion, on
February 24, US President Joe Biden also called the invasion “unprovoked.”
It’s a word that has been echoed repeatedly across the media
ecosystem. “Putin’s forces entered Ukraine’s second-largest city on the fourth
day of the unprovoked invasion,” Axios (2/27/22) reported; “Russia’s
unprovoked invasion of Ukraine entered its second week Friday,” said CNBC (3/4/22). Vox (3/1/22) wrote of “Putin’s decision
to launch an unprovoked and unnecessary war with the second-largest country in
Europe.”
The “unprovoked” descriptor obscures a long history of provocative
behavior from the United States in regards to Ukraine. This history is
important to understanding how we got here, and what degree of responsibility
the US bears for the current attack on Ukraine.
https://fair.org/home/calling-russias-attack-unprovoked-lets-us-off-the-hook/
Ignoring expert advice
The story starts at the end of the Cold War, when the US was the
only global hegemon. As part of the deal that finalized the reunification of
Germany, the US promised Russia that NATO would not expand “one inch
eastward.” Despite this, it wasn’t long before talk of expansion began
to circulate among policy makers.
In 1997, dozens of foreign policy veterans (including former
Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and former CIA Director Stansfield Turner)
sent a joint letter to then-President Bill
Clinton calling “the current US-led effort to expand NATO…a policy error of
historic proportions.” They predicted:
In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across
the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition,
undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West [and] bring the
Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement.
New York Times columnist Thomas
Friedman (5/2/98) in 1998 asked famed
diplomat George Kennan—architect of the US Cold War
strategy of containment—about NATO expansion. Kennan’s response:
I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the
Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their
policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this
whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.
Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and
then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the
Russians are—but this is just wrong.
Despite these warnings, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic
were added to NATO in 1999, with Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania,
Slovakia and Slovenia following in 2004.
US planners were warned again in 2008 by US Ambassador to Moscow
William Burns (now director of the CIA under Joe Biden). WikiLeaks leaked
a cable from Burns titled
“Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines” that included another
prophetic warning worth quoting in full (emphasis added):
Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw
nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences
for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive
encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it
also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously
affect Russian security interests.
Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that
the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of
the ethnic Russian community against membership, could lead to a major
split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that
eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a
decision Russia does not want to have to face.
A de facto NATO ally
But the US has pushed Russia to make such a decision. Though
European countries are divided about whether or not Ukraine should join, many
in the NATO camp have been adamant about maintaining the alliance’s “open door
policy.” Even as US planners were warning of a Russian invasion, NATO Secretary
General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated NATO’s 2008 plans to integrate Ukraine into
the alliance (New York Times, 12/16/21). The Biden administration
has taken a more roundabout approach, supporting in the abstract
“Kyiv’s right to choose its own security arrangements and alliances.” But the
implication is obvious.
Even without officially being in NATO, Ukraine has become a de
facto NATO ally—and Russia has paid close attention to these developments. In a
December 2021 speech to his top military
officials, Putin expressed his concerns:
Over the past few years, military contingents of NATO countries
have been almost constantly present on Ukrainian territory under the pretext of
exercises. The Ukrainian troop control system has already been integrated into
NATO. This means that NATO headquarters can issue direct commands to the
Ukrainian armed forces, even to their separate units and squads….
Kiev has long proclaimed a strategic course on joining NATO.
Indeed, each country is entitled to pick its own security system and enter into
military alliances. There would be no problem with that, if it were not for one
“but.” International documents expressly stipulate the principle of equal and
indivisible security, which includes obligations not to strengthen one’s own
security at the expense of the security of other states….
In other words, the choice of pathways towards ensuring security
should not pose a threat to other states, whereas Ukraine joining NATO is a
direct threat to Russia’s security.
In an explainer piece, the New York Times (2/24/22) centered NATO expansion as
a root cause of the war. Unfortunately, the Times omitted the
critical context of NATO’s pledge not to expand, and the subsequent abandonment
of that promise. This is an important context to understand the Russian view of
US policies, especially so given the ample warnings from US diplomats and
foreign policy experts.
The Maidan Coup of 2014
A major turning point in the US/Ukraine/Russia relationship was
the 2014 violent and unconstitutional ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych,
elected in 2010 in a vote heavily split between eastern and
western Ukraine. His ouster came after months of protests led in part by far-right
extremists (FAIR.org, 3/7/14). Weeks before his ouster,
an unknown party leaked a phone call between US officials
discussing who should and shouldn’t be part of the new government, and finding
ways to “seal the deal.” After the ouster, a politician the officials
designated as “the guy” even became prime minister.
The US involvement was part of a campaign aimed at exploiting the
divisions in Ukrainian society to push the country into the US sphere of
influence, pulling it out of the Russian sphere (FAIR.org, 1/28/22). In the aftermath of the
overthrow, Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine, in part to secure a
major naval base from the new Ukrainian
government.
The New York Times (2/24/22) and Washington
Post (2/28/22) both omitted the role the
US played in these events. In US media, this critical moment in history is
completely cleansed of US influence, erasing a critical step on the road to the
current war.
Keeping civil war alive
In another response to the overthrow, an uprising in Ukraine’s
Donbas region grew into a rebel movement that declared independence from
Ukraine and announced the formation of their own republics. The resulting civil
war claimed thousands of lives, but was largely paused in 2015 with a
ceasefire agreement known as the Minsk II accords.
The deal, agreed to by Ukraine, Russia and other European
countries, was designed to grant some form of autonomy to the breakaway regions
in exchange for reintegrating them into the Ukrainian state. Unfortunately, the
Ukrainian government refused to implement the autonomy provision of the
accords. Anatol Lieven, a researcher with the Quincy Institute for Responsible
Statecraft, wrote in The Nation (11/15/21):
The main reason for this refusal, apart from a general
commitment to retain centralized power in Kiev, has been the belief that
permanent autonomy for the Donbas would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and
the European Union, as the region could use its constitutional position within
Ukraine to block membership.
Ukraine opted instead to prolong the Donbas conflict, and there
was never significant pressure from the West to alter course. Though there
were brief reports of the
accords’ revival as recently as late January, Ukrainian security chief Oleksiy
Danilov warned the West not to
pressure Ukraine to implement the peace deal. “The fulfillment of the Minsk
agreement means the country’s destruction,” he said (AP, 1/31/22). Danilov claimed that even
when the agreement was signed eight years ago, “it was already clear for
all rational people that it’s impossible to implement.”
Lieven notes that the depth of Russian commitment has yet to be
fully tested, but Putin has supported the Minsk accords,
refraining from officially recognizing the Donbas republics until last week.
The New York Times (2/8/22) explainer on the Minsk
accords blamed their failure on a disagreement between Ukraine and Russia over
their implementation. This is inadequate to explain the failure of the
agreements, however, given that Russia cannot affect Ukrainian parliamentary
procedure. The Times quietly acknowledged that the law meant
to define special status in the Donbas had been “shelved” by the
Ukranians, indicating that the country had stopped trying to solve the
issue in favor of a stalemate.
There was no mention of the comments from a top Ukrainian official
openly denouncing the peace accords. Nor was it acknowledged that the US could
have used its influence to push Ukraine to solve the issue, but refrained from
doing so.
Ukrainian missile crisis
One under-discussed aspect of this crisis is the role of US
missiles stationed in NATO countries. Many media outlets have claimed that
Putin is Hitler-like (Washington Post, 2/24/22; Boston
Globe, 2/24/22), hellbent on reconquering
old Soviet states to “recreat[e] the Russian empire with himself as the Tsar,”
as Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbot told Politico (2/25/22).
Pundits try to psychoanalyze Putin, asking “What is motivating
him?” and answering by citing his
televised speech on February 21 that recounted the history of Ukraine’s
relationship with Russia.
This speech has been widely characterized as a call to reestablish
the Soviet empire and a challenge to Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign
nation. Corporate media ignore other public statements Putin has made in recent
months. For example, at an expanded meeting of the Defense Ministry Board,
Putin elaborated on what he considered
to be the main military threat from US/NATO expansion to Ukraine:
It is extremely alarming that elements of the US global defense
system are being deployed near Russia. The Mk 41 launchers, which are located
in Romania and are to be deployed in Poland, are adapted for launching the
Tomahawk strike missiles. If this infrastructure continues to move forward, and
if US and NATO missile systems are deployed in Ukraine, their flight time to
Moscow will be only 7–10 minutes, or even five minutes for hypersonic systems.
This is a huge challenge for us, for our security.
The United States does not possess hypersonic weapons yet, but
we know when they will have it…. They will supply hypersonic weapons to Ukraine
and then use them as cover…to arm extremists from a neighbouring state and
incite them against certain regions of the Russian Federation, such as Crimea,
when they think circumstances are favorable.
Do they really think we do not see these threats? Or do they
think that we will just stand idly watching threats to Russia emerge? This is
the problem: We simply have no room to retreat.
Having these missiles so close to Russia—weapons that Russia (and
China) see as part of a plan to give the United States the capacity to launch a nuclear
first-strike without retaliation—seriously challenges the cold war
deterrent of Mutually Assured Destruction, and more closely resembles a gun
pointed at the Russian head for the remainder of the nuclear age. Would this be
acceptable to any country?
Media refuse to present this crucial question to their audiences,
instead couching Putin’s motives in purely aggressive terms.
Refusal to de-escalate
By December 2021, US intelligence agencies were sounding the alarm
that Russia was amassing troops at the Ukrainian border and planning to attack.
Yet Putin was very clear about a path to
deescalation: He called on the West to halt NATO expansion, negotiate Ukrainian
neutrality in the East/West rivalry, remove US nuclear weapons from non
proliferating countries, and remove missiles, troops and bases near Russia.
These are demands the US would surely have made were it in Russia’s position.
Unfortunately, the US refused to negotiate on Russia’s core
concerns. The US offered some serious steps towards a larger arms control
arrangement (Antiwar.com, 2/2/22)—something the Russians
acknowledged and appreciated—but ignored issues of NATO’s
military activity in Ukraine, and the deployment of nuclear weapons in Eastern
Europe (Antiwar.com, 2/17/22).
On NATO expansion, the State Department continued to insist that they would not
compromise NATO’s open door policy—in other words, it asserted the right to
expand NATO and to ignore Russia’s red line.
While the US has signaled that it would approve
of an informal agreement to keep Ukraine from joining the alliance for a period
of time, this clearly was not going to be enough for Russia, which still
remembers the last broken agreement.
Instead of addressing Russian concerns about Ukraine’s NATO
relationship, the US instead chose to pour hundreds of
millions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine, exacerbating Putin’s expressed
concerns. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t help matters by suggesting that Ukraine might
begin a nuclear weapons program at the height of the tensions.
After Putin announced his recognition of the breakaway republics,
Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled talks with Putin, and began
the process of implementing sanctions on Russia—all before Russian soldiers had
set foot into Ukraine.
Had the US been genuinely interested in avoiding war, it would
have taken every opportunity to de-escalate the situation. Instead, it did the opposite
nearly every step of the way.
In its explainer piece, the Washington Post (2/28/22) downplayed the
significance of the US’s rejection of Russia’s core concerns, writing: “Russia
has said that it wants guarantees Ukraine will be barred from joining NATO—a
non-starter for the Western alliance, which maintains an open-door policy.”
NATO’s open door policy is simply accepted as an immutable policy that Putin
just needs to deal with. This very assumption, so key to the Ukraine crisis,
goes unchallenged in the US media ecosystem.
‘The strategic case for
risking war’
It’s impossible to say for sure why the Biden administration took
an approach that increased the likelihood of war, but one Wall Street
Journal piece from last month may offer some insight.
The Journal (12/22/21) published an op-ed from
John Deni, a researcher at the Atlantic Council, a think tank funded by the US and allied
governments that serves as NATO’s de facto brain trust. The piece was
provocatively headlined “The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine.” Deni’s
argument was that the West should refuse to negotiate with Russia, because
either potential outcome would be beneficial to US interests.
If Putin backed down without a deal, it would be a major
embarrassment. He would lose face and stature, domestically and on the world
stage.
But Putin going to war would also be good for the US, the Journal op-ed
argued. Firstly, it would give NATO more legitimacy by “forg[ing] an even
stronger anti-Russian consensus across Europe.” Secondly, a major attack would
trigger “another round of more debilitating economic sanctions,” weakening the
Russian economy and its ability to compete with the US for global influence.
Thirdly, an invasion is “likely to spawn a guerrilla war” that would “sap the
strength and morale of Russia’s military while undercutting Mr. Putin’s
domestic popularity and reducing Russia’s soft power globally.”
In short, we have part of the NATO brain trust advocating risking
Ukrainian civilians as pawns in the US’s quest to strengthen its position
around the world.
‘Something even worse than
war’
A New York Times op-ed (2/3/22) by Ivan Krastev of
Vienna’s Institute of Human Sciences likewise suggested that a Russian invasion
of Ukraine wouldn’t be the worst outcome:
A Russian incursion into Ukraine could, in a perverse way, save
the current European order. NATO would have no choice but to respond
assertively, bringing in stiff sanctions and acting in decisive unity. By
hardening the conflict, Mr. Putin could cohere his opponents.
The op-ed was headlined “Europe Thinks Putin Is Planning Something
Even Worse Than War”—that something being “a new European security architecture
that recognizes Russia’s sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space.”
It is impossible to know for sure whether the Biden administration
shared this sense that there would be an upside to a Russian invasion, but the
incentives are clear, and much of what these op-eds predicted is coming to
pass.
None of this is to say that Putin’s invasion is justified—FAIR
resolutely condemns the invasion as illegal and ruinous—but calling it
“unprovoked” distracts attention from the US’s own contribution to this
disastrous outcome. The US ignored warnings from both Russian and US officials
that a major conflagration could erupt if the US continued its path, and it
shouldn’t be surprising that one eventually did.
Now, as the world once again inches toward the brink of nuclear
omnicide, it is more important than ever for Western audiences to understand
and challenge their own government’s role in dragging us all to this point.
Featured image: Wikimedia map of NATO expansion
since 1949 (creator:Patrickneil).
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Video: Why is Ukraine the West's Fault? Featuring
Professor John Mearsheimer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 28,031,716 views
UnCommon Core: The Causes and
Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis
John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in
Political Science and Co-director of the Program on International Security
Policy at the University of Chicago, assesses
the causes of the present Ukraine crisis, the best way to end it, and its
consequences for all of the main actors. A key assumption is that in order to
come up with the optimum plan for ending the crisis, it is essential to know
what caused the crisis. Regarding the all-important question of causes, the key
issue is whether Russia or the West bears primary responsibility.
John J. Mearsheimer. “Why the Ukraine Crisis
Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal
Delusions That Provoked
Putin.” Foreign Affairs, Vol.
93, No. 5 (SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2014), pp.
77-84, 85-89 (13 pages)
Published By: Council on Foreign Relations Open Free Full Text PDF article here:
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf
Also, available at these links with subscription:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24483306
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-08-18/why-ukraine-crisis-west-s-fault
AMERICAN EMPIRE, COMMENTARY, NATO, NUCLEAR WEAPONS, RUSSIA, UKRAINE
Caitlin
Johnstone: Fable of ‘Unprovoked’ War Blocks Peace. October 2, 2022. As long as the fact this war was
provoked remains unacknowledged by the side that provoked it, the sane path of
detente wll look like reckless appeasement and nuclear brinkmanship will look
like sanity. By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
“Silencing the lambs — how propaganda
works.”
By John Pilger | 11
September 2022,
8:00am | 23 comments |
For
decades, propaganda has steered the course of the mass media's narrative,
dominated by the needs of state and corporate power. John Pilger explains that nothing has changed in today's world.
IN
THE 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified
the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was
on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the
Fuhrer.
She told me that the “patriotic messages” of her films were
dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called
the “submissive void” of the German public.
Did
that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? I asked. “Yes,
especially them,” she said.
I
think of this as I look around at the propaganda now consuming Western
societies.
Of
course, we are very different from Germany in the 1930s. We live in information
societies. We are globalists. We have never been more aware, more in touch,
better connected.
Are
we? Or do we live in a Media Society
where brainwashing is insidious and relentless, and perception is filtered
according to the needs and lies of state and corporate power?
The
United States dominates the Western world’s media. All but one of the top ten
media companies are based in North America. The internet and social media – Google,
Twitter, Facebook – are mostly American-owned and controlled.
In
my lifetime, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow more
than 50 governments, mostly democracies. It has interfered in democratic
elections in 30 countries. It has dropped bombs on the people of 30 countries,
most of them poor and defenceless. It has attempted to murder the leaders of 50
countries. It has fought to suppress liberation movements in 20 countries.
The
extent and scale of this carnage is largely unreported and unrecognised; those
responsible continue to dominate Anglo-American political life.
In
the years before he died in 2008, the playwright Harold Pinter made two
extraordinary speeches, which broke a silence:
U.S. foreign policy could be best defined as follows: kiss my
arse or I'll kick your head in. It is as simple and as crude as that.
What is interesting about it is that it’s so incredibly
successful. It possesses the structures of disinformation, use of rhetoric,
distortion of language, which are very persuasive, but are actually a pack of
lies. It is very successful propaganda. They have the money, they have the
technology, they have all the means to get away with it, and they do.
In
accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, Pinter said this:
“The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant,
vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You
have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of
power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant,
even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
.
. . At its summit in Madrid in June, NATO, which is controlled by the United
States, adopted a strategy document that militarises the European continent and
escalates the prospect of war with Russia and China. It proposes multi-domain
warfighting against nuclear-armed peer competitors. In other words, nuclear
war.
It says:
‘NATO’s enlargement has been a historic success.’
I
read that in disbelief.
A
measure of this “historic success” is the
war in Ukraine, news of which is mostly not news, but a one-sided litany of
jingoism, distortion and omission. I have reported a number of wars and have
never known such blanket propaganda.
In
February, Russia invaded Ukraine as a response to almost eight years of killing
and criminal destruction in the Russian-speaking region of Donbas on their border.
In
2014, the United States had sponsored a coup in Kyiv that got rid of
Ukraine’s democratically elected, Russian-friendly president and installed a
successor whom the Americans made clear was their man.
In
recent years, American “defender” missiles have been installed in eastern
Europe, Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, almost certainly aimed at
Russia, accompanied by false assurances all the way back to former White House
Chief of Staff James Baker’s “promise” to Gorbachev in February 1990 that NATO would never expand beyond
Germany.
Ukraine is the frontline.
NATO has
effectively reached the very borderland through which Hitler’s army stormed in
1941, leaving more than 23 million dead in the Soviet Union.
Last December, Russia proposed a far-reaching security
plan for Europe. This was dismissed, derided or suppressed in the Western
media. Who read its step-by-step proposals? On 24 February, Ukrainian
President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy threatened
to develop nuclear weapons unless
America armed and protected Ukraine. This was the final straw.
On
the same day, Russia invaded — according to the Western media, an unprovoked
act of congenital infamy. The history, the lies, the peace proposals, the
solemn agreements on Donbas at Minsk counted for nothing.
On
25 April, the U.S. Defence Secretary, General Lloyd Austin, flew into Kyiv and
confirmed that America’s aim was to destroy the Russian Federation — the word
he used was “weaken”. America had got the war it wanted, waged by an American
bankrolled and armed proxy and expendable pawn.
Almost
none of this was explained to Western audiences.
Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine is wanton and inexcusable. It is a crime to invade a
sovereign country. There are no “buts” — except one.
When
did the present war in Ukraine begin and who started it? According to the
United Nations, between 2014 and this year, some 14,000 people have been killed in
the Kyiv regime’s civil war on the Donbas. Many of the attacks were carried out
by neo-Nazis.
Watch
an ITV news report from May
2014, by the veteran reporter James Mates, who is shelled, along with civilians in the city of Mariupol,
by Ukraine’s Azov (neo-Nazi) battalion.
In
the same month, dozens of Russian-speaking people were burned alive or suffocated
in a trade union building in Odessa besieged by fascist thugs, the followers of the
Nazi collaborator and anti-Semitic fanatic Stepan Bandera. The New York
Times called the thugs ‘nationalists’.
‘The
historic mission of our nation in this critical moment,’ said Andreiy
Biletsky, founder of the Azov Battalion, ‘is to lead the White
Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival, a crusade against the
Semite-led Untermenschen’.
Since
February, a campaign of self-appointed “news monitors” (mostly funded by the
Americans and British with links to governments) has sought to maintain the
absurdity that Ukraine’s neo-Nazis don’t exist.
Airbrushing, a term once associated
with Stalin’s purges, has become a tool of mainstream journalism.
In
less than a decade, a “good” China has
been airbrushed and a “bad” China has replaced it: from the world’s workshop to
a budding new Satan.
Much
of this propaganda originates in the U.S. and is transmitted through proxies
and “think tanks” such as the notorious Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the voice of the arms
industry, and by zealous journalists such as Peter Hartcher of the Sydney Morning Herald, who labelled those spreading Chinese influence as ‘rats, flies,
mosquitoes and sparrows’ and called for these ‘pests’ to
be ‘eradicated’.
News
about China in the West is almost entirely about the threat from Beijing.
Airbrushed are the 400 American military bases that surround most of China, an
armed necklace that reaches from Australia to the Pacific and Southeast Asia,
Japan and Korea. The Japanese island of Okinawa and the Korean island of Jeju
are loaded guns aimed point blank at the industrial heart of China. A Pentagon
official described this as a “noose”. . . .
In
recent years, some of the best journalists have been eased out of the
mainstream. “Defenestrated” is the word used. The spaces once open to
mavericks, to journalists who went against the grain, truth-tellers, have
closed.
The
case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is the most shocking.
When Julian and WikiLeaks could win readers and prizes
for The Guardian, the New York Times and other
self-important “papers of record”, he was celebrated.
When
the dark state objected and demanded the destruction of hard drives and the
assassination of Julian’s character, he was made a public enemy. Vice President
Biden called him a “hi-tech terrorist”. Hillary Clinton asked: “Can’t we just drone this guy?”
The
ensuing campaign of abuse and vilification against Julian Assange – the UN
Rapporteur on Torture called it “mobbing” – brought the liberal press to its lowest ebb. We know who
they are. I think of them as collaborators: as Vichy journalists.
When
will real journalists stand up? An inspirational samizdat already exists on
the internet: Consortium News, founded by the great
reporter Robert Parry, Max Blumenthal’s Grayzone, Mint Press News, Media Lens, Declassified UK, Alborada, Electronic Intifada, WSWS, ZNet, ICH, CounterPunch, Independent Australia,
the work of Chris Hedges, Patrick Lawrence, Jonathan Cook, Diana Johnstone, Caitlin Johnstone and others who will
forgive me for not mentioning them here.
And
when will writers stand up, as they did against the rise of fascism in the
1930s? When will filmmakers stand up, as they did against the Cold War in the
1940s? When will satirists stand up, as they did a generation ago?
Having
soaked for 82 years in a deep bath of righteousness that is the official
version of the last world war, isn’t it time those who are meant to keep the
record straight declared their independence and decoded the propaganda? The urgency
is greater than ever.
[To read the entire essay go to: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/john-pilger-silencing-the-lambs--how-propaganda-works
Note: After editing this long essay in
a long anthology, I discovered the link was inoperative. –Dick]
John Pilger is
a regular contributor to Independent Australia and a distinguished
journalist and filmmaker. You can follow John on Twitter @JohnPilger.
“An
end to the war in Ukraine must be urgently sought.”
Editor. Mronline.org (12-23-2022).
Think Tank reports on the invasion of Ukraine -
Consilium
https://www.consilium.europa.eu › library-blog ›
posts
No sane participant or observer of this war wants
it prolonged unnecessarily. But now is not the time to be advocating an urgent 'solution'. In contrast, citizens in China, India, and
Turkiye prefer a quick end to the war even if Ukraine
has to concede territory. Rand Europe.
Pope Francis says Ukraine war "perhaps somehow either provoked or
not prevented" BY
ANNA MATRANGA. JUNE 14, 2022 / 12:45
PM / CBS NEWS
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pope-francis-ukraine-war-russia-putin-perhaps-somehow-provoked-not-prevented/
Negotiations
Must Begin
“Six Months after Russian
Invasion, a Bloody Stalemate, a Struggle for Peace” By Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft, posted August 25, 2022. From H-PAD. August 2022: https://www.historiansforpeace.org/2022/09/09/h-pad-notes-9-9-22-links-to-recent-articles-of-interest/
Argues
that neither side can win a complete victory and that all sides, including
Ukraine's Western allies, face harm from a continuation of the war. “The time
to begin negotiations for peace is now, not after months or years in which tens
of thousands more people have died and Ukraine has suffered still greater
harm.” The author is a historian who has written several books on Russia
and its neighbors.
NEED
FOR A NEUTRAL, NON-JINGOISTIC JOURNALISM.
Veterans for Sanity to Biden on Ukraine
Sonny San Juan via
uark.onmicrosoft.com Sep 6, 2022,
FROM: Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Ukraine Decision Time,
Pres. Biden must know the truth
REF: Nukes Cannot be Un-Invented,
VIPS
Mr. President:
September 05, 2022: "Antiwar", https://original.antiwar.com/Veteran-Intelligence-Professionals-for-Sanity2/2022/09/05/veteran-intelligence-professionals-ukraine-decision-time-for-biden/
- Before Defense Secretary Austin
flies off to Ramstein for the meeting Thursday of the Ukraine Defense Contact
Group we owe you a few words of caution occasioned by our many decades of
experience with what happens to intelligence in wartime. If he tells you Kyiv
is beating back the Russians, kick the tires – and consider widening your
circle of advisers
Truth is the coin of the realm in intelligence analysis. It is
equally axiomatic that truth is the first casualty of war, and that applies to
the war in Ukraine as well as earlier wars we have been involved in. When at
war, Defense Secretaries, Secretaries of State, and generals simply cannot be
relied upon to tell the truth – to the media, or even to the President. We
learned that early – the hard and bitter way. A lot of our comrades in arms did
not come back from Vietnam.
Biased
Western Press
The Chris Hedges Show with Patrick
Lawrence.” 9-5-22.
The war
in Ukraine has exacerbated the loss of credibility within the warmongering,
biased western press , inflicting, journalist Patrick Lawrence argues, irreparable damage.
Hedges
The Ukraine conflict has
plunged the world into a geopolitical crisis. But this is not, as the writer Patrick Lawrence points out, the only
crisis. The war in Ukraine has exacerbated the crisis within the western press,
inflicting damage that he believes is ultimately irreparable. The press in the U.S. and most of Europe
slavishly echoes the opinions of a ruling elite and oversees a public discourse
that is often unhinged from the real world. It openly discredits or censors
anything that counters the dominant narrative about Ukraine, however factual.
For example, on August 4, Amnesty International published a report titled
“Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians.” The report charged
Ukrainian forces with putting civilians at risk by establishing bases and
operating weapons systems in populated residential areas, including in schools
and hospitals, a violating the laws of war. To call out Ukrainian for war
crimes, however well documented, saw the press and the ruling elites come down
in fury on Amnesty International. The head of Amnesty International’s Kyiv
office resigned, calling the report “a tool of Russian propaganda.” In
one of the many broadsides the Royal United Services Institute in London
wrote that “The amnesty report demonstrates a weak understanding of the laws of
armed conflict, no understanding of military operations, and indulges in
insinuations without supplying supporting evidence.” It is nearly impossible to
question the virtues of Ukraine’s government and military. Those that do are
attacked and banned from social media. How did this happen? Why is a
position on the war in Ukraine the litmus test for who gets to have a voice and
who does not? Why should a position on Ukraine justify censorship?
Corporate-Pentagon-White
House-Congressional-Mainstream Media—NSS Propaganda System
[I have given
McGovern’s entire argument because
it is is one of the best recent summaries of US information control and
demonization of selected “enemies” I have read.
An excellent book on this subject
is Propaganda, Lies nd False Flags: How
the U.S. Justifies Its Wars (2020). –Dick]
Ray
McGovern. “Brainwashed for War with
Russia.” TRANSCEND
MEDIA.ORG, 26 Sep 2022.
|Antiwar – TRANSCEND Media Service
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2022/09/brainwashed-for-war-with-russia/
22
Sep 2022 – Thanks
to Establishment media, the sorcerer apprentices advising President Joe Biden – I refer to Secretary of State
Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jacob Sullivan, and China specialist
Kurt Campbell – will have no trouble rallying Americans for the widest war in
77 years, starting in Ukraine, and maybe spreading to China. And, shockingly,
under false pretenses.
Most Americans are oblivious to the reality that Western media are owned and operated by
the same corporations that make massive profits by helping to stoke small
wars and then peddling the necessary weapons. Corporate leaders, and
Ivy-mantled elites, educated to believe in U.S.
“exceptionalism,” find the lucre and the luster too lucrative to be able to
think straight. They deceive themselves into thinking that (a) the US cannot
lose a war; (b) escalation can be calibrated and wider war can be limited to
Europe; and (c) China can be expected to just sit on the sidelines. The
attitude, consciously or unconsciously, “Not to worry. And, in any case, the
lucre and luster are worth the risk.”
The media also know they can always trot out died-in-the-wool Russophobes to “explain,” for example, why
the Russians are “almost genetically driven” to do evil (James Clapper, former
National Intelligence Director and now hired savant on CNN); or Fiona Hill
(former National Intelligence Officer for Russia), who insists “Putin wants to
evict the United States from Europe … As he might put it: “Goodbye, America.
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
Absent a miraculous appearance of clearer heads with a less
benighted attitude toward the core interests of Russia in Ukraine, and China in
Taiwan, historians who survive to
record the war now on our doorstep will describe it as the result of hubris and
stupidity run amok. Objective historians may even note that one of their
colleagues – Professor John Mearsheimer
– got it right from the start, when he explained in the autumn 2014 issue
of Foreign Affairs “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the
West’s Fault.”
Historian Barbara Tuchman addressed the kind of situation the
world faces in Ukraine in her book “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam.”
(Had she lived, she surely would have updated it to take Iraq, Afghanistan,
Syria, and Ukraine into account). Tuchman wrote:
“Wooden-headedness…plays a remarkably large role in government.
It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions
while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish
while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.”
Six Years (and Counting) of Brainwashing
Thanks to US media, a very small percentage of Americans know
that:
·
o 14 years ago, then US
Ambassador to Russia (current CIA Director) William Burns was warned by Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Russia might have to intervene in Ukraine,
if it were made a member of NATO. The Subject Line of Burns’s
Feb. 1, 2008 Embassy Moscow cable (#182) to Washington
makes it clear that Amb. Burns did not mince Lavrov’s words; the subject line
stated: “Nyet means nyet: Russia’s NATO enlargement redlines.”Thus,
Washington policymakers were given forewarning, in very specific terms, of
Russia’s redline regarding membership for Ukraine in NATO. Nevertheless, on
April 3, 2008, a NATO summit in Bucharest asserted: “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s
and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today
that these countries will become members of NATO.”
o 8 years ago, on Feb. 22,
2014, the US orchestrated a coup in Kiev – rightly
labeled “the most blatant coup in history’, insofar as it had already been
blown on YouTube 18 days prior. Kiev’s spanking new leaders,
handpicked and identified by name by US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria
Nuland in the YouTube-publicized conversation with the U.S. ambassador in Kiev,
immediately called for Ukraine to join NATO.
o 6 years ago, in June 2016,
Russian President Vladimir Putin told Western reporters of his concern that
so-called antiballistic missiles sites in Romania and Poland could be converted
overnight to accommodate offensive strike missiles posing a threat to Russia’s
own nuclear forces. (See this unique video, with English subtitles,
from minute 37 to 49.) There is a direct analogy with the 1962 Cuban missile
crisis when Moscow put offensive strike missiles in Cuba and President John
Kennedy reacted strongly to the existential threat that posed to the US.
o On December 21, 2021,
President Putin told his most senior military leaders:
“It is extremely alarming that elements of
the US global defense system are being deployed near Russia. The Mk 41
launchers, which are located in Romania and are to be deployed in Poland, are
adapted for launching the Tomahawk strike missiles. If this infrastructure
continues to move forward, and if US and NATO missile systems are
deployed in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be only 7–10 minutes,
or even five minutes for hypersonic systems. This is a huge challenge for us,
for our security.” [Emphasis added.]
o On December 30, 2021,
Biden and Putin talked by phone at Putin’s urgent request. The Kremlin readout stated:
“Joseph Biden emphasized that Russia and the US shared a special
responsibility for ensuring stability in Europe and the whole world and
that Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons
in Ukraine.” Yuri Ushakov, a top foreign policy adviser to Putin, pointed
out that this was also one of the goals Moscow hoped to achieve with its
proposals for security guarantees to the US and NATO. [Emphasis added.]
·
o On February 12, 2022,
Ushakov briefed the media on the
telephone conversation between Putin and Biden earlier that day.
“The call was as a follow-up of sorts to the … December 30
telephone conversation. … The Russian President made clear that President
Biden’s proposals did not really address the central, key elements of Russia’s
initiatives either with regards to non-expansion of NATO, or non-deployment
of strike weapons systems on Ukrainian territory … To these items, we
have received no meaningful response.” [Emphasis added.]
·
o On February 24, 2022,
Russia invaded Ukraine.
Unprovoked?
The US insists that Russia’s invasion was “unprovoked”.
Establishment media dutifully regurgitate that line, while keeping Americans in
the dark about such facts (not opinion) as are outlined (and
sourced) above. Most Americans are just as taken in by the media as they were
20 years ago, when they were told there were weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq. They simply took it on faith. Nor did the guilty media express remorse –
or a modicum of embarrassment.
The late Fred Hiatt, who was op-ed editor at the Washington
Post, is a case in point. In an interview with the Columbia
Journalism Review [CJR, March/April 2004] he commented:
“If you look at the editorials we wrote running up [to the war],
we state as flat fact that he [Saddam Hussein] has weapons of mass
destruction.” “If that’s not true, it would have been better not to say it.”
(My journalism mentor, Robert Parry, had this to say about
Hiatt’s remark. “Yes, that is a common principle of journalism, that if
something isn’t real, we’re not supposed to confidently declare that it is.”)
It’s worse now. Russia is
not Iraq. And Putin has been so demonized over the past six years that people
are inclined to believe the likes of James Clapper to the effect there’s
something genetic that makes Russians evil. “Russia-gate” was a big con (and,
now, demonstrably so), but Americans don’t know that either. The consequences
of prolonged demonization are extremely dangerous – and will become even more
so in the next several weeks as politicians vie to be the strongest in opposing
and countering Russia’s “unprovoked” attack on Ukraine.
THE Problem
Humorist Will Rogers had it right: “The problem ain’t what people know. It’s what people know
that ain’t so; that’s the problem.”
Act NOW!
Negotiations Urgently Needed to avoid a large-scale Nuclear Catastrophe in
Ukraine!
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THE COALITION FOR PEACE ACTION (CFPA)
* 40 Years of Peacemaking *
www.peacecoalition.org
Dear Dick,
Zaporizhzhia, the largest
nuclear power plant in Ukraine, and in all of Europe, could become the site of
a large-scale nuclear catastrophe given rising tensions and continued shelling.
We
don’t really know all that is happening. We hear reports from both
Russian and Ukrainian sources, each side pointing fingers at the other. We
are faced with the possibility of major nuclear catastrophe, including a
devastating “dirty bomb” that could kill millions and would render the land
radioactive. Intense diplomacy is the only way to prevent this outcome. Click here or below to quickly email your Congresspersons and the US
Secretary of State!
Both
Russia and Ukraine have finally agreed to have the IAEA (International Atomic
Energy Agency), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, inspect the plant. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi is
leading a team of inspectors who are now making their way there.
People
around the world are terrified of a potential catastrophe at
Zaporizhzhia. We must do all that we can to urge our country to engage in
intense diplomacy NOW!
We call on the Biden Administration to change strategy in
Ukraine from endless war to serious negotiations. It’s time to push for a settlement that includes a
ceasefire, withdrawal of Russian troops, a commitment to Ukraine’s independence
and neutrality, and security guarantees for both Ukraine and Russia.
We
need an urgent diplomatic push to prevent destruction in Ukraine and a
potential nuclear catastrophe. Click here or below to quickly email your Congresspersons and the US
Secretary of State!
P.S. Over the summer,
CFPA's income experienced the doldrums of fundraising. Donating now as
generously as you can gives us the financial resources to ramp up our
organizing as strongly as possible, especially as we approach the crucial 2022
elections! Click to see our late summer fundraising appeal, and/or below
to donate NOW!
Sincerely, The Rev. Robert Moore
WHAT DO THE CITIZENS WANT?
[A civil war has raged in eastern Ukraine for almost a decade. In a clause of the Minsk Agreement for peace
in the Ukraine (2014), Ukraine agreed (Minsk I) to allow eastern Ukraine autonomy,
but in 2015 (Minsk II) Ukraine demanded control of the provinces. –D]
“Four breakaway territories of Ukraine ask to join Russia.”
Originally published: teleSUR
English on September 26, 2022 (more
by teleSUR English) | (Posted Sep
30, 2022)
Empire, Movements, Strategy,
WarEurope, Russia,
UkraineNewswireDenis Pushilin, Leonid Pasechnik,
President
Vladimir Putin, Referendums
On
Wednesday, the leaders of four regions
in eastern and southern Ukraine called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to
incorporate their territories into Russia.
Once the
results of the accession referendums held in the previous days were known, the
leaders of the self-proclaimed republics of Lugansk and Donetsk, Leonid
Pasechnik and Denis Pushilin, traveled to Moscow to personally request
President Vladimir Putin to incorporate these regions into the Russian
Federation.
The heads
of the administrations of Kherson and Zaporizhia also issued statements in
which they also advocated “reunification” with Russia, highlighting the support
this decision received in the referendums that were held between September 23
and 27 amid attacks perpetrated by Ukrainian forces.
The Russian news agency
RIA published the results of the referendums held in the four separatist
regions, where the majority of their populations voted in favor of annexation
to Russia. The votes in favor of YES were as follows: Kherson (97%), Zaporizhia
(98.19%), Lougansk (97.82%), and Donetsk (98%). MORE
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Tell
Congress: Nuclear Weapons Must Never Be Used
Nuclear
Updates, FCNL 10-6-22
. . . . [threats to use nuclear weapons] deserve thorough
condemnation. But more importantly, they require a steady response of
de-escalation that pulls us back from the threat of nuclear warfare.
Tell your members of Congress that more diplomacy is the best
way to protect human lives.
Dialogue with Russia is not capitulation or appeasement. It is,
in fact, the only sane response to the threat of nuclear brinksmanship.
Congress has a moral responsibility to de-escalate tensions and prevent the use
of nuclear weapons to preserve the environment and all humanity.
In the face of nuclear threats, the world must work together to
deter disaster. Urge Congress to keep open the lines of diplomacy and avoid
further escalation of the war in Ukraine.
Sincerely,
Allen Hester
Legislative Representative
Nuclear Disarmament and Pentagon Spending
FCNL
2023
Jacqueline
Luqman. “Why and how to end the war in Ukraine.”
Editor.
Mronline.org (3-5-23). Jacqueline Luqman was a panelist on the February 16, 2023 webinar Why and
How to End the War in Ukraine , which was sponsored by Chicago Area Peace
Action. These were her remarks. She
declares herself a spokesperson for Black
Alliance for Peace.
[More than half of this statement summarizes the
narrative of the events leading to the Ukraine War as perceived by opponents of
US/NATO encirclement of Russia from Finland to Kazakhstan. That’s the “why” in the title, and is
immediately available by link. The “how”
is much shorter, and is based entirely upon the preceding history. --D
Jacqueline Luqman. “Why and
how to end the war in Ukraine.”
Originally published: Hood
Communist on March 2, 2023 by
(more by Hood Communist). (Posted Mar
04, 2023). WarEuropeNewswire
[Why the War in Ukraine]
What I think we need to be clear on is that the U.S., the EU, and NATO are
directly responsible for lighting the embers of war in Ukraine back in 2014.
From late 2013 until February 2014, the Obama/Biden administration sent
weapons, money, and encouragement to anti-democratic right-wing elements in
Ukraine to execute “regime change” and overthrow the democratically elected
president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych.
MORE https://mronline.org/2023/03/04/why-and-how-to-end-the-war-in-ukraine/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-and-how-to-end-the-war-in-ukraine&mc_cid=757612b13e&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e
[How we
can end it.]
Yes, this conflict in
Ukraine must end. And the how is what we in the Black Alliance
for Peace believe can be achieved
by:
An
Immediate Ceasefire
Providing
Humanitarian aid and resettlement of all refugees and displaced persons in
Ukraine and the Donbass Region
The Ceasing of all
shipments of NATO weapons to Ukraine and negotiating Ukrainian NATO neutrality. UKRAINE MUST NEVER
BECOME A MEMBER OF NATO. I will never not remind people that the late Rep. John
Conyers introduced an
amendment to the defense spending bill in 2015 that would have made
it illegal to send weapons to the Azov Battalion and other neo-Nazi groups in
Ukraine. The neo-Nazi threat in Ukraine was recognized then by U.S. lawmakers,
but the Pentagon removed the amendment.
Expulsion
of all foreign white supremacist and neo-Nazi forces from Ukraine. Because if we’re
going to fight to end the war in Ukraine and do and say nothing about the
neo-Nazis that the U.S. legitimized to destabilize the country, we are merely
saving people from one catastrophe—the war—only to have them subjected to
another existential threat—violent neo-Nazis with a particular hatred for
Russians—to be faced later.
That
NATO, a structure for advancing the interests of white supremacy and the U.S.
empire, be dismantled.
That
the U.S. government renounce its commitment to the doctrine of global “Full
Spectrum Dominance.”
And if
that doesn’t happen, what do we do?
We must
commit ourselves to genuine and principled anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist
struggle against imperialist war wherever in the world it manifests.
We must
engage in solidarity with people around the world who are fighting against the
US/EU/NATO Axis of Domination.
We must
commit to destroying this capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal,
settler-colonial system in this country that wages war on marginalized people
domestically and abroad and commit to building a new system that is focused on
people-centered human rights for everyone.
We must
grow an anti-imperialist movement on the shared principles of upholding and
defending all and everyone’s humanity, with the understanding that any
right-wing elements that engage with us must adhere to our shared principles.
We must not abandon our shared principles of unity and solidarity to appease
the right wing that is not interested in the struggle for human rights.
Anything short of this is
a win for the empire that has already done so well at dividing our focus.
CHINA’S
PEACE PLAN
HANNA
ARHIROVA China calls for truce, peace talks in Ukraine war. Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette. Feb 25, 2023. Information for this article was contributed
by Huizhong Wu, Geir Moulson, Yuras Karmanau and Joanna Kozlowska of The Associated
Press. Forwarded to me by Pat Snyder.
“Xi Jinping speaks with Zelensky about China’s
peace plan for Ukraine.”
Originally
published: Orinoco
Tribune on April 27, 2023 by
Alba Ciudad (more by Orinoco Tribune) | (Posted Apr
29, 2023). Mronline.org
(4-30-23).
The president of China, Xi Jinping, and his Ukrainian
counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, held their first contact since the beginning of
the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in February 2022, as reported by the
Chinese Foreign Ministry.
Chinese peace plan
Beijing has always opted to sit Kyiv and Moscow at the
negotiating table and support any initiative leading to peace. Last month,
China announced it was sending €200,000 to the International Atomic Energy
Agency in order to help protect nuclear power plants in Ukraine, in particular
the Zaporizhzhya plant, one of the largest nuclear power plants in Europe.
In January, China issued
a 12-point document regarding its position on the war in Ukraine, insisting
that the international community foster the conditions to resume talks and find
a peaceful solution to the conflict. The document vindicated talks as the only
viable solution to the crisis, opposed the Cold War mentality, demanded an end
to hostilities, and emphasised a necessity for the respect of the sovereignty
of all nations.
It also urged those involved to remain rational and exercise
restraint, refrain from fanning the flames of war and aggravating tensions, as
well as prevent the situation from escalating out of control. “All parties
should support Russia and Ukraine to work in the same direction and resume
direct dialogue as soon as possible,” read the official text,
in order to gradually de-escalate
the situation and ultimately reach a comprehensive ceasefire.
China considered it vital to promote and channel any measure to
alleviate the humanitarian crisis, while calling on Moscow and Kyiv not to
attack civilian buildings, as well as to protect women, children, and other
victims of the conflict, and to respect the fundamental rights of prisoners of
war.
Likewise, Beijing called for reducing risks, guaranteeing
stability for industrial supply chains, facilitating grain exports, ceasing the
imposition of unilateral sanctions, and making way for the reconstruction of
devastated areas.
“The international community must remain committed to the
correct approach of promoting peace talks and helping the parties to the
conflict to open the door to a political solution to the crisis as soon as
possible,” reads China’s peace proposal.
China will continue to play a
constructive role in this regard.
David
Swanson and World Beyond War provide us with a full campaign for ending the
US/NATO/Ukraine/Russia War. https://worldbeyondwar.org/ukraine/?link_id=6&can_id=3d53bb64e2596ba3e930952f90ab3f2c&source=email-defuse-nuclear-war&email_referrer=email_1658010&email_subject=defuse-nuclear-war
WBW’S Action
for Ukraine and the World
·
Petition for the Rule of Law in Ukraine
·
U.S. Campaign of Emails to Congress
·
What a Peace
Agreement Looks Like
Some Perspective
President Biden is half right when he refers to
“an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces” — unjustified
indeed, unprovoked not in the least. Two sides have been escalating this
conflict for years, each claiming to be acting defensively, each provoking the
other. The NATO nations’ weaponry and forces that are now imagined as a
solution are also the original source of the conflict. It is right to grow
indignant now about Ukraine’s “sovereignty,” but so would it have been during
the U.S.-backed coup eight years ago that has endangered Russian-speaking
Ukrainians.
This is no time for anything other than de-escalation
by all sides. The United Nations and the International Criminal Court ought to
be upholding the rule of law just as if this were in Africa rather than Europe,
exactly as ought to have been done with the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria,
Yemen, et alia. Criminal sanctions that violate the Geneva Conventions are not
a means of holding warmakers to the rule of law. Prosecutions in courts are.
We need nuclear weapons taken out of service by
both sides. We need serious negotiations, beginning with the Minsk 2 agreement,
not just empty talk. We need nations other than Russia or the United States to
step up and insist on de-escalation and de-militarization, before this slowly
spiraling madness reaches nuclear apocalypse.
Learn About the Ukraine Crisis [World Beyond War provides a full pathway to
peace from their extensive experience and wisdom in advocating for peace https://worldbeyondwar.org/ukraineaction/ ]
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