LA PROGRESSIVE

After Two Years of War in Ukraine, It’s Time for Peace

While it is the Ukrainians and Russians fighting and dying in this war of attrition with over half a million casualties, it is the United States that has stood in the way of peace talks.

• MEDEA BENJAMIN AND NICOLAS DAVIES

• FEB 22, 2024

As we mark two full years since Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukrainian government forces have withdrawn from Avdiivka, a town they first captured from the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) in July 2014. Situated only 10 miles from Donetsk city, Avdiivka gave Ukrainian government forces a base from which their artillery bombarded Donetsk for nearly ten years. From a pre-war population of about 31,000, the town has been depopulated and left in ruins.

The mass slaughter on both sides in this long battle was a measure of the strategic value of the city to both sides, but it is also emblematic of the shocking human cost of this war, which has degenerated into a brutal and bloody war of attrition along a nearly static front line. Neither side made significant territorial gains in the entire 2023 year of fighting, with a net gain to Russia of a mere 188 square miles, or 0.1% of Ukraine.

And while it is the Ukrainians and Russians fighting and dying in this war of attrition with over half a million casualties, it is the United States, with some its Western allies, that has stood in the way of peace talks. This was true of talks between Russia and Ukraine that took place in March 2022, one month after the Russian invasion, and it is true of talks that Russia tried to initiate with the United States as recently as January 2024.

In March 2022, Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey and negotiated a peace agreement that should have ended the war. Ukraine agreed to become a neutral country between east and west, on the model of Austria or Switzerland, giving up its controversial ambition for NATO membership. Territorial questions over Crimea and the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk would be resolved peacefully, based on self-determination for the people of those regions.

But then the U.S. and U.K. intervened to persuade Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskyy to abandon the neutrality agreement in favor of a long war to militarily drive Russia out of Ukraine and recover Crimea and Donbas by force. U.S. and U.K. leaders have never admitted to their own people what they did, nor tried to explain why they did it.

So it has been left to everyone else involved to reveal details of the agreement and the U.S. and U.K.’s roles in torpedoing it: President Zelenskyy’s advisers; Ukrainian negotiators; Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Turkish diplomats; Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who was another mediator; and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, who mediated with Russian President Vladimir Putin for Ukraine.

The U.S. sabotage of peace talks should come as no surprise. So much of U.S. foreign policy follows what should by now be an easily recognizable and predictable pattern, in which our leaders systematically lie to us about their decisions and actions in crisis situations, and, by the time the truth is widely known, it is too late to reverse the catastrophic effects of those decisions. Thousands of people have paid with their lives, nobody is held accountable, and the world’s attention has moved on to the next crisis, the next series of lies and the next bloodbath, which in this case is Gaza.

But the war grinds on in Ukraine, whether we pay attention to it or not. Once the U.S. and U.K. succeeded in killing peace talks and prolonging the war, it fell into an intractable pattern common to many wars, in which Ukraine, the United States and the leading members of the NATO military alliance were encouraged, or we might say deluded, by limited successes at different times into continually prolonging and escalating the war and rejecting diplomacy, in spite of ever-mounting, appalling human costs for the people of Ukraine.

U.S. and NATO leaders have repeated ad nauseam that they are arming Ukraine to put it in a stronger position at the “negotiating table,” even as they keep rejecting negotiations.

U.S. and NATO leaders have repeated ad nauseam that they are arming Ukraine to put it in a stronger position at the “negotiating table,” even as they keep rejecting negotiations. After Ukraine gained ground with its much celebrated offensives in the fall of 2022, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley went public with a call to “seize the moment” and get back to the negotiating table from the position of strength that NATO leaders said they were waiting for. French and German military leaders were reportedly even more adamant that that moment would be short-lived if they failed to seize it.

They were right. President Biden rejected his military advisers’ calls for renewed diplomacy, and Ukraine’s failed 2023 offensive wasted its chance to negotiate from a position of strength, sacrificing many more lives to leave it weaker than before.

On February 13, 2024, Reuters Moscow bureau broke the story that the United States had recently rejected a new Russian proposal to reopen peace negotiations. Multiple Russian sources involved in the initiative told Reuters that Russia proposed direct talks with the United States to call a ceasefire along the current front lines of the war.

After Russia’s March 2022 peace agreement with Ukraine was vetoed by the U.S., this time Russia approached the United States directly before involving Ukraine. There was a meeting of intermediaries in Turkey, and a meeting between Secretary of State Blinken, CIA Director Burns and National Security Adviser Sullivan in Washington, but the result was a message from Sullivan that the U.S. was willing to discuss other aspects of U.S.-Russian relations, but not peace in Ukraine.

And so the war grinds on. Russia is still firing 10,000 artillery shells per day along the front line, while Ukraine can only fire 2,000. In a microcosm of the larger war, some Ukrainian gunners told reporters they were only allowed to fire 3 shells per night. As Sam Cranny-Evans of the U.K.'s RUSI military think-tank told the Guardian, “What that means is that Ukrainians can’t suppress Russian artillery any more, and if the Ukrainians can’t fire back, all they can do is try to survive.”

A March 2023 European initiative to produce a million shells for Ukraine in a year fell far short, only producing about 600,000. U.S. monthly shell production in October 2023 was 28,000 shells, with a target of 37,000 per month by April 2024. The United States plans to increase production to 100,000 shells per month, but that will take until October 2025.

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Meanwhile, Russia is already producing 4.5 million artillery shells per year. After spending less than one tenth of the Pentagon budget over the past 20 years, how is Russia able to produce 5 times more artillery shells than the United States and its NATO allies combined?

RUSI’s Richard Connolly explained to the Guardian that, while Western countries privatized their weapons production and dismantled “surplus” productive capacity after the end of the Cold War in the interest of corporate profits, “The Russians have been… subsidizing the defense industry, and many would have said wasting money for the event that one day they need to be able to scale it up. So it was economically inefficient until 2022, and then suddenly it looks like a very shrewd bit of planning.”

President Biden has been anxious to send more money to Ukraine–a whopping $61 billion—but disagreements in the U.S. Congress between bipartisan Ukraine supporters and a Republican faction opposed to U.S. involvement have held up the funds. But even if Ukraine had endless infusions of Western weapons, it has a more serious problem: Many of the troops it recruited to fight this war in 2022 have been killed, wounded or captured, and its recruitment system has been plagued by corruption and a lack of enthusiasm for the war among most of its people.

In August 2023, the government fired the heads of military recruitment in all 24 regions of the country after it became widely known that they were systematically soliciting bribes to allow men to avoid recruitment and gain safe passage out of the country. The Open Ukraine Telegram channel reported, “The military registration and enlistment offices have never seen such money before, and the revenues are being evenly distributed vertically to the top.”

The Ukrainian parliament is debating a new conscription law, with an online registration system that includes people living abroad and with penalties for failure to register or enlist. Parliament already voted down a previous bill that members found too draconian, and many fear that forced conscription will lead to more widespread draft resistance, or even bring down the government.

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Oleksiy Arestovych, President Zelenskyy’s former spokesman, told the Unherd website that the root of Ukraine’s recruitment problem is that only 20% of Ukrainians believe in the anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalism that has controlled Ukrainian governments since the overthrow of the Yanukovych government in 2014. “What about the remaining 80%?” the interviewer asked.

“I think for most of them, their idea is of a multinational and poly-cultural country,” Arestovych replied. “And when Zelenskyy came into power in 2019, they voted for this idea. He did not articulate it specifically but it was what he meant when he said, ‘I don’t see a difference in the Ukrainian-Russian language conflict, we are all Ukrainians even if we speak different languages.’”

“And you know,” Arestovych continued, “my great criticism of what has happened in Ukraine over the last years, during the emotional trauma of the war, is this idea of Ukrainian nationalism which has divided Ukraine into different people: the Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers as a second class of people. It’s the main dangerous idea and a worse danger than Russian military aggression, because nobody from this 80% of people wants to die for a system in which they are people of a second class.”

If Ukrainians are reluctant to fight, imagine how Americans would resist being shipped off to fight in Ukraine. A 2023 U.S. Army War College study of “Lessons from Ukraine” found that the U.S. ground war with Russia that the United States is preparing to fight would involve an estimated 3,600 U.S. casualties per day, killing and maiming as many U.S. troops every two weeks as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq did in twenty years. Echoing Ukraine’s military recruitment crisis, the authors concluded, “Large-scale combat operations troop requirements may well require a reconceptualization of the 1970s and 1980s volunteer force and a move toward partial conscription.”

U.S. war policy in Ukraine is predicated on just such a gradual escalation from proxy war to full-scale war between Russia and the United States, which is unavoidably overshadowed by the risk of nuclear war. This has not changed in two years, and it will not change unless and until our leaders take a radically different approach. That would involve serious diplomacy to end the war on terms on which Russia and Ukraine can agree, as they did on the March 2022 neutrality agreement.

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Video of Debate on Ukraine in Madison Wisconsin on November 12

• Europe, Madison Chapter, North America, Ukraine, Videos

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 12, 2023

https://worldbeyondwar.org/video-of-debate-on-ukraine-in-madison-wisconsin-on-november-12/

VIDEO: https://worldbeyondwar.org/video-of-debate-on-ukraine-in-madison-wisconsin-on-november-12/

Nothing in my lifetime has done more to increase the risk of nuclear apocalypse than the war in Ukraine. Nothing is doing more to impede global cooperation on climate, poverty, or homelessness. Few things are doing as much direct damage in those areas, devastating the environment, disrupting grain shipments, creating millions of refugees. While casualties in Iraq were heatedly disputed in U.S. media for years, there’s widespread acceptance that casualties in Ukraine are already at half a million. There’s no way to precisely count how many lives could have been saved around the world by investing hundreds of billions in something wiser than this war, but a small fraction of that could have ended starvation on Earth. The war is leaving for those who’ve survived lands full of rubble, unexploded bombs and cluster bomblets, poisons of all sorts, poverty, trauma, and hatred and resentment. Ukrainian and Russian families are mourning the loss of loved ones forced into war or charged with the crime of opposing war.

Russia and Ukraine successfully negotiate prisoner exchanges, return of children, return of corpses, safe passage for ships, even as each side claims the other is a monster that cannot be spoken with and must be killed.

Russia and Ukraine each claim that compromise is treason — can you imagine if we taught that in preschools instead of parliaments — and that total victory is just around the corner. But the land gained by each side since January 1st is hardly enough to bury the corpses generated in gaining it, and don’t take it from me: the Ukrainian commander-in-chief General Valery Zaluzhny calls it a World War I-like stalemate. This ends one of two ways: nuclear war that threatens all life on Earth or negotiation.

Negotiation is bad for weapons profits, embarassing for politicians who have spent years denouncing it, and emotionally difficult — but not intellectually difficult. The basic terms of a settlement are found in the pre-war Minsk II agreement, in the Russian proposal of December 2021, in the agreement nearly reached before Western sabotage of it in the spring of 2022, and in dozens of peace proposals from governments around the world. The terms include: removal of all foreign troops, neutrality for Ukraine, demilitarization, lifting sanctions, and autonomy for Crimea and Donbas. The main sticking point for the West, ironically enough, is democracy. Ever since Crimea voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia following a U.S.-backed coup in 2014, hundreds of Western commentators have called it the worst act of the century, worse than the war on Iraq, yet not a one has supported holding a re-vote no matter how conducted. The people in Eastern Ukraine were supposed to have autonomy. Denying it to them in the name of war for the Rules Based Order is a disaster. Doing so with endless free weapons shipments that the U.S. public has never voted for and in some polls would reject if given the chance makes a mockery of the word democracy.

As the leading holdout on basic human rights treaties, top opponent of international courts, top abuser of the veto at the UN, and leading weapons dealer to dictatorships and so-called democracies, the U.S. government has plenty of room to shift to promoting democracy and peace by example instead of by bombing.

U.S. and other Western diplomats, spies, and theorists predicted for 30 years that expanding NATO would lead to war with Russia. President Barack Obama refused to arm Ukraine, predicting that doing so would lead toward where we are now — as Obama still saw it in April 2022. Prior to the so-called “Unprovoked War” there were public comments by U.S. officials arguing that the provocations would not provoke anything. “I don’t buy this argument that, you know, us supplying the Ukrainians with defensive weapons is going to provoke Putin,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) One can still read a RAND report advocating creating a war like this one through the sorts of provocations that senators claimed wouldn’t provoke anything. And doing so for the purpose various Congress Members tell you the war is being waged: to hurt Russia.

Provoked or not, you have a horrendous, murderous, criminal invasion — predictably and absurdly counterproductive from the perspective of the Russian claim to be pushing back against NATO. It may be true that if the shoe were on the other foot, that if Russia had put nuclear-capable missile bases near the U.S. border, the U.S. would have done something just as evil. The U.S. recently did things more evil in Iraq and Afghanistan with fictional excuses. When the Soviets put missiles in Cuba the U.S. almost destroyed the world. But then it resolved the matter through compromise, even while publicly pretending to have done so through machismo, teaching those of us yet to come the wrong lesson. And there is no question that both sides built up to this catastrophe for years. Zelensky was elected for peace, and then bullied by the rightwing, with the U.S. accepting or supporting the shift toward hostility. But once you have a brutal invasion, what can be done?

One thing that could have been done is negotiate peace. According to Ukrainian media, Foreign Affairs, Bloomberg, and Israeli, German, Turkish, and French officials, the U.S. and UK pressured Ukraine to prevent a peace agreement in the early days of the invasion. Since then, the U.S. and allies have provided mountains of free weapons to keep the war going. Eastern European governments have expressed concern that if the U.S. slows or ends the weapons flow, Ukraine might become willing to negotiate peace again.

Another thing that could have been done is unarmed resistance. Coups and dictators have been nonviolently ousted in dozens of places. An unarmed army helped liberate India. In 1997 unarmed peacekeepers in Bougainville succeeded where armed ones had failed. In 2005 in Lebanon, Syrian domination was ended through a nonviolent uprising. In 1923 the French occupation of part of Germany was ended through nonviolent resistance. Between 1987 and 91 nonviolent resistance drove the Soviet Union out of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania — and the latter established plans for future unarmed resistance. Ukraine had nonviolently ended Soviet rule in 1990. Some of the tools of unarmed resistance are familiar from 1968 when the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia.

In polls in Ukraine, prior to the Russian invasion, not only did people know what unarmed resistance was, but more of them favored it than favored military resistance to an invasion. When the invasion happened, there were hundreds of incidents of Ukrainians using unarmed resistance, stopping tanks, etc. But there was near media silence on early unorganized and unsupported attempts at unarmed resistance. What if the attention paid to Ukrainian war heroes was paid to Ukrainian unarmed resister heroes? What if the world of people who want peace were invited to join in the unarmed resistance, and the billions spent on weapons had been spent on that? What if Ukrainians had been asked to host international protectors, people like us with and without any training, rather than to flee their country or join the war?

People would likely have been killed, and for some reason, those deaths would have been deemed far worse. But they would very likely have been far fewer. The path that has been chosen in Ukraine has led to half a million casualties, 10 million refugees, an increased risk of nuclear war, a severing of international cooperation that pretty well dooms us to climate collapse, a diversion of resources globally into militarism, environmental destruction, food shortages, and risk of disaster at a nuclear powerplant.

If instead of blowing up pipelines and selling fossil fuels some 10% of what has been spent had gone into green energy in Ukraine, humanity’s future would be brighter. At this point, some observable action must precede negotiations. Either side could announce a ceasefire and ask that it be matched. Either side could announce a willingness to agree to a particular agreement. If a ceasefire is not matched, the slaughter can be quickly resumed. If a ceasefire is used to build up troops and weapons for the next battle, well then, the sky is also blue and a bear does it in the woods. Nobody imagines either side as capable of switching off the war business that quickly. A ceasefire is required for negotiations, and an end to weapons shipments is required for a ceasefire. These three elements must come together. They could be abandoned together if negotiations fail. But why not try?

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200 Workers Block Access to Toronto Weapons-Maker L3Harris

• Canada, Montréal Chapter, Nonviolent Activism, North America, Toronto Chapter

By World BEYOND War, November 10, 2023

https://worldbeyondwar.org/200-workers-block-access-to-toronto-weapons-maker-l3harris/

Blockades are also formed at three other weapons plants arming Israel in Ontario and Quebec.

Canada must stop arming Israel, said more than 200 workers who blocked the entrances to a Toronto weapons manufacturer Friday morning.

“Last week we shut down the Toronto arms manufacturer INKAS; today we’re escalating with workers and community members blockading and disrupting production at four different weapons plants this morning, belonging to L3 Harris and Lockheed Martin,” said Rachel Small, organizer with World BEYOND War. “These companies’ weapons components and systems are being used right now to slaughter Palestinians in Gaza. We will not turn away from the horrors we are witnessing and are instead joining people around the world in holding our governments to account, blockading arms factories and shipments, and doing everything we can to cut off the flow of weapons to Israel.”

More than 200 workers and community members brought together by World BEYOND War, Labour for Palestine, and Labour Against the Arms Trade have blocked access to all entrances to L3 Harris’ Toronto facility.

More than 200 workers and community members blocked driveways and entrances at L3 Harris’ Don Mills facility in Toronto. At the same time, a group of 50 Indigenous peoples and settlers shut down all access to L3 Harris’ factory in Waterdown, outside Hamilton; dozens of peace activists blocked the main door of L3 Harris’ Montreal facility; and more than 150 workers and community members blockaded Lockheed Martin’s manufacturing plant in Ottawa. L3Harris parts are used in the Israeli warships and Lockheed Martin fighter jets that have bombed Gaza over the past month.

More than 150 community members and workers organizing with Labour for Palestine, Independent Jewish Voices, and World BEYOND War have blockaded Lockheed Martin’s Ottawa facility.

“Canadian workers do not want to be complicit with Israeli war crimes and ethnic cleansing. Echoing the calls of respected human rights organizations, union members are demanding that the Government of Canada end arms exports to Israel immediately” said Simon Black with Labour Against the Arms Trade. “But we won’t stand by while our government refuses to act.”

A group of 50 Indigenous peoples and settlers shut down all access to L3 Harris’ factory in Waterdown, outside Hamilton.

“We can’t just wash our hands of the crimes that the Israeli military is committing against the Palestinian people,” said Aidan Macdonald, member of Labour4Palestine. “Canada is actively and continually complicit in Israeli apartheid. Let’s remember that in 2022 alone, Canada exported over $21-million worth of military goods and technology exported to Israel. There are lots of other L3 Harris’ and Lockheeds and INKAS’ out there – and they’re all on notice. We are taking action to end Canadian complicity.”

Activists with Montreal for a World BEYOND War, Decolonial Solidarity, PAJU and allies are blocking entrances to L3Harris Technologies’ Montreal facility.

“International solidarity is important to us,” said Thanu Subendran from the Tamil Freedom Coalition. “The Tamil people are no strangers to the genocide that is unfolding throughout all of Palestine. 14 years ago, our people were mercilessly massacred by the Sri Lankan state with military assistance provided by Israel. So when Palestinian workers called on all of us to step up and put an end to the sale of arms to Israel, Tamils and all peoples of conscience have a moral obligation to answer that call.”

On October 16, Palestinian trade unionists issued a global call to workers worldwide to halt the arms trade with Israel. Over 30 Palestinian trade unions and professional associations have issued a united call for November 10 and 11 to be global days of action to stop arming Israel.

Over 10,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7th, including over 4000 children. With a blockade on water, electricity and food, a quarter of all buildings razed to the ground, and over a million people displaced, UN experts have denounced Israel’s actions as crimes against humanity.

The groups are calling on allies to tell Canada’s Members of Parliament and key ministers to end the sale of arms to Israel through this online action: https://worldbeyondwar.org/CanadaStopArmingIsrael/

L3 Harris’ Don Mills facility in Toronto and its facility in Waterdown, outside Hamilton Ontario, produce WESCAM MX-Series electro-optical and infrared imaging technologies that are used for surveillance and targeting along borders, on aircraft, sea vessels, and on drones.

L3 Harris is a major supplier for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 aircraft, and claims to have delivered two million parts to the F-35 program, and 1600 components to each aircraft.

The Israeli Air Force currently has 36 operational F-35s in its growing fleet, which have been deployed in the past month’s assault on Gaza that has killed over 10,000 Palestinians.

L3’s technology is also integral to Israeli warships. Another subsidiary of L3Harris, L3 MAPPS, whose facility in Montreal was blockaded this morning, claims to have pioneered the Integrated Platform Management System used to monitor and control platform machinery and systems of the Israeli Navy’s SA’AR 5 & SA’AR 6 Corvettes. The SA’AR 5 warship has long been used by the Israeli Navy to maintain the illegal naval blockade on Gaza and, according to Israeli forces, SA’AR 6 vessels were used to attack Gaza from the sea over the past month.

L3Harris also makes components for joint direct attack munitions (JDAM) made by Boeing. JDAM are a guidance tail kit that converts unguided bombs into so-called smart munitions. Boeing is reported to be expediting delivery to Israel of 1800 JDAM kits, part of a 2021 sale valued at about $735 million US.

L3 Harris and its subsidiaries profit from Canada’s support. The Government of Canada has awarded them more than 600 million dollars in contracts with the Department of National Defence and other agencies, according to publicly available government data, and brokering hundreds of millions more in contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense via the Canadian Commercial Corporation.

More than 12,000 tons of explosives have been dropped on Gaza over the last month, which is equivalent to the explosive force of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in Japan in 1945.

Canada awarded 315 permits for a total of $21.3 million worth of military goods and technology exported to Israel in 2022. Including $3.2 million in bombs, torpedoes, rockets, missiles, and other explosive devices. These figures do not include the vast majority of military exports that are sold to the US, which are then incorporated into weapons sent to Israel. The list of companies arming the Israeli military is not released by the Canadian government, but antiwar organization World BEYOND War has released a map listing dozens of companies across Canada involved in providing weapons and military technology to Israel.

The Arms Trade Treaty, of which Canada is a signatory, stresses the importance of respecting international humanitarian law, human rights, and regulating the global arms trade. Article 6.3 prohibits arms transfers by state parties if they know the arms could be used in genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva conventions, attacks directed against civilians, or other war crimes. There is ample evidence that arms are currently being used by Israel in precisely these ways.

Human Rights Watch has called on key allies of Israel, including Canada, to suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel, charging that its forces are committing widespread, serious abuses amounting to war crimes against Palestinian civilians with impunity.

“Future military transfers to Israel in the face of ongoing serious violations of the laws of war risk making the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany complicit in these abuses if they knowingly and significantly contribute to them, Human Rights Watch said.”

We Petition the United Nations to Apply the Rule of Law to Ukraine

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Target: The United Nations General Assembly

International law is at stake in Ukraine.

SPONSORED BY

World Beyond War

The Russian government has called for an investigation and prosecution of the U.S. government for sabotaging the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Ukraine, the European Union, and the United States have proposed an ad hoc special tribunal to try Russia for the crime of aggression and related offenses.

These approaches are distinguishable from victor's justice purely because there is unlikely to be any victor, and such law-enforcement-by-outlaws would need to happen simultaneously with the ongoing war or following a negotiated compromise.

Neither the United States nor Russia is a party to the International Criminal Court (though Norway and other relevant parties are) – and the United States punishes other governments for supporting the ICC. Both the United States and Russia defy the rulings of the International Court of Justice. Of 18 major human rights treaties, Russia is party to only 11, and the United States to only 5. The United States and Russia are the top two dealers of weaponry to the rest of the world, the two worst abusers of the veto in the UN Security Council, the two worst violators of nuclear and other disarmament treaties, and the two biggest holdouts on and flouters of the Landmines Treaty, the Arms Trade Treaty, and the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Justice cannot come out of the barrel of a gun. Nor should a charade of justice serve as propaganda against a war opponent. The very idea of international law depends on the United Nations General Assembly democratically and without bias applying the same standard to all parties. Doing so need, of course, in no way imply the incoherent-but-popular-to-object-to idea that any two actors are equal to each other in any way, or that any two crimes are equal to each other.

We need an honest investigation in Ukraine of the likely violation of dozens of laws by multiple parties, including in the areas of:
• Facilitation of the 2014 coup
• The war in the Donbas from 2014-2022
• The invasion of 2022
• Threats of nuclear war, and the keeping of nuclear weapons in other nations in possible violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty
• The use of cluster bombs and of depleted uranium munitions
• The sabotage of Nord Stream 2
• The targeting of civilians
• Mistreatment of prisoners
• Forced conscription of protected persons and conscientious objectors to military service

Beyond criminal prosecution, we need a process of truth-and-reconciliation. This can only be created by a democratically representative world body that acts independently of imperial powers. We are calling upon the United Nations General Assembly to be that body.

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Open Letter from a Ukrainian Facing Prison for Speaking for Peace

Culture of Peace, Europe, Ukraine

By Yurii Sheliazhenko, World BEYOND War, November 15, 2023
https://worldbeyondwar.org/open-letter-from-a-ukrainian-facing-prison-for-speaking-for-peace/

Greetings from Kyiv. Yesterday my city was disturbed again by air raid sirens, so I ran from Vernadsky scientific library to hide in the closest shelter,  a subway station. Ruthless Russian aggression against Ukraine continues, as well as the Ukrainian defensive war effort. Civilians are dying, cities are being bombarded on both sides of the frontline, and that is the essence of any war — aggressive or defensive — the pure evil of war, which is barbaric mass killing by definition.

The air raid alert didn’t stopped President Zelensky from signing a request to his pocket parliament to continue martial law and compulsory mobilization for another 90 days, and not for the last time: top Ukrainian General Zaluzhny has admitted that the war is a stalemate. This stalemate has already taken more than half a million lives, but enormous losses on the battlefield haven’t changed attitudes in Moscow and Kyiv to fight, not just for months, but for years and years.

The irony is that ambitious plans to win in the indefinite future cause everyday losses in a cruel irrational war of attrition. Corpses buried in trenches, endless graveyards of fallen heroes will make questionable any value of victory if someone even dare to celebrate such after this tragic mess, and I am optimistic about this “after the mess” expectation because some chilling voices on both sides have already said that this war will never end.

It is forbidden to seek peace, peace activists are persecuted, and international initiatives like the Vienna Summit for Peace in Ukraine are falsely portrayed as enemy’s propaganda with personal defamation of organizers and participants. Propaganda of war has become the state ideology; intellectuals are mobilized to serve it and punished for any doubts. Just one example: for long years Jürgen Habermas was an icon for Ukrainian philosophers, but now, after his moderate advocacy of peace talks, they have turned the academic journal “Philosophical Thought” into a quarterly exercise in pamphleteering which should be called more correctly “Philosophical Thought Against Habermas” because there are attacks on Habermas in almost every article.

Structural, existential, fundamentalist militarism poisons our minds and our everyday lives. The hate consumes us. Even pro-war thinkers can’t ignore this. I didn’t expected from Myroslav Marinovich a realist quip that there will never be a ditch with crocodiles between Ukraine and Russia. Sergiy Datsyuk warned quite rightly that the war will never end if people will continue to refuse to think and transform, because the war is exactly how you deal with conflicts without thinking. Any war is dumb indeed. These voices of common sense, however, are rare. Talking to Time magazine about the unrealistic military goals of President Zelensky, a member of his team preferred to be anonymous, and not without reason: immediately after the publication, one of the functionaries in the presidential office called for the “security” service to expose and punish those who don’t believe in victory.

As you probably know, the “Security” Service of Ukraine absurdly accused me, a pacifist, of the so-called justification of Russian aggression in a statement which clearly condemns Russian aggression. They searched my house and took my computer and mobile phone. I am under house arrest now until the end of this year at least, and then a trial could be started: there is a risk that I could be jailed for up for five years. My “crime” was that I sent to President Zelensky a statement entitled “Peace Agenda for Ukraine and the World” which calls for a ceasefire, peace talks, respect for the right to refuse to kill, non-violent democratic governance, and conflict management.

To be precise, that is what is written in the formal notification of suspicion I received, but my real crime in the eyes of militarists is that the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement and I have raised popular awareness about the human right to conscientious objection to military service, which is furiously denied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, contrary to all obligations and commitments according to Constitution of Ukraine, European Convention on Human Rights, and

International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights. The number of people willing to die for the sake of militarism decreases. There are thousands of draft evaders, but it is a pity they are not courageous enough to become antiwar activists. Lacking manpower, instead of changing ambitious plans, Zelensky’s regime still pursues the fantastic goal of making soldiers of the whole population of the country and punishing all those who refuse to kill. So they opened a criminal investigation against me for the thought-crime of pacifism, and started hidden surveillance, and infiltrated agent provocateurs into our organization long before the letter to President Zelensky. His pocket national “security” service has done this because of my human rights defending work, my legal aid to conscientious objectors.

Individual conscience and a serious attitude to peace studies or just to the old commandment “Thou shalt not kill” could easily make you an enemy of the state in Ukraine. Seventh-Day Adventist Dmytro Zelinsky became a prisoner of conscience, thrown into jail for his demand to replace conscription with alternative service. Another prisoner of conscience, Vitaliy Alekseyenko, was released from jail by the Supreme Court but not acquitted, a retrial was ordered with reference to an outdated law which, contrary to the Constitution, grants access to alternative service only in peacetime. I prepared a constitutional complaint for Vitaliy but my notes were seized during the search. I still managed to prepare constitutional complaints in his case and in my case, but the Constitutional Court found procedural pretexts to avoid consideration of both complaints on the merits, so apparently constitutional complaint is not an effective human rights remedy in Ukraine, but I will continue to try this instrument in hope that at some point it will start to work properly.

There always should be hope for peace and justice, it is the worst thing to lose hope. I am persecuted for a dream about the world where everybody refuses to kill and because of that there could be no wars; but even if militarists will imprison me, I hope to continue my human rights work and advocacy of peace from behind the bars. I am convinced that peace is possible, but I don’t expect that peace could be reached in some secret high level talks. Don’t leave the cause of peace to generals and heads of states armed to the teeth!

Recently it was leaked that due to the stalemate on the battlefield some Western officials tried to suggest to their Ukrainian counterparts negotiations with Russia, not because they want peace but because they want to wage war on China and the Arab world, but this high-level pseudo-peace impulse was not welcomed, and even the fact of the stalemate was denied by President Zelensky who still demands more weapons and promises quick victory.

Quiet diplomacy hardly helps against loud militarist arrogance. How could it help when the media calls to war, churches preach war, war chests are full, and budgets for diplomacy are laughably poor? The main problem is that militarism is a structural problem in the West and everywhere following the West’s model — so the West needs to think about how to provide for the rest of the world a more sane and peaceful model to copy. Without the post-Soviet military patriotic upbringing and conscription copied from centuries-old Prussian and French militarism, or the cult of the sacred army, I doubt Russia could have started or Ukraine could have been dragged into the current senseless bloodshed, this pointless waste of lives. Without the Cold-War epoch heritage of the military industrial complex there would be no NATO expansion and no nuclear arsenals in Russia and the United States threatening to kill all life on our planet, insanely pretending it somehow ensures so-called national security. I don’t even know what that means: the security of the graveyard protected from a second death?

I remember parades of nukes on Red Square in Moscow, and I am horrified by a thought that such deadly glory could make people, deceived by propaganda of war, not scared, but proud for their “great country.” And even if there is no radioactive militarist vanity display on the streets of your city, people almost everywhere are proud about having an army, the organization of people trained to kill a lot of people. Only one in ten countries in the world has decided not to have an army; I envy Costa Rica which prohibited creation of army through its Constitution. It hosts a United Nations University for Peace, and most of all I wish that every country could have its own University for Peace, I mean a real peace institution, not just a signboard for another despicable military school. I wish peace education courses would be a part of the curricula of basic education everywhere. I wish when people heard terms like “nonviolent resistance,” and “unarmed civilian protection,” they wouldn’t ask what is that. Propaganda teaches that nonviolence is utopia and total killing of others is supposedly not utopia.

And I wish when a minister of “defence” makes a witty remark like “Go talk about nonviolent resistance to people in Bucha, where the Russian army perpetrated the horrible massacre!” that someone among his audience could tell him: “Actually, I was in Bucha and I learned from locals their experience of nonviolent action; furthermore, I donated to local NGOs and religious organizations to prepare for nonviolent resistance in the future, to protect their right to conscientious objection. Because no violence, even self-defending killing can give hope for a better future; only readiness to resist violence without violence can give hope for a better future.” We need strengthened peace movements, more people engaged, more intellectual and material resources. We need investments in peace — not into weapons, armies and militarized borders, but in nonviolent conflict resolution, peacebuilding dialogues, peace education and human rights initiatives.

Workers humiliated by war should work for peace. Markets robbed by war should give peace a budget. You could start by donating to the ObjectWar Campaign, to provide asylum to conscientious objectors from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Every soldier rescued from the militarist serfdom of conscription weakens warmongers and brings peace closer. All so-called enemies of the West are wannabes copying Western militarist politics and economy; so the best way to end all wars is to discuss at home and abroad profound antiwar reforms and to work on big structural changes towards nonviolent governance. Any pacifist changes in the West will entail pacifist changes everywhere, just as Western militarism generates omnipresent wars.

Without structural changes in our way of thinking and our way of life the war in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East and all other wars will never stop. We need to awaken the popular conscience to make the refusal to kill a preeminent factor in culture and politics. We need to activate popular imagination, produce and popularize more textbooks, or just books, as well as games, films, songs and paintings of the world without violence. It should be easy to imagine and try life without violence. It is called culture of peace, and it is already approved by consensus of the United Nations General Assembly.

People need to believe, discuss and understand the simple truth that it is possible to live without violence, without wars, and in fact it is insane to succumb to violence while deep rooted structures of peace are so powerful and universal that peace could thrive everywhere even in a tragic time of war. Take this preeminent dynamic of peaceful life and develop it in modern democratic institutions, because true democracy is decision-making in conversation with others, in cooperation, knowledge sharing, harmony and service for common good, not in killings, hate, inequality, coercion and dictate. Make reason, truth, and love great powers ruling the world.

A path to peace lies through big structural changes. Our mission, as peace movements, is to move forward and pave the way for the whole family of humankind on the common planet to future knowledge-based nonviolent way of life.

Comment from a Peace Action WI member:

Re: “Investing in Ukraine and Israel is in our cold, hard national interest,” Washington Post Editorial, October 20, 2023

Nothing could be farther from our national interest than to pursue this unfair, futile, and dangerous proxy war against Russia using the Ukrainians as pawns. It was the United States that announced that we would induct Ukraine into NATO after we had promised Russia that we would move NATO “not one inch eastward” if it got out of East Germany. The broken promises, the constant eastward expansion of NATO, the denunciation of the intermediate-missile treaty created a threat no Russian leader could ignore. The Post’s call to arm Ukrainians further and sic them against Russia is American arrogance writ large. It is as preposterous as the Tonkin Gulf resolution claiming that Vietnamese PT boats had attacked the mighty U.S. Navy and this justified carpet bombing of North Vietnam. We need to negotiate a neutral Ukraine with Russia, cut our losses, and get out.

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Yurii Sheliazhenko’s appeal postponed again, the pacifist remains under house arrest

06.10.23 - Pressenza IPA

 On October 3, the hearing was held in Kiev on the appeal presented by Yurii Sheliazhenko against the house arrest measure according to what was reported by the international working group that is following the case of the President of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement accused by his country’s services of activities against the Ukrainian state.

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VETERANS FOR PEACE

Easier Ways to Talk About War and Peace

by David Swanson | Fall 2023 Edition

War and peace could be a very simple issue. We make it very complicated. People say and do things that I simultaneously want to cheer for and condemn.

This week Senator Rand Paul said he wants to stop supporting Ukraine in order to support the United States. The phrase “support Ukraine” is shorthand for fueling a war that is destroying Ukraine, damaging the world, and threatening nuclear apocalypse. “Support Ukraine” means keeping the weapons flowing, in combination with the insistence that the weapons will keep coming as long as Ukraine agrees to not make peace.

Some of the money goes to things other than weapons, and — rather bizarrely — people find this particularly offensive. It’s one thing to fund senseless mass-murder, and quite another to fund human needs — that’s outrageous!

But on the tv show 60 Minutes, it’s the opposite of outrageous. The aid to Ukraine, as this show depicts it, is funding good capitalist entrepreneurs with start-up money and, yes, some of it goes to tanks, but tanks are purely protective devices, like armor, that save lives because the soldiers inside them can’t be shot or blown up with mines. The irony that Bradley Fighting Vehicles exist to kill and destroy is completely and intentionally lost. There’s no bragging about body counts here, just rehearsed gratitude to the brave American people

This war is the top impediment to global cooperation on climate and environment, and a top direct destroyer of the environment. It is the top force shifting resources worldwide into militarism.

The polling is the same. A rapidly increasing percentage of the U.S. public — a majority in some polls, and a plurality in all polls — wants to stop supporting or aiding Ukraine. But what does that mean? What if I want to help Ukraine? What if I consider Ukrainians, and for that matter Somalis and Yemenis and Syrians and Venezuelans, to be exactly as important as U.S. residents? What if I want the U.S. government to drop its opposition to peace talks and drop its commitment to sending more weapons, but send the whole world, including the United States itself, vastly more in actual humanitarian aid? What if aiding Hawaiians is not more important than slaughtering Ukrainians because of what passports Hawaiians have but because killing Ukrainians isn’t supporting or aiding or helping Ukrainians at all?

We live in a very strange age in which spending money on death and destruction is understood as philanthropy, in which the U.S. government badgers other governments to spend money on weapons as a percentage of their economies, as if weapons are a public good, a service that global citizens must provide. Once you’ve internalized the idea that militarism is good for you, even though it leads to wars, and even though tiny percentages of that money could eliminate poverty or create a green new deal beyond the wildest fantasies of green new dealers, and once you’ve committed your mind to believing that victory is eternally imminent, and that the enemy is a monstrous and magical threat to the mysterious force of freedom (even as Ukraine bans elections, opposition parties, and free speech, and the U.S. Democratic Party effectively eliminates primaries), it’s only going to confirm your commitment to war when you see that the only Congress Members who oppose it are selfish hypocrites pushing voodoo economics.

Rand Paul wants to hoard all the resources for this 4 percent of humanity, on top of which he’s lying because we all know he no more wants to spend a dime on Hawaiians or Virginians or anybody else than he does on Ukrainians. But if Ilhan Omar won’t oppose so-called aiding Ukraine while Rand Paul and Henry Kissinger and Donald Trump will, can there be any question which position is the one for a good caring person?

Yes, as a matter of fact there can be. Does anyone remember learning about the error of argument from authority? Aren’t we practically conditioned to scream “follow the science”? Don’t we claim to value independent thought? Doesn’t UVA still teach that bit of Jefferson about the need for an informed populace? Well, what all of that means is that something isn’t true because of who agrees with it, but because it actually makes sense to you as a responsible thinking person.

The war in Ukraine, both sides quietly admit while shouting the opposite, is an endless quagmire. And if you believe either side’s fantasy about total victory, please consider how such a victory could possibly be lasting, sustainable, or just. This is a war over not allowing the people of Crimea and Donbas to choose their own fate. That’s the opposite of democracy, and neither success nor failure for whichever side you’re on would last even if it were in any way likely to happen.

This war ends with compromise or with nuclear apocalypse. Risking nuclear apocalypse is insane, while being normal and accepted practice. Independent thinking means rejecting that. This war is the top impediment to global cooperation on climate and environment, and a top direct destroyer of the environment. It is the top force shifting resources worldwide into militarism. It is the justification for spying on everything we do and curtailing rather than expanding our rights. It teaches bigotry and dehumanization. And it teaches, exactly contrary to what we teach our children, but in perfect alignment with thousands of movies on Netflix and Amazon, that compromise is evil, that holding out for total destruction of someone else is admirable, and that violence solves problems.

Have we ever really come to grips with the fact that less than 3% of U.S. military spending could end starvation on Earth? Military spending is so enormous that fractions of it could transform the world, including the United States. There’s no need for this selfish choosing of us or them. And actually aiding the world would generate many fewer enemies than bombing it. Unlike normal countries, the United States counts as 40 percent of its so-called foreign aid, weapons for foreign militaries. Its biggest recipients are Ukraine, Afghanistan, Israel, and Egypt. And yet, as a percentage of income, many other countries’ actual foreign aid is greater than that of the United States, weapons included.

Perhaps we should frown a little on all the free weapons for Egypt, because a Senator has gold bars in his closet for making that happen. But have we forgotten Congress Members bragging about what they would earn from weapons stocks on Wall Street through fueling the war in Ukraine? Have we forgotten that opposing free weapons for Israel will earn you a well-funded primary challenger and banishment from committees and television appearances? It’s not all about gold bars. In fact, in a system of legalized campaign bribery, Saudi-funded stink tanks, Pentagon funded movies and video games and pre-game celebrations, and revolving doors between weapons dealers and media outlets and so-called public service, gold bars are more an indication of stupidity than of any sort of unusual corruption.

War and peace can be a simpler question. Mass murder is evil. It’s evil when Russia does it. It’s evil when the United States does it. It’s evil when Ukraine does it. Compromise and peace have always been possible and preferable. It just gets harder the longer a war drags on. And that’s a dangerous trend when the alternative is nuclear escalation. Allowing the people in the disputed territories to choose their own fate is democratic. Drafting people into mandatory barbarism, and imprisoning those who object, as both Russia and Ukraine are doing, is the opposite of democracy.

The U.S. is party to fewer major human rights treaties than any other nation on Earth, is the greatest saboteur of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, the greatest abuser of the veto in the United Nations (Zelensky is right to want it gone), the greatest violator of treaties related to war and peace and disarmament, the most frequent shredder of treaties it was party to, the greatest violator of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, standing outside the Land Mines, Arms Trade, and Cluster Munitions treaties. The top weapons dealer, coup-trainer, and— by many measures — Earth destroyer, it should shut up about the rules based order and catch up with those who support one, including the 47 nations that have pushed the United Nations for peace negotiations in Ukraine.

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WUWM on NPR’s Morning Edition  ran this story nationally (https://www.npr.org/2023/09/21/1200738343/bidens-plan-to-send-more-aid-to-ukraine-is-criticized-by-voters-in-wisconsin) about voices on both the right and the left concerned with the ongoing war in Ukraine, and calling for negotiations rather than escalation and sending more military equipment from the US.

This included wounded Vietnam veteran Mark Foreman from Milwaukee Veterans for Peace, in reference to the recent visit by VFP’s Golden Rule sailboat to MKE. 

We should thank Chuck Quirmbach for preparing and submitting that report ([email protected]).

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Ray McGovern's September 21 Peace Action of WI presentation on his view of the war in Ukraine + Q and A. Link is below

https://youtu.be/cc-aO2go3Y4?t=250

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CODE PINK

Tell Congress: Peace Now! No More Weapons to Ukraine!

On October 4, CODEPINK and the Peace in Ukraine coalition will deliver this petition to every member of the Senate Foreign Relations committee. We have one month to collect as many signatures as possible! Sign below and send this to 5 of your friends!

We, the undersigned, call on every member of the United States Congress to vote NO  on new weapons for the Russia-Ukraine-NATO war. President Biden’s latest request for another $24 billion –most of that for weapons and military training – will put the cost of this war at nearly $140 billion for US taxpayers, most of whom live paycheck to paycheck, struggling to make ends meet. There is no military solution to this war, only heartache as the U.S. escalates a proxy war between Russia and the United States, the two most nuclear armed nations.

We need Congress to support a mutual ceasefire and diplomatic resolution that addresses the security concerns of all stakeholders–not more weapons to throw gasoline on the fire and risk nuclear war.

A new CNN poll reveals 55% of Americans oppose spending more money to continue the war in Ukraine. The answer is not more cluster munitions, depleted uranium shells, long range fighter jets or nuclear-capable F-16s. More weapons will only line the coffers of weapons manufacturers in the U.S., while pushing the world to the precipice of World War III. To stop the killing and bring this war to an end, we urge you to vote NO on   future Ukraine war funding requests and take a public stand in support of a ceasefire and peace talks.

https://www.codepink.org/peacenow23

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https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/blinken-us-does-not-oppose-ukrainian?r=1h66kd&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Blinken: US Does Not Oppose Ukrainian Attacks Inside Russia With US-Supplied Missiles

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

SEP 11, 2023

During an appearance on ABC’s This Week with Jonathan Karl, Secretary of State Tony Blinken explicitly said that the US would not oppose Ukraine using US-supplied longer-range missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory, a move that Moscow has previously called a “red line” which would make the United States a direct party to the conflict.

“We understand that the United States is considering sending those long-range missiles that Ukraine has been asking for for a long time,” Karl said in the interview. “These are long-range missiles, 200 miles in range. Are you okay if those missiles allow Ukraine to attack deep into Russian territory?”

“In terms of their targeting decisions, it’s their decision, not ours,” answered Blinken after some bloviation.

“We’ve seen an increasing number of attacks on Russian territory by Ukrainian drones, some in Moscow, Rostov-on-Don just a couple of days ago. Did you bring that up?” asked Karl.

“No,” said Blinken.

“Are you — are you okay with — I mean, obviously, they’re — it’s their decisions, but is this war now escalating into Russia?” asked Karl.

“ Jon, we haven’t encouraged and we haven’t enabled any use of weapons outside of Ukraine’s territory,” Blinken said. “Having said that, let’s take a step back for a second. Virtually every single day the Russians are attacking indiscriminately throughout the entire country of Ukraine. Just during the 48 hours that I was there going in, more missiles were launched at civilian targets, including in Kyiv while I was there; a horrific attack on a marketplace, people just going to buy food, civilians, had nothing to do with this war — killed 17 people. This is the daily life for Ukrainians. This is what they face every single day. So they have to make the basic decisions about how they’re going to defend their territory and how they’re working to take back what’s been seized from them. Our role, the role of dozens of other countries around the world that are supporting them, is to help them do that. And ultimately, what we all want is an end to this Russian aggression and an end to the aggression that, again, is just and is durable. That’s what Ukrainians want more than anyone else. That’s what we’re working toward.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7rv684DaVQ

 

Putin has showed no ‘interest in meaningful diplomacy’: Secretary Blinken | This Week ABC News’ Jon Karl interviews Secretary of State Antony Blinken on “This Week.” SUBSCRIBE to ABC News: https://bit.ly/2vZb6yP WATCH MORE on http://abcnews.go.com/ THIS WEEK: https://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek LIKE ABC News on FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/abcnews FOLLOW ABC News on TWITTER: https://twitter.com/abc #ABCNews #ThisWeek # ... www.youtube.com

The interview then concluded without any further follow-up from Karl. By successfully winding down the clock babbling about what Ukraine has a right to do, Blinken avoided discussing the real issue of what the US itself is doing. Nobody disputes that Ukraine has a right to attack Russian territory; Russia is attacking Ukrainian territory, so of course Ukraine has a right to retaliate. That is not being seriously debated anywhere. What’s being debated is whether the US should be backing those attacks, because doing so could lead to nuclear war.

A year ago when Ukraine first started urging the United States to send it the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) — which has nearly four times the range of the HIMARS weapons the US has been supplying — Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova immediately responded with a warning that their use on Russian territory would make the US a direct participant in the conflict, and Russia would respond accordingly.

“If Washington decides to supply longer-range missiles to Kyiv, then it will be crossing a red line, and will become a direct party to the conflict,” Zakharova said, adding that Russia “reserves the right to defend its territory.”

As Michael Tracey noted on Twitter, Blinken was saying last year that Ukraine had provided assurances to the US that it would not use the other weapons systems the US has been supplying “against targets on Russian territory.” Going by Blinken’s current statements and the attacks we’ve been seeing from Ukraine inside the Russian Federation, this agreement appears no longer to be in place. Blinken has already previously voiced support for Ukrainian use of US-supplied weapons in Crimea, and now he’s saying the US is fine with any US-supplied weapons being used on any Russian territory.

Which means there appears to have been yet another massive escalation between nuclear superpowers, which is once again going alarmingly under-reported by the western press

https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1701067365222346769

In an article published in Antiwar this past July titled “ATACMS: Be Very Afraid of This Acronym,” West Suburban Peace Coalition president Walt Zlotow wrote that this missile system “has potential to draw the US and NATO into all out war with Russia”:

ATACMS are long range US missiles that can strike up to 190 miles. Top US officials, likely including President Biden, are seriously considering giving ATACMS to Ukraine in their battle to take back all Russian gains in Ukraine, including Crimea. They can reach both Crimea and the Russian mainland.

If so used by Ukraine to attack Russia, it may be a missile too far that could ignite Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Further escalation into nuclear confrontation between Russia and the US/NATO alliance seeking Russia’s defeat becomes more likely.

The US and its allies keep providing Ukraine with more and more offensive weapons that they had previously refused to supply for fear of getting drawn into the war and provoking a nuclear conflict. Last year Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov correctly predicted that the US would wind up supplying the tanks, F-16s and ATACMS it had previously deemed too escalatory, because that had already been established as the trend from the beginning of the war.

“When I was in D.C. in November, before the invasion, and asked for Stingers, they told me it was impossible,” Reznikov told The New Yorker last year. “Now it’s possible. When I asked for 155-millimetre guns, the answer was no. HIMARS, no. HARM, no. Now all of that is a yes.” He added, “Therefore, I’m certain that tomorrow there will be tanks and ATACMS and F-16s.”

https://twitter.com/RStatecraft/status/1618368242300452865

As Branko Marcetic explained earlier this year in an article for Responsible Statecraft titled “Mission Creep? How the US role in Ukraine has slowly escalated,” this continual pattern of escalation is actually incentivizing Russia to start taking aggressive action against western powers so that its warnings and red lines will cease being ignored.

“By escalating their support for Ukraine’s military, the U.S. and NATO have created an incentive structure for Moscow to take a drastic, aggressive step to show the seriousness of its own red lines,” Marcetic writes. “This would be dangerous at the best of times, but particularly so when Russian officials are making clear they increasingly view the war as one against NATO as a whole, not merely Ukraine, while threatening nuclear response to the alliance’s escalation in weapons deliveries.”

“Moscow keeps saying escalatory arms transfers are unacceptable and could mean wider war; U.S. officials say since Moscow hasn’t acted on those threats, they can freely escalate. Russia is effectively told it has to escalate to show it’s serious about lines,” Marcetic added on Twitter.

And it’s just so strange how this isn’t the main thing everyone talks about all the time. The fact that we are drawing closer and closer to nuclear conflict should dominate headlines every single day, and the subject of how to avoid planetary disaster should be the constant focus of mainstream political discourse. But it isn’t, because that would interfere with the grand chessboard maneuverings of a globe-dominating empire working to secure unipolar planetary domination by undermining disobedient nations like Russia and China.

It’s hard to think about the end of the world. It’s hard to even wrap your mind around it, much less stand staring into the harsh white light of deep contemplation about what it is and what it would mean. A lot of cognitive dissonance and discomfort comes up, and it’s easier to shift one’s attention to something easier to chew on like the presidential race.

But this is something that urgently needs to be looked at. Because the people steering our world today appear to be driving blind.

 

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An excellent talk on Ukraine and NATO. Share with those wanting to learn the background.

Ukraine and the Expansion of NATO – Jeffrey Sachs – VFPConvention2023 | Veterans for Peace 

 

Ukraine and the Expansion of NATO – Jeffrey Sachs – VFPConvention2023 The crimes related to this current violence in Ukraine began long before Russia invaded Ukraine. Thank you to Je...

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The Urgency of Pursuing Peace in Ukraine: Event with Keynote Speaker Cornel West

As the war in Ukraine continues to intensify, with the growing danger of a direct U.S. confrontation with Russia, Peace in Ukraine and CODEPINK are launching a new action plan focusing on Congress called: “The Urgency of Pursuing Peace in Ukraine.” We will be asking our elected officials to answer the question: What is your peace plan?

The launch will feature an evening talk including Dr. Cornel West and other key speakers, followed the next morning by an interfaith press conference and a National Advocacy Day. While some advocates will be advocating on Capitol Hill, local constituents will be calling in or joining the DC meetings by zoom.

These events are designed to educate, inspire and mobilize people to action. We must get serious about putting this Congress and administration on notice that they must reverse their present course, which is taking us to the precipice of a nuclear confrontation. Instead, they must join us in calling for a ceasefire and negotiations to end this terrible conflict that is spinning out of control. 

*MUST RSVP to enter in-person venue!

 RSVP for live stream link!

Tue, Oct 03, 7pm-9:30pm ET

Co-sponsored by Peace in Ukraine Coalition, CODEPINK, ANSWER, WILPF- US, Massachusetts Peace Action, World BEYOND War, UNAC, Veterans for Peace National, RootsAction, Pax Christi USA, North Alabama Peace Network, Veterans For Peace Linus Pauling Chapter 132, Our Revolution Hawaii, Portland Peaceful Response Coalition,Veterans For Peace: Spokane Chapter #35, Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives, Phoenix Antiwar Coalition, New England Peace Pagoda, Family Mediation Center, Inc., US Interfaith Peace Working Group, Mt Diablo, Peace and Justice Center, East Bay DSA International Solidarity Committee, Diáspora Pa’lante Collective...

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Big Brave Western Proxy Warriors Keep Whining That Ukrainian Troops Are Cowards

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

AUG 19, 2023

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

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Amid continuous news that the Ukrainian counteroffensive which began in June is not going as hoped, The New York Times has published an article titled “Troop Deaths and Injuries in Ukraine War Near 500,000, U.S. Officials Say.” 

Reporting that Ukrainian efforts to retake Russia-occupied territory have been “bogged down in dense Russian minefields under constant fire from artillery and helicopter gunships,” The New York Times reports that Ukrainian forces have switched tactics to using “artillery and long-range missiles instead of plunging into minefields under fire.”

Then the article gets really freaky:

“American officials are worried that Ukraine’s adjustments will race through precious ammunition supplies, which could benefit President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and disadvantage Ukraine in a war of attrition. But Ukrainian commanders decided the pivot reduced casualties and preserved their frontline fighting force.

“American officials say they fear that Ukraine has become casualty averse, one reason it has been cautious about pressing ahead with the counteroffensive. Almost any big push against dug-in Russian defenders protected by minefields would result in huge numbers of losses.”

I’m sorry, US officials “fear” that Ukraine is becoming “casualty averse”? Because safer battlefield tactics that burn through a lot of ammunition don’t chew through lives like charging through a minefield under heavy artillery fire?

What are the Ukrainians supposed to be? Casualty amenable? If Ukraine was more casualty amenable, would it be more willing to throw young bodies into the gears of this proxy war that the US empire actively provoked and killed peace deals to maintain?

Something tells me that the US officials speaking to The New York Times about their “fear” of Ukrainian casualty aversiveness do not know what real fear is. Something tells me that if you marched these US officials through Russian minefields under constant fire from artillery and helicopter gunships, then they would understand fear.

Western officials have been spending the last few weeks whining to the media that Ukraine’s inability to gain ground is due to an irrational aversion to being killed. They’ve been decrying Ukrainian cowardice to the press under cover of anonymity, from behind the safety of their office desks.

In an article published Thursday titled “U.S. intelligence says Ukraine will fail to meet offensive’s key goal,” The Washington Post cited anonymous “U.S. and Western officials” to report that the massive losses Ukraine has been suffering in this counteroffensive had been “anticipated” in war games ahead of time, but that they had “envisioned Kyiv accepting the casualties as the cost of piercing through Russia’s main defensive line.”

The same article quotes Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba telling critics of the counteroffensive to “go and join the foreign legion” if they don’t like the results so far, adding, “It’s easy to say that you want everything to be faster when you are not there.”

In an article published last month titled “U.S. Cluster Munitions Arrive in Ukraine, but Impact on Battlefield Remains Unclear,” The New York Times reported unnamed senior US officials had “privately expressed frustration” that Ukrainian commanders “fearing increased casualties among their ranks” were switching to artillery barrages, “rather than sticking with the Western tactics and pressing harder to breach the Russian defenses.”

“Why don’t they come and do it themselves?” a former Ukrainian defense minister told The New York Times in response to the American criticism.

In an article last month titled “Ukraine’s Lack of Weaponry and Training Risks Stalemate in Fight With Russia,” The Wall Street Journal reported that unnamed western military officials “knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons” needed to dislodge Russia, but that they had “hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day” anyway. 

“It didn’t,” Wall Street Journal added.

In the same article, The Wall Street Journal cited a US Army War College professor named John Nagle admitting that the US itself would never attempt the kind of counteroffensive it’s been pushing Ukrainians into attempting.

“America would never attempt to defeat a prepared defense without air superiority, but they [Ukrainians] don’t have air superiority,” Nagl said, adding, “It’s impossible to overstate how important air superiority is for fighting a ground fight at a reasonable cost in casualties.”

And now we’re seeing reports in the mass media that US officials — still under cover of anonymity of course — are beginning to wonder if perhaps it might have been better to try to negotiate peace instead of launching this counteroffensive that they knew was doomed from the beginning. 

In an article titled “Milley had a point,” Politico cites multiple anonymous US officials saying that as “the realities of the counteroffensive are sinking in around Washington,” empire managers are beginning to wonder if they should have heeded outgoing Joint Chiefs chair Mark Milley’s suggestion back in November that it was a good time to consider peace talks.

“We may have missed a window to push for earlier talks,” one anonymous official says, adding, “Milley had a point.”

Oops. Oops they made a little oopsie poopsie. Oh well, it’s only Ukrainian lives.

Imagine reading through all this as a Ukrainian, especially a Ukrainian who’s lost a home or a loved one to this war. I imagine white hot tears pouring down my face. I imagine rage, and I imagine overwhelming frustration.

This whole war could have been avoided with a little diplomacy and a few mild concessions to Moscow. It could have been stopped in the early weeks of the conflict back when a tentative peace agreement had been struck. It could have been stopped back in November before this catastrophic counteroffensive.

But it wasn’t. The US had an agenda to lock Moscow into a costly military quagmire with the goal of weakening Russia, and to this day US officials openly boast about all this war is doing to advance US interests. So they’ve kept it going, using Ukrainian bodies as a giant sponge to soak up as many expensive military explosives as possible to drain Russian coffers while advancing US energy interests in Europe and keeping Moscow preoccupied while the empire orchestrates its next move against China.

Last month The Washington Post’s David Ignatius wrote an article explaining why westerners shouldn’t “feel gloomy” about how things are going in Ukraine, writing the following about how much this war is doing to benefit US interests overseas:

“Meanwhile, for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians). The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked. NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values. NATO squabbles make headlines, but overall, this has been a triumphal summer for the alliance.”

“Other than for the Ukrainians” he says, as a parenthetical aside.

Everyone who supported this horrifying proxy war should have that paragraph tattooed on their forehead.

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They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine.

CHRIS HEDGES

JUL 2, 2023

The playbook the pimps of war use to lure us into one military fiasco after another, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, does not change. Freedom and democracy are threatened. Evil must be vanquished. Human rights must be protected. The fate of Europe and NATO, along with a “rules based international order” is at stake. Victory is assured.

The results are also the same. The justifications and narratives are exposed as lies. The cheery prognosis is false. Those on whose behalf we are supposedly fighting are as venal as those we are fighting against.......

 

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JUNE 30, 2023

Destroying Eastern Ukraine to Save It

BY MATTHEW HOH

Following an essay I published earlier this month and the letter the Eisenhower Media Network ran in The New York Times in May, I have heard forceful and passionate protests that Russia had no other option but to invade Ukraine in February 2022. Frankly, I find quite bewildering and concerning this intense insistence that the only option available to Russia was to launch a cross-border invasion, conduct a deliberate occupation of a sovereign country, and commit a clear violation of the Nuremberg Principles and international law.

So far, pre-emptive invasion and occupation have resulted in the deaths and wounding of hundreds of thousands; created over 10 million internal and external refugees, including roughly 3 million into Russia; initiated massive and lasting environmental destruction; and threatened a nuclear world war through dangerous escalation. 

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MEDEA BEJAMIN RETURING FROM UKRAINE;

Why There's No PEACE Movement From the Left in America (w/ Medea Benjamin)

Jun 26, 2023

This week, I spoke to Code Pink co-founder and anti-war activist Madea Benjamin as she returned from Ukraine about what peace really means, and out to distinguish good faith anti-war commitments from mere political rhetoric as we evaluate 2024 candidates. Also, what's going on with the lack of a peace movement from left elected, and what exactly went wrong at the Rage Against the War Machine rally? Listen to or watch the full episode at https://www.patreon.com/badfaithpodcast. Subscribe to Bad Faith on YouTube to access our full video library. Find Bad Faith on Twitter (@badfaithpod) and Instagram (@badfaithpod). Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands

A prominent Russian strategist, fearing that humanity has become "desensitized" to the risk of a nuclear war, is suggesting that the only way to prevent an all-out global apocalypse would be to detonate a single nuclear bomb in hopes that the resulting devastation would awaken such a profound mortal terror that no one would be able to consider launching a global nuclear exchange.

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Sergey Karaganov's controversial essay is now being widely debated, debunked, and/or defended. That such a debate is even taking place should terrify everyone on our planet.

— Gar Smith

Why Russia "Needs to Consider a Nuclear Strike"

Here’s Why Russia Has to Consider Launching a Nuclear Strike on Western Europe 

RT News

This month, there has been an active debate in Russia about the possibility of Moscow preemptively using nuclear weapons. Which would be at variance with the established doctrine. It began after the publication of an article by Professor Sergey Karaganov, which prompted a wide response from the domestic expert community. 

While Karaganov has been advocating relaxing the rules, others have different opinions: for example, Fyodor Lukyanov  thinks the West cannot be 'sobered up' by using the bomb, and Ilya Fabrichnikov believes Russia should not 'take NATO's bait' and unleash the ultimate weapon. 

This is Karaganov’s follow up response to his critics.

If Things Continue as They Are, Moscow Will Have 
No Choice but To Use the Ultimate Weapon

Sergey Karaganov / RT News

MOSCOW (June 27, 2023) — During over seventy years of mutual deterrence, atomic weapons have saved the world. People just took this for granted. However, now we see that things have changed and the unthinkable is happening: the West is responsible for a major war in the underbelly of a major nuclear power.

The official history of the creation of these weapons is known, but in my opinion there is also a higher power at play. It is as if the Lord God saw that a large part of humanity had gone mad, having started two world wars in a generation, and gave us these nuclear weapons, which are weapons of the apocalypse. He wanted them to be, to be in the front of our minds, at all times, and to scare us. 

But now people have lost their fear.

Over the last few decades in the United States, Western Europe and even partly in Russia, what I call “strategic parasitism” has spread: the belief that there can never be a major war and that there will never be a major war. People are accustomed to peace, and it is on this basis that modern Western ideology has grown. In addition, there is now an unprecedented amount of propaganda around, to an extent unprecedented event during the Cold War. 

People are simply being fed lies, and they are afraid to say what they really think. As a result of more than 70 years of peace, the public's sense of self-preservation has become dysfunctional, and it is further stifled by the extraordinarily virulent agitprop, part of which claims that Russia would never be able to attack Western Europe. 

Official Western propaganda pumps the idea that the West can do anything it likes and Moscow will just put up with it. This has now become very clear and vivid.

In recent years, Russia has begun to strengthen its nuclear deterrent, but the steps taken so far are woefully inadequate. We, too, became complacent at some point, following Western theories and recklessly overestimating the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, which the West is now exploiting, and not by accident either. The little bureaucrats there keep saying: no, the Russians will never use nuclear weapons. 

They do not want to hear anything different under any circumstances, as they don’t want to interrupt their desire for an endless war in Ukraine. Because their military-industrial complex is greater than ours, they just want to wear us down.

I hope we never use nuclear weapons, but the fact that we refuse to allow their use in all situations except in the case of mortal danger to the state itself seems to me to be reckless.

The US is tying Russia's hands in this way, hoping that in the long run this long war will cause an internal implosion. And, as a result, this would radically weaken its main rival, China, which will be left to fend for itself. 

This is a strategic plan that is absolutely clear.

At the same time, having already thrown the Ukrainian people into the furnace, the Americans are pushing the Western Europeans into the same place, destroying the status they have held for five centuries. This policy also solves another problem — it destroys the Old World as a strategic player and potential competitor. In turn, the captured West European elites are driving their countries and peoples into the ground. 

We would like to believe that our adversaries will come to their senses. Because if they don't, Russia's political-military leadership will be faced with a terrible moral choice and the need to make a hard decision. But I believe that our president must demonstrate his willingness to use nuclear weapons at some point.

But the question is who could and should be the target of such an attack. The Americans, as we all know, have been shamelessly lying when they say that we are preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Ukraine. This is monstrous nonsense, absolutely malicious, because of course the Ukrainians are a miserable, deluded people who are being driven to slaughter. But they are still our people, and we are not going to hit them. 

If there are to be nuclear strikes, they should be aimed at countries in Western Europe that have been most supportive of the mercenary regime in Kiev.

Fortunately, we have begun to take steps up the ladder of nuclear deterrence. But we need to move faster and more decisively, even though their use would be, of course, a monstrous step and should be avoided if possible. But as the vector of development of the West, its elites and society — and its movement towards anti-human and post-human values show — all this clearly indicates an objective drift to an eventual thermonuclear war. We have to interrupt this process and save the world — avoiding, of course, super-violent actions if possible.

We have time, but we must realize that it is rather short. We have to use these few years to solve the problem of the West, to make it step back and mind its own business, because now, to distract from its own internal issues, it is trying to start wars all over the world.

Launching the current military operation was an important — and certainly correct — step, although in my view it should have been taken earlier. There are a number of other moves that can be made. In particular, it is worth making it clear to everyone in the West that any attack on Belarus will be equated to a blow to Russia and will have similar consequences.

Possible Russian measures could also include missile redeployments, tests of our strategic missiles at close range, as well as psychological actions and even the severing of diplomatic relations with those countries that play the most active Russophobic roles. Also possible is a measure such as warning all Russian speakers, all citizens of the former Soviet Union, and all people of goodwill to leave places that are potential targets of a nuclear strike. 

This too could be a potentially powerful tool of deterrence. And all these people do not have to go to Russia: let them go to other states that do not have military facilities and do not help the Kiev regime and do not supply it with weapons and money — there are many such countries. People should return to Russia not out of fear, but out of their own free will.

When discussing a hypothetical atomic attack on Western Europe, the question arises: how would the US answer? Virtually all experts agree that under no circumstances would the Americans respond to a nuclear attack on their allies with a nuclear attack on our territory. Incidentally, even Biden has said so openly.

Russian military experts, however, believe that a massive conventional retaliatory strike could follow. It could be pointed out that this would be followed by even more massive nuclear strikes. And they would finish off Western Europe as a geopolitical entity. Which, of course, would be undesirable because, after all, we are to some extent Europeans and, to use Dostoyevsky's words, the old European stones are not alien to us.

When discussing such scenarios, the subject of China and its position inevitably comes up. Our strategic goals are the same, but our operational goals differ, of course. And if I were Chinese, I wouldn't be in a hurry to end the conflict in Ukraine, because it diverts US and Western attention and military power away from them and gives Beijing an opportunity to accumulate strength.

It's a perfectly normal, I would say respectful, position. And of course I do not want nuclear weapons to be used. First of all, for moral and ethical reasons: I think the Chinese and I agree on that.

And secondly, because the Chinese still have a small nuclear capability, it is undesirable for them to start a military and political competition in this area right now. In ten years' time they will have a first-class nuclear capability (and even in five to seven years' time their situation will change), and then the best option to prevent a major thermonuclear war will be to have a more powerful China in the front line, with Russia supporting and covering it, as the Chinese are supporting us now.

I fully understand the moral anguish of people who say: under no circumstances is the use of nuclear weapons conceivable or acceptable. To which I reply: my friends, I respect pacifists, but they exist and live in this world only because soldiers fight and die for them, just as our soldiers and officers are fighting now in Ukraine.

Professor Sergey Karaganov is the honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow

Related

• The US and its allies are playing 'Russian Roulette'. You'd almost think they want a nuclear war

https://www.rt.com/russia/578446-dmitry-trenin-sergey-karaganov/

• Why Russia cannot ‘sober up the West’ by using a nuclear bomb

https://www.rt.com/russia/578721-why-russia-cannot-sober-up-the-west/

• ‘Using nuclear war to save the world is like using a guillotine for a headache’: Russian experts respond to call for atomic strike

https://www.rt.com/russia/578218-experts-respond-to-call-for-atomic-strike/

• Why I disagree with the call for Russia to use its nuclear weapons against the West

https://www.rt.com/russia/578165-russia-shouldnt-use-nuclear-weapon/

 

Comment

Coleen Rowley — Karaganov is absolutely right in my opinion up to a point, including about the Western public being now so largely desensitized to the prospect of nuclear war that serves to erode (if not end) our prior consensus of "mutually assured destruction" that has, up till now, prevented a WWIII between nuclear superpowers. 

The media and mind control in the West is so effective that almost no one worries about the nuclear escalation that is clearly happening.  (As the NYC PSA put out, we just need to go inside and shut our windows.)

I don't think there is a right answer to the Russian experts' debate itself as to whether a limited nuclear strike on Europe (and then the retaliatory strikes that would follow) would serve to wake up ("sober up") the West and prevent total Armageddon (Karaganov's theory) or whether Russia's "taking the bait" to launch a nuclear strike (just as it's claimed they took the bait in launching their "strategic military operation" in Ukraine last year) will just quickly escalate to all-out Armageddon anyway (Karaganov's critics' theory who say launching a nuclear first strike to theoretically stop total destruction is like using a guillotine to treat a headache). 

Formulating the correct answer to that unbelievably sickening debate is like counting angels dancing on the head of the pin.  But what IS clear is that Western leaders either see this all as mere Russian bluffing or simply don't care if the world is destroyed--perhaps some like a Lindsey Graham (who lack ties to other humans but are totally power-driven) are all in, aka let's go for broke "Total War." 

 

Karanganov may well hope or intend that these more serious threats that undergird this latest Russian "debate" serve to finally wisen/wake/sober-up the West but I'm pessimistic.  That's a "Hail Mary" in my opinion at this point.  Psychopaths like Sullivan-Blinken-Nuland Ilk are possessed not only of enormous self-confidence (actually blinding arrogance) but also of enormous focus and drive and leadership "courage," so will likely not be distracted by such worries.  

The only good answer is to end the war in Ukraine but the reality is — barring a major miracle — we, the people of the world, are doomed. 

Max Blumenthal addresses UN Security Council on Ukraine aid

62,727 views Jun 29, 2023 #TheGrayzone

Watch The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal address the UN Security Council on the role of US military aid to Ukraine in escalating the conflict with Russia and the real motives behind Washington's support for Kiev's proxy war.

 

MAX BLUMENTHAL

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America's state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.

 

Yurii Sheliazhenko <[email protected]>	Ukrainian Peace Activist

This video is banned in Ukraine, so I watched it here https://media.un.org/en/asset/k10/k10qe57xan

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War in Ukraine Was Provoked, That Matters to Achieve Peace

The question of NATO enlargement is at the center of this war, we understand why U.S. weaponry will not end this war. Only diplomatic efforts can do that.

• JEFFREY SACHS
• MAY 31, 2023

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Opinion | What you can do to prevent nuclear war

Capitol Times in Madison, WI

May 24,2023

• By Stefania Sani and Janet Parker | guest column

• The Biden administration has just approved using U.S. weapons to attack Crimea, a horrifying leap closer to nuclear war. We agree with journalist Caitlin Johnstone’s response, “Everyone on earth should be shouting a loud, unequivocal 'no' to this at the top of their lungs.”

  Some are. Last week, an open letter from the Eisenhower Media Network to the Biden administration was published as a full-page ad in the New York Times from a group of former military, intelligence and civilian national security officials. Their headline: “The U.S. Should Be a Force for Peace in the World.”

  The letter begins: “The Russia-Ukraine War has been an unmitigated disaster. Hundreds of thousands have been killed or wounded. Millions have been displaced. Environmental and economic destruction have been incalculable. Future devastation could be exponentially greater as nuclear powers creep ever closer toward open war.

  "We deplore the violence, war crimes, indiscriminate missile strikes, terrorism, and other atrocities that are part of this war. The solution to this shocking violence is not more weapons or more war, with their guarantee of further death and destruction.

  "As Americans and national security experts, we urge President Biden and Congress to use their full power to end the Russia-Ukraine War speedily through diplomacy, especially given the grave dangers of military escalation that could spiral out of control.”

  What a welcome development! More welcome news: Peace in Ukraine Coalition’s ceasefire and diplomacy petition will be printed this week in The Hill, a widely-read Capitol Hill newspaper.

  And what are we doing in Wisconsin? Our group, Madison for a World BEYOND War, speaks up publicly to defuse nuclear war. We have done 31 War Abolition Walks in Madison since April 2022 to call for an end to the war in Ukraine, and all war. On May 6, we were part of WI vs WW3, an antiwar demonstration at the Capitol during Farmers Market on the Square. It was a big-tent event, organized by unusual collaborators — veterans, libertarians, socialists, Catholics, Quakers and Democrats. In March, we helped host the 20th Midwest Catholic Worker Faith & Resistance Gathering, which brought together well over 100 people to resist the F-35 fighter jets and war.

  War is organized mass murder. We are part of a growing global movement for war abolition. Wars end in negotiations. Why not skip the killing and start with negotiating? Almost all human conflicts are resolved nonviolently, between individuals and between nations. Only a tiny number of conflicts lead to people killing each other. But once wars get started, they are addictive and terribly hard to stop. We are doing all we can so that the war in Ukraine ends in negotiations, not nuclear annihilation.

  We at World Beyond War don’t take sides. In war, the only winners are the people selling the weapons. We call for a ceasefire and negotiations in Ukraine. Our message is: Let’s not annihilate ourselves with nuclear weapons.

  We honor the brave war resisters in Russia, the hundreds of thousands of people who have demonstrated, spoken out and refused to be drafted into the military. We honor the Ukrainian conscientious objectors who have fled the country to avoid being drafted, and other Ukrainians who have been prosecuted and jailed for draft resistance — Ukrainian and Russian antiwar activists are heroes. Let’s follow their examples and speak out.

  In Madison, we do War Abolition Walks together most weeks. We hold signs that say, “Defuse Nuclear War” and “Weapons Makers Are the Only Winners.” Often, we visit the offices of our members of Congress. Will you join us?

  Stefania Sani and Janet Parker are co-coordinators at Madison for a World BEYOND War.

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(Non-Violence is the only path to peace)

Dear Russia-Had-No-Choice Friends https://worldbeyondwar.org/dear-russia-had-no-choice-friends/ By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 24, 2023 Here’s a terrible “syllogism” from a wonderful person, Ray McGovern, longtime CIA employee, then longtime peace activist, and now year-long contender that Russia had no choice but to attack Ukraine. “The Russians had other options to invading Ukraine. They attacked Ukraine in a ‘war of choice’; also threaten NATO. Ergo, the West must arm Ukraine to the teeth, risking wider war.” This is supposedly an explanation of the thinking of we believers that Russia had some choice other than to invade Ukraine. In reality, it illustrates a very sad and enormous distance between the thinking of people who once agreed that war was immoral, but who have now spent over a year utterly failing to persuade each other of anything. Of course the quote above is not a syllogism at all. This is a syllogism: A threat of war requires war. Russia is threatened with war. Russia requires war. (Or write the same thing substituting Ukraine for Russia.) But so is this: A threat of war does not require war. Russia is threatened with war. Russia does not require war. (Or write the same thing substituting Ukraine for Russia.) The disagreement is over the major premise. The syllogism is not actually a very useful tool for thinking; merely for a primitive sort of thinking about thinking. The world is actually complex, and someone could build a case for this one, too: “A threat of war sometimes requires war, depending.” (They’d be wrong.) That the threat or war, and even actual war, in many cases has not required war in response but been defeated by other means is a matter of record. So the question is whether this time was different from all of those times. Here’s another disagreement. Which of these is true? “Opposing one side of a war requires defending the other side.” or “Opposing one side of a war could conceivably be part and parcel of opposing all sides of all wars.” This is a factual question, too, a matter of record. Those of us who have spent all these many months denouncing every war act by both sides of the war in Ukraine can show each side all the accusations we’ve received of supporting both their side and the other side — and all the evidence that they are all mistaken. But maybe it doesn’t matter whether someone fantasizes that I’m cheering for NATO and secretly in the pay of Lockheed Martin. They simply want an answer to the staggeringly slam-dunk drop-the-mic win-the-whole-internet brilliant inquiry of “Well what the eff then could Russia have possibly, possibly done?” Before I describe what Russia could have done, both in the moment of maximum crisis and in the previous months and years and decades, it’s worth digging up some ancient Greeks one more time: Russia had to defend against NATO. Attacking Ukraine was guaranteed to provide the biggest boost NATO had seen in a lifetime. Therefore Russia had to attack Ukraine. Maybe the syllogism can be helpful after all? The two premises are perfectly true. Can anyone spot the illogic? It seems not, at least not in the first year and a quarter. The U.S. set the trap and Russia simply had no choice but to take the bait? Really? How insulting to Russia! Over a year ago I wrote an article called “30 Nonviolent Things Russia Could Have Done and 30 Nonviolent Things Ukraine Could Do.” Here’s the Russian list: Russia could have: Continued mocking the daily predictions of an invasion and created worldwide hilarity, rather than invading and making the predictions simply off by a matter of days. Continued evacuating people from Eastern Ukraine who felt threatened by the Ukrainian government, military, and Nazi thugs. Offered evacuees more than $29 to survive on; offered them in fact houses, jobs, and guaranteed income. (Remember, we’re talking about alternatives to militarism, so money is no object and no extravagant expense will ever be more than a drop in the bucket of war spending.) Made a motion for a vote in the UN Security Council to democratize the body and abolish the veto. Asked the UN to oversee a new vote in Crimea on whether to rejoin Russia. Joined the International Criminal Court. Asked the ICC to investigate crimes in Donbas. Sent into Donbas many thousands of unarmed civilian protectors. Sent into Donbas the world’s best trainers in nonviolent civil resistance. Funded educational programs across the world on the value of cultural diversity in friendships and communities, and the abysmal failures of racism, nationalism, and Nazism. Removed the most fascist members from the Russian military. Offered as gifts to Ukraine the world’s leading solar, wind, and water energy production facilities. Shut down the gas pipeline through Ukraine and committed to never building one north of there. Announced a commitment to leaving Russian fossil fuels in the ground for the sake of the Earth. Offered as a gift to Ukraine electric infrastructure. Offered as a gift of friendship to Ukraine railway infrastructure. Declared support for the public diplomacy that Woodrow Wilson pretended to support. Announced again the eight demands it began making in December, and requested public responses to each from the U.S. government. Asked Russian-Americans to celebrate Russian-American friendship at the teardrop monument given to the United States by Russia off New York Harbor. Joined the major human rights treaties it has yet to ratify, and asked that others do the same. Announced its commitment to unilaterally uphold disarmament treaties shredded by the United States, and encouraged reciprocation. Announced a no-first-use nuclear policy, and encouraged the same. Announced a policy of disarming nuclear missiles and keeping them off alert status to allow more than mere minutes before launching an apocalypse, and encouraged the same. Proposed a ban on international weapons sales. Proposed negotiations by all nuclear-armed governments, including those with U.S. nuclear weapons in their countries, to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons. Committed to not maintaining weapons or troops within 100, 200, 300, 400 km of any borders, and requested the same of its neighbors. Organized a nonviolent unarmed army to walk to and protest any weapons or troops near borders. Put out a call to the world for volunteers to join the walk and protest. Celebrated the diversity of the global community of activists and organized cultural events as part of the protest. Asked the Baltic states that have planned nonviolent responses to Russian invasion to help train Russians and other Europeans in the same. I discussed this on this radio show. I’m sure it’s in vain, but please make a real effort to remember that this was in an article about what each side could do instead of the insanity of organized mass-murder, risking nuclear apocalypse, starving the globe, impeding climate collaboration, and ruining a country. Please make a real effort to remember that we all have always been painfully aware of all the U.S. aggression toward Russia. So, the answer to “How dare I suggest that Russia behave better than the horrible worst-government-on-Earth of the country where I myself live, the United States?” is the usual one: I spend most of my time demanding that the United States behave better, but if the rest of the world can find it within itself to behave so well that life on Earth is preserved despite every effort of Washington, I’m going to be grateful for that — and I’m certainly not going to discourage it. Maybe the Russian peace activists so bravely opposing their nation’s warmaking, as we all must oppose our own, are deeply misguided, but I don’t think they are. So, why is it so impossible to even make each other understand where we’re coming from, you Russia-Had-No-Choicers and I? You suspect that either Ray’s old outfit is slipping me cash or that I’m scared of getting called a “Putin Lover” — as if I haven’t had plenty of death threats for opposing a war on Iraq that I would have traded in a heartbeat to simply be called an “Iraq Lover.” My suspicions of you may be as wildly off as yours of me, but I don’t think they are, and I mean them with total respect. I suspect that you think if one side of a war is wrong, the other is probably right — and right in every detail. I suspect you opposed the U.S. side of the war on Iraq but not the Iraqi side. I suspect you oppose the U.S. side of the war in Ukraine, and that you think it simply follows that whatever the Russian side does is admirable. I imagine the two of us going back to an age of dueling. I’d be screaming “Stop this idiotic barbarism, you two!” and you’d be hurriedly asking around to determine which idiot was the good one and which the evil one. Or would you? I suspect that you don’t want to give any thought to the years that the two sides spent failing to prepare unarmed defenses, and that you think that no matter what Russia did to appeal to the morality and fairness of the world, the world would have spat at Russia and grabbed some popcorn to watch the U.S./NATO buildup. Yet, even with Russia committing hideous murderous acts, we’ve nonetheless seen much of the world — and many of the world’s governments! — refuse to side with NATO, despite enormous pressure, and despite the horrible embarrassment of having to seem to defend, or being accused of defending, Russia’s warmaking. We’ll never know how the world would have responded had Russia used massive and creative nonviolent action, had Russia joined international bodies of law, had Russia signed onto human rights treaties, had Russia sought to democratize world institutions, had Russia appealed to the world to reject U.S. imperialism in favor of a world run by the entire world. Maybe the Russian government doesn’t want to fall under the rule of law any more than the U.S. government does. Maybe it wants a balance of power, not a balance of justice. Or maybe it thinks like most people in Western society — even many who have acted as peace activists for years — that war is the only answer in the end. And maybe nonviolent action would have failed. But there are two weaknesses in that thought that I think are indisputable. One is that we are now closer than ever to nuclear apocalypse, and when we’re gone we won’t really get to argue who was more in the right than whom. The other is that the U.S./NATO build-up was over decades and years and months. Russia could have waited another day or 10 or 200, and in that time it could have begun to try something else. Nobody picked the timing of Russia’s escalation other than Russia. And when you pick the timing of something, you had a choice to give something else a try first. Even more importanly, unless both sides admit some wrong and agree to some compromise, the war will not end and life on Earth might. It would be a real shame if we couldn’t agree on that much

 

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A Timely Call for Peace in Ukraine by U.S. National Security Experts by Medea Benjamin - Nicolas J. S. Davies May 20, 2023: Information Clearing House --On May 16, 2023, The New York Times published  a full-page advertisement signed by 15 U.S. national security experts about the war in Ukraine. It was headed “The U.S. Should Be a Force for Peace in the World,” and was drafted by the Eisenhower Media Network. While condemning Russia’s invasion, the statement provides a more objective account of the crisis in Ukraine than the U.S. government or The New York Times has previously presented to the public, including the disastrous U.S. role in NATO expansion, the warnings ignored by successive U.S. administrations and the escalating tensions that ultimately led to war. The statement calls the war an “unmitigated disaster,” and urges President Joe Biden and Congress “to end the war speedily through diplomacy, especially given the dangers of military escalation that could spiral out of control.” Click to Support Independent Journalism This call for diplomacy by wise, experienced former insiders — U.S. diplomats, military officers and civilian officials — would have been a welcome intervention on any one of the past 442 days of this war. Yet their appeal now comes at an especially critical moment in the war. On May 10, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he is delaying Ukraine’s long-awaited “spring offensive” to avoid “unacceptable” losses to Ukrainian forces. Western policy has repeatedly put Zelenskyy in near-impossible positions, caught between the need to show signs of progress on the battlefield to justify further Western support and arms deliveries and, on the other hand, the shocking human cost of continued war represented by the fresh graveyards where tens of thousands of Ukrainians now lie buried. It is not clear how a delay in the planned Ukrainian counter-attack would prevent it leading to unacceptable Ukrainian losses when it finally occurs, unless the delay in fact leads to scaling back and calling off many of the operations that have been planned. Zelensky appears to be reaching a limit in terms of how many more of his people he is willing to sacrifice to satisfy Western demands for signs of military progress to hold together the Western alliance and maintain the flow of weapons and money to Ukraine. Boris Johnson’s Role  Zelensky’s predicament is certainly the fault of Russia’s invasion, but also of his April 2022 deal with the devil in the shape of then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Johnson promised Zelensky that the U.K. and the “collective West” were “in it for the long run” and would back him to recover all of Ukraine’s former territory, just as long as Ukraine stopped negotiating with Russia. Johnson was never in a position to fulfill that promise and, since he was forced to resign as prime minister, he has endorsed a Russian withdrawal only from the territory it invaded since February 2022, not a return to pre-2014 borders. Yet that compromise was exactly what he talked Zelensky out of agreeing to in April 2022, when most of the war’s dead were still alive and the framework of a peace agreement was on the table at diplomatic talks in Turkey. Zelensky has tried desperately to hold his Western backers to Johnson’s overblown promise. But short of direct U.S. and NATO military intervention, it seems that no quantity of Western weapons can decisively break the stalemate in what has degenerated into a brutal war of attrition, fought mainly by artillery and trench and urban warfare. An American general bragged that the West has supplied Ukraine with 600 different weapons systems, but this itself creates problems. For example, the different 105 mm guns sent by the U.K., France, Germany and the U.S. all use different shells. And each time heavy losses force Ukraine to re-form survivors into new units, many of them have to be retrained on weapons and equipment they’ve never used before. Leaked Pentagon Document Despite U.S. deliveries of at least six types of anti-aircraft missiles — Stinger, NASAMS, Hawk, Rim-7, Avenger, and at least one Patriot missile battery — a leaked Pentagon document revealed that Ukraine’s Russian-built S-300 and Buk anti-aircraft systems still make up almost 90 percent of its main air defenses. NATO countries have searched their weapons stockpiles for all the missiles they can provide for those systems, but Ukraine has nearly exhausted those supplies, leaving its forces newly vulnerable to Russian air strikes just as it prepares to launch its new counter-attack. Since at least June 2022, Biden and other U.S. officials have acknowledged that the war must end in a diplomatic settlement, and have insisted that they are arming Ukraine to put it “in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.” Until now, they have claimed that each new weapons system they have sent and each Ukrainian counter-offensive have contributed to that goal and left Ukraine in a stronger position. But the leaked Pentagon documents and recent statements by U.S. and Ukrainian officials make it clear that Ukraine’s planned spring offensive, already delayed into summer, would lack the previous element of surprise and encounter stronger Russian defenses than the offensives that recovered some of its lost territory last fall. One leaked Pentagon document warned that “enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions supplies probably will strain progress and exacerbate casualties during the offensive,” concluding that it would probably make smaller territorial gains than the fall offensives did. How can a new offensive with mixed results and higher casualties put Ukraine in a stronger position at a currently non-existent negotiating table? If the offensive reveals that even huge quantities of Western military aid have failed to give Ukraine military superiority or reduce its casualties to a sustainable level, it could very well leave Ukraine in a weaker negotiating position, instead of a stronger one. Meanwhile, offers to mediate peace talks have been pouring in from countries all over the world, from the Vatican to China to Brazil. It has been six months since the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley suggested publicly, after Ukraine’s military gains last fall, that the moment had come to negotiate from a position of strength. “When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it,” he said. It would be doubly or triply tragic if, on top of the diplomatic failures that led to the war in the first place and the U.S. and U.K. undermining peace negotiations in April 2022, the chance for diplomacy that Milley wanted to seize is lost in the forlorn hope of attaining an even stronger negotiating position that is not really achievable. If the U.S. persists in backing the plan for a Ukrainian offensive, instead of encouraging Zelenskyy to seize the moment for diplomacy, it will share considerable responsibility for the failure to seize the chance for peace, and for the appalling and ever-rising human costs of this war. The experts who signed The New York Times statement recalled that, in 1997, 50 senior U.S. foreign policy experts warned President Bill Clinton that expanding NATO was a “policy error of historic proportions” and that, unfortunately, Clinton chose to ignore the warning. Biden, who is now pursuing his own policy error of historic proportions by prolonging this war, would do well to take the advice of today’s policy experts by helping to forge a diplomatic settlement and making the United States a force for peace in the world. Views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.

 (These articles don't represent all views of Peace Action WI members)

The War in Ukraine Was Provoked

May 24, 2023

The Biden administration’s insistence on NATO enlargement has made Ukraine a victim of misconceived and unachievable U.S. military aspirations, writes Jeffrey D. Sachs. c

By  Jeffrey D. Sachs 
Common Dreams

George Orwell wrote in 1984 that “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

Governments work relentlessly to distort public perceptions of the past. Regarding the Ukraine War, the Biden administration has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the Ukraine War started with an unprovoked attack by Russia on Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

In fact, the war was provoked by the U.S. in ways that leading U.S. diplomats anticipated for decades in the lead-up to the war, meaning that the war could have been avoided and should now be stopped through negotiations. 

Recognizing that the war was provoked helps us to understand how to stop it. It doesn’t justify Russia’s invasion. A far better approach for Russia might have been to step up diplomacy with Europe and with the non-Western world to explain and oppose U.S. militarism and unilateralism.

In fact, the relentless U.S. push to expand NATO is widely opposed throughout the world, so Russian diplomacy rather than war would likely have been effective.

Two Main Provocations

The Biden team uses the word “unprovoked” incessantly, most recently in Biden’s major speech on the first-year anniversary of the war, in a recent NATO statement, and in the most recent G7 statement.

Mainstream media friendly to Biden simply parrot the White House. The New York Times is the lead culprit, describing the invasion as “unprovoked” no fewer than 26 times, in five editorials, 14 opinion columns by NYT writers, and seven guest op-eds. 

[Related: Caitlin Johnstone: Unprovoked!]

There were in fact two main U.S. provocations.

The first was the U.S. intention to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia in order to surround Russia in the Black Sea region by NATO countries (Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria Turkey, and Georgia, in counterclockwise order).

The second was the U.S. role in installing a Russophobic regime in Ukraine by the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014. The shooting war in Ukraine began with Yanukovych’s overthrow nine years ago, not in February 2022 as the U.S. government, NATO, and the G7 leaders would have us believe. 

Biden and his foreign policy team refuse to discuss these roots of the war. To recognize them would undermine the administration in three ways.

Dec. 7, 2015: U.S. Vice President Biden meets with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kiev. (U.S. Embassy Kyiv, Flickr)

First, it would expose how the war could have been avoided, or stopped early, sparing Ukraine its current devastation and the U.S. more than $100 billion in outlays to date.

Second, it would expose Biden’s personal role in the war as a participant in the overthrow of Yanukovych, and before that as a staunch backer of the military-industrial complex and very early advocate of NATO enlargement.

Third, it would push Biden to the negotiating table, undermining the administration’s continued push for NATO expansion.

 

The archives show irrefutably that the U.S. and German governments repeatedly promised to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move “one inch eastward” when the Soviet Union disbanded the Warsaw Pact military alliance.

Nonetheless, U.S. planning for NATO expansion began early in the 1990s, well before Vladimir Putin was Russia’s president. In 1997, national security expert Zbigniew Brzezinski spelled out the NATO expansion timeline with remarkable precision. 

U.S. diplomats and Ukraine’s own leaders knew well that NATO enlargement could lead to war. The U.S. scholar-statesman George Kennan called NATO enlargement a “fateful error,” writing in The New York Times that,

“Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”

President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense William Perry considered resigning in protest against NATO enlargement. In reminiscing about this crucial moment in the mid-1990s, Perry said the following in 2016:

“Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when NATO started to expand, bringing in eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia. At that time, we were working closely with Russia and they were beginning to get used to the idea that NATO could be a friend rather than an enemy … but they were very uncomfortable about having NATO right up on their border and they made a strong appeal for us not to go ahead with that.”

In 1998, William Burns, then the U.S. ambassador to Russia and now the C.I.A. director, sent a cable to Washington warning at length of grave risks of NATO enlargement:

“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.” 

OSCE monitoring the movement of heavy weaponry in Eastern Ukraine, March 2015. (OSCE, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Ukraine’s leaders knew clearly that pressing for NATO enlargement to Ukraine would mean war. Former Zelensky adviser Oleksiy Arestovych declared in a 2019 interview “that our price for joining NATO is a big war with Russia.”

During 2010-2013, Yanukovych pushed neutrality, in line with Ukrainian public opinion. The U.S. worked covertly to overthrow Yanukovych, as captured vividly in the tape of then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt planning the post-Yanukovych government weeks before the violent overthrow of Yanukovych.

Nuland makes clear on the call that she was coordinating closely with then Vice President Biden and his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, the same Biden-Nuland-Sullivan team now at the center of U.S. policy vis-à-vis Ukraine. 

Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Secretary of State Antony Blinken meeting with members of Ukraine’s Rada in Kiev, May 6, 2021. (State Department/Ron Przysucha)

After Yanukovych’s overthrow, the war broke out in the Donbass, while Russia claimed Crimea. The new Ukrainian government appealed for NATO membership, and the U.S. armed and helped restructure the Ukrainian army to make it interoperable with NATO. In 2021, NATO and the Biden administration strongly recommitted to Ukraine’s future in NATO.

In the immediate lead-up to Russia’s invasion, NATO enlargement was center stage. Putin’s draft NATO-Russia Treaty (Dec. 17, 2021) called for a halt to NATO enlargement.

Russia’s leaders put NATO enlargement as the cause of war in Russia’s National Security Council meeting on Feb. 21, 2022. In his address to the nation that day, Putin declared NATO enlargement to be a central reason for the invasion. 

Historian Geoffrey Roberts recently wrote:

“Could war have been prevented by a Russian-Western deal that halted NATO expansion and neutralised Ukraine in return for solid guarantees of Ukrainian independence and sovereignty? Quite possibly.”

In March 2022, Russia and Ukraine reported progress towards a quick negotiated end to the war based on Ukraine’s neutrality. According to Naftali Bennett, former prime minister of Israel, who was a mediator, an agreement was close to being reached before the U.S., U.K. and France blocked it. 

While the Biden administration declares Russia’s invasion to be unprovoked, Russia pursued diplomatic options in 2021 to avoid war, while Biden rejected diplomacy, insisting that Russia had no say whatsoever on the question of NATO enlargement. And Russia pushed diplomacy in March 2022, while the Biden team again blocked a diplomatic end to the war. 

By recognizing that the question of NATO enlargement is at the center of this war, we understand why U.S. weaponry will not end this war. Russia will escalate as necessary to prevent NATO enlargement to Ukraine. The key to peace in Ukraine is through negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality and NATO non-enlargement.

The Biden administration’s insistence on NATO enlargement to Ukraine has made Ukraine a victim of misconceived and unachievable U.S. military aspirations. It’s time for the provocations to stop, and for negotiations to restore peace to Ukraine.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a university professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the U.N. Broadband Commission for Development. He has been adviser to three United Nations secretaries-general, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2020). Other books include: Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable (2017) and The Age of Sustainable Development, (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.

This article is from  Common Dreams.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

This doesn't represent all views of Peace Action WI members

A Force for Peace in The New York Times Our full page ad today urging diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine MATTHEW HOH MAY 17    SHARE   Today the Eisenhower Media Network, I am the associate director, ran a full-page ad in the print edition of The New York Times urging diplomacy and not more war in Ukraine. I was pleased and proud to be a part of this effort and humbled to have my name among a very impressive list of signatories, including Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the USSR. Thanks for reading Matt’s Thoughts on War and Peace! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Pledge your support I think the question of why did you have to run an ad in the NYT, as opposed to simply publishing an op-ed, answers itself. I’ve been involved with war and media for almost 14 years and there is simply no comparison to how tightly controlled the narrative on the Ukraine War has been from all sides and how few people and institutions break through their own bubbles. Slightly optimistically, headlines in the NYT, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal this month have shown a willingness in DC to speak of negotiations - a couple of months ago such a concept was forbidden; practically a thought crime to utter the word negotiations. This signaling, across those three major papers, is not accidental or coincidence and perhaps the American side may be coming to terms with the futility of a military victory in Ukraine and is now conducting the necessary media preparation for a narrative and message shift. All that said, please find below the letter as published today in print in the NYT ($4 a copy these days!). The text is below the image. Please share and distribute as you can. Matt Text: The U.S. Should Be a Force for Peace in the World The Russia-Ukraine War has been an unmitigated disaster. Hundreds of thousands have been killed or wounded. Millions have been displaced. Environmental and economic destruction have been incalculable. Future devastation could be exponentially greater as nuclear powers creep ever closer toward open war. We deplore the violence, war crimes, indiscriminate missile strikes, terrorism, and other atrocities that are part of this war. The solution to this shocking violence is not more weapons or more war, with their guarantee of further death and destruction. As Americans and national security experts, we urge President Biden and Congress to use their full power to end the Russia-Ukraine War speedily through diplomacy, especially given the grave dangers of military escalation that could spiral out of control. Sixty years ago, President John F. Kennedy made an observation that is crucial for our survival today. “Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.” The immediate cause of this disastrous war in Ukraine is Russia’s invasion. Yet the plans and actions to expand NATO to Russia’s borders served to provoke Russian fears. And Russian leaders made this point for 30 years. A failure of diplomacy led to war. Now diplomacy is urgently needed to end the Russia-Ukraine War before it destroys Ukraine and endangers humanity. The Potential for Peace Russia’s current geopolitical anxiety is informed by memories of invasion from Charles XII, Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler. U.S. troops were among an Allied invasion force that intervened unsuccessfully against the winning side in Russia’s post-World War I civil war. Russia sees NATO enlargement and presence on its borders as a direct threat; the U.S. and NATO see only prudent preparedness. In diplomacy, one must attempt to see with strategic empathy, seeking to understand one’s adversaries. This is not weakness: it is wisdom. We reject the idea that diplomats, seeking peace, must choose sides, in this case either Russia or Ukraine. In favoring diplomacy we choose the side of sanity. Of humanity. Of peace. We consider President Biden’s promise to back Ukraine “as long as it takes” to be a license to pursue ill-defined and ultimately unachievable goals. It could prove as catastrophic as President Putin’s decision last year to launch his criminal invasion and occupation. We cannot and will not endorse the strategy of fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian. We advocate for a meaningful and genuine commitment to diplomacy, specifically an immediate ceasefire and negotiations without any disqualifying or prohibitive preconditions. Deliberate provocations delivered the Russia-Ukraine War. In the same manner, deliberate diplomacy can end it. U.S. Actions and Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine As the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended, U.S. and Western European leaders assured Soviet and then Russian leaders that NATO would notexpand toward Russia’s borders. “There would be no extension of…NATO one inch to the east,” U.S. Secretary of State James Baker told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990. Similar assurances from other U.S. leaders as well as from British, German and French leaders throughout the 1990s confirm this. Since 2007, Russia has repeatedly warned that NATO’s armed forces on Russian borders were intolerable – just as Russian forces in Mexico or Canada would be intolerable to the U.S. now, or as Soviet missiles in Cuba were in 1962. Russia further singled out NATO expansion into Ukraine as especially provocative. Seeing the War Through Russia’s Eyes Our attempt at understanding the Russian perspective on their war does not endorse the invasion and occupation, nor does it imply the Russians had no other option but this war. Yet, just as Russia had other options, so too did the U.S. and NATO leading up to this moment. The Russians made their red lines clear. In Georgia and Syria, they proved they would use force to defend those lines. In 2014, their immediate seizure of Crimea and their support of Donbas separatists demonstrated they were serious in their commitment to defending their interests. Why this was not understood by U.S. and NATO leadership is unclear; incompetence, arrogance, cynicism, or a treacherous mixture of all three are likely contributing factors. Again, even as the Cold War ended, U.S. diplomats, generals and politicians were warning of the dangers of expanding NATO to Russia’s borders and of maliciously interfering in Russia’s sphere of influence. Former Cabinet officials Robert Gates and William Perry issued these warnings, as did venerated diplomats George Kennan, Jack Matlock and Henry Kissinger. In 1997, fifty senior U.S. foreign policy experts wrote an open letter to President Bill Clinton advising him not to expand NATO, calling it “a policy error of historic proportions.” President Clinton chose to ignore these warnings. Most important to our understanding of the hubris and Machiavellian calculation in U.S. decision-making surrounding the Russia-Ukraine War is the dismissal of the warnings issued by Williams Burns, the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In a cable to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2008, while serving as Ambassador to Russia, Burns wrote of NATO expansion and Ukrainian membership: “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.” Why did the U.S. persist in expanding NATO despite such warnings? Profit from weapons sales was a major factor. Facing opposition to NATO expansion, a group of neoconservatives and top executives of U.S. weapons manufacturers formed the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO. Between 1996 and 1998, the largest arms manufacturers spent $51 million ($94 million today) on lobbying and millions more on campaign contributions. With this largesse, NATO expansion quickly became a done deal, after which U.S. weapons manufacturers sold billions of dollars of weapons to the new NATO members. So far, the U.S. has sent $30 billion worth of military gear and weapons to Ukraine, with total aid to Ukraine exceeding $100 billion. War, it’s been said, is a racket, one that is highly profitable for a select few. NATO expansion, in sum, is a key feature of a militarized U.S. foreign policy characterized by unilateralism featuring regime change and preemptive wars. Failed wars, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, have produced slaughter and further confrontation, a harsh reality of America’s own making. The Russia-Ukraine War has opened a new arena of confrontation and slaughter. This reality is not entirely of our own making, yet it may well be our undoing, unless we dedicate ourselves to forging a diplomatic settlement that stops the killing and defuses tensions. Let’s make America a force for peace in the world. Read more at www.EisenhowerMediaNetwork.org SIGNERS Dennis Fritz, Director, Eisenhower Media Network; Command Chief Master Sergeant, US Air Force (retired) Matthew Hoh, Associate Director, Eisenhower Media Network; Former Marine Corps officer, and State and Defense official. William J. Astore, Lieutenant Colonel, US Air Force (retired) Karen Kwiatkowski, Lieutenant Colonel, US Air Force (retired) Dennis Laich, Major General, US Army (retired) Jack Matlock, U.S. Ambassador to the U.S.S.R., 1987-91; author of Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended Todd E. Pierce, Major, Judge Advocate, U.S. Army (retired) Coleen Rowley, Special Agent, FBI (retired) Jeffrey Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University Christian Sorensen, Former Arabic linguist, US Air Force Chuck Spinney, Retired Engineer/Analyst, Office of Secretary of Defense Winslow Wheeler, National security adviser to four Republican and Democratic US Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Colonel, US Army (retired) Ann Wright, Colonel, US Army (retired) and former US diplomat TIMELINE 1990 – U.S. assures Russia that NATO will not expand towards its border “…there would be no extension of…NATO one inch to the east,” says US Secretary of State James Baker. 1996 – U.S. weapons manufacturers form the Committee to Expand NATO, spending over $51 million lobbying Congress. 1997 – 50 foreign policy experts including former senators, retired military officers and diplomats sign an open letter stating NATO expansion to be “a policy error of historic proportions.” 1999 – NATO admits Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic to NATO. U.S. and NATO bomb Russia’s ally, Serbia. 2001 – U.S. unilaterally withdraws from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. 2004 – Seven more Eastern European nations join NATO. NATO troops are now directly on Russia’s border. 2004 – Russia’s parliament passed a resolution denouncing NATO’s expansion. Putin responded by saying that Russia would “build our defense and security policy correspondingly.” 2008 – NATO leaders announced plans to bring Ukraine and Georgia, also on Russia’s borders, into NATO. 2009 – U.S. announced plans to put missile systems into Poland and Romania. 2014 – Legally elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, fled violence to Moscow. Russia views ouster as a coup by U.S. and NATO nations. 2016 – U.S. begins troop buildup in Europe. 2019 – U.S. unilaterally withdraws from Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. 2020 – U.S. unilaterally withdraws from Open Skies Treaty. 2021 – Russia submits negotiation proposals while sending more forces to the border with Ukraine. U.S. and NATO officials reject the Russian proposals immediately. Feb 24, 2022 – Russia invades Ukraine, starting the Russia-Ukraine War.

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Peace in Ukraine Coalition's letter to SOS Blinken urging support for a ceasefire in Ukraine.

We are working with Medea Benjamin to gather additional signatures from nuclear experts, grassroots anti-nuke leaders and academics calling on SOS Blinken to pursue vigorous diplomacy in Ukraine to avoid a nuclear war. 

https://www.codepink.org/notoww3

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Risks too high at Zaporizhzhia

May 10, 2023

Beyond Nuclear has put out a press statement warning that the risks of a nuclear catastrophe at Ukraine’s six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are too high, with rumors of a Ukrainian offensive reportedly prompting mass evacuations of civilians living near the plant. Only an immediate ceasefire — or, better still, a negotiated end to a likely unwinnable war — can protect us from a potentially catastrophic nuclear incident at the plant, which has already endured shelling, missile attacks, and frequent loss of connection to the electrical grid.

The press release begins:

Fears of an imminent Ukrainian offensive that could put the country’s six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in even greater danger, should prompt immediate efforts to negotiate a ceasefire, if not an end to the Russian war against Ukraine, urged safe energy group, Beyond Nuclear today.

News reports that civilians around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are being evacuated suggest that the conflict already consuming the southwestern region of Ukraine could be about to escalate, potentially engulfing the nuclear plant.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has already escaped close calls, the target of shelling and missile attacks on at least one occasion and with frequent losses of offsite power that, if not restored promptly, could lead to a meltdown. 

The plant has been occupied by Russian forces since March 4, 2022. Rumors abound that a severely depleted workforce is laboring under stressful and even violent conditions, while other staff have fled or have disappeared.

As a precaution, all six Zaporizhzhia reactors are currently shut down, but that does not mean they are out of danger. 

“The fuel in the reactor core still requires electricity to power cooling, as do the pumps that supply cooling water to the fuel pools,” warned Beyond Nuclear international specialist, Linda Pentz Gunter. “A meltdown is still possible. Putting the reactors in what is termed ‘cold shutdown’ just buys workers more time to restore power, but a reliable supply of electricity to the site is still essential to avoid disaster.

“The consequences not only for the people of Ukraine and neighboring Russia, but for all of Europe, should any or all of these reactors melt down or suffer a fuel pool fire are unimaginably dire,” Pentz Gunter said. 

Read the full press release

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Madison, Wisc., Holds War Abolition Walk

https://worldbeyondwar.org/madison-holds-walk/

By Madison for a World BEYOND War, April 10, 2023
https://worldbeyondwar.org/madison-holds-walk/

On Saturday, April 8, the Madison for a World BEYOND War chapter held its 28th War Abolition Walk to call on elected officials to reduce military spending, stop F-35 warplanes from coming to Wisconsin, and push for diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine.

Saturday’s walk began at the Farmers Market at Garver Feed Mill with bannering and flyering, and then proceeded along the Capital City Trail bike path. Participants made their way to the pedestrian bridge over E Washington Ave, at N Marquette St, to vigil with banners and greet drivers and bikers. The walk then passed by Madison College and concluded outside the gates of Truax ANG Base, to oppose the basing of F-35 fighter jets in Madison.

Participants handed out many flyers and had good conversations with many people during the whole trek to Madison College; they also received many car honks while bannering on the overpasses.

The event received prime time coverage on Channel 3000 local evening news.

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Video of WI antiwar march in Milwaukee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inusplLxPO8

Shout out to the Milwaukee End the Wars Coalition for marching in the cold for a #ceasefire & peace negotiations to end the war in #Ukraine. 

Here's Marcy Winograd's tweet of your march. If you're on twitter, pls retweet.

https://twitter.com/marcywinograd/status/1645804220183089154

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No African country has joined US -led sanctions; they remember US coups in Africa and Russian support for the African liberation movements

The War in Ukraine and How Africa Surprised the West

 Ted Snider April 03, 2023

https://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Snider/2023/04/02/the-war-in-ukraine-and-how-africa-surprised-the-west

On March 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Moscow. The meeting, at which the two leaders “reaffirm[ed] the special nature of the Russia-China partnership" may be a crucial moment in the emergence of the new multipolar world that is challenging US hegemony.

But while the US and its European partners watched and worried about the meeting with XI, Putin was busy shuttling between that meeting and a conference of the representatives from more than forty African countries. The conference was called Russia-Africa in a Multipolar World. Moscow was bristling that day with the signs of a changing multipolar world.

The African response to the war in Ukraine surprised the US and Europe. Not one country in Africa has joined the US led sanctions on Russia and the dominant stance of the continent has been neutrality. The US and its European allies expected strong support from Africa and strong condemnation of Russia. Instead, they got neutrality from most, a lack of condemnation of Russia from many, and the blame being placed on the US and NATO by several.

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The Tragic U.S. Choice to Prioritize War Over Peacemaking

 https://worldbeyondwar.org/the-tragic-u-s-choice-to-prioritize-war-over-peacemaking/

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, World BEYOND War, April 3, 2023

 

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​https://cnduk.org/cnd-condemns-uk-decision-to-send-depleted-uranium-shells-to-ukraine/

 

March 21, 2023

CND condemns UK decision to send depleted uranium shells to Ukraine

 

The UK government is sending depleted uranium shells for use in the Challenger 2 tanks gifted to Ukraine, a move CND has condemned as an additional environmental and health disaster for those living through the conflict. 

Defence Minister Baroness Goldie admitted in the answer to a written question that armour piercing rounds containing depleted uranium (DU) were included in its tank package for Kiev. She added that the rounds “are highly effective in defeating modern tanks and armoured vehicles.”

A byproduct of the nuclear enriching process used to make nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons, DU emits three quarters of the radioactivity of natural uranium and shares many of its risks and dangers. It is used in armour piercing rounds as it is heavy and can easily penetrate steel. However on impact, toxic or radioactive dust can be released and subsequently inhaled. 

DU shells were used extensively by the US and British in Iraq in 1991 and 2003, as well as in the Balkans during the 1990s.

It is thought that the extensive use of these shells is responsible for the sharp rise in the incidence rate of some cancers like breast cancer or lymphoma in the areas they were used. Other illnesses linked to DU include kidney failure, nervous system disorders, lung disease and reproductive problems. However, a lack of reliable data on exposure to DU means no large-scale study on its true impact exists. 

CND General Secretary Kate Hudson said: 

“Like in Iraq, the addition of depleted uranium ammunition into this conflict will only increase the long-term suffering of the civilians caught up in this conflict. DU shells have already been implicated in thousands of unnecessary deaths from cancer and other serious illnesses. CND has repeatedly called for the UK government to place an immediate moratorium on the use of depleted uranium weapons and to fund long-term studies into their health and environmental impacts. Sending them into yet another war zone will not help the people of Ukraine.”

 

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Update 150 – IAEA Director General Statement on Situation in Ukraine

March 9, 2023

Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) suffered a complete loss of external power for 11 hours today, forcing it to rely on emergency diesel generators for reactor cooling and other essential nuclear safety and security functions in the latest incident underlining the urgent need to protect Europe’s largest such facility, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.........

He earlier told the Board that the current situation was untenable: “Each time we are rolling a dice. And if we allow this to continue time after time then one day our luck will run out.”

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(The nuclear power plants there have 60-120 Chernobyl's Worth Of Radiation)

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A coming wider war with Crimea in US sights

US-NATO response to fall of Bakhmut is likely an assault on Crimea, which in turn will spark Russian attacks on Eastern Europe

by Stephen Bryen March 4, 2023

Excerpt:

There are two key signals of a possible US-NATO change in strategy that are perceptible if we understand that NATO, at least so far, does what the US says it needs to do,

New deliveries of special types of long-range ammunition to Kiev are the first signal. The second is the publicized switch by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland to favoring a refocus on retaking Crimea in a new Ukrainian offensive.

“[W]e will support Ukraine for as long as it takes. Ukraine is fighting for the return of all of its land within its international borders. We are supporting them, including in preparing a next hard push to regain their territory…Crimea must be—at a minimum, at a minimum—demilitarized.”

US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland

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SCOTT RITTER: Reimagining Arms Control After Ukraine

Having used arms control to gain unilateral advantage over Russia, the cost to the U.S. and NATO in getting Moscow back to the negotiating table will be high.

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UKRAINE: IT’S ALL ABOUT FOSSIL FUELS

 By Jill Clark-Gollub, Popular Resistance.

• February 14, 2023
• Educate!

Seymour Hersh, considered one of the United States’ most accomplished investigative journalists, has just published a story giving forensic details about how the U.S. government blew up the Nordstream 1 and 2 pipelines. It is an indictment of the Biden administration at the highest level and confirms growing suspicions that the tens of billions of dollars our government has been sending to prolong the conflict in Ukraine has been about bolstering the American fracked gas industry all along. The American public must condemn this act of terrorism that caused a ”reckless release” of methane and other greenhouse gases and “amounts to an environmental crime.” We must stop our government from prolonging this unnecessary war and demand accountability from a government that seems to be the planet’s greatest obstacle to meaningful action on climate change.

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Dedicated to Abolishing War, Establishing Justice, and Fighting Climate Disaster

Roger Waters Addresses the UN to Demand an End to the War in Ukraine

by Kevin Reed | Winter 2023 Edition

First published at the World Socialist Website

 https://youtu.be/c-iDibSlIUE

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The Real News Network

The Chris Hedges Report: Ukraine and the crisis of media censorship

Throughout the Ukraine war, Western news outlets have mindlessly parroted the opinions of a ruling elite and overseen a public discourse that is often unhinged from the real world.

 https://youtu.be/N0H7PIJcEP0

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Ukraine War: Those Who Fail to Call for Negotiations, Fail to Understand the Dangerous Predicament That Faces the Planet!

U.S. Peace Council, January 25, 2023 

At no time since the Cuban missile crisis has our world has been so close to disaster. As the war in Ukraine approaches its first anniversary, it is being increasingly transformed by the Biden administration and the “collective west” into a war between NATO and Russia. The danger of turning into a nuclear confrontation is imminent.

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was a wake-up call in the midst of Cold War, warning just how close a nuclear World War III could be. Unlike today, both sides sought accommodation. They understood that a retreat from war was in their mutual interest. The Anti-Ballistic Missile and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaties, now scrapped, were negotiated.

Back then, an international peace movement with a robust US contingent amplified the demand for a peaceful world. Such voices are much diminished now. Unlike in the past, not a single Democrat in Congress spoke out for peace, leaving the ideological terrain for war virtually uncontested. Particularly unfortunate are the voices, including some in the U.S. “left,” who continue to beat the drums of war by calling for the continuation of war until the victory of Ukraine. That would only mean the victory of NATO in an all-out war with Russia.

Negotiated peace agreements are not based so much on trust as on the mutual understanding that the alternative is in neither side’s interest. Arguing as some on the “left” do that “Putin’s Russia cannot be trusted,” disregards the fact that no negotiation between warring parties has ever been based on trust.

The undeniable reality facing us should make us all aware of the urgency for negotiations and a diplomatic solution to this war.

The war in and around Ukraine must end. There should be no dispute about that. All wars end either with negotiations or with the victory of one side or the other. Given that this war is not merely between Russia and Ukraine but is between Russia and a Western-backed Ukraine, the first option — for victory — is impossible. Neither Russia (a major nuclear power) nor the Western powers (many of them being major nuclear powers) will tolerate anything near a defeat.

If a military victory is not possible, then the only way forward is for negotiations. War is not an answer. Escalating this war should not be promoted by those who believe in international cooperation and genuine peace. Those who fail to call for negotiations in the midst of this contentious period — with the war ongoing and its impact intensifying a cost-of-living crisis around the world — fail to understand the dangerous predicament that faces the planet. 

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Tell your members of Congress to oppose the tanks and more weapons for Ukraine because there is no military solution. We need a ceasefire and negotiated settlement.

As your constituent, I urge you to publicly oppose President Biden’s decision to send 31 General Dynamics’ battlefield tanks—with a price tag of $400-million. This is a move that will only escalate the war in Ukraine. These hard-to-maintain, toxic jet gas-powered tanks, usually coated with depleted uranium, are approved for a spring offensive guaranteed to result in more death, destruction and climate havoc in Ukraine, home to a third of the European continent’s biodiversity.

The White House has repeatedly told us the US will not engage in a direct war with Russia; yet it reverses itself over and over again to up the ante with more sophisticated weapons: HIMARS rockets that can directly strike into Russia; Patriot missiles on which Ukrainians will train in the United States; now Abrams high-powered 70-ton tanks run on toxic aviation gas. These weapons undermine the possibility of a diplomatic solution, fueling the fiction that this war can be resolved on the battlefield.

We urge you to challenge the tank shipments and demand diplomacy now.

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WHITE HOUSE REFUSES TO SAY WHETHER UKRAINE WILL RECEIVE TOXIC DEPLETED URANIUM AMMO

A Biden official wouldn’t disclose whether Bradley Fighting Vehicles will be equipped with the anti-tank rounds, linked to cancer and birth defects.

Sam Biddle

January 26 2023

 https://theintercept.com/2023/01/26/ukraine-uranium-bradley-fighting-vehicle/

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 Medea Benjamin Discussion on the War in Ukraine
Wednesday, Jan. 18, 7pm CT

PDA is hosting a ZOOM call with world renowned peace activist and Code Pink founder, Medea Benjamin. You are urged to attend. 

The Ukraine War has put humanity at a crossroads. As Dr. King stated, the choice is nonviolence or nonexistence.

Medea will be discussing the book she has co-authored Nicolas Davies “War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless War.”

We will also be discussing why a ceasefire and negotiations are the only sane ways to end this war and how you can help bring this about.

There will be time for some Q and A.  

Register here:

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYuf-yuqjgoHNGCzZgD-7qOBO0FLouvteOc

Call Jim Carpenter with any questions or concerns. (414) 347-0353 (land line, no text) 

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Ukrainians crowd under a destroyed bridge as they try to flee crossing the Irpin river in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 5//Serhii, father of teenager Iliya, cries on his son's lifeless body lying on a stretcher at a maternity hospital converted into a medical ward in Mariupol on March 2. Iliya was fatally wounded Wednesday while playing soccer in Mariupol when shelling started amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The explosive hit the soccer field near a school in the Azov Sea city. TIME Magazine photos

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Animated Graphic of Military (red), Government (blue) and Humanitarian Expenditures (yellow) Tax dollars to Ukraine

Each dot represents $100,000 in US taxpayer dollars, according to the creator of this highly illustrative graphic. In 2022, the US is projected to send $60 Billion in military aid, $27 Billion in government aid, and last on the priority list, $15 Billion in humanitarian aid.

https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1602337689851858945

Eight Reasons Why Now Is a Good Time for a Ukraine Ceasefire and Peace Talks by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies Posted onDecember 01, 2022 As the war in Ukraine has dragged on for nine months and a cold winter is setting in, people all over the world are calling for a Christmas truce, harkening back to the inspirational Christmas Truce of 1914. In the midst of World War I, warring soldiers put down their guns and celebrated the holiday together in the no-man’s land between their trenches. This spontaneous reconciliation and fraternization has been, over the years, a symbol of hope and courage. Here are eight reasons why this holiday season too offers the potential for peace and a chance to move the conflict in Ukraine from the battlefield to the negotiating table. 1. The first, and most urgent reason, is the incredible, daily death and suffering in Ukraine, and the chance to save millions more Ukrainians from being forced to leave their homes, their belongings and the conscripted menfolk they may never see again. With Russia’s bombing of key infrastructure, millions of people in Ukraine currently have no heat, electricity or water as temperatures drop below freezing. The CEO of Ukraine’s largest electric corporation has urged millions more Ukrainians to leave the country, ostensibly for just a few months, to reduce demand on the war-damaged power network. The war has wiped out at least 35% of the country’s economy, according to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. The only way to halt the meltdown of the economy and the suffering of the Ukrainian people is to end the war. 2. Neither side can achieve a decisive military victory, and with its recent military gains, Ukraine is in a good negotiating position. It has become clear that U.S. and NATO military leaders do not believe, and possibly have never believed, that their publicly stated goal of helping Ukraine to recover Crimea and all of Donbas by force is militarily achievable. In fact, Ukraine’s military chief of staff warned President Zelensky in April 2021 that such a goal would not be achievable without "unacceptable" levels of civilian and military casualties, leading him to call off plans for an escalation of the civil war at that time. Biden’s top military advisor, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, told the Economic Club of New York on November 9, "There has to be a mutual recognition that military victory is probably, in the true sense of the word, not achievable through military means…&quot French and German military reviews of Ukraine’s position are reportedly more pessimistic than US ones, assessing that the current appearance of military parity between the two sides will be short-lived. This adds weight to Milley’s assessment, and suggests that this could well be the best chance Ukraine will get to negotiate from a position of relative strength. 3. US government officials, especially in the Republican Party, are starting to balk at the prospect of continuing this enormous level of military and economic support. Having taken control of the House, Republicans are promising more scrutiny of Ukraine aid. Congressman Kevin McCarthy, who will become Speaker of the House, warned that Republicans would not write a "blank check" for Ukraine. This reflects the growing opposition at the base of the Republican Party, with a Wall Street Journal November poll showing that 48% of Republicans say the US is doing too much to help Ukraine, up from 6% in March. 4. The war is causing upheavals in Europe. Sanctions on Russian energy have sent inflation in Europe skyrocketing and caused a devastating squeeze on energy supplies that is crippling the manufacturing sector. Europeans are increasingly feeling what German media call Kriegsmudigkeit. This translates as "war-weariness," but that is not an entirely accurate characterization of the growing popular sentiment in Europe. "War-wisdom" may describe it better. People have had many months to consider the arguments for a long, escalating war with no clear endgame – a war that is sinking their economies into a recession – and more of them than ever now tell pollsters they would support renewed efforts to find a diplomatic solution. That includes 55% in Germany, 49% in Italy, 70% in Romania and 92% in Hungary. 5. Most of the world is calling for negotiations. We heard this at the 2022 UN General Assembly, where one after another, 66 world leaders, representing a majority of the world’s population, eloquently spoke out for peace talks. Philip Pierre, Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, was one of them, pleading with Russia, Ukraine and the Western powers "to immediately end the conflict in Ukraine, by undertaking immediate negotiations to permanently settle all disputes in accordance with the principles of the United Nations." As the Amir of Qatar told the Assembly, "We are fully aware of the complexities of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and the international and global dimension to this crisis. However, we still call for an immediate ceasefire and a peaceful settlement, because this is ultimately what will happen regardless of how long this conflict will go on for. Perpetuating the crisis will not change this result. It will only increase the number of casualties, and it will increase the disastrous repercussions on Europe, Russia and the global economy." 6. The war in Ukraine, like all wars, is catastrophic for the environment. Attacks and explosions are reducing all kinds of infrastructure–railways, electrical grids, apartment buildings, oil depots–to charred rubble, filling the air with pollutants and blanketing cities with toxic waste that contaminates rivers and groundwater. The sabotage of Russia’s underwater Nord Stream pipelines supplying Russian gas to Germany led to what may have been the largest release of methane gas emissions ever recorded, amounting to the annual emissions of a million cars. The shelling of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, including Zaporizhzhia, the largest in Europe, has raised legitimate fears of deadly radiation spreading throughout Ukraine and beyond. Meanwhile, US and Western sanctions on Russian energy have triggered a bonanza for the fossil fuel industry, giving them a new justification to increase their dirty energy exploration and production and keep the world firmly on course for climate catastrophe. 7. The war has a devastating economic impact on countries across the world. The leaders of the world’s largest economies, the Group of 20, said in a declaration at the end of their November summit in Bali that the Ukraine war "is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy – constraining growth, increasing inflation, disrupting supply chains, heightening energy and food insecurity and elevating financial stability risks." Our long-standing failure to invest the relatively small proportion of our resources required to eradicate poverty and hunger on our otherwise rich and abundant planet already condemns millions of our brothers and sisters to squalor, misery and early deaths. Now this is compounded by the climate crisis, as entire communities are washed away by flood waters, burned out by wildfires or starved by multi-year droughts and famines. International cooperation has never been more urgently needed to confront problems that no country can solve on its own. Yet wealthy nations still prefer to put their money into weapons and war instead of adequately addressing the climate crisis, poverty or hunger. 8. The last reason, which dramatically reinforces all the other reasons, is the danger of nuclear war. Even if our leaders had rational reasons to favor an open-ended, ever-escalating war over a negotiated peace in Ukraine – and there are certainly powerful interests in the weapons and fossil fuel industries that would profit from that – the existential danger of what this could lead to absolutely must tip the balance in favor of peace. We recently saw how close we are to a much wider war when a single stray Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile landed in Poland and killed two people. President Zelensky refused to believe it was not a Russian missile. If Poland had taken the same position, it could have invoked NATO’s mutual defense agreement and triggered a full-scale war between NATO and Russia. If another predictable incident like that leads NATO to attack Russia, it can only be a matter of time before Russia sees the use of nuclear weapons as its only option in the face of overwhelming military force. For these reasons and more, we join the faith-based leaders around the world who are calling for a Christmas Truce, declaring that the holiday season presents "a much-needed opportunity to recognize our compassion for one another. Together, we are convinced that the cycle of destruction, suffering and death can be overcome." Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022. Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 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. Pamela -- Wisconsin Ukrainians Inc., local peace groups talk to WUWM about possible peace talks in Ukraine WUWM 89.7 FM | By Chuck Quirmbach November 22, 2022 LISTEN Continued war—or possible peace talks—in Ukraine? The question is on the minds of some of the estimated 10,000 people of Ukrainian descent now living in Wisconsin. The same question is on the minds of peace group coalitions active in the Milwaukee area. Wisconsin Ukrainians is a non-profit group that's been sending humanitarian and medical supplies to the people of Ukraine for months now since the invasion by Russia. In addition, the group has sent to Ukrainian soldiers from the U.S. and trusted suppliers in Ukraine military gear such as boots, helmets and body armor. Halyna Salapata is on the board of Wisconsin Ukrainians and is a leader of Ukrainian Milwaukee. She says with winter arriving, her group recently had an effort called "dress-a-soldier." "So, we were able to buy 200 fleece jackets, 200 thermal underwear, and then we got 100 pairs of boots, which is a lot. I know winter is coming—that even if they've got clothes in Ukraine, it's never enough because it's rainy, and winter means snow. So, they have to have a change of clothes. [We're] trying our best," Salapata says. Just this week, Ukrainian authorities started evacuating civilians from recently-liberated areas for the winter, fearing Russian troops have damaged too much infrastructure to supply needed heat and lighting. Bernat Armangue/AP The cold weather concerns come as some officials in the U.S., and elsewhere have stepped up promotion of the idea that it's time for peace talks with the Russians. Salapata says—negotiations?—only under one condition. "Russia must leave all captured territories. I agree with the Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine's armed forces, Valeri Zaluzhnyi, and I agree with President Zelensky of Ukraine that until Russia leaves all captured territories there is no peace talk," Salapata says. Another Ukraine native, Dina Borysenko, says family members who have fled the war stay with her in the Milwaukee area. She says other relatives still in Ukraine are often without heat and electricity. Borysenko says she doesn't trust any Russian talk of a ceasefire. "Because we are fluent in Russian, we can see the news and see their propaganda. There is no slowing down on their part. If they agree to a temporary ceasefire, it's only to regroup and build more ammunition and come back. There is no sign they want to stop," Borysenko says. Photo Supplied By Jim Carpenter But local and national peace groups are pushing for peace talks. Jim Carpenter is with Milwaukee's End the Wars Coalition and was just named Peacemaker of the Year by Peace Action Wisconsin. He says Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a "horrible crime." "We have an upward spiral of violence occurring, right? We sent weapons, Ukraine takes territory. Russia responds by sending missiles into Ukraine, destroying vital infrastructure, trying to freeze people. It has no good ending," Carpenter says. Carpenter says it's reasonable that Russia gives back territory that it's taken this year. But he says Zelensky may also be seeking land Russia took nearly a decade ago, an issue Carpenter says should be resolved at the bargaining table. Carpenter says many Americans fear Russian President Vladimir Putin could even set off a nuclear bomb in Ukraine if he's frustrated. "They do not want to see the end of humanity, with nuclear war in order to fight over some territory in Ukraine. That just does not make any sense," Carpenter says. Ukraine native Dina Borysenko acknowledges the risk of a wider conflict. "Absolutely. But I think, it's very difficult to make it worse for Ukrainians. They are being bombed daily. My family is in eastern Ukraine—they daily bomb," she says. Chuck Quirmbach At last weekend's Holiday Folk Fair in Milwaukee, a youth group performed a traditional Ukrainian dance. It was a brief, colorful and shining moment, as people otherwise worry about war and debate how to end it. Tags Peace Action WisconsinUkraine Facebook Twitter Email LISTEN • 4:39 Peace Action of WI http://www.peaceactionwi.org/ Peace Action of Wisconsin · 1001 E Keefe Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53212, United States This email was sent to [email protected]. To stop receiving emails, click here. You can also keep up with Peace Action of WI on Twitter or Facebook. Created with NationBuilder, software for leaders.

 

 

Tell Congress to prevent nuclear war! EMAIL CONGRESS NOW!   President Biden is asking a lame duck Congress to approve another $37 billion for the war in Ukraine, with $22 billion earmarked for more weapons, military training and intelligence.  Join CODEPINK, World Beyond War and RootsAction in challenging the fiction that there is a military solution to the devastating war in Ukraine. For each Ukrainian battlefield victory, such as Kherson, we witness Russian retaliation–missile strikes in a seemingly never-ending spiral of violence.  Tell your House and Senate reps to vote NO on more money to escalate a war that has no military solution. To date, the US has spent an estimated $20 billion on weapons and military $$$ for drones, rockets and ammunition, with the total tab for the war in Ukraine expected to exceed $100 billion before the new Congress is seated. What could $100 billion a year buy at home? According to the National Priorities Project trade-off calculator, that amount would pay for a million elementary school teachers, 300 million households with solar energy and 12 million public housing units. We need a ceasefire, diplomacy and investments in climate, health care, housing and education, not more weapons for a protracted war that risks nuclear annihilation while filling the coffers of for-profit weapons contractors. Demand your congressional representatives vote NO on the next $37 billion for endless war in Ukraine. Diplomacy now, not more weapons! With hope for peace in Ukraine, Marcy, Medea, Jodie, Grace, Maha and the rest of the CODEPINK Team P.S. See Medea Benjamin on her new book tour! * NATO Steadfast Noon Exercise and Nuclear Modernization in Europe

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Chorus for Peace in Ukraine Growing

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas Davies

Ukraine has been wracked by shocking destruction and deadly violence since Russia invaded the country in February. Estimates of the death toll range from a confirmed minimum of 27,577 people, including 6,374 civilians, to over 150,000. The slaughter can only get more horrific as long as all sides, including the United States and its NATO allies, remain committed to war.

In the first weeks of the war, the United States and NATO countries sent weapons to Ukraine to try to prevent Russia from quickly defeating Ukraine’s armed forces and conducting a U.S.-style “regime change” in Kyiv. But since that goal was achieved, the only goals that President Zelenskyy and his Western allies have publicly proclaimed are to recover all of pre-2014 Ukraine and decisively defeat and weaken Russia.

These are aspirational goals at best, which require sacrificing hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of Ukrainian lives, regardless of the outcome. Even worse, if they should come close to succeeding, they are likely to trigger a nuclear war, making this the all-time epitome of a “no-win predicament.”

At the end of May, President Biden responded to probing questions about the contradictions in his Ukraine policy from the New York Times Editorial Board, replying that the United States was sending weapons so that Ukraine “can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.”

But when Biden wrote that, Ukraine had no position at any negotiating table, thanks mainly to the conditions that Biden and NATO leaders attached to their support. In April, after Ukraine negotiated a15-point peace plan for a ceasefire, a Russian withdrawal and a peaceful future as a neutral country, the United States and United Kingdom refused to provide Ukraine with the security guarantees that were a critical part of the agreement.

As now disgraced British prime minister Boris Johnson told President Zelenskyy in Kyiv on April 9th, the “collective West” was “in it for the long run,” meaning a long war against Russia, but wanted no part in any agreement between Ukraine and Russia.

In May, Russian forces advanced through Donbas, forcing Zelenskyy to admit, by June 2nd, that Russia now controlled 20% of Ukraine’s pre-2014 territory, leaving Ukraine in a weaker, not a stronger position.

Six months after Secretary Austin declared in April that the new goal of the war was to decisively defeat and “weaken” Russia, President Biden is rejecting calls for a new peace initiative. So the United States and United Kingdom had no reservations about intervening to kill peace talks in April, but now that they’ve sold President Zelenskyy on fighting an endless war, Biden insists that he has no say in the matter if Zelenskyy rejects peace negotiations.

But it is axiomatic that wars end at the negotiating table, as Biden acknowledged to the Times. The perennial thorny question for war leaders is “When to negotiate?” The problem is that, when your side seems to be winning, you have little incentive to stop fighting. But when you appear to be losing, there is no incentive to negotiate from a weak position either, as long as you believe that the tide of war will sooner or later shift in your favor and improve your position. That was the hope on which Johnson and Biden convinced Zelenskyy to stake his country’s future in April.

Now Ukraine has launched localized counter-offensives and recovered parts of its territory. Russia has responded by throwing hundreds of thousands of fresh troops into the war and starting to systematically demolish Ukraine’s electricity grid.

The escalating crisis exposes the weakness of Biden’s position. He is gambling with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives, which he has no moral claim over, that Ukraine will somehow be in a stronger military position after a winter of war and power outages, with hundreds of thousands more Russian troops in the areas Russia controls. This is a bet on a much longer war, in which U.S. taxpayers will shell out for thousands of tons of weapons and millions of Ukrainians will die, with no clear endgame short of nuclear war.

Thanks to the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the U.S. mass media, most Americans have no inkling of the deceptive way that Biden and his bubble-headed British allies cornered Zelenskyy into a suicidal decision to abandon promising peace negotiations in favor of a long war that will destroy his country.

The horrors of the war, the contradictions in Western policy, the blowback on European energy supplies, the specter of famine stalking the Global South and the rising danger of nuclear war are provoking a worldwide chorus of voices urgently calling for peace in Ukraine.

If you’re on a media diet of the thin gruel that passes for news in America these days, you may not have heard the calls for peace from UN Secretary General Guterres, Pope Francis or the leaders of 66 countries speaking at the UN General Assembly in September, representing the majority of the world’s population.

But there are also Americans calling for peace. From across the political spectrum, from retired military officers and diplomats to journalists and academics, there are “adults in the room” who recognize the dangerous contradictions of U.S. policy on Ukraine, and are joining leaders from around the world in calling for diplomacy and peace.

Jack Matlock served as the last U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, from 1987 to 1991, after a 35-year career as a Soviet specialist in the U.S. Foreign Service. Matlock was at the embassy in Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis, where he translated critical messages between Kennedy and Kruschev.

On October 17, 2022, in an article in Responsible Statecraft titled “Why the US must press for a ceasefire in Ukraine,” Ambassador Matlock wrote that as principal arms supplier to Ukraine and the sponsor of the most punitive sanctions on Russia, the United States “is obligated to help find a way out” of this crisis. The article concluded, “Until… the fighting stops, and serious negotiations get underway, the world is headed for an outcome where we all are losers.”

Another veteran U.S. diplomat who has spoken out for diplomacy over Ukraine is Rose Gottemoeller, the Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019 after she served as President Obama’s senior adviser on arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation. Gottemoeller recently wrote in the Financial Times that she sees no military solution to the crisis in Ukraine, but that “discreet talks” could lead to the kind of “quiet bargain” that resolved the Cuban missile crisis 60 years ago.

On the military side, Admiral Mike Mullen was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 to 2011. After President Biden chatted at a fundraising party about the war in Ukraine leading to nuclear “Armageddon,” ABC interviewed Mullen about the danger of nuclear war. “I think we need to back off that a little bit and do everything we possibly can to get to the table to resolve this thing,” Mullen replied. “It’s got to end, and usually there are negotiations associated with that. The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.”

Economist Jeffrey Sachs was the director of the Earth Institute and now the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He has been a consistent voice for peace in Ukraine ever since the invasion. In a recent article on September 26, titled “The Great Game in Ukraine is Spinning out of Control,” Sachs quoted President Kennedy in June 1963, uttering what Sachs called “the essential truth that can keep us alive today:”

“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war,” said JFK. “To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”

Sachs concluded, “It is urgent to return to the draft peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine of late March, based on the non-enlargement of NATO… The world’s very survival depends on prudence, diplomacy, and compromise by all sides.”

Even Henry Kissinger, whose own war crimes are well documented, has spoken out on the senselessness of current U.S. policy. Kissinger told the Wall Street Journal in August, “We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to.”

In the U.S. Congress, after every single Democrat voted for a virtual blank check for arming Ukraine in May, with no provision for peacemaking, Progressive Caucus leader Pramila Jayapal and 29 other progressive Democratic Representatives recently signed a letter to President Biden, urging him to “make vigorous diplomatic efforts in support of a negotiated settlement and ceasefire, engage in direct talks with Russia, explore prospects for a new European security arrangement acceptable to all parties that will allow for a sovereign and independent Ukraine, and, in coordination with our Ukrainian partners, seek a rapid end to the conflict and reiterate this goal as America's chief priority.”

Unfortunately, the backlash within their own party was so blistering that within 24 hours they withdrew the letter. Siding with calls for peace and diplomacy from all over the world is still not an idea whose time has come in the halls of power in Washington DC.

This is an extremely dangerous moment in history. Americans are waking up to the reality that this war threatens us with the existential danger of nuclear war, a danger most Americans thought we had survived once and for all at the end of the First Cold War. Even if we manage to avoid nuclear war, the impact of a long, bloody war will destroy Ukraine and kill millions of Ukrainians, cause humanitarian catastrophes across the Global South, and trigger a long-lasting global economic crisis.

That will relegate all humanity’s urgent priorities, from tackling the climate crisis to hunger, poverty and disease, to the back-burner for the foreseeable future.

There is an alternative. We can and must resolve this conflict through peaceful diplomacy and negotiation, to end the killing and destruction and let the people of Ukraine live in peace.

BY

 MEDEA BENJAMIN

Medea Benjamin is a cofounder of both CODEPINK and the international human rights organization Global Exchange. She has been an advocate for social justice for more than 30 years.

Follow medeabenjmin

 NICOLAS DAVIES

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

Biden’s Foreign Policy Sinking His Party & Ukraine

Jeffrey D. Sachs says the U.S. president’s dismissal of diplomacy undermines his own party, prolongs the destruction of Ukraine and threatens nuclear war. 

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/11/02/bidens-foreign-policy-sinking-his-party-ukraine/

President Joe Biden

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TK News by Matt Taibbi

Does the United States Have a Plan in Ukraine?

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/does-the-united-states-have-a-plan

 

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As people of faith and conscience, believing in

the sanctity of all life on this planet,

we urge our government to take a leadership role

in bringing the conflict in Ukraine to an end

through a negotiated settlement, 

before the conflict results in a nuclear war

that could devastate the world’s ecosystems  

and annihilate humankind as well as many other living creatures. 

Interfaith Peace Working Group

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Why the US must press for a ceasefire in Ukraine

As a key player in Kyiv’s defense and the leader of sanctions against Russia, Washington is obligated to help find a way out.

October 17, 2022

Opinion piece written by

Jack F. Matlock Jr, former US Ambassador to Moscow

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/10/17/on-ukraine-the-us-is-on-the-hook-to-find-a-way-out/

Four recent events have put the war in Ukraine on a distinctly more dangerous course.

— The Russian annexation of four additional Ukrainian provinces blocks compromise solutions that were feasible earlier.

— The disabling attacks on both North Stream pipelines make it impossible in the near term to restore Russia as the principal energy supplier to Germany, even if the war in Ukraine should be miraculously ended.

— The Ukrainian attack on the bridge to Crimea gave Russia a pretext to escalate attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets.

— The Russian retaliatory attacks on civilian targets are certain to do more damage to Ukraine than Ukraine can do to Russia. 

The leaders of both Russia and Ukraine have set impossible goals. In fact, not a single participant in the war in Ukraine has espoused a goal that can restore peace in the area. Russia’s recent incorporation of four Ukrainian provinces into the Russian Federation will not be accepted by Russia’s neighbors or by most European powers.

Given the passions aroused by the war and its atrocities, Ukraine, even with NATO support, cannot create a stable, functioning state within all the borders it inherited in 1991. If Ukraine tries to regain these territories by force and is encouraged and empowered by the U.S. and NATO to do so, Russia (and not just President Putin) will very likely demolish Ukraine in retaliation. Reality trumps illusion whenever the two conflict.

And if war should stop with the destruction of Ukraine — Kyiv and Lviv leveled as Grozny once was — that would assume that escalation does not involve the use of nuclear weapons. If the Russian leader feels convinced that the U.S. and “Western” goal is to take him out, what is to prevent him taking out others as he goes?

What Went Wrong

It did not have to happen. When the Cold War ended (by negotiation, not by victory) and the USSR fragmented into 15 separate countries (because of pressures from the inside, not from without), Europe was suddenly whole and free, the goal of U.S. and NATO policy during the Cold War. If the future stability and prosperity of Europe were to be ensured, the principal task was to build a security system covering all the countries of Europe. 

But a succession of American presidents, from Clinton to Trump, chose instead to enlarge NATO, to trash arms control treaties that ended the Cold War, and to enlist former Soviet republics in a military alliance that excluded Russia. Benjamin Abelow summarized the portentous events in his insightful How the West Brought War to Ukraine. 

The war might have been prevented — probably would have been prevented — 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. Nevertheless, what was possible even as late as January 2022 may not be possible now. The Russian annexation of additional territory raises the stakes. But the longer the war continues the harder it is going to be to avoid the utter destruction of Ukraine.

America’s Security

We Americans can only admire the valiant resistance Ukrainians have mounted to the Russian invasion and should be proud that we have been able to support their defense. Everything possible should be done to make sure that Ukraine survives as an independent state. But that does not mean that Ukraine has to recover all the territory it inherited in 1991. In fact, given all the passions aroused by the war and what preceded it (the violent change of government in 2014 that many Russians considered a coup d’etat organized by the United States), the population in some areas is likely to resist a return to Kyiv’s control.

Some will argue that the United States has a moral obligation to support whatever the Ukrainian leaders demand since “they know best.” No, they do not know best what is in the security interests of the American people, and that should be the primary concern of any American government. They also, under the stress of war, may not be the best judges of their own ultimate security interests.

I was ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1990 when the Lithuanians declared their independence from the Soviet Union. The United States had never recognized the annexation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia by the Soviet Union, so the Lithuanians requested immediate U.S. recognition of their independence. I had total sympathy with the Lithuanian aspirations but had to explain that it would be a mistake to do so until Lithuania was in fact free. Why? Because, in 1990, U.S. recognition would almost certainly have precipitated a Soviet crack-down which the U.S. could not counter without risking nuclear war. 

The Lithuanians, along with their Baltic neighbors, kept their demands for independence peaceful. The U.S. privately kept pressure on the Soviet Government to refrain from using force, and the USSR State Council recognized the independence of Lithuania and its two neighboring countries in September 1991, freeing them legally before the rest of the Soviet Union broke up. 

The issue with Ukraine and Russia of course is not recognition of independence but whether the U.S. should support the Ukrainian goal to restore its control over all the territory it received when the Soviet Union broke up. If pursuit of that goal precipitates the progressive destruction of Ukraine, it is obviously not in Ukraine’s interest.  

Effect on the World

The fighting in Ukraine continues and intensifies while the world is still struggling with the covid-19 pandemic and remains vulnerable to mutations and new pathogens, while global warming is producing ever more destructive effects. Meanwhile, migrations caused by famine, flood, war, and misgovernment are overwhelming the capacity of even the richest countries to absorb the afflicted. And to all of that one must add the threat of Armageddon, a nuclear holocaust — something no rational leader would risk. But rationality cannot be assumed in either domestic or international politics today.

Europe’s position will be severely tested during the upcoming winter as the result of drastically curtailed trade with Russia, particularly when it comes to energy. Increasingly, European publics are likely to blame the United States for policies that fuel inflation and bring on economic recession, especially as their currencies weaken against the dollar. The U.S. sanctions on Russia will be seen by many as self-serving attempts to dominate Western Europe.

A new iron curtain is now being imposed on Russia — this time by Western policy — even as the United States announces more measures to confront and “contain” an assertive China. This will result, inevitably, in more cooperation between Russia and China. Also, the increasing use of economic sanctions to achieve political purposes will encounter push-back with a greater volume of international trade conducted in national currencies other than the U.S. dollar. 

As Europe is weakened and more countries suffer from U.S. sanctions, coalitions to resist U.S. dominance will flourish. Geopolitical competition will take precedence over action to deal with common problems, even as international conflict intensifies them.

What all the parties to the conflict in Ukraine seem to have forgotten is that the future of mankind will not be determined by where international borders are drawn — these have never been static in history and doubtless will continue to change from time to time. The future of mankind will be determined by whether nations learn to settle their differences peacefully.  

Is There a Way to Stop the War?

There may not be, given the passions aroused by the conflict. Both Ukraine and Russia have lost enough blood that their populations are likely to oppose any effort to give the other side any portion of what it wants. Their presidents hate each other and see any concession as a personal defeat. But the more the war continues, the more Ukrainian lives will be lost, property destroyed, and the probability of a wider conflict increased.

The only practical way to stop the actual fighting would be to agree on a ceasefire. This is difficult for the Ukrainians since they are liberating some of the occupied territories, but the reality is that if the war continues Russia is capable of damaging Ukraine more than Ukraine can damage Russia without risking a wider war.

As principal arms supplier to Ukraine, the U.S. should encourage the Ukrainians to agree to a ceasefire. As the sponsor of the most punitive sanctions on Russia, the U.S. should use its leverage to induce Russia to agree to genuine negotiations during a ceasefire. 

Negotiations must be conducted in private to be successful, which would require a revival of U.S.-Russia diplomacy. Over the past few years, tit-for-tat expulsions have reduced both countries to skeleton diplomatic staffs. Nevertheless, if there is a will to talk and negotiate, ways can be found. So far, it is the will that seems to be lacking.

At present, none of the relevant parties to the conflict in Ukraine seem to be willing to stop fighting and enter into genuine negotiations to bring peace in Ukraine. Until this changes, the fighting stops, and serious negotiations get underway, the world is headed for an outcome where we all are losers.

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Caitlin Johnstone: US Rejects Moscow’s Offer to Talk

October 13, 2022

It’s inexcusable that these direct peace negotiations are not already underway. The recent escalation of this war makes peace talks more necessary, not less. 

By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com

Listen to a reading of this article.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow was open to talks with the U.S. or with Turkey on ending the war in Ukraine, claiming that U.S. officials are lying when they say Russia has been refusing peace talks.

Reuters reports:

“Lavrov said officials, including White House national security spokesman John Kirby, had said the United States was open to talks but that Russia had refused.”

“This is a lie,” Lavrov said. “We have not received any serious offers to make contact.”

Lavrov’s claim was given more weight when U.S. State Department Spokesman Ned Price dismissed the offer for peace talks shortly after it was extended, citing Russia’s recent missile strikes on Kyiv.

“We see this as posturing,” Price said at a Tuesday press briefing.

“We do not see this as a constructive, legitimate offer to engage in the dialogue and diplomacy that is absolutely necessary to see an end to this brutal war of aggression against the people and the state, the Government of Ukraine.”

This is inexcusable. At a time when our world is at its most perilous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis according to many experts as well as the president of the United States, the U.S. government has no business making the decision not to sit down with Russian officials and work toward de-escalation and peace.

They have no business making that call on behalf of every terrestrial organism on this planet whose life is being risked in these games of nuclear brinkmanship. The fact that this war has escalated with missile strikes on the Ukrainian capital makes peace talks more necessary, not less.

This rejection is made all the more outrageous by new information from The Washington Post that the U.S. government does not believe Ukraine can win this war and refuses to encourage it to negotiate with Moscow.

“Privately, U.S. officials say neither Russia nor Ukraine is capable of winning the war outright, but they have ruled out the idea of pushing or even nudging Ukraine to the negotiating table,” WaPo reports. “They say they do not know what the end of the war looks like, or how it might end or when, insisting that is up to Kyiv.”

These two points taken together lend even more credibility an argument I’ve been making from the very beginning of this war: that the U.S. does not want peace in Ukraine, but rather seeks to create a costly military quagmire for Moscow just as U.S. officials have confessed to trying to do in Afghanistan and in Syria.

Which would explain why U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the U.S. goal in Ukraine is actually to “weaken” Russia, and also why the empire appears to have actively torpedoed a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia in the early days of the conflict.

This proxy war has no exit strategy. And that is entirely by design.

Many have been calling for the U.S. to abandon its policy of actively sustaining this war while avoiding peace talks.

“President Biden’s language, we’re about at the top of the language scale, if you will,” former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen told ABC’s This Week on Sunday regarding the president’s recent remark that this conflict could lead to “Armageddon.”

“I think we need to back off that a little bit and do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing,” Mullen said, adding, “As is typical in any war, it has got to end and usually there are negotiations associated with that. The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.”

“One thing the United States can do is… drop the position, the official position, that the war must go on to weaken Russia severely, meaning no negotiations,” Noam Chomsky argued in a recent appearance on Democracy Now.

“Would that open the way to negotiations, diplomacy? Can’t be sure. There’s only one way to find out. That’s to try. If you don’t try, of course it won’t happen.”

“It is time for the United States to supplement its military support for Ukraine with a diplomatic track to manage this crisis before it spirals out of control,” said the Quincy Institute’s George Beebe following the Monday missile strikes on Kyiv, calling it “a major escalation in the war” that was bound to “bring the world closer to a direct military collision between Russia and the United States.”

“The Americans have to come to an agreement with the Russians. And then the war will be over,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said at an event on Tuesday, adding that “anyone who thinks that this war will be concluded through Russian-Ukrainian negotiations is not living in this world.

It’s absolutely insane that the world’s two nuclear superpowers are accelerating toward direct military confrontation and they aren’t even talking to each other, and it’s even crazier that anyone who says they should be gets called a Kremlin agent and a Chamberlain-like appeaser. Responsible Statecraft’s Harry Kazianis discusses this freakish dynamic in a recent article titled “Talking is not appeasement — it’s avoiding a nuclear armageddon“:

“I have fought more than thirty combat simulations in wargames under my own direction for a private defense contract over the last several months, looking at various aspects of the Russia-Ukraine war, and one thing is clear: the chances of a nuclear war increase significantly every day that passes.

In every scenario I tested, the Biden Administration slowly gives Ukraine ever more advanced weapons like ATACMS, F-16s, and other platforms that Russia has consistently warned pose a direct military threat. While each scenario has postulated a different point at which Moscow decides to use a tactical nuclear weapon in order to counter conventional platforms it can’t easily defeat, the chances that Russia uses nukes grow as new and more powerful military capabilities are introduced into the battlefield by the West.

In fact, in 28 of the thirty scenarios I have run since the war began, some sort of nuclear exchange occurs.

The good news is there is a way out of this crisis — however imperfect it may be. In the two scenarios where nuclear war was averted, direct negotiations led to a ceasefire.”

I reiterate: it is absolutely pants-on-head gibbering insanity that these direct negotiations are not already presently underway.

Let us petition any and all higher powers we have faith in that this changes very soon. Let us also petition the leaders of our individual nations around the world to exert whatever kind of pressure they can muster upon Washington for these talks to commence.

This brinkmanship threatens us all, and the managers of the U.S. empire have no business playing these games with our lives.

Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes.  For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.

This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com and re-published with permission.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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The Pathway to a Negotiated Peace in the Ukraine with Jeffrey Sachs

42,044 views Oct 7, 2022

Brooklyn For Peace Fall Forum Series presents: The Pathway to a Negotiated Peace in Ukraine: October 6, 2022 Our speaker, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, addresses the war in Ukraine’s impact on climate change and global food security and will outline the pathway to a negotiated peace in Ukraine. He is a world-renowned economics professor, bestselling author, innovative educator, and global leader in sustainable development. He is widely recognized for bold and effective strategies to address complex challenges including the escape from extreme poverty, the global battle against human-induced climate change, international debt and financial crises, national economic reforms, and the control of pandemic and epidemic diseases. Sachs serves as the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he holds the rank of University Professor. Sachs held the position of Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University from 2002 to 2016. He is President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Chair of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission, Co-Chair of the UN Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition, Commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development, Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Honorary Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development at Sunway University, academician of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences at the Vatican, and an SDG Advocate for UN Secretary-General António Guterres. From 2001-18, Sachs served as Special Advisor to UN Secretaries-General Kofi Annan (2001-7), Ban Ki-moon (2008-16), and António Guterres (2017-18). Sachs has authored and edited numerous books, including three New York Times bestsellers: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011). Sachs was the co-recipient of the 2015 Blue Planet Prize, the leading global prize for environmental leadership. Read his full bio. https://www.jeffsachs.org/ https://brooklynpeace.org/

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Russia's side of the Ukraine story..

Dr. Kozin is a Moscow-based Russian military expert and researcher who has been publishing reports on an almost daily basis since the beginning of Russia’s special military operation.

BEGIN KOZIN REPORT

Report # 153. Russia has strongly warned Zelensky and NATO

October 10, 2022

Multiple missile strikes targeted 14 Ukrainian cities, all across the country, on October 10th morning, according to local officials and media. The news comes two days after a bomb explosion arranged by Security Service of Ukraine damaged the strategic Crimean Bridge – which Moscow has labelled a Ukrainian terrorist attack.

The office of Valery Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces – by the way wearing a wrist bracelet with engraved fascist swastika – reported they had detected at least 75 missiles. 

Russian federal TV Chanel One announced in the evening of October 10 that the total number of them was around 200, being fired in several salvos. Three types of missiles have been used: land-based, sea-based and air-based. Ukrainian officials confirmed that nearly 30 different important facilities have been targeted, outlined by the Kremlin that they belong to military command and control centers, communications assets and energy systems.

President Vladimir Zelensky confirmed the attacks throughout the country in a video address, saying numerous parts of Ukraine had come under fire, and claimed that Russia was targeting the energy infrastructure. Local officials in Lvov, Kharkov, and Odessa and eleven others also reported that their cities came under fire.

 

In Kiev, damage from the strikes was reported near the HQ of the Security Service of Ukraine, which is located in the government area of the capital. City officials halted operations of the metro system, and the stations have been used as shelters for civilians. The head of Lvov Region, Maksim Kozitsky, reported that elements of the western province’s energy infrastructure came under attack. Vitaly Kim, who heads the southern Nikolaev Region which borders Russia’s Kherson Region, reported dozens of projectiles and a number of kamikaze drones coming from Russian troops. He claimed that Moscow was targeting “critical infrastructure” throughout the country.

2. President Vladimir Putin addressed the Russian Security Council with explanation of the attack (Moscow, October 10):

“Colleagues, good afternoon,

 

You know that yesterday Chairman of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin reported to me on the first results of the investigation into the act of sabotage on the Crimean Bridge.

 

The forensic and other expert data, as well as operational information, show that the October 8 explosion was an act of terrorism aimed at destroying Russia's civilian and critical infrastructure.

 

It is also clear that the Ukrainian special services were the organisers and perpetrators of the attack. The Kiev regime has long been using terrorist methods, including murders of public figures, journalists and scientists, both in Ukraine and in Russia. And terrorist attacks on towns in Donbass, which have been going on for more than eight years. And also acts of nuclear terrorism, by which I mean missile and artillery strikes on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant.

 

This is not the whole story: Ukraine's special services have also carried out three terrorist acts against Russia's Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, repeatedly blowing up the plant's high-voltage lines. The third such terrorist attack damaged three of those lines at once. The damage was repaired in the shortest possible time and there were no serious consequences.

 

However, there have been a number of other terrorist attacks and attempts to commit similar crimes against electricity generation and gas transportation infrastructure facilities in our country, including an attempt to blow up a section of the TurkStream gas pipeline system.

 

All this has been proven by objective data, including the testimony of the detained perpetrators.

 

It is well known that Russian representatives are not allowed to take part in the investigation into the causes of explosions at and the destruction of international gas pipelines running under the Baltic Sea. But we all know who ultimately benefits from this crime.

 

Thus, the Kiev regime, by its actions, has actually put itself on the same level as international terrorist groups, and with the most odious of those. It is simply no longer possible to leave crimes of this kind without retaliation.

 

This morning, at the proposal of the Defence Ministry and in accordance with the plan of Russia’s General Staff, a massive strike was launched with long-range precision air, sea and land-based weapons against Ukrainian energy, military and communications facilities”.

 

“In the event of more attempts to stage terrorist attacks on our territory, Russia's response will be harsh and commensurate with the threats posed to the Russian Federation. Nobody should have any doubts about that”, – President warned.

 

3. Byelorussian President Lukashenko announced creation of the regional Armed Forces Grouping with Russia

On October 10, President Lukashenko announced formation of the Regional Armed Forces Grouping with Russia that was tasked to offset NATO aggression from neighboring countries-members of the transatlantic alliance. 

 Belarus accused Ukraine of planning attack it.

It was announced that Ukrainian forces have destroyed almost all bridges and mined the roads along the border with Belarus, Anatoly Lappo, chairman of the State Border Committee of Belarus, said on October 9. "Today, almost all border bridges have been blown up, and automobile and railway border routes are completely mined,” Lappo told Belarusian TV.  Ukrainian forces have fortified the border "to the extent that they put anti-tank mines in three rows on the roads," Lappo added.

 

4. Concerning attack on Crimean Bridge, a Russian commentator noted:

 

The massive strike against key cities in Ukraine was not caused by Ukrainian attack of the Crimean Bridge on October 8, 2022 only.

The attack was initiated by several factors, like genocide of civilians in Donbass for the last eight years [see Report # 146 dated September 27, 2022], continued shelling of many settlements in Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, and many cities and villages in Russia. Moscow also discovered several dozens of U.S. biolabs in Ukraine and Kiev’s attempts to acquire nuclear weapons from NATO,

Such terrorist attack took place not because of barbarism of the inhuman Kiev’s regime only. It happened also due to constant incitement of Zelensky by NATO/EU, amid dead silence from the UNO and the OSCE.

 

Russia can deliver a more sophisticated military blow on Ukraine itself and on the battlefield in particular, because such provocative action means the escalation of hostile Ukrainian activity on the Russian territory, damaging and disrupting key transport infrastructure of the federal importance used to deliver essential foodstuff, medical equipment, construction materials, transport fuel and lubricants, etc to a great number of people; gradually expanding it to more and more areas on its territory and endangering the lives of more and more civilians. 

 

LOS ANGELES PROGRESSIVE

Milwaukee Peace Rally

Peace Activists Hit the Streets from DC to San Francisco

Demanding a “Ceasefire now!” activists hosted anti-war events in DC, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Madison, Boston, Rockville, Santa Cruz, San Mateo, San Pedro, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.

• MARCY WINOGRAD
• SEP 18, 2022

On Sunday President Biden warned Russian President Valdamir Putin “Dont. Don’t. Don’t.” use nuclear weapons in retaliation for severe battlefield losses in Ukraine. While Putin dismissed Biden’s worries as unfounded, the specter of nuclear Armageddon drove US anti-war activists to the streets days before in a September Week of Action organized by the Peace in Ukraine Coalition.

 

Demanding a “Ceasefire now!” activists hosted anti-war events in DC, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Madison, Boston, Rockville, Santa Cruz, San Mateo, San Pedro, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.

The Peace in Ukraine Coalition–CODEPINK, Veterans for Peace, Democratic Socialists of America, Massachusetts Peace Action, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-US and other organizations – mobilized for negotiations, not escalation in what CODEPINK describes as a proxy war threatening a direct war between the two most heavily armed nuclear nations, the United States and Russia.

With President Biden asking Congress for another $13.7 billion for Ukraine, $7.2 billion for weapons and military training, activists delivered letters to their House and US Senate representatives, some letters simply urging a ceasefire, others pushing for a no vote on the next weapons request folded into a $47 billion COVID relief bill. That bill, called a continuing resolution, must be voted on in one form or another by September 30th to avoid a federal government shutdown.

If the resolution passes with Biden’s request, military analysts say it would bring this year’s total for Ukraine to $67 billion. The amount allotted for weapons, military training and intelligence could surpass $40 billion, four times the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency during an existential climate crisis of wildfires, droughts, storms and rising sea levels.

In the nation's capital CODEPINK co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, together with Colonel Ann Wright and other activists, kicked off the Week of Action, going door to door to the offices of the House Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), where the most natural anti-war allies would, theoretically, be found. While some members of the caucus call for much-needed diplomacy and raise concerns about the risk of nuclear war – either through a miscalculation or an intentional first strike – not one member of the nearly 100-member CPC will commit to voting against more weapons for Ukraine.

Benjamin told the press, “Further escalation should be unthinkable, but so should a long war of endless crushing artillery barrages and brutal urban and trench warfare that slowly and agonizingly destroys Ukraine, killing hundreds of Ukrainians with each day that passes. The only realistic alternative to this endless slaughter is a return to peace talks to bring the fighting to an end.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer do not make it easy for Democrats to break ranks – as the Republicans are doing ahead of the midterms–on the question of weapons for Ukraine. Pelosi and Schumer embed humanitarian aid and military dollars in the same legislation, making it hard for progressive Democrats to join with the 57 Republicans, among them hard-core Trumpers Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14), Lauren Boebert (CO-03), Jim Jordan (OH-04), who voted against previous Ukraine packages.

Since the Russian invasion on February 24th, thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have died, and according to the United Nations,12 million have been displaced, either internally or throughout eastern Europe. The Pentagon estimates 80,000 Russian soldiers have been killed.

Partners in the Peace in Ukraine Coalition condemn the Russian invasion but argue there is no military solution to a war that was provoked by the same neo-conservatives responsible for the disastrous US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Through successive administrations, the voices for a unipolar world in which the US dominates led to expansion of NATO, a hostile nuclear-armed military alliance, from 12 countries after the fall of the Soviet Union to 30 countries, including some that border Russia: Latvia, Estonia, Poland and LIthuania.

In addition to the expansion of NATO, organizations in the Peace in Ukraine Coalition cite other provocations: US support for a 2014 coup of Ukraine's democratically elected Russia-friendly President and years of US arms shipments–from Presidents Obama to Trump to Biden–to undermine the 2015 MINSK II peace agreement. That accord signed by Russia and Ukraine was to end the civil war that followed the 2014 coup and left an estimated 14,000 people dead in Ukraine's industrial Donbas region. Fighting between the swastika-flag-waving Azov Battalion and Russian separatists preceded Russia's February invasion of Ukraine, though corporate media often fails to mention this.

On Thursday, September 15th, demonstrators in San Francisco’s Financial District marched from the Senate offices of Alex Padilla and Dianne Feinstein to deliver letters in opposition to funding a protracted war in Ukraine.

Massachusetts Peace Action activists camped outside the offices of three Democratic House members – Jake Auchincloss, Katherine Clark and Stephen Lynch – to implore them to support a ceasefire.

Milwaukee anti-war activists, including a county supervisor, took their peace flags and “Diplomacy, Not War” signs to the campus of conservative Marquette University, where they passed out hundreds of flyers with QR codes for students to email their Congress members for a ceasefire. Organizer Jim Carpenter, co-chair (with this author) of the foreign policy team of Progressive Democrats of America, told skeptics who want a fight to the last Ukrainian, “Are you more concerned about saving lives or saving territory?”

DSA members in Santa Barbara, CA, distributed a similar half-pager to a staffer for Democratic Congressman Salud Carbajal, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee and represents a district crawling with military contractors and home to Vandenberg Air Force Base, where a test launch of a nuclear missile was delayed due to Putin’s placement of Russia’s nuclear arsenal on high alert.

On the steps outside the Congressman’s office, activists talked to a Ukrainian church member visiting the lawmaker at the same time to press for more weapons to Ukraine. “You can’t negotiate with Putin – you can never trust him,” he insisted, waving a life-size Ukrainian flag and arguing for a fight to the finish – to regime change.

“But there is no military solution short of economic ruin, global famine, climate catastrophe – or worse, nuclear Armageddon,” responded this activist, who pointed out – to nods from the Ukrainian– that since the start of the war Ukraine and Russia had negotiated grain exports and nuclear reactor inspections. Why couldn’t they negotiate an end to the war, if only the US and NATO would stop sending weapons to prolong the crisis?

Santa Barbara Peace Rally

Veterans for Peace members in the Bay Area wrote to Democratic reps Mark Desaulinier (CA-11) and Barbara Lee (CA-13), the lone vote against the US invasion of Afghanistan and sponsor of legislation to cut the Pentagon budget by $350 billion. “We urge you to forcefully call for negotiations and speak out against Secretary of Defense Austin’s call for continuing the war to ‘weaken Russia.’ That is a recipe for a world war if ever there was one,” read the letters.

In Rockville, MD, another Veterans for Peace member Jim Driscoll, who volunteered for the Marines in Vietnam, published an OpEd in the local press, “Why I was arrested to ‘Stop the War. Save the Climate.’” Driscoll was arrested in August during an anti-war protest outside Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen’s office. His message to Van Hollen, as well as the media? Stop fueling the war in Ukraine that exacerbates the climate crisis.

Driscoll writes, “As with Vietnam and Iraq, the U.S. government and a subservient media have painted an ahistorical, one-sided, distorted narrative to justify the damage we have foisted upon the people of Ukraine …”

Ukraine’s President Zelensky, meanwhile, is slated this week to virtually address an Austin, Texas, summit of military contractors–Raytheon, Northrop Grumman– to appeal directly to the war profiteers for more weapons. The White House–concerned that Ukrainian battlefield victories will trigger Russian retaliation– opposes Zelensky’s latest request: missiles with a range of 190 miles that Zelensky could use to strike Russian-annexed Crimea.

As a plan B, Zelensky’s government has launched an “Advantage Ukraine” initiative of low taxation and deregulation to attract foreign investors to build made-to-order weapons systems in Ukraine. That country, however, may have serious competition as a forward-deployed threat to Russia, for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently announced he wants to make his country “the cornerstone of conventional defense of Europe.”

Not everyone in high places campaigns, however, for escalation and further militarization. Mexican President Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) will call on the United Nations to create an international committee to promote dialogue between Biden, Putin and Zelensky with invitations to Pope Francis, the Prime Minister of India and the UN Secretary General to act as mediators to end the war in Ukraine. AMLO would like to put everything on the negotiating table, including nuclear missile tests.

Excited by AMLO’s initiative, members of the Peace in Ukraine Coalition hope to amplify his message in the coming weeks as an existential question haunts coalition members.

How does the war in Ukraine end? With nuclear annihilation of 60% of the human race or a decades-long war of attrition or a backdoor deal for semi-autonomy of the Donbas and partial denuclearization of Europe?

As the United States approaches the 60th anniversary of the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, one is reminded that former President John F. Kennedy persuaded Soviet Leader Nikita Krushchev to remove nuclear missiles pointed at Florida from a base in Cuba, not by fast-tracking weapons to escalate a hot war but by quietly making a deal to remove the Jupiter missiles from Turkey.

As time passed, US nuclear warheads were reinstalled in Turkey, though the quiet negotiations between JFK and Kruschev serve as an example of how diplomacy can avert catastrophe.

To join the Peace in Ukraine Coalition, visit www.peaceinUkraine.org or email the author [email protected]

CODEPINKBIDENRUSSIAPEACE ACTIVISTSUKRAINEPEACE

BY

 MARCY WINOGRAD

Marcy Winograd is a blogger, activist, and public school teacher in Los Angeles. 

Follow marcywinograd

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Open in browser SEP 23   How the West Provoked War in Ukraine     Listen now       KATIE HALPER AND AARON MATÉ         Click here for the full episode, including the extended interview with Ben Abelow where the expert plays political chess to show the previous and predicted moves of these cold war leaders. Researcher and writer Dr. Ben Abelow, a scholar who lobbied Congress on nuclear arms policy, joins Useful Idiots to explain, as his new book argues, how the west brought war to Ukraine. “The goal of the US,” Abelow says, “is not to save Ukrainians but to degrade Russia’s military until they won’t be able to fight in the future. And while some say stopping Russia is a humanitarian goal, the way one would degrade Russia’s military is to keep an extended war going and fight to the last Ukrainian.” Abelow analyzes the history of this cold war, the aggression by each side, and the hypocrisy of the argument that Ukraine has a sacrosanct right to join NATO. “The right to join NATO is the right to place a western military arsenal on Russia’s border. If Russia made a military alliance with Canada or Mexico, US leaders would not be talking about their right to do so.” And on this week’s news of Putin announcing military escalation and giving a thinly-veiled threat of nuclear war, Dr. Abelow warns: “I hope it’s taken seriously.”

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Andrew Bacevich, “What—if Anything—Will US Military Learn From Putin’s Disastrous Ukraine Invasion?” September 13, 2022 Tom Dispatch

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Zaporizhia

Arnie Gundersen On Zaporizhzhia & The Spent nuke Fuel Pools Capacity To Cause 100 Chernobyls

   There are six spent nuclear fuel pools at Zaporizhia. Each one has 10-20 Chernobyl's worth of radiation. That's 60-120 Chernobyls plus six reactors. PLus if enough of this goes there will be a  cascading efect killing workers at other NPPs and nuclear weapons sites, the power, all over causing more and more boil offs of spent nuclear fuel pools and meltdowns across the northern hemisphere causing tens of thousands of Chernobyls and killing everyone in the northern hemisphere plus most or all of the animals and plants. I don't know what would happen in the southern hemisphere.

       Two of the last three  http://www.nuclearhotseat.com #583 and #584 address the spent nuclear fuel pools and reactors in interviews with Arnie Gundersen

 

The Pathway to a Negotiated Peace in Ukraine, with Jeffrey Sachs

Join us on Thursday, September 22 @ 5-6 pm EST via Zoom

Our speaker, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, will address the war in Ukraine's impact on climate change and global food security, and will outline the pathway to a negotiated peace in Ukraine. There will be time for Q&A following his remarks. Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned economics professor, bestselling author, innovative educator, and global leader in sustainable development. He is widely recognized for bold and effective strategies to address complex challenges including the escape from extreme poverty, the global battle against human-induced climate change, international debt and financial crises, national economic reforms, and the control of pandemic and epidemic diseases. Sachs serves as the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. When: Thursday, September 22, at 5:00 pm (NOTE THE TIME!!) Where: On Zoom: Register here. Sponsor: Brooklyn For Peace Co-Sponsors: Bay Ridge Peace Action, Fort Greene Peace, Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives, Veterans for Peace--NYC Chapter 34, World Can't Wait. Please email us at [email protected] if your organization would like to co-sponsor. Spread the word about this event on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Diplomacy Needed to End Ukraine War: YOUR Phone Call Is Important!

If Nydia Velazquez represents you, call to thank her, and ask that she encourage her colleagues to sign on as well. Velazquez: 718-599-3658  Your phone call is the most effective action you can take, and shows how important this issue is to you. Leave a message if you don't get someone on the phone, or if it's in the evening or on the weekend. You can also use this tool from Peace Action to send an email message to your representative.

Pink Floyd's Waters explains why he called Biden a war criminal

The US president is committing a “huge crime” by fueling the conflict in Ukraine, the rock legend told CNN

RT 9/7/2022

https://www.rt.com/news/560404-pink-floyd-waters-biden-war-criminal/

Roger Waters © Timothy Hiatt / Getty Images

US President Joe Biden is fueling the Ukraine conflict, which is a “huge crime,” Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters said in an interview released on Saturday.

Waters sat down with CNN’s Michael Smerconish to discuss, in particular, the political views that the rock legend hasn’t shied away from displaying in his new concert tour ‘This Is Not A Drill’, which features a montage of alleged “war criminals,” including a picture of Joe Biden with the caption “WAR CRIMINAL. Just getting started.”

“[Joe Biden] is fueling the fire in Ukraine for start. That’s a huge crime. Why won’t the United States of America encourage [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky to negotiate, obviating the need for this horrific, horrendous war, that’s killing [people]?” he asked.

Waters also pushed back against Smerconish's argument that Ukraine was “invaded” by Russia, noting that the entire crisis should be analyzed in the historical context.

“You need to look at the history… This war is basically about the action and reaction of NATO pushing right up to the Russian border, which they promised they wouldn’t do,” he added, recalling the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s talks with the West on the withdrawal of Moscow’s forces from Eastern Europe.

Waters said that the conflict over Ukraine started as early as 2008, an apparent reference to the NATO summit in Bucharest at which the intentions of Ukraine and Georgia to eventually become full-fledged members of the alliance were supported.

Read more

 Pink Floyd pulls music to support Ukraine

The interview also saw Pink Floyd’s England-born frontman and Smerconish engage in a heated exchange over the American role in WWII. Waters insisted that the US cannot call itself ‘liberators’, adding that Washington entered the war only because of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941. The CNN journalist, however, said the US would have joined the conflict regardless.

Staying on the subject of WWII, the musician argued that the Soviet Union “had already almost won the bloody war” by the time the US entered, adding that “23 million Russians died protecting you and me from the Nazi menace.”

Smerconish responded by saying “you would think the Russians would have learned their lesson from war and wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine – fair?”

Waters pushed back, asking “what the United States would do if the Chinese were putting nuclear-armed missiles into Mexico and Canada.”

“The Chinese are too busy encircling Taiwan as we speak,” Smerconish retorted, to which Rogers reminded his interviewer of the One China principle, accusing the journalist of believing “your site’s propaganda.”

Previously, Waters had condemned the Russian operation, branding it “a criminal mistake in my opinion, the act of a gangster” and called for an immediate ceasefire.

Late last year, Russia made a proposal to NATO and the US to agree on security guarantees under which the bloc would refrain from further expansion, with the potential addition of Ukraine being a particularly contentious point. At the time, Moscow also insisted on the non-deployment of offensive weapons, including nuclear arms, and demanded that NATO forces withdraw to the positions they occupied in 1997.

In March, following the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said that the previously proposed security guarantees were no longer valid, citing the drastic changes in the geopolitical landscape.

Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”

In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.

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Russian Operations in Ukraine (August 4, 2022): featuring Mark Sleboda

 Aug 4, 2022

Joining Brian Berletic for this update on YouTube is Mark Sleboda, an international relations and security expert based in Russia, and US Navy veteran, with his opinion on the war. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__sVuhjJPOY

(Who's "winning"? Not the people of Ukraine- peace talks are the only thing that can save them.)

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Open in browser

West prepares to plunder post-war Ukraine with neoliberal shock therapy: privatization, deregulation, slashing worker protections

The Barricade Aug 2

Western governments and corporations met in Switzerland to plan harsh neoliberal economic policies to impose on post-war Ukraine, calling to cut labor laws, “open markets,” drop tariffs, deregulate industries, and “sell state-owned enterprises to private investors.”

By Jake Kallio and Benjamin Norton

While the United States and Europe flood Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars of weapons, using it as an anti-Russian proxy and pouring fuel on the fire of a brutal war that is devastating the country, they are also making plans to essentially plunder its post-war economy.

Representatives of Western governments and corporations met in Switzerland this July to plan a series of harsh neoliberal policies to impose on post-war Ukraine, calling to cut labor laws, “open markets,” drop tariffs, deregulate industries, and “sell state-owned enterprises to private investors.”

Ukraine has been destabilized by violence since 2014, when a US-sponsored coup d’etat overthrew its democratically elected government, setting off a civil war. That conflict dragged on until February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded the country, escalating into a new, even deadlier phase of the war.

The United States and European Union have sought to erase the history of foreign-sponsored civil war in Ukraine from 2014 to early 2022, acting as though the conflict began on February 24. But Washington had sent large sums of weapons to Ukraine and provided extensive military training and support over several years before Russia invaded.

Meanwhile, starting in 2017, representatives of Western governments and corporations quietly held annual conferences in which they discussed ways to profit from the civil war they were fueling in Ukraine.

In these meetings, Western political and business leaders outlined a series of aggressive right-wing reforms they hoped to impose on Ukraine, including widespread privatization of state-owned industries and deregulation of the economy.

On July 4 and 5, 2022, top officials from the US, EU, Britain, Japan, and South Korea met in Switzerland for a so-called “Ukraine Recovery Conference.” There, they planned Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction and performatively announced aid commitments – while salivating over a bonanza of potential contracts.

New NATO candidates Finland and Sweden committed to assure reconstruction in Lugansk, roughly 48 hours after Russia and separatist forces announced the region had fallen fully under their control.

But the Ukraine Recovery Conference was not new. It had been renamed to save the expense of a new acronym. In the previous five years, the group and its annual meetings were instead referred to as the “Ukraine Reform Conference” (URC).

The URC’s agenda was explicitly focused on imposing political changes on the country – namely, “strengthening the market economy“, “decentralization, privatization, reform of state-owned enterprises, land reform, state administration reform,” and “Euro-Atlantic integration.”

Before 2022, this gathering had nothing to do with aid – and a lot to do with economics.

Documents from the 2018 Ukraine Reform Conference emphasized the importance of privatizing most of Ukraine’s remaining public sector, stating that the “ultimate goal of the reform is to sell state-owned enterprises to private investors”, along with calls for more “privatization, deregulation, energy reform, tax and customs reform.”

Lamenting that the “government is Ukraine’s largest asset holder,” the report stated, “Reform in privatization and SOEs has been long awaited, as this sector of the Ukrainian economy has remained largely unchanged since 1991.”

The Ukraine Reform Conference listed as one of its “achievements” the adoption of a law in January 2018 titled “On Privatization of State and Municipal Property,” which it noted “simplifies the procedure of privatization.”

While the URC enthusiastically pushed for these neoliberal reforms, it acknowledged that they were very unpopular among actual Ukrainians. A poll found that just 12.4% supported privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOE), whereas 49.9% opposed it. (An additional 12% were indifferent, whereas 25.7% had no answer.)

Economic liberalization in Ukraine since Russia’s February invasion has been even more grim.

In March 2022, the Ukrainian parliament adopted emergency legislation allowing employers to suspend collective agreements. Then in May, it passed a permanent reform package effectively exempting the vast majority of Ukrainian workers (those at businesses with fewer than 200 employees) from Ukrainian labor law.

While the most immediate beneficiaries of these changes will be Ukrainian employers, Western governments have been lobbying to liberalize Ukraine’s labor laws for years.

Documents leaked in 2021 showed that the British government coached Ukrainian officials on how to convince a recalcitrant public to give up workers’ rights and implement anti-union policies. Training materials lamented that popular opinion towards the proposed reforms was overwhelmingly negative, but provided messaging strategies to mislead Ukrainians into supporting them.

Ukraine Recovery Conference participants in Lugano, Switzerland on July 4, 2022

 

West calls for aggressive neoliberal reforms at ‘Ukraine Recovery Conference’

The July 2022 Ukraine Recovery Conference, which was held by Lugano, Switzerland and jointly hosted by the Swiss and Ukrainian governments, featured representatives from the following states and institutions:

• Albania

• Australia

• Austria

• Belgium

• Canada

• Croatia

• Cyprus

• Czech Republic

• Denmark

• Estonia

• Finland

• France

• Germany

• Greece

• Hungary

• Ireland

• Iceland

• Israel

• Italy

• Japan

• Latvia

• Lithuania

• Liechtenstein

• Luxembourg

• Malta

• Netherlands

• North Macedonia

• Norway

• Poland

• Portugal

• Republic of Korea (popularly known as South Korea)

• Romania

• Slovak Republic

• Slovenia

• Spain

• Sweden

• Switzerland

• Türkiye (formerly known as Turkey)

• Ukraine

• United Kingdom

• United States of America

• Council of Europe

• European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

• European Commission

• European Investment Bank

• Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen speaks at the Ukraine Recovery Conference on July 4, 2022

Among the prominent officials who attended were European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, Swiss President Ignazio Cassis, and UK Foreign Minister Liz Truss.

Ukraine’s Western-backed leader Volodymyr Zelensky also addressed the conference via video.

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky addresses the Ukraine Recovery Conference via video on July 4, 2022

Physically present at the Switzerland meeting were Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and Zelensky’s top political ally Ruslan Stefanchuk, the chairman of Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.

Stefanchuk is the second-in-line for the presidency after Zelensky. He is also a member of Ukraine’s all-powerful National Security and Defense Council, which truly governs the country.

(From left to right) Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, Swiss President Ignazio Cassis, European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, and Verkhovna Rada chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Switzerland on July 4, 2022

Even the United Nations gave its imprimatur to the conference: UN Secretary-General António Guterres delivered a video statement as well.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addresses the Ukraine Recovery Conference on July 5, 2022

At the two-day meeting, the attendees agreed that Ukraine should eventually be given membership in the European Union. The country had already been granted EU candidate status just two weeks before, at a June summit in Brussels.

At the conclusion of the meeting, all governments and institutions present endorsed a joint statement called the Lugano Declaration. This declaration was supplemented by a “National Recovery Plan,” which was in turn prepared by a “National Recovery Council” established by the Ukrainian government.

This plan advocated for an array of neoliberal reforms, including “privatization of non critical enterprises” and “finalization of corporatization of SOEs” (state-owned enterprises) – identifying as an example the selling off of Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear energy company EnergoAtom.

In order to “attract private capital into banking system,” the proposal likewise called for the “privatization of SOBs” (state-owned banks).

Seeking to increase “private investment and boost nationwide entrepreneurship,” the National Recovery Plan urged significant “deregulation” and proposed the creation of “‘catalyst projects’ to unlock private investment into priority sectors.”

In an explicit call for slashing labor protections, the document attacked the remaining pro-worker laws in Ukraine, some of which are a holdover of the Soviet era.

The National Recovery Plan complained of “outdated labor legislation leading to complicated hiring and firing process, regulation of overtime, etc.” As an example of this supposed “outdated labor legislation,” the Western-backed plan lamented that workers in Ukraine with one year of experience are granted a nine-week “notice period for redundancy dismissal,” compared to just four weeks in Poland and South Korea.

Neoliberal economic reforms proposed in Ukraine’s National Recovery Plan

In the same vein, the National Recovery Plan urged Ukraine to cut taxes on corporations and wealthy capitalists.

The blueprint complained that 40% of Ukraine’s GDP comes from tax revenue, calling this a “rather high tax burden” compared to its model example of South Korea. It thus called to “transform tax service,” and “review potential for decreasing the share of tax revenue in GDP.”

In short, the Ukraine Recovery Conference’s economic proposal was little more than a repackaged Washington Consensus: a typical right-wing program that involves implementing mass privatizations, deregulating industries, gutting labor protections, cutting taxes on the rich, and putting the burden on Ukrainian workers.

In the 1990s, following the overthrow of the Soviet Union, the United States imposed what it called capitalist “shock therapy” on Russia and other former constituent republics.

A 2001 UNICEF study found that these harsh neoliberal reforms in Russia caused 3.2 million excess deaths, and pushed 18 million children into poverty, bringing about rampant malnutrition and public health crises.

Washington and Brussels appear committed to return to this very same neoliberal shock therapy in their plans for post-war Ukraine.

More calls for neoliberal shock therapy in post-war Ukraine

To accompany its July 2022 meeting in Switzerland, the Ukraine Recovery Conference published a “strategic briefing” compiled by a right-wing Ukrainian organization called the Center of Economic Recovery.

The Center of Economic Recovery describes itself as a “platform that unites experts, think tanks, business, the public and government officials for the development of the country’s economy.” On its website, it lists many Ukrainian corporations as its partners and funders, making it clear that it acts as lobby on their behalf, like a chamber of commerce.

The report that this corporate lobby wrote for the Ukraine Recovery Conference was even more explicit than the National Recovery Plan in its advocacy of aggressive neoliberal economic reforms.

Using right-wing libertarian language of “economic freedom,” the document urged to “reduce government size” and “open markets.”

Its proposal read as neoliberal boilerplate: “decrease the regulatory burden on businesses” by “reducing the size of the government (tax administration, privatization; digitalization of public services), improving regulatory efficiency (deregulation), and opening markets (liberalization of capital markets; investment freedom).”

In the name of “EU integration and access to markets,” it likewise proposed “removal of tariffs and non-tariff non-technical barriers for all Ukrainian goods,” while simultaneously calling to “facilitate FDI [foreign direct investment] attraction to bring the largest international companies to Ukraine,” with “special investment incentives” for foreign corporations.

It was essentially a call for Ukraine to surrender its economic sovereignty to Western capital.

Both the National Recovery Plan and the strategic briefing also heavily emphasized the need for robust anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.

Neither document acknowledged that fact that Kiev’s Western-backed leader Volodmyr Zelensky, who spoke at the Ukraine Recovery Conference, is known to have large amounts of wealth hidden in a network of offshare accounts.

Zelensky was named in the Pandora Papers, a leak of suspicious offshore companies, and he is linked to luxury properties in London.

Even more calls for liberalization, privatizations, deregulation, tax cuts

In addition to the National Recovery Plan and the strategic briefing, the July 2022 Ukraine Recovery Conference presented a report prepared by the company Economist Impact, a corporate consulting firm that is part of The Economist Group.

This third document, titled “Ukraine Reform Tracker,” was funded by the Swiss government with the stated “aim of stimulating and supporting discussion on this matter at the 2022 Ukraine Recovery Conference.”

The Ukraine Reform Tracker analyzed the neoliberal policies already imposed in Ukraine since the US-backed 2014 coup, and urged for even more aggressive neoliberal reforms to be implemented when the war ends.

Of the three reports presented at the conference, this was perhaps the most full-throated call for Ukraine to adopt neoliberal shock therapy after the war – a tactic often referred to as disaster capitalism.

Quoting the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the document insisted that Ukraine has “issues in deregulation and competition that still need to be addressed, such as ongoing state intervention” – depicting state intervention in the economy as something inherently bad.

In this vein, the Ukraine Reform Tracker pushed to “increase foreign direct investments” by international corporations, not invest resources in social programs for the Ukrainian people.

The report emphasized the importance of developing the financial sector and called for “removing excessive regulations” and tariffs.

“Deregulation and tax simplification has been further deepened,” it wrote approvingly, adding, “Steps towards deregulation and the simplification of the tax system are examples of measures which not only withstood the blow of the war but have been accelerated by it.”

The Ukraine Reform Tracker praised the central bank for “successfully liberalising the currency, floating the exchange rate.” While it noted some of these policies were reversed due to the Russian invasion, the report urged “the swiftest possible elimination of currency controls,” in order to “reinstate competitiveness within the financial sector.”

The report however complained that these neoliberal reforms are not being implemented quickly enough, writing, “Privatisation— which already progressed slowly before the war—stalled, with a draft law aiming to simplify the process rejected” by the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament.

It called for further “liberalising agriculture” to “attract foreign investment and encourage domestic entrepreneurship,” as well as “procedural simplifications,” to “make it easier for small and medium enterprises” to “expand by purchasing and investing in state-owned assets,” thereby “making it easier for foreign investors to enter the market post-conflict.”

“Further pursuing the privatisation of large and loss-making state-owned enterprises” will “allow more Ukrainian entrepreneurs to enter the market and thrive there in the post-war context,” the report urged.

The Economist Impact study stressed the importance of Ukraine cutting its trade with Russia and instead integrating its economy with Europe.

“Ukraine’s trade reforms centre on efforts to diversify its trade operations and enhance its integration into the EU market,” it wrote.

The Western government-sponsored report boasted of significantly reducing Kiev’s economic ties to its eastern neighbor, noting: “Russia was Ukraine’s main trading partner in 2014, capturing 18.2% of its exports and providing 22% of its imports. Since then, however, Russia’s share of Ukraine’s exports and imports has decreased consistently, reaching 4.9% and 8.4% in 2021, respectively.”

“Ukraine made particular progress in diversifying its trade portfolio within the EU, raising its trade volumes with member states by 46.2% from 2015 to 2019,” it added.

The report added that it is “essential” that Ukraine carry out other reforms, such as modifying its railways by “aligning the rail gauges with EU standards.”

The Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano, Switzerland on July 5, 2022

The Ukraine Reform Tracker presented the war as an opportunity to impose even more disaster capitalist policies.

“The post-war moment may present an opportunity to complete the difficult land reform by extending the right to purchase agricultural land to legal entities, including foreign ones,” the report stated.

“Opening the path for international capital to flow into Ukrainian agriculture will likely boost productivity across the sector, increasing its competitiveness in the EU market,” it added.

The document proposed new ways for exploiting Ukrainian labor in specific industries, “especially pharmaceutical and electrical production, plastic and rubber manufacturing, furniture, textiles, and food and agricultural products.”

“Once the war is over, the government will also need to consider substantially lowering the share of stateowned banks, with the privatisation of Privatbank, the country’s largest lender, and Oshchadbank, a large processor of pensions and social payments,” it insisted.

The Ukraine Reform Tracker concluded optimistically, stating that that “post-war moment will be an opportunity for Ukraine,” and “there is likely to be significant pressure to continue and speed up the implementation of the reform agenda. Continued business reforms could allow Ukraine to further deregulate [and] privatise lossmaking SOEs.”

While pushing disaster capitalism, the Ukraine Recovery Conference exploits ‘social justice’ rhetoric

While these three documents published by the 2022 Ukraine Reform Conference (URC) were vociferous calls for the imposition of right-wing economic policies, they were accompanied by superficial appeals to social justice rhetoric.

The URC released a set of seven “Lugano Principles” that it identified as the keys to a just, equitable post-war reconstruction:

• partnership

• reform focus

• transparency, accountability, and rule of law

• democratic participation

• multi-stakeholder engagement

• gender equality and inclusion

• (environmental) sustainability

These principles demonstrate the ways that hawks in Washington and Brussels have increasingly weaponized ideas about “intersectionality” to advance their belligerent foreign policy.

In his report “Woke Imperium: The Coming Confluence Between Social Justice and Neoconservatism,” former US State Department officer Christopher Mott discussed the growing use of left-liberal social-justice talking points to legitimize and enforce Western imperialism.

Mott observed that the “liberal Atlanticist tendency to push moralism and social engineering globally has immense potential to create backlash.”

Western-backed liberals in post-socialist Europe have spent three decades creating a false dichotomy between either a liberalizing cultural project that can only be realized under US-led trans-Atlantic hegemony and neoliberal economic reforms, or a purely fictional socialist past whose political legacy is somehow reflected in right-wing anti-communist nationalist parties attempting to roll back advances that women had achieved under socialism.

Despite its patent absurdity, this narrative has won adherents among younger liberal intellectuals, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, who have little or no memory of the socialist period, and who face increasingly desperate career prospects outside of the Western-backed ideological apparatus.

On the other hand, right-wing nationalists like Hungary’s Viktor Orban posture as the only defenders of their countries’ cultural sovereignty against hostile outsiders, while also refusing to break from neoliberal capitalist orthodoxy.

In turn, organic local activists struggling for legitimate social justice causes find themselves portrayed as agents furthering the agendas of foreign powers.

At best, during peacetime, this undermines their work and hinders progress for their causes. In a country like Ukraine, where Western governments have supported far-right, neo-fascist groups and eight years dragging out a civil war, this is life-threatening.

In Ukraine, what’s even left to loot?

On May 9, 2022, the US Congress passed the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act, greatly expanding Washington’s authority to provide military aid to Ukraine.

Lend-lease provisions originated during World War II and were used by the US government to provide military aid to countries fighting Nazi Germany, including Britain and the Soviet Union, without formally entering the war.

Under this framework, the US provides military equipment as a loan; if the equipment is not or cannot be returned, recipient governments are on the hook to pay back the full cost.

The Joe Biden administration explained its use of lend-lease by the need to quickly move the bill through Congress before other funding ran out.

While many North Americans protested what they saw as a pointless giveaway of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to a foreign country, lend-lease provisions are loans, not grants.

Britain, one of the United States’ closest allies, only finished paying back its 60-year-old lend-lease debt in 2006. Russia settled its former Soviet obligations the same year.

Given this historical precedent, Ukraine will likely be saddled with debts it can’t readily pay back – debts extended to corrupt Western-backed elites under wartime duress. This means US financial institutions will have further collateral to impose neoliberal structural adjustment policies on Ukraine, subordinating its economy for years to come.

Washington and its allies have a long history of instrumentalizing debt to force countries to accept unpopular pro-Western policy changes, and difficulties of repayment often compel countries to accept even more debt, leading to debt trap cycles that are extremely difficult to escape.

It was in fact the International Monetary Fund, and specifically the refusal of Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych to accept IMF demands that he cut wages, slash social spending, and end gas subsidies in order to integrate with the EU, which led him to turn instead to Russia for an alternative economic agreement, thus setting the stage for the Western-backed “Euromaidan protests” and eventually the 2014 coup.

Meanwhile, in the current war, Moscow and Russian-backed separatist fighters are occupying and may annex what were historically the most industrialized regions of Ukraine, located in the east.

At the same time, much of what remained of the country’s pre-war industrial base has been physically destroyed by the war. And these same regions hold much of Ukraine’s energy resources, notably coal.

Millions of Ukrainians have already emigrated and are unlikely to return, especially if they are able to access work visas in the EU. Young and educated people with technical skills are the least likely to stay.

The situation is even bleaker when one considers that, well before Russia’s February invasion, Ukraine was already the poorest country in Europe.

While Soviet Ukraine had thrived as a centre of the USSR’s heavy industry, and a source for much of Soviet political leadership, post-Soviet Ukraine has been a playground for rival elites supported by the West or by Russia.

Post-Soviet Ukraine has been devastated by persistent economic crises and rampant and systematic corruption. It has consistently had smaller incomes and a lower standard of living even compared to neighboring post-socialist countries, including Russia.

Ukraine has not been able to restore the size of the economy it had in 1990, when it was still part of the Soviet Union. And looking beyond raw GDP data, the quality of life for many Ukrainian workers and their access to social services has significantly declined.

With limited financial means to provide for basic state functions, much less to repay foreign debts, a post-war Ukraine could be forced to accept humiliating and dangerous concessions in other spheres – serving, say, as an Israel-style trying ground for weapons testing, or hosting Kosovo-style black sites for US covert operations, or providing Western businesses a Chile-style no-regulation environment for tax evasion and criminal activities – all while gutting what little remains of its domestic welfare state and labor protections.

Yet instead of advocating for a diplomatic solution to the war, which could help the Ukrainian government and people concentrate their resources on economic recovery, Western governments have adamantly opposed proposed peace talks, insisting, in the words of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, “This war will be won on the battlefield.”

Washington and Brussels are sacrificing Ukraine for their geopolitical interests. And their Ukraine Recovery Conference shows they expect to keep benefiting economically even after the war ends.

This article was originally published here.

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Benjamin Norton

Benjamin Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the founder and editor of Multipolarista, and is based in Latin America.

Jake Kallio is a writer and anti-war activist based in Canada.

Rep Jayapal Member of Congress letter seeking a diplomatic end to the war in Ukraine

Endorsing organizations: Progressive Democrats of America, Win Without War, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Quincy Institute, Peace Action, Campaign For Peace, Disarmament, and Common Security

  

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Jayapal Letter

Dear Mr. President:

We write with appreciation for your commitment to Ukraine’s legitimate struggle against Russia’s war of aggression. Your support for the self-defense of an independent, sovereign, and democratic state has been supported by Congress, including through various appropriations of military, economic and humanitarian aid in furtherance of this cause. Your administration’s policy was critical to enable the Ukrainian people, through their courageous fighting and heroic sacrifices, to deal a historic military defeat to Russia, forcing Russia to dramatically scale back the stated goals of the invasion.

Crucially, you achieved this while also maintaining that it is imperative to avoid direct military conflict with Russia, which would lead to “World War III, something we must strive to prevent.” The risk of nuclear weapons being used has been estimated to be higher now than at any time since the height of the Cold War. Given the catastrophic possibilities of nuclear escalation and miscalculation, which only increase the longer this war continues, we agree with your goal of avoiding direct military conflict as an overriding national-security priority.  

Given the destruction created by this war for Ukraine and the world, as well as the risk of catastrophic escalation, we also believe it is in the interests of Ukraine, the United States, and the world to avoid a prolonged conflict. For this reason, we urge you to pair the military and economic support the United States has provided to Ukraine with a proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire. This is consistent with your recognition that “there’s going to have to be a negotiated settlement here,” and your concern that Vladimir Putin “doesn't have a way out right now, and I'm trying to figure out what we do about that.” 

We are under no illusions regarding the difficulties involved in engaging Russia given its outrageous and illegal invasion of Ukraine. However, if there is a way to end the war while preserving a free and independent Ukraine, it is America’s responsibility to pursue every diplomatic avenue to support such a solution that is acceptable to the people of Ukraine. Such a framework would presumably include incentives to end hostilities, including some form of sanctions relief, and bring together the international community to establish security guarantees for a free and independent Ukraine that are acceptable for all parties, particularly Ukrainians. The alternative to diplomacy is protracted war, with both its attendant certainties and catastrophic and unknowable risks. 

Russia’s invasion has caused incalculable harm for the people of Ukraine, leading to the deaths of countless thousands of civilians, Ukrainian soldiers, and displacement of 13 million people, while Russia’s recent seizure of cities in Ukraine’s east have led to the most pivotal moment in the conflict and the consolidation of Russian control over roughly 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory. The conflict threatens an additional tens of millions more worldwide, as skyrocketing prices in wheat, fertilizer and fuel spark acute crises in global hunger and poverty. A war that is allowed to grind on for months or even years—potentially escalating in intensity and geographic scope—threatens to displace, kill, and immiserate far more Ukrainians while causing hunger, poverty, and death around the world. The conflict has also contributed to elevated gas and food prices at home, fueling inflation and high oil prices for Americans in recent months. Economists believe that if the situation in Ukraine is stabilized, some of the speculative concerns driving higher fuel costs will subside and likely lead to a drop in world oil prices.

We agree with the Administration’s perspective that it is not America’s place to pressure Ukraine’s government regarding sovereign decisions, and with the principle you have enunciated that there should be “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” But as legislators responsible for the expenditure of tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in military assistance in the conflict, we believe such involvement in this war also creates a responsibility for the United States to seriously explore all possible avenues, including direct engagement with Russia, to reduce harm and support Ukraine in achieving a peaceful settlement. 

In May, President Zelensky, despite deadlocked negotiations, reiterated that the war “will only definitively end through diplomacy,” and had previously explained that “any mentally healthy person always chooses the diplomatic path, because he or she knows: even if it is difficult, it can prevent the loss of thousands, tens of thousands…and maybe even millions of lives.”

In conclusion, we urge you to make vigorous diplomatic efforts in support of a negotiated settlement and ceasefire, engage in direct talks with Russia, explore prospects for a new European security arrangement acceptable to all parties that will allow for a sovereign and independent Ukraine, and, in coordination with our Ukrainian partners, seek a rapid end to the conflict and reiterate this goal as America’s chief priority.

Sincerely,

[Members of Congress]

Vijay Prashad: Another View on the War In Ukraine

257,391 views Mar 8, 2022 Guest: Vijay Prashad, director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research which describes itself as an international, movement-driven institution focused on stimulating intellectual debate that serves people’s aspirations. He is also the author of such books as The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. His latest book is Washington Bullets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiTxlyiKVT0

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While Biden Gives Ukrainian Army “The Most Lethal Weapon,” War Profiteer BAE Systems Stock Soars

By Jeremy Kuzmarov

 -

 June 27, 2022 

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/06/27/while-biden-gives-ukrainian-army-the-most-lethal-weapon-war-profiteer-bae-systems-stock-soars/

"During the 2020 U.S. election campaign, BAE Systems donated $569,202 to Democratic Party candidates, and $452,594 to Republicans, according to opensecrets.org.

Joe Biden received $102,591 compared to $94,966 for Donald Trump....

So far this year, BAE Systems has spent $940,000 on lobbying Congress; in 2021, it spent $3.63 million.^[5]"

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$1B More in U.S. Military Aid to Ukraine:
Weapons Expert Urges Negotiation vs.
“Military-First Approach”

DEMOCRACY NOW - JUNE 16, 2022
GUEST - William Hartung - national security and foreign policy expert at the Quincy Institute for Responsible
Statecraft.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0?ui=2&ik=a287a42611&attid=0.1&permmsgid=msg-f:1736265242436441271&th=18187409f34814b7&view=att&disp=safe

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Weapons sent by US and NATO may fall into dark net and even to terrorists, leading to  widespread and unbearable cost

Global Times

Feeding armed conflict

By Fan Lingzhi and Lin Xiaoy

Published: Jun 09, 2022 08:08 PM

   https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202206/1267729.shtml

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Katrina Vanden Heuvel on How U.S. Media’s “One-Sided Debate” on Ukraine Fans the Flames of War

NATO vs Russia: what happens next

https://www.democracynow.org/2022/6/6/katrina_vanden_heuvel_kyiv_severodonetsk_ukraine

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In Davos and beyond, NATO's upbeat narrative plays like a broken record, while on the ground, Russia is stacking up wins that could sink the Atlantic order.

By Pepe Escobar

May 24 2022

 The Cradle

Three months after the start of Russia’s Operation Z in Ukraine, the battle of The West (12 percent) against The Rest (88 percent) keeps metastasizing. Yet the narrative – oddly – remains the same.

On Monday, from Davos, World Economic Forum Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab introduced Ukrainian comedian-cum-President Volodymyr Zelensky, on the latest leg of his weapons-solicitation-tour, with a glowing tribute. Herr Schwab stressed that an actor impersonating a president defending neo-Nazis is supported by “all of Europe and the international order.”

He means, of course, everyone except the 88 percent of the planet that subscribes to the Rule of Law – instead of the faux construct the west calls a ‘rules-based international order.’

Back in the real world, Russia, slowly but surely has been rewriting the Art of Hybrid War. Yet within the carnival of NATO psyops, aggressive cognitive infiltration, and stunning media sycophancy, much is being made of the new $40 billion US ‘aid’ package to Ukraine, deemed capable of becoming a game-changer in the war.

This ‘game-changing’ narrative comes courtesy of the same people who burned though trillions of dollars to secure Afghanistan and Iraq. And we saw how that went down.

Ukraine is the Holy Grail of international corruption. That $40 billion can be a game-changer for only two classes of people: First, the US military-industrial complex, and second, a bunch of Ukrainian oligarchs and neo-connish NGOs, that will corner the black market for weapons and humanitarian aid, and then launder the profits in the Cayman Islands.

A quick breakdown of the $40 billion reveals $8.7 billion will go to replenish the US weapons stockpile (thus not going to Ukraine at all); $3.9 billion for USEUCOM (the ‘office’ that dictates military tactics to Kiev); $5 billion for a fuzzy, unspecified “global food supply chain”; $6 billion for actual weapons and “training” to Ukraine; $9 billion in “economic assistance” (which will disappear into selected pockets); and $0.9 billion for refugees.

US risk agencies have downgraded Kiev to the dumpster of non-reimbursing-loan entities, so large American investment funds are ditching Ukraine, leaving the European Union (EU) and its member-states as the country’s only option.

Few of those countries, apart from Russophobic entities such as Poland, can justify to their own populations sending huge sums of direct aid to a failed state. So it will fall to the Brussels-based EU machine to do just enough to maintain Ukraine in an economic coma – independent from any input from member-states and institutions.

These EU ‘loans’ – mostly in the form of weapons shipments – can always be reimbursed by Kiev’s wheat exports. This is already happening on a small scale via the port of Constanta in Romania, where Ukrainian wheat arrives in barges over the Danube and is loaded into dozens of cargo ships everyday. Or, via convoys of trucks rolling with the weapons-for-wheat racket. However, Ukrainian wheat will keep feeding the wealthy west, not impoverished Ukrainians.

Moreover, expect NATO this summer to come up with another monster psyop to defend its divine (not legal) right to enter the Black Sea with warships to escort Ukrainian vessels transporting wheat. Pro-NATO media will spin it as the west being ‘saved’ from the global food crisis – which happens to be directly caused by serial, hysterical packages of western sanctions.

Poland goes for soft annexation

NATO is indeed massively ramping up its ‘support’ to Ukraine via the western border with Poland. That’s in synch with Washington’s two overarching targets: First, a ‘long war,’ insurgency-style, just like Afghanistan in the 1980s, with jihadis replaced by mercenaries and neo-Nazis.  Second, the sanctions instrumentalized to “weaken” Russia, militarily and economically.

Other targets remain unchanged, but are subordinate to the Top Two: make sure that the Democrats are re-elected in the mid-terms (that’s not going to happen); irrigate the industrial-military complex with funds that are recycled back as kickbacks (already happening); and keep the hegemony of the US dollar by all means (tricky: the multipolar world is getting its act together).

A key target being met with astonishing ease is the destruction of the German – and consequently the EU’s – economy, with a great deal of the surviving companies to be eventually sold off to American interests.

Take, for instance, BMW board member Milan Nedeljkovic telling Reuters that “our industry accounts for about 37 percent of natural gas consumption in Germany” which will sink without Russian gas supplies.

Washington’s plan is to keep the new ‘long war’ going at a not-too-incandescent level – think Syria during the 2010s – fueled by rows of mercenaries, and featuring periodic NATO escalations by anyone from Poland and the Baltic midgets to Germany.

Last week, that pitiful Eurocrat posing as High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, gave away the game when previewing the upcoming meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council.

Borrell admitted that “the conflict will be long” and “the priority of the EU member states” in Ukraine “consists in the supply of heavy weapons.”

Then Polish President Andrzej Duda met with Zelensky in Kiev. The slew of agreements the two signed indicate that Warsaw intends to profit handsomely from the war to enhance its politico-military, economic, and cultural influence in western Ukraine. Polish nationals will be allowed to be elected to Ukrainian government bodies and even aim to become constitutional judges.

In practice, that means Kiev is all but transferring management of the Ukrainian failed state to Poland. Warsaw won’t even have to send troops. Call it a soft annexation.

The steamroller on the move

As it stands, the situation on the battlefield can be examined in this map. Intercepted communications from the Ukrainian command reveal their aim to build a layered defense from Poltava through Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhia, Krivoy Rog, and Nikolaev – which happens to be a shield for the already fortified Odessa. None of that guarantees success against the incoming Russian onslaught.

It’s always important to remember that Operation Z started on February 24 with around 150,000 or so fighters – and definitely not Russia’s elite forces. And yet they liberated Mariupol and destroyed the elite neo-Nazi Azov batallion in a matter of only fifty days, cleaning up a city of 400,000 people with minimal casualties.

While fighting a real war on the ground – not those indiscriminate US bombings from the air – in a huge country against a large army, facing multiple technical, financial and logistical challenges, the Russians also managed to liberate Kherson, Zaporizhia and virtually the whole area of the ‘baby twins,’ the popular republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Russia’s ground forces commander, General Aleksandr Dvornikov, has turbo-charged missile, artillery and air strikes to a pace five times faster than during the first phase of Operation Z, while the Ukrainians, overall, are low or very low on fuel, ammo for artillery, trained specialists, drones, and radars.

What American armchair and TV generals simply cannot comprehend is that in Russia’s view of this war – which military expert Andrei Martyanov defines as a “combined arms and police operation” – the two top targets are the destruction of all military assets of the enemy while preserving the life of its own soldiers.

So while losing tanks is not a big deal for Moscow, losing lives is. And that accounts for those massive Russian bombings; each military target must be conclusively destroyed. Precision strikes are crucial.

There is a raging debate among Russian military experts on why the Ministry of Defense does not go for a fast strategic victory. They could have reduced Ukraine to rubble – American style – in no time. That’s not going to happen. The Russians prefer to advance slowly and surely, in a sort of steamroller pattern. They only advance after sappers have fully surveilled the terrain; after all there are mines everywhere.

The overall pattern is unmistakable, whatever the NATO spin barrage. Ukrainian losses are becoming exponential – as many as 1,500 killed or wounded each day, everyday. If there are 50,000 Ukrainians in the several Donbass cauldrons, they will be gone by the end of June.

Ukraine must have lost as many as 20,000 soldiers in and around Mariupol alone. That’s a massive military defeat, largely surpassing Debaltsevo in 2015 and previously Ilovaisk in 2014. The losses near Izyum may be even higher than in Mariupol. And now come the losses in the Severodonetsk corner.

We’re talking here about the best Ukrainian forces. It doesn’t even matter that only 70 percent of Western weapons sent by NATO ever make it to the battlefield: the major problem is that the best soldiers are going…going…gone, and won’t be replaced. Azov neo-Nazis, the 24th Brigade, the 36th Brigade, various Air Assault brigades – they all suffered losses of 60+ percent or have been completely demolished.

So the key question, as several Russian military experts have stressed, is not when Kiev will ‘lose’ as a point of no return; it is how many soldiers Moscow is prepared to lose to get to this point.

The entire Ukrainian defense is based on artillery. So the key battles ahead involve long-range artillery. There will be problems, because the US is about to deliver M270 MLRS systems with precision-guided ammunition, capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 70 kilometers or more.

Russia, though, has a counterpunch: the Hermes Small Operational-Tactical Complex, using high precision munitions, possibility of laser guidance, and a range of more than 100 kilometers. And they can work in conjunction with the already mass-produced Pantsir air defense systems.

The sinking ship

Ukraine, within its current borders, is already a thing of the past. Georgy Muradov, permanent representative of Crimea to the President of Russia and Deputy Prime Minister of the Crimean government, is adamant: “Ukraine in the form in which it was, I think, will no longer remain. This is already the former Ukraine.”

The Sea of ​​Azov has now become a “sea of ​​joint use” by Russia and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), as confirmed by Muradov.

Mariupol will be restored. Russia has had plenty of experience in this business in both Grozny and Crimea. The Russia-Crimea land corridor is on. Four hospitals among five in Mariupol have already reopened and public transportation is back, as well as three gas stations.

The imminent loss of Severodonetsk and Lysichansk will ring serious alarm bells in Washington and Brussels, because that will represent the beginning of the end of the current regime in Kiev. And that, for all practical purposes – and beyond all the lofty rhetoric of “the west stands with you” – means heavy players won’t be exactly encouraged to bet on a sinking ship.

On the sanctions front, Moscow knows exactly what to expect, as detailed by Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov: “Russia proceeds from the fact that sanctions against it are a rather long-term trend, and from the fact that the pivot to Asia, the acceleration of reorientation to eastern markets, to Asian markets is a strategic direction for Russia. We will make every effort to integrate into value chains precisely together with Asian countries, together with Arab countries, together with South America.”

On efforts to “intimidate Russia,” players would be wise to listen to the hypersonic sound of 50 Sarmat state-of-the-art missiles ready for combat this autumn, as explained by Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin.

This week’s meetings in Davos brings to light another alignment forming in the world’s overarching unipolar vs. multipolar battle. Russia, the baby twins, Chechnya and allies such as Belarus are now pitted against ‘Davos leaders’ – in other words, the combined western elite, with a few exceptions like Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Zelensky will be fine. He’s protected by British and American special forces. The family is reportedly living in an $8 million mansion in Israel. He owns a $34 million villa in Miami Beach, and another in Tuscany. Average Ukrainians were lied to, robbed, and in many cases, murdered, by the Kiev gang he presides over – oligarchs, security service (SBU) fanatics, neo-Nazis. And those Ukrainians that remain (10 million have already fled) will continue to be treated as expendable.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir “the new Hitler” Putin is in absolutely no hurry to end this larger than life drama that is ruining and rotting the already decaying west to its core. Why should he? He tried everything, since 2007, on the “why can’t we get along” front. Putin was totally rejected. So now it’s time to sit back, relax, and watch the Decline of the West.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

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Critics of the West’s role in the Ukraine war, such as CIA veterans Ray McGovern and John Kiriakou, are being ostracized from the American media landscape.

https://scheerpost.com/2022/05/20/ray-mcgovern-john-kiriakou-its-scoundrel-time-in-the-good-ol-usa/

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Funding the Ukraine proxy war, Bernie Sanders and the Squad abandon progressives and peace By voting to enrich the US arms industry and escalate a proxy war against Russia, Congressional progressives are enabling a militarist agenda that threatens their political cause, and the planet. Aaron Maté May 24 In the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders' opposition to the US invasion of Iraq helped set him apart from frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and the party establishment that they represent. In 2022, with the US engaged in another costly and catastrophic conflict abroad, Sanders has chosen to abandon the anti-war mantle and join the ranks of his former rivals. Along with every elected Democrat -- including the self-proclaimed Squad – Sanders voted last week to approve a $40 billion measure that will escalate the Ukraine proxy war and enrich its prime beneficiary, the US arms industry. Subscribe now More than half of the allocated spending, $24 billion, is for military aid, including $9.1 billion for weapons makers to replenish the US arsenal. The mammoth bill follows the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act – also unanimously approved by Democrats -- which invokes World War II-era policies to speed the transfer of US military equipment to Ukraine. Coupled with NATO's likely expansion to Sweden and Finland, "the real winners are American defense companies," Forbes columnist Jon Markman writes. In passing the new $40 billion bill, "the leaders of both parties raised few questions about how much money was being spent or what it would be used for," the New York Times observes. This swift bipartisan approval "was striking, given the gridlock that has prevented domestic initiatives large and small from winning approval in recent years." This includes the progressive-backed Build Back Better agenda for social spending, once a headline issue and now seldom discussed. The unwavering US effort to flood Ukraine with weaponry instead of diplomacy is additionally striking given its predictable consequences for the conflict and the planet. These include more bloodshed; more refugees; more arms trafficking; more weapons falling into the hands of neo-Nazis and other extremists; more war profiteering; more inflation; more global hunger; and more of a possibility of direct military confrontation between the US and Russia. The dangers have prompted the New York Times' editorial board, normally a reliable supporter of US militarism, to get cold feet about the Ukraine proxy war that it has heretofore cheered. To avoid "a costly, drawn-out war," the Times editors argue, the Biden administration should make clear to Kiev that "there is a limit to how far the United States and NATO will go to confront Russia, and limits to the arms, money and political support they can muster." The Times' stance will resonate with anyone worried about an escalated proxy war between the world's top nuclear powers. But in Washington, it is difficult to see how Biden will receive that message if even the progressive, anti-war flank of his own party is voting in lockstep to fuel the danger. This group includes lawmakers like Sanders, Ilhan Omar, Ro Khanna, Pramila Jayapal, and Barbara Lee, who have previously voiced concerns about the very military escalation in Ukraine that just authorized. Remarkably, as Glenn Greenwald notes, not only have these politicians betrayed their own public statements, but have refused to provide any explanation for their tectonic about-face. The lone exception was Cori Bush, who simultaneously defended her support for the $40 billion measure while acknowledging that it will "primarily" benefit "private defense contractors" and fuel "the increased risks of direct war and the potential for direct military confrontation" between the US and Russia. That so many single self-identified Congressional progressives can turn against their anti-war record and public positions might seem perplexing. In light of the prevailing US political and media climate of recent years, it makes perfect sense. The enlistment of progressive support for a neoconservative proxy war in Ukraine is the outgrowth of the Russiagate disinformation campaign that has engulfed the US since 2016. When it comes to the US posture toward the Russian government, Russiagate has normalized militarism and evidence-free allegations; blamed it for US dysfunctions; stigmatized diplomacy; and, to ensure domestic obedience, portrayed anyone who dissents from these imperatives as a Kremlin pawn, asset, or conspirator.   The fact that a mammoth gift to the US arms industry – and attendant escalation of dangers unseen since the Cuban Missile Crisis – could win the unanimous support of politicians nominally committed to progressive causes is one of the Russiagate campaign's strongest successes to date. Its consequences are worth considering for anyone concerned with the future of the US progressive movement, and the planet. Escalating a Trumpian proxy war In public statements about Russia, Bernie Sanders has made clear that he sees a hawkish posture toward the Kremlin as a challenge to Donald Trump's agenda. Just like they deceptively sold the Mueller investigation to the Democratic base as the miracle cure that would bring down Trump, Democratic leaders and their media acolytes have marketed the Ukraine proxy war along similar lines. The minority of Republicans who voted against the $40 billion spending measure, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer declared, are adopting "the same soft-on-Putin playbook that we saw used by former President Trump." In reality, Democrats are continuing a bipartisan war-mongering playbook that Trump's administration escalated. It is true that Trump made friendly statements about Vladimir Putin and critical ones of NATO. But looking beyond his off-the-cuff remarks, Trump's policies played a major role in provoking the current crisis. In Ukraine, Trump authorized weapons shipments that Barack Obama, worried about further inflaming the Donbas war and arming neo-Nazis, had refused to send. As senior Obama official Charles Kupchan cautioned in August 2017, arming Ukraine would be "a recipe for military escalation and transatlantic discord," – a prescient warning that Democrats have long forgotten. Trump, along with Congressional Democrats, opted to follow the dictates of leading Republican neoconservatives John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who had personally vowed to Ukrainian forces that "2017 will be the year of offense," in order to make Russia "pay a heavier price" and ensure that "we will win together." Trump's escalation of the Ukraine proxy war coincided with his nixing of vital arms control pacts that had eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons and encouraged US-Russia cooperation. The John Bolton-led abandonment of the INF treaty in 2019, and the Open Skies Treaty the following year, played an overlooked role in triggering Russia's military build-up on Ukraine's borders last year. In a bid to resolve the impasse, the Kremlin's draft pacts with the NATO and the US, transmitted in December 2021, contained extensive proposals to revive the arms control regime that Trump had killed. But continuing the Trump posture, Biden rejected a sweeping agreement, sending the "basic message to Moscow" that the US and NATO will "not to bow to Russian demands," the New York Times reported one month later. Bernie Sanders: Russiagate target, and ally In supporting militarism against Russia, progressive Democrats are not only enabling a dangerous playbook for the planet, but one that has been wielded to undermine their own political fortunes. The 2016 election put the neoliberal wing of the Democratic party in a historically vulnerable position. Hillary Clinton, the presumed shoo-in, not only lost to the reality TV host Donald Trump, but did so after being caught conspiring against Sanders, her progressive rival. Just as Trump had taken over the GOP, Clinton's humiliating loss offered the Sanders wing a rare opportunity to displace the failed, corrupt leadership that had tried to sabotage them. Sanders initially appeared poised to take the reins. "What Trump did very effectively is tap the angst and the anger and the hurt and pain that millions of working class people are feeling," Sanders told CBS News one week after Clinton's defeat. To defeat Trump, Sanders said, "there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic Party does business… I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from." But Clinton and her establishment allies had no interest in change, as that would threaten their status and power within the failed neoliberal system that voters had just revolted against. Instead, as documented in Shattered, the 2017 insider book on the Clinton campaign, "Hillary declined to take responsibility for her own loss." Within 24 hours of Clinton’s concession speech, top aides devised a plan to "engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up and up." The then-evidence-free claim of "Russian hacking" was chosen as "the centerpiece of the argument." As the ongoing trial of Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann is newly underscoring, "the argument" entailed concocting – and feeding to the FBI – false tales of a sweeping Trump-Russia plot. The Clinton camp's plan succeeded beyond its wildest dreams. Rather than allow Sanders to take control of the party and address the working class discontent that Trump had tapped into, the Democratic Party elite and their media allies kept the base fixated on conspiracy theories that Trump was the creation – and asset of – Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. Adding to the Clinton wing's good fortune, Bernie Sanders played along. Rather than renounce the Russia fixation concocted by the same DNC elites who had plotted against him, Sanders instead paid lip service to their Trump-Russia conspiracy theories. And rather than focus on the corruption – including directly targeting him -- that the stolen DNC emails revealed, Sanders instead helped channel outrage at the Russian government for (allegedly) making them public. Sanders' servitude to the Russiagate narrative was so devout that he even introduced a John McCain-quoting Senate measure in July 2018, the height of Mueller-mania, to "Protect American Democracy from Russian Meddling." The resolution, Sanders explained, sought to "force members of the Senate to go on the record in accepting the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and the looming threat of Russian interference in this year’s midterm elections." In short, Sanders was not only willing to promote evidence-free claims – long since called into serious question – that "Russian interference" was behind the DNC email theft and posed "a threat to the democratic system of the United States," but motivated enough to "force" his Congressional colleagues to declare their fidelity to these allegations and the "intelligence community" that generated them. When the 2020 election season arrived, Sanders learned how the US intelligence community and allied Democratic elites would reward his Russiagate narrative discipline: using it against him. On the eve of the Democratic caucus in Nevada, when Sanders was still a frontrunner, intelligence officials dusted off the Russiagate playbook with anonymous leaks claiming that Vladimir Putin was seeking to help Sanders' candidacy. No details or evidence was provided, for good reason: despite so many humiliating retractions, US officials knew that reliable media stenographers would dutifully report any malicious act ascribed to "Putin" – all the more so if it could benefit Sanders' neoliberal rivals. To illustrate, the New York Times breathlessly parroted the new "Russian interference" claims even while acknowledging that this supposed pro-Sanders meddling consisted of "as-yet-undetectable methods." Easily detectable was the real agenda at play. “Current and former officials” fed the Times a view that happened to comport with the talking points of Democratic Party centrists: “Moscow could potentially consider Mr. Sanders a weaker general election opponent for the president than a more moderate Democratic nominee, according to two people familiar with the matter.” The team of anonymous officials and “moderates” who targeted Sanders could also once again rely on him to comply. Rather than challenge a transparent scam aimed at undermining him, Sanders ultimately catered to it. Asked by The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal why the campaign had not demanded evidence of the alleged Putin plot on its behalf, Sanders foreign policy advisor Matt Duss explained that the progressive frontrunner accepted the anonymously disseminated, evidence-free "intelligence." When Sanders was briefed by U.S. officials on the supposed Russian plot to elect him, "he was briefed convincingly," Duss declared.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/05/13/end-horror-ukraine-go-big-and-go-broad

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To End the Horror in Ukraine, Go Big, and Go Broad

May 13, 2022

Amid such suffering and with the risk of escalation increasing by the day, our call must be clear: End the war now.

Kevin Martin is President of Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund, the country’s largest peace and disarmament organization with approximately 200,000 supporters nationwide.

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1 IN 3 BIG DEFENSE CONTRACTORS PROFIT FROM US PRISONER SUFFERING

WASHINGTON – America’s largest arms companies are increasingly finding lucrative new ways of profiting from the prison industrial complex; in many cases, weapons of war are directly manufactured using coerced prison labor. A new MintPress News study of the 100 largest private Defense Department contractors found that 37% of them were also profiting from incarcerated Americans, either in prisons and jails, or in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) camps. This proportion rose to 16 of the top 25 largest arms manufacturers, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman. The complete list of top corporations profiting from mass incarceration, displayed in order of value of Department of Defense contracts received, is as follows:

Lockheed Martin Raytheon General Dynamics Northrop Grumman BAE Systems L3Harris Technologies General Electric Health Net Federal Services Atlantic Diving Supply Leidos Holdings, Inc. McKesson Corp. Booz Allen Hamilton Holding

AmerisourceBergen Corp. Leonardo S.p.A. Textron Inc. AECOM CACI International Jacobs Engineering Group Honeywell International The Walsh Group Ltd. Hensel Phelps Construction Co Express Scripts Inc. FedEx Verizon

Carahsoft Technology Cardinal Health Inc. International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) Harris Global Communications Inc. AT&T Microsoft Serco Group Cisco Systems Gilbane Inc. CDW Corp. GlaxoSmithKline plc Centene Deloitte

The list (which can be viewed and downloaded here) was created by compiling data from government website USASpending.Gov. The list of the 100 largest private military contractors over the last completed fiscal year was then compared to a database of prison industry private-sector players curated by prison abolition group Worth Rises.

When asked to comment on the fact that almost two-thirds of the biggest players in the defense industry were also waist-deep in the prison profiteering racket, journalist and prison teacher Chris Hedges was far from shocked. “The fabric of the defense industry, the carceral state, the intelligence industry, it is all interwoven. And I think these findings prove it,” he said. Hedges’s most recent book, “Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison,” was released in October.

MintPress also spoke with Worth Rises’s founder and executive director, Bianca Tylek, who was similarly unsurprised, stating:

There’s considerable overlap between the two industries, which isn’t shocking; these are controversial industries. Corporations that operate in one controversial industry aren’t afraid to take part in another. Where we see a particular overlap is in security and surveillance technology. In fact, historically, the federal government has awarded grants to test technology being developed for anti-terrorism in prisons and jails.”

One of those “controversial” corporations is Raytheon. In 2011, the Massachusetts-based giant was awarded a contract worth up to $40 million to develop a case-management and communications system for ICE, combining more than a hundred Department of Homeland Security databases into one.

The company, which announced $64.4 billion worth of sales last year, also makes use of America’s vast prison population as a source of almost infinite cheap labor to make some of its most expensive products. Prisoners are coerced into working for as little as 23 cents per hour (minus taxes and other fees) for subcontractors who manufacture parts for Patriot missiles that cost up to $5.9 million apiece, meaning it would take nearly three thousand years of round-the-clock working for a prisoner to be able to afford what they are making.

The U.S. government allows Raytheon and others to sell their products to some of the worst human rights-abusing governments in the world, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Raytheon weapons have been crucial in the Saudi-led Coalition’s bombardment of Yemen, creating what the United Nations calls “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” Since the beginning of the war, Raytheon has sold at least $3.3 billion worth of equipment to Riyadh alone. In 2018, the Saudi military used a Raytheon-made laser-guided missile to blow up a school bus full of Yemeni children, killing 51 people. While this story made the news, there are doubtless countless other similar cases like this that never reach Western audiences.

Thus, there exists a situation whereby prisoners earning pennies per hour are making multimillion-dollar weapons fired by individuals being paid barely $20,000 per year at civilians who might not make that much in their lifetimes.

Meanwhile, incarcerated individuals across the U.S. make electronics, harnesses and optical equipment for BAE Systems, including for its Bradley Fighting Vehicle, a mainstay of the U.S. Army. For this work, prisoners reportedly receive around $100 per month.

A number of BAE System subsidiaries – including military and police equipment manufacturer Armor Holdings (which makes the majority of the U.S. Army’s backpacks) and camera, security and spy technology firm Fairchild Imaging – also appear on Worth Rises’ list of corporations that sell to the prison industry. Worth Rises considers BAE Systems, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin to be among the most egregious corporate profiteers from prison labor, all of them scoring “full marks” on their harm index.

Other big defense contractors moonlight in the prison industry as well. General Electric and its subsidiaries are involved in the construction and equipping of prisons, supplying food and overseeing prison healthcare. Not to be outdone, Booz Allen Hamilton supplies IT and administrative solutions to ICE. And in Louisiana, prisoners on work-release built warships for Northrop Grumman before it closed its Avondale shipyard in 2014.

Perhaps the most important player connecting the prison industry to the military is government-owned corporation Unicor (also known as Federal Prison Industries). Employing more than 16,000 inmates nationwide in 2021, Unicor is a massive enterprise, boasting revenues of over $528 million last year. Making everything from textiles to office equipment and electronics, the company provides a vital service to the military industrial complex, supplying it with a near endless stream of captive and virtually free labor to exploit.

Unicor often acts as a subcontractor for the big arms conglomerates, but is also directly employed by the U.S. government. In the past 12 months, it has secured a number of contracts worth around $100 million with the Army and Air Force to produce all manner of clothing, from trousers to coats to workout outfits, with work being done in its network of factories in more than a dozen states across the country.

While the likes of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin keep their associations with this controversial source of labor quiet, Unicor is proud of its connections, boasting on its website:

Our electro-optical cable assemblies are used in avionic and missile controls, submarine navigation, and tactical observation and targeting systems in fighter jets, helicopters, tanks and other armored vehicles. Our expertise in manufacturing electro-optical assemblies is proven in numerous programs, such as the Bradley eye-safe laser rangefinder and the Patriot missile guidance system.

Other vehicles Unicor notes its products are part of include the F-15 Eagle (Boeing) and F-16 Fighting Falcon (Lockheed Martin) jets and the Cobra (Bell/Textron) helicopter. Unicor also manufactures bulletproof body armor and used to supply the military with combat helmets until a quality-control issue caused a huge recall. Boeing, which is not included on the current list presented above, appears to no longer use prison labor in the construction of its products.

WOKE IMPERIALISM?

While many of the 37 corporations listed are well known as weapons manufacturers, readers might not associate some of the other names with the arms industry – a fact that highlights the diverse range of services the Department of Defense pays for. CACI International, for instance, is far from a household name, despite the fact that it employs more than 22,000 people worldwide. CACI’s primary client is the U.S. government, for whom it provides a wide array of IT and professional services. Situated in the part of northern Virginia colloquially known as “Raytheon Acres,” it is one of the many companies collectively feasting from the trough of Iraq and Afghanistan war contracts.

CACI markets itself as a progressive employer. Its website is rife with talk of diversity and inclusiveness, claiming:

CACI values everyone’s unique contributions that they bring to our company, and to our customers — every day. A diverse workforce fosters innovative thinking. It improves our potential for recruiting and retaining highly qualified employees, and it makes us a more attractive business partner.

It also boasts that it is on the Forbes list of top female-friendly companies. However, this progressiveness stops cold when money is on the line. In 2016, CACI bid for and won a $93 million contract with ICE to maintain its detention centers – buildings that have been widely described as concentration camps. According to its then-CEO, Ken Asbury, “CACI is committed to supporting our federal law enforcement officers and first responders protecting the nation.”

Last year, Asbury’s successor John Mengucci bemoaned President Joe Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal as bad for business. He was right: in 2019, CACI secured a $907 million contract over 5 years to “provid[e] intelligence operations and analytic support” to U.S. forces in Afghanistan, although with the withdrawal, that particular gravy train appears to have run dry.

In 2004, a group of 256 Iraqis sued CACI for its alleged involvement in their torture and sexual assault at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. Last year, the Supreme Court rejected CACI’s appeal, bringing them a step closer to facing consequences for their actions.

Some readers might be surprised to see tech companies such as Verizon, IBM, AT&T and Microsoft among the largest defense contractors. However, in a high-tech, 21st century environment, the military requires a wide range of technology and, considering the high premiums it usually pays, it is fast becoming a highly lucrative market to tap. As the former supreme allied commander of NATO, Admiral James Stavridis, said in 2019, in the next 10 years, the military would be vastly more focused on cyberwarfare, with a priority on offensive cyber capability and unmanned land vehicles and drones, all of which require the services of Silicon Valley.

In November, the Pentagon solicited bids from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google and Oracle for its multibillion dollar Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability program. Last April, Microsoft also secured a gigantic $22 billion contract to supply the Army with more than 120,000 bespoke augmented-reality headsets, meant for use in both training and battlefield scenarios.

For many years, Silicon Valley has closely collaborated with the national security state. In 2020, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, IBM, and Amazon Web Services signed a partnership with the CIA to provide the agency with cloud computing services. The deal was reportedly worth tens of billions of dollars. Likewise, big tech has found collaborating with the prison industry to be highly profitable. Google, Amazon and Microsoft have all provided their services and experience to ICE, helping the agency streamline its operations to find and deport as many people as possible. In all three cases, this has caused a major backlash, including from their own staff.

Prison conditions in the United States are among the worst in the developed world. Although most states require prisoners to be financially compensated for their labor, wages can be garnished to pay for child support, victim restitution and even room and board. And in five states – Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia and Florida – prisoners are required to work without any pay whatsoever. “This is bonded labor; it can’t organize; it can’t strike; it can’t protest its working conditions. Pay is far below the minimum wage,” Hedges told MintPress. Thus the massive prison population serves the needs of corporate America in two ways: first, it provides a gigantic pool of cheap, disciplined labor to exploit, helping them compete with sweatshops in Asia; and second, it acts as a disciplining tool against free labor, helping to bust unions and drive down wages and working conditions across the country. As Hedges said:

Figures like Dostoyevsky understood that if you want to understand the beating heart of any country, you have to look at its prison population because those who are trapped in the prison system are, in essence, the model workers for the corporate state. That is what they want all of us to become. And in the gig economy, we are moving in that direction.”

Worth Rises is among a number of groups that consider some prison labor to be akin to slavery, and it has campaigned to change the Thirteenth Amendment, which allows slavery to be used as a form of punishment for a crime.

As the economy has been hollowed out and jobs shipped overseas, much of the country’s working-class population has become, in corporate America’s eyes, surplus to economic requirements. They are no longer needed to work in factories and are effectively useless in generating profits for others. Hedges sees the rise of the prison industrial complex as a response to this. As he noted:

Bodies on the streets of Detroit or Newark or East New York are not worth anything in the eyes of the corporate state. But if you lock them in a cage, they have the capacity to generate fifty or sixty thousand dollars per year for these corporations. So in that sense, it is a complete continuum [since slavery].”

With almost 2.3 million people behind bars across a network of more than 7,000 facilities, the United States has by far the highest incarceration rate in the world, locking its citizens up at over 10 times the rate of European countries like Denmark or Sweden, and over 17 times that of Japan. Nearly $4.6 billion is spent every year on the construction of new facilities. The U.S. spends far more on its carceral state than any other country, with its prison population accounting for almost a quarter of the incarcerated people worldwide. A vast array of products, from baseball caps to Ikea furniture to McDonald’s uniforms to Victoria’s Secret lingerie has been made by incarcerated individuals. This profit-driven relationship between the U.S. government and corporate America when it comes to incarcerating millions is what sociologists mean when they refer to the “prison industrial complex.”

The U.S. prison population explosion closely mirrors the rise of neoliberalism as the dominant ideology. Before the Reagan administration, American prison figures were comparable to those in Europe. However, between 1984 and 2005, a new prison or jail was built, on average, every 8.5 days, to the point where it peaked in 2009. Worth Rises’s Tylek strongly criticized the cost and waste of the endeavor. “In many places, prison and jail populations have fallen over the past few years. And yet the budgets of those agencies continue to increase. Nothing justifies that,” she said.

The off-the-charts prison industry has become so normalized that it is the subject of light entertainment. In 2020, a new game called “Prison Empire Tycoon” went viral, becoming the number one strategy game in Apple’s App Store. The point of the game was to oversee and run a for-profit prison. During the tutorial at the start of the game, a baton-wielding guard instructs players, telling them that “the state pays us good money” to manage the “lowlifes” they send your way. “It’s a perfect business,” he says, as he shows you how to send people to solitary confinement, something that is near-universally described as torture. Few people apparently took any issue with it, with the game garnering positive reviews.

PAYING THEIR DEBT?

One way of generating more profit in both the game and in reality is to shift costs onto the prisoners themselves. Incarcerated people now regularly have to pay for essentials like soap, toothpaste and shampoo as well as phone calls with loved ones. Others require medical co-pays to see a doctor or for room and boarding costs, to be garnished from earned wages.

Often just being sent to a correctional facility incurs a $100 “processing fee” prisoners must pay, while visitors are regularly charged for background checks. Prisoners’ friends and families transfer $1.8 billion into correctional facilities every year. Faced with no other choices, they are forced to accept money transfer fees up to 45%. Financial corporations like JPay and JP Morgan Chase partner with correctional facilities in order to ensure the best deal for them – and the worst deal for the prisoners. As Tylek told MintPress, “Being incarcerated is very expensive. It is so expensive that it drives many families that are supporting people who are incarcerated into debt.”

Hedges, who has spent a great deal of time teaching in the New Jersey penitentiary system, also noted the similarities between prisons and the military, commenting that guards are often recruited from the military or National Guard. Increasingly, guards resemble swat teams, and are equipped with high-tech lethal weaponry. “Everything is militarized,” he said, adding:

You are referred to by your number, not your name. You are forced to walk in a single file down the halls. Any infraction or [slight perceived] by a corrections officer can see you end up being beaten or thrown into solitary confinement and stripped of what few privileges you have. It is the perfect microcosm of the totalitarian state.”

BRINGING THE WARS HOME

To an even greater extent than prisons, policing has become increasingly militarized. Since 1997, the Department of Defense has transferred more than $7.2 billion worth of military equipment to law enforcement agencies. Today, it is not uncommon for police departments to possess high-powered assault rifles, tanks and helicopters. In the wake of the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, President Barack Obama restricted the flow of surplus military equipment. However, once in office, Donald Trump quickly reversed the decision.

A 2017 study found that the receipt of military equipment by law enforcement agencies led to an increase in fatal shootings by police. Even when controlling for other variables, counties with the most equipment received were found to record more than double the police killings of counties that received nothing. When all you have is a hammer, the saying goes, everything begins to resemble a nail.

“In many cases, the government is reacting to domestic crime in the way it responds to international war. And this is driven by the fact that many of the same vendors are providing the equipment and technology for both these environments,” Tylek said.

As empires decline, Hedges has argued, they often bring the repression they mete out abroad back with them, using on the domestic population tactics honed through quelling foreign dissent. Today, poor communities across the U.S. are beginning to be governed in an increasingly militarized way, while those oppressed by a prison industrial complex at home are coerced into providing their labor to bolster the military industrial complex abroad. And at every step, corporate America continues to profit.

Feature photo | Inmates return from farm work detail at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La. Gerald Herbert | AP

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

 

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Critics of the West’s role in the Ukraine war, such as CIA veterans Ray McGovern and John Kiriakou, are being ostracized from the American media landscape.

https://scheerpost.com/2022/05/20/ray-mcgovern-john-kiriakou-its-scoundrel-time-in-the-good-ol-usa/

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Biden Wanted $33B More For Ukraine. Congress Quickly Raised it to $40B. Who Benefits?

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/biden-wanted-33b-more-for-ukraine?s=r&fbclid=IwAR3XFo4G4IGvbzfaXkarW4JWTfvWcZXHxbR5XtrCc9v_h2_PDankRrUCq2M

 

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https://www.thenation.com/article/world/ukraine-russia-peace/

The Deadly Illusion of “Victory”

Choosing peace in Ukraine, not ashes and blood.

By Michael T. KlareTwitter

“America stands with Ukraine until victory is won,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared on May 1, after traveling to Kyiv for a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Victory? What exactly does Pelosi mean by “victory”? Does that entail the total defeat of Russian forces and their expulsion from all of Ukraine? That can only be accomplished through the participation of US and NATO forces—a scenario that would almost certainly result in a Europe-wide war, with an attendant risk of nuclear escalation. Or does she mean a meat-grinder war aimed at weakening Russia to the point where it is no longer able to fight NATO, as suggested by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin after visiting Kyiv a few days earlier? That might, conceivably, avert a nuclear war, but would surely result in hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainian and Russian soldiers and civilians, and leave Ukraine itself in ruins. Nowhere, in her comments or those by other high-ranking US officials, is there any talk of a negotiated settlement in Ukraine, only of scenarios leading to Russia’s defeat, at whatever cost in human lives.

For Ukrainians, the desire to inflict pain on Russia is understandable: Their country has been invaded, their cities bombed, and many of their compatriots slain. It is also understandable why many in Europe, especially in the “frontline” states of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, are keen to see Russia humbled, as they fear invasion themselves. Elsewhere in Europe, and in this country, there is a natural instinct to favor the underdog in the Ukraine conflict, especially given the toll being imposed on civilians in Ukraine and widespread antipathy to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This outlook seemed to govern US policy during the early days of the war. With Ukraine under attack from multiple directions and its vastly outnumbered army putting up heroic resistance around major cities, the Biden administration promised to rush the delivery of Javelin anti-tank missiles and other light defensive weapons. To further impair Russia’s war-making capacity, President Biden also imposed severe sanctions on key aspects of the Russian economy.

 

The prevailing image, during those early days of the war, was of a plucky but outgunned David fighting off a clumsy but savage Goliath—an image that attracted widespread sympathy around the world, no less than in this country. Congress was keen to speed the delivery of Javelins to the Ukrainians and to otherwise help David fend off Goliath. And, to the surprise of many on all sides, this combination of Ukrainian pluck and US weapons technology succeeded in blocking the Russian advance around Kyiv, forcing Goliath to withdraw.

This would have been the moment to initiate serious peace talks, leading to a halt in the fighting. A Ukrainian pledge to permanently forswear membership in NATO and grant limited autonomy to breakaway regions in the Donbas, combined with a Russian vow to withdraw its forces from the rest of the country, might have provided the basis for a cease-fire and then more formal negotiations on Ukraine’s long-term status. But aside from some ill-fated diplomacy by Presidents Emmanuel Macron of France and Recep Tayyip of Turkey, little effort was made to pursue this lifesaving course. Instead, both sides girded for a tougher, bloodier war.

For President Vladimir Putin of Russia, the reasons for this embrace of intensified fighting are no doubt complex. From all that can be determined, he entered the war believing that Ukrainian forces would capitulate after a few days of fighting and that the Ukrainian people—Russians at heart, he thought—would largely welcome their Russian “liberators.” When none of this occurred, and his much-vaunted army proved an immense disappointment, Putin seems to have taken it personally—as an affront to his strategic acumen—and so initiated a plan to seize eastern and southern Ukraine through sheer force of arms.

For US leaders, the motives for supporting an intensified Ukrainian drive to expel the Russians are somewhat more transparent: to strike a crushing blow on the Russian military, drastically reducing its threat to NATO and, conceivably, its loyalty to Vladimir Putin. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Secretary Austin explained after meeting with Zelensky in Kyiv on March 24. This has required a very different sort of US aid effort from that undertaken at the start of the war: Instead of Javelins and other light, man-portable weapons, the United States and its allies are now supplying the Ukrainians with tanks, howitzers, and other heavy weapons intended to inflict severe damage on Russian armored columns.

CURRENT ISSUE

In line with this approach, Biden asked Congress on April 28 for an additional $33 billion in aid for Ukraine—10 times the amount allocated for this purpose until now—with much of the additional funding to be used in supplying heavy weapons systems. “This assistance would provide even more artillery, armored vehicles, anti-armor systems, [and] anti-air capabilities that have been used so effectively thus far on the battlefield by the Ukrainian warriors,” he declared at the White House.

The Biden administration has also worked tirelessly to persuade the other NATO powers to supply Ukraine with weapons of this sort. On April 28, the day Biden announced that $33 billion aid package, Austin was in Germany, meeting with representatives of 40 US allies to coordinate the flow of such arms to Ukrainian forces. Significantly, Germany pledged to supply 50 armored anti-aircraft systems—the first time that country had agreed to provide Ukraine with heavy weapons. “Putin never imagined that the world would rally behind Ukraine so swiftly and surely,” Austin stated.

All this has substantially transformed the nature of the fighting in Ukraine, converting it from a rear-guard defensive action to a brutal slugfest between two major ground armies. At the very least, this will result in massive casualties on both sides, along with the destruction of any towns and cities in the zone of conflict. Even far more worrisome, it has become less of a Ukraine vs. Russia war and more of a US/NATO vs. Russia war—a shift that vastly increases the risk of a major-power conflagration and nuclear escalation.

Russian leaders have already warned that increased NATO weapons deliveries to Ukraine represent a strategic threat to their forces, obliging them to undertake appropriate countermeasures—for example by bombing Ukrainian arms depots located along the Polish border, a move that could easily lead to a direct clash with NATO forces and a wider war. Senior officials, including President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, have also warned that a major Russian reversal—one that posed a threat to the survival of the state—could result in the use of nuclear weapons. “The danger [of such use] is serious, real,” Lavrov declared on April 25, “and we must not underestimate it.”

None of this, however, seems to have diminished US leaders’ determination to increase the pressure on Russia and to keep raising it until Moscow capitulates—however illusionary this might seem. “The United States of America is in this to win, and we will stand with Ukraine until victory is won,” said Representative Jason Crow (D-Colo.) after accompanying Pelosi to Kyiv.

 

Under these circumstances, neither side has demonstrated any interest in conducting serious peace negotiations. It is likely, then, that the fighting will escalate, many more people will perish, and Ukraine’s cities, towns, and infrastructure will be pulverized. But given the balance of forces on each side, it seems unlikely that either will ever be in a position to achieve “victory.” More likely, the fighting will grind on for weeks or months until both sides reach exhaustion—and then they will agree to a cease-fire in place and a negotiated outcome not too different from what might have been achieved in March, with far less bloodshed.

What is called for, then, is not illusionary promises of “victory” but rather a serious international effort to stop the fighting now, before more people perish, or the war escalates into something a whole lot worse. This will require a concerted effort by prominent figures with the authority to address the leaders on all sides—perhaps some combination of Presidents Macron of France, Erdogan of Turkey, and Xi Jinping of China. They will have to devise an outcome that provides security assurances to all sides: a neutral Ukraine, a demilitarized Donbas, and some form of international backing for these arrangements. To facilitate these efforts, moreover, the major actors should agree to engage in de-escalatory steps of various sorts: the suspension of nuclear threats by Russia and “victory” talk by Western leaders, the establishment of safe evacuation routes for civilians trapped in combat zones, provisions for the delivery of food and medical aid to civilians in besieged cities, and so on.

If we truly cared about the fate of Ukraine and its people, preventing further loss of life should be our highest priority. Let us heed the words of Tamara Mikheenko, a 70-year-old woman speaking by phone to a reporter from The New York Times from her embattled village in eastern Ukraine. Tell the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, and Russia to halt the fighting, she said. “Let them agree to stop this madness.”

Michael T. KlareTWITTERMichael T. Klare, The Nation’s defense correspondent, is professor emeritus of peace and world-security studies at Hampshire College and senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C. Most recently, he is the author of All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change.

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Nato boosts military aid for war in Ukraine

The West is continuing to pump military aid into Ukraine which could lead to a dangerous escalation of the war

The Tory party in England declared a major escalation to the war in Ukraine last week. They announced 8,000 more troops will soon be sent across Europe. This latest troop ­deployment is the largest since the Cold War. Opposition to the plans must be part of the Stop the War Coalition day of action on Saturday of this week.  Commander field army lieutenant general Ralph Wooddisse outlined the intentions of the British army. 

“The scale of the ­deployment, coupled with the professionalism, ­training and agility of the British army, will deter aggression at a scale not seen in Europe this century,” he said. The ministry of defence released details of the ­deployment last week. It said that operations would see “72 Challenger 2 tanks, 12 AS90 tracked artillery guns and 120 Warrior armoured fighting vehicles deployed to countries from Finland to North Macedonia, demonstrating the army’s modernisation into a lethal, agile and global force”.

British troops will serve in the Joint Expeditionary Force—a British-led military force made up of other allies.  In a statement, Ben Wallace, the British defence secretary, wrote, “These exercises will see our troops join forces with allies and ­partners across Nato and the Joint Expeditionary Force in a show of solidarity and strength.”

The latest moves are an addition to relentless troop build-ups. Early last month, more than 3,000 British ­sailors and Royal Marines were deployed to the Arctic Circle, as well as onshore, at sea and in the skies of Norway. Overall, the Cold Response 2022 involved around 30,000 troops from 27 Nato allies and “partners”. And the US continued to pour in weapons to prop-up Ukraine’s military last week. 

President Joe Biden asked Congress to accept his proposal to send a £26.25 billion aid package to Ukraine. Around £16 billion of this is military aid. Democrat house of representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi also met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev to underline that Ukraine must inflict defeat on Russia.Pelosi told a news ­conference in Poland, “America stands with Ukraine. We stand with Ukraine until victory is won. And we stand with Nato.”

Meanwhile Poland has confirmed that it has sent 240 Soviet-designed T-72 tanks to Ukraine. The country has already given Ukraine around half of its T-72s. Poland recently signed a £3.8 billion deal to buy 250 M1A2 Abrams SEPv3 tanks from the US to make up for this. Sweden also stepped closer to joining Nato, despite large numbers of Swedish people opposing the move. 

Swedish prime minister Magdalena Andersson said that Nato membership could be agreed without a national vote. She thinks a referendum would be a “bad move.”Andersson added, “There is a lot of information about national security that is confidential, so there are important issues in such a referendum that cannot be discussed and important facts that cannot be put on the table.”

In a recent survey, just 51 percent of Swedes were in favour of joining Nato. Only a week previously 45 percent favoured joining the military alliance. Meanwhile Russia has responded to the stepping up of Western military support. Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for Russia’s ministry of foreign affairs, accused the West of using leaders in Ukraine to carry out their own aims. 

She warned, “Advisers from Western countries staying in Ukraine’s decision-making centres will not necessarily be a problem for Russia’s response measures. “We do not advise to continue trying our patience.”Nato countries are also in fear of their own people. This was made clear when the Spanish government unveiled a series of repressive measures to crush protests for June’s Nato summit in Madrid.

The Spanish Interior Ministry will deploy 12,000 police officers, who will join another 12,000 officers from the capital region and 1,000 city police. In total Madrid will be a city under siege by 25,000 cops.

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The Poor Peoples Campaign Dishonors Martin Luther King

Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist

 

04 May 2022

King delivering his speech “Beyond Vietnam” at New York City’s Riverside Church in 1967 (Photo John C. Goodwin)

It is disheartening to hear movement leaders say they are inspired by Martin Luther King while also supporting the U.S. proxy war against Russia. Like all wars it endangers the lives of civilian populations, enriches the military industrial complex, and robs Americans of public resources. Once King chose an anti-war stance he did not waiver in his condemnations of U.S. empire.

On April 4, 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave one of the most significant speeches of his career. In “Beyond Vietnam - Time to Break Silence ” King declared his unequivocal opposition to the war in Vietnam. His very public break with Lyndon Johnson was greeted with derision, including from his own allies, who believed that the president was an ally who should not be attacked. The NAACP board passed a resolution calling King’s statement a “serious tactical mistake” that would neither “serve the cause of civil rights nor of peace.” The media joined in the condemnation, with the New York Times characterizing his comments as “facile” and “slander.” Even Black newspapers such as The Pittsburgh Courier judged his remarks to be “tragically misleading.”

It is important to remember this speech in which he declared that the United States was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” There are individuals and organizations who routinely claim King’s mantle until they fall prey to the war propaganda promoted by the present day purveyors of violence.

The Rev. Dr. William Barber is sadly one such person. In an April 30, 2022 email on the subject Moral Clarity About Our Own Atrocities he made many specious arguments on the issue of war as it pertains to U.S. policy in Ukraine.

“To see the butchery at Bucha or the massacre at Mariupol and do nothing would be to forfeit any claim to moral authority. We know this instinctively. It is why, despite the political gridlock on Capitol Hill, Republicans and Democrats have acted swiftly to approve historic military aid to Ukraine. In the face of such a moral imperative, it would be anathema for either party to ask, “How are we going to pay for it?”

read more on link above

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents . Her work can also be found at patreon.com/margaretkimberley  and on Twitter @freedomrideblog . Ms. Kimberley can be reached via email at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

A Statement on Ukraine from the Black Liberation Movement

Black Liberation Movement Organizations

 

03 May 2022

 

Black liberation movement organizations issued a joint statement opposing US/NATO actions in Ukraine.

Dismantle NATO Now!
Rescind the $16B US Allocations to the Ukraine War!
US Imperialism is the Main Danger to Peace, Sovereignty, and Justice for Peoples all Over The World!

The ongoing crisis and war in Ukraine threatens to pull the world into a disastrous nuclear confrontation. Disinformation, lies, and propaganda from the US and other western media are aimed at confusing millions of people inside the US and around the world to view Russia as the aggressor, while hiding the US role in the evolution of this conflict. One major example of this manipulation is that western media has not been honest about the massive role that the US played in facilitating a 2014 coup in Ukraine that overthrew the country’s democratically elected president, and funneled support to neo-Nazi forces who were favorable to US/EU interests, helping them rise to power in Ukraine.

We, the undersigned organizations and individuals of the Black Liberation Movement and the various mass organizations and movements fighting for justice inside the US, call on all peace loving, Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities to condemn and oppose US involvement in the Ukraine and across Europe through its various corporate and political interests and its military arm, The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

We, Black people living in the United States, are a people of African descent oppressed inside the United States. We have been barred from the right to housing, to food, to medicine, to clean air, healthy environments, education and livable wages. Our grandmothers make difficult decisions monthly between keeping on the lights or being able to afford insulin. As 13% of the US population, we face disproportionate levels of violent police repression and make up 40% of US prisoners. Those corporate and elite ruling class forces in the US who are making the policies to expand NATO across the 12,500 miles of Russia’s borders from Central Asia to Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, are the same ruling elites that maintain the oppressive policies inside the US that leave our communities in the racist economic and political peril we have suffered here for hundreds of years.

We further condemn the blatant hypocrisy of the US government as a capitalist, imperialist, patriarchal predator power that has invaded and undermined numerous countries for regime change and other schemes, in order to control the politics, wealth, and natural resources of those nations. The United States is the strongest and largest imperialist power in the world and has repeatedly invaded other nations such as Grenada (1983); Afghanistan (2001); Iraq (2003); Libya (2011); and at least 21 others since 1945. The US military arm on the African continent is known as AFRICOM, a force that breeds violence and instability in maintaining US corporate interests across Africa.

In these imperialist wars, it is the Black, Brown, Indigenous, working and poor families who suffer the losses of dislocation, the deaths of loved ones, and other forms of agony. Black people in this country have fought in every US war while our families and communities continue to suffer the ravages of hatred, discrimination, poverty, disease, and death. In the Ukraine conflict, racism is showing its ugly face in the denial of immigration rights to African and other non-white people’s seeking to escape the degradation and violence of this conflict, like all others living in Ukraine.

We join with Black and Brown people in other countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America who uphold the right of all nations to sovereignty and security, including Russia, who has historically been invaded by the forces of imperialism and fascism across its borders several times in the 20th century. The Russian people lost millions of lives to defeat fascism during WWII, fighting Hitler’s Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941. This history of invasions of Russia also lies at the root of the Russian concerns about its security and the Ukraine/NATO expansion scheme that has provoked this war.

We call upon every community and organization fighting for justice and peace to adopt and sign this statement calling for the Dismantling of NATO, an end to US Support of the War in Ukraine, and to Rescind the Billions of Dollars in military aid to Ukraine. Those military funds sent to Ukraine should be reallocated to the needs of people inside the US for universal healthcare, universal childcare, affordable housing, education, liquidation of all student loan debt, minimum incomes and other human needs.

Signed by:

• NBLM National Unity Initiative
• New African People’s Organization
• Black Workers for Justice
• Mapinduzi
• Black Alliance for Peace
• All African People’s Revolutionary Party
• New African Independence Party
• Lowcountry Action Committee
• Spirit of Mandela
• Cooperation Jackson
• Pan-African Community Action
• Hood Communist
• Imam Jamil Action Network
• Parable of the Sower Intentional Community

 

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UN’s Guterres Meets With Putin While NATO Allies Talk in Germany UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a cease-fire (WaPo) in Ukraine during a visit to Moscow today. While Guterres meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, U.S. military leaders are meeting (NYT) with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies in Germany. Yesterday, Lavrov accused NATO of “essentially” entering a proxy war by shipping weapons to Ukraine and warned of a “very significant” risk of nuclear confrontation. Speaking at the NATO meeting, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the alliance had convened “to help Ukraine win the fight against Russia’s unjust invasion.” Germany agreed to provide heavy weapons to Ukraine for the first time, saying it will send radar-equipped tanks. Guterres will travel to Kyiv on Thursday and meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

 

Analysis “It may require an international figure of [Guterres’s] status and seniority to hammer out agreements to assist civilians in Mariupol and other centers of fighting, even as the war continues,” the International Crisis Group writes.   “US policy toward Russia continues to be plagued by lack of rhetorical discipline. First calling for regime change, now [the] goal of weakening Russia. This only increases Putin’s case for escalating & shifts focus away from Russian actions in Ukraine & toward Russia-US/NATO showdown,” CFR President Richard Haass tweets.   CFR offers background and the latest analysis on the war in Ukraine.

Chart of the Day: What the U.S. is spending in military aid to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia

from CGTN News

The Biden Administration is expected to announce another military assistance package for Ukraine in the coming days, sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

The latest aid package worth $800 million is roughly the same size as one announced by the White House last week. But details were still being worked out, one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.

Since Russia launched its "special military operation" against Ukraine in February, the U.S has given over $2 billion in military assistance to Ukraine. The total aid will exceed $3 billion if this week's package is as much as reported. 

The recent package of assistance contains weapons systems the U.S. has already provided and new capabilities tailored to Ukraine's needs, according to the statement released by the U.S. Department of Defense. 

It includes 18 155 mm Howitzers, along with 40,000 artillery rounds. Also included are the AN/TPQ-36 counter artillery and AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel air surveillance radar systems. 

In a diplomatic note last week, Moscow warned the U.S. and NATO allies against sending the "most sensitive" weapons for Kyiv to use in the conflict with Russia, saying such shipments were "adding fuel" to the situation and could come with "unpredictable consequences," the Washington Post reported.

A foreign ministry spokesperson in Moscow confirmed Russia had sent diplomatic notes to the United States and other nations about supplying weapons to Ukraine but did not say what the messages contained, Interfax news agency reported.

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University of Wisconsin Professor Alfred W. McCoy's proposal for a war tax on Russian oil and gas is to deduct 20% from European purchases of Russian energy, with the money to be used as reparations for Ukraine. The whole article is worth a read as McCoy analyzes the US-Russia-China relationships and (mis)calculations behind this monstrous war, but if you want to cut to the chase, here you go, the last third or so of the article:

"In short, the West has seized a few yachts from Putin’s cronies, stopped servingBig Macs in Red Square, and slapped sanctions on everything except the one thing that really matters. With Russia supplying 40% of its gas and collecting an estimated $850 million daily, Europe is, in effect, funding its own invasion.

Reparations

Following the failure of both Washington’s pressure on China and Western sanctions against Russia to stop the war, the international courts have become the sole peaceful means left to still the conflict. While the law often remains an effective means to mediate conflict domestically, the critical question of enforcing judgements has long robbed the international courts of their promise for promoting peace — a problem painfully evident in Ukraine today.

Even as the fighting rages, two major international courts have already ruled against Russia’s invasion, issuing orders for Moscow to cease and desist its military operations. On March 16th, the U.N.’s highest tribunal, the International Court of Justice, ordered Russia to immediately suspend all military operations in Ukraine, a judgment Putin has simply ignored. Theoretically, that high court could now require Moscow to pay reparations, but Russia, as a permanent member of the Security Council, could simply veto that decision.

With surprising speed, on day five of the invasion, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) at Strasbourg ruled in the case of Ukraine v. Russia (X), ordering the Kremlin “to refrain from military attacks against civilians and civilian objects, including residential premises, emergency vehicles and… schools and hospitals” — a clear directive that Moscow’s military continues to defy with its devastating rocket and artillery strikes. To enforce the decision, the court notified the Council of Europe, which, two weeks later, took the most extreme step its statutes allow, expelling Russia after 26 years of membership. With that not-terribly-painful step, the European Court seems to have exhausted its powers of enforcement.

But matters need not end there. The Court is also responsible for enforcing the European Convention on Human Rights, which reads in part: “Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions.” Under that provision, the ECHR could order Russia to pay Ukraine compensation for the war damage it’s causing. Unfortunately, as Ivan Lishchyna, an adviser to Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice, points out: “There is no international police or international military force that can support any international court judgment.”

As it happens, though, there is a blindingly obvious path to payment. Just as a U.S. municipal court can garnish the wages of a deadbeat dad who won’t pay child support, so the European Court of Human Rights could garnish the gas income of the world’s ultimate deadbeat dad, Vladimir Putin. In its first five weeks, Putin’s war of choice inflicted an estimated $68 billion dollars of damageon Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure (its homes, airports, hospitals, and schools), along with other losses worth about $600 billion or three times that country’s total gross domestic product.

But how would Ukraine collect such a sum from Russia? Any Ukrainian party that has suffered damage — whether individuals, cities, or the entire nation — could petition the European Court of Human Rights to enforce its judgement in Ukraine v. Russia (X) by awarding damages. The Court could then instruct the Council of Europe to direct all European corporations buying gas from Gazprom, the Russian state monopoly, to deduct, say, 20% from their regular payments for a Ukraine compensation fund. Since Europe is now payingGazprom about $850 million daily, such a court-ordered deduction, would allow Putin to pay off his initial $600 billion war-damage debt over the next eight years. As long as his invasion continued, however, those sums would only increase in a potentially crippling fashion.

Though Putin would undoubtedly froth and fulminate, in the end, he would have little choice but to accept such deductions or watch the Russian economy collapse from the lack of gas, oil, or coal revenues. Last month, when he rammed legislation through his parliament requiring Europe’s gas payments in rubles, not euros, Germany refused, despite the threat of a gas embargo. Faced with the loss of such critical revenues sustaining his economy, a chastened Putin called Chancellor Scholz to capitulate.

With billions invested in pipelines leading one-way to Europe, Russia’s petro-dependent economy would have to absorb that war-damage deduction of 20% — possibly more, if the devastation worsened — or face certain economic collapse from the complete loss of those critical energy exports. That might, sooner or later, force the Russian president to end his war in Ukraine. From a pragmatic perspective, that 20% deduction would be a four-way win. It would punish Putin, rebuild Ukraine, avoid a European recession caused by banning Russian gas, and prevent environmental damage from firing up Germany’s coal-fueled power plants.

Paying for Peace

Back in the day of anti-Vietnam War rallies in the United States and nuclear-freeze marches in Europe, crowds of young protesters would sing John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s hope-filled refrain, even though they were aware of just how hopeless it was even as the words left their lips: “All we are saying is give peace a chance.” But now, after weeks of trial and error over Ukraine, the world just might have a chance to make the aggressor in a terrible war at least begin to pay a price for bringing such devastating conflict back to Europe.

Perhaps it’s time to finally deliver a bill to Vladimir Putin for a foreign policy that has involved little more than flattening one hapless city after another — from Aleppo and Homs in Syria to Chernihiv, Karkhiv, Kherson, Kramatorsk, Mariupol, Mykolaiv, and undoubtedly more to come in Ukraine. Once the world’s courts establish such a precedent in Ukraine v. Russia (X), would-be strongmen might have to think twice before invading another country, knowing that wars of choice now come with a prohibitive price tag." 

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Listen to Massachusetts Peace Action's Brian Garvey on local Milwaukee Radio Station, Riverwest Radio, 104.1 FM, WXRW.  Hosted by Peace Action WI members Babette Grunow and Garry Grass on their weekly show, the Grass is Greener. Past episodes are available online.

Grass Is Greener - Brian Garvey Of MA Peace Action: Seeking Peace In Ukraine - 2022-04-16 by WXRW riverwestradio.com 104.1fm

Grass Is Greener - Brian Garvey Of MA Peace Action: Seeking Peace In Ukraine

Brian Garvey on the Peace Movement -- Moving Past Divisions on Ukraine

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New Reporting Details Corporate Media's War Industry Pundits

"This type of revolving-door behavior should be prohibited for military officials to serve in a private capacity representing military contractors," said one consumer advocate.

BRETT WILKINS

April 12, 2022

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/04/12/new-reporting-details-corporate-medias-war-industry-pundits

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Pulitzer-prize winner, theologian, and author Chris Hedges describes the bi-partisan war culture we find ourselves in today in "The Pimps of War."

The unaccountable coterie of neocons and liberal interventionists who orchestrated two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East are now stoking a suicidal war with Russia.

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/04/11/chris-hedges-the-pimps-of-war/

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The Military Situation In The Ukraine

April 1, 2022 Jacques Baud

Part One: The Road To War

https://www.thepostil.com/the-military-situation-in-the-ukraine/

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Negotiate for peace in Ukraine!

The U.S., which played a major role in exacerbating the conflict that led up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, must now play a major role in the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to achieve a ceasefire. Add your name to the following letter to President Biden and Congress asking for the U.S. to support and commit to necessary compromises such as recognizing Ukraine as a neutral country and not expanding NATO any further eastward.

https://www.codepink.org/ukrainetalks

Dear President Biden and U.S. Congress,

The war in Ukraine is raging on, with only a narrow diplomatic channel existing between Ukraine and Russia. Negotiations have barely been able to achieve humanitarian corridors for civilians to leave and vital food, water, and other supplies to enter. The achievement of an urgent ceasefire is still beyond reach. In order to support negotiations, the United States must provide a clear articulation of what compromises the U.S./NATO will support.

There is no military solution to the conflict over Ukraine, a country caught in the crossfire between the U.S. and Russia, the world’s two most heavily armed nuclear nations. While the U.S. and the world are rightfully denouncing Putin’s invasion of a sovereign country, the shelling of civilians, the destruction of homes and hospitals, and threats of nuclear attacks, the major role the U.S. has played in exacerbating the conflict that led up to Russia’s invasion must also be acknowledged and addressed. 

By breaking promises not to expand NATO into Eastern Europe, by placing offensive missiles in Romania and Poland that could reach Russia in minutes, by arming Ukrainian forces, by continuing to “modernize” the U.S. nuclear arsenal and by withdrawing from key nonproliferation treaties, the U.S. exacerbated the conflict that led up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We know that Russia must withdraw its troops and commit to respecting the sovereignty of Ukraine, but the United States must be ready to make compromises and support negotiations between Ukraine and Russia by committing to the following:

• Continued rejection of a no-fly zone over Ukraine;

• No NATO expansion;

• Recognition of Ukraine as a neutral country;

• An off-ramp for sanctions on Russia to be lifted;

• Support for an international security agreement to protect the interests of all people on the European continent to remain free from war and occupation; 

• Support for Ukrainian demilitarization to the degree that missiles would be banned;

• Supply humanitarian aid to Ukraine and support Ukrainian refugees. 

We, the undersigned, ask you to urge President Zelensky to engage in vigorous negotiations to reach a deal to end the fighting.

Sincerely,

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U.S. Peace Council Statement on Russia’s Military Intervention in Ukraine

The US with its NATO allies have not only provoked this tragedy but have sought to prolong it in their refusal to engage in negotiations for a ceasefire.

March 26, 2022 U.S.Peace Council  U.S.PEACE COUNCIL

What we all hoped would not happen has happened. The Russian Federation sent troops into Ukraine on February 24 in response to decades of relentless US-led NATO provocation. The present situation puts many serious, fundamental questions before the global peace movement.

A fierce propaganda campaign, long simmering with Russiagate and the onset of a new Cold War, demonizing the Russian president and state has intensified. Wholesale condemnation of Russia has assumed global proportions, instigated by the US and allies, and supported by their sycophantic media. Alternative views and voices of opposition to the official anti-Russian narrative have been suppressed or shut down.

Not surprisingly, many people subjected to this toxic bombardment of massive imperialist propaganda have placed all the blame on Russian aggression. Various reasons are given to justify their, in our view dangerous, position. Let us look at some of these justifications and assess the degree of their moral, legal, and political validity.

Applying the UN Charter

The first and most morally justifiable reason given is the argument that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is in violation of the Charter of the United Nations. Based on this fundamental principle, shouldn’t the U.S. Peace Council, a staunch supporter and advocate of the Charter, also condemn Russia as a violator?

Let us look at the UN Charter to see whether we can firmly decide that Russia is in violation:

Article 2

3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.

4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

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Article 51

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations….

Looking at Article 2, especially paragraph 4, it can be argued that Russia is in violation. But based on Article 51, the Russian Federation has invoked its right to self-defense and has duly informed the Security Council. Russia presents important arguments in favor of its use of force under Article 51.

The Ukraine government has acted as the US and NATO’s proxy in hostilely encircling the Russian Federation. Ukraine military and paramilitaries have attacked Donetsk and Lugansk since 2014, resulting in the deaths of some 14,000 of their own people, many of whom were Russian speakers and some Russian citizens. Most recently, Russia discovered an imminent Ukrainian government plan for a large-scale invasion of the Donetsk and Lugansk that border Russia. Russia now recognizes these two republics as independent states, after they asked Russia to aid in their defense.

Russia clearly asked for security guarantees from the US and NATO, which refused to adequately respond to Russia’s concerns. Ukraine was planning to host US/NATO nuclear weapons on its territory that could reach Moscow in a matter of five minutes. This took place in the alarming context of the US decision in 2019 to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia.

If this is not an act of war against Russia, what is it? Aren’t those who are complicit in an act of murder equally guilty of murder? This is not to say that Russia was right in its decision. Rather we are insisting that the UN Charter should be applied to Ukraine on the basis of facts, as a specific case with a given historical background.

Second, the United Nations itself has been unsuccessful in upholding its own Charter in the face of blatant violations by the NATO states. Here, our intention is not to justify the Russian action, but to provide a realistic context for the need to uphold the UN Charter.

Since the end of the Soviet Union, when the US became the sole superpower, Washington has blatantly ignored the UN Charter in its drive to impose global “full spectrum” dominance. We should understand NATO as more than just an “alliance” of nominally sovereign states, but as an imperial military integrated under US command.

Let us look at two of the relevant articles of the UN Charter that have been trampled upon by the imperialist powers since the end of the century:

Article 6.

A Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

Article 25.

The Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.

US, NATO, and their allies have increasingly violated these and other articles of the UN Charter over the past two decades. Here are just a few examples:

— In 1999 for 78 days, NATO attacked, dropped 28,000 bombs, and shattered Yugoslavia into pieces without the consent of the United Nations.

— In 2001, as a response to the 9/11 attack, US declared an indefinite “war on terror,” affecting at least 60 countries, including seven targeted for illegal regime change.

— In 2003, US and the members of its “coalition of the willing” illegally attacked and invaded Iraq in defiance of the UN Security Council.

— In 2011 US, UK, and France unilaterally and without the consent of the UN Security Council attacked Libya and killed its leader, Moammar Qaddafi.

— Starting in 2011, US, NATO, and regional allies started a proxy war in Syria by arming and funding terrorist groups, a war which is still taking innocent lives.

— In 2014, the US staged a coup with the help of neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine and established a pro-NATO government, which led to the massacre of Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine.

— Throughout this period, the US and its European allies have imposed illegal unilateral economic sanctions on more than 40 countries of the world, causing the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

— And, of course, one should mention the illegal occupation and annexation of Syrian and Palestinian territories by Israel with full support of the United States.

The crisis facing us in Ukraine today is a result of the UN’s inability to uphold its charter against such illegal actions by the sole superpower and its NATO allies, which has enabled US/NATO to push Russia and other targeted nations of the world into such an impossible situation.

Yes, we should defend the UN Charter, but not selectively as imperialism hypocritically wants us to. We should not allow ourselves to be duped by imperialism’s “blame the victim” narrative when the victim is forced to defend itself.

Inter-Imperialist War

Many, especially on the left, have taken the position that Russia is a capitalist/imperialist state, that this is an inter-imperialist war, and that we have to condemn both sides equally. But whether or not Russia is an imperialist state is irrelevant to the issue at hand.

First, such a position implies that only countries with certain socio-economic systems need to be defended against imperialist aggression and others should be left to fend for themselves. Given the fact that the majority of countries targeted by imperialism are capitalist themselves, such a position leads to weakening the anti-imperialist struggle.

The second and more important problem with this kind of argument is that it removes the whole issue of aggression from the picture. It no longer matters who is the aggressor and who is the victim. It obviates the fact that the US seeks to be the world’s hegemon with global “full-spectrum” dominance. In short, US imperialism generated a war without using US soldiers.

Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that Russia is indeed an imperialist state and that what is going on is nothing but an inter-imperialist war. Even so, isn’t this inter-imperialist war going to impact the future of humanity? Don’t we all have a stake in its outcome?

False Equivalency of US/NATO and Russian Roles

As a peace organization, we cannot principally agree with the escalation of the Ukraine conflict to the level of military confrontation. However, we oppose the one-sided position of condemning Russia alone.

Some others have taken a more “balanced” position of condemning both sides, by simultaneously calling a halt in NATO expansion and the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine. But this position, too, ignores the causal relationships inherent the Ukraine situation. It places the cause and effect on the same level, while ignoring the fact that the NATO expansion is the material cause of the Russian military response. For these reasons, the position of equivalent blame superficially looks balanced but, in reality, isn’t.

Second, the natures of the two demands are different. The first is a general, strategic, long-term demand;
the second is an immediate and concrete one. By formulating the demands in this way, such a position inevitably ends up putting the main pressure on Russia alone.

Third, the first demand about NATO expansion is not specific to the case of Ukraine while the second one is. It ignores the fact that US/NATO has flooded Ukraine with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of military equipment along with dispatching military and covert operations personnel to “advise.” A correct demand would be recognition of Ukraine as a neutral state, removal of all foreign weapons and military personnel (including mercenaries) from Ukraine, and full implementation of Minsk II agreement.

NATO’s success in its effort to expand to the Ukraine-Russia border would create a hellish world and lead to the possibility of a nuclear war. Let us not forget that the story would not end there, and Belarus could be the next target. So, it is imperative for the peace movement to do everything we can to guarantee Ukraine’s neutrality and US/NATO’s recognition of it.

U.S. Peace Council Assessment

The US with its NATO allies have not only provoked this tragedy but have sought to prolong it in their refusal to engage in negotiations for a ceasefire. While no one wins in a war, the US has had the most to gain: further unifying NATO under US domination, reducing Russian economic competition in the European energy market, justifying increasing the US war budget, and facilitating sales of war materiel to NATO vassals. A Europe further divided between the EU/UK and Russia benefits none but the imperial US.

On the basis of this assessment of the present situation in Ukraine, the U.S. Peace Council raises the following immediate demands, in order of priority and urgency:

1. Immediate ceasefire and dispatch of humanitarian aid to Ukraine, including the self-proclaimed independent republics.

2. Recognition of the neutrality of Ukraine.

3. Withdrawal of foreign militaries, weapons, and equipment – including mercenaries – from Ukraine.

4. Resumption of negotiations for a permanent settlement of internal conflicts in Ukraine with the participation of all parties concerned.

U.S. Peace Council
March 24, 2022

 

De-Escalate NOW to Prevent Nuclear War in Ukraine!

 Princeton, NJ 

The op-ed below has been accepted for publication by  NJ.com, the largest media outlet in NJ which is affiliated with the Star Ledger and Trenton Times, where it may also run.

Since invading Ukraine on February 24, President Putin has put Russian nuclear forces on high alert and issued warnings to other nations that if they interfere with the Russian invasion they risk “consequences such as they have never seen in their history.” 

The nuclear threat has been further elevated by statements by Russian leaders that Russia has a “right” to use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict in response to conventional weapon threats or an “existential threat” to Russia.

What makes Russia’s threat especially dangerous is that it has been made in the context of ongoing warfare. Even if this threat were meant solely to intimidate, the fog of war sharply increases the chances of a nuclear war through inadvertent escalation, miscalculation, or accident.

It is therefore imperative that the US and NATO de-escalate NOW to prevent the war in Ukraine from escalating into a nuclear war. I advocate for two near term steps toward that end.

First, the US, France and the UK should publicly issue No First Use of Nuclear Weapons pledges. This multilateral declaration would make clear that the policy and nuclear weapon posture of the nuclear weapon nations within NATO is to never initiate the use of nuclear weapons. The only time such doomsday weapons would be used by them is if they were under nuclear attack.

This has the potential to dramatically transform the current escalatory dynamic. Instead of nuclear saber rattling, the three nuclear nations in NATO would join the only other nuclear power that has a No First Use policy, China, in eschewing initiating use of nuclear weapons.

Second, NATO should stop deploying nuclear weapons in NATO countries that aren’t nuclear weapon states. Currently there are an estimated one hundred nuclear weapons at US Air Force Bases in five non-nuclear NATO countries. These are superfluous to the thousands deployed by the US, France, and the UK.

For the medium term, the US should re-enter the Iran Nuclear Agreement that President Trump withdrew from in 2018. As a result of that withdrawal, Iran is very close to having enough nuclear weapon grade material to assemble a nuclear bomb. Negotiations are reportedly very near the finish line.

Other Nuclear Arms Control Treaties the US could re-enter include the ABM Treaty George W. Bush withdrew from; and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty-which Trump also withdrew the US from--that was the first ever nuclear reduction treaty in 1987 and banned an entire class of nuclear weapons. The US could also take leadership for a follow-up to the New START Nuclear Reduction Treaty to seek deeper reductions.

Ultimately, the US needs to take leadership to move forward on the groundbreaking work of  the UN’s Nuclear Ban Treaty, supported by a large majority of UN members. Moving toward the global abolition of nuclear weapons is the only sure way to guarantee that the world’s people won’t face the risk of extinction.

I’ve been a leader in the US anti-nuclear weapons movement for 44 years. When I began, our goal was to reverse the rapidly escalating nuclear arms race. The active engagement of millions in the US and across the world resulted in a reversal and an over 80% reduction in global nuclear arsenals.

If enough of citizens again engage in sustained anti-nuclear activism, we can make the world safe from the danger of nuclear weapons use, now in Ukraine, and for all future generations. For more information and/or to get involved, visit peacecoalition.org.

The Rev. Robert Moore   609-924-5022 office; [email protected]

The writer is Executive Director of the Princeton-based Coalition for Peace Action.

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RELEASE: Veterans for Peace Warns Against "No Fly Zone" in Ukraine

Hedges: Waltzing Toward Armageddon with the Merchants of Death

https://scheerpost.com/2022/03/14/hedges-waltzing-toward-armageddon-with-the-merchants-of-death/

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Black Alliance for Peace

The Department of Africana Studies San Diego State University presents: 

https://sdsu.zoom.us/j/84383595179?pwd=NnRZa0tabDdXWFA0ZlhsNlRaTVNRUT09#success

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VIDEO: Yurii Sheliazhenko on Democracy Now Proposes Non-Militarized Resolution of Conflict in Ukraine

NEWS ANALYSIS - WAR & PEACE

Arms Industry Sees Ukraine Conflict as an Opportunity, Not a Crisis

Jonathan Ng, - Truthout - March 2, 2022

In February, a photograph of Russian President Vladimir Putin sitting hunched over a 13-foot table with French President Emmanuel Macron circulated the globe. News about their sprawling table and sumptuous seven-course dinner was reminiscent of a Lewis Carroll story. But their meeting was deadly serious. Macron arrived to discuss the escalating crisis in Ukraine and threat of war. Ultimately, their talk foundered over expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), yielding little more than the bizarre photograph.

Yet the meeting was surreal for another reason. Over the past year, Macron, the leading European Union (EU) peace negotiator, has led an ambitious arms sales campaign, exploiting tensions to strengthen French commerce. The trade press even reported that he hoped to sell Rafale fighter jets to Ukraine, breaking into the “former bastion of Russian industry.”

Macron is not alone. NATO contractors openly embrace the crisis in Ukraine as sound business. In January, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes cited “tensions in Europe” as an opportunity, saying, “I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit.” Likewise, CEO Jim Taiclet of Lockheed Martin highlighted the benefits of “great power competition” in Europe to shareholders.

Bottom of Form

On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine, pounding cities with ordnance and dispatching troops across the border. The sonic boom of fighter jets filled the air, as civilians flooded the highways in Kyiv, attempting to flee the capital. And the stock value of arms makers soared.

The spiraling conflict over Ukraine dramatizes the power of militarism and the influence of defense contractors. A ruthless drive for markets — intertwined with imperialism — has propelled NATO expansion, while inflaming wars from Eastern Europe to Yemen.

Selling NATO

The current conflict with Russia began in the wake of the Cold War. Declining military spending throttled the arms industry in the United States and other NATO countries. In 1993, Deputy Secretary of Defense William Perry convened a solemn meeting with executives. Insiders called it the “Last Supper.” In an atmosphere heavy with misapprehension, Perry informed his guests that impending blows to the U.S. military budget called for industry consolidation. A frantic wave of mergers and takeovers followed, as Lockheed, Northrop, Boeing and Raytheon acquired new muscle and smaller firms expired amid postwar scarcity.

While domestic demand shrunk, defense contractors rushed to secure new foreign markets. In particular, they set their sights on the former Soviet bloc, regarding Eastern Europe as a new frontier for accumulation. “Lockheed began looking at Poland right after the wall came down,” veteran salesman Dick Pawlowski recalled. “There were contractors flooding through all those countries.” Arms makers became the most aggressive lobbyists for NATO expansion. The security umbrella was not simply a formidable alliance but also a tantalizing market.

However, lobbyists faced a major obstacle. In 1990, Secretary of State James Baker had promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that if he allowed a reunited Germany to join NATO, the organization would move “not one inch eastward.” Yet lobbyists remained hopeful. The Soviet Union had since disintegrated, Cold War triumphalism prevailed, and vested interests now pushed for expansion. “Arms Makers See Bonanza In Selling NATO Expansion,” The New York Times reported in 1997. The newspaper later noted that, “Expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — first to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic and then possibly to more than a dozen other countries — would offer arms makers a new and hugely lucrative market.”

New alliance members meant new clients. And NATO would literally require them to buy Western military equipment.

Lobbyists poured into Washington, D.C. fêting legislators in royal style. Vice President Bruce Jackson of Lockheed became the president of the advocacy organization U.S. Committee to Expand NATO. Jackson recounted the extravagant meals that he hosted at the mansion of the Republican luminary Julie Finley, which boasted “an endless wine cellar.”

Postwar expansion benefited arms makers both by increasing their market and stimulating conflict with Russia.

“Educating the Senate about NATO was our chief mission,” he informed journalist Andrew Cockburn. “We’d have four or five senators over every night, and we’d drink Julie’s wine.”

Lobby pressure was relentless. “The most interested corporations are the defense corporations, because they have a direct interest in the issue,” Romanian Ambassador Mircea Geoană observed. Bell Helicopter, Lockheed Martin, and other firms even funded Romania’s lobbying machine during its bid for NATO membership.

Ultimately, policy makers reneged on their promise to Gorbachev, admitting Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO in 1999. During the ceremony, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright — who directly cooperated with the Jackson campaign — welcomed them with a hearty “Hallelujah.” Ominously, the intellectual architect of the Cold War, George Kennan, predicted disaster. “Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion,” Kennan cautioned.

Few listened. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Chas Freeman described the mentality of policy makers: “The Russians are down, let’s give them another kick.” Relishing victory, Jackson was equally truculent: “‘Fuck Russia’ is a proud and long tradition in US foreign policy.” Later, he became chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which paved the way for the 2003 invasion, the biggest industry handout in recent history.

Within two decades, 14 Central and Eastern European countries joined NATO. The organization originally existed to contain the Soviet Union, and Russian officials monitored its advance with alarm. In retrospect, postwar expansion benefited arms makers both by increasing their market and stimulating conflict with Russia.

Targeting Ukraine

Tensions reached a new phase in 2014 when the United States backed the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine. Yanukovych had opposed NATO membership, and Russian officials feared his ouster would bring the country under its strategic umbrella. Rather than assuage their concerns, the Obama administration maneuvered to slip Ukraine into its sphere of influence. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland coordinated regime change with brash confidence. Nuland openly distributed cookies to protesters, and later, capped a diplomatic exchange with “fuck the EU.” At the height of the uprising, Sen. John McCain also joined demonstrators. Flanked by leaders of the fascist Svoboda Party, McCain advocated regime change, declaring that “America is with you.”

By then, newly minted NATO members had bought nearly $17 billion in American weapons. Military installations, including six NATO command posts, ballooned across Eastern Europe. Fearing further expansion, Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and intervened in the Donbas region, fueling a ferocious and interminable war.

In essence, the Saudi-led coalition subsidizes the NATO military buildup, while the West inflames the war in Yemen.

NATO spokespeople argued that the crisis justified expansion. In reality, NATO expansion was a key inciter of the crisis. And the conflagration was a gift to the arms industry. In five years, major weapons exports from the United States increased 23 percent, while French exports alone registered a 72-percent leap, reaching their highest levels since the Cold War. Meanwhile, European military spending hit record heights.

As tensions escalated, Supreme Commander Philip Breedlove of NATO wildly inflated threats, calling Russia “a long-term existential threat to the United States.” Breedlove even falsified information about Russian troop movements over the first two years of the conflict, while brainstorming tactics with colleagues to “leverage, cajole, convince or coerce the U.S. to react.” A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution concluded that he aimed to “goad Europeans into jacking up defense spending.”

And he succeeded. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute registered a significant leap in European military spending — even though Russian spending in 2016 equaled only one quarter of the European NATO budget. That year, Breedlove resigned from his post before joining the Center for a New American Security, a hawkish think tank awash in industry funds.

The arms race continues. After European negotiations gridlocked, Russia recognized two separatist republics in the Donbas region before invading Ukraine this February. Justifying the bloody operation, Putin wrongly accused Ukrainian authorities of genocide. Yet his focus was geopolitical. “It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries,” he said. “In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns. Its military machine is moving and, as I said, is approaching our very border.”

In retrospect, three decades of industry lobbying has proved deadly effective. NATO engulfed most of Eastern Europe and provoked a war in Ukraine — yet another opportunity for accumulation. Alliance members have activated Article 4, mobilizing troops, contemplating retaliation and moving further toward the brink of Armageddon.

Yet even as military budgets rise, European arms makers — like their American counterparts — have required foreign markets to overcome fiscal restraints and production costs. They need clients to finance their own military buildup: foreign wars to fund domestic defense.

Yemen Burning

Arms makers found the perfect sales opportunity in Yemen. In 2011, a popular revolution toppled Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had monopolized power for two decades. His crony, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, became president the next year after easily winning the election: He was the only candidate. Thwarted by elite intrigue, another uprising ejected Mansour Hadi in 2015.

That year, Prince Salman became king of Saudi Arabia, but power concentrated into the hands of his son, Mohammed bin Salman, who feared that the uprising threatened to snatch Yemen from Saudi Arabia’s sphere of influence.

Months later, a Saudi-led coalition invaded, leaving a massive trail of carnage. “There was no plan,” a U.S. intelligence official emphasized. “They just bombed anything and everything that looked like it might be a target.”

The war immediately attracted NATO contractors, which backed the aggressors. They exploit the conflict to sustain industrial capacity, fund weapons development and achieve economies of scale. In essence, the Saudi-led coalition subsidizes the NATO military buildup, while the West inflames the war in Yemen.

The revolving door is not simply a metaphor but an institution, converting private profit into public policy.

Western statesmen pursue sales with perverse enthusiasm. In May 2017, Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia for his first trip abroad as president, in order to flesh out the details of a $110 billion arms bundle. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, arrived beforehand to discuss the package. When Saudi officials complained about the price of a radar system, Kushner immediately called the CEO of Lockheed Martin to ask for a discount. The following year, Mohammed bin Salman visited company headquarters during a whirlwind tour of the United States. Defense contractors, Hollywood moguls and even Oprah Winfrey welcomed the young prince.

Yet the Americans were not alone. The Saudi-led coalition is also the largest arms market for France and other NATO members. And as the French Ministry of the Armed Forces explains, exports are “necessary for the preservation and development of the French defense technological and industrial base.” In other words, NATO members such as France export war in order to retain their capacity to wage it.

President Macron denies that the coalition — an imposing alliance that includes Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Sudan and Senegal — uses French weapons. But the statistics are suggestive. Between 2015 and 2019, France awarded €14 billion in arms export licenses to Saudi Arabia and €20 billion in licenses to the United Arab Emirates. CEO Stéphane Mayer of Nexter Systems praised the performance of Leclerc tanks in Yemen, boasting that they “have highly impressed the military leaders of the region.” In short, while Macron denies that the coalition wields French hardware in Yemen, local industrialists cite their use as a selling point. Indeed, Amnesty International reports that his administration has systematically lied about its export policy. Privately, officials have compiled a “very precise list of French materiél deployed in the context of the conflict, including ammunition.”

Recently, Macron became one of the first heads of state to meet Mohammed bin Salman following the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Like Trump’s trip, Macron’s diplomatic junket was a sales mission. Eventually, Macron clinched a deal with the United Arab Emirates for 80 Rafale fighters. The CEO of Dassault Aviation called the contract “the most important ever obtained by French military aerospace,” guaranteeing six years of work for a pillar of its industrial base.

French policy is typical of NATO involvement in Yemen. While denouncing the war, every Western producer has outfitted those carrying it out. Spanish authorities massage official documents to conceal the export of lethal hardware. Great Britain has repeatedly violated its own arms embargo. And the United States has not respected export freezes with any consistency.

Even NATO countries in Eastern Europe exploit the war. While these alliance members absorb Western arms, they dump some of their old Soviet hardware into the Middle East. Between 2012 and July 2016 Eastern Europe awarded at least €1.2 billion in military equipment to the region.

Ironically, a leading Eastern European arms exporter is Ukraine. While the West rushes to arm Kyiv, its ruling class has sold weapons on the black market. A parliamentary inquiry concluded that between 1992 and 1998 alone, Ukraine lost a staggering $32 billion in military assets, as oligarchs pillaged their own army. Over the past three decades, they have outfitted Iraq, the Taliban and extremist groups across the Middle East. Even former President Leonid Kuchma, who has led peace talks in the Donbas region, illegally sold weapons while in office. More recently, French authorities investigated Dmytro Peregudov, the former director of the state defense conglomerate, for pocketing $24 million in sales commissions. Peregudov resided in a château with rolling wine fields, while managing the extensive properties that he acquired after his years in public service.

The Warlords

Kuchma and Peregudov are hardly exceptional. Corruption is endemic in an industry that relies on the proverbial revolving door. The revolving door is not simply a metaphor but an institution, converting private profit into public policy. Its perpetual motion signifies the social reproduction of an elite that resides at the commanding heights of a global military-industrial complex. Leading power brokers ranging from the Mitterrands and Chiracs in France, to the Thatchers and Blairs in Britain, and the Gonzálezes and Bourbons in Spain have personally profited from the arms trade.

In the United States, the industry employs around 700 lobbyists. Nearly three-fourths previously worked for the federal government — the highest percentage for any industry. The lobby spent $108 million in 2020 alone, and its ranks continue to swell. Over the past 30 years, about 530 congressional staffers on military-related committees left office for defense contractors. Industry veterans dominate the Biden administration, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin from Raytheon.

The revolving door reinforces the class composition of the state, while undermining its moral legitimacy. As an elite rotates office, members insulate policymaking from democratic input, taint the government with corruption and mistake corporate profit with national interest. By 2005, 80 percent of army generals with three stars or more retired to arms makers despite existing regulations. (The National Defense Authorization Act prohibits top officers from lobbying the government for two years after leaving office or leveraging personal contacts to secure

But compliance is notoriously poor.) More recently, the U.S. Navy initiated investigations against dozens of officers for corrupt ties to the defense contractor Leonard Francis, who clinched contracts with massive bribes, lavish meals and sex parties.

Steeped in this corrosive culture, NATO intellectuals now openly talk about the prospect of “infinite war.” Gen. Mike Holmes insists that it is “not losing. It’s staying in the game and getting a new plan and keeping pursuing your objectives.” Yet those immersed in its brutal reality surely disagree. The United Nations reports that at least 14,000 people have died in the Russo-Ukrainian War since 2014, and over 377,000 have perished in Yemen.

Moderator posted: " "Have a Nice Doomsday" / Original Illustration by Mr. Fish By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost 
New post on scheerpost.com
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<https://scheerpost.com/?author=14765177>

https://scheerpost.com/2022/02/27/hedges-the-greatest-evil-is-war/

Hedges: The Lie of American Innocence<https://scheerpost.com/2022/03/21/hedges-the-lie-of-american-innocence/>
by Moderator<https://scheerpost.com/?author=14765177>
[https://scheerpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Have-a-Nice-Doomsday-1024x869.jpg]"Have a Nice Doomsday" / 
________________________________

By Chris Hedges<https://scheerpost.com/category/chris-hedges/> / Original to ScheerPost

The branding of Vladimir Putin as a war criminal by Joe Biden, who lobbied for the Iraq war and staunchly supported the 20 years of carnage in the Middle East, is one more example of the hypocritical moral posturing sweeping across the United States. It is unclear how anyone would try Putin for war crimes since Russia, like the United States, does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. But justice is not the point. Politicians like Biden, who do not accept responsibility for our well-documented war crimes, bolster their moral credentials by demonizing their adversaries. They know the chance of Putin facing justice is zero. And they know their chance of facing justice is the same.

We know who our most recent war criminals are, among others: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, General Ricardo Sanchez, former CIA Director George Tenet, former Asst. Atty. Gen. Jay Bybee, former Dep. Asst. Atty. Gen. John Yoo, who set up the legal framework to authorize torture; the helicopter pilots who gunned down civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in the “Collateral Murder” video released by WikiLeaks. We have evidence of the crimes they committed.

But, like Putin’s Russia, those who expose these crimes are silenced and persecuted. Julian Assange, even though he is not a US citizen and his WikiLeaks site is not a US-based publication, is charged under the US Espionage Act for making public numerous US war crimes. Assange, currently housed in a high security prison in London, is fighting a losing battle in the British courts to block his extradition to the United States, where he faces 175 years in prison. One set of rules for Russia, another set of rules for the United States. Weeping crocodile tears for the Russian media, which is being heavily censored by Putin, while ignoring the plight of the most important publisher of our generation speaks volumes about how much the ruling class cares about press freedom and truth.

If we demand justice for Ukrainians, as we should, we must also demand justice for the one million people killed — 400,000 of whom were noncombatants — by our invasions, occupations and aerial assaults in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan. We must demand justice for those who were wounded, became sick or died because we destroyed hospitals and infrastructure. We must demand justice for the thousands of soldiers and marines who were killed, and many more who were wounded and are living with lifelong disabilities, in wars launched and sustained on lies. We must demand justice for the 38 million people who have been displaced or become refugees in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria, a number that exceeds the total of all those displaced in all wars since 1900, apart from World War II, according to the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs at Brown University. Tens of millions of people, who had no connection with the attacks of 9/11, were killed, wounded, lost their homes, and saw their lives and their families destroyed because of our war crimes. Who will cry out for them?

Every effort to hold our war criminals accountable has been rebuffed by Congress, by the courts, by the media and by the two ruling political parties. The Center for Constitutional Rights, blocked from bringing cases in US courts against the architects of these preemptive wars, which are defined by post-Nuremberg laws as “criminal wars of aggression,” filed motions in German courts to hold US leaders to account for gross violations of the Geneva Convention, including the sanctioning of torture in black sites such as Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib.

Those who have the power to enforce the rule of law, to hold our war criminals to account, to atone for our war crimes, direct their moral outrage exclusively at Putin’s Russia. "Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime," Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, condemning Russia for attacking civilian sites, including a hospital, three schools and a boarding school for visually impaired children in the Luhansk region of Ukraine. "These incidents join a long list of attacks on civilian, not military locations, across Ukraine," he said. Beth Van Schaack, an ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, will direct the effort at the State Department, Blinkin said, to "help international efforts to investigate war crimes and hold those responsible accountable."

This collective hypocrisy, based on the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves, is accompanied by massive arms shipments to Ukraine. Fueling proxy wars was a specialty of the Cold War. We have returned to the script. If Ukrainians are heroic resistance fighters, what about Iraqis and Afghans, who fought as valiantly and as doggedly against a foreign power that was every bit as savage as Russia? Why weren’t they lionized? Why weren’t sanctions imposed on the United States? Why weren’t those who defended their countries from foreign invasion in the Middle East, including Palestinians under Israeli occupation, also provided with thousands of anti-tank weapons, anti-armor weapons, anti-aircraft weapons, helicopters, Switchblade or “Kamikaze” drones, hundreds of Stinger anti-aircraft systems, Javelin anti-tank missiles, machine guns and millions of rounds of ammunition? Why didn’t Congress rush through a $13.6 billion package to provide military and humanitarian assistance, on top of the $1.2 billion already provided to the Ukrainian military, for them?

Well, we know why. Our war crimes don’t count, and neither do the victims of our war crimes. And this hypocrisy makes a rules-based world, one that abides by international law, impossible.

This hypocrisy is not new. There is no moral difference between the saturation bombing the US carried out on civilian populations since World War II, including in Vietnam and Iraq, and the targeting of urban centers by Russia in Ukraine or the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Mass death and fireballs on a city skyline are the calling cards we have left across the globe for decades. Our adversaries do the same.

The deliberate targeting of civilians, whether in Baghdad, Kyiv, Gaza, or New York City, are all war crimes. The killing of at least 112 Ukranian children, as of March 19<https://thewire.in/world/ukraines-prosecutor-office-says-112-children-killed-in-war>, is an atrocity, but so is the killing of 551 Palestinian children during Israel’s 2014 military assault on Gaza. So is the killing of 230,000 people over the past seven years in Yemen from Saudi bombing campaigns and blocades that have resulted in mass starvation and cholera epidemics. Where were the calls for a no-fly zone over Gaza and Yemen? Imagine how many lives could have been saved.

War crimes demand the same moral judgment and accountability. But they don’t get them. And they don’t get them because we have one set of standards for white Europeans, and another for non-white people around the globe. The western media has turned European and American volunteers flocking to fight in Ukraine into heroes, while Mulsims in the west who join resistance groups battling foreign occupiers in the Middle East are criminlized as terrorists. Putin has been ruthless with the press. But so has our ally the de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman, who ordered the murder and dismemberment of my friend and collague Jamal Khashoggi, and who this month oversaw a mass execution of 81 people conivicted of criminal offenses. The coverage of Ukraine, especially after spending seven years reporting on Israel’s murderous assaults against the Palestinians, is another example of the racist divide that defines most of the western media.

World War II began with an understanding, at least by the allies, that employing industrial weapons against civilian populations was a war crime. But within 18 months of the start of the war, the Germans, Americans and British were relentlessly bombing cities. By the end of the war, one-fifth of German homes had been destroyed. One million German civilians were killed or wounded in bombing raids. Seven-and-a-half million Germans were made homeless. The tactic of saturation bombing, or area bombing, which included the firebombing of Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo, which killed more than 90,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo and left a million people homeless, and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which took the lives of between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, had the sole purpose of breaking the morale of the population through mass death and terror. Cities such as Leningrad, Stalingrad, Warsaw, Coventry, Royan, Nanjing and Rotterdam were obliterated.

It turned the architects of modern war, all of them, into war criminals.

Civilians in every war since have been considered legitimate targets. In the summer of 1965, then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara called the bombing raids north of Saigon that left hundreds of thousands of dead an effective means of communication with the government in Hanoi. McNamara, six years before he died, unlike most war criminals, had the capacity for self-reflection. Interviewed in the documentary, “The Fog of War,” he was repentant, not only about targeting Vietnamese civilians but about the aerial targeting of civilians in Japan in World War II, overseen by Air Force General Curtis LeMay.

“LeMay said if we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDT8NdyoWfI>,” McNamara said in the film. “And I think he’s right…LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose, and not immoral if you win?”

LeMay, later head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, would go on to drop tons of napalm and firebombs on civilian targets in Korea which, by his own estimate, killed 20 percent of the population over a three-year period.

Industrial killing defines modern warfare. It is impersonal mass slaughter. It is administered by vast bureaucratic structures that perpetuate the killing over months and years. It is sustained by heavy industry that produces a steady flow of weapons, munitions, tanks, planes, helicopters, battleships, submarines, missiles, and mass-produced supplies, along with mechanized transports that ferry troops and armaments by rail, ship, cargo planes and trucks to the battlefield. It mobilizes industrial, governmental and organization structures for total war. It centralizes systems of information and internal control. It is rationalized for the public by specialists and experts, drawn from the military establishment, along with pliant academics and the media.

Industrial war destroys existing value systems that protect and nurture life, replacing them with fear, hatred, and a dehumanization of those who we are made to believe deserve to be exterminated. It is driven by emotions, not truth or fact. It obliterates nuance, replacing it with an infantile binary universe of us and them. It drives competing narratives, ideas and values underground and vilifies all who do not speak in the national cant that replaces civil discourse and debate. It is touted as an example of the inevitable march of human progress, when in fact it brings us closer and closer to mass obliteration in a nuclear holocaust. It mocks the concept of individual heroism, despite the feverish efforts of the military and the mass media to sell this myth to naïve young recruits and a gullible public. It is the Frankenstein of industrialized societies. War, as Alfred Kazin warned, is “the ultimate purpose of technological society.” Our real enemy is within.

Historically, those who are prosecuted for war crimes, whether the Nazi hierarchy at Nuremberg or the leaders of Liberia, Chad, Serbia, and Bosnia, are prosecuted because they lost the war and because they are adversaries of the United States.

There will be no prosecution of Saudi Arabian rulers for the war crimes committed in Yemen or for the US military and political leadership for the war crimes they carried out in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, or a generation earlier in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The atrocities we commit, such as My Lai, where 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians were gunned down by US soldiers, which are made public, are dealt with by finding a scapegoat, usually a low-ranking officer who is given a symbolic sentence. Lt. William Calley served three years under house arrest for the killings at My Lai. Eleven US soldiers, none of whom were officers, were convicted of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But the architects and overlords of our industrial slaughter, including Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Gen. Curtis LeMay, Harry S. Truman, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Lyndon Johnson, Gen. William Westmoreland, George W. Bush, Gen. David Petraeus, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are never held to account. They leave power to become venerated elder statesmen.

The mass slaughter of industrial warfare, the failure to hold ourselves to account, to see our own face in the war criminals we condemn, will have ominous consequences. Author and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi understood that the annihilation of the humanity of others is prerequisite for their physical annihilation. We have become captives to our machines of industrial death. Politicians and generals wield their destructive fury as if they were toys. Those who decry the madness, who demand the rule of law, are attacked and condemned. These industrial weapons systems are our modern idols. We worship their deadly prowess. But all idols, the Bible tells us, begin by demanding the sacrifice of others and end in apocalyptic self-sacrifice.doctrine of infinite war is not so much a strategy as it is a confession — acknowledging the violent metabolism of a system that requires conflict. As a self-selecting elite propounds NATO expansion, military buildup and imperialism, we must embrace what the warlords most fear: the threat of peace.

The author would like to thank Sarah Priscilla Lee of the Learning Sciences Program at Northwestern University for reviewing this article.

Chomsky: Peace Talks in Ukraine “Will Get Nowhere” If US Keeps Refusing to Join

 https://truthout.org/articles/chomsky-peace-talks-in-ukraine-will-get-nowhere-if-us-keeps-refusing-to-join/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=0f3fe992-e64c-42c7-85ff-483718a7c020

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: Nuclear Dimensions Amid the Search for Accountability and Peace

Interview with Tri-Valley CAREs’ Marylia Kelley on peace, justice and the potential nuclear consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

30-minute interview conducted by Chris Nelson, KZFR

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: Nuclear Dimensions Amid the Search for Accountability and Peace

Interview with Tri-Valley CAREs’ Marylia Kelley on peace, justice and the potential nuclear consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

30-minute interview conducted by Chris Nelson, KZFR

Listen at: http://www.kzfr.org/broadcasts/28795

The Geopolitics of Hell

Would a “Cold” War Be the Best News Around?

Michael Klare, L A Progressive

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been widely described as the beginning of a new cold war, much like the old one in both its cast of characters and ideological nature. “In the contest between democracy and autocracy, between sovereignty and subjugation, make no mistake — freedom will prevail,” President Biden asserted in a televised address to the nation the day Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. But while Russia and the West disagree on many issues of principle, this is not a replay of the Cold War. It’s an all-too-geopolitical twenty-first-century struggle for advantage on a highly contested global chessboard. If comparisons are in order, think of this moment as more akin to the situation Europe confronted prior to World War I than in the aftermath of World War II.

Geopolitics — the relentless struggle for control over foreign lands, ports, cities, mines, railroads, oil fields, and other sources of material and military might — has governed the behavior of major powers for centuries. Think of Gibraltar, Pearl Harbor, the diamond mines of Africa, or the oil fields of the Middle East. Aspiring world powers, from the Roman Empire on, have always proceeded from the assumption that acquiring control over as many such places as possible — by force if necessary — was the surest path to greatness.

During the Cold War, it was considered uncouth in governing circles to openly express such blatantly utilitarian motives. Instead, both sides fabricated lofty ideological explanations for their intense rivalry. Even then, though, geopolitical considerations all too often prevailed. For example, the Truman Doctrine, that early exemplar of Cold War ideological ferocity, was devised to justify Washington’s efforts to resist Soviet incursions in the Middle East, then a major source of oil for Europe (and of revenue for American oil firms).

Today, ideological appeals are still deployed by top officials to justify predatory military moves, but it’s becoming ever more difficult to disguise the geopolitical intent of so much international behavior. Russia’s assault on Ukraine is the most ruthless and conspicuous recent example, but hardly the only one. For years now, Washington has sought to counter China’s rise by bolstering U.S. military strength in the western Pacific, prompting a variety of countermoves by Beijing. Other major powers, including India and Turkey, have also sought to extend their geopolitical reach. Not surprisingly, the risk of wars on such a global chessboard is likely to grow, which means understanding contemporary geopolitics becomes ever more important. Let’s begin with Russia and its quest for military advantage.

Fighting for Position in the European Battlespace

Yes, Russian President Vladimir Putin has justified his invasion in ideological terms by claiming that Ukraine was an artificial state unjustly detached from Russia. He’s also denigrated the Ukrainian government as infiltrated by neo-Nazis still seeking to undo the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II. These considerations seem to have grown more pervasive in Putin’s mind as he assembled forces for an attack on Ukraine. Nevertheless, these should be viewed as an accumulation of grievances overlaying an all too hardcore set of geopolitical calculations.

From Putin’s perspective, the origins of the Ukrainian conflict date back to the immediate post-Cold War years, when NATO, taking advantage of Russia’s weakness at the time, relentlessly expanded eastward. In 1999, three former Soviet-allied states, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic, all previously members of the Warsaw Pact (Moscow’s version of NATO), were incorporated into the alliance; in 2004, Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovakia were added, along with three former actual republics of the Soviet Union (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). For NATO, this staggering enlargement moved its own front lines of defense ever farther from its industrial heartlands along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. Meanwhile, Russia’s front lines shrank hundreds of miles closer to its borders, putting its own heartland at greater risk and generating deep anxiety among senior officials in Moscow, who began speaking out against what they saw as encirclement by hostile forces.

“I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe,” Putin declared at a Munich Security Conference in 2007. “On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?”

It was, however, NATO’s 2008 decision to offer membership to Georgia and Ukraine, two former Soviet republics, that thoroughly inflamed Moscow’s security anxieties. After all, Ukraine shares a 600-mile border with Russia, overlooking a large swath of its industrial heartland. Should it ever actually join NATO, Russian strategists feared, the West could deploy powerful weapons, including ballistic missiles, right on its border.

“The West has explored the territory of Ukraine as a future theater, future battlefield, that is aimed against Russia,” Putin declared in a fire-breathing address on February 21st, just before Russian tanks crossed the Ukrainian border. “If Ukraine was to join NATO it would serve as a direct threat to the security of Russia.”

For Putin and his top security aides, the invasion was primarily intended to preclude such a future possibility, while moving Russia’s front lines farther from its own vulnerable heartland and thereby enhancing its strategic advantage in the European battlespace. As it happens, they seem to have underestimated the strength of the forces arrayed against them — both the determination of ordinary Ukrainians to repel the Russian military and the West’s unity in imposing harsh economic sanctions — and so are likely to emerge from the fighting in a worse position. But any geopolitical foray of this magnitude entails such draconian risks. 

Mackinder, Mahan, and U.S. Strategy

Washington, too, has been guided by cold-blooded geopolitical considerations over the past century-plus and, like Russia, has often faced resistance as a result. As a major trading nation with a significant dependence on access to foreign markets and raw materials, the U.S. has long sought control over strategic islands globally, including Cuba, Hawaii, and the Philippines, using force when needed to secure them. That quest continues to this day, with the Biden administration seeking to preserve or expand U.S. access to bases in Okinawa, Singapore, and Australia.

In such endeavors, U.S. strategists have been influenced by two major strands of geopolitical thinking. One, informed by the English geographer Sir Halford Mackinder (1861-1947), held that the combined Eurasian continent possessed such a large share of global wealth, resources, and population that any nation capable of controlling that space would functionally control the world. From that followed the argument that “island states” like Great Britain and, metaphorically speaking, the United States, had to maintain a significant presence on the margins of Eurasia, intervening if necessary to prevent any single Eurasian power from gaining control over all the others.

The American naval officer Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) similarly held that, in a globalizing world where access to international commerce was essential to national survival, “control of the seas” was even more critical than control of Eurasia’s margins. An ardent student of British naval history, Mahan, who served as president of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, from 1886 to 1893, concluded that, like Britain, his country must possess a powerful navy and a range of overseas bases to advance its status as a preeminent global trading power.

From 1900 on, the United States has pursued both geopolitical strategies, though on opposite sides of Eurasia. With respect to Europe, it has largely hewed to Mackinder’s approach. During World War I, despite widespread domestic misgivings, President Woodrow Wilson was persuaded to intervene by the Anglo-French argument that a German victory would lead to a single power capable of dominating the world and so threatening vital American interests. The same line of reasoning led President Franklin Roosevelt to support U.S. entry into World War II in Europe and his successors to deploy substantial forces there to prevent the Soviet Union (today, Russia) from dominating the continent. This, in fact, is NATO’s essential reason for existing.

In the Asia-Pacific theater, however, the United States has largely followed Mahan’s approach, seeking control over island military bases and maintaining the region’s most powerful naval force. When, however, the U.S. has gone to war on the Asian mainland, as in Korea and Vietnam, disaster and ultimate withdrawal followed. As a result, Washington’s geopolitical strategy in our time has focused on maintaining island military bases across the region and ensuring that this country keeps its overwhelming naval superiority there.

Great-Power Competition in the Twenty-First Century

In this century, Washington’s increasingly fraught post-9/11 global war on terror (GWOT), with its costly and futile invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, came to be viewed by many strategists in Washington as a painful and misguided diversion from a long-established focus on global geopolitics. A fear only grew that it was providing China and Russia with opportunities to advance their own geopolitical ambitions, while the U.S. was distracted by terrorism and insurgency. By 2018, America’s senior military leadership, reaching the end of its patience with the endless war on terror, proclaimed a new strategic doctrine of “great-power competition” — a perfect euphemism for geopolitics.

“In this new era of great power competition, our warfighting advantages over strategic competitors are being challenged,” explained Secretary of Defense Mark Esper in 2019. As the Pentagon winds down the GWOT, he noted, “we are working to re-allocate our forces and equipment to priority theaters that enable us to better compete with China and Russia.”

That, he went on to explain, would require concerted action on two fronts: in Europe against an increasingly assertive, well-armed Russia, and in Asia against an ever more powerful China. There, Esper sought an accelerated buildup of air and naval forces along with ever closer military cooperation with Australia, Japan, South Korea, and — increasingly — India.

In the wake of this country’s Afghan War defeat, such an outlook has been embraced by the Biden administration which, at least until the current crisis over Ukraine, saw China, not Russia, as the greatest threat to America’s geopolitical interests. Because of its growing wealth, enhanced technological capacity, and ever-improving military, China alone was viewed as capable of challenging American dominance on the geopolitical chessboard. “China, in particular, has rapidly become more assertive,” the White House stated in its Interim National Security Strategic Guidance of March 2021. “It is the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system.”

In early February, to provide high-level guidance for a “whole-of-nation” struggle to counter China, the White House issued a new “Indo-Pacific Strategy,” just as Russia was mobilizing its forces along Ukraine’s borders. Describing the Indo-Pacific as the true epicenter of world economic activity, the strategy called for a multifaceted effort to bolster America’s strategic position and — to use a word from another age — contain China’s rise. In a classic expression of geopolitical thinking, it stated:

“Our objective is not to change [China] but to shape the strategic environment in which it operates, building a balance of influence in the world that is maximally favorable to the United States, our allies and partners.”

In implementing this blueprint, Biden’s national security team views key islands and sea passages as vital to its strategy for containing China. Its senior officials have emphasized the importance of defending what they call the “first island chain” — including Japan and the Philippines — that separates China from the open Pacific. Smack in the middle of that chain is, of course, Taiwan, claimed by China as its own and now viewed in Washington (in a typical Mahanian fashion) as essential to U.S. security.

In that context, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Affairs Ely Ratner told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in December:

“I’d like to begin with an overview of why Taiwan’s security is so important to the United States. As you know, Taiwan is located at a critical node within the first island chain, anchoring a network of U.S. allies and partners that is critical to the region’s security and critical to the defense of vital U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific.”

From Beijing’s point of view, however, such efforts to contain its rise and prevent its assertion of authority over Taiwan are intolerable. Its leaders have repeatedly insisted that U.S. interference there could cross a “red line,” leading to war. “The Taiwan issue is the biggest tinderbox between China and the United States,” said Qin Gang, China’s ambassador to the U.S., recently. “If the Taiwanese authorities, emboldened by the United States, keep going down the road for independence, it most likely will involve China and the United States, the two big countries, in the military conflict.” 

With Chinese warplanes regularly intruding on Taiwan-claimed airspace and U.S. warships patrolling the Taiwan Strait, many observers expected that Taiwan, not Ukraine, would be the site of the first major military engagement arising from the great-power competition of this era. Some are now suggesting, ominously enough, that a failure to respond effectively to Russian aggression in Ukraine could induce Chinese leaders to begin an invasion of Taiwan, too.

Other Flashpoints

Unfortunately, Ukraine and Taiwan are hardly the only sites of contention on the global chessboard today. As great-power competition has gained momentum, other potential flashpoints have emerged because of their strategic location or access to vital raw materials, or both. Among them:

• The Baltic Sea area containing the three Baltic republics (and former SSRs), Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, all now members of an expanded NATO. Vladimir Putin would ideally like to strip them of their NATO membership and once again place them under some form of Russian hegemony.

• The South China Sea, which borders China as well as Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. China has laid claim to almost this entire maritime expanse and the islands within it, while employing force to prevent other claimants from exercising their developmental rights in the area. Under Presidents Trump and Biden, the U.S. has vowed to help defend those claimants against Chinese “bullying.”

• The East China Sea, its uninhabited islands claimed by both China and Japan. Each of them has sent combat planes and ships into the area to assert their interests. Late last year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured Japan’s foreign minister that Washington recognizes its island claims there and would support its forces if China attacked them.

• The border between India and China, which has been the site of periodic clashes between the militaries of those two countries. The U.S. has expressed sympathy for India’s position, while pursuing ever closer military ties with that country.
• The Arctic, claimed in part by Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia, and the United States, is believed to harbor vast reserves of oil, natural gas, and valuable minerals, some lying in areas claimed by two or more of those countries. It is also seen by Russia as a safe haven for its nuclear-missile submarines and by China as a potential route for trade between Asia and Europe.

In recent years, there have been minor clashes or incidents in all of these locations and their frequency is on the rise. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, tensions are only going to increase globally, so keep an eye on these flashpoints. History suggests that global geopolitics rarely ends peacefully. Under the circumstances, a new cold war — with militaries largely frozen in place — might just prove good news and that’s about as depressing as it gets. 

Michael Klare

Crossposted with permission from TomDispatch

Peace Action WI believes that non-violence and peace talks are the only path forward to peace.

"The United Nations General Assembly voted, on Mar 2, 2022, 141 to 5 to demand Russia halt the war. China was among 35 countries that abstained. Belarus and North Korea were among Russia's supporters, along with Syria and Eritrea. Longtime allies China, Cuba and Venezuela abstained.

'The message of the General Assembly is loud and clear. End hostilities in Ukraine now,' Guterres said. 'Silence the guns now. Open the door to dialogue and diplomacy now.'"

There must be an international peace conference for a treaty that will establish the permanent neutrality and independence of Ukraine which will be guaranteed by the United Nations Security Council under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter. It is clear that only  the non-military options in the UN Charter (Articles 33 – 41) and not a military response (Article 42) by either side are legal under international law. President Biden must publicly announce that NATO expansion is over for good and that Ukraine will not be joining NATO.

Russia must cease it's military aggression and negotiate for peace in the Ukraine, with an immediate ceasefire, withdraw its troops and weapons from Ukraine. Ukraine must negotiate for peace, too. Russia’s war against Ukraine has already seen violations of international humanitarian law and human rights, including Russian forces using banned weapons such as cluster munitions and using explosive weapons in populated areas, hitting hospitals, homes, schools, and other civilian infrastructure. The conflict has also already involved severe environmental impacts, including pollution from military sites and material, as well as from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, radiation risks from fighting at the Chernobyl nuclear power facility, groundwater contamination, and more. 

 The US must send humanitarian aid, not escalate war by sending more weapons or troops to the region. Sanctions aren't a solution, they will harm civilians, and will not force Russia to capitulate and will not help with diplomacy. Only the UN Security Council has the authority to order the use of sanctions. That means the United States and other countries cannot unilaterally impose sanctions against other countries without the approval of the council. Unilateral Coercive Sanctions Violate the UN Charter.

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