OMNI

US, NATO, RUSSIA, UKRAINE war, ANTHOLOGY #20, mAY 6, 2022.

Consequences of War, Control OF INFORMATION and CENSORSHIP,

and seeking PEACE https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/05/omni-us-nato-russia-ukraine-war.html

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology

Omnicenter.org/donate/

What’s at Stake:  Wartime State, Corporate Rapacity and Repression, and Populist Patriotism v. Free Speech and Peace.

CONTENTS #20,

CONSEQUENCES OF WAR (10): CONTROL OF INFORMATION/CENSORSHIP.  RESISTANCE: PEACEMAKING.

Patrick Lawrence.  “The US Bubble of Pretend.”

George Paulson.  Scott Ritter and President Poroshenko.

Glenn Greenwald.  “The Censorship Campaign against Western Criticism of
    NATO….”

Evan Reif.  War of Repression against “anyone who dares to speak against the
     Kyiv regime.”

Jeremy Kuzmarov.  “Ukraine Hunts Down Traitors Helping Russia.”

Chris Hedges.   “American Commissars.”

Caitlin Johnstone.  “Pay Pal Blocks [Criticism] of U.S.”

Margaret Kimerley.  “Obama Wants Censorship.”

Johnstone.  “Being Anti-War Isn’t Easy.”

CPNN.  Russian Nobel Laureate Attacked in Russia. Silencing Occurring Also in
     Russia.

PEACE (3)

Art Hobson.  “Why must we make war?  The frailties of Homo sapiens.”

UN’s Guterres

Ukraine Pacifist Movement

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies.  “This Is How the US Could Help Bring Peace to Ukraine”

TEXTS

“The U.S. bubble of pretend.”  Editor.  Mronline.org (4-29-22). 

The lack of objective, principled coverage of the war in Ukraine is a degenerate state of affairs. The one thing worse is the extent to which it’s perfectly fine with most Americans.

Originally published: Consortium News  on April 5, 2022 by Patrick Lawrence.  (Posted Apr 28, 2022)

Media, State Repression, Strategy, WarAmericas, Europe, Russia, Ukraine, United StatesNewswireNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Russia-Ukraine War

This is the first of an occasional series, to appear in four parts, considering various aspects of our “bubble of pretend,” that protective membrane within which most Americans prefer to reside, safely removed from the realities of our circumstances, the disorders of our time, and, of course, the responsibilities we share for these circumstances and disorders. My concern as I began these pieces, sometimes tipping into morbid fascination, was that our collective psychology, as I understand the term, has deteriorated these past few years to such an extent it calls into question the survival of our polity, if not our republic.   — P.L.

It is perfectly obvious by now, to anyone who cares to look, that mainstream media in America and the other Western powers are not reporting the Ukraine crisis accurately.

Let me try that another way: The government-supervised New York Times and the rest of the corporate-owned media on both sides of the Atlantic lie routinely to their readers and viewers as to why Russia intervened in Ukraine, the progress of its military operation, the conduct of Ukrainian forces, and America’s role in purposely provoking and prolonging this crisis.

So far as I know, this is the first war in modern history with no objective, principled coverage in mainstream media of day-to-day events and their context. None. It is morn-to-night propaganda, disinformation and lies of omission—most of it fashioned by the Nazi-infested Zelensky regime in Kiev and repeated uncritically as fact.

There is one thing worse than this degenerate state of affairs. It is the extent to which the media’s malpractice is perfectly fine to most Americans. Tell us what to think and believe no matter if it is true, they say, and we will think and believe it. Show us some pictures, for images are all.  MORE  https://mronline.org/2022/04/28/the-u-s-bubble-of-pretend/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-u-s-bubble-of-pretend&mc_cid=5360602604&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e

Hello friends,

I wasn’t planning on writing to you this weekend but I just encountered an example of what may be an example of the kind of censorship that is now taking place all across the internet and social media when it comes to the war in Ukraine.  As many, if not all of you know, sites that present a counter-narrative to the one coming out of Washington are being suppressed.  One of the sources I sometimes follow for news on the Ukraine war has been former Marine-intelligence analyst and weapons inspector Scott Ritter (some of you will remember RItter during the lead up to the Iraq war when he very publicly told the world that Iraq possessed no WMDs).  During an interview Ritter gave not long after the Russian invasion, he mentioned something that former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had once said in a speech.  Specifically, the Ukrainian President–according to Ritter–claimed that Ukraine would prevail against the inhabitants of the breakaway region because, to paraphrase, Ukrainian children would go about their lives and go to school while the children of the Donbas would spend their lives cowering in fear in bomb shelters (because of the shelling by the Ukrainian military).  So, today I decided to independently confirm if Ritter’s allegation about what the Ukrainian President said was correct, and, after a little internet searching, discovered a documentary video on YouTube about the Donbas made in 2016 that looked promising. After clicking on the link, I was prevented from viewing the documentary–called simply “Donbas” by someone named Anne-Laure Bonnel–because of age-appropriate concerns.  I was eventually able to get around the age-appropriate restrictions and began watching the documentary. It began with Poroshenko giving a speech–the subtitles were in French, but I can read French–and, indeed, the Ukrainian President was talking about children cowering in “caves.”  I appeared to have found just what I had been looking for!  I then attempted to switch to English subtitles, in case I wanted to share it later with my mostly anglophone friends, but was unable to.  So, I started watching the documentary again, from the beginning, with my eyes focused on reading French, and my ears honed in on the actual words of the Ukrainian President (I know a little bit of Russian, which has come in handy several times while watching documentaries on Ukraine).  Well, less than a minute in, the documentary abruptly stopped and the following warning appeared:  “the following content has been identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate or offensive to some audiences.”  I tried every trick I could think of, but I was unable to continue watching the documentary.  

By the way, if any of you are wondering about Ritter, he was permanently banned from Twitter a couple of weeks ago.  [War Watch Wednesdays will soon include a list of]

Peace,   George 

From the editor:
 Former OMNI US-NATO-Ukraine-Russia Anthologies citing Scott Ritter:
Anthology #2: SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons.
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/12/war-watch-wednesdays-www.html
Anthology #11:  Ritter: The Case for Neutrality to Defuse Crisis With Russia. https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/02/omni-russia-newsletter-11-february-24.html 
#13: Harms of US Russophobia   https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/03/omni-russiaukraine-newsletter-13-march.html
#18: Scott Ritter.  “Pity the Nation.”
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/04/omni-us-russia-ukraine-war-anthology-18.html
Also
Ritter, Scott. Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change.
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-democracy-roman-or-british-empire.html
OMNI Constitution Day
SCOTT RITTER’S WAGING PEACE: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement. 
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2008/09/omnis-constitution-day.html

 Glenn Greenwald. “The Censorship Campaign against Western Criticism of NATO’s Ukraine Policy Is Extreme.”  An article by Glenn Greenwald in Scheerpost.

If one wishes to be exposed to news, information or perspective that contravenes the prevailing US/NATO view on the war in Ukraine, a rigorous search is required. And there is no guarantee that search will succeed. That is because the state/corporate censorship regime that has been imposed in the West with regard to this war is stunningly aggressive, rapid and comprehensive.

On a virtually daily basis, any off-key news agency, independent platform or individual citizen is liable to be banished from the internet. In early March, barely a week after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the twenty-seven nation European Union — citing “disinformation” and “public order and security” — officially banned  the Russian state-news outlets RT and Sputnik from being heard anywhere in Europe. In what Reuters called “an unprecedented move,” all television and online platforms were barred by force of law from airing content from those two outlets. Even prior to that censorship order from the state, Facebook and Google were already banning those outlets, and Twitter immediately announced they would as well, in compliance with the new EU law.

But what was “unprecedented” just six weeks ago has now become commonplace, even normalized. Any platform devoted to offering inconvenient-to-NATO news or alternative perspectives is guaranteed a very short lifespan. Less than two weeks after the EU’s decree, Google announced  that it was voluntarily banning all Russian-affiliated media worldwide, meaning Americans and all other non-Europeans were now blocked from viewing those channels on YouTube if they wished to. As so often happens with Big Tech censorship, much of the pressure on Google to more aggressively censor content about the war in Ukraine came from its own workforce: “Workers across Google had been urging YouTube to take additional punitive measures against Russian channels.”

So prolific and fast-moving is this censorship regime that it is virtually impossible to count how many platforms, agencies and individuals have been banished for the crime of expressing views deemed “pro-Russian.” On Tuesday, Twitter, with no explanation as usual, suddenly banned one of the most informative, reliable and careful dissident accounts, named “Russians With Attitude.” Created in late 2020 by two English-speaking Russians, the account exploded in popularity  since the start of the war, from roughly 20,000 followers before the invasion to more than 125,000 followers at the time Twitter banned it. An accompanying podcast with the same name also exploded in popularity and, at least as of now, can still be heard on Patreon.

What makes this outburst of Western censorship so notable — and what is at least partially driving it — is that there is a clear, demonstrable hunger in the West for news and information that is banished by Western news sources, ones which loyally and unquestioningly mimic claims from the U.S. government, NATO, and Ukrainian officials. As The Washington Post acknowledged  when reporting Big Tech’s “unprecedented” banning of RT, Sputnik and other Russian sources of news: “In the first four days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, viewership of more than a dozen Russian state-backed propaganda channels on YouTube spiked to unusually high levels.”

Note that this censorship regime is completely one-sided and, as usual, entirely aligned with U.S. foreign policy. Western news outlets and social media platforms have been flooded with pro-Ukrainian propaganda and outright lies  from the start of the war. A New York Times article from early March  put it very delicately in its headline: “Fact and Mythmaking Blend in Ukraine’s Information War.” Axios was similarly understated in recognizing this fact: “Ukraine misinformation is spreading — and not just from Russia.” Members of the U.S. Congress  have gleefully spread  fabrications that went viral to millions of people, with no action from censorship-happy Silicon Valley corporations. That is not a surprise: all participants in war use disinformation and propaganda to manipulate public opinion in their favor, and that certainly includes all direct and proxy-war belligerents in the war in Ukraine.

Yet there is little to no censorship — either by Western states or by Silicon Valley monopolies — of pro-Ukrainian disinformation, propaganda and lies. The censorship goes only in one direction: to silence any voices deemed “pro-Russian,” regardless of whether they spread disinformation.   MORE   https://cpnn-world.org/new/?p=27096

Evan Reif.  “Nazis and The Beast: The Arrest of Gonzalo Lira.”  CovertAction Magazine (May 1, 2022).

Are American journalists collaborating with Nazi terrorists to silence dissent?
There is another war going on in Ukraine. A war of repression is being waged on journalists, political dissidents and anyone who dares to speak against the Kyiv regime.  It has been going on uninterrupted since the Maidan coup of 2014. It is not being fought on the battlefield, but rather in the press, online and in the diabolic black sites of the Ukrainian secret police. 
The list of those who have been detained, repressed or even killed has grown as this crisis wears on. To name a few […]

The post Nazis and The Beast: The Arrest of Gonzalo Lira appeared first on CovertAction Magazine.     Read in browser »

Jeremy Kuzmarov.   “ Ukraine Hunts Down ’Traitors Helping Russia.’”  CovertAction Magazine (May 01, 2022).

State terror operations that follow from CIA playbook contradict saintly image of Zelensky promoted in the U.S. media.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s saintly image in the media is contradicted by state terror operations being conducted under his orders against political dissidents and Ukrainian civilians accused of collaboration with Russia.

The Associated Press reported last week that nearly 400 people in the northeastern city of Kharkiv alone have been detained under anti-collaboration laws enacted by Ukraine’s parliament and signed by Zelensky after Russia’s February 24 invasion.

A YouTube video accompanying the short article juxtaposed a speech by Zelensky saying that “collaborators will be brought to justice” with the arrest of a middle-aged Kharkiv man named Viktor by the Ukrainian Security Services (SBU) because of a social media post praising Vladimir Putin, calling for secession and insulting the Ukrainian flag—which Viktor called a “symbol of death.”  The SBU agent showed Viktor his social media post and asked: “You supported Putin? Are you supporting the Russian army. You are not speaking very nicely about the Ukrainian flag, are you?”  Viktor responded, before being taken away: “I am sorry. Yes I commented a lot. I told you. I changed my mind.” […]

The post Ukraine Hunts Down “Traitors Helping Russia” appeared first on CovertAction Magazine.    Read in browser »

The next 3 items were forwarded by Abel.

Chris Hedges.   “American Commissars.”  April 18, 2022.   Original to ScheerPost

Social media platforms are aggressively censoring all who challenge the dominant narrative on Ukraine, the ruling Democratic Party, the wars in the Middle East and the corporate state

“Enough Said.” [Original illustration by Mr. Fish]

The ruling class, made up of the traditional elites that run the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, is employing draconian forms of censorship on its right-wing and left-wing critics in a desperate effort to cling to power. The traditional elites were discredited for pushing through a series of corporate assaults on workers, from deindustrialization to trade deals. They were unable to stem rising inflation, the looming economic crisis and the ecological emergency. They were incapable of carrying out significant social and political reform to ameliorate widespread suffering and refused to accept responsibility for two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East. And now they have launched a new and sophisticated McCarthyism. Character assassination. Algorithms. Shadow banning. De-platforming.

Censorship is the last resort of desperate and unpopular regimes. It magically appears to make a crisis go away. It comforts the powerful with the narrative they want to hear, one fed back to them by courtiers in the media, government agencies, think tanks and academia. The problem of Donald Trump is solved by censoring Donald Trump. The problem of left-wing critics, such as myself, is solved by censoring us. The result is a world of make-believe.

YouTube disappeared six years of my RT show, “On Contact,” although not one episode dealt with Russia. It is not a secret as to why my show vanished. It gave a voice to writers and dissidents, including Noam Chomsky and Cornel West, as well as activists from Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter, third parties and the prison abolitionist movement. It called out the Democratic Party for its subservience to corporate power. It excoriated the crimes of the apartheid state of Israel. It covered Julian Assange in numerous episodes. It gave a voice to military critics, many of them combat veterans, who condemned US war crimes.

It no longer matters how prominent you are or how big a following you have. If you challenge power, you are at risk of being censored. Former British MP George Galloway detailed a similar experience during an April 15 panel organized by Consortium News in which I took part:

I have been threatened with travel restrictions were I to continue the television broadcast I had been doing for almost an entire decade. I have been stamped by the false label ‘Russian State Media,’ which I never had, by the way, when I was presenting a show on Russian state media. It was only given after I ceased to have a show on Russian state media, ceased because the government made it a crime for me to do so.

My 417,000 Twitter followers had been gaining a thousand a day, going like a runaway train, then suddenly it hit the buffers when the Elon Musk story emerged. I expressed the view that oligarch that he no doubt is, I prefer Elon Musk to the kings of Saudi Arabia, who it turns out are presently major shareholders in the Twitter company. As soon as I joined that fight, my numbers literally crashed to a halt, with shadow bans and all the rest of it…

All of this is happening before the consequences of the economic crash brought about by western policy and our misnamed leaders has really hit yet. When economies begin to not just slow down, not just hiccup, not just experience levels of inflation not seen for years, or decades, but becomes a crash, as well it might, there will be even more for the state to suppress, especially any alternative analysis as to how we got here and what we must do to get out of it.

Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq and Marine Corp intelligence officer, called out the lie about weapons of mass destruction prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Recently, he was banned from Twitter for offering a counter narrative about dozens of killings in the Kyiv western suburb of Bucha. Many of the victims in Bucha were found with gunshot wounds to the head and with their hands tied behind their back. International observers and eyewitnesses have blamed Russia for the killings. Ritter’s alternative analysis, right or wrong, saw him silenced.

Ritter lamented the Twitter ban at the forum: 

It took me three years to get 4,000 followers on Twitter. I thought that was a big deal. Then this Ukraine thing comes up. It exploded. When I got suspended for the first time for questioning the narrative in Bucha my account had just gotten over 14,000. By the time my suspension was lifted I was up to 60,000. By the time they suspended me again I was close to 100,000. It was out of control, which is why I am convinced the algorithm said: You must delete. You must delete. And they did. The excuse they gave was absurd. I was abusive and I was harassing by telling what I thought was the truth. 

I don’t have the same insight in the Ukraine I had in Iraq. Iraq, I was on the ground doing the job. But the techniques of observation and evaluation that you are trained as an intelligence officer to apply to any given set apply to Ukraine today. Simply looking at the available data set, you cannot help but draw the conclusion that it was Ukrainian national police, mainly because you have all the elements. You have motive. They don’t like Russian collaborators. How do I know? They said so on their website. You have the commander of the national police ordering his people to shoot people in Bucha on the day in question. You have the evidence. The dead bodies on the street with white armbands carrying Russian food packets. Could I be wrong? Absolutely. Could there be data out there I am not aware of? Absolutely. But it is not there. As an intelligence officer I take the available data. I access the available data. I provide assessments based on that available data. And Twitter found that objectionable.

Two pivotal incidents  contributed to this censorship. The first was the publication of classified documents by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. The second was the election of Donald Trump. The ruling class was unprepared. The exposure of their war crimes, corruption, callous indifference to the plight of those they ruled and extreme concentration of wealth shredded their credibility. The election of Trump, which they did not expect, made them afraid they would be supplanted. The Republican Party establishment and the Democratic Party establishment joined forces to demand greater and greater censorship from social media.

Even marginal critics suddenly became dangerous. They had to be silenced. Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate in 2016, lost about half her social media following after mysteriously going offline for 12 hours during the campaign. The discredited Steele dossier, paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, charged Stein, along with Trump, with being a Russian asset. The Senate Intelligence Committee spent three years investigating Stein, issuing five different reports before exonerating her.

Stein spoke of the threat to freedom of speech during the forum: 

We are in an incredibly perilous moment.  It’s not only freedom of the press and freedom of speech, but it is really democracy in all its dimensions that is under threat. There are all these draconian laws now against protest. There are 36 that have been passed that are as bad as a 10-year prison sentence for demonstrating on a sidewalk without a permit. They differ state by state. You need to know the laws in your state if you protest. Drivers have been given license to kill you if you are out in the street in some states as part of a protest.   MORE [numerous discoveries try to find time –D]  https://scheerpost.com/2022/04/18/hedges-american-commissars/

 [Hedges’ conclusion]
There are many similarities to the 1930s, including the power of predatory international banks to consolidate wealth into the hands of a few oligarchs and impose punishing austerity measures on the global working class. “More than anything else, the Nazis were a nationalist protest movement against globalization,” notes Benjamin Carter Hett in The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and The Downfall of the Weimar Republic.

Shutting down critics in a decayed and corrupt society is equivalent to turning off the oxygen on a seriously ill patient. It hastens mortality rather than delaying or preventing it. The convergence of a looming economic crisis, fear by a bankrupt ruling class that they will soon be banished from power, the growing ecological catastrophe and the inability to thwart self-destructive military adventurism against Russia and China, have set the stage for an American implosion.

Those of us who see it coming, and who desperately seek to prevent it, have become the enemy.

Caitlin Johnstone. “PayPal Blocks Multiple Alternative Media Figures Critical Of US Empire Narratives.”   Apr 28, 2022

(Update: Consortium News has also had its access to PayPal cut off)

In what appears to be yet another escalation in Silicon Valley’s redoubled efforts to quash dissident voices since the beginning of the Ukraine war, PayPal has just blocked the accounts of multiple alternative media voices who’ve been speaking critically against official US empire narratives. These include journalist and speaker Caleb Maupin, and Mnar Adley and Alan MacLeod of MintPress News.

Just the other day MintPress published an excellent article by MacLeod titled “An Intellectual No-Fly Zone: Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the New Norm” documenting the many ways skepticism of the US government’s version of events in this war is being suppressed by Silicon Valley megacorporations, including financial censorship via the demonetization of YouTube videos that don’t regurgitate the imperial line on Ukraine.  Today, both MintPress and MacLeod have been banned from using the payment service that many online content creators have come to rely on to help crowdfund their work.

MintPress News @MintPressNews

BREAKING: MintPress News & @AlanRMacLeod has been banned from PayPal for unspecified reasons. Help us fight back against this onslaught of censorship: indiegogo.com/projects/let-s…

Mnar Adley@MnarMuh

URGENT: My PayPal account for @MintPressNews has been banned from PayPal without any reason. This is blatant censorship of dissenting journalists & outlets. Please help us fight back so we can continue to expose the permanent war state. https://t.co/nmp4xlZ0HD https://t.co/5rQnzZQxaj     April 28, 2022.       

MintPress News happens to have published critical journalism about PayPal itself in the past, like the articles it published in 2018 by Whitney Webb documenting the way shady PayPal-linked billionaires Peter Thiel and Pierre Omidyar have advanced the interests of the US empire and facilitated imperial narrative control, or this one from 2016 on how the company blocks Palestinians from opening accounts while showing no such bias against illegal Israeli settlers.

I asked MintPress News Executive Director Mnar Adley for comment on PayPal’s move. Here is her response in full: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/paypal-blocks-multiple-alternative   [ Continued…don’t miss it –D]

Obama Wants Censorship

By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. PopularResistance.org. (5-1-22) . On April 21, 2022 former president Barack Obama gave a speech at Stanford University on the subject of social media. In typical Obamaesque fashion, he didn’t state his point plainly. He used a lot of time, more than an hour, to advocate for social media censorship. He only used that word once, in order to deny that it was in fact what he meant, but the weasel words and obfuscation couldn’t hide what Obama was talking about. In 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, the candidate she thought easiest to beat, Obama first presented his lament about “disinformation” and “fake news.”  -more-

A Similar Silencing of Dissent is Occurring in Russia

 “

Russian Nobel Laureate Muratov Doused With Red Paint By Unknown Attacker.”  CPNN: Culture of Peace News Network.
FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION

An article from Radio Free Europe (Copyright (c)2020 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.)  Dmitry Muratov, the editor in chief of one of Russia’s leading independent newspapers, Novaya gazeta, said he was attacked by an assailant who threw a mixture of red paint and acetone on him.  (Editor’s note: So far Muratov has avoided assassination, but when he received the Nobel Peace Prize last year, he said the prize was for his colleagues at Novaya Gazeta who had been assassinated. Muratov, co-winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize with Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, was on a train bound from Moscow to Samara on April 7 when the attack occurred.  Muratov said the attacker shouted, “Muratov, here’s to you for our boys.”  He told the new European edition of Novaya gazeta about the attack, saying that his eyes were burning badly.  Novaya gazeta, a leading independent Russian newspaper, suspended operations  last month after it said it received warnings from Russian authorities.   April 19, 2022
MORE  https://cpnn-world.org/new/?p=27093

PEACE

Why must we make war?

The frailties of Homo sapiens

Art Hobson, ahobson@uark.edu

NWADG, 26 April 2022

         Since Russia’s immoral and foolish invasion, the world has been all too “interesting.”   This is my sixth (and hopefully last) consecutive column about Ukraine.  I’d rather write about science, global warming, or the frailties of American culture. 

         On the theory that it’s better to recall history rather than condemned to repeat it, let’s review warfare during this century and the last.  An excess of weapons and alliances plus one random assassination generated the Great War of 1914-1918.  Afterward, lingering hostility toward Germany provoked that nation’s re-armament, leading to the second act of what historian Niall Ferguson calls “The War of the World.”  Like WW1, WW2 created a bitter aftermath–a 45-year “Cold War” between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.  A sword of Damocles hung over the planet as each nation amassed some 30,000 nuclear weapons, each far larger than the two nuclear bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  . 

         In 1986 the world nearly banished nuclear weapons.  Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev publicly proposed a plan for abolishing all nuclear weapons by the end of the 20th century and met with U.S. President Ronald Reagan to discuss this.  Reagan agreed that nuclear weapons should be banned, but he foolishly wanted to retain his program to provide an impenetrable shield against nuclear weapons.  Most scientists thought this was a technological fantasy that would only weaken our only real defense against nuclear war, namely deterrence by the threat of mutual annihilation.   This disagreement doomed Gorbachev’s proposal–a historic missed opportunity. 

         By 1989, civil discontent destabilized many nations of the Warsaw Pact (the Soviet-led military alliance of East European states), leading to the Soviet Union’s breakup in 1991.  The Button,a history of nuclear weapons diplomacy, co-authored by former U.S. Secretary of Defense (under President Bill Clinton) William Perry, is my source for an inside look at what happened next.

         The end of the Cold War brought a rare opportunity to transform U.S.-Russia relationships.  NATO, established in 1949 to keep the Soviets out of Western Europe, sought a new partnership with Russia.  Newly independent Eastern European nations sought NATO membership but NATO, realizing that this could destroy the opportunity to cooperate with Moscow, wisely ignored this.  In 1990, President George H. W. Bush’s administration assured Russia that NATO would expand “not one inch eastward.”  Russian President Gorbachev only accepted reunification of East and West Germany because of assurances from western leaders that NATO would not expand after he withdrew Russian forces from Eastern Europe. 

         U.S.-Russia cooperation was remarkable during this difficult period.  America did not go so far as to offer NATO membership to Russia, but Russia did agree to join a new NATO auxiliary called Partnership For Peace, which former Warsaw Pact states were also invited to join. 

         Russia cooperated remarkably in joint PFP military exercises in the United States and Ukraine, and hosted exercises that included troops from the USA, other NATO nations, and Ukraine.  This training turned out to be valuable when NATO deployed troops in Bosnia in 1995.  Russia sent its best paratrooper brigade to join that effort, which was led by an American General.  Yet Russia still saw NATO as a threat. 

         In 1996, the Clinton Administration decided, despite Russian misgivings, to expand NATO by offering membership to Hungary, Czech Republic, and Poland.  In an open letter to Clinton, more than 40 experienced foreign policy experts expressed concern about NATO expansion, especially since there was no Russian threat at that time.  The U.S. architect of the Cold War, George Kennan, stated, “I think [NATO expansion] is the beginning of a new Cold War.  …The Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies.  …It is a tragic mistake.” 

         After that, NATO was standoffish toward Russia and expanded right up to Russia’s border.  NATO acted as if Moscow’s concerns did not matter. 

         Today, Ukraine is paying the price for these mistakes while the West continues acting as if Moscow’s concerns do not matter.  Prior to President Putin’s invasion, Secretary of State Blinken said the U.S. is leaving “no stone unturned” in the search for a peaceful resolution.  Yet Blinken has always rejected as a “non-starter” the only stone that interests Putin:  neutral status for Ukraine. 

         And so it goes.  As World War I poet Wilfred Owen put it, both sides repeat “the old Lie:  Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”   The Latin phrase is from the Roman poet Horace:  “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”
  

Art Hobson is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Arkansas.  He worked at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and co-authored “The Future of Land-Based Strategic Missiles” (Am. Inst. of Physics, 1989).  Email him at ahobson@uark.edu.   

References:

• Reykjavik meeting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Gorbachev#German_reunification_and_the_Gulf_War

• End of cold war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact#End_of_the_Cold_War

• The material from “The Button” about the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union can be found Chapter 9, the Section titled “Fumbling the end of the Cold War.”

Here is a passage from the Statement: 
 “We condemn military actions on both sides, the hostilities which harm civilians. We insist that all shootings should be stopped, all sides should honor the memory of killed people and, after due grief, calmly and honestly commit to peace talks.  We condemn statements on the Russian side about the intention to achieve certain goals by military means if they cannot be achieved through negotiations.    We condemn statements on the Ukrainian side that the continuation of peace talks depends on winning the best-negotiating positions on the battlefield.   We condemn the unwillingness of both sides to a ceasefire during the peace talks.”

 MEDEA BENJAMIN, NICOLAS J.S. DAVIES.  “This Is How the United States Could Help Bring Peace to Ukraine.”  Common Dreams (April 28, 2022).  [This essay was forwarded to me by Art Hobson, who endorses its concrete, realistic plan to end the war.  It’s long and every step in the argument is important, so I have included only its Conclusion, but I urgently urge all to read the entire essay and to communicate its recommendations to our congressional representatives:  https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/04/28/how-united-
states-could-help-bring-peace-ukraine ]

Conclusion 
How the United States and its NATO allies act now and in the coming months will be crucial in determining whether Ukraine is destroyed by years of war, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen—or whether this war ends quickly through a diplomatic process that brings peace, security, and stability to the people of Russia, Ukraine, and their neighbors.

If the United States wants to help restore peace in Ukraine, it must diplomatically support peace negotiations and make it clear to its ally, Ukraine, that it will support any concessions that Ukrainian negotiators believe are necessary to clinch a peace agreement with Russia.

Whatever mediator Russia and Ukraine agree to work with to try to resolve this crisis, the United States must give the diplomatic process its full, unreserved support, both in public and behind closed doors. It must also ensure that its own actions do not undermine the peace process in Ukraine as they did the 2012 Annan plan in Syria.

One of the most critical steps that U.S. and NATO leaders can take to provide an incentive for Russia to agree to a negotiated peace is to commit to lifting their sanctions if and when Russia complies with a withdrawal agreement. Without such a commitment, the sanctions will quickly lose any moral or practical value as leverage over Russia and will be only an arbitrary form of collective punishment against its people, and against poor people everywhere who can no longer afford food to feed their families. As the de facto leader of the NATO military alliance, the U.S. position on this question will be crucial.

So policy decisions by the United States will have a critical impact on whether there will soon be peace in Ukraine, or only a much longer and bloodier war. The test for U.S. policymakers, and for Americans who care about the people of Ukraine, must be to ask which of these outcomes U.S. policy choices are likely to lead to.

MEDEA BENJAMIN Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace, is the author of the 2018 book, “Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Her previous books include: “Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection” (2016); “Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control” (2013); “Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart” (1989), and (with Jodie Evans) “Stop the Next War Now (Inner Ocean Action Guide)” (2005). 

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

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/04/28/how-united-states-could-help-bring-peace-ukraine

Related:  The claim that this is a free country must be accompanied by considerable qualification:

James R. Bennett.  Control of Information in the United States: An Annotated Bibliography.  1987.  (2943 entries). 

James R. Bennett.  Control of the Media in the United States: An Annotated Bibliography.  1992.  (4749 entries).

CONTENTS OF US, NATO, RUSSIA, UKRAINE war ANTHOLOGY #19 4-29-2022

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/04/omni-us-nato-russia-ukraine-war.html

ORIGINS, CAUSES OF THE WAR

Should NATO Exist?  Klion Yes. Madar No.
Hawes, “History Returns Again,” Historical Background of the War
Guy Mettan, “Zelenskymania,” Inevitable and Improvised,
   Winners and Losers, Switzerland Ruined, CyberWar, “Stratcom”
Alastair Crooke, “War It Is—and Escalation Is Coming”
John Ross, “What Is Propelling the U.S. into Increasing
      International Aggression?”

Ivan Eland, “’Unprovoked Attacks’ from 1812 to 9-11.”
Richard Falk.  “Why Ukraine?”

Ukrainian Nazis

   Evan Reif, “NED Finances Key Ukrainian Propaganda….” and a
    Journalist
    “Russian Abhorrence of Nazi Influence in Ukraine”

US Biological Warfare Labs in Ukraine?
    Bhadrahumar, “Migratory Birds of Mass Destruction”
    Whitney, “…Possible U.S. Preparations for Biological Warfare”
Bruce Gagnon, Interview on U.S. Goal of Russian Regime Change

CONSEQUENCES OF THE WAR

Civilian Deaths

Tomgram/TomDispatch, “Nick Turse, Bodies Beyond Bucha”
    Nick Turse, “The Civilian Deaths You Haven’t Heard About”

Arms Proliferation

Branko Marcetic, “The U.S. Has No Idea Where Its Ukrainian
     Military Aid is Going”

Censorship (see #20)

Washington Post Calls for Censoring Chinese Media, Praises
     Purge of Russian Outlets

Media Bias (see #20)

   Jeff Cohen, Corporate Media and Official Enemies

   Caitlin Johnstone, Corporate Media Control of Public’s
      Perception

New Cold War, WWIII

Michael Klare, A more dangerous world

Guterres, UN Wire

     Displaced People, Refugees Increasing

PEACE

WWIII?  West’s War on Russia

Abby Martin, FCNL, “Questions for the US Anti-War Movement”

Rafaela Demerath, Congress Must Invest in Peacemaking

Tomgram, Tom Dispatch, “Andrew Bacevich, American Militarism
   A Persistent Malady.”
   Bacevich, “Putin Changed the Subject, But Confronting MLKJr’s 
    ‘Giant Triplets’ Is More Urgent.”  What would Martin Say?

Vijay Prashad, “We Want a World Without Walls”

Chris de Ploeg, “Weapons Are Not Helping”

Jeffrey Knopf, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Abolish Nuclear
     Weapons

BAS on Nuclear Arms Control

War Abolition 101

Contents #18

END US, NATO, RUSSIA, UKRAINE war ANTHOLOGY  #20
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