Greenwashing The War In Ukraine

Now in its second year, the war in Ukraine has already produced two ecological disasters: the largest methane release in history from the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, and an enormous flood of agricultural lands from the breach in the Nova Kakhova dam on the Dnieper River.

Both have been blamed on Russia, but thinking people aren't buying it. In both cases, Russia could have simply shut off the flow of gas or opened the floodgates without bombing anything. 

Enter luminaries of the climate movement to defend the empire's run up to WW3.

Greta Thunberg: 

This ecocide as a continuation of Russia's unprovoked[emphasis mine] full-scale invasion of Ukraine is yet another atrocity which leaves the world lost for words. 

Bill McKibben:

It’s amazing to watch people across the planet rallying to the defense of brave Ukraine—choirs singing outside Russian embassies, soccer teams refusing to play Russian teams. And it’s wonderful to watch governments rise to the occasion: shutting off airspace to Russian airplanes, or kicking them off international banking protocols.

Annalena Baerbock, German Green and German Foreign Minister:

Howie Hawkins, U.S. Green and 2020 candidate for president:

What's going on?

It's not like these folks don't know the outsize role that militarism plays in driving climate crisis.

The notion that fighting wars for access to fossil fuels requires a lot of fossil fuels has been both well-documented and, in recent years, widely shared. So how is it that Greens and other environmental advocates are suddenly cheerleaders for NATO's war on Russia?

It's not sudden, in fact. The leading national organizations focused on climate crisis in the U.S. have long since been infiltrated and hollowed out by the Democratic Party, and disinclined to criticize woke militarism. One of the DNC's many false dichotomies is Republicans bad for environment, Democrats good. This flies in the face of facts on the ground, both in the Biden administration and the Obama administration.

But the DNC strategy is really very clever: find movements with traction and then slowly control them from within while leaving their facades in place.

This is why environmental groups like the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, 35o.org et al. have consistently failed to oppose soaring Pentagon budgets, hundreds of military bases around the globe, air shows that burn highly polluting jet fuel for entertainment, and increasingly common rocket launches that damage shoreline breeding grounds.

Here in Maine a coalition effort to block construction of a rocket launch site just offshore from Acadia National Park drew zero support from any of the state branches of the organizations named above. The "orange man bad" hysteria promoted the false dichotomy belief that anything Democrats was, by contrast, good. But Dems serve the same corporations that Republicans do, and their immense failures to steward our crumbling ecosystem are right there for those with eyes to see them.

It's not strictly an environmental organization, but the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has also thrown down on the NATO side of the war in Ukraine.

My reply:

I do not "like" your tweet bashing Russia. Your pro-NATO stance is hurting your credibility with me. According your own account of who's spending on nukes, the U.S. is way out in front at $43.7 billion or $83,143 per minute (an interesting metric).

With its NATO allies UK & France, $56.1 billion vs. Russia's $9.6 billion. Which of these countries have used nuclear weapons? Depleted uranium? ICAN's mission of a nuclear ban has not & will not be realized if you continue to support U.S./NATO imperialism.

Hastening the likelihood of nuclear weapons use by provoking war with Russia -- and, incidentally, China -- is a crime against life on our planet. And there's nothing green about it.

Hardy Band Says No To NATO's War On Russia

 A hardy band of boomers stood out in snowy Portland, Maine, USA on Sunday at a vigil for peace that recognized the U.S./NATO war against Ukraine is really a war on Russia. 

 

 

Publicity for the event made it clear that would be our focus, and requested no flags. If only 10 people in the "peace community" of Maine could stand with us on this basis, so be it.

 

As Martin Luther King Jr. Day approaches, I'm reminded of this wisdom he shared before the U.S. government assassinated him:

Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks: is it politic? Vanity asks: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, politic nor popular - but simply because it is right.

This where the few of us not confused by government propaganda find ourselves these days. I wrote about it here as a guest post for my friend Pat Taub's blog:

Fear Of Not Conforming

by Lisa Savage 

 

As a blogger I enjoy hearing from readers even when they disagree with me. It’s an indication of reader engagement if someone takes the time to offer a critique.

So, I was glad to hear from an old friend in response to a recent blog post of mine. “Tale of Two Broken Accords: Oslo And Minsk,”  written during the recent COP27 climate conference. It was my reflection on how international agreements are often achieved with great effort and announced with great fanfare only to be cast aside.

My friend wrote:

“Lisa: Am I misunderstanding something, or have you become an apologist for Vladimir Putin?”

I have old friends from many walks of life but relatively few who stand beside me in objecting to U.S. wars. This friend, however, was part of the original In Spite of Life Players putting on satirical political plays each 4th of July here in Athens, Maine. These plays routinely lampooned propaganda and U.S. imperial ambitions.

The author appearing as “Senator Susan Snow” in a past 4th of July play

 

I wrote back:

“If you’d been reading my blog you’d know that I reject the “Putin bad” analysis of the RAND-inspired war on Russia by NATO, with the endgame taking out China’s powerful ally. If that were to be accomplished (i.e., regime change and break up of Russia), Taiwan is sure to become the next Ukraine.

At least in Taiwan the U.S. will not have to arm and otherwise support neo-Nazis. Maybe old Japanese Empire collaborators instead?  It’s disappointing that you seem to be ill-informed about what’s going on. May I ask what sources of information you rely on to understand global politics? It’s a sincere question.”

This is a person with a huge collection of books about history and politics and I was reminded about that. But books necessarily lag behind other media in interpreting current events, and I was more interested in what news outlets they were relying on to form opinions.

The New York Times, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Harpers, The Atlantic, and television news were on their list, all of which my friend described as “Mainstream/Lamestream Media.”

But then came the real kicker.

“I’d like to think that I would have the intellectual humility/integrity to reconsider my positions if I found myself espousing the views of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Mike Flynn, and Kevin McCarthy.”

My friend was afraid of being associated with right wing influencers and was warning me of the danger of sounding like I agreed with them!

I’ve never watched any of those shows and I said so. Instead, I offered a list of some of the sources I consider trustworthy on geopolitics in our day: Consortium News, Responsible Statecraft, The Cradle, and some individual journalists like Eva K. Bartlett, John Pilger, and Alan Macleod.

Will my friend expand their reading following our dialogue? I like to think so but who knows. (Something I’ve found interesting about liberals’ strong disagreement with me over Ukraine is that, when I was running for the U.S. Senate in 2020, they loved my foreign policy analysis in debates.)

The author, Maine’s Green Party candidate for the US Senate, during the 2020 debates 

There is strong pressure to conform to the group one identifies with – in this case, critics of the media outlets who promoted the rise of 45. So-called legacy media relentlessly associated 45 with Russian President Putin for years, and the transition from hating 45 to hating Putin was a short trip for many. It has blinded them to the facts on the ground in Ukraine.

How did the rebels of the boomer generation become so conformist? Maybe a joke will help:

Two passengers are flying to New York. The American turns to the Russian and asks, “Why are you coming to America?”

“To study U.S. propaganda.”

“What propaganda?”

“Exactly.”

##

Pat shared a comment she received on my guest post:

This was not worth offering a window into her thinking nor a contribution to any debate that defends one country attacking another with out provocation and murdering thousands. Her comments are drivel. This action by Putin is not up for debate. I and many of my friends have been donating to Ukraine so they may survive. I can't believe a thinking person has another point of view.

My response:

If you can't believe a thinking person has another point of view from yours, maybe you aren't as much of a thinking person as you think you are.

We've all be wrong lots of times; the question is, are we willing to examine our beliefs and sometimes change them in light of new evidence?

Now that we know for certain that the CIA, FBI, and other taxpayer-funded agencies spend much of their staff time managing narratives on social media platforms from behind the scenes, where can we get useful new evidence?

From new-to-us, more reliable sources than corporate sources that parrot U.S. press releases. 

Pro-tip: if your news source uses the word "unprovoked" about Russia intervening after years of Ukraine killing thousands of Russian-speakers in the Donbas border region, you're definitely reading U.S. government propaganda. (Ditto China's alleged "threat" to world peace -- but that's a post for another day.)

 If you see someone with a sign like this, maybe ask them what they're currently reading.

Provocations In The East, False Flags In The West

A roundup of war news, spreading rapidly as the U.S. empire thrashes about in its death throes. History suggests that 800+ military bases around the planet might look like they offer a solution to losing the consent of the governed: the president currently has 31% approval (Quinnipiac) and 75% of registered voters in his own party don't want him to run again in 2024 (CNN).

House Speaker Pelosi in Taiwan

Despite being warned that her visit to Taiwan violates previous U.S. agreements to respect China's sovereignty, she persists.

Meanwhile on the streets of Taipei pic.twitter.com/j2eTCqOETK

— Meiguolao Watcher ☭ (@Dragondescendan) August 2, 2022

In a likely too little, too late move, the Biden administration announces a feeble competitor for infrastructure projects where China's Belt and Road Initiative is already well underway in Africa.

Drone bombing Afghanistan 

Despite "withdrawing" from Afghanistan and stealing their funds abroad to prevent the Taliban government from feeding the hungry, plus funding Al Qaeda in Syria for years as "moderate rebels", the U.S. announced it had assassinated a top Al Qaeda leader in Kabul. 

"Justice has been delivered," claimed the U.S. president despite the fact that extrajudicial murder is about as far from justice as you can get. The president claimed that assassinating Ayman al-Zawahiri is a sign of America's resolve. (To do the bidding of Israel's government, I think he forgot to add.)

U.S. troops in Yemen

The long humanitarian disaster of Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen has only been possible with logistical support from its U.S. ally. Now the president of the U.S. has confimed to Congress -- you know, the legislative branch of government that used to have the sole authority to wage war -- that the U.S. has troops in Yemen as well. (Proxy war with Iran in Yemen is an element of the U.S. close alliance with colonial occupier Israel in Palestine, and despite Biden campaigning on a promise to end U.S. support for the Saudi's war there.)

Neither Twitter nor Facebook would permit me to share a link to this article.

Spreading the false flag news that Russian, not Ukrainian, forces bombed a Russian POW camp filled with captured fighters of the Azov battalion. Why would Ukraine do that? Because dead men tell no tales of forced conscription and botched operations.

Source: SanctionsKill.org

Sanctions on Venezuela and numerous other non-compliant nations. The U.S. president recently called the regions south of the U.S. border "America's front yard" perhaps indicating we are no longer a bad neighbor but now think we own the continent.

Ben Norton, "The End of U.S. Hegemony and the Rise of BRICS", Mintpress News:

In the past two decades, the U.S. grip on global power has been slipping, and new nations and organizations have begun to emerge that challenge American dominance. One of these is the BRICS, an economic and increasingly political bloc of emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Argentina, Iran and others have expressed an interest in joining this alliance, which has now laid out plans for its own bank and international currency, two moves strike at the heart of American economic hegemony.

“Now that the U.S. has sanctioned one-quarter of the global population, and especially now with the economic war on Russia, BRICS has emerged as this new economic infrastructure bringing countries together that want to get around Western sanctions,”

 

War at home: Russiaphobia used as pretext for violent attacks on Black organization, the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP).

From August 1, 2022 Black Alliance for Peace press release:

On Friday, July 29, 2022, the FBI executed multiple raids against APSP’s Uhuru House in St. Petersburg, Florida and their Uhuru Solidarity Center in St. Louis, Missouri and the private residence of APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela also in St. Louis. The FBI employed flashbang grenades and handcuffed Yeshitela and his wife while their house was raided.  

The FBI claims that the raids are connected to the federal indictment of a Russian national, Aleksandr Ionov, alleging that he has been working to spread "Russian propaganda" in the United States.

Source: Trzmiel/Shutterstock

 

Nuclear war looming?

From In-Depth News "Caring About Nuclear Sharing: A Setback for Nuclear Arms Control": 

It is estimated that between 100 and 150 American B61 nuclear weapons are stationed in five countries: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. NATO has now announced its desire to modernise its nuclear deterrence..

NATO officials were enthusiastic about the widely shared willingness to modernise the nuclear sharing concept. Jessica Cox, Chief of NATO’s nuclear policy directorate said: “We’re moving fast and furiously towards F-35 modernization and incorporating those into our planning and exercising…” And she added that “the aircraft’s advanced features also will boost the capabilities of alliance members and F-35 customers like Poland, Denmark or Norway who might be tasked with supporting actual nuclear sharing missions.”

Cox is the bland bureaucratic face of discussions preparing for total annihilation. But don't let her tone fool you. 

Educate yourself, and speak out against the WW3 madness.

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What About Putin?

Recently I noted that an interesting aspect of opposing war with Russia in Europe as compared with opposing U.S.-supported wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, or Yemen is hearing from numerous liberal Democrats that are extremely in favor of this war and irate that I am not.

Yesterday I came under attack by two liberal Democrat-types (both of whom happen to be older female academics) because I am insufficiently moved by warmongering propaganda offered up on NPR, CNN, MSNBC, and other corporate media.

This is a common theme of my days.

In the false binary where if Republicans are bad then Democrats must be good because there are always only two choices, if I'm against NATO I must therefore be in favor of Putin. As the avatar of Catherine the Great's imperial ambitions in one case (what the what?) when I was castigated for sharing a Facebook memory of a talk about Crimea three years ago organized by friends of mine.

I shared this memory with the comment: "Bruce has been paying attention to NATO encroachment on Ukraine for a while now."

Here's the pushback:

For weeks I've been hounded with gotcha questions from a certain Twitter account. "What are your views on WWII?" was one of her more absurd questions. Was I supposed to answer in tweets? 

I suggested that this person could read this blog and search for terms like "WWII" to read my essays on the subject. But I don't think she is actually interested in doing that.

Yesterday's gotcha question:

Since I've been on the receiving end of these gotcha questions for weeks, I'm clear that the subtext is that I appear to be favoring the kind of appeasement that scholars of WWII think led to Hitler's Germany expanding its territory without much opposition.

I'm not going to concede that Putin is the reincarnation of Hitler no matter how many gotcha questions I am asked.

When I was a young history major the essential question in this field was, How did the German people let the Nazis take over their country?

As I've noted in this blog many times, since the unfortunate events of 9/11 it is horrifyingly clear how that happened -- because we're living through it. Information control is an essential part of the military takeover of a society, well along in the case of the U.S. in 2022.

The U.S. imperial project has hundreds (some say 800, depending on how you define "military base") of military installations in other countries. It has invaded and occupied numerous countries, and coup'd or regime changed a long list of others. Its leading space entrepreneur, a man who is deeply embedded in U.S. programs to militarize space, has tweeted "We'll coup anyone we want" in reference to toppling democratically elected governments to gain access to their mineral reserves.

"NATO expansion in Europe"  Source: Counterfire.org

Or just take a look at NATO and how it has been used to expand U.S. imperial ambitions steadily since its inception.

There are some salient facts about the current crisis that those jumping on the bandwagon to demonize Putin either don't know about or tend to forget.

#1 is expressed well here by Nina Beety, an anti-nuclear activist and academic who is able to see past the corporate media narrative of "Putin Bad" that we are all supposed to adhere to:

The 2015 Minsk-2 agreement required dialogue between Donetsk, Lugansk, and Kiev, which Kiev has refused to do, and all foreign actors were to withdraw personnel and equipment from Ukraine, which the U.S., UK, and Poland have refused to do [emphasis mine]. 

Instead, 150,000 Ukrainian soldiers, U.S., UK, and Polish personnel and increasing amounts of weaponry are massing near the communities of eastern Ukraine, reportedly preparing to attack, in violation of Minsk. 

#2 can be found by perusing George Washington University's National Security Archives website. Their 2017 article on this topic begins:

 U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu). 

The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels. 

The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”...

The key phrase, buttressed by the documents, is “led to believe.” 

#3 is a fact that few know about but which I haven't been able to get out of my head since I heard it shared on an antiwar organizing call last week: after the 2014 coup, the U.S. intended to put a naval base in Crimea. This led to a vote on whether or not the people favored annexation by Russia and, in a landslide, they did.

A local resident rescues a dog from a fire in a house destroyed in the Ukrainian armed forces' air attack on the village of Luganskaya on July 2, 2014 (RIA Novosti/Valeriy Melnikov) © RIA Novosti  source: Russia Today video

#4 is an example of so-called "facts on the ground" which are easily documented but which the corporate press in the U.S. steadfastly refuse to report: Ukraine has been shelling civilians in the Donbass region -- i.e. on their border with Russia -- for years and has killed around 14,000 and injured many others.

But, yeah, Putin bad. All you need to know. Get back to work or playing wordle. 

You'll need to look up when WWIII begins with another land war in Europe. At that point, probably the only salient fact left will be that the Russian Federation has pledged no first use of nukes, while the U.S. has adamantly refused to promise the same security measures to preserve life on the planet.

There's an old Russian saying that in really sophisticated propaganda, even its opposite is not true. 

So if "Putin bad" is not true, maybe "Putin good" is not true either. 

That said, I would appreciate it if my critics would stop imposing their false binary on me.

Mainers Brave Bitter Cold To Join Thousands Across The U.S. Demanding: No War With Russia!

photo credit: Martha Spiess

Yesterday thousands rallied across the U.S. to protest the threat of war with Russia, expansion of NATO, and arming Ukraine at taxpayer expense. 

photo credit: Bob Klotz

Around 30 people stood in Topsham at the big intersection where thousands of people passed by during the hour long protest. Sponsoring organizations Maine Natural Guard, Peaceworks of Greater Brunswick, Peace Action Maine, Maine Veterans for Peace and WILPF-Maine sent representatives. It was also exciting to see members of many other organizations in our state join us including Maine Poor People's Campaign and 350 Maine. 

WMTW Channel 8 and WABI Channel 5 news both ran segments on our protest that included my statement: "I have grandchildren. They don't want nuclear war. My children don't want nuclear war. And all the people you see standing out here don't want nuclear war.

What happened to diplomacy? Let's sit down and talk. Let's talk about our mutual security needs and work something out."

Many of the messages shared yesterday reflected a concern that nuclear war could be a consequence of U.S.-NATO military attacks on Russia. 

Cynthia Howard in Topsham photo credit: Martha Spiess

Although the corporate press have repeated that unnamed sources believe Russia plans to invade Ukraine, no evidence for this claim has been produced.  Ukraine and NATO nations have moved approximately 150,000 troops and nuclear-capable weapons to several borders with Russia, and in response Russia has increased to around 100,000 the troops stationed on its own border with Ukraine. 

Russia has repeatedly said it has no intention of invading Ukraine.

The president of Ukraine has asked the U.S. and NATO to tone down their bellicose rhetoric as it is alarming the people of that nation.

Note that Russia has a long-standing no first use policy on nuclear weapons. The U.S. does not, nor has it signed the United Nations treaty on the ban of nuclear weapons after more than a year in effect.

photo credit: Russell Wray

Elsewhere in Maine yesterday a group including Veterans for Peace members gathered on a bridge in Ellsworth. Russell Wray reported: "We stood for an hour and got quite a bit of positive response, honks, thumbs up, and even clapping." It was bitterly cold throughout, and Rob Shetterly reported that he thought about jumping into the Union River to warm up. We also heard that a group stood in Bucksport.

An online rally at noon brought together representatives of national and international peace groups including the Black Alliance for Peace, United National Antiwar Coalition, the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, World Beyond War, WILPF-U.S and many more. Recording on YouTube & Facebook. 

Bruce Gagnon and I were on from Maine, and Bruce spoke to his experiences visiting Russia and the Crimea and Donbass regions of Ukraine following the 2014 coup that installed a Nazi-aligned government there. Bruce's same day blog post about U.S. mercenary corporation Blackwater joining the Nazi Azov battalion in Donbass may be read here.

Photo source: Organizing Notes

Militias displaying Nazi insignia are common in Ukraine and operate there with the tacit agreement of the government.

I spoke about how U.S. imperialism is in trouble abroad as Russia and China released a joint statement on security, economic development, and public health policy just prior to the opening of the Winter Olympic games in Beijing. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is in trouble at home with extremely low approval ratings. No national plan for public health in a pandemic as U.S. deaths approach 900,000 without universal healthcare and galloping inflation further impoverishing those struggling to feed and house themselves are contributing to loss of faith in the current government's ability to respond to people's needs. 

Promoting a land war in Europe seems to be a desperate strategy to improve the Biden administration's approval ratings as nonstop war coverage by corporate press outlets tends to improve a war president's standing in opinion polls.

Meanwhile, in calls with investors, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin expressed pleasure that the worsening situation in Ukraine is helping their profits.

See reporting by Sarah Lazare here.

Feb 5 demonstrators in New York City, photo courtesy Codepink