Ukraine

Yanis Varoufakis:https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2022/03/05/putins-criminal-invasion-europes-response-americas-role-avvenire-interview-english-version/

“…What mistakes have European countries made to get to this point?

Regarding Ukraine, Europe’s greatest error was to defer to Washington and to NATO. Washington misled successive Ukrainian governments with promises the United States was never going to keep, egging them on toward a confrontation with Moscow that endangered peace in Europe. In an important sense, the United States succeeded in justifying the expansion of NATO with the argument that NATO was the only shield from tensions the United States had helped create. Washington did not care about Ukraine or Europe. And Europe blindly played along, serving Washington’s interests by going along with America’s investment in tensions with Russia. History will condemn EU leaders for falling behind the US agenda and, for this, reason failing to fulfil the EU’s fundamental promise to Europeans: No war on our Continent.

—

What is your opinion of Putin’s decisions?

He will be included in History’s annals in the chapter reserved for brutal leaders who chose an avoidable war (rather than be forced into one). Long before Ukraine, to establish his regime, he had committed abominable war crimes in Chechnya. My greatest fear is that, if Ukrainians continue to resist bravely (which, make no mistake, I want them to!), he will flatten Kiyv with the same brutality that he demolished Grozny, killing tens of thousands of civilians.

The world we live in today: I have to have 2 browsers open all the time, one with a VPN to a Western state to avoid Russian censorship & the other a normal browser from my location in Russia to avoid Western censorship – in order to have access to info from all sides on #Ukraine

— Mark Sleboda (@MarkSleboda1) March 5, 2022

Our friend, Nathan J. Robinson, has a good article on the overall discussion of Ukraine:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/03/can-we-have-an-intelligent-adult-conversation-about-russia

___

His article, along with much of the back and forth in recent days, has me thinking about an obvious missing piece of this puzzle. Of course, we can always keep going back in time and find some new “origin” for these conflicts. We can even go back before these nation-states even existed, obviously. But I think a major starting point being lost here is this:

NATO’s current boundaries are close to the boundaries of Europe prior to WWII. NATO has basically just gone back to the Europe before that war, and prior to the USSR’s imperialist expansion westward at war’s end and its aftermath. Too much of the discussion, IMO, seems to just assume NATO “expansion” happened in countries that somehow formerly belonged to Russia somehow. Um, no. They were conquered by force and absorbed into the Soviet Empire. Yes, there was a pincer movement by both the US and Russia to extend their respective spheres of influence and exploit war’s end to one degree or another. They both tried to carve up Europe and elsewhere to suit their own imperialistic ambitions. But from the European perspective, the Warsaw Pact countries were always a part of Europe, and never a part of Russia.

National boundaries suck. The concept of nation-states is a (deadly) fiction. But if we’re going to deal with them as factual entities, we shouldn’t fall into all too convenient cut-off dates. We should try to find the point in history when these factual entities held their most authentic form for the longest period of time — at least in relative terms.

Don’t ever underestimate an Ukrainian farmer with a tractor! pic.twitter.com/aTJLeOiQZ8

— Channa Prakash (@AgBioWorld) March 8, 2022

Chomsky:

Noam Chomsky on the options that Russia could have pursued over Ukraine and NATO, rather than launching what he calls a "criminal invasion" that was "a very welcome gift to Washington" — and possibly "Washington’s goal all along": https://t.co/L7rRRIobtN pic.twitter.com/WdjBXEAsmh

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) March 10, 2022

https://www.salon.com/2022/03/10/conservatives-duped-by-disinformation-campaign-claim-us-is-holding-bioweapons-in-ukraine/

Conservatives duped by Russia disinformation campaign, claim U.S. is holding bioweapons in Ukraine
Russia appears to be planting false stories about U.S. bioweapons in Ukraine – and conservatives are falling for it
By Jon Skolnik
Published March 10, 2022 5:14PM (EST)

Right-wing personalities are spreading baseless notion that the U.S. is producing bioweapons in Ukraine, a Kremlin-backed conspiracy theory apparently used to justify Russia’s devastating invasion of Ukraine.

The theory, reported by Media Matters, was publicly presented during a Tuesday Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in which Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland whether Ukraine has access to “chemical or biological weapons.”

Nuance responded that Ukraine has “biological research facilities” that the State Department is concerned might fall into Russian hands.

Later, Rubio noted that “Russian propaganda groups” are spreading “information about how they have uncovered a plot by the Ukrainians to unleash biological weapons in the country.”
Advertisement:

To that point, Nuance acknowledged that “it is a classic Russian technique to blame the other guy for what they are planning to do themselves.”

While U.S. intelligence officials have repeatedly denied possessing bioweapons in Ukraine, members of QAnon have spread the theory near and far – and now, it’s getting validation from mainstream conservatives with massive followings.

On Wednesday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested that Nuland, who suggested that Russia might be using disinformation tactics, was in fact the one waging a propaganda campaign against Russia.

“So what you are saying, Victoria Nuland, if, for example, you were funding secret bio-labs in Ukraine but wanted to hide that fact from the people who were paying for it in whose name you are doing it, then you might lie about it by claiming the Russians were lying about it,” Carlson ranted. “In other words, you might mount a disinformation campaign by claiming the other guy was mounting a disinformation campaign. Is that what you are saying, Victoria Nuland?”

Ex-Trump advisor Steve Bannon echoed a similarly meandering line of thinking that same day, instructing Florida residents to ask Rubio whether the CIA and Defense Department gave him specific questions to stick to in the hearing.

“What are they creating?” Bannon asked of the agencies. “Are we involved in any way? Have we financed it? Are we partners? Do we actually know what’s going on?”

Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn was even more to the point, declaring that the U.S. had somehow admitted to developing bioweapons in Ukraine.

“I was told that biolabs in Ukraine was a conspiracy theory yet here we are,” Flynn wrote over Telegram. “They are now admitting it openly.”

While it is true that the U.S. has biolabs in Ukraine, there is no evidence that the U.S. is building bioweapons with them. In fact, the U.S. operation of these labs stems from a 2005 agreement between Ukraine and the U.S. to secure old Soviet-era weapons that were left behind in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s disintegration, CNN noted.

“The US Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program works with the Ukrainian government to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern in Ukrainian government facilities, while allowing for peaceful research and vaccine development,” the U.S. embassy explained back in 2020.
Advertisement:

According to CNN, the theory that the U.S. is holding bioweapons in Ukraine typically flares up during times in which Russia is under intense international scrutiny. Kremlin agents have been known to plant pro-Russia stories in fringe media outlets, which results in conspiracy theories percolating to more mainstream personalities with larger audiences

Jon Skolnik

Jon Skolnik is a staff writer at Salon. His work has appeared in Current Affairs, The Baffler, and The New York Daily News.
MORE FROM Jon Skolnik • FOLLOW jonsskolnik

Thread to remind us of the ramifications of nuclear war…

With each new Russian atrocity in Ukraine, calls for NATO intervention increase. Are we sleepwalking towards nuclear war? The appetite for risk is increasing with the horror of civilian casualties. Putin is cornered and may escalate. What's the worst that can happen? Thread: 1/12

— Mark Lynas (@mark_lynas) March 11, 2022

…

Here's the full article published by @ScienceAlly with all the above facts together with important context and sources from the peer-reviewed literature. Please do read and share – the word count is only 1,500. 12/12. ENDhttps://t.co/6wvexZBC9G

— Mark Lynas (@mark_lynas) March 11, 2022

wv wrote:

I’m waiting for the capitalist-media to tell me Putin is murdering babies in incubators. w v

Tragically, (as you know) virtually all the world’s media are capitalist, though it would actually be easier than many believe to change that**.

The key for me is just tell the truth, be accurate, no matter who pulls the strings. IMO, however, it’s not helpful to answer one cartoonish portrayal with another. As in, if Putin is being portrayed as a Marvel super-villain, it’s not productive to paint the US and the West in the same way. No cartoons, period, is better.

___

**Took a look at Caitlin Johnstone’s About page, after your h/t. Found it interesting, but I think she’s a bit confused as to what “capitalism” actually is and isn’t. She could actually receive direct payment for her craft and remain non-capitalist. She doesn’t have to ask for donations only to stay clean.

Long before capitalism existed, writers, craftsmen, artists, artisans, small farmers, etc. etc. took payment for their work. It’s not “money for work” that makes one a capitalist. It’s buying labor (as a commodity) to produce a commodity for money that does it. M-C-M and exchange value, with the capitalist appropriating the surplus value of his or her workforce as if he or she did all the work. The larger picture adding competitive laws of motion, Grow or Die, etc. That endless trap of production for profit, growth, pollution, waste, more, more, and more. All of that creates neck-breaking hierarchies and guarantees horrific levels of inequality too.

Ms. Johnstone could write for payment and stay clean, and leftist media could do the same, scale up, share ownership, share the fruits, and stay clean. Flatten hierarchies to the extent possible. Logically, that flattens inequality too — at least when and where this is applied.

One moon’s opinion:

—

New on MoA:
Propaganda Does Not Change The War – The Ukraine Is Still Losinghttps://t.co/zwQY0V6HZM pic.twitter.com/X7WKx8pyEJ

— Moon of Alabama (@MoonofA) March 25, 2022

1/ Big Arrow War—a primer. For all those scratching their heads in confusion, or dusting off their dress uniforms for the Ukrainian victory parade in Kiev, over the news about Russia’s “strategic shift”, you might want to re-familiarize yourself with basic military concepts.

— Scott Ritter (@RealScottRitter) March 29, 2022