Letter to the NYT "The West is Hobbled by Its Own Hypocrisy"

The New York Times coverage of attitudes of peace groups towards the war against Ukraine missed the view of our 71 year-old peace organization.

 

Putin's aggression should be soundly defeated, but support from the West is hobbled by its own hypocrisy.  President Biden wants Europe to give up Russian oil but says nothing while his ally Modi approves India's huge increase in purchases of that very same fuel.  Nor has the President explained the U.S.' continued purchases of Russian uranium. Over 15,000 people have petitioned on this subject to no avail.

 

The West should stop ignoring the massive increase in greenhouse gas emissions caused by the warfare in Ukraine and its resulting effect on world's climates.  It should respond by going on a crash program to end the use of fossil fuels.

 

Finally, Putin's imperial actions would be opposed by more of the world's governments if the U.S. and its allies weren't themselves busily supporting bloody "authoritarians" like Modi, El-Sisi of Egypt, the Saudi Arabian prince MBS, various other Middle Eastern tyrants, and Israeli Apartheid's Netanyahu.

 

The New York Times failed to print this letter.

Climate News We Don't Want to Hear

 

 

Update 7/28 "The Era of Global Boiling has Arrived."

on Democracy Now today

 

July 27.  From the article in the New York Times yesterday "A Grim Climate Lesson From the Canadian Wildfires"

 

David Wallace-Wells a few years ago wrote a book about worst-case outcomes if we didn't stop global warming.  Then a year ago he said we probably were not going to hit worst-case.  But that was before this.

 

"In Quebec, more land was torched in June than in the previous 20 years combined."

 

"According to some tabulations, in 2021 wildfires in North America and Eurasia contributed more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than any nation but China, the United States and India."

 

"In California the record-setting fire season of 2020, which produced five of the state’s seven largest fires in modern history, also entirely erased its emissions gains over the previous 16 years."

 

 “The most powerful firefighting equipment that humans have — Canadair planes that cost roughly $35 million each and drop 30 bathtubs’ worth of water at a time — can extinguish fires with an intensity of up to 10,000 kilowatts per meter of fire line,” Henry Mance wrote recently in The Financial Times. “Today’s megafires are a different order of magnitude, sometimes exceeding 100,000 kilowatts per meter” — 10 times as intense. Water dumped from above can evaporate before it reaches the ground.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Also in the NY Times yesterday this news, "Warming Could Push the Atlantic Past a ‘Tipping Point’ This Century" 

 

A major ocean current in the north Atlantic may collapse because of global warming.  It could reach a “tipping point” with no way back.

 

“Were the circulation to tip into a much weaker state, the effects on the climate would be far-reaching, though scientists are still examining their potential magnitude. Much of the Northern Hemisphere could cool. The coastlines of North America and Europe could see faster sea-level rise. “

 

“That led them to predict that the Atlantic circulation could collapse around midcentury, though it could potentially occur as soon as 2025 and as late as 2095.”

 

Sachs Happily on Solovyov's TV Show 

What Does He Think of Solovyov's Call for Nuclear Strikes on Ukraine?

 

June 24. There’s a Russian news presenter named Vladimir Solovyov who hosts Russian TV and radio programs. Solovyov is a confidant of Vladimir Putin. He was awarded the Order of Honor from Vladimir Putin in 2013. Needless to say Solovyov has been a supporter of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.    On January 25 he described the attack as “a ‘holy’ and ‘patriotic’ war against all of NATO, as well as ‘50 Satanic countries’ who want "to destroy us."  Responding to a guest who said using nuclear weapons would be a bad trend Solovyov replied that "not using nuclear weapons is a dangerous trend" as he said that Russia should make the most of its "superiority in tactical nuclear weapons."  

 

None of that stopped liberal hero Jeffrey Sachs from going on Solovyov Live a month later on March 9 where he and Solovyov  had a friendly banter about the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, whether it was an act of terrorism, Sy Hersh, a possible lab leak that could have created COVID 19, Victoria Nuland, the lie that Ukraine was forced to stop a peace plan with Putin because of Western pressure, why “the world” wants diplomacy, proxy war and so on.  Sachs was on for 20 minutes and NEVER mentions that Russia invaded Ukraine. In fact, I don’t think he disputed Putin’s confidant on anything.   Sachs had been on the program at least twice before, in October 2021 and again in August of last year, six months after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

 

Surely he knew that Solovyov had called for a nuclear attack on Ukraine, but Sachs said not one word.

 

I call Sachs a liberal hero with some justification.  He’s on CNN, Bloomberg, The Week, The Hill, etc.    He must have been on Democracy Now five times in the last year.  Last fall one of his appearances there got 3 million views on YouTube, far, far above a typical DN show (I suspect that these number were boosted by a certain foreign power’s bots, but I have no proof.)

 

Well, this week after Ukraine bombed the Chonhar bridge to Crimea Solovyov said, “We no longer have any option. We must wipe them from the face of the earth... their decision-making centers," Solovyov said. "If our tactical nuclear weapons give us an advantage, maybe it's time? Maybe we simply need to batter them."

 

Sachs, whose big mouth is always open, has had nothing to say about this direct call by Putin’s pal to go and commit genocide.

 

“A Private Militia for a Thug”

 

March 27.  Netanyahu’s welcome “pause” in his campaign to gut the Israeli Supreme Court comes with strings attached.  It’s part of a package in which there’s a poison pill.  In exchange for the pause, religious-fascist Ben-Gvir was given a fully funded government militia.  He’ll be put in charge of a brand new Israeli "National Guard”.  The Israeli democracy movement (better called the Keep-Democracy-for-Israeli-Jews movement) is still in peril.  The answer is staring it in the face.  Unite with Palestinian forces to build a democratic and eco-socialist state.

 

The phrase for the title of this piece came from a comment reaction by “Lorraine” to an article in Haaretz with the headline “Explosives, Guns, Knives: Israeli Far-right Groups Call for Violence Against Protesters This Evening”.   It refers to calls on encrypted WhatsApp groups for violent attacks on Israelis who have turned out in huge numbers to protest Netanyahu’s attempted “judicial coup”.    There’s a barely disguised fascist “soccer fan club” La Familia that urges its members to turn out for counterprotests. And some callers want people to drive vehicles in crowds or to use gasoline.

 

As late as this morning a guest on Democracy Now predicted that Netanyahu would backtrack and that Ben-Gvir would quit the government and that we’d see a coalition much like one of Netanyahu's Far-Right-Center-Right coalitions of the past.  It doesn’t look that way.  Ben-Gvir, the ultimate extremist, is being given an army.

 

Lorraine nails it, “Netanyahu and company give the appearance of listening to the opposition while using the opportunity to slip in yet more anti-democratic take-overs. Don't fall for this! Don't accept these terms for a freeze!”  The lack of counter-protesters in Israel until today shows that while the new coalition was able to scrape up a majority of votes it is weak in terms of power in the street.  Yesterday the Histadrut union federation pulled off a general strike.  Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir couldn’t do that.  But they can use an armed gang loyal to a “thug” to violently smash the power in the street.  Israel Jews must continue the massive demonstrations until the “militia” idea is scrapped.

 

But more must be done.  Millions of people are shut out from the democratic protests.  What does a Palestinian think when seeing seas of Israeli blue and white flags in demonstrations of protesters and counter-protesters?  Both are waving the emblem of apartheid.  What’s in it for Palestinians if there's a restoration of “liberal apartheid”.

 

Democratic forces in Israel need to go all the way and demand democracy for everyone “from the river to the sea”.  This would gain support not only from millions of Palestinians, who are experts in struggle from 75 years of experience, but also from millions more in surrounding countries and across the sea.

 

And “eco-socialism”?  Why bring that up? Well, Israel for the last 50 years has been conquered by neo-liberalism.  Gaps between rich and poor are among the largest in the world.  Most working people in Israel, who are victims of this way of life, fall for right-wing populist “solutions”, meaning racist measures.  As climate collapse shows its first signs this will only grow worse.  An alternative solution is necessary, but is available, a socialism that centers climate preservation and climate justice as an essential part of its structure.  That’s what is meant by eco-socialism.  It’s a key way of convincing the Israeli masses that abandoning apartheid will not just mean losing status and their few material privileges.  It would instead open up new possibilities for a better post-racist and post-fossil-fuel-poisoned life.

 

P.S. March 28.  You realize that when Smotrich on March 1 said that Huwara should be "wiped out", he qualified his remark saying, “I think the State of Israel should be the one to wipe it out, not, God forbid, private people.”  Now the Kahanists are being given the vehicle to do just that.

 

ukrinform.net 2019 picture

What Did Zelensky Get for His Gesture?

 

January 2, 2023.  Israeli PM Netanyahu telephoned Zelensky and asked for a favor, asked him to vote against a UN General Assembly resolution that calls on the International Court of Justice to issue an opinion on Israel’s occupation of Palestinians territories.  In committee Ukraine had voted FOR the resolution.  Rather than given in totally to Netanyahu  and rather than stand against all occupations on principle, Zelensky told his UN ambassador not to attend the session where the vote was held.  So Netanyahu got Zelensky to bend with one phone call. 

 

What did Zelensky get for his gesture?  Nothing.   Less than nothing.  Israeli journalist Barak Ravid reports that Netanyahu’s government is hinting that it’s going in a pro-Putin direction.  Foreign Minister Eli Cohen in his first speech that he will speak on January 3 to Putin’s Foreign Minister Lavrov.  He also said he he’ll won’t be talking about Russia and Ukraine in public.  Ravid tweets that “Cohen’s predecessor Yair Lapid led a tough line Russia, condemned it publicly & even said the Russian military committed war crimes.” 

 

You recall Naftali Bennett, the Israeli PM at the time of the Russian invasion last February, flew at the very start of  March  to meet with Putin.  Zelensky who was presumed to be facing defeat, just got a phone call.  Despite constant pleading Israel has refused to give any significant amount of weapons to Ukraine.

 

A Haaretz editorial on January 2nd gets into another matter, (Non-Jewish) Ukrainian refugees in Israel.  It notes that Ukrainian refugees who entered shortly after the invasion could work for three months.  “Employment of those who arrived between June and October was restricted: They are permitted to work in only 17 cities in Israel, and only in the fields of hospitality, construction, agriculture and institutional nursing” in other words low-level blue collar jobs.  Ukrainian citizens who arrived in Israel after October 1, 2022 will not be allowed to work in the country at all.  The editorial mentions they could face “starvation”.

 

Why Zelensky put up with this requires speculation.  Perhaps he thinks if he can flatter Israel enough they’ll eventually come through.  Perhaps he thinks he can trade on his Jewish heritage. Perhaps Biden tells him to do it.  Anyway, it’s not working. 

 

An Unfortunate Peace Plan

 

December 21, 2022

 

Tankies, campists and the naïve loudly call for “diplomacy”, “negotiations” and “compromise”, but rarely explain even in general terms what they see as the elements of a just peace.  On December 20 there was an exception.  Alfred De Zayas, a law professor, wrote a piece on Counterpunch which he called a “Blueprint for Peace in Ukraine”.  I respond to 8 points that he numbered.

 

1. Ceasefire based on the UN Charter,

If it was agreed that Putin would withdraw his troops from Ukraine this would be a fine idea.  If it’s just to give Putin time to rest his exhausted soldiers and to resupply them with weapons it would be a catastrophe for Ukrainians.

 

2. A ban on deliveries of weapons to the belligerents,

Outrageous.  Russia has materials to build all the weapons it wants to use.  It’s only Ukraine that must import arms.  This idea smacks of the weapons ban in the late 1930’s that effectively kept weapons away from the Spanish Republic as it faced fascist Franco, Hitler and Mussolini.

 

3. UN organized international assistance to all populations suffering because of the war, lack of energy, lack of food, etc.

Is the idea that the whole world should pay for the damages Putin/Russia caused?

 

4. UN organized and monitored referenda in Crimea and Donbas,

Why should Ukraine accept that?  Its internationally recognized borders were guaranteed by the major powers in 1994.  It included all of the Donbas and all of Crimea.  Since 2014 the populations of both areas have changed radically, with citizens of Russia flowing in, with Ukrainians being forced out directly or having fled for their lives.  But let’s say none of that happened.  If it looked like a majority of people in 5 Western states decided they’d like to be independent would the U.S. government ethically be obliged to allow it?  Would it just have to ignore what the loss of those states’ resources might mean for the USA?  According to an article in Foreign Policy the Donbas (or just the area occupied by Putin’s armies) “including Ukraine’s section of the Black Sea, now mainly controlled by Russia—account for about half of Ukraine’s conventional oil, 72 percent of its natural gas, and almost its entire coal production and reserves. The bulk of Ukraine’s critical minerals, especially the rare earth metals that are now in high demand, are likewise found in Donetsk…”  Should Ukraine just write that off?

Nations that are colonies or who have been terribly repressed do have the right to secede, but the language mandates in Ukraine in 2014 and the Ukrainian Far-Right blathering of that year hardly amount to systematic and long-term oppression.

 

5. Lifting of sanctions that have nullified the benefits of globalization, broken supply chains, upset international trade, endangered food security,

Sure, once Putin’s government agrees to hundreds of billions in reparations to Ukraine.

 

6. Drafting of a new security architecture for Europe and the world,

If Ukraine has to wait until this happens it will be reduced to cinders.

 

7. Establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to hear the grievances from all sides,

"grievances"?

 

8. Punishment of war crimes by the respective governments, e.g. Ukrainian crimes to be investigated and prosecuted by Ukrainian judges, Russian crimes to be investigated and punished by Russian tribunals.

This has to be a joke.  Russian tribunals are completely under Putin’s thumb. Ask Navalny or the spouses of people assassinated by Putin’s underlings.

 

What If the Victimized Nations Try Geoengineering?

 

November 2.   The new Time Magazine had an article, “Morals Won’t Drive Climate Action, But Self-Interest Can”.  It was mostly about convincing people that it would help them personally to avoid climate catastrophe.  But the section that struck me was at the start where author Justin Worland talked about the possibility of countries disastrously suffering killing heat waves might try a “last-resort method of trying to lower temperatures on the ground by spraying sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere, a bit of geoengineering that no one heretofore has dared risk.”

 

Now must such a possibility was dramatized in the 2021 sci-fi book “ The Ministry of the Future” by Kim Stanley Robinson.  After suffering a horrendous number of deaths (millions) in one week, the Indian government on its own gets plane after plane to pour sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere in hopes of reducing world temperatures.

 

That was just sci-fi, but Worland says just such a possibility was considered by the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate.  They are trying to prepare for a situation where a desperate country attempts to use science to change the climate (geoengineering) all on its own. This isn’t just some nutty idea.  If things don’t change drastically some countries will be quite desperate.  A study published in 2020 by the National Academy of Science estimates that in 50 years areas where 3 billion people now live may be too hot for people to go outdoors.

 

This year there have been 100 million migrants in the world (including Ukraine) and we know the effect on world politics.  Right now most are not fleeing because of climate change, but imagine what will happen when hundreds of millions or billions of people are forced out of their homes by intolerable climates.  Armies might build 100-foot walls and prepare to use 100 million bullets, but what are they going to do if a victimized country quietly tries geoengineering?  The Time Magazine article says it would just cost a country a few billion.

 

In case you’re wondering why not pump sulfur aerosols into the upper atmosphere consider this caution by the website of the Science X Network.  It notes that computer simulations of such a plan have been done and researchers noted let’s say, problems.

 

“The researchers report that overall, the models showed the desired cooling impact. But they also showed something less helpful—reduced global rainfall. The models showed that the changes in rainfall would not be uniform, either; some areas would get less than others. And as some of those areas, such as the North Atlantic, received less rainfall, the ocean would experience an increase in salinity, which would make the water denser. That denser water would then have an impact on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, burying more heat in the deep ocean. The net result would be a warmer ocean, more polar melting and faster rising sea levels.”

 

Reduced rainfall, warmer oceans, more polar melting and that’s just the effects we can think of.  As they say, “Nature bats last.”

 

Watch comedian Stephen Colbert talk to a Mr. David Keith who is in favor of trying geoengineering.  Go to this page and scroll down until you see a picture of Al Gore being interviewed by Ellen DeGeneris.  Click on that picture and after a couple seconds you’ll see Keith and Colbert talking.

 

Hey, why not try geoengineering.  What could go wrong?

 

Scott Ritter Back on Twitter - Defames Ukrainians

 

November 1.  Scott Ritter, one of the more extreme opponents of Ukraine, was kicked off Twitter in March, evidently for repeating the lie that the mass murders of civilians in Ukraine in Bucha were done by Ukrainians.

 

Sensing that the new owner, Elon Musk, might let him say more of that "free speech" he defied the ban and set up a new account saying, "This account is in open violation of Twitter rules prohibiting banned persons from making new accounts. Free speech is everything." 

 

He tweeted, "Test, Test, Test. Bucha was a war crime.  Ukraine did it"

 

He also tweeted a video of ex-CIA officer Ray McGovern which was entitled, "Russian cannot afford to lose this war."

 

For those living in the real world who want to know how to refute the malicious idiocy of the above click here to go to the Ukrainian website "Stop Fake" which quickly demolishes lies.  11/4 or watch this PBS-AP video on Bucha.

 

Last I looked (10/30) Ritter's tweet above about Bucha got him blocked.

 

“Progressive" Ukraine Effort Gets Annihilated - Thankfully

 

A letter on Ukraine by 30 Democratic liberals of the Progressive Caucus was withdrawn the day after it was posted.  The wording in the letter was so crafted as to appear harmless, but the Washington Post and the Intercept and leading Democrats saw the letter as a call to Biden to sharply change directions on Ukraine and to go over the head of Ukrainians and bargain directly with Putin.  It evidently met with a furious response within the Democratic Party leadership.  Ryan Grim at the Intercept says the effort was “annihilated”.    Biden’s policy needs to be sharply criticized, but not with this wrong-headed bleating.

 

Grim said the letter was supported by an “array of nonprofit groups, Campaign For Peace, Disarmament, and Common Security; Just Foreign Policy; Friends Committee on National Legislation; MoveOn; Peace Action; Physicians for Social Responsibility; the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft; and Win Without War.”  They’ve all been bemoaning the terrible effects of the warfare on the world’s economy.  OK that's true, but they unfortunately come to the conclusion that the answer is to find some formula to satisfy Putin.  They repeat the words “negotiate” and “diplomacy” endlessly with few or no proposals on how to settle things.  If they ever talk concretely, it’s echoing Chomsky saying, “Crimea is off the table”, suggesting a neutral and unarmed Ukraine and some method by which eastern Ukraine will be beyond the reach of the Ukrainian government.  They call, “Go back to Minsk agreement”.   They apparently haven’t noticed that Russia has annexed four regions of Ukraine, with far more territory than was Russian controlled before February 24.  

 

Biden’s policy is deeply flawed.  The worst failing is that it has nothing to say about U.S. hypocrisy.   Putin thinks he can hold on and win because the “Global South” will eventually stop U.S. momentum, because this “South” is appalled by U.S. double-standards.  And it’s true.  It takes a lot of gall to go on about Ukraine’s rights after a century of imperial trampling of other nation’s rights, with interference and wars all over the globe.  Ukraine?    What about Gaza?  What about Palestine?  What about Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen? What about the last century of the U.S. interventions in Latin America?  Even after Saudi Arabia jolted the U.S. by joining with Putin to cut back oil production, Biden has done nothing.

 

Second there’s energy policy.  If ever there was a time to abandon fossil fuels, it’s now.  We see Europe struggling to support Ukraine while trying to kick its addiction to Russian natural gas.  We need several things here, an abandonment of the Manchin-Biden deal on energy, a sharp ramping up of solar and wind and RATIONING of fossil fuel use.  Fuel was rationed during the second world war.  It’s imperative it be done now.

 

Third, debt forgiveness.  God know how much debt Ukraine has piled up trying to keep the country afloat. A bill passed the U.S. House in May that would require U.S. representatives at institutions like the World Bank press for cancellation of Ukraine’s debt.  The bill has been sitting in the Senate ever since!  Certainly U.S. banks would love to entangle Ukraine in webs of debt forever.  Heck with that.

 

Glad that the Progressive letter went down in flames, but let’s not rally behind Biden.

  #CancelTheDebt  #EndTheHypocrisy  #100PercentRenewables  #FreePalestine

 

Solomon Spoils a Vital Message

 

Oct 18.  Norman Solomon talked today on Democracy Now about an important new campaign “Defuse Nuclear War”.  This is the website DefuseNuclearWar.org | Help build a movement to prevent nuclear war for the campaign.  It has solid ideas for legislation and measures Biden could take to lower the risks of a nuclear spasm.  Yet Solomon spoiled his presentation by tying the campaign to campist talking points about the warfare in Ukraine.

 

He said that the West was putting Putin into a corner and that the U.S. policy should change its course and start  “genuine diplomacy”.   Let’s deal with the “into a corner” argument first.  It’s Ukraine that’s being ground into a corner, with whole cities turned to rubble, with its main nuclear power plants occupied and this week with a third of its electrical generation destroyed.  And we have to worry about Putin saving face?  He’s a fascist dictator.  He can withdraw from Ukraine at any time and say BS like, “Hey we beat up the [supposed] Nazis pretty good.  We showed how tough we are.  Mission accomplished.”  He’ll still be in control.  RT can make it all look very pretty and Putin can hand out medals to his heroes.  Come on, It’s not like Putin can lose the next election.

 

As for “diplomacy” I covered that in depth in a recent article in which I point out there’s no evidence at all that Biden is pressuring Zelensky to refuse to negotiate.  I’d just say here that it’s shameful for people to demand a superpower go over the head of the elected government of Ukraine and impose a deal.  

 

As for the rest of Solomon’s talk and the campaign his RootsAction group is sponsoring, it’s spot on.  It’s intensely reckless for the U.S. to have nuclear war games involving Europe.  One accident and the spasm could begin as a series of falling dominoes, nuclear dominoes.  I'm all for the campaign to stop nuclear war "games", but I'm not connecting it to any message calling for Ukraine to be left spinning in the wind.

 

Democracy Now’s Schizophrenic Coverage of Ukraine

 

October 3, 2022.  Democracy Now generally has excellent coverage of things on the ground in Ukraine, their Headline stories, their interviews with Ukrainians Oksana Dutchak, Nataliya Gumenyuk, Russian Khrushcheva, etc.

 

But for analysis DN! goes to people who see the world in terms of geopolitics, Jeffry Sachs, members of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Madea Benjamin, Katrina vanden Heuvel.  The shows hosts almost never talk to Ukrainians about the big picture.

 

Today was no different.  They had on Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad who spent most of their time claiming the U.S. stopped Ukraine from negotiating an agreement with Russia in April.  

 

Chomsky.  "In April there was negotiations between Russia and Ukraine under Turkish auspices that may have been getting somewhere, soon as they were announced and then Boris Johnson then Prime Minister of England flew to Ukraine and apparently informed Ukraine that the West, meaning the United States and Britain would not favor negotiations.  He was followed directly by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin who presumably gave the message that is stand[?] that is repeated over and over and that is now official U.S. policy that the war must continue to weaken Russia severely and it follows no time for negotiations.  Well none of this can be said with certainly because there is so little commentary and reporting and what there is, is highly, often highly distorted and in the example that I just gave [Modi of India] The fact is sooner or later there will have to be some kind of negotiated settlement unless one side or another virtually capitulates."

 

It's no secret that that there were talks under Turkish auspices in April, but as far as I can tell there's NO evidence at all that the US and the UK strongarmed the Ukrainian government.  Even Chomsky's words above are full of "may" and "apparently".

 

 It seems to me if Zelensky took a stronger position in the beginning of April it had a lot more to do with Ukrainian troops forcing Putin out of Kyiv and the whole north of Ukraine at the start of April than whatever Boris Johnson said to Zelensky privately.  [October 4 note.  In April the Ukrainian government also uncovered the mass graves in Bucha and this quite reasonably added to national fury.]

 

Vijay Prashad on the program goes further with the claim that the  U.S.  pressured Ukraine to break off negotiations.

 

Prashad "And by the way, it’s not just a matter of Ukraine and Russia coming to some understanding because they do have to live next to each other. And as Noam was saying, in April of this year, they had an interim agreement, which looked a lot like Minsk II, but the West said no. "

 

So there was an "interim agreement" and not just Chomsky's claim that the talks "may have been getting somewhere".

 

OK, prove it.  What is this agreement that the U.S. and the UK broke apart?  Where is the evidence that the Ukrainian government was strongarmed?  [No, rumors don't count.  Let's hear the actual audio or see some leaked document or an insider talking on video.]  And WHY would the Ukrainian government reject a deal that it had just worked out with Russia?  Does Ukraine want war for war’s sake?  Is Zelensky just a puppet of the West?  Don’t you think Ukrainians would have been furious with Zelensky if they knew he had rejected peace on Washington’s orders?

 

Finally, if this war by Ukrainians is so unnecessary show us their movement opposing Ukrainian military action.  You can’t because it doesn’t exist.

 

Democracy Now, start talking to Ukrainian Leftists when you want some of the bigger picture.  Start with folks from “Social Movement”.

 

 

CODEPINK Calls for Rallies Based on Myths

Sept. 11, 2022

CODEPINK is calling for rallies this week , opposing weapons to Ukraine, demanding “diplomacy”.   It says “Don’t Escalate” and  “No, to NATO expansion “  There’s no slogan about Russia at all.

 

The rationale for these demonstrations are found in an article by Medea Benjamin co-founder of CODEPINK.  The rallies target U.S. leaders because she says  that  months ago Russia and Ukraine were at the point of a peace agreement and the U.S. pressured Ukrainian leaders to “torpedo” the talks so that the war would go on and weaken Russia.  She writes

"Russia and Ukraine tentatively agreed to a fifteen-point peace plan " in the first month of the war.

 

"Russia was ready to withdraw from all of Ukraine, except for Crimea and the self-declared republics in Donbas. Ukraine was ready to renounce future membership in NATO and adopt a position of neutrality between Russia and NATO."

 

"Ukrainian and Turkish sources have revealed that the U.K. and U.S. governments played decisive roles in torpedoing those early prospects for peace. During U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “surprise visit” to Kyiv on April 9th, he reportedly told Prime Minister Zelensky that the U.K. was “in it for the long run,” that it would not be party to any agreement between Russia and Ukraine, and that the “collective West” saw a chance to “press” Russia and was determined to make the most of it."

 

The problem is there’s no evidence that any of this is true.   There’s no  evidence that Biden or Boris Johnson strongarmed Zelensky, and there’s no source for the claim that Russia was going to withdraw from all the land it had just occupied in the invasion

 

She writes,

“After six months of a U.S. and NATO proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, we are at a crossroads …”

 

Back to the “proxy” war nonsense claim.  It’s as if Ukrainians didn’t volunteer by the tens of thousands as Russian troops smashed their cities.

 

For a definitive answer to the “negotiations” and “diplomacy-will-solve-all" notion read the article in May by Michael Karadjis.  It’s called “Putin’s conquest of southeast Ukraine: Vexed questions of ‘negotiations’, gotcha moments and real imperial interests”

 

We do need anti-war rallies, directed against Putin, the Israeli government and its enabling US politicians and Assad/Putin. 

 

We don't need anti-war rallies against the brave Ukrainian efforts at self-defense.

 

Cease Fire?

I listened to Democracy Now on August 26 interview Anatol Levien for the umpteenth time about Ukraine.  Levien works at the senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, which is the Koch-Soros funded think tank.  His big point was the military situation was at a stalemate and what we should be working for is a “cease-fire”. 

 

Actually, the worst person in the interview was DN! Co-host Juan Gonzalez. He repeated the trope that the U.S. is forcing Ukraine to fight the war as part of geo-political campaign against Russia.  He asks, “Does the Biden administration want one[cease-fire], or does it prefer to continue to have the Ukrainian people basically be cannon fodder to continue to weaken Russia? “ Levien tells him that Ukrainians do not want a cease-fire at this point.  He says “they still think that they can regain a lot of territory.” Not an unreasonable desire if you think about it.  When Israel invaded Lebanon our call was not for “ceasefire”, but for Israel to get its troops out of Lebanon.

 

Gonzalez then presses him on the “Global South” and how it doesn’t support Ukraine. He refers to an article by (Shock-Therapy) Jeffrey Sachs.  (I’ve criticized him here.) Talking about Sachs, Gonzalez says “the Ukrainian war is a reflection of that, is a continued insistence of the United States and Europe to be the dominant powers in the world, at a time when, really, power is shifting to the Global South.” He strangely considers Russia and China to be part of this “South”, but it is true that in a lot of poor countries exploited by the West there isn’t a lot of solidarity with Ukraine.

 

Rather than criticize Gonzalez further I point to a weakness in the Left solidarity with Ukraine movement.  The reason working people in the Middle East and Latin America are cool to Ukraine’s fight is the titanic hypocrisy they see in the US in resisting Russian imperialism without curbing U.S. imperialism in Palestine, Yemen, Honduras, Colombia, etc. etc. etc.  Solidarity efforts with Ukraine have to be paired without constant criticism of U.S. imperial projects and solidarity with its victims.

 

And could our friends in Ukraine come up with scholars and activists for Democracy Now to interview?

 

 

 

Roger Waters Spews Out the Tankie Crap on Ukraine

 

August 7

 

Rock star Roger Waters was interviewed for seven minutes on CNN by Michael Smerconish on August 6.  Smerconish asked him why he had projected a picture of Biden with the words "War Criminal" during his current "This Is Not a Drill" tour. Now Waters could have correctly mentioned Palestine or Yemen, but the great political sage Waters only talked about Ukraine

 

"Joe Biden is fueling the fire in Ukraine for a start. That's a huge crime," Waters said. "Why won't the United States of America encourage [Ukraine President Volodymyr] Zelensky to negotiate, obviating the need for this horrific, horrendous war?"

 

"Bollocks" as the Brits say.  This is all backwards. Back in March Zelensky offered a deal for Ukraine neutrality and for the issue of Crimea to delayed for a decade. Putin just sent in more troops and artillery.

 

Smerconish pointed out the obvious, that Russia was the aggressor. "You're blaming the party that got invaded. You've got this reversed.

 

Waters answered, "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 when [Mikhail] Gorbachev negotiated the withdrawal of the USSR from the whole of Eastern Europe."

 

Well, Roger, look at a map. NATO [which indeed sucks and should be abolished] touches Russia only at the very tip of Norway and in Latvia and Estonia. And those last two countries joined NATO 20 years ago and Russia wasn't unhappy about it then. The Russian Foreign Minister then, the very same Lavarov, attended the NATO welcoming ceremony.

 

Smerconish said that the U.S. has taken on the role of "liberator" around the world. Waters, answered, "You got into World War 2 because of Pearl Harbor. You were completely isolationists [beforehand]. Thank God the Russians had already won the bloody war almost by then. 23 million Russians died, protecting you and me from the Nazi menace."

 

A couple huge things wrong here: 1) In December 1941 "Russia" had not "almost won" the war. The battle of Stalingrad which most historians consider the war's turning point hadn't yet started and wouldn't end until 1943. 2) It wasn't "Russia". It was the Soviets who pushed back Hitler in the East. The Soviet Union was made up of lots of nationalities including Ukrainians. 3) Part of the reason the Soviet were able to fight the Nazis effectively was the enormous amount of equipment the U.S. sent the Soviets via "Lend Lease". It started in the summer of 1941. It included, "more than 400,000 trucks, over 12,000 tanks and other combat vehicles, 32,000 motorcycles, 13,000 locomotives and railway cars" and plenty more. 4) The U.S. government has done many, many horrible things, but there was no reason to sell the U.S. short during our finest hour.

Responding to a Smerconish comment Waters said, "Go read a bit more and figure out what the United States would do if China put nuclear-armed missiles in Mexico and Canada."

 

OMG. Need we point out no one had put nuclear-armed missiles in Ukraine and in fact Ukraine had in 1994 given up ALL its nukes in return for a signed guarantee that its "existing borders" would be respected by Russia.  Waters here sounds just like the pig Henry Kissinger and the other "realists" who think the big powers have a right to a "sphere of influence" and the little countries (like Cuba) have no rights at all.

 

[and if you don't know the term "tankie", it refers to those who defended the Soviets when they invaded Hungary in 1956, and similar vicious moronic thinking.]

 

P.S. In late September his tour appearances in Poland were cancelled after outrage at his statements on Ukraine

 

Anti-Zionism is a Traditional and Growing Stream of Jewish Thinking

Answering the Slander from the ADL

 

July 20, 2022. In his misrepresentations of anti-Zionism in Newsweek, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt conveniently failed to mention Jewish anti-Zionism.  Zionism is a political movement just like the temperance movement or the pro-choice movement. It’s a group of ideas with a goal. It calls for a country run strictly for the benefit of Jews. One can certainly oppose that idea without being a racist hater of Jews. Indeed, Zionism has only had a mass following among Jews since the last years of the 1800s and it wasn’t until the Holocaust that it had any real following among Orthodox Jews.

 

Famous Jewish anti-Zionists included New York Times publisher Adolph Simon Ochs, violinist Yehudi Menuhin, Reform rabbi Elmer Berger, Auschwitz survivor Hajo Meyer, and the anti-Nazi intelligence agent Leopold Trepper. Prominent today are Israeli lawyer Lea Tzemel, the American writer Ben Ehrenreich and Daniel Boyarin, Professor of Talmudic Culture at UC Berkeley. Groups of anti-Zionists included the tens of thousands in Europe in the pre-WWII Bund movement, the Israeli Jews in the Matzpen movement, the American Council for Judaism. Anti-Zionist Jewish groups today include 20,000 Ultra-Orthodox Satmar Jews, the Neturei Karta and the U.S. group Jewish Voice for Peace.

 

There are many obvious reasons to oppose Zionism. Among them are Israel’s savage mistreatment of Palestinians, its regard of Jews outside Israel as inferiors and Zionist leaders’ long treacherous history of deals with anti-Semites, ultra-rightists and in some cases killers of Jews.

 

The May 2021 Israeli government attack on Palestinians caused unprecedented anger among a section of the U.S. Jewish community.  They may not declare it, but effectively a quarter of U.S. Jews are anti-Zionist.  Last July the results of a poll were released that had been commissioned by the  by the Jewish Electorate Institute,  which the Israeli paper Haaretz says is a group led by prominent Jewish Democrats.  A quarter of U.S. Jews agreed with the statement that Israel was an “apartheid state”.   22 percent agreed that “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians”.  On another question, “34 percent agreed that “Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is similar to racism in the United States”.  According to Haaretz, “20 percent said they preferred establishing one state that is neither Jewish nor Palestinian” encompassing Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. 

 

Another anti-Zionist effort was the open letter calling for the removal of the Israeli flag from Jewish spaces. Approximately 150 Jews called for it to be taken down from its place in synagogues, Jewish Federation offices and the like.  The statement said Israeli was “an apartheid regime” and noted that apartheid has been an international crime since the 1970’s.  It declared it is “offensive to see Jewish communal spaces wave the emblem of a criminal system.”  A number of the signers were quite prominent.

 

It’s not just polls that show the growth of anti-Zionist thinking among Jews.  The evidence is shown in the rapid growth of two American Jewish groups, Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now.  Jewish Voice for Peace, which formally voted to reject Zionism, has 16,000 members. Its social media numbers are far higher than AIPAC’s, the quintessential “pro-Israel” group.  Jewish Voice for Peace has 667,000 Facebook followers and 165,000 followers on Twitter.    AIPAC has  174,000 FB followers and 120,000 followers on Twitter.   IfNotNow is a newer group.  It’s younger and it doesn’t take formal political positions, but it’s in the streets more than JVP.  Still, it has more than 47K followers on FB and 78K Twitter followers.

 

Saying anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism is outright slander.  Anti-Zionism has always been a current in Jewish thinking.  As Israel adds to its infamous record of violence and discrimination, the number of Jews and non-Jews opposed to Zionism will grow.

At PEP we were sent a petition on Ukraine and chose not to sign it.

The reasons I think it's defective

1. It doesn't demand Putin withdraw his troops from any part of Ukraine!  Yes, it asks for a ceasefire, but even if enacted that would leave Putin in control of 20-30% of the country.

2. It says "above all we're angry at our own government" and all its demands indeed are pointed at the U.S. government.  This comes from a strange brand of Leftism that worries most about one's own moral purity rather that what affects the masses of people in whatever country.  In the case of Ukraine the worst actor is not the U.S., but it's traditional colonizer, Russia.

To see the petition and more criticisms click here.

Democracy Now Interviews a Putin Apologist

Consortium News Editor in Chief Joe Lauria:   …Plenty missing from the mainstream media coverage of this [Ukraine] from the initial part of this invasion until today. Mostly we have seen reporting in the corporate media based solely on U.S. officials or Ukrainian officials… So, American and European audiences have been fed the idea that Russia has been failing in this war and that Ukraine still has a chance to win,

Lauria’s message is that Ukraine has no chance to “win”, meaning to stop Putin from seizing 25% or 100% of their country.  Since they have no chance, they should accept whatever Putin has in store for them. 

 

To read the whole article click here

 

Andrew J. Bacevich  Doesn’t want Us to Call Putin’s Russia Fascist – He’s Wrong

Quincy Institute president Andrew Bacevich takes exception to those calling Putin’s Russia fascist.  Selections from his article are below. My criticisms of his article are in red.  Ellipses (…) show my deletions of sentences or paragraphs of his piece.

 

Bacevich writes:

 

Timothy Snyder, Levin Professor of History at Yale University, is a scholar of surpassing brilliance...

I just wish Professor Snyder would stick to history.

It’s not my aim to defend all of Snyder’s statements, but I do want to criticize many of Bacevich’s claims. He’s head of the well-heeled Quincy Institute (Koch-Soros money) which all sorts of liberals turn to for foreign policy guidance.

 

Click here to read the whole article

 

 

Chris Hedges is Getting it Very Wrong on Ukraine

 

June 16, 2022.  For decades Chris Hedges has been a brave and prize-winning reporter, an educator of prisoners, and a fine analyst of the Christian Far-Right.  But in the last few years he’s lost his way.  Perhaps it started in 2017 when he interviewed the alt-imperialists Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton on his Russia Today show “On Contact” as they “doubted” media reports of Assad chemical use.   Certainly. he’s getting it wrong on Ukraine now.  The following is from his April 16 interview on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My comments are in red and in boldface. To keep to the point I’ve eliminated parts of his comments (which are long indictments of U.S. outrages) and replaced them with an ellipsis (…).  The transcript of the entire interview is here.

 

Ralph Nader: Welcome indeed. Listeners, we're going to cover a lot of ground here – NATO, Putin, Ukraine. We're going to talk first about…tell us your reaction to the media coverage here. …?

Chris Hedges: Well, it gets to what Chomsky and Ed Herman wrote about in their book, Manufacturing Consent: [The Political Economy of the Mass Media]--the difference between worthy and unworthy victims. So our victims are not worthy. Yemenis are not worthy. Palestinians are not worthy. … The two decades of war crimes that we committed that have so far dwarfed anything that Putin has done in Ukraine are ignored.

First, why start by talking about coverage by corporate media?  We all know corporate media for the most part will spin out whatever story the empire wants. We know all about U.S. government horrors and hypocrisy.

Why not start by telling us what’s going on between Russia and Ukraine?

(continued here)

The Alt-Imperialists

 

Since the end of 2015 when a number of prominent anti-war and Left figures started apologizing for Assad or more precisely

when they started “doubting” all the charges of Assad’s use of sarin and other chemicals, the question was what to call this bizarre form of politics.  One term that was used by some was “tankies”.  This goes back to 1956 when most of the world’s Communist parties supported the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia led by its units of tanks. It has the advantage of incorporating the brutality of the view, but it seems a little dated. Another term used is “campists”, people who think the world is divided into one camp which is the U.S. and its allies and underlings and another camp made up of every state and regime not in the U.S.’s good graces.  The problem is that it needs considerable explaining before it can be understood.

 

The Lebanese writer and researcher Joey Ayoub has come up with a brilliant term which he’s been using at least since 2020, “alt-imperialists”.  Its advantages are that it starts with the trendy prefix “alt” and that it is immediately obvious in its meaning.  Alt-imperialists are those who oppose the imperialism of their own country, but support another (or several other) imperialist countries.

 

Who are the alt-imperialists?  The worst are the Grayzone crew, Blumenthal, Norton and Maté. Ex-member of Congress Tulsi Gabbard is also a member of the club.  Not totally infected, but touched by the malady are Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, and Katrina vanden Heuvel.  And there’s many more.

 

As Australian Leftist Michael Karadjis has explained anti-war people fall victim to this when their political thinking isn’t based on understanding the exploitation of the working class.  As I see it their anti-war politics has come out of something else, religion or pacifism, or anger at their personal mistreatment by the U.S. government. Instead of being based solidly on empathy and solidarity with the oppressed,  its  foundation is a lot more shaky.  So it morphs into geopolitical campaigns, endlessly rationalizing support for all sorts of grotesque regimes on grounds of “lesser evilism”.

 

Down with Alt-imperialist thinking.  Up with internationalism.

 

Vanden Heuvel on Democracy Now! Repeats False Ukraine “Proxy War” Idea

 

 June 8.  Click here for a point-by-point criticism of Katrina vanden Heuvel's June 6 interview on Democracy Now!  Vanden Heuvel is publisher of "The Nation" and has a regular column in the Washington Post.  I think her "proxy war" notion is false and insulting to the millions of Ukrainians and their terrible sufferings.

 

 

graphic above - Amnesty International

Three Far-Reaching Ideas about Ending the Gun Plague and one Small Suggestion

 

 

May 25.  Yesterday a Texas teenager added another score of kids to the annual carnage of guns.  Face the facts. Reasonable measures to keep guns out of the hands of hotheads cannot be legislated when corporate execs make immense amount of money from gun sales and spend millions to get ad agencies to use hysteria to encourage the buying of firearms.

We can sharply decrease deaths from gun violence, but to do it we need to take strong, far-reaching action.

 

1. Nationalize all the big U.S. gun making companies. Put public officials in charge who would let them continue to sell guns, but would forbid the industry to spend tens of millions to romanticize guns to children and teenagers or to convince adults that only guns can keep them safe. U.S. government-owned companies would, of course, not be allowed to contribute money to politicians.

 

2. Investigate the Far-Right NRA for its role in creating the climate that led to the attempt to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6, 2021.

 

3. Take away guns from most cops. Only allow specially trained police to use them in emergency situations. (see my earlier post.) That's the way it is in Britain.

 

4. Ask Don McClean (“American Pie”) not to perform at the NRA 2022 convention in Texas. [ See this petition to him. ]

 

As far as proposal #1 goes I use "nationalize" loosely.  The industry would no longer be run with its focus on money making, but we want to avoid some of the Social Democratic or Soviet models of governance.  We don't want to just have some unreachable bureaucracy running things.  We need a popular takeover of the industry with worker control of many aspects.  But first get the gun making industry out of the hands of the salesmen of death.

 

Chomsky Praises Trump as "Statesman"

 

May 2, 2022

 

I saw that Chomsky was trending on Twitter and I feared the worst. Actually what was trending was Chomsky's praise for Donald Trump!

 

Fox contributor Glen Greenwald was bragging Chomsky had called Trump a "statesman" and had said that there was "one Western statesman of stature" who is pushing for a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine rather than looking for ways to fuel and prolong it. His name is Donald J. Trump. 

 

The replies to Greenwald pointed to the full interview with Chomsky on April 27. It's here on youtube . Greenwald did not distort what Chomsky said. (see the text of the whole section below)

 

What wise policy is Trump advocating that so impressed Chomsky?

 

Well, on April 18 Trump said, "It doesn't make sense that Russia and Ukraine aren't sitting down and working out some kind of an agreement." That's about it. So what's so wonderful about that sentence? Trump pretends he can make fantastic deals to solve any problem.

 

Sure he can sell weapons, but what kind of "deal" did Trump make to settle Korea or end the conflict [apartheid] between Israelis and Palestinians.

 

But read up on what else Trump has said about Ukraine. In March made two statements the very opposite of "negotiations". Just three weeks earlier on March 22 it was widely reported that on Fox Business Trump advised Biden that if Putin uses the word "nuclear", then "You should say, ‘Look, if you mention that word one more time, we’re going to send them [nuclear armed submarines] over and we’ll be coasting back and forth, up and down your coast. "

 

And weeks before that, on March 6 he told Republican donors in New Orleans that the "United States should label its F-22 planes with the Chinese flag and “bomb the s--t out of Russia.” 

 

Donald Trump is a statesman?

 

Anyway, Noam Chomsky, why always think the magic solution is "negotiations" and "diplomacy", in this case figuring a way to soothe Putin's supposedly justified security fears? Why don't you read "What Should Russia do with Ukraine" which was published in early April by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti (Russian: РИА Новости) It was written by one of their writers, Timofey Sergeytsev. (See my post immediately below this one) . It's an absolutely horrifying document explaining that Ukraine was entirely Nazi, that it was a worse danger than Hitler and that the majority of its people had to be killed or taken for reeducation, and that "de-Nazification" had to go on for a generation. Putin's government is not worrying about security. It's obsessed with the existence of Ukraine. It's the existence of Ukraine which it defines as Nazism.

 

The RIA Novosti article was never withdrawn or criticized by anyone in the Russian government.

 

You can read my critique of Noam Chomsky's recent interview with Bill Fletcher, Jr. on New Politics.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

Text from the April 27 interview with Chomsky starting at 5:43

 

Q. How do you sell Biden's policies on Ukraine?

 

A. There is fortunately one statesman in the United States, a person of high political figure who has made a very sensible statement about how to solve the crisis, mainly by facilitating negotiations instead of undermining them and moving towards establishing some kind of accommodation in Europe in which are there are no military alliances but just mutual accommodations, he didn't say it, but something like George H.W. Bush, the first Bush, not the second, proposed in the early '90's, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, proposed what they called a partnership for peace, which would be open for Europeans generally and for Asians as well. It wouldn't eliminate NATO but would live up to the promise that NATO would not expand to the east, firm promise to Gorbachev, keep to that ...well NATO there but deemphasize it so other countries could join including Russia for that matter or join in the Partnership for Peace that Tajikistan joined for example and not NATO and move it towards a world a Eurasia with no military alliances, actually DeGaulle had similar vision ... Macron in his initiatives trying to contact Putin suggested something similar, going back to the one Western statesman who didn't mention all of this but he suggested something similar, a move towards negotiations and diplomacy instead of escalating the war, try to see if you can bring about an accommodation which would be roughly along these lines. His name is Donald J. Trump, the one statesman I know of in the West, not my favorite person incidentally. I think he's a most dangerous person, maybe in history, but let's tell the truth. He's the one person who said it and it's the right way out. Others have said it too, but not in high positions.

 

 

 

A Disgusting Official Thinker of Putin's Regime

The essay below was published in early April by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti (Russian: РИА Новости).  It was written by one of their writers.  It’s hideous.

 

 If we can’t directly attribute the ideas to Putin we can certainly say that if Putin had the slightest problem with them they would never have appeared or would have been removed. Historian of mass killings, Timothy Snyder, called the article the “Genocide Handbook”.    I did my own analysis and agree.   The original article is below.  My comments in red. - Stanley Heller

 

What should Russia do with Ukraine?

 

by Timofey Sergeytsev

 

Translation

 

We wrote about the inevitability of Ukraine’s denazification as early as last April. We do not need a Nazi, Banderite Ukraine, the enemy of Russia and a tool of the West used to destroy Russia. Today, the denazification issue has taken a practical turn.

 

Denazification is necessary when a considerable number of population (very likely most of it) has been subjected to the Nazi regime and engaged into its agenda. That is, when the “good people — bad government” hypothesis does not apply. Recognizing this fact forms the backbone of the denazification policy and all its measures, while the fact itself constitutes its subject.

 

This is the situation Ukraine has found itself in.

 

No need to prove any of this.  Most people would think a country where all the Far Right together only got 1% of the vote could hardly be a “Nazi country”

 

The fact that the Ukrainian voter was choosing between the “Poroshenko peace” and the “Zelenskyy peace” must not deceive you: Ukrainians were quite happy with the shortest way to peace via a blitzkrieg, which was strongly alluded to by the last two Ukrainian presidents when they were elected. This was the method used to “pacify” home antifascists in Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro[the RU original uses the city’s former name “Dnipropetrovsk”], Mariupol, and other Russian cities — the method of total terror. And ordinary Ukrainians were fine with it. Denazification is a set of actions aimed at the nazified bulk of the population, who technically cannot be directly punished as war criminals.

 

Those Nazis who took up arms must be destroyed on the battlefield, as many of them as possible. No significant distinction should be made between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the so-called “nationalist battalions,” as well as the Territorial Defense, who have joined the two other types of military units. They are all equally complicit in the horrendous violence towards civilians, equally complicit in the genocide of the Russian people, and they don’t comply with the laws

 

What genocide? This is nuts.  The fighting in the Donbas? Warfare with attacks on civilians on both sides.

 

and customs of war. War criminals and active Nazis must be punished in such a way as to provide an example and a demonstration. A total lustration must be conducted. All organizations involved in Nazi actions must be eliminated and prohibited. However, besides the highest ranks, a significant number of common people are also guilty of being passive Nazis and Nazi accomplices. They supported the Nazi authorities and pandered to them. A just punishment for this part of the population can only be possible through bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, waged as carefully and

 

By “inevitable hardships of a just war” you mean murder, right?

 

sparingly as possible relates civilians. The further denazification of this bulk of the population will take the form of re-education through ideological repressions (suppression) of Nazi paradigms and a harsh

 

Nazi “paradigms” such as fair elections, right to assemble, right to a fair trial, etc.

 

censorship not only in the political sphere but also in the spheres of culture and education. It was through culture and education that the pervasive large-scale Nazification of the population was conducted, ensured by the guarantees of dividends from the Nazi regime victory over Russia, by the Nazi propaganda, internal violence and terror, and the 8-year-long war against the people of Donbas, who have rebelled against the Ukrainian Nazism.

 

Denazification can only be conducted by the winner, which means (1) their unconditional control over the denazification process and (2) the authority that can ensure such control. For this purpose, a country that is being denazified cannot possess sovereignty. The denazifier state, Russia, cannot take a liberal approach towards denazification. The denazifier ideology cannot be challenged by the guilty party that is being denazified.

 

There can be no complaints, no due process and no protest no matter what is done to the loser.

 

When Russia admits that Ukraine needs to be denazified, it essentially admits that the Crimea scenario cannot be applied to the whole Ukraine. In all fairness, this scenario was also not possible in the insurgent Donbas in 2014. Only the 8-year-long rebellion against the Nazi violence and terror managed to result in an internal unification and deliberate, explicit, broad-scale refusal of retaining any association with or relation to Ukraine, who has identified itself as a Nazi community.

 

The period of denazification can take no less than one generation that has to be born, brought upm and mature under the conditions of denazification. The nazification of Ukraine has been going on for more than 30 years — starting from as early as 1989, when Ukrainian nationalism was given legal and legitimate forms of political self-expression and led the movement for “independence”, setting a course for Nazism.

 

“independence” means Nazism according to Sergeytsev

 

The current nazified Ukraine is characterized by its formlessness and ambivalence, which allow it to disguise Nazism as the aspiration to “independence” and the “European” (Western, pro-American) path of “development” (in reality, to degradation) and claim that “there is no Nazism” in Ukraine, “only few sporadic incidents.” Indeed, there isn’t a main Nazi party, no Führer, no full-fledged racial laws (only a cutdown version in the form of repressions against the Russian language). As a result — no opposition or resistance against the regime.

 

However, all listed above doesn’t make Ukrainian Nazism a “light version” of the German Nazism of the first half of the 20th century. Quite the opposite: since Ukrainian Nazism is free from such “genre” norms and limitations (which are essentially a product of political technologies), it can spread freely just like a basis for any Nazism — both European and, in its most developed form, the American racism.

 

The fact that Ukraine has nothing that rational people would see as Nazi means it’s a tricky new form of Nazism.

 

That’s why there can be no compromise during denazification, as in the case of the “no to NATO, yes to EU” formula. The collective West is in itself the architect, source, and sponsor of Ukrainian Nazism, while the Banderite supporters from Western Ukraine and their “historical memory” is just one of the tools of the nazification of Ukraine. Ukronazism poses a much bigger threat to the world and Russia than the Hitler version of German Nazism.

 

I almost don’t have to comment here. He says “Ukronazism”,  (a new word “Ukro” and “Nazism”) is a worse threat “to the world”  than Hitler’s Nazism.  It’s a sentence both breathtaking in its stupidity and in its menace.  This is how Hitler talked about the Jews.

 

Apparently, the name “Ukraine” cannot be kept as a title of any fully denazified state entity on the territory liberated from the Nazi regime. The people’s republics, newly created on the territories free from Nazism, must and will develop on the basis of practices of economic self-government and social security, restoration and modernization of systems of essential services for the population.

 

Their political direction cannot be neutral in practice: the redemption of their guilt before Russia for treating it like an enemy can be manifested only by relying on Russia in the processes of restoration, revival, and development. No “Marshall Plans” can be allowed to happen on these territories.

 

In other words treat them worse than the defeated Nazi Germany.  For Sergeytsev declaring independence from Russia was worse than the Germans killing 3 million Soviet POW’s, 1 million citizens during the siege of Leningrad, etc. etc.

 

 No “neutrality” in the ideological and practical sense that is compatible with denazification can be possible. Individuals and organizations who are to become tools of denazification in the new denazified republics cannot but rely on the direct organizational and force support from Russia.

 

Denazification will inevitably include de-ukrainization — the rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component in the self-identification of the population of the historical Malorossiya and Novorossiya territories, which was started by the Soviet authorities. Being a tool of the Communist superpower, this artificial ethnocentrism was not left unclaimed after its fall. It was transferred in its subservient role to a different superpower (the power above states) — the superpower of the West. It needs to be brought back within its natural boundaries and stripped of political functionality.

 

“natural boundaries”, in other words steal Ukrainian land

 

Unlike, for example, Georgia or the Baltic States, history has proved it impossible for Ukraine to exist as a nation-state, and any attempts to “build” such a nation-state naturally lead to Nazism.

 

Calling for independence from a vicious overlord is apparently the essence of Nazism. 

 

Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construct that has no civilizational substance of its own, a subordinate element of an extraneous and alien civilization. Debanderization alone will not be enough for denazification: the Banderite element is only a hand and a screen, a disguise for the European project of the Nazi Ukraine, which is why the denazification of Ukraine means its inevitable de-europeanization.

 

The Banderite elites must be eliminated; their re-education is impossible.

 

So they will be murdered.

 

The social “bog,” which has actively and passively supported them through action and inaction, must go through the hardships of war and internalize the lived experience as a historical lesson and the redemption of its guilt. Those who didn’t support the Nazi regime and suffered from it and the war it started in Donbas must be consolidated and organized, must become the backbone of the new authorities, their vertical and horizontal framework. History has shown that the tragedies and dramas of the war time benefit the peoples who were tempted and carried away by their role as the enemy of Russia.

 

Denazification as a goal of the special military operation within the limits of the operation itself means a military victory over the Kyiv regime, the liberation of the territories from the armed supporters of nazification, the elimination of hard-line Nazis, the imprisonment of war criminals, and the creating of systemic conditions for further denazification in peacetime.

 

The latter, in its turn, must begin with the establishment of local governments, militia, and defense institutions, cleansed of Nazi elements, the launching on their basis of constituent processes to create a new republican statehood, the integration of this statehood into the close cooperation with the Russian agency on Ukraine denazification (newly established or reorganized on the basis of, for example, Rossotrudnichestvo), the adoption of the republican regulatory framework (legislation) on denazification under Russian control, the definition of boundaries and frameworks for the direct application of Russian law and Russian jurisdiction in the liberated territory in regard to denazification, the establishment of a tribunal for crimes against humanity in the former Ukraine. In this regard, Russia should act as the guardian of the Nuremberg Trials.

 

Perhaps the executed will be punished further.

 

All of the above means that in order to achieve the denazification goals, the support of the population is necessary, as well as its transition to the Russian side after its liberation from the terror, violence, and ideological pressure of the Kyiv regime, and after their withdrawal from informational isolation. Of course, it will take some time for people to recover from the shock of military hostilities, to be convinced of Russia’s long-term intentions, meaning “they will not be abandoned.” It’s impossible to foresee exactly in which territories such a mass of the population will constitute a critically needed majority. The “Catholic province” (Western Ukraine, made up of five oblasts) is unlikely to become part of the pro-Russian territories. The exclusion line, however, will be found experimentally. Behind the line, a forcibly neutral and demilitarized Ukraine will remain, with the formally banned Nazism and hostile to Russia. This is where the haters of Russia will go. The threat of an immediate continuation of the military operation in case of non-compliance with the listed requirements must become a guarantee of the preservation of this obsolete Ukraine in a neutral state. Perhaps this will require a permanent Russian military presence on its territory. From the exclusion line to the Russian border, there will be a territory of potential integration into the Russian civilization, which is inherently anti-fascist.

 

Western Ukraine will be a rump state much like the German created  "General Government" of what once was southeast Poland in 1941

 

The operation to denazify Ukraine, which began with a military phase, will follow the same logic of stages in peacetime as during the military operation. At each stage, it will be necessary to achieve irreversible changes, which will become the results of the corresponding stage. In this case, the necessary initial steps of denazification can be defined as follows:

— The elimination of armed Nazi formations (which means any armed formations of Ukraine, including the Armed Forces of Ukraine), as well as the military, informational, and educational infrastructure that ensures their activity;

— The establishment of people’s self-government institutions and militia (defense and law enforcement) of the liberated territories to protect the population from the terror of underground Nazi groups;

— The installation of the Russian information space;

— The seizure of educational materials and the prohibition of educational programs at all levels that contain Nazi ideological guidelines;

— Mass investigations aimed to establish personal responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, the spread of Nazi ideology, and support for the Nazi regime;

— Lustration, making the names of accomplices of the Nazi regime public, involving them in forced labor to restore the destroyed infrastructure as punishment for Nazi activities (from among those who have not become subject to the death penalty or imprisonment);

Forced labor for millions of Ukrainians who believe in the “Nazi” idea of independence

— The adoption at the local level, under the supervision of Russia, of primary normative acts of denazification “from below,” a ban on all types and forms of the revival of Nazi ideology;

— The establishment of memorials, commemorative signs, monuments to the victims of Ukrainian Nazism, perpetuating the memory of the heroes of the struggle against it;

— The inclusion of a set of anti-fascist and denazification norms in the constitutions of the new people’s republics;

— The establishment of permanent denazification institutions for a period of 25 years.

 

Russia will have no allies in the denazification of Ukraine. Because this is a purely Russian business. And also because it is not just the Bandera version of Nazi Ukraine that will be eradicated. The process will also, and above all, affect Western totalitarianism, the imposed programs of civilizational degradation and disintegration, the mechanisms of subjugation under the superpower of the West and the United States.

 

All ideas like the notions of freedoms, equality, and “degradation” meaning LGBTQ rights are Western totalitarianism

 

In order to put the Ukraine denazification plan into practice, Russia itself will have to finally part with pro-European and pro-Western illusions, acknowledge itself as the last authority in protecting and preserving those values of historical Europe (the Old World) that deserve to preserve and that the West ultimately abandoned, losing the fight for itself. This struggle continued throughout the 20th century and found its expression in the world war and the Russian revolution, which were inextricably linked with each other.

 

Russia did everything possible to save the West in the 20th century. It implemented the main Western project that constituted an alternative to capitalism, which defeated the nation-states — the Socialist red project. It crushed German Nazism, a monstrous offspring of the crisis of Western civilization. The last act of Russian altruism was its outstretched hand of friendship, for which it received a monstrous blow in the 1990s.

 

Everything that Russia has done for the West, it has done at its own expense, by making the greatest sacrifices. The West ultimately rejected all these sacrifices, devalued Russia’s contribution to resolving the Western crisis, and decided to take revenge on Russia for the help that it had selflessly provided. From now on, Russia will follow its own way, not worrying about the fate of the West, relying on another part of its heritage — the leadership in the global process of decolonization.

 

As part of this process, Russia has a high potential for partnerships and alliances with countries that the West has oppressed for centuries and which are not going to put on its yoke again. Without Russian sacrifice and struggle, these countries would not have been liberated. The denazification of Ukraine is at the same time its decolonization, which the population of Ukraine will have to understand as it begins to free itself from the intoxication, temptation, and dependence of the so-called European choice.

“denazification of Ukraine is at the same time its decolonization”, war is peace, hate is love, etc. etc.

* An extremist organization banned in Russia.

Translation: A team of Ukrainian volunteers

 

You do notice there’s nothing here about Russia being afraid of NATO as the reason to attack Ukraine.  It’s all about crushing “Nazism” which to Sergeytsev is the gall of Ukrainian to be disgusted and tired of Russian domination.

 

 

Ukraine has Lesson for Climate Activists Supporting Nuclear Power

 

Update March 14.  The Irish Sun (and the Voice of America) reports 

The International Atomic Energy Agency said: "The Ukrainian regulator informed the IAEA that staff at Chernobyl were no longer carrying out repair and maintenance of safety-related equipment.

"It is in part due to their physical and psychological fatigue after working non-stop for nearly three weeks."

 

March 12.  Terrific people like George Monbiot and James Hansen believe nuclear power is essential to keeping humanity from going over the climate precipice.  They argue that nuclear power is a relatively low-carbon and that problems of escaping radiation and nuclear waste are overblown.  I don’t want to get into those arguments right now.  What I do want to say is that I don’t think pro-nuclear climate activists have much considered the safety of nuclear power plants during wars.

 

That’s understandable. Until two weeks ago I didn’t dream that anyone would deliberately attack a nuclear power plant, but Russian troops are doing just that, taking Ukraine’s closed Chernobyl reactors and waste and the biggest operating nuclear power complex at Zaporizhzhia.  

 

Ukrainian economist Tymofiy Mylovanov on Democracy Now claimed a number of MIT professors have concluded that nuclear waste storage areas at Chernobyl have been opened and “mined”, that is explosives are being put there.  On March 11 the Washington Post reported that on the 9^th Russian troops “damaged a high-voltage line that connected the reactor site with the electricity grid.”  It's been off-line since then, running on diesel fuel.  The plants at Chernobyl haven’t been running since 2000, but the electricity is still needed.  It’s used to operate pumps that keep cooling pools working.  The pools are cooling 20,000 spent fuel rods.  We’re told there’s no immediate cause for alarm.

 

The Zaporizhzhia power complex was conquered by Russian troops after a battle that led to a fire that gutted one building, but apparently did not cause the release of radiation.  The plants continue to operate and send out power.  But who is operating them?  Are the Ukrainian workers there allowed to leave?  Did some of the staff flee?  Are the Russians administrating the plants competent?

 

Ukraine has 15 operating nuclear reactors. None so far have leaked significant radiation.  We’ve been lucky.  But do you base a power system on “luck” when an unlucky day could lead to a melt-down?  Should we be putting nuclear power plants all over the world as some want, given humanity’s inability to stop making war?

 

The Tankies New Tactics (part 2)

March 9.  In the runup to the invasion they claimed that U.S. reports about Putin massing troops on Ukraine’s borders were either false or that the U.S. was hysterical for pointing it out.  They couldn’t bring themselves to say, “Putin, don’t invade Ukraine!”  Their slogans were mainly “No US war with Russia” or sometimes “No War Over Ukraine”.  The obvious fact that you don’t bring 150,000 troops to your borders with armaments directed for invasion just to bluff and make a point was beyond them. 

 

Now the campists have switched their tune a bit.  They all react in horror that the Russians actually invaded. OMG, whoever would believe such a thing could happen?  But they can’t bring themselves to express solidarity with Ukraine.  Some say “Solidarity with Russian anti-war protesters” which is good, but they don’t call for solidarity with Ukrainians.  Instead they call for “diplomacy”.  They don’t say it outright, but all find some convoluted way to oppose armaments going to Ukrainians.

 

On Democracy Now! Today March 9 Tariq Ali said, “Further escalation, further armaments, pouring in weapons is going to make conditions worse, principally for people of Ukraine.”   So, no weapons to Ukraine. Instead “diplomacy”.  That’s exactly what the U.S. has been doing in regard to Syria and all the while Assad/Putin ravages the country.  Forgive Ukrainians for not wanting this enlightened outcome.

 

As Gilbert Achcar pointed out in my interview with him last week, what’s going on primarily is not a war between empires (like in 1914), but one empire (Russia) trying to conquer and absorb another much smaller and weaker country (think Vietnam 1967).

 

Yes, Ukraine is getting weapons from “the West”, a nasty empire who at this very moment is keeping Afghan money from starving Afghans.  But think back to 1942.  Then the U.S. allied with the Soviet Union which in the previous decade has murdered about 5 million people under its control.  How many people say it was unprincipled for Roosevelt to ally with Stalin during World War II?

 

March 6 was a day that Stop the War UK and CODEPINK and others called for rallies under the title "Stop the War in Ukraine".  Pictures here.  The Left in Connecticut had a demonstration of 70-100 people in New Haven on that day, but we had a different theme, "Solidarity with Ukrainian Victims of Invasion".  See the stills of the signs and complete video of the New Haven rally here.  I think it's a model for the way the Left should act towards the war.

 

Below is a picture that I think shows the way NOT to be tankie.

 

New Haven, CT  March 6, 2022

 

Waiting

March 4, 2022

 

Mubarak Soulemane's family waiting since January 15, 2020 for a state prosecutor to decide wither or not to indict the state trooper who shot him dead.

 

The family of Omar Abdalmajeed As'ad waiting since January 12, 2022 for any significant punishment for the Israeli soldiers who detained him for no reason and bound him and gagged him and left him for dead.

 

The Tankies New Tactics

 

Feb. 26, 2022.  You may be unfamiliar with the term “tankies”.  In 1956 it referred to the U.S. Communist Party and to those Leftists who apologized for the Soviet Union invasion of Hungary where tanks literally crushed a movement to create a socialism that included democracy.  Another term for these people is “campists”, those who see the world divided into two camps, the U.S. empire and its allies and vassals are one evil imperial camp and everyone else is in the good virtuous camp.  Now the U.S. government sure does lead one imperial camp and does invade or overthrow government whenever it thinks it can get away with it (think Iraq, Yemen, Honduras, etc.), but that doesn’t mean there aren't other imperial camps.  Ask Chechens and Syrians and people from Belarus about what they think of Russia.  Ask people in Tibet and Hong Kong and the Uyghurs what they think of the Chinese government.  But for tankies/campists these people don’t exist or they’re people in the pay of the U.S. CIA.

 

About a month ago 100 peace organizations signed a statement created by ANSWER, CODE PINK, UNAC, the Peace Council and others.  Some of it was fine, its criticism of the U.S. brazen expansion of NATO.  The problem with it though was it all framed as a great power dispute.  The 40 million people in Ukraine who are in fact then threatened with a Russian  invasion were totally ignored.  Small countries have security concerns, too!  While the statement says, " both sides are to blame for causing this crisis" the statement only blamed one side.  It left out the fact that Russia violated its agreement to respect the 1994 borders of Ukraine.  It left out the fact that Russia seized the Crimea from Ukraine and invaded Ukraine's Donbass via Russian "volunteers" and is making those lands de facto part of Russia.  The statement didn’t include the simple demand that Russia obey international law and NOT invade Ukraine further. 

 

Rallies were called for the first weekend in February by the signers of that statement.  They were held in many cities, but they were pitifully small.  The one in DC looked to be 30 people.

 

Now CODE PINK is taking the lead an organizing an “international online rally” today (Feb. 26).  It’s leading headline “No War in Ukraine”

 

For the past week or so these have been its demands:

· No war with Russia

·  Stop the NATO expansion

·  No more weapons to Ukraine and the European Union

·  Obey international laws and the UN Charter

·  Resolve the current conflict within the United Nations Security Council

·  Restore the Minsk Agreements

·  De-escalate the threat of a nuclear war

 

Notice that even though 150,000 Russian soldier surrounded Ukraine on 3 sides there’s no demand that Russia not invade Ukraine.  There’s no refutation of Putin’s claim that Ukraine is not a country and that the land is Russian.  There’s no recognition that there’s an anti-war movement within Russia whose support must be our number 1 priority.  If you look on the CODE PINK site you see their solution for all this is “diplomacy”, getting the great powers together to talk and make a deal.

 

The star speaker for the event is Jeremy Corbyn who made it an act of principal never to support Syrians fighting their fascist overlord and imperial Russia, nor the poisonings of Russians in Britain.  I can imagine his excuses for Putin and his bleatings for ceasefire and  “peace”.

 

Today I notice organizers of the rally added this demand “Withdraw Russian Troops”.  Well, bully for them.

 

I could write more, but I’m going to check out a rally for Ukrainians at noon in Hartford.

 

Also, For the Sake of the Climate We Denounce

the Growing War

 

Feb. 23, 2022. Draft of a statement on climate and war.

 

Obviously, war over Ukraine will directly cause awful death and injury to humans, but already we see what war mobilization and energy preparedness are doing to our hopes to maintain livable climates. As armies are moving and training, they are burning fossil fuels and creating large amounts of greenhouse gases. Warfare between armies will produce far more. 

 

Measures to prepare for cutoffs of Russian natural gas are leading world leaders to go back to even the worst climate polluting methods of creating energy.  The New York Times reports, “In Britain, the Coal Authority gave a mine in Wales permission last month to increase output by 40 million tons over the next two decades. In Australia, there are plans to open or expand more coking coal mines. And China, which has traditionally made energy security a priority, has further stepped up its coal production and approved three new billion-dollar coal mines this week.”  Fracked gas companies are looking to reopen closed drilling sites. 

 

Scientists have been sounding the alarm for decades. We have to stop spewing greenhouse gases into the air.

 

No war.  Russia, get out of Ukraine. Dissolve war alliances like NATO and the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

 

The Clock is ticking. Tipping points for climate collapse are approaching.  Stop the imperial wars for resources and power.  Human civilization is at stake.

 

What about Syria?

Feb. 9, 2022.  Listening to Democracy Now this morning about all the heavy sanctions many in Congress want to levy against Putin/Russia because he's massed troops on the Ukrainian border.  Wondering why wasn't any of this considered with Syria against Assad?

 

Putin is threatening Ukraine, right, but he's done a hell of a lot more in Syria.  He's assisted a murderous regime in killing hundreds of thousands and exiling millions.  His intervention in 2015 turned the tide of the fighting, defeated the freedom uprising (or revolution as you will) and paved the way for religious-based extremists from taking over in areas that had been controlled by democratic forces.  His planes bomb Syria constantly, schools, hospitals, markets, crowds of civilians, etc.

 

Not really calling for sanctions which often harm the people more than the regime, but for action.  1) send millions of dollars' worth of concrete to Idlib so hospitals and schools and buildings for homes can be constructed. 2) make U.S. radar tracking of Russian and Syrian jets public so that people in Idlib can have some warning of attacks; 3) press Turkey to allow more trade and refugees to come from Idlib

 

And Take Away Guns from Most Cops, Too 

 

Janury 24, 2022 first printed March 24, 2018

 

In today’s “March for Our Lives” the emphasis is on taking military rifles out of the hands of civilians and other measures to curb the lust to sell weapons from the out-of-control gun industry. Absolutely right. Yet, there’s another demand that should be made: Sharply limit the number of police with guns.

 

A few days ago a young man was shot to death in Sacramento. He was in his own backyard. It was dark and police were looking for someone suspected of break-ins. A policeman said he saw something and yelled, “Gun, gun, gun.” Police shot Stephon Clark 20 times. All he was holding was a cell phone.

 

Last May in Bridgeport, Conn., 15-year-old, Jayson Negron, evidently stole a car and went joyriding with some friends. He was chased by police almost immediately, drove the wrong way down a street, was stopped, a policeman challenged him and within a few minutes Negron is shot dead and a passenger wounded.

 

Angry protests broke out after these killings as they did after Michael Brown and so many others were shot. Demands were made for severe punishment of police, but in all but a few cases, the police were found by prosecutors or juries to have used “reasonable” force.

 

But what if the officers involved with Clark and Negron did not have guns? If they thought their lives were in danger, they could have backed up and taken cover and called for reinforcements. They could have lit up the areas and taken photos. They could have surrounded the suspect, waited him out and talked him into surrendering. Yes, maybe the suspect could have escaped, but we’re not talking about suspected murderers here. The crimes being investigated were stealing, car theft, and in Michael Brown’s case taking something from a store. None of these crimes carry the death sentence. With streets and highways full of cameras and with questioning of witnesses suspects would get tracked down sooner or later.

 

Plain and simple take away guns from the average police officer. Only arm special squads of police with pistols and rifles and only call them into action in grave circumstances.

 

Is this some fantasy? No, it’s the normal way things go in Great Britain. Only 5 percent of police there carry firearms. And British police don’t want to carry guns. A poll by their union found 82 percent want to keep things are they are.

 

A few years ago Metropolitan Police Brian Paddick explained front-line officers would not be keen to face the agonizing, split-second decisions faced by their counterparts in specialist firearms units.

 

“In terms of the police being approachable, in terms of the public being the eyes and ears of the police, officers don’t want to lose that,” he said.

 

According to the British Home Office, there were 14,753 police firearms operations in the year ending March 2016 and seven incidents in which police discharged their guns. You read that right, seven incidents where the police shot the guns. And that year was no exception in the years immediately before 2016 it was often six or four and once just three.

 

The UK is no paradise of civilization. You recall they’ve had a number of terrorist incidents and lots of other serious crime over the years. Yet they have a way of dealing with crime that doesn’t get a lot of civilians (and police) shot.

 

So let’s chill not only by taking AR-15 away from civilians but by removing Glocks and Smith and Wesson’s away from police, too.