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Bulletin 293: Ukraine conflict: If you want a ceasefire (as we do), stop firing March 5, 2022 Permalink for this bulletin. Please forward! Previously: Bulletin 292: (03/01/22) Statement on the Ukraine conflict and war with Russia Dear friends and colleagues -- We hope you are all thriving. There is a lot going on here at the Study Group, including analysis and communication of new revelations bearing on Los Alamos National Laboratory's (LANL's) struggle to be able to manufacture nuclear warhead cores ("pits"). That's coming, but not today. First, there is a crying need to provide some perspectives and information about the war in Ukraine, which as we noted on March 1 is now a global hybrid war that will affect all of us, not just people in Ukraine. We have three practical suggestions at the end. This is a war that could become a nuclear war at any time. Quite a few stupid statements are coming from members of Congress (whom the collective we might try to reach) and from leaders of other states. The situation is not contained at any level, or stable. Short of nuclear war, highly consequential decisions are being made which will have grave consequences for decades to come not just for Ukraine and Russia but for the entire world. Among these are decisions about direct and indirect military participation by outside parties, membership in NATO, economic sanctions and counter-sanctions, whether or not to enter into peace negotiations and how sincerely to do so. We need to be clear that economic warfare via sanctions and counter-sanctions may kill millions of people -- even hundreds of millions under some easily-imagined scenarios. Some economic weapons under discussion may harm global agriculture, induce famines, topple governments, and create waves of destitute migrants. Others would cripple large industries, bringing economies to near-standstill. Supply-chain and financial cross-contagions could cripple modern economies quickly. The collateral damage of tit-for-tat economic warfare, which will invariably hurt the most vulnerable most of all, is unknowable. It is a weapon of mass destruction. It is imperative to bring peace to Ukraine and to not inflame or broaden this conflict further. Our words can kill, or heal. Propaganda is also a weapon of mass destruction in this context. The "blame game" augments and strengthens Western pro-war, pro-sanction, pro-NATO propaganda. It has deadly consequences and we urge -- we beg -- peace organizations and peace-minded individuals to avoid it. It's very hard to write about this war because most of us have unknowingly incorporated "facts" and frames from the mainstream Western media into our worldview. The reality of U.S. foreign proxy wars, hybrid wars, and regime-change operations is simply very different from what is presented to all of us. There is no possible way we can offer enough references or analysis to bridge the gap in knowledge for everybody. We can't run an information service about this war. (Some of us do it between ourselves, informally!) We hope you will spend some time with the sources listed below. There is a lot of good analysis out there. None of it is coming from U.S. mainstream media or think-tank sources, to be blunt. We can't emphasize enough that epochal events are happening, and we can't know about them unless we spend some time trying to figure out what is going on. Peace and disarmament organizations in the West have a special obligation to transcend the propaganda of their governments and the U.S. alliance system. There are too many Western NGOs which use, unconsciously, frames and narratives that have been supplied from governments, directly and indirectly. In Bulletin 292 we refused to either justify or condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. We believe it is best for the peace movement to devote its energies toward finding the most peaceful way forward from this point, with the least loss of life and greatest chance for peace and stability going forward. We are idealists, but we also need to be anchored in reality, in what's happening now. Clearly, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is illegal under international law. Don't imagine that we don't know that! The far-deadlier, U.S.- and U.K.-supported war against the Houthis is also illegal. (Perhaps because the Houthis are not ethnic Europeans, they don't matter too much?) The 2003 Iraq war was illegal. The shelling, over 8 years, of settlements and cities in the Donbass region by ultra-nationalist Ukrainian forces was and is also illegal. This and much, much more that we might mention does not justify Russia's invasion, but it provides a little bit of context. The point again is to how to bring peace, not where to cast blame. There is a lot of blame to go around -- including in the U.S. and Western NGOs, which have ignored the dangers posed by NATO, the ongoing crimes in the Donbass, Ukraine's preparations for war there, and the overall thrust of U.S. policy to subordinate or break Russia, since at least the NATO Summit in Bucharest in 2008. In Bulletin 292 our desiderata began with "a negotiated peace at the earliest possible time." We noted that a complete, instantaneous ceasefire would not be very unlikely while arms and military assistance were flowing into Ukraine. We noted that there was no humanity or morality in continuing a hopeless fight when the military outcome is already known. Prudent surrender saves lives. Since then, there has been at least one temporary Russian ceasefire, to open a humanitarian corridor in Mariupol. Unfortunately, the forces defending the city did not let people through. The long and the short of it is, if you want a ceasefire, stop firing. A note on information sources We have been following many news sources and analysts. Depending on your level of interest and need you can do the same, despite an increasing curtain of censorship. Unless you are a professional and need to know what bullshit is being spewed by U.S. mainstream media, don't bother with them. Nearly everything reported in the U.S. mainstream about this war is propaganda in one form or another. "Facts" often aren't true, and in any case are always carefully selected to support the official U.S. government line. Context, if there is any, is heavily abridged and skewed as necessary to support approved narratives. Trust in U.S. media is near all-time lows (here and here) for very good reasons. In our experience, this level of unrebutted narrative control first appeared in relation to the U.S.-fomented coup in Ukraine. By late 2015 we (the Study Group) noticed (at slide 7):
The only alternative to being a propaganda victim is to triangulate reality using multiple sources, mentally assessing each for their self-interest, ideological biases, hard-to-fake details provided, past trustworthiness, and so on. References and quotations can be checked. Through the years we have learned that people with political views quite different from ours can be very good analysts. So what are some decent sources of information about this conflict? Try these few, and their sources:
We could list a lot more, but this is enough. We omit the usual progressive outlets, which are unreliable. One interesting observation is that there are a lot of well-known voices on the political right as well as the left which oppose further involvement in, or escalation of, this war. It takes time and reflection to learn. As always, caveat emptor. What we can do It is apparent that few in the U.S. government truly grasp the dangers inherent in the war they have provoked -- either before it began, or now -- or the consequences of their actions now. Three tasks jump out:
Greg and Trish, for the Study Group |
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