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January 25, 2023 Bulletin 322: Right and Left To Join in D.C. Protest: ‘Not One More Penny for War in Ukraine’ / Bulletin of Atomic Scientists resets clock, blames Russia Permalink for this bulletin (please forward). Simple home page. Detailed home page.
Dear friends and colleagues -- The original plan of this Bulletin was to focus on nuclear weapons policy sensu stricta. That must wait until next time. 1. Right and Left To Join in D.C. Protest: ‘Not One More Penny for War in Ukraine’ In this important article, John Walsh writes: On February 19, Washington, DC, will witness a protest against the war in Ukraine that marks a sharp departure from past demonstrations. The lead demand is simple and direct, "Not One More Penny for war in Ukraine." It is a demand that emphasizes what we in the US can do to end the war, not what others can do. After all, the only government we have the power to influence is our own. We entirely concur with this "simple and direct" demand. His point about our own government being the only one we have the power to influence is surely all too obvious, yet we frequently see antiwar activists in this country fatuously focusing wholly or partly on what Russia should or shouldn't do, or shouldn't have done. That certainly avoids speaking truth to power. Above and beyond that demand, the potential power of this unique and promising movement arises from the nature of the sponsoring organizations – The Peoples Party, a progressive new Party, and the Libertarian Party. It is in fact what much of the press would term a "right-left" Coalition, spanning a spectrum broad enough to actually bring the proxy war in Ukraine to an end. Fittingly, the organizers are calling the protest "Rage Against the War Machine." With the war in Ukraine putting us [near or at] the precipice of nuclear Armageddon, "rage" might be considered a mild reaction. "Rage" is by definition opposed to rational thought and action, both of which we badly need more of in this country. That said, many anti-war, anti-militarism, and pro-domestic-priorities views are shared by many on the so-called "left" and the so-called "right." The cardinal demands of this protest, as Walsh explains them here, are to our view excellent:
The Democrats and Republicans have armed Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in weapons and military aid. The war has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, and is pushing us toward a nuclear WW3. Stop funding the war.
The US government instigated the war in Ukraine with a coup of its democratically elected government in 2014, and then sabotaged a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine in March. Pursue an immediate ceasefire and diplomacy to end the war.
The war is accelerating inflation and increasing food, gas and energy prices. The US blew up Russian gas pipelines to Europe, starving them of energy and deindustrializing their countries. End the war and stop increasing prices.
NATO expansion to Russia’s border provoked the war in Ukraine. NATO is a warmongering relic of the Cold War. Disband it like the Warsaw Pact. In general, we do not advocate long-distance travel to demonstrations. (I, Greg, am going to attend because I will already be in Washington.) There is no reason why supporting demonstrations with the same or similar demands, also with participation from across the so-called political spectrum if that can be managed, cannot be organized in our own communities. The rapidly-escalating NATO-Russia war in which we now find ourselves is a severe threat to everybody and everything on this planet. President Biden could de-escalate and stop this war in an hour with a few phone calls, saving what's left of Ukraine and avoiding escalation beyond the point of no return. That "point of no return" is invisible and unknowable. A war of this magnitude empowers a lot of people, in a number of countries, to cross other people's red lines, with or without permission from anybody. "Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war" is a famously apt description -- of what the U.S. and some of its NATO allies are doing right now. "Havoc" is not controllable. But "RussiaRussiaRussia," many say. That's just a distraction from the de-escalatory, life-saving power that is instantly available to the leaders of the United States and its major NATO allies. Our job is to make them choose life, not more death. 2. Our Ukraine page is being updated daily and may be useful to you The mainstream media in the U.S. and many European countries is pretty far gone. Fortunately there are alternative sources of information and analysis. Every day, usually in the morning as soon as we can, we offer what we think are the most important, best, and most easily-read or -heard alternative news and views. We urge you to take advantage of this resource and to share it with as many as you can. Why is this important to us and why should it be important to you? First, there can be no nuclear disarmament, or significant cooperation on climate issues or any other global issue, without the cooperation of Russia or China. How in the world could that be possible without peace in Ukraine, and in regards to Taiwan, at the very minimum? The alternative to peace -- which is explicit in U.S., Polish, and unfortunately now also German policy -- is based on the defeat and subjugation or "regime change" of Russia. There is no rational reason to think Russia is going to be defeated in Ukraine. What then? What more will U.S. and European leaders sacrifice on the altar of their own hubris and stupidity? Ukraine, certainly. That's already done. But everything? Even without nukes flying, the increasingly-total war in which we are engaged against our will -- and against the Constitution of the United States for that matter -- won't allow any space for the domestic priorities we'd all like to see. Our Ukraine page, which develops further every day, is a good resource not just for individual study but also for study groups, students, activists, and peace-oriented communities of all kinds. We know of one local religious community which has undertaken an action-oriented study of the situation, a process which we hope will be catalyzed by some of you and repeated in many places, using whatever resources you deem best. There's a lot of good open-source intelligence "out there." Learning to assess it is a meta-skill those who would be actual citizens, not just "consumers," should have in what has become an Age of Lies. 3. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists resets clock, blames Russia As can be seen in the Bulletin's announcement, its famous "doomsday clock" has been now set at 90 seconds to midnight, down from the 100 seconds set in 2020. (By way of comparison, before, during, and after the Cuban missile crisis, the clock remained at 7 minutes to midnight.) Fair enough. We are definitely in a scary situation, one which calls us to action. The big problem is that the Bulletin's announcement pretty much blames Russia and only Russia throughout, and uses very dubious "facts" to do so. One could tear this announcement apart sentence by sentence, starting with the first paragraph. "Ukraine’s sovereignty and broader European security arrangements that have largely held since the end of World War II are at stake." Ukraine was sovereign throughout the Cold War? Really. Sovereign after a U.S.- and NATO-led coup overthrew Ukraine's democratically-elected leader in what STRATFOR's George Friedman in late 2014 called "the most blatant coup in history"? Where U.S. officials discussed by phone whom they would choose to rule Ukraine (whole conversation)? Which cost $5 billion to bring about? (For much more, see Consortium News "Evidence of US-Backed Coup in Kiev" and the quirky but richly-documented "2022 The Year in Review: The War in Ukraine" by Dave Collum). The Ukraine being sold out to Blackrock and a variety of Big Ag interests? The Ukraine in which Zelensky asked attendees of the World Economic Forum last June to be "shareholders?" The Ukraine the U.S. and NATO allies now pay for lock, stock, and barrel every day? That sovereign Ukraine? And what about those "broader European security arrangements that have largely held since the end of World War II?" The operative word is "largely," given NATO's illegal bombing campaign in Serbia in 1999. Still in the first paragraph, "Also, Russia’s war on Ukraine has raised profound questions about how states interact, eroding norms of international conduct that underpin successful responses to a variety of global risks." Why didn't the Bulletin raise "profound questions" about why and how the increasing provocations in Ukraine and elsewhere were orchestrated? What about the 14,000 or so people who died in the Donbass before Russia began its "Special Military Operation," which became a war after negotiations were spiked by the U.S. and U.K. in the spring? What about the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines, regarding which all available evidence points toward the U.S., U.K., and possibly Poland? What kind of "norm of international conduct" was that? Or do we suppose that Russia and Germany blew up their own pipelines? So what's the answer? The skillfully-conveyed propaganda offered by the Bulletin leads us in exactly the wrong direction, away from any minor stain that might stick to our own "City on a Hill." The Bulletin is part of the problem, not the solution. I tried to summarize the situation in a few words this morning in response to a local newspaper article about the Bulletin's new clock setting. It is frankly not easy or fun or financially profitable for us to make criticisms of the Bulletin or of articles based on its corporate action. Somebody had to do it.
I think the Bulletin is being quite cowardly. The penultimate conclusion of Ritter's assessment (linked above) is that: The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to know these underlying facts, and not to see them as truth. In my estimation, this indifference is largely a byproduct of academic environments, where existential concerns for humanity are almost invariably secondary to career interests, as a matter of economic survival. Lewis Mumford, writing in 1953 about "the new sense of social responsibility" of the leading atomic scientists, thought they "did their best, in this brief time, to repair the damage caused by their century-old indifference to social consequences." But their best was not good enough. To have aroused mankind fully to the extent of the political invention and moral rehabilitation...the actions of the scientists would have had to speak even louder than their words. They would have had to close their laboratories, give up their researches, renounce their careers, defy their governments, possibly endure martyrdom, if they were to convey to the public the full urgency of their convictions....And while "science as usual" prevailed, it was fanciful to hope that "business as usual" and "politics as usual" could be shaken out of their rut. (Lewis Mumford, "Social Consequences of Atomic Energy," 1953, in this collection) So "Let the truth now be told, as perhaps the one means left to keep the heavens from falling" (Mumford, same essay). Thank you for your attention and mutual solidarity -- use it, please, in the present crisis. The fact of a crisis is something the Bulletin did get right. Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group |
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