September 2023

Sep 30, 2023

Featured • Modern Empire Apologia Is Mostly Just Westerners Arguing With Reality, Caitlin Johnstone, Sep 29, 2023
This ought to be obvious, but Caitlin is right: it is not. I gave a talk partly about Ukraine recently, and one or two questions from the audience were along the lines of "shouldn't Russia give up all the territory it controls?" Somehow the idea that impossible things are choices "we" "should" be making wasn't obviously absurd to these questioners. Only one second of thought is necessary to dispel that fantasy. While the problem is in part ignorance, that's not the whole problem, because ignorance can be fixed by education, if people cared. The tendency is quite prevalent to not just believe in what amounts to magic -- in a magic Santa Claus who will keep us in power, luxury and ease -- but to actually demand it, and condemn people who want to live in reality. Sure, let's all pretend that Joe Biden is actually compos mentis. Let's pretend the U.S. did not orchestrate the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines. Let's pretend that hydrogen from any source is a viable substitute for natural gas, gasoline, and diesel. Let's pretend the supply of rare minerals is adequate to replace all the cars and trucks in the world with electric vehicles, which can all be powered by...rainbows, or nuclear fusion, or whatever. Let's pretend that Joe Biden did not financially benefit, directly or indirectly, from bribes from foreign entities seeking favors. Far too many people are "checking out."

 • Ukraine Loses Up to 690 Soldiers Over Past 24 Hours, Sputnik International, Sep 30, 2023
All sacrificed for the egos of Western political leaders and nothing more.

 • Russia Has Gained More Territory This Year Than Ukraine, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, Sep 28, 2023

Russian forces have gained more territory in Ukraine this year than the Ukrainian side despite the Ukrainian counteroffensive that was launched in June, The New York Times reported on Thursday.

The report noted that despite nine months of heavy fighting in Ukraine, only about 500 square miles of territory have changed hands this year. Russia has gained 331 square miles while Ukraine has gained 143, a difference of 188, which amounts to Russia’s net gain in territory so far this year....

The Times quoted Marina Miron, a postdoctoral researcher in war studies at King’s College London, who said Russia appears to be comfortable holding the territory it currently controls rather than seeking rapid gains.

“It’s not losing anything by not moving forward,” Miron said. “The whole strategy in Ukraine is for the Russians to let the Ukrainians run against those defenses, kill as many as possible, and destroy as much Western equipment as possible.”

Sep 29, 2023

Featured • How Long Does It Take to Train an Abrams Crew and Who Will Be Manning Them in Ukraine?, Ilya Tsukanov, Sputnik International, Sep 28, 2023

And as the tanks break down, or get stuck, they could instantly find themselves targets for Russian troops armed with man-portable anti-tank weapons, mortars, artillery, and kamikaze drones, Litovkin said. “Therefore I don’t think that the Abrams will play any major role in modern warfare,” with the Americans likely to “once again damage their own reputation,” just like the British did by sending their "unbeatable" Challengers.

Moscow announced that it plans to increase military spending by nearly 70% in 2024 as it fights against what the Kremlin has dubbed NATO’s “hybrid war.” Russia’s defense budget next year, which is dwarfed by the Pentagon budget, will still be less than the total amount the US has already pledged to assist Kiev in its proxy war with Moscow.

A new map and series of infographics created and published by The New York Times on Thursday shows a stalemated frontline stretching from southern Ukraine and across the entire east of the country. It also underscores that Russia exercises control over the vast majority of the territories of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia—which was a stated goal of Putin's war aims.

The Times finds that "Less territory changed hands in August than in any other month of the war" and that "While Ukraine made small gains in the south, Russia took slightly more land overall, mostly in the northeast." And in total, the report says, "When both sides’ gains are added up, Russia now controls nearly 200 square miles more territory in Ukraine compared with the start of the year."

To allow Ukrainian soldiers to save their lives and surrender, the Russian military launched a special radio channel “Volga”. According to reports from the front, over the past month, almost 11 thousand servicemen of the Ukrainian army contacted the Russians through this channel and surrendered.

The frequency, 149.200 call sign ‘Volga’, was set up by the Russian military during the summer. Thus far, it has been used by more than 10,000 Ukrainian servicemen who were subsequently taken into Russian custody, according to a source with knowledge of the situation cited by TASS. The person added that the radio frequency is active along the entire front line.

“More than 10,0000 Ukrainian soldiers have chosen life and used the 149.200 ‘Volga’ frequency to surrender. The prisoners are well-fed and are provided with all the necessary medical care,” the source stated.

Sep 28, 2023

 • America's Russia Jenga Strategy is Backfiring, Larry Johnson, Sep 27, 2023
So-called "left" and "right" (Johnson being in the latter camp) in the U.S. disagree (partially) about the nature and causes of the looming catastrophes here in the U.S., but the perception that the U.S. is in very deep trouble is common to both.

 • House Kills Rep. Gaetz’s Amendment to Ban Transfer of Cluster Bombs, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, Sep 27, 2023

The House on Wednesday night voted down an amendment to the Pentagon appropriations bill introduced by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) that would have banned the transfer of civilian-killing cluster bombs to other countries.

The amendment failed in a vote of 160-269, with only 85 Republicans and 75 Democrats supporting the measure.

Sep 27, 2023

Featured  • Nobody Who Fought Against Russia Could Possibly Be Bad!, Caitlin Johnstone, Sep 27, 2023

Western minds have become so warped by cold war hysteria these last few years that it never occurred to a single person in an entire giant room full of professional politicians that someone who fought against Russia during World War II might be a bad guy. Having fought against Russia at any point in history is just reflexively assumed to have put you on the right side.

This war wasn’t just provoked, it was knowingly provoked. Off ramp after off ramp was sped past by the US war machine at a hundred miles an hour on its beeline toward a horrific proxy war, because empire managers had calculated that such a war would serve US interests. And now we routinely see US officials like Mitch McConnell openly saying that this war serves US interests.

They really couldn’t be more obvious about it if they tried....

Their only remaining trick is to argue with reality; to basically say that yes it’s reality that NATO expansion provoked this war because Moscow saw it as a threat, but reality shouldn’t have been what reality was. They argue that Russia should have felt completely different feelings about a military threat on its border than nations like the United States would feel, since as we’ve discussed previously the last time there was a credible military threat near the US border the US responded so aggressively that the world almost ended....

If all westerners deeply understood all the suffering and danger that has been unleashed upon our world by this war, and deeply understood the fact that their own governments played a role in starting it, the political status quo of the western world would be impossible to maintain. Which is why such unprecedented levels of propaganda and internet censorship have gone into preventing westerners from coming to such an understanding.

Sep 26, 2023

Featured -- Highly recommended!  • The ‘Last Man’ Teleology and the Fall of the West, Alastair Crooke, Strategic Culture Foundation, Sep 25, 2023
This short essay, built on prior ones over the past year, knits together several seemingly-disparate issues, foreign and domestic, in what I think is a pretty darn concise, masterful synthesis.

Featured -- Highly recommended  • Hersh Reveals U.S. Motive For Destruction Of Nord Stream Pipelines, Moon of Alabama, Sep 26, 2023

After Biden’s order to trigger the explosives planted on the pipelines, it took only a short flight with a Norwegian fighter and the dropping of an altered off-the-shelf sonar device at the right spot in the Baltic Sea to get it done. By then the CIA group had long disbanded. By then, too, the official told me: “We realized that the destruction of the two Russian pipelines was not related to the Ukrainian war”—Putin was in the process of annexing the four Ukrainian oblasts he wanted—“but was part of a neocon political agenda to keep Scholz and Germany, with winter coming up and the pipelines shut down, from getting cold feet and opening up” the shuttered Nord Stream 2. “The White House fear was that Putin would get Germany under his thumb and then he was going to get Poland.”...

The Biden administration blew up the pipelines but the action had little to do with winning or stopping the war in Ukraine. It resulted from fears in the White House that Germany would waver and turn on the flow of Russia gas—and that Germany and then NATO, for economic reasons, would fall under the sway of Russia and its extensive and inexpensive natural resources. And thus followed the ultimate fear: that America would lose its long-standing primacy in Western Europe. (emphasis by MoA)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office denied any knowledge of Hunka and his Nazi service, stating, “The Speaker had his own allotment of guest seating at Friday’s address, which were determined by the Speaker and his office alone.” Whether Trudeau (and his Stepan Bandera-sympathizing deputy PM Chrystia Freeland) knew about Yaroslav Hunka or not, the question remains: why was he never brought to justice? He, or any of the other 2,000 SS Nazis Canada reportedly took in in the years following WW2. Having been accepted as anti-communist refugees with little to no scrutiny, these suspected war criminals and collaborators have been allowed to live out the rest of their days in peace, and most of them have done so openly under their own names, as the Simon Wiesenthal Center has repeatedly reported.

There is much to be said about Canada’s history with Ukrainian Nazis. Not only did it take them in after WW2, but the government-backed Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which, until recently, listed Nazi-collaborator veterans organizations as members, as well as government-funded Ukrainian ‘youth centers’ that celebrate Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich. There are even monuments honoring Nazi collaborators and Ukrainian Insurgent Army criminals still standing in Canadian cities. Canada has also supported modern-day Nazis in Ukraine itself, by training members of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion on Canadian soil, although Canadian corporate media has in recent years attempted to downplay this....

After all, as Canadian researcher Tamara Lorincz noted, while everyone applauded the Ukrainian Nazi, “Not one MP called for peace, ceasefire & negotiations.” That’s the quiet part few are willing to say out loud – just as Canada apparently accepted SS “refugees” because they were fighters against the Soviet Union’s communism, just as Canada (and other Western powers) are willing to support terrorists if they are fighting against an “undesirable” government in the Middle East, so will Canada continue to cover for, give support to, and pretend to not notice a resurgence of one of history’s most atrocious ideologies as long as its adherents can be used against the current adversary – Russia.

"When speaking about the conflict in Ukraine, [US President Joe] Biden, [NATO Secretary General Jens] Stoltenberg and other Western officials have started calling it 'a war of attrition.' They have put huge amounts of money into militarizing the Kiev regime. Where has it gotten them? The simple facts are these: the West is experiencing weapons and ammunition shortages, people in Europe and the US have lost trust in politicians, and the Kiev regime’s counteroffensive has failed," Volodin stated.

According to him, the outcome of the "war of attrition" also includes economic problems in Europe and the US, a lack of manpower for the Ukrainian armed forces, and ultimately bankruptcy and demographic disaster for Ukraine. "These seven facts speak for themselves: Ukraine will cease to exist as a state unless the Kiev regime capitulates on Russia’s terms," Volodin stressed.

"More than 10.5 million people have fled Ukraine. Another 11.2 million residents of Crimea, Sevastopol, the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions decided to join Russia. Ukraine has lost 53.7% of its population since 2014," the State Duma speaker highlighted.

“Each new call from Western leaders is more foolish, reckless, and ideologically charged than the previous one, making it more dangerous for the world. They are consciously fuelling the disintegration of their societies by promoting anti-human values.” Meanwhile, modern information technology and the internet has become a convenient tool for demonization and manipulation of public perceptions. “Even now, to fight the hated Russians, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are being sent to their deaths,” wrote the scholar. “Clearly, many more are dying from the collapse of infrastructure and healthcare. These victims are either completely forgotten or deliberately downplayed. Clearly, there is an even worse attitude toward demonized Russians. Russophobia has reached almost unprecedented proportions, perhaps comparable to how the Nazis viewed Slavs and Jews.”

This is happening against the backdrop of a broken dialogue system and the collapse of the arms control system, which, while not always useful and sometimes even harmful in the past, at least provided channels of communication between leading military powers, according to Karaganov. Meanwhile, a global realignment is underway with the West waging a “desperate final battle to preserve its dominance,” as per the Russian scholar. “A seismic shift is taking place in global geopolitics, geostrategy, and geoeconomics, and it is gaining momentum. New continents are rising, and global problems are worsening. The emergence of new sources of friction and conflicts is inevitable,” he wrote. Amid this unprecedented rapid redistribution of global power from the West to the global majority, Russia has become historically designated as “its military and political core,” according to Karaganov.

[..] “Humanity is facing an existential challenge to prevent the inexorably approaching catastrophe of the Third World War within the next decade or so by forcing the West, primarily the United States, to step back and adapt to the new reality. To achieve this, we need to compel their ‘deep state’ to refresh, as much as possible, the ruling elites, whose low quality does not meet the challenges facing humanity today. The falling West may drag everyone along, including its deep state,” he highlighted. To that end, Western elites should once again realize that nuclear armageddon poses a real threat to the world, according to the scientist....

However, even in such a potentially fairer world, there will be need to strengthen the “fuse,” the reliance on nuclear deterrence. New giants will enter the stage, and they will inevitably engage in a competition. The intensification of the nuclear factor with the terror it instils is necessary to prevent the inevitable rivalry from escalating into hostilities. Therefore, if nuclear weapons will have to be used (God forbid), the strike should be of a sufficiently large proportion.

If nuclear weapons are used on a small scale, with a yield of several kilotonnes, it could potentially win us a war but would destroy the fear that had preserved relative peace for three-quarters of a century. Nuclear weapons would become “usable.” I’m aware that I was joined by some colleagues in the West in my fear of limited nuclear exchanges between India and Pakistan in this context. The world would not collapse, but the sacrosanct fear of nuclear weapons would disappear. Fear would be restored if it were to be used in Europe, since it still plays the key role in the global media agenda. But, I reiterate, heaven forbid that ever comes to pass and pray that one could avoid using the weapon of God to bring sense to those, who have lost it.

These are terrible ideas, expressed intelligently, but terrible and wrong nonetheless. We post them here to show the dangers of pressing on with the idiocy of present U.S. policies. This guy is not alone -- there will be other conservatives in Russia who think like this.

Sep 25, 2023

 • Ukraine SitRep: Battlefield Reports Show Lack Of Armor And Certain Munitions, Moon of Alabama, Sep 25, 2023

 • US government stopped me from interviewing Putin – Tucker Carlson, RT, Sep 24, 2023

 • We’ve Been on the Burisma Story Since 2014, Consortium News, Sep 24, 2023

 • ‘New World Order’ Vs ’Empire Of Lies’ – Lavrov at UN: Key takeaways from Lavrov’s UN speech, RT, Sep 23, 2023

Russia is calling for “an immediate and full” lifting of sanctions imposed against such nations as Cuba, Venezuela and Syria, Lavrov said, adding that such unilateral punitive measures “blatantly violate the principle of sovereign equality of nations” and interfere with these countries’ rights to development. “One should put an end to any coercive measures imposed in circumvention of the UN Security Council as well as to the West’s … practice of manipulating its sanctions policies to exert pressure on those deemed undesirable,” he added. Russia’s top diplomat also blasted the US over what he called threats against nations willing to work with Moscow. “It is shameful for a great power to run around like this and threaten everyone and only demonstrating its obsession with domination,” he told journalists after the UNGA session.

Moscow is ready for talks on its ongoing conflict with Kiev at any time, Lavrov told a press conference on the sidelines of the UN assembly. However, Russia will not consider any deals involving a ceasefire, he said, adding that Moscow and Kiev had supposedly almost reached an agreement in the first months of the conflict following a series of talks in Belarus and Türkiye only for this process to be disrupted, supposedly by Ukraine’s Western backers.“Putin said it very clearly: yes, we are ready for talks but we will not consider any ceasefire proposals because we did so once and were deceived.” Russia also respects Ukraine’s sovereignty in accordance with the Ukrainian declaration of independence and its constitution, Lavrov said, adding that both documents also declare the non-aligned status of Ukraine and respect for the Russian language and Russian-speaking minorities.

Ukraine’s sovereignty “was destroyed by those who staged and supported a coup, the leaders of which then declared a war on their own people,” Lavrov said, referring to the 2014 Maidan coup.

This is the reality today. We lose because we don’t have the capacity. But before Ukraine nobody understood that. Nobody believed that. Everybody believed that America was the supreme military power in the world. Today, the blinders have come off. Economically, we’re number two. Maybe we can maintain that position, maybe not. Militarily, we’re number three. And who knows where we’ll go with that. Because our military is a broken system. We spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a system that produces nothing beneficial to the defense of the United State. Let alone the defense of its allies. How can you spend $900 billion a year and say we can’t fight and prevail in a land war in Europe against the Russian army that spends $68 billion a year? It’s because our system is broken. But that’s another question.

Ukraine has changed everything. Before Ukraine, America was number one, at least perception-wise. After Ukraine, American is number two economically, number three militarily, and this is a reality that the world is accepting....

When will Europe know it? When will Europe realize that NATO is a false prophet? When will Europe realize that the money you put into NATO is wasted money? When will Europe realize that instead of pursuing war you should be pursuing peace? It’s time for Europe to wake up. Because if you don’t, if you continue to believe in the myth of American hegemony, the myth of American supremacy—because it is a myth, it isn’t real anymore, it exists in the minds of American politicians, but it doesn’t exist in the way the world operates today. Europe has to decide: Do you want to become a prisoner in a cage of your own construct? Because that’s what’s happening. The world is bypassing America. The world is moving on with their collective life. And the American singularity is in the rearview mirror going backwards.

Sep 24, 2023

Featured • Russian Reconnaissance Team Destroys Leopard Tank in Special OP Zone with Fully-German Crew, Sputnik International, Sep 23, 2023

"The mechanic repeatedly stated that he was not a mercenary but a Bundeswehr serviceman, and that he and the rest of the crew were members of the same unit of the German army," the Russian fighter said, adding that while receiving medical aid, the German soldier named his brigade and its dislocation site.

The tank's driver died from wounds minutes after he was found despite efforts to save him."

They have no strategic vision or even rational medium-term objectives, just a series of symbolic totems: they are like a bunch of pilgrims heading blindly towards a fabled destination, holding hands, hoping for a miracle.

These people lost contact with reality years ago. All that matters is to produce a vivid piece of information, true or otherwise, that will dominate the media coverage today. If tomorrow’s story contradicts today’s, it doesn’t matter: people will have forgotten by then...This school of politics lives by a form of magic: things announced will automatically happen, without anything actually needing to be done. After all, this tax cut will produce X thousand new jobs, Y thousand doctors will be recruited over mumble mumble years, so what’s wrong with saying that country Z will supply Ukraine with all the equipment it needs forever? After all, nobody takes these kinds of promises seriously do they? Do they?

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said one phrase summed up the visiting leader’s message.

“Mr. Zelensky said: ‘If we don’t get the aid, we will lose the war,’” he remarked after hosting the Ukrainian president.

Read more: Kiev has ‘nothing to show’ for all the money spent – US senator, RT, Sep 21, 2023.

White House officials held a classified briefing for lawmakers on Wednesday evening. Senator Josh Hawley indicated he had been cemented in the conviction that the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy was failing.

“If there’s some path to victory in Ukraine, I didn’t hear it today. And I also heard that there’s going to be no end to the funding requests,” the Republican said.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a fellow GOP member with an opposing view on the conflict, argued that “pulling the plug on Ukraine while they’re winning on the battlefield and letting [Russian President Vladimir] Putin get away with this is far worse than Afghanistan.”

Sep 23, 2023

Featured • US Can’t Deal with Defeat, Michael Brenner, Consortium News, Sep 21, 2023

Cultivated amnesia is a craft enormously facilitated by two broader trends in American culture: the cult of ignorance whereby a knowledge-free mind is esteemed as the ultimate freedom; and a public ethic whereby the nation’s highest officials are given license to treat the truth as a potter treats clay so long as they say and do things that make us feel good.

So, in the U.S., the strongest collective memory of America’s wars of choice is the desirability – and ease – of forgetting them. “The show must go on” is taken as the imperative. So it will be when we look at a ruined Ukraine in the rear-view mirror.

Sep 22, 2023

Featured • Twenty-Eight Republicans Tell Biden They're Against More Ukraine Aid Amid Zelensky Visit, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, Sep 21, 2023

 • Jeffrey Sachs: NATO Expansion & Ukraine’s Destruction, Consortium News, Sep 21, 2023

So, yes, Putin went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to Russia’s border. Ukraine is being destroyed by U.S. arrogance, proving again Henry Kissinger’s adage that to be America’s enemy is dangerous, while to be its friend is fatal.

The Ukraine War will end when the U.S. acknowledges a simple truth: NATO enlargement to Ukraine means perpetual war and Ukraine’s destruction. Ukraine’s neutrality could have avoided the war, and remains the key to peace. The deeper truth is that European security depends on collective security as called for by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), not one-sided NATO demands.

The US sent its first shipment of cluster bombs to Ukraine in July. To do so, President Biden had to bypass US law that prohibits the transfer of cluster munitions with a higher than 1% dud rate, which refers to the percentage of submunitions that are left unexploded and can be found by civilians for years or decades after the conflict.

According to The New York Times, the cluster munitions sent to Ukraine are expected to have a dud rate of about 14%. To get around the law, Biden invoked an obscure provision of the Foreign Assistance Act that allows the US to provide weapons regardless of export controls if the president determines doing so is vital for national security.

I think the key factor during the next eight weeks will be how much damage Russia inflicts on Ukraine’s remaining military strength and infrastructure. Barring a mass surrender of Ukrainian forces, however, the Biden policy is to keep the war going. Politics is the guiding principle governing the Biden team’s decisions on Ukraine. The American leaders are content, so far, to ignore the military situation on the ground in Ukraine as long as it does not create political problems in the United States. They don’t give a damn about dead and dying Ukrainian soldiers. As long as they are convinced that Ukraine’s attacks on Russia are weakening Putin, Biden and his malevolent advisors will continue to fan the flames of war.

But he said more important was how Russia's political leaders viewed the lay of the land in the Washington DC swamp.

"They have to worry about not only Biden, but people like Sullivan, people like Blinken, who are both demonstrably guilty of fooling around with elections," McGovern pointed out. "Blinken has revealed that, having collected 51 former intelligence leaders to say that [Hunter] Biden's laptop was not genuine, that it had the smell or all the earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation. Well, that's hooey now. But it helped get Joe Biden elected."

Sep 21, 2023

Featured • NATO Fractures: In U-Turn, Poland Announces It Will No Longer Arm Ukraine, ZeroHedge, Sep 21, 2023

Featured • The Real History of the War in Ukraine, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Antiwar.com, Sep 20, 2023

Featured • PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Question About Biden, Consortium News, Sep 19, 2023

Consider: If FBI informants and others are reporting witness accounts of $5 million payments to Biden père et fils, reliable accounts of the interactions that led to them, bales of pertinent text and email messages and Joe Biden’s direct role in the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating these matters, everybody in Kiev who counts is probably aware of the Bidens’ dealings, at least in outline, and Zelensky must know of them in detail. Is there some other plausible conclusion to draw?

The follow-on question is very simple and very large. Does Zelensky have enough on Biden to get whatever he wants — the HIMARS rocket systems, the howitzers, the tanks and APCs, the F–16s, the scores of billions of dollars, much of which Biden’s people know full well is black-marketed or embezzled?

Sep 20, 2023

 • Ukraine's American Trans Spox Picks A Fight With US Senator J.D. Vance, ZeroHedge, Sep 20, 2023

Senator JD Vance of Ohio has made formal inquiry as to whether Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (born Michael John Cirillo) is being funded by the US government or has ties to the US intelligence community.

Sen. Vance has sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, toward that end of seeking information.

Last week a viral video by Ashton-Cirillo saw him declare on behalf of the Territorial Defense Forces of Ukraine that Russia's "propagandists" will be "hunted down" around the world...

[Vance tweet]: "Since I’ve got your [Aston-Cirillo's] attention, are you/Ukraine still planning to kill people who engage in speech you don’t like? And are there any American citizens on the kill list?"

One question is not answered by The New York Times report. Why did it take twelve days to publish its report when it took only hours after the impact to find convincing evidence of a Ukrainian missile impact?

And why was this published the very day President Zelenski arrives in New York and shortly before he will meet President Biden in the White House?

Are the knives out to cut the liar to size?

[Desmet tweet:] Dear friends, Last week I was invited to give a short speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. In many respects, a speech in the European Parliament is a speech in the beating heart of one of the institutions at the forefront of the processes that I (we) have criticized in recent years. That's true, but at the same time I think such considerations should never stop us from going there. It is precisely with the people with whom we disagree, the people who we easily experience as our opponents, that we should try to speak.

Sep 19, 2023

Featured • The BRICS Commodity Powerhouse: Can It Force a New Economic ‘Order’?, Alastair Crooke, Sep 18, 2023

The point is that much of the ruling strata still do not ‘get it’: the decades-long experience of near-zero inflation that the West has experienced has imprinted itself on the collective mindset – but that world of effortless money-making was an aberration, not a norm. Plainly put, the West now is somehow trapped in various diverse financial ways, such as fiscal exhaustion (i.e. U.S. deficit spending has reached 8.5% of GDP).

Whilst true, that many in the West do not understand that the zero-inflation era was an aberration, caused by factors that no longer pertain – for sure, the aberration is well understood in Beijing and Moscow.

Liam Halligan notes similarly that oil prices are up almost a third over the last three months: “It’s a hugely significant increase that could seriously aggravate the cost of living crisis. Yet the surge seems to have barely been noticed by much of our political and media class”.

Crude markets began to tighten earlier this summer after the Opec exporters’ cartel agreed to withhold oil supplies in a bid to raise prices, and Halligan tartly observes: “Anyone who downplays the power of Opec knows nothing about worldwide energy markets and even less about geopolitics”. (Emphasis added.)

Is it happenstance that a quiet financial war, triggered by the drip-drip of de-dollarisation and higher energy costs, might finally give BRICS the leverage to coerce a change of policy in the West? And should western reluctance to re-structure persist, might the BRICS leadership ratchet higher? The newly expanded BRICS, after all, is now a Commodity Powerhouse.

So, who now controls inflation in the U.S.: A trapped Fed, or the new commodity king?

Ukraine faces the threat of its “carefully woven web of foreign assistance” being slowly unraveled due to waning optimism and growing disappointment among its Western backers, the head of the National Security and Defense Council, Aleksey Danilov, wrote in an opinion piece published on Saturday in the newspaper Ukrainskaya Pravda.

The security chief accused “reputable and influential” Western media outlets of publishing materials suggesting Ukraine’s much-hyped summer counteroffensive is failing, Kiev’s troops are unable to take back territory from Russia, and Moscow’s resources are “limitless.” These sentiments slow down the Western military assistance to Kiev and stand in the way of Ukraine’s “peace formula,” Danilov added.

He stated that the only solution to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, which has been going on for more than a year and a half, is a military solution. “The peace formula is the weapons formula,” he said in the article.

Sep 18, 2023

Featured • Hyping Ukraine Counteroffensive, US Press Chose Propaganda Over Journalism, Bryce Greene, FAIR, Sep 15, 2023

 • Boldly Into the Chaos, Kunstler, Sep 18, 2023

The Ukraine war caper has pretty clearly lost its appeal as a supposed crusade for “democracy.” The yellow and blue flags vanished from the front porches and car bumpers months ago. It was a lie from the get-go that we have any national interest in that sad sack country. Our own government engineered the fiasco, and from every angle it has been a dead loss for all parties on our side. Ukraine has been reduced to a failed state in-waiting; Euroland has sacrificed its industrial economy for nothing; and the USA has squandered its last bits of prestige among other nations in this ignominious game of Lets You and Him Fight. Also, Americans have begun to notice that the billions funneled into Mr. Zelensky’s cadre of neo-Nazis and kleptocrats is money that is not going to places like East Palestine, Ohio, Lahaina, Maui, and the towns along our tortured southern border from Matamoros to Tijuana. Even the people who supposedly elected “Joe Biden” are becoming a little concerned about blundering into World War Three over the mess created by Victoria Nuland & Company.

The war also has the potential to spiral into a conflict between nuclear powers. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says the US is already at war with Russia. On Sunday at the Eastern Economic Forum, the Russian diplomat explained Moscow’s position. “No matter what it says, it [the US] controls this war, it supplies weapons, munition, intelligence information, data from satellites, it is pursuing a war against us,” Lavrov said.

The stalled Ukrainian counteroffensive has led Kyiv to step up strikes inside Russia. Over the weekend, Ukraine launched a series of drone attacks on Crimea and Moscow. The Kremlin slammed Kyiv for launching terrorist attacks. Moscow claims its air defenses thwarted the attack.

Kyiv’s strikes on Russia are likely to increase as Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave Ukraine a green light last week. When Washington’s top diplomat was asked if he approved of Ukraine using American weapons to hit targets deep inside Russian territory, he responded by stating “In terms of their targeting decisions, it’s their decision, not ours.”

Sep 17, 2023

 • Ukraine is Running Out of Men As Hope of Victory Fades, Larry Johnson, Sep 16, 2023
Reality, vs. fantasy. How many thousands of Ukrainians will U.S. liberals sacrifice to their own pride and ignorance?

 • Ground War in Ukraine May Be Over - Pentagon Ex-Advisor, Sputnik International, Sep 16, 2023

With thousands of Ukrainian losses during the ongoing “counteroffensive”, Kiev appears to be “desperate for manpower” and is trying to rectify this problem by “forcing people into uniform inside the country that are not really capable of fighting” and attempting to repatriate Ukrainians of military age from overseas, Macgregor said during an interview with Norwegian political scientist Glenn Diesen.

“So I think the Ukrainian ground war, for all intents and purposes, is either at a standstill or perhaps even over,” he remarked....

“The Russians would love to sit down and talk to somebody who is willing to examine where we stand – no one will do it,” he said. “So this is why I call this phase of the war, it’s no longer the Ukrainian phase, it is now the Biden phase of the war. And the Biden phase of the war is long range strikes.”

Speaking at a meeting of Poltava City Council, Lt. Colonel Vitaly Berezhny, who serves as acting head of the of the local recruitment and social support center, admitted that local authorities are struggling with their conscription campaign, having fulfilled only 13% of their conscription quota, placing them last in the region.

Berezhny was quoted by local media outlet Poltavshina as saying the military urgently needs reinforcements, as “out of 100 people who joined the units last fall, 10-20 remain, the rest are dead, wounded or disabled.”

Sep 16, 2023

 • Zelensky political rival charged with treason, RT, Sep 16, 2023
Similar to party apparatchiks arresting Trump, the U.S. demanding the arrest of Imran Khan in Pakistan, and the DNC anointing Biden, planning to basically skip a real primary election. And denying a Kennedy running for president the normal Secret Service protection. All thug tactics. Next week, the head thugs of the U.S. and Ukraine will meet in DC, both of whom are personally corrupt and neither of whom believe in, or practice, democracy or the rule of law. Legions cover up all this in the press, NGOs, academia, and government. And we citizens, where are we in all this?

 • Will Russian Lines in Ukraine Crumble? A Chat With Judge Napolitano, Larry Johnson, Sep 15, 2023

 • You're Not Supporting Ukraine Enough Until the Nuclear Blast Hits Your Face, Max Abrahms, Newsweek, Sep 14, 2023

The view now ruling the Democratic Party and the President is the same as the warmongers: It's silly to worry as Musk does about turning the Ukraine war into something catastrophically worse. It's un-American not to try to find Russia's redline for starting World War III. It's traitorous to believe—as the President himself did, just a few months ago—that we should be doing all we can to prevent escalation.

The new mantra seems to be: We're not trying hard enough in Ukraine until we feel the nuclear blast against our faces.

Sep 15, 2023

 • Zelensky to Visit Washington Next Week as Congress Debates New Ukraine Spending, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, Sep 14, 2023

Zelensky’s next visit comes as support for the proxy war in Ukraine falters among Republican voters. According to a recent poll from CNN, 55% of Americans oppose Congress authorizing more spending on the conflict, including 71% of Republicans who were asked.

The majority of Republicans in Congress still favor fueling the war, but there is a loud minority in the House, mainly members of the Freedom Caucus, that could make getting the funds authorized a headache for the White House.

On Wednesday, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo issued a threat to kill Russian “propagandists” and claimed that “next week, the teeth of the Russian devils will gnash even harder, and their rabid mouths will foam in uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes.”

“Russia’s war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down, and justice will be served as we in Ukraine are led on this mission by faith in God, liberty and complete liberation,” the transgender military spokesperson pledged.

“A zombie apocalypse,” Zakharova wrote in response to the threat. “We will be sending this further evidence of the terrorist nature of the Kiev regime and its sponsorship by Washington to all international organizations and NGOs,” she said.

On Sunday Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Jonathan Karl of ABC’s This Week that he remained “very confident in Ukraine’s ultimate success” in the ongoing war with Russia. He depicted Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to escalate its attacks inside Russia as “their decision, not ours.”

Blinken’s wrong-headed confidence and his acceptance of a significant escalation in the Ukraine war defies belief, given the reality on the ground today in the war. But it also could be based on insanely optimistic assessments supplied by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA’s assessments, as I have reported, are now the intelligence of choice inside the White House.

As a journalist who has written about national security matters for many decades, how can I explain a process that is clearly contrary to the best interests of the people of the United States and its leadership?

Sep 14, 2023

Featured • An Open Letter to Senator Richard Blumenthal Regarding the War in Ukraine — Jeffrey D. Sachs, Center for Sustainable Development, Sep 14, 2023

The war in Ukraine is yet another war of choice caused by American arrogance, in this case the US push to enlarge NATO to Ukraine and Georgia. When President George W. Bush, Jr. and US Ambassador to NATO Victoria Nuland made this push in 2008 at the NATO Bucharest Summit, I chalked it up to extreme right-wing neoconservatism. The US Ambassador to Russia in 2008, Ambassador William Burns, wrote from Moscow to explain the destabilization that would result from the US push to enlarge NATO to Ukraine. It therefore came as a blow to watch the Democratic Party become the party of right-wing neoconservatism, with Victoria Nuland, Vice President Cheney’s principal deputy foreign policy advisor and Bush’s Ambassador to NATO, becoming President Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State and now President Biden’s acting Deputy Secretary of State.

The US has spurned every opportunity to negotiate with Russia, claiming that NATO enlargement is none of Russia’s business. Even when Ukraine and Russia were close to an agreement in March 2022 based on Ukrainian neutrality, the US stepped in to block the agreement. If Ukraine is to be saved, it will be saved by Ukraine’s neutrality, as part of an overall peace and security arrangement between the US and Russia.

My vote for RFK Jr. will my last vote as a registered Democrat, as I plan to leave what has become a party of warmongers and register as an independent. In the meantime, I appeal to your conscience. The US, backed by you and your fellow Senators, should not be sending Ukrainians to their senseless deaths so that the US can stand tall against China. This is a delusion, and a cruel one, not the foreign policy of a responsible nation. [emphasis added]

North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and held talks aimed at deepening ties between Moscow and Pyongyang. While leaders were tight-lipped on the details of the discussions, cooperation in the military and space area were on the table.

Putin hosted Kim at Russia’s Vostochny Spaceport. When asked if Russia would assist North Korea’s satellite program, Putin responded, “That’s why we came here. The leader of the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] shows great interest in rocket engineering; they are also trying to develop space.”

Putin met with Kim for five hours including a formal state dinner and a one-on-one discussion. The nature of most of the talks between the leaders is unknown. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained, “As neighbors, our countries implement cooperation in sensitive areas that should not become the subject of public disclosure and announcement. But this is quite natural for neighboring states.”

As a result of the increase in production, Russia can make more ammunition than the US and Europe combined. The US and its NATO allies are working to bolster their production, but results aren’t expected to be seen for years. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg previously said Ukraine was using artillery rounds at a faster rate than the entire alliance could produce.

Russia is steadily reorienting trade and business cooperation toward Asia and away from the “static” West, Presidential Business Rights Commissioner Boris Titov told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Titov stated that while the process initially started as a political response to Western sanctions against Moscow, it has since evolved and is now based entirely on economics.

“Until recently, the process of Russia’s turn to the East was largely due to political reasons, but today everything has changed dramatically... Now we can say with certainty that this turn is irreversible, and it is based not on political, but primarily economic reasons,” the ombudsman said.

Titov claimed that while the Western economy is well-developed, it is already “too heavily invested and sluggish.”

“In the East, on the other hand, everything is booming, moving forward rapidly, developing rapidly. And this applies not only to China, India, and Indonesia, but also to many other countries. They are the center of development today, not Europe, our main consumers of energy are there, finally,” the Russian official added.

According to Titov, Russian entrepreneurs have already realized that doing business in the East is more lucrative.

Sep 13, 2023

Featured • Scott Ritter: US Transfer of Ever More Deadly Arms to Ukraine Reeks of Desperation, Ilya Tsukanov, Sputnik International, Sep 12, 2023

Over the past year-and-a-half, the US and its NATO allies have adopted a cautious, “two steps forward, one step back” approach to arming Kiev, first assuring that various weapons (be it cluster munitions and long-range cruise missiles or tanks and F-16 fighter jets) would not be sent, citing the danger of escalation tensions with Russia, and then announcing their delivery weeks or months later. “The Biden administration seems to be going through a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-type phase when it comes to the nature of the weapons that it’s willing to provide to Ukraine,” Scott Ritter, a veteran former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, UN weapons inspector, and military analyst, told Sputnik. “A year ago, the Biden administration was very reticent about providing certain categories of weapons out of fear to create the potential of an escalation between the United States, between NATO and Russia over Ukraine.

“The last thing the United States wanted, or so the Biden administration said, was a direct war with Russia.” “Today, all of those inhibitions seem to have been swept away. We see the United States providing M1 Abrams tanks. We see the United States authorizing the delivery of F-16 fighters. And now the United States is considering to provide Ukraine with the ATACMS long-range missile system or the guided multiple launch rocket system, a 45-mile range rocket system delivered by the HIMARS system that has extreme accuracy and could deliver cluster munitions. This, of course, follows on the heels of the decision by the Biden administration made earlier this year to provide Ukraine with the cluster variant of the 155-millimeter artillery shell,” Ritter said.

Desperation over sobering battlefield realities and a desire to “harm Russia,” rather than hopes that the new long-range weapons could turn the tide in the conflict, are the main motivators behind the Biden administration’s escalation strategy, the observer believes. “The Ukrainians, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, have suffered 71,000 casualties over the course of the last four months in a failed counteroffensive effort. And there’s nothing about the nature of these weapons that would improve Ukraine’s chances on the battlefield. These weapons that are being provided are being provided to provide Ukraine with the potential of doing harm to Russia. The ATACMS missiles being provided, simply put, to strike the Crimea Bridge, to destroy that bridge, to enable Ukraine to strike targets deep in the Russian rear area – airfields, command posts, logistics. This is a dramatic escalation of the conflict,” Ritter stressed.

“Why is the Biden administration doing this? Frankly speaking, it’s out of an act of desperation. Look, anybody who looks at the situation on the ground in Ukraine knows that Ukraine is losing, Russia is winning. And literally there’s nothing that can be done to prevent a Russian victory. The provision of ATACMS rockets, the GMLRS rocket system isn’t going to change the outcome on the battlefield. What it will do is provide Ukraine the opportunity to inflict more harm on Russia,” and that, Washington may be hoping, will put political pressure on Moscow domestically, the observer explained.

US Acting Deputy Secretary of State and Russophobic hawk Victoria Nuland appears to have let slip that the Biden administration supports Ukraine’s strikes targeting Russian territory. In a video clip circulating on social media, Nuland, who just recently visited Ukraine’s capital, can be heard saying that one “axis” of Washington’s strategy in it proxy war with Moscow in Ukraine is to “put some of Russia’s most precious assets at risk.” This comes amid reports that Washington will be sending long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to the Kiev regime. However, earlier in September, a Pentagon official told Sputnik no decision had been made to supply Ukraine with ATACMS.

It was too good to be true – Print and be damned with the consequences. Debt? No matter; print a little more. Washington overdid it (the political enticement was too great).

And so, dollar ‘hegemony’ has shifted from being a tool of power projection to being the prime source of U.S. vulnerability. Plainly put, Washington’s massive oversupply of dollars and dollar-debt has turned ‘the dollar’ into a distinctly double-edged sword; It cuts against the West now. Financially top-heavy, the western manufacturing base has atrophied and shrunk –triggering a two-tier U.S. society of huge inequalities.

The present conflict in Ukraine has underlined the deficiencies in hegemonic power that specifically arise from a neglected manufacturing base.

Mackinder, were he here today, might thus need to adjust his model, distinguishing between the land that is ‘outside’ the one set of economic policies (the BRICS-led Asian, African and global Southern bloc), and that which is ‘inside’: i.e. within a ‘coastal’ debt-led, consumerist paradigm.

Speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum, Putin remarked, “I think there will be no fundamental changes regarding Russia in US foreign policy, no matter who is elected president,” he said. “Mr. Trump says he will solve acute problems, including the Ukrainian crisis, in a few days, this can only please. Nevertheless, he too imposed sanctions on Russia during his presidency.” ...

Putin went on to say that the treatment of Trump under President Biden shows America’s moving away from a Democratic system. “As for the prosecution of Trump, for us what is happening in today’s conditions, in my opinion, is good because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others democracy.” He continued,

“Everything that is happening with Trump is the persecution of a political rival for political reasons. That’s what it is. And this is being done in front of the public of the United States and the whole world.”

Sep 12, 2023

Featured • Patrick Lawrence: Exceptionalism & Its Consequences, Consortium News, Sep 11, 2023
An outstanding essay, IMO.

He [Reagan] did not restore America’s confidence in itself after Vietnam. In my estimation, no American leader from Reagan’s day to ours has accomplished this. Reagan’s feat was to persuade an entire nation, or most of it, that it was all right to pretend: All was affect and imagery. He licensed Americans to avoid facing the truth of defeat and failure and of professed principle betrayed. He demonstrated in his words and demeanor that greatness could be acted out even after it was lost as spectacularly as it had been in Indochina.

This is the exceptionalism whose many destructive consequences we now witness. It is an ideology whose most peculiar feature is that it is subliminally understood to be exhausted and that it rests in large measure on denial. No American political figure would dare now to speak sensibly against the exceptionalist orthodoxy. This is ever more the case as the orthodoxy becomes more obviously hollow, more detached from perfectly discernible realities.

We do not, in short have the leadership we need. But I do not think we are too far from seeing the kind of leaders we need appear. The time this will require will prove agonizing, but we also find among us an incipient generation of leaders who stand squarely against our condition of inertia. Tulsi Gabbard, the vigorously anti-imperialist former congresswoman from Hawaii, is but one example of this emergent cohort.

One may not care for Donald Trump or for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., but that is not my concern here. Whatever one thinks of them, they are trying to speak in a new political language — the post-exceptionalist language all American must learn. The common theme is plain: To remake American democracy and to abandon imperial ambitions are two halves of the same project....

At home the intellectual confinements exceptionalist beliefs impose have debilitated us for decades. We are now greatly in need of genuinely new thinking in any number of political and social spheres even as we deny ourselves permission to do any such thinking.

And here I come to the essential motivation for Americans to make the leap into the future I urge, the sine qua non of it: It must first dawn on us that it is greatly, immeasurably to our advantage to embrace a post-exceptionalist idea of ourselves. This truth has not yet come to us; no leader has said this to us. How little do most of us understand, in consequence, that to abandon our claims to exceptional status will first of all come as an immense unburdening?

Some years ago, Bernd Ulrich, the noted German commentator, asked the most excellent question from my point of view. “Can America save itself?” Ulrich wondered in Die Zeit. It is precisely my question as I look toward a post-exceptionalist idea of America. This idea, indeed, was Ulrich’s unstated topic.

“In principle, absolutely,” he replied to his own question. “But certainly not with gradual changes,” he then wrote, and I resume the quotation: “In terms of global politics and history, it must get off the high horse it has so long ridden. It needs a moderate self-esteem, beyond superlatives and supremacy.”

So unless the US relents, Russia has no option but to continue to prosecute the war until Ukraine is prostrated or Russia has otherwise precipitated regime change in Kiev. Russia needs to capture Ukraine, either politically or practically. This outcome becomes even more important if the US sends ATACMS. Russia will need an even wider buffer zone (300 km versus 77 km for the HIMARS previously sent) to prevent their use against Russian territory.

However, an undeniable Ukraine loss, no matter how much porcine maquillage US and EU spokescritters apply, will, as Alastair Crooke in particular described long-form in a recent Duran program, will rattle smaller NATO members, who will doubt they can rely on NATO to come to their rescue. NATO may still be fit for purpose as a defensive alliance. However, the fact that the US and NATO members sent in a whole mess of heavily-hyped wunderwaffen that did pretty much nothing to blunt Russian operations, and some of which were impressively destroyed, like Leopard 2 and Challenger tanks and the West is not responding with a Sputnik-level effort to get Western firepower up to Russian levels, means there is good reason to doubt how well the NATO shield would hold up if tested.

Mind you, Crooke explained in a related article that US is (or the hawks think it is) moving in the direction of a long, low intensity conflict, which is consistent with the Blinken remarks above. But that US/Ukraine hope ignores again that the war is generally very much going in Russia’s direction, with Ukraine continuing to throw men and materiel against Russian positions, and Russia only engaging in fairly minor advances in and near Kupiansk to produce even more of the same. Russia wanted to attrit Ukraine and is getting that outcome. And Russia can and will increase the intensity when it suits Russia.

One would think, given both the weakening Ukraine position, and the all-too-obvious need for the Biden Administration not to suffer a visible defeat in Ukraine, the optimal time would be between March and October 2024. However, that still may not take the form of the too-eagerly-hoped for big arrow attacks unless the Ukraine army is severely degraded. But the flip side is when Russia finally cracks the last Ukraine line of defense in the Donbass, there’s not much in the way of defensible positions west of Lugansk up to the Dnieper.

In other words, the way to an end game is regime change. And the weak regimes are all in the West.

Zelenski goes on to threaten, in rather unthankful fashion, those countries which have delivered aid to Ukraine but may want to cut their losses:

Curtailing aid to Ukraine will only prolong the war, Mr Zelensky argues. And it would create risks for the West in its own backyard. There is no way of predicting how the millions of Ukrainian refugees in European countries would react to their country being abandoned. Ukrainians have generally “behaved well” and are “very grateful” to those who sheltered them. They will not forget that generosity. But it would not be a “good story” for Europe if it were to “drive these people into a corner”.

I have seen such threats from low ranking individuals of the fascist Bandera fringe. They spoke of terrorism they would unleash in the West should it end its support for Ukraine. That the Ukrainian president now reinforces such threats shows how deeply he immersed himself in that mindset....From there it is just a short step towards total war:

Meanwhile, a long war of attrition would mean a fork in the road for Ukraine. The country would lose even more people, both on the front lines and to emigration. It would require a “totally militarised economy”. The government would have to put that prospect to its citizens, Mr Zelensky says, without specifying how; a new social contract could not be the decision of one person. Almost 19 months into the war, the president says he is “morally” ready for the switch. But he will only broach the idea with his people if the weakness in the eyes of his Western backers becomes a “trend”. Has that moment come? No, not yet, he says. “Thank God.”

Does Zelenski know of any country with a totally militarized economy that survived? I have yet to hear of one.

According to more from the FT report detailing the upcoming giant war game:

"It will start in spring next year and is expected to involve between 500 and 700 air combat missions, more than 50 ships, and about 41,000 troops, Nato officials said."

"It is designed to model potential maneuvers against an enemy modelled on a coalition led by Russia, named Occasus for the purposes of the drill."

Crucially, the Baltic Sea coastline - where NATO has increasingly flexed its military might with more and more exercises - is very important to Russia as its strategic Kaliningrad exclave sits on it, sandwiched between two NATO members, Poland and Lithuania. Last year's Defender drills had been the largest up to that point, and they continue to get expanded year-by-year.

Sep 11, 2023

Featured • Blinken: US Does Not Oppose Ukrainian Attacks Inside Russia With US-Supplied Missiles, Caitlin Johnstone, Sep 11, 2023

During an appearance on ABC’s This Week with Jonathan Karl, Secretary of State Tony Blinken explicitly said that the US would not oppose Ukraine using US-supplied longer-range missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory, a move that Moscow has previously called a “red line” which would make the United States a direct party to the conflict.

“We understand that the United States is considering sending those long-range missiles that Ukraine has been asking for for a long time,” Karl said in the interview. “These are long-range missiles, 200 miles in range. Are you okay if those missiles allow Ukraine to attack deep into Russian territory?”

“In terms of their targeting decisions, it’s their decision, not ours,” answered Blinken after some bloviation.

“We’ve seen an increasing number of attacks on Russian territory by Ukrainian drones, some in Moscow, Rostov-on-Don just a couple of days ago. Did you bring that up?” asked Karl.

“No,” said Blinken.

“Are you — are you okay with — I mean, obviously, they’re — it’s their decisions, but is this war now escalating into Russia?” asked Karl.

NATO is poised to hold early next year its largest military exercises since the Cold War era, the Financial Times reported on Monday. The drills will simulate a potential Russian invasion and is intended to increase the bloc’s readiness for such a scenario, according to the article.

Bearing the name Steadfast Defender, the exercises will involve around 41,000 troops, more than 50 ships, and between 500 and 700 combat air missions, according to the report. While the exercises are designed to simulate a clash with a fictional coalition named ‘Occasus,’ NATO officials told the FT that the maneuvers are “seen as a key part of demonstrating to Moscow that the alliance is prepared to fight.”

The exercises will take place in Germany, Poland, and the Baltic states in February and March 2024, and will involve not only the members of the US-led military bloc, but also Sweden, the report said. The Nordic nation applied to join NATO last year, but its application is still in limbo due to the reluctance of Türkiye and Hungary to ratify its bid owing to a number of grievances in bilateral relations.

The FT also reported that the drill is seen as part of a new training strategy according to which the alliance will hold two major war games a year instead of one. The exercise will also reportedly focus on counterterrorism efforts outside of the bloc’s borders.

“As the Biden administration grows more desperate to show progress in the war, it is running greater and greater risks in daring Moscow to retaliate against the West,” the Quincy Institute’s Director of Grand Strategy George Beebe said Saturday after the news. “The danger is that we will only discover where Russia’s red lines are drawn after we have crossed them.”

The West’s “boiling the frog” approach to Ukraine aid appears to be premised on a range of calculations concerning Russian behavior and the war’s underlying dynamics. Western policymakers reportedly share the concern that a sudden, drastic surge in aid, marshaling the full might of NATO’s arsenal into colossal aid packages announcing all available weapons within a short time span, could invite catastrophic escalation up to and including the use of nuclear weapons and a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

Sep 10, 2023

 • US 'Lies' About Ukraine's Failed Counteroffensive - Ex-CIA Analyst, Svetlana Ekimenko, Sputnik International, Sep 9, 2023

“Americans have been had,” added Ray McGovern, a former top US intel analyst, who also joined the Judging Freedom podcast. He pointed out that, “Billions of money had gone to Ukraine, with a lot of it syphoned off.” He told the host that America was “losing” in the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

Nevertheless, senior-level members of the US intelligence community continue “to delude themselves, their colleagues, the press, and the public," regarding the actual developments on the ground, specified Larry Johnson. These officials refused to wake up to the reality that Ukraine was experiencing “shortage of ammunition, shortage of manpower, trouble recruiting people,” etc.

Sep 9, 2023

Featured • US likely to send long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine for the first time: Officials, Matt Seyler, ABC News, Sep 9, 2023

A second official said the missiles are "on the table" and likely to be included in an upcoming security assistance package, adding that a final decision has not been made. It could be months before Ukraine receives the missiles, according to the official.

With a range of up to 190 miles, depending on the version, deploying ATACMS could allow Ukraine to reach targets nearly four times further away than with the currently-provided rockets for its U.S.-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and M270 multiple-launch rocket systems.…

In addition to giving Ukrainian crews much greater standoff distance when striking Russian positions -- making it more difficult for the Russians to fire back -- ATACMS could also help Ukraine more easily reach targets in Crimea.

"I think specific targets in Crimea would be command and control, logistics hubs -- especially ammunition facilities -- and air bases," said Mick Mulroy, an ABC News contributor who served as a CIA officer and deputy assistant secretary of defense.

For instance, the F-16 perception-token is still far away—a yawning abyss of hopeless loss lies from now to then. In order to stave off the collapse of public trust and Western nation support, Ukraine will have to gain a new shiny toy to bridge the gap and briefly manage public perception up until the F-16s can be arranged. As of this writing, it’s now looking like the new, immediate perception-token will be the ATACMS missile, as new hints from the Biden administration have leaked that imply they are very close to greenlighting this next wunderwaffe.

Should it be delivered, the ATACMS will be used to make a couple big splashes somewhere—most likely a civilian area unprotected by AD—in Donbass, which will be crudely packaged and sold, as ever, by mainstream press as a “devastating blow” to a putative Russian “critical C2/C3 node” or logistics rear. That will restart the cycle of driving hope in some Ukrainian ‘victory’, which will continue on with ever-diminishing returns, each new ‘wunderwaffe’ not only having less and less impact, but an ever-shorter lifespan. Though it’s hard to imagine how much shorter it can get than the week-long flameouts of the Storm Shadow or JDAM, but it doesn’t mean they won’t try to stretch its significance.

Next year will certainly be an extremely eventful time where things are set to culminate with the heights of the American election cycle. It will be interesting to see whether the ruling establishment will finally be forced to cut the cord and throw Ukraine under the bus or whether they will dare risk some black swan escalation on the eve of the all-important and historic election. For now, Ukraine will continue to bleed for the gallery while the Russian war machine finishes calmly strapping on its armor in preparation for the killing blow.

Sep 8, 2023

Featured • Vlahos: Ukraine Shares Same Fate as the South in the American Civil War, AGON magazine, Sep 5, 2023

“The goal in this war is not about Ukraine, about Ukrainian needs and interests. It's about America’s apocalyptic view of the world. It is our task to transform the whole world into democracy and create a new world order. According to this sacred narrative, America cannot lose because we are driven by a divine providence, we have God or Righteousness on our side, and even when things go wrong time and time again, we keep going. This is because our strategy is dominated by the notion of who we are. We do not act rationally, we are driven by a religious impulse. This war is going to end with the opposite of what America wanted”.

[Interviewer] What will President Biden do if things go as you predict?

After all, he risks having to deal with a defeat in the middle of an election campaign. [Vlahos:] “It will be a hard blow. We can already see approaches to how Washington will spin the story. You want to say: ‘We did what we could for Ukraine, we gave them everything they asked for and we trained them, but they were not up to the task.’ They can also choose to throw Zelensky under the bus and point to the huge corruption which has been fatal to Ukraine's warfare. It will sound a bit like Afghanistan, but a Ukrainian collapse will be something completely different, and sooner or later the casualty figures will come out. They are gigantic, so at some point it will be clear that the US blocked Kyiv’s negotiations with the Russians and sacrificed an entire country for the sake of our vanity, narcissism and far-reaching ambitions”.

Kiev will not accept mediation from Pope Francis in the conflict with Moscow, because the “pro-Russian” pontiff would betray Ukraine, a senior aide to President Vladimir Zelensky has declared.

Mikhail Podoliak renewed his critique of the Catholic leader in an interview with national media published on Friday. He previously branded the Pope an “instrument of Russian propaganda” for telling Russian Catholics they should cherish their nation’s history.

“There is no sense discussing a mediator titled the Pope, when he has a pro-Russian position that is absolutely obvious to everyone by now,” Podoliak said, claiming the Vatican would “cheat Ukraine and justice” should its intercession be allowed.
Zelensky’s aide described Poland as “pretty much the most Catholic nation, except the Vatican,” and argued that Pope Francis “has shown that he is no expert in politics and continues to reduce the influence of Catholicism in the word to zero.”

Christopher C. Black, an international criminal lawyer with 20 years of experience in war crimes and international relations told Sputnik it was “not legally possible” to do what Blinken declared the US was doing. “It seems to me that the statements declaring their intentions to use seized assets to fund the Ukraine regime are more for propaganda purposes than for real economic effect. They make these announcements from time to time to try to humiliate Russia and show Russia who’s boss, or so they think,” Black told Sputnik, adding that such moves were aimed at harming Russian prestige. “But the opposite occurs. It is their [US] reputation and prestige that is undermined, their claimed adherence to the rule of law, to the right to property, to justice.

Sep 7, 2023

Featured • Report: Ukraine’s Growing Assassination Program, Connor Freeman, Antiwar.com, Sep 6, 2023. See also: Dirty Secrets of Kiev's Nazi Regime, SouthFront, Sep 6, 2023, a quick summary of recent revelations in short video form.

Featured • If Everyone Understood That The US Deliberately Provoked This War, Caitlin Johnstone, Sep 7, 2023
    We saw this war coming in 2015. See for example this presentation. Or as we wrote in February of 2015:

Pouring gas on the U.S.-caused Ukrainian fire: There’s a fine new guest post by Steven Starr over at Forget the Rest and I urge you to read it. I agree with all of it.
It is one of many dozen fine articles we could have sent you over the past months, but frankly the intellectual collapse we see around us in U.S. NGOs, universities, churches, newspapers, and foundations has at times left us wondering where to spend the hours we have available. We have been following this catastrophe very closely for many months but have been unable to ignite any interest in our communities, even among our closest supporters. Hello out there! We should all be talking about this, about what it means (which is a lot), and preparing for action, as we have been saying for some time. The domestic implications of these events affect many issues and cry out for a concerted response. In the beginning, any response is better than none.

Sep 6, 2023

Featured • Revisiting John Pilger’s 2016 Warnings About US Warmongering Against Russia And China, Caitlin Johnstone, Sep 6, 2023

 • Eastern European NATO Countries Fear Peace Talks Between Ukraine and Russia, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, Sep 5, 2023

Sep 5, 2023

Featured • Ukraine Fails to Achieve Its Goals in Three Months of Counteroffensive – Shoigu, Sputnik International, Sep 5, 2023

 • SITREP 9/4/23: First Challengers Burn as East Continues to Rise in Power, Simplicius, Sep 4, 2023
    Pro-Russian but rich in information as usual.

 • Letter: The U.S. is in for a rude awakening, Bruce Currie, Concord Monitor (paywall), Sep 4, 2023

Sep 4, 2023

Featured • Scott Ritter: A comprehensive Ukrainian defeat is the only possible outcome of its conflict with Russia, RT, Sep 3, 2023
    "Kiev was offered a peace deal long ago, but chose war instead, egged on by its Western backers. Now its fate is sealed."

Many people do not understand the background to this war. This is an excellent, succinct review of the background and current realities of this war, and given the latter, how it must end. Anglo-American neocons undercut the possibility of a negotiated settlement in March 2022, and frankly, for years before that. Ukraine now has no real ability to negotiate, while Western and especially U.S. leaders are looking for a way to delay and to spin the inevitable defeat so that it does not result in their own political downfall. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian men and boys are being sent to futile, deadly battles against impossible odds in order to save face in Washington, London, and Brussels. Ordinary Ukrainians are suffering for the sake of their corrupt rulers and the hateful neo-Nazi template stamped on their government and society, which was killing Russian-speakers in Ukraine by the thousands long before February 2022.

    "First and foremost, Ukraine must reflect honestly about the causes of this conflict, and which side bears the burden of responsibility for the fighting. Ukraine, through its actions in 2014, lost Crimea."

That means not just Ukraine's leaders, and Western leaders, must do so but also its citizens, who were turning a blind eye to the atrocities perpetrated by government and neo-Nazi formations in Ukraine's east, and to the mortal threat to Russia posed by Ukraine's NATO and nuclear ambitions, which were occurring in the context of further serious threats to Russia such as the installation of missile launchers in Poland and Romania and the conversion of all U.S. submarine warheads into highly-accurate, potent, first-strike weapons. Add in the creation by NATO, in Ukraine, of the largest and best equipped army in Europe, for the explicit purpose of taking over the breakaway provinces in the east. And much more.

    "Russia did not enter the conflict with the intent of seizing Ukrainian territory. But in March 2022, Kiev rejected a draft peace agreement (which it had preliminarily approved at first), and this decision to eschew peace in favor of war led to Russia absorbing Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson.
    "As one of its conditions to even begin negotiating for peace with Moscow, Kiev demanded the return of all former Ukrainian territories currently under Russian control – including Crimea. To achieve such an outcome, however, Ukraine would have to be able to compel compliance by defeating Russia militarily and/or politically. As things stand, this is an impossibility.
    "What Ukraine and its Western partners do not yet seem to have come to grips with is the fact that Russia’s leadership is in no mood for negotiations for negotiations’ sake. Putin has listed its goals and objectives when it comes to the conflict – denazification, demilitarization, and no NATO membership for Ukraine.
    "This is the reality of the present situation. Russia is working to achieve its stated goals and objectives. As things stand, there is little Ukraine or its partners in the US, NATO, and the EU (the so-called ‘collective West’) can do to prevent it from accomplishing these aims. The timeline is not calendar-driven, but rather determined by results. The longer Kiev – and its Western partners – drag out this conflict, the greater the harm that will accrue for Ukraine.
    "It is time for Ukraine and its Western partners to move to the path of peace and reconstruction. But this can only happen when Ukraine surrenders and accepts reality."

Featured • U.S. Support of Neo-Nazis in Ukraine, St Pete for Peace.org, Sep 2023
One of Russia's goals in their "Special Military Operation" (SMO) is denazification. If we want peace in Ukraine (and we do), we need to know about Ukrainian neo-Naziism. St. Pete for Peace has compiled an accessible multimedia history of U.S. support for Ukrainian neo-Naziism. Scroll down to the bottom for some excellent video resources. They put current U.S. foreign policy news here.

 • Ukraine Loses Nearly 600 Troops in Combat Over Past Day - MoD, Sputnik International, Sep 3, 2023

 • U.S. Intelligence Community Sending Mixed Messages on Ukraine, Larry Johnson, Sep 3, 2023

• The Russian economy is robust and healthy despite Western sanctions.
• Russia’s political influence in the world is growing, not shrinking. BRICS is a case in point.
• Russia is inflicting enormous casualties on Ukraine’s military and decimating infrastructure critical to the Ukrainian military campaign.
• Russia’s defense industry has ramped up to levels of production that the West cannot match.
• Russia’s seemingly unlimited access to natural resources, energy and rare earth minerals strengthens Russia’s military position in the world.
• Russia enjoys a massive technological advantage over NATO in terms of electronic warfare, air defense systems, mine laying vehicles and hypersonic missiles.
• Russian leaders and their people genuinely believe they face an existential threat from the West.
• Ukraine is totally dependent on the West to provide money and weapons to continue to fight.

Sep 3, 2023

Featured • Timofey Bordachev: Funny old man Josep Borrell is a typical example of the arrogant mediocrities running the EU, RT, Sep 2, 2023
    "From the point of view of mass psychology, exceptionalism is a very good means of control. Those who consider themselves special, the best and unparalleled in their superiority, never compare their own position with others. This means that they are ready to accept not only aggression against “outsiders,” but also the restriction of their rights: they are still the best in the world. You are already in paradise, fellow Western Europeans, what more do you need?
    "The bloc is a collection of states whose main political goal is to...rule despite all the mistakes of the elites’ economic policies.
    "For such purposes, politicians with Borrell's psychology are the most suitable performers. And since this approach is fully in line with Western European foreign policy culture, it will not go away in the future. No matter how relations between Russia and the EU develop in the coming years and decades, economic expediency will always be secondary for the other side, and political dominance will always come first. And it will not matter at all who speaks in the media on behalf of Brussels."

Insightful. Poor Europe. The comments about exceptionalism as a means of social control are of course fully, or more so, applicable here in the U.S. The assumption of superiority is even more important for the professional-managerial class in the U.S., which assumes its own superiority, as established by its own inbred rites of passage. We are now seeing the widespread discrediting of that assumption, which is splitting the country. This was the theme of that important book, Listen, Liberal!, by Thomas Frank.

 • A Dire Warning: The US Plan To Make Ukraine Into Europe's 'Big Israel', ZeroHedge, Sep 2, 2023

 • How Bad is it for Ukraine?, Larry Johnson, Sep 2, 2023

Sep 2, 2023

Featured • U.S. Seeking Perpetual War in Ukraine? with Alastair Crooke , Judging Freedom, Sep 1, 2023

 • US to send depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine – Reuters, RT, Sep 2, 2023

 • Col. Macgregor: Ukraine is Being Annihilated, Stephen Gardner, Sep 1, 2023
For people who haven't been listening to MacGregor, or who don't think Ukraine matters much, this may be important. It's too inconvenient for us to review this just now, after such a busy week, so we offer it here on more on faith than on solid recommendation. MacGregor's voice on Ukraine -- and on the political impacts of this war on the U.S. -- is valuable, and in military aspects well-informed and qualified. Judge for yourself.

 • System Update with Glenn Greenwald, guest Jeffrey Sachs, Sep 1, 2023
    "The US stepped in and said do not accept neutrality. We’ve been in the hands of the neocons — Nuland, Blinken, Sullivan, and Biden — and we are destroying Ukraine. This is yet another neocon debacle, another Afghanistan. This is going to end terribly for the US. It has nothing to do with democracy. It doesn’t matter which party is in, Victoria Nuland is always there." — Jeffrey Sachs

Sep 1, 2023

Featured • US getting ‘money’s worth’ in Ukraine – Biden ally, RT, Sep 1, 2023
    "The US is using Ukraine as the “tip of the spear” against Russia, getting a major return on its “investment” in Kiev without any American lives lost, according to Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat.
    "Even Americans who have no particular interest in freedom and independence in democracies worldwide, should be satisfied that we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment,” Blumenthal argued in an op-ed published earlier this week by the Connecticut Post.
    "For less than 3 percent of our nation’s military budget, we’ve enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half. We’ve united NATO and caused the Chinese to rethink their invasion plans for Taiwan. We’ve helped restore faith and confidence in American leadership – moral and military. All without a single American service woman or man injured or lost, and without any diversion or misappropriation of American aid,” he claimed.

This is not the Babylon Bee or the Onion. He actually said these things. Unbelievably depraved. At this point, this is not about crazy, bloodthirsty senators any more. As in the case of the florid corruption of the Biden Administration, it's about you and me. Are we so insouciant we can overlook all this? Why in the world would we deserve, or could we regain, democracy if we effectively overlook this -- that is, if we fail to use the legal remedies available to restore the rule of law? If we fail in our duties as citizens it's going to get worse, and fast. For people interested in arms control, let alone disarmament, nothing like that will happen until a long while after we in the U.S. curb this bloodlust and replace it with sane, ethical human behavior.

 • Living on a War Planet, David Bromwich, Scheerpost, Aug 30, 2023
    Ilargi Mejier comment: Q: If, as the author here, you realize the Russia SMO was provoked, at what point does the reaction to the provocation become “illegal and immoral”? The provocation was not just a virtual further eastward extension of NATO, but Ukraine had gathered a huge military force (200-300K) looking ready to invade the Donbass. After killing some 14,000 there over 8 years.

 • The Heritage Foundation Suggested We Form A Ukraine Strategy. The Neocons Lost Their Minds, John Daniel Davidson, The Federalist, Aug 24, 2023
    "The Heritage Foundation came under fire [last] week from a bunch of politically toxic neocons for suggesting we should prioritize helping Americans suffering from natural disasters like the Maui wildfires over funding a grinding war of attrition between Ukraine and Russia. A radical suggestion, I know. The background here is that under the leadership of President Kevin Roberts, Heritage has been saved from irrelevance by focusing less on what establishment neocon Beltway elites think is important and more on what ordinary Americans actually want. And one of the things they want is for Congress to stop pouring taxpayer dollars into Ukraine. In an op-ed last week, Roberts noted this as part of a pointed criticism of an underhanded White House plan to force another round of aid to Ukraine into a supplemental funding bill that would add money to FEMA’s depleted Disaster Relief Fund (DRF).
    "Roberts rightly says this is a dirty trick designed to pressure Republicans to support more aid to Ukraine by tying it to aid for hurricane and wildfire victims. Then this week, Heritage posted a couple of ads making the entirely fair point that every American has now sent more money to Ukraine than to the victims of the Maui fires. One of those ads argued that until the Biden administration comes up with a plan to end the war, Congress shouldn’t approve another cent of aid. Reasonable people can disagree about how much support Americans owe the Ukrainians in their struggle against Russia. But even if one accepts that we should be supporting Ukraine to the hilt, it’s fair to ask what the plan is to end the war — and no, “until Russia is totally defeated” is not a serious response, much less a strategy."

 • ‘The Real Purpose In Making The Bomb Was To Subdue The Soviets.’ Now It’s Happening Again, On A Vast Scale. Why? – July 22 At Fuller Lodge, Los Alamos Reporter, Jul 19, 2023

 • Bulletin 330: "'The real purpose in making the bomb was to subdue the Soviets.'* Now it's happening again, on a vast scale. WHY?" A conversation with acclaimed historian Peter Kuznick and Greg Mello in Los Alamos, July 22, Jul 7, 2023

 • Ukraine War Makes it Harder to be a Nuclear ‘Dove’ | Our Land, Laura Paskus, New Mexico in Focus, Jun 30, 2023

 • Bulletin 329: Russia rules out nuclear disarmament negotiations; second week of Ukrainian offenses fail; what will US and NATO do? Build 60 projects in LANL's Pajarito Corridor?, Jun 17, 2023

 • Ukraine; Biden's Manicheism; the U.S. cannot even conduct a nuclear arms race, let alone win one, LASG friends ltr, Mar 16, 2023

 • Ukraine protest and updates, pit production delays and cost increases in NNSA's new budget, LASG friends ltr, Mar 14, 2023

 • Antiwar rally 2 pm Saturday in Albuquerque; LANL pits delayed, endorse the "Call for Sanity"; Ukraine update; the Nordstream investigation (and likely impeachment) "imperative" LASG friends ltr, Mar 11, 2023

 • Ukraine losses mount toward critical point; ANSWER rally against the war is now 2 pm (not 1 pm), March 18, Albuquerque; nearly half U.S. citizens believe WWIII is near, LASG friends ltr, Mar 7, 2023

 • Ukraine news and views; antiwar rally March 18; pending guest editorial; pit production precis, LASG friends ltr, Mar 3, 2023

 • Bulletin 325: Understanding the Nordstream sabotage and punishing those responsible, Feb 18, 2023

 • Ukraine news with comments and excerpts; bookmark for future reference if desired,LASG friends ltr, Feb 8, 2023

 • Bulletin 324: Opposition to Ukraine war gains visibility in New Mexico and via our web site, more broadly, Feb 6, 2023

 • Anti-nuclear activist opposes helping Ukraine, encourages peace, Santa Fe New Mexican, Feb 5, 2023

 • Bulletin 323: "Nuclear Hotseat" interview / Ukraine war updates, Feb 4, 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, Jan 25, 2023

 • $10 Trillion for Nuclear War: Racing to the Nuclear Cliff, The Socialist Program with Brian Becker, Jan 10, 2023

 • Bulletin 321: Last day for 2022 donations! / A few quick updates, Dec 31, 2022

 • Bulletin 320: Neocon humiliation -- or nuclear exchange / The centrality of war resistance in moral politics / 3 days left for 1:1 donation match!, Dec 29, 2022

 • Bulletin 319: Ukraine; NDAA: omnibus appropriations bill; fundraising --thank you; some matching funds still available, Dec 21, 2022

 • Stop the war now, Jean Nichols, The Taos News, Dec 19, 2022

 • Bulletin 318: Speak out now against further U.S. escalation in Ukraine; daily updates for your use, Dec 14, 2022

 • Agenda for tonight's emergency Ukraine meeting in Albuquerque, and by Zoom, Nov 15, 2022

 • Bulletin 314: Reminder re next week's antiwar, disarmament, & nuclear safety events: come if you can or tune in, outreach needed; pit interview on KNME tonight 7 pm; fundraising drive continues; erratum, Nov 11, 2022

 • Bulletin 313: Important meeting about Ukraine next week; DNFSB hearing in Santa Fe; more, Nov 7, 2022

 • Biden Administration releases aggressive nuclear strategy envisioning "first use" of nuclear weapons in wars like Ukraine, press release, Oct 27, 2022

 • Bulletin 310: Speak up! We urge you to take up the call for peace in Ukraine, Sep 25, 2022

 • Pope Francis: "World War III has been declared." We agree. Stop LANL's pit factory; Stop the U.S. war against Russia, presentation, Jun 15, 2022

 • Bulletin 301: Oppose the war! Demand and create accountability for lawmakers who fund and promote more war in Ukraine, May 16, 2022

 • Grave dangers loom in Ukraine war votes and escalations; opportunities open for journalists and citizens; We urge news media to widen debate, pose questions, create accountability, press release, May 16, 2022

 • LASG friends ltr: Thursday evening public discussion in Albuquerque: Ukraine, propaganda, progressives supporting Nazis and war, May 10, 2022

 • Escalation in Ukraine: The Nuclear War Danger is Real, Brian Becker & Greg Mello discuss the U.S. policy of waging proxy war on Russia, BreakThrough News, May 4, 2022

 • Bulletin 299: Emergency call to action: stop Biden's proposed $33 billion war escalation, Apr 28, 2022

 • Bulletin 298: Talk on pits & renewed U.S. nuclear weapons production Tuesday evening 4/26/22; antiwar billboard; what you can do, Apr 25, 2022

 • The core debate, Searchlight New Mexico, Mar 23, 2022

 • Bulletin 294: Please consider forwarding this fine statement from UNAC re Ukraine, Mar 23, 2022

 • Nuclear expert speaks on the dangers of war between the US and Russia, World Socialist Website, Mar 15, 2022

 • A Proposed Solution to the Ukraine War, Consortium News, Greg Mello, Mar 7, 2022

 • Bulletin 293: Ukraine conflict: If you want a ceasefire (as we do), stop firing, Mar 5, 2022

 • Bulletin 292: Statement on the Ukraine conflict and war with Russia, Mar 1, 2022

 • "What can we in New Mexico do?," LASG letter, Feb 23, 2022

 • Bulletin 288: US nuclear weapons since 2020: continuity and change, Dec 7, 2021 (see discussion of US, NATO, and Russia)

 • Nuclear experts speak on the dangers of war between the US and Russia, World Socialist Web Site, Apr 15, 2017

 • US Leaders Reject “Nuclear Winter” Studies, Ignore Existential Danger of Nuclear War. Turn a Blind Eye towards Armageddon, Steven Starr, Global Research, Nov 1, 2016

 • The Ukraine Conflict: What's Behind It? Why Is It Important?, Sep 26, 2015

 • Bulletin 200: Warhead budget bloat; U.S.-caused Ukraine catastrophe at the brink; hello peak oil, Feb 8, 2015