First off I just have to share the exciting news that my blog has an imposter! I consider this a great compliment in the sense that my contributions to a sane narrative on U.S. wars in general and the war in Ukraine in particular is a threat to the mainstream narrative managers. FBI? CIA? NSA? Who really knows. I usually think of my communications efforts as being small scale enough to fly under the radar, but this indicates that, as of September 2022, that’s no longer the case. Yay!
It’s been a great week overall as I had a very nice note from a board member at Bread & Puppet appreciating my letter to the editor defending B&P’s political theater and shining some light into the abyss of liberal support for the U.S./NATO war in Ukraine.
But there has also been a whole lot of pushback this week on my having organized a Feb 19 “Rage Against the War Machine” event in Maine where I live.
So far the cogent objections to the rally in DC that I have seen are:
o Libertarians are too racist to stand with against war. (If I accepted this I would have to cease doing much of anything political in Maine because there are many Libertarians among us.)
o Organizers failed to add anti-racist demands.
o Organizers failed to add bodily autonomy demands. Have seen this in connection with both pro-abortion and anti-vax activists.
o Some speakers are unacceptable. Probably the most high profile (at least today) is on again, off again, on again, off again Scott Ritter. Arguably the loudest voice against NATO’s war on Russia, Ritter is again being smeared with bogus claims he is a twice convicted pedophile. My response:
Ritter is to “pedophile” as Julian Assange is to “rapist.”
At our Maine event co-sponsored by Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Maine Natural Guard, Peaceworks of Greater Brunswick, Communist Party of Maine, Libertarian Party of Maine, Maine Green Independent Party, and People’s Party of Maine, we will share the demands of the national event:
At our event, there will be no speakers. We are instead standing with signs and banners in two different busy intersections. We will be standing with folks who belong to groups that I dislike and strongly disagree with, for example, Democrats.
With WW3 underway and the distinct threat of it turning nuclear, I am willing to do that.
My fave blogger Caitlin Johnstone had this to say about the Feb 19 coalition controversy:
This evening I’ll be standing against racism in Portland in response to vicious attacks and threats against some Black leaders in our beloved community. I’ll be standing with a lot of people who are so confused that they support the war in Ukraine. Oh well. May they eventually come to see the light.
Corporate media will try very, very hard to make sure that they don’t. That’s why New Yorker magazine, the New York Times, and the Washington Post wouldn’t publish Seymour Hersch’s historic article about how the U.S. blew up the NordStream pipelines with Norway’s help, and they also won’t report on the article other than to say the White House is denying it. To discredit him, corporate media is dragging out all sorts of deep fakes like, Hersch also denied (correctly) that Syria used chemical weapons on its own people.
Hersch won a Pulitzer Prize for his expose of the My Lai massacre, and also broke the story on torture by U.S. Army personnel at Abu Graib prison in Iraq.
But now I expect we will soon be hearing about some sort of sex crime Hersch is alleged to have committed. Stay tuned.
You are absolutely right, Lisa, anyone speaking out against U.S. warmongering will be attacked. If you can’t dispute the facts of the message, then you slander the messenger to discredit them. All three branches of our government are corrupt. And our country is heading down a perilous path indeed. After Seymour Hersh’s article, “How America Took out the Nordstream” (an indisputable act of war against Russia), Americans who know what is what understand that again, American aggression is all about the oil.
The Russians have been considering how to respond to this revelation, although they are first demanding that they be involved in an investigation of the explosions of the Nordstream pipelines (which they have been blocked from), or they will carry out their own investigation. Never doubt that the Russians will retaliate after deliberating what makes the most sense for them to do to nullify the threat from the U.S.
Here is what Russian military analyst, Dr. Vladimir Kochin, wrote in a report published today: “the Russian academic community has advocated inter alia some additional military and political measures: to withdraw from the 2010 New START and not to resume the US inspections in Russia under its provisions; not to resume the New START BCC meetings; to increase the number of SOA strategic warheads; to enhance combat readiness of its nuclear forces; to cancel the 1972 US-Russian Incidents at Sea Prevention Agreement; to change current Russia’s NFU (or NFS) Nuclear Strategy into a new First Strike Nuclear Strategy; to increase a number of Russian SSBNs in the World Oceans close to the CONUS.
They also put forward some diplomatic measures: to recall Russian Ambassadors and his Deputies in the USA, Norway, Denmark and Sweden to Moscow for consultations, thus keeping the Embassy at the level of the third number, like Senior Counsellor for Political Affairs, with the subsequent demand to reduce the level of their Embassies in Russia respectively (in Denmark and Sweden, because they, highly likely, were aware of the US plot in their maritime economic zones); or to make more radical step: to sever diplomatic relations with all these four countries completely.
In economic sphere: to disrupt all economic and financial contracts, and transport/ transit channels with them; not to sell gas and crude oil to them.
Russian experts have justified such measures by two direct armed aggressions launched by the USA and NATO against Russia, namely: (1) exploding international energy supply route in the Baltic Sea; and (2) combined direct Ukrainian-NATO aggression that is dangerously escalating.”
To me, the most serious retaliation would be for Russia to embrace a First Strike Nuclear Strategy. Must the U.S. push matters to this brink? It’s going to take the efforts of a galvanized citizenry in the U.S. to prevent an all out nuclear war because we cannot trust our government to act rationally in our behalf. We are closer than we have ever been to nuclear annihilation.