Top Afghan Diplomat Accuses US of Breaking Doha Promises

© AP Photo / Muhammad Farooq

KABUL (Sputnik) - The acting Afghan foreign minister has accused the United States in an interview with Sputnik of not following through on the commitments it made during Doha talks.

"No, the United States has not taken action in some aspects [of the 2020 Doha agreement]," Amir Khan Muttaqi told Sputnik in an interview.

The Taliban* had to free its men from prisons after the US-installed government fell, in what Muttaqi argued was a breach of a US promise to facilitate their gradual release.

The Taliban official said that Washington did not deliver on its promise to have Taliban members removed from international blacklists and help the interim government rebuild the war-torn country.

"It was promised that the US would cooperate in the reconstruction of Afghanistan and encourage other countries to do the same. Instead of cooperating, they imposed sanctions," Muttaqi said.

But he stressed that the caretaker Afghan government stayed true to its commitment to prevent terrorists from using Afghan soil to threaten the security of the US and its allies.

"So far, this soil has not been used against them. We promised them that we would maintain economic and diplomatic relations with the US. We stand by that promise," he added.

*The Taliban is an organisation under UN sanctions for terrorist activities.

Texas abortions plummeted after the 6-week ban and caused a backlog in care

Taiyler Simone Mitchell
Protesters, demonstrators and activists gather in front of the U.S. Supreme Court as the justices hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, a case about a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, on December 01, 2021. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The month after Texas' strict abortion ban went into effect, abortions dropped by 50%, per the Texas Policy Evaluation Project.

 
Since then, there has been a backlog of patients running to get the procedure done.
The ban, which makes it illegal to get abortions after the six-week mark, inspired several others.
The number of Texas patients getting abortions plummeted drastically after the ban on the procedure after the six-week pregnancy mark was implemented in the state, according to The Washington Post.

One month after the September 1 implementation of Senate Bill 8 — the most restrictive abortion ban in the country — the number of abortions in Texas decreased by 50%, according to the Texas Policy Evaluation Project.

Senate Bill 8 allows for private citizens to sue abortion providers after learning of someone getting an abortion past the six-week mark and collect $10,000 in damages if they win. Experts told Insider's Kelsey Vlamis that laws like this could encourage legal vigilantism and chaos. SB8 has inspired several similar bills similar across the country.

The restrictive law is also causing a backlog of patients trying to get the procedure. Patients rushing to make an appointment for abortion has created been more of a time crunch for them to receive care — and clinics are scrambling to get patients in for the procedure in a timely manner.

Assuming a patient has a regular 28-day menstrual cycle, they could then have just two weeks after a missed period to schedule an appointment and go through the necessary steps before getting the abortion — including setting up the appointment, seeing the doctor, and a legally required 24-hour waiting period after consultation.

"If there is a two-week waiting period, you would have had to schedule your abortion before you missed your period," Joe Nelson, a doctor, told The Post. "How can we possibly expect patients to do that?"

Nearby states have also seen an influx in abortion-seeking patients from Texas since the ban took effect.

 EVEN AMERICA'S FRIENDS ARE CRITICAL

America is focusing on the wrong enemy

15 Feb 2022|Brahma Chellaney

Much of the democratic world would like the United States to remain the pre-eminent global power. But with the US apparently committed to strategic overreach, that outcome risks becoming unlikely.

The problem with America’s global leadership begins at home. Hyper-partisan politics and profound polarisation are eroding American democracy and impeding the pursuit of long-term objectives. In foreign policy, the partisan divide can be seen in perceptions of potential challengers to the US: according to a March 2021 poll, Republicans are most concerned about China, while Democrats worry about Russia above all.

This may explain why US President Joe Biden is treating a ‘rogue’ Russia as a peer competitor, when he should be focused on the challenge from America’s actual peer, China. In comparison to Russia, China’s population is about 10 times bigger, its economy is almost 10 times larger, and its military expenditure is around four times greater. Not only is China more powerful than Russia, it genuinely seeks to supplant the US as the pre-eminent global power. By contrast, with its military build-up on Ukraine’s borders, Russia is seeking to mitigate a perceived security threat in its neighbourhood.

Hastening the decline of US global leadership is hardly the preserve of Democrats. A bipartisan parade of US leaders has failed to recognise that the post-Cold War unipolar world order, characterised by unchallenged US economic and military predominance, is long gone. The US squandered its ‘unipolar moment’, especially by waging an expensive and amorphous global war on terror, including several military interventions, and through its treatment of Russia.

After its Cold War victory, the US essentially took an extended victory lap, pursuing strategic manoeuvres that flaunted its dominance. Notably, it sought to expand NATO to Russia’s backyard, but made little effort to bring Russia into the Western fold, as it had done with Germany and Japan after World War II. The souring of relations with the Kremlin contributed to Russia’s eventual remilitarisation.

So, while the US remains the world’s foremost military power, it has been stretched thin by the decisions and commitments it has made, in Europe and elsewhere, since 1991. This goes a long way towards explaining why the US has ruled out deploying its own troops to defend Ukraine today. What the US is offering Ukraine—weapons and ammunition—cannot protect the country from Russia, which has an overwhelming military advantage over its neighbour.

But US leaders made another fatal mistake since the Cold War: they aided China’s rise, helping to create the greatest rival their country has ever faced. Unfortunately, they have yet to learn from this. Instead, the US continues to dedicate insufficient attention and resources to an excessively wide array of global issues, from Russian revanchism and Chinese aggression to lesser threats in the Middle East and Africa, and on the Korean peninsula. And it continues inadvertently to bolster China’s global influence, not least through its overuse of sanctions.

For example, by barring friends and allies from importing Iranian oil, two successive US administrations enabled China not only to secure oil at a hefty discount, but also to become a top investor in—and security partner of—the Islamic republic. US sanctions have similarly pushed resource-rich Myanmar into China’s arms. As Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, whose country has faced a US arms embargo over its ties to China, asked last year, ‘If I don’t rely on China, who will I rely on?’

Russia has been asking itself the same question. Though Russia and China kept each other at arm’s length for decades, US-led sanctions introduced after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea drove President Vladimir Putin to pursue a closer strategic partnership with China. The bilateral relationship is likely to deepen, regardless of what happens in Ukraine. But the raft of harsh new sanctions the US has promised to implement in the event of a Russian invasion will accelerate this shift significantly, with China as the big winner.

The heavy financial penalties the US has planned—including the ‘nuclear option’ of disconnecting Russian banks from the international SWIFT payments system—would turn China into Russia’s banker, enabling it to reap vast profits and expand the international use of its currency. If Biden fulfilled his pledge to block the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which is set to deliver Russian supplies directly to Germany via the Baltic Sea, China would gain greater access to Russian energy.

In fact, by securing a commitment from Putin this month to a nearly tenfold increase in Russian natural gas exports, China is building a safety net that could—in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan—withstand Western energy sanctions and even a blockade. China could also benefit militarily by demanding greater access to Russian military technology in exchange for its support.

For the US, a strengthened Russia–China axis is the worst possible outcome of the Ukraine crisis. The best outcome would be a compromise with Russia to ensure that it does not invade and possibly annex Ukraine. By enabling the US to avoid further entanglement in Europe, this would permit a more realistic balancing of key objectives—especially checking Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific—with available resources and capabilities.

The future of the US-led international order will be decided in Asia, and China is currently doing everything in its power to ensure that order’s demise. Already, China is powerful enough that it can host the Winter Olympics even as it carries out a genocide against Muslims in the Xinjiang region, with limited pushback. If the Biden administration does not recognise the true scale of the threat China poses, and adopt an appropriately targeted strategy soon, whatever window of opportunity for preserving US pre-eminence remains may well close.

AUTHOR

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi–based Centre for Policy Research and fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of several books, including Asian juggernaut, Water: Asia’s new battleground and Water, peace, and war: confronting the global water crisis. This article is presented in partnership with Project Syndicate © 2022. Image: Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik/AFP/Getty Images.

ROFLMAO 

Tucker Carlson Claims Ukraine Is ‘Run By Dictator Who’s Friends With Everyone in Washington’

By Kipp JonesFeb 14th, 2022, 


Tucker Carlson ripped Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a dictator on Monday, and derided American politicians he said are attempting to garner sympathy for he and his country.

Zelensky stated early on Monday that his country would face a direct attack from Russia by Wednesday.

Those close to him clarified he was merely joking, as more than 100,000 Russian troops are amassed along Ukraine’s borders.

U.S. officials have offered no indication they are kidding, as it has been stated numerous times since last week that Russian President Vladimir Putin could attack at any moment.

While Zelensky is portrayed in the media as a sympathetic figure whose country faces potential encroachment from and occupation by Moscow, Carlson said on his Fox News show that Zelensky is actually a tyrant.

The host accused Ukraine’s government of jailing its political opponents and engaging in rampant censorship.

After attacking Democrats and “some low-IQ” Republicans, Carlson scoffed at the notion that Ukraine is even a democracy.

“Why Ukraine?” Carlson asked. “Because the president’s son was paid $1 million a year by Ukraine and they have a massive lobbying effort in Washington.”

Carlson slammed people such as Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) for portraying Ukraine versus Russia as a binary choice between good versus evil.

According to Carlson, both countries are autocratic, and any issue between them are for them to sort out.

“What exactly is Ukraine like, what’s its government like?” Carlson said. “Turns out, it’s run by a dictator who’s friends with everyone in Washington.”

Carlson said the country’s main opposition figure “is now under arrest and the opposition media, the TV stations, have been shut down by the government.”

“That’s how a dictatorship operates,” he said, before he noted, “It should make you very nervous that Joe Biden, Susan Rice and the National Security Advisor kid, they’re all telling us with a straight face… it’s a democracy.”

Carlson further commented that “no country that jails its opposition leader is a democracy.”

He also argued that it appears as though the Biden administration is running Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

Author Richard Hanania joined the show, where he offered what he said are numerous examples of Ukraine’s government behaving undemocratically.

Hanania invoked the case of former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, who is currently facing treason charges, and is a vocal opponent to Zelensky.

Carlson’s guest inferred the charges against Poroshenko’s are trumped up. He noted,

And so it’s not a question of whether Russia or Ukraine is perfect. It’s a question of whether Ukraine matters to the united States. Whether Ukraine is such a morally upstanding country that it’s worth the U.S. poisoning its relations with another super power, the only country in the world thats a pure competitor as far as number of nuclear weapons, bringing in a tornado and going to war for Ukraine.

Hanania added that what happens in Ukraine is “none of our business.”

Carlson concluded, “I think it’s the kind of democracy they’d like to see here. Maybe that’s the point.”

Watch above, via Fox News.

Honduran police surround house of ex-president after U.S. seeks extradition


FILE PHOTO: U.S. declassifies blacklisting of former Honduras leader Hernandez


Mon, February 14, 2022
By Gustavo Palencia and Marvin Valladares

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) -Scores of Honduran police officers on Monday surrounded the house of former president Juan Orlando Hernandez after the United States asked the government to arrest and extradite Washington's key erstwhile ally in the region.

Speculation has been swirling for months that the United States was planning to extradite Hernandez when he left office amid accusations that he colluded with drug traffickers. Leftist leader Xiomara Castro replaced him as president last month.

Washington's request for extradition represents a major about-face by the U.S. government, which saw Hernandez as a vital ally in the volatile Central America region during his eight years in power.

The United States had already placed Hernandez on a blacklist, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken this month said there were credible reports Hernandez "has engaged in significant corruption by committing or facilitating acts of corruption and narco-trafficking".

Hernandez could not be immediately reached for comment but he has always denied any links to drug traffickers.

A Reuters witness outside Hernandez's house said about 100 police officers were waiting outside.

Hernandez's lawyer, Hermes Ramírez, told Canal 5 television that the former president was holed up inside his home and that the arrest warrant for Hernandez is illegal because he has immunity as a member of the regional Central American parliament.

"They are trying to trample on the rights of President Hernandez," Ramirez said.

Hernandez formally joined the Guatemala-based regional body, called Parlacen, just a few hours after Castro's inauguration as president.

Parlacen affords members immunity from prosecution in Central America, though that immunity can be removed or suspended if a member's home country requests it.

Luis Javier Santos, Honduras' best known anti-corruption prosecutor, said on Twitter that "there is no impediment to his extradition".

The Honduran Foreign Ministry earlier in the day said the U.S. Embassy had requested the arrest of a Honduran politician who is the subject of an extradition request to the United States, without naming him.

A senior Honduran official, speaking anonymously because they were not allowed to speak to media on the subject, told Reuters the United States "requested the provisional arrest of former president Juan Orlando Hernández for extradition purposes".

Melvin Duarte, a spokesman for the Honduran judiciary, said the Supreme Court is due to meet at 9.30am on Tuesday to name a judge to oversee Hernandez' extradition case.

Throughout his time in power Hernandez, cultivated close ties to Washington and most notably won the support of former U.S. President Donald Trump, using Honduran security forces to help the Republican leader cut down on U.S.-bound land migration routes from Central America and further afield.

But allegations of links with drug traffickers dogged his time in power, which was also marred by corruption scandals.

Last year, a U.S. judge sentenced Hernandez's brother to life in prison plus 30 years for drug trafficking.

(Reporting by Gustavo Palencia and Marvin Valladares.Writing by Drazen JorgicEditing by Clarence Fernandez, Kim Coghill and Gerry Doyle)

AOC says there is a 'very real risk' that the nation will not 'have a democracy' a decade from now

ALEX NITZBERG

February 14, 2022

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said that she thinks there is a possibility that the U.S. will no longer "have a democracy" in a decade.

"The infrastructure plan, if it does what it’s intended to do, politicians will take credit for it ten years from now, if we even have a democracy ten years from now," the Democratic lawmaker said during an interview earlier this month, according to the New Yorker.

"I think there’s a very real risk that we will not. What we risk is having a government that perhaps postures as a democracy, and may try to pretend that it is, but isn’t," she said.

The outlet noted that the interview, which occurred on Feb. 1, had "been edited for length and clarity."

Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive lawmaker who is currently serving her second term in Congress, indicated that the country has a problem with an increase in "white-nationalist, reactionary politics."

"You have white-nationalist, reactionary politics starting to grow into a critical mass. What we have is the continued sophisticated takeover of our democratic systems in order to turn them into undemocratic systems, all in order to overturn results that a party in power may not like," she said, according to the New Yorker.

The legislator said that there is a danger of the nation reverting to the racism of the Jim Crow era.

"I think we will return to Jim Crow. I think that’s what we risk," she said.

"And the question that we’re really facing is: Was the last fifty to sixty years after the Civil Rights Act just a mere flirtation that the United States had with a multiracial democracy that we will then decide was inconvenient for those in power? And we will revert to what we had before, which, by the way, wasn’t just Jim Crow but also the extraordinary economic oppression as well?" Ocasio-Cortez said, according to the outlet.

 

AUTHORITARIANISM AS LITMUS TEST

 BY SCOTT LEMIEUX

 

/

 

ON FEBRUARY 14, 2022

 

/

 

Another Republican who opposes free multi-party elections wants control of the election apparatus in a major state:

A Republican county clerk in Colorado who was stripped of her responsibility of overseeing county elections is joining a growing movement of people throughout the country who spread false claims about fraud in the 2020 presidential election and want to oversee the next one.

Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk, who is facing accusations that she breached the security of voting machines, announced on Monday that she would run to be the top elections official in Colorado.

At least three Republican challengers are already running to unseat the current Colorado secretary of state, Jena Griswold, a Democrat.

Colorado is a purple state that President Biden won with 55 percent of the vote in 2020. The state’s primary is on June 28, and Colorado is one of 27 states whose top elections official will be on the ballot this year.

Given what the national context is likely to be in November, not great!

US  RIGHT WING  FREAKS OUT OVER PIKETTY SPEAKING
National Defense University hosts speaker arguing 'democratic socialism' is answer to China threat

The academic lecture for national security leaders, which will condemn "Western arrogance," comes as U.S. military is accused of going woke.


By Aaron Kliegman

Updated: February 14, 2022 

A prestigious school funded by the Department of Defense to educate U.S. military officers and other national security leaders is hosting an event this week where the featured speaker will argue America must respond to its competition with China by ending its "arrogance" and promoting "democratic socialism."

The controversial event, which critics described to Just the News as anti-American propaganda, comes at a time when the Pentagon has come under fire for embracing "woke" ideas. Such scrutiny has coincided with a drop in public trust in the military, according to recent polling.

On Wednesday, the National Defense University (NDU) is scheduled to hold a speaker session titled "Responding to China: The Case for Global Justice and Democratic Socialism." The speaker will be Thomas Piketty, a French academic who is currently a professor at the Paris School of Economics and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. Piketty has also written several books, including "Time for Socialism."

"Western countries are still struggling to define their attitude toward the Beijing regime," the official description of the NDU event states. "In this talk, Mr. Piketty will argue that the right answer lies in ending Western arrogance and promoting a new emancipatory and egalitarian horizon on a global scale — a new form of democratic and participatory, ecological, and post-colonial socialism."

"If they stick to their usual lecturing posture and a dated hyper-capitalist model," the description continues, "Western countries may find it extremely difficult to meet the Chinese challenge."

The Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) and the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy, both part of NDU, are presenting the session in collaboration with the DOD Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) program, a portfolio of projects that studies and assesses challenging problems associated with the planning and operations of the Pentagon, the military services, and other government agencies.

Part of INSS's stated mission is "to provide strategic support to the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the services, and combatant commands." The Eisenhower School's mission is to "prepare select military officers and civilians for strategic leadership and success in developing national security strategy."

The NDU event is drawing backlash among some in the broader national security community, including individuals who previously worked at NDU. They told Just the News that inviting someone to promote socialism as a response to growing tensions with China — which is ruled by the Chinese Communist Party — is not in accordance with the school's mission.

"As a former associate dean at National Defense University and a former strategist to the president, I am disgusted and horrified that our nation's highest institution of military education is being used as a platform to promote anti-capitalist, pro-socialist propaganda," said Sebastian Gorka. "And on the taxpayer dime."

Gorka, who served in former President Trump's White House and was named to the National Security Education Board in 2020, rebuked Piketty for advocating socialism as the solution to the strategic challenged posed by China.

"The fact that a French apologist for an ideology Americans died to prevent the spread of dares to hold a lecture on one of the oldest military bases in our nation is an affront to all veterans and those still serving," said Gorka, referring to Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., where NDU is located. "Mr. Piketty seems to have forgotten that 'Western arrogance' saved France from destruction by Hitler's Germany's National SOCIALIST Workers' Party."
GORKA IS A HUNGARIAN CATHOLIC FASCIST

When asked to elaborate on his views on the U.S.-China relationship and how NDU selected him as a speaker, Piketty told Just the News to attend his talk without expanding further.

NDU described Wednesday's event as nothing out of the ordinary, touting it as a way to expose students and faculty to different perspectives.

"NDU's mission is to educate joint warfighters and other national security leaders in critical thinking and the creative application of military power to inform national strategy and globally integrated operations, under conditions of disruptive change, in order to prevail in war, peace, and competition," an NDU spokesperson told Just the News.

"To do that," the spokesperson continued, "we provide opportunities for students and faculty to be exposed to a wide variety of perspectives on national security and international affairs, to include this optional engagement with economist Thomas Piketty. This is in line with the accreditation requirement that NDU demonstrates a commitment to academic freedom, intellectual freedom, and freedom of expression."

Wednesday's event comes at a time when senior military and civilian leadership inside the Pentagon is being scrutinized for pushing soldiers to consider so-called "woke" ideas pushed by the far left.

"The Department of Defense has become deeply and dangerously politicized," said a senior Republican congressional aide. "This sort of woke and anti-American propaganda is everywhere, and especially in the military academies and places like NDU. This propaganda isn't about challenging our young men and women — it's about making the case for the Chinese Communist Party and against America."

"If and when Republicans retake Congress and the White House," the aide added, "we will systematically move to reverse these trends, and the academies and NDU are absolutely going to be part of that."

NDU is designated as a "Chairman's Controlled Activity," meaning its charter was approved by the secretary of defense and the school operates under the guidance and direction of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation's highest-ranking military officer.

The current chairman, Gen. Mark Milley, was accused of pushing wokeness on soldiers after defending the study and teaching of critical race theory within the armed forces last June.

"It's important actually for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read," Milley told the House Armed Services Committee. "I want to understand white rage."

"I personally find it offensive," Milley said, "that we are accusing the United States military, our general officers, our commissioned and noncommissioned officers, of being woke because we're studying some theories that are out there."

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point offers a seminar class on "white rage" and the chief of Naval Operations recommends "How to Be an Antiracist "— a foundational text of critical race theory — on the official reading list of the U.S. Navy. The list also includes "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness and Sexual Minorities and Politics."

Supporters argue incorporating such texts and ideas into the armed forces fosters well-rounded service members who better understand the world around them beyond military tactics. Critics counter that doing so will divide and demoralize soldiers when unity is crucial for military effectiveness, adding the focus of military education should be how to prepare, deter, and fight wars.

Last week, the DOD wrote that diversity, equity, and inclusion are "necessities" in the military and need to be "a consideration or a part of all decisions in the military."

In this environment, some military experts have warned the country's war colleges and service academies no longer teach warfighting. The curricula at these schools have for some 50 years taught soldiers to be "a diplomat, an economist, a scientist, a historian, and a lawyer," but not a warfighter, two professors and military historians at the U.S. Army War College wrote last year, arguing the military "no longer knows how to fight and win wars."

This perception of the military, especially in the wake of President Biden's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, may be one reason why public trust in the military has declined.

Only 45% of Americans have a "great deal" of trust in the military, a steep drop from 70% three years ago, according to a recent survey conducted by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. An additional 10% of respondents said they had "not much" trust in the military, compared to just 2% three years ago.

The results, released late last year, also showed an 11-point drop in admiration for the military since February 2020.

The findings also revealed a majority of Americans — 52% — named China as the country posing the greatest threat to the U.S. That's up from 21% four years ago.

This broader context has contributed to some observers' objections to Piketty's planned speech on Wednesday.

"I did not serve on Fort McNair for more than half a decade to see it become a platform for those who hate America and the West," said Gorka. "And I will dedicate myself to making sure this event does not happen."

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Calls for Escalating US Aggression against Russia

With Its Doomsday Clock at 100 Seconds to Midnight,

by Roger D. Harris / February 14th, 2022

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists emerged after World War II as a voice for peace by some of the scientists who developed the then ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Now, its mission has drifted into being an echo chamber for the US imperial project urging President Biden to take even more destabilizing actions against Russia.

Dropping the A-bombs

By the time that the scientists at the top-secret Manhattan Project had developed the atomic bomb and the US military had worked out the logistics for deploying it, World War II was for all intents and purposes over. By early May 1945, Germany had unconditionally surrendered; in large part due to the efforts of the Red Army defeating the Nazi Wehrmacht, but at the horrific cost of 27,000,000 Soviet lives. The Japanese too had been defeated militarily and had agreed to “unconditional surrender” with the one caveat that Emperor Hirohito be spared.

So, the world’s emerging hegemon had a problem. It had the ultimate weapon to impose its policy of world domination (i.e., today’s official US national security doctrine of global “full spectrum dominance”). But what good is this ultimate weapon if it is a secret? And, even if known, would the world believe that the US has the will to unleash such a destructive force?

President Truman had the solution – nuke Japan. All the military targets in Japan had been destroyed, but an even stronger message of the US’s determination to enforce imperial hegemony was made by annihilating the civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

The Japanese promptly surrendered, offering up the life of their emperor. The US accepted, but did not execute the emperor, who was more useful alive than dead. Besides, the leniency gesture reinforced the message that the US would capriciously bomb at will. Even when President Obama visited Hiroshima in 2016, he pointedly offered “no apology” for the destruction his country had wrought.

Dawn of the Cold War

The quick Japanese surrender in August 1945 had another cause, which many modern historians consider more overriding than the US bombs. The Soviets, engaged with their western front, had remained neutral in the war with Japan, but had promised the Allies to join the war effort against Japan once the Germans were defeated. At the same time the US dropped the bombs, the USSR declared war with Japan causing Tokyo to capitulate.

The dropping of the atomic bombs was the first salvo of the Cold War, signifying the end of the US wartime alliance of convenience with the Soviet Union. Truman’s rush to nuke Japan had the dual advantage of making known his “hammer” over the Kremlin as well as denying the USSR time to advance east and have a seat in the surrender agreement with Japan. The Soviets had not developed atomic weapons on the assumption – which proved to be essentially correct – that World War II would be over before they could be deployed to defeat the Axis powers.

In the immediate post-war period, the Soviets and their allies were existentially threatened by the unambiguous intention of the US and its allies to destroy them. As a defensive measure, the Soviet Union had no choice but to develop a deterrent nuclear force, testing its first atomic bomb in 1949.

Although the Soviets pledged to use their nuclear arsenal only in defense and renounced “first strike,” the US didn’t. Soon the Cold War arms race threatened the planet with destruction. The emergent construct of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) was a fragile arrangement for the future of humanity.

Emergence of the Bulletin by scientists for peace

Voices of peace arose from the very inventers of the atomic bomb. Immediately after the destructive power of the atom was rained on Japan and even before the Soviet Union developed their deterrent force, former Manhattan Project scientists Eugene Rabinowitch and Hyman Goldsmith founded the Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, subsequently renamed the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Other notables associated with the Bulletin were nuclear physicist Hans Bethe, Soviet space scientist Anatoli Blagonravov, Jewish-German émigré and developer of quantum mechanics Max Born, physicist “father of the atomic bomb” turned anti-nuclear proliferation activist J. Robert Oppenheimer, British polymath peace activist Bertrand Russell, Soviet physicist Nikolay Semyonov, and Albert Einstein.

The Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock, unveiled in 1947, was set at seven minutes to midnight. The clock was intended as an educational tool to serve “as a vivid symbol of these multiplying perils, its hands showing how close to extinction we are.”

The Pugwash Conferences, an effort at peace in the early part of the Cold War, were an outgrowth of the Bulletin in its formative years in the 1950s.

Mission drift at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Today, the risk of nuclear annihilation, not to mention global warming and other threats, has never been greater, according to the Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock. But the Bulletin has morphed from an advocate for peace and against other threats to humanity to something else.

From an organization run by scientists, the current governing board of the Bulletin has hardly a scientist in sight. Its president and CEO is Rachel Bronson, a political scientist who came out of the US security establishment NGO world, including the Council on Foreign Relations (Wall Street’s think tank) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (ranked the top military think tank in the world). Its chair, David Kuhlman, is a corporate consultant specializing in helping “clients identify pathways to profitable growth.” Its secretary, Steve Ramsey, formerly worked for defense contractor General Electric. Former Secretary of State and accused war criminal Madeleine Albright does promotionals for the Bulletin.

The Bulletin maintains a liberal façade and still publishes articles that contribute to peace and environmentalism. In that way, its role in collusion with the US imperial project is insidious, because the patina of peace is used to legitimize its mission drift.

Fanning the flames of anti-Chinese sentiment, the Bulletin promotes the conspiracy theory that the Chinese artificially developed COVID-19, featuring journalist Nicholas Wade’s “How COVID-19’s origins were obscured, by the East and the West.” However, scientific evidence points to natural origins of the virus. Anti-Russian sentiment is promoted with journalist Matt Field’s “Russian media spreading disinformation about US bioweapons as troops mass near Ukraine.” Where are the scientists advocating for peace?

The Bulletin covers the Ukraine crisis

Another case in point of its devolution is the article “How to mix sanctions and diplomacy to avert disaster in Ukraine,” published in the Bulletin on February 1. The article advocates for sanctions that would “severely and quickly devastate Russia’s powerful energy export sector.” Echoing Washington’s talking points, the article couches its recommendations as responding to Russian aggression but actually proposes nothing to de-escalate the conflict.

It is beyond ironic that an organization that purports to be warning against the dangers of nuclear holocaust is making a full-throated defense of an even more aggressive posture by one of the world’s leading nuclear powers.

Yes, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist’s Doomsday Clock is now 100 seconds to midnight, and they are trying to push it closer to Armageddon.

The view of the Bulletin’s Ukraine article is that the current crisis is Putin’s “own making.” In contrast, the article explains that the US has diplomatically “initiated” talks with Russia. There is no mention of the forward deployment of US troops or sending lethal aid to Ukraine. There is no recognition of aggressive actions by NATO such as stationing assault ABM missile systems in Romania and possibly Poland. Off limits is allusion to the US shredding the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Hidden from sight in the aforementioned article and another published the same day on “How the demise of an arms control treaty foreshadowed Russia’s aggression against Ukraine” is the US-orchestrated Ukraine coup in 2014 that installed an anti-Russian regime there. The latter article’s meticulously detailed history of the region notes “Moscow invaded and annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea,” but not the coup that precipitated it.

Reasonable peace proposals

There is not a word in these articles of how some of the Russian initiatives might prevent hostilities and make the region more secure with a reduced likelihood of war. And certainly, there is none of the following reasonable peace proposals:

+Russia and the US shall not use the territory of other countries to prepare or conduct attacks against the other.

+Neither party shall deploy short- or intermediate-range missiles abroad or in areas where these weapons could reach targets inside the other’s territory.

+Neither party shall deploy nuclear weapons abroad, and any such weapons already deployed must be returned.

+Both parties shall eliminate any infrastructure for deploying nuclear weapons outside their own territories.

+Neither party shall conduct military exercises with scenarios involving the use of nuclear weapons.

+Neither party shall train military or civilian personnel from non-nuclear countries to use nuclear weapons.

The above peace measures are what in fact Russia proposed, but are considered “non-starters” by the US and presumably by the Bulletin.

Citing the Atlantic Council, the US-based think tank for NATO, the Bulletin explains that the sanctions that they are advocating would cause the Russian economy to “experience significant chaos.” These sanctions that the Bulletin calls for are a form of warfare just as deadly as dropping bombs. Sanctions kill! Instead of supporting peaceful measures to reduce tensions in the Ukraine, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has become a cheerleader for WashingtonFacebook

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Roger D. Harris is with the human rights group Task Force on the Americas, founded in 1985, and is on the SanctionsKill coalition. Read other articles by Roger D..

FROM THE RIGHT

'False crisis' regarding Russia hurts relations between U.S. and Ukraine, experts say

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he had not seen the intelligence assessments regarding an invasion, and that the warnings were stoking panic.

By Susan Katz Keating

JUST THE NEWS
Updated: February 14, 2022 - 

The situation in Ukraine is a "false crisis" that has hurt relations between Washington and Kyiv, as the Biden Administration increasingly claims to know the date and method of a Russian incursion against its neighbor, experts told Just the News.

The experts made their comments Monday while appearing on the John Solomon Reports podcast.

"It's a false crisis," said international relations expert Kiron Skinner, who served as an adviser at the State Department under Donald Trump. She made that assessment, she noted, because "there's been a war of attrition going on between Kyiv and Moscow for eight years."

International tension has spiked recently as Russia maintains an estimated 100,000 troops along its border with Ukraine and has issued ominous statements about "the start of a countdown" and claims that Moscow is being "provoked."

The U.S. has repeatedly announced that Moscow plans to stage a "false flag" provocation in order to justify an attack on Ukraine, and has said that the attack is "imminent," and could occur this week. The State Department on Monday shuttered its main embassy in Kyiv, and moved the operations to the western city of Lviv.

The announcements and predictions strike a sour note in government circles in Kyiv, according to Dan Hoffman, a former station chief for the CIA in Moscow.

"The relationship between the United States and Ukraine is strained right now, to say the least, because Russia has got 130,000 troops on the border," Hoffman told Just the News. "President Zelenskyy, rightly so, is questioning, well, where's the intelligence?"

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday said that he had not seen the intelligence assessments regarding an invasion, and that the warnings were stoking panic.

"I think there is too much information out there today about a deep full scale war on Russia's part," Zelenskyy said. "There is even talk of appropriate dates. We understand all the risks. We understand that the risks are there. If anyone has any additional information about a 100% chance of an invasion, they should give it to us."

Alternating between English and Ukrainian, Zelenskyy continued: "I have to speak with our people as President, and I say the truth to people, and the truth is that we have different information."

Information regarding an attack comes through intelligence channels, the administration has said. But the information and the subsequent leaks prompt questions from the former station chief, Hoffman.

"The Biden administration's kind of substituting diplomacy for releasing, declassifying intelligence, thinking that by declassifying intelligence they're going to influence Vladimir Putin's behavior," Hoffman said. "I think that's frankly a little bit lazy."

The method falls short, he noted.

"We haven't influenced his behavior at all," Hoffman said. But Putin might be influencing ours.

The administration perhaps thinks "they're doing something by releasing intelligence that, frankly, I think it's possible Vladimir Putin is feeding us anyways."

Putin may not want an invasion, but has been "probing," Skinner said.

Predictions from the West, meanwhile, about an imminent invasion are harmful to Ukraine, that country's president said.

"The best friend of our enemies is panic in our country," Zelenskyy said. "All this information, it only fuels panic. It doesn't help us."