What US Africa Command Doesn’t Want You To Know

by Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt Posted onOctober 25, 2022

Originally posted at TomDispatch.

Today’s Nick Turse piece on U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) plunged me into an all-American past that, in light of this planet’s chaotic present, had faded from my mind a bit. After all, TomDispatch began more than 20 years ago in the wake of the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. In a sense, this site was my response to the way President George W. Bush and his top officials reacted to the destruction of the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon. They promptly went to war, officially against “terrorism,” but on a remarkably global scale.

It took next to no time for the president to bluntly label that effort, which began with the invasion of Afghanistan, “the Global War on Terror,” or GWOT. In fact, he and his top officials could hardly have been thinking more expansively about American military power and this planet then. Within five days (yes, five days!) of 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld, his secretary of defense, was already talking about dealing with al-Qaeda, then the most modest of terror outfits (run by a former U.S. ally), by launching, as he put it, “a large multi-headed effort that probably spans 60 countries, including the United States.” (Yes, 60 countries!)

More than two decades later, after disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, the U.S. military and its various commands still occupy at least 750 bases on every continent except Antarctica, having, in the words of President Barack Obama, “pivoted” from the Middle East to Asia in more recent years (though American troops are still fighting in Syria and based in Iraq). Now, in an era when war has returned to Europe and a new Cold War with China is rapidly heating up, it’s easy to ignore the fact that, in its own fashion, this country still remains at war, or on the edge of war, not just in the Middle East but even in Africa where AFRICOM, created in 2007, was the last major effort in the Bush administration’s attempt to garrison the planet.

Sadly, in these years, all too few media outlets have paid enough attention to so much of this. As I wrote in introducing the 2012 piece on AFRICOM Turse reminds us about today:

“Like a number of other TomDispatch writers, I believe that the U.S. military should not be responsible for Planet Earth; that it is not in our interest for the Pentagon to be dividing the globe, like a giant pie, into six “slices” covering almost every inch of the planet: U.S. European Command, or EUCOM (for Europe and Russia), the U.S. Pacific Command, or PACOM (Asia), CENTCOM (the Greater Middle East and a touch of North Africa), NORTHCOM (North America), SOUTHCOM (South America and most of the Caribbean), and AFRICOM (almost all of Africa). Nor should the U.S. military be garrisoning the planet in the historically unprecedented way it does. This imperial role of ours has little or nothing to do with “defense” and creates many possibilities for future blowback. Instead, it seems far more sensible to begin to shut down or cut back radically on our vast array of global bases and outposts (rather than, as in Africa, expanding them), and downsize our global mission in a major way. AFRICOM would obviously disagree…”

In that context, let TomDispatch Managing Editor Nick Turse remind you of his own adventures with AFRICOM from 2012 to late last night, a command the U.S. military would have preferred that none of us pay any attention to when it came to the global spread of this country’s armed power. At this moment, his piece should be a telling reminder of just what a strange and unnerving American world of war and secrecy we’ve been plunged into since September 11, 2001. ~ Tom Engelhardt

---

Keeping an Eye on AFRICOM, Ten Years Later

By Nick Turse

What’s the U.S. military doing in Africa? It’s an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, straight-jacketed in secrecy, and hogtied by red tape. Or at least it would be if it were up to the Pentagon.

Ten years ago, I embarked on a quest to answer that question at TomDispatch, chronicling a growing American military presence on that continent, a build-up of both logistical capabilities and outposts, and the possibility that far more was occurring out of sight. “Keep your eye on Africa,” I concluded. “The U.S. military is going to make news there for years to come.”

I knew I had a story when U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) failed to answer basic questions honestly. And the command’s reaction to the article told me that I also had a new beat.

Not long after publication, AFRICOM wrote a letter of complaint to my editor, Tom Engelhardt, attempting to discredit my investigation. (I responded point by point in a follow-up piece.) The command claimed the U.S. was doing little on that continent, had one measly base there, and was transparent about its operations. “I would encourage you and those who have interest in what we do to review our Website, www.AFRICOM.mil, and a new Defense Department Special Web Report on U.S. Africa Command at this link http://www.defense.gov/home/features/2012/0712_AFRICOM/,” wrote its director of public affairs Colonel Tom Davis.

A decade later, the link is dead; Davis is a functionary at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona; and I’m still keeping an eye on AFRICOM.

A few months ago, in fact, I revealed the existence of a previously unknown AFRICOM investigation of an airstrike in Nigeria that killed more than 160 civilians. A formerly secret 2017 Africa Command document I obtained called for an inquiry into that “U.S.-Nigerian” operation that was never disclosed to Congress, much less the public.

Since then, AFRICOM has steadfastly refused to offer a substantive comment on the strike or the investigation that followed and won’t even say if it will release relevant documents to members of Congress. Last month, citing my reporting, a group of lawmakers from the newly formed Protection of Civilians in Conflict Caucus called on Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to turn over the files on, and answer key questions about, the attack. The Pentagon has so far kept mum.

Has AFRICOM then, as Davis contended so long ago, been transparent? Is its website the go-to spot for information about U.S. military missions on that continent? Did its operations there remain few and innocuous? Or was I onto something?

A Kinder, Gentler Combatant Command

From its inception, according to its first commander, General William Ward, AFRICOM was intended “to be a different kind of command”: less hardcore, more Peace Corps. “AFRICOM’s focus is on war prevention,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs Theresa Whelan said in 2007, “rather than warfighting.”

In 2012, Ward’s successor, General Carter Ham, told the House Armed Services Committee that “small teams” of American personnel were conducting “a wide range of engagements in support of U.S. security interests.” Years later, retired Army Brigadier General Don Bolduc, who served at AFRICOM from 2013 to 2015 and headed Special Operations Command Africa until 2017, would offer some clarity about those “engagements.” Between 2013 and 2017, he explained, American commandos saw combat in at least 13 African countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan, and Tunisia. U.S. troops, he added, were killed or wounded in action in at least six of them.

Between 2015 and 2017, there were at least 10 unreported attacks on American troops in West Africa alone. A month after that January 2017 Nigerian air strike, in fact, U.S. Marines fought al-Qaeda militants in a battle that AFRICOM still won’t admit took place in Tunisia. That April, a U.S. commando reportedly killed a member of warlord Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army in the Central African Republic. The next month, during an advise, assist, and accompany mission, 38-year-old Navy SEAL Kyle Milliken was killed and two other Americans were wounded in a raid on a militant camp in Somalia. That same year, a Navy SEAL reportedly shot and killed a man outside a compound flying an Islamic State (ISIS) flag in Cameroon. And that October, AFRICOM was finally forced to abandon the fiction that U.S. troops weren’t at war on the continent after ISIS militants ambushed American troops in Niger, killing four and wounding two more. “We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world, militarily, and what we’re doing,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, then a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, after meeting with Pentagon officials about the attack.

In the 2010s, I would, in fact, help reveal that the U.S. had conducted at least 36 named operations and activities in Africa — more than anywhere else on earth, including the Middle East. Among them were eight 127e programs, named for the budgetary authority that allows Special Operations forces to use foreign military units as surrogates in counterterrorism missions. More recently, I would report on 11 of those proxy programs employed in Africa, including one in Tunisia, code-named Obsidian Tower and never acknowledged by the Pentagon, and another with a notoriously abusive Cameroonian military unit connected to mass atrocities.

Five of those 127e programs were conducted in Somalia by U.S. commandos training, equipping, and directing troops from Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Uganda as part of the fight against the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab. In 2018, 26-year-old Alex Conrad of the Army’s Special Forces was killed in an attack on a small U.S. military outpost in Somalia.

Such outposts have long been a point of contention between AFRICOM and me. “The U.S. maintains a surprising number of bases in Africa,” I wrote in that initial TomDispatch article in July 2012. Colonel Davis denied it. “Other than our base at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti,” he claimed, “we do not have military bases in Africa.” I had, he insisted, filed that article before AFRICOM could get me further outpost material. “If he had waited, we would have provided the information requested, which could have better informed his story.”

I had begun requesting information that May, called in additional questions in June and July, and then (as requested) put them in writing. I followed up on the 9th, mentioning my looming deadline and was told that AFRICOM headquarters might have some answers for me on the 10th. That day came and went, as did the 11th. TomDispatch finally published the piece on July 12th. “I respectfully submit that a vigorous free press cannot be held hostage, waiting for information that might never arrive,” I wrote Davis.

When I later followed up, Davis turned out to be on leave, but AFRICOM spokesperson Eric Elliott emailed in August to say: “Let me see what I can give you in response to your request for a complete list of facilities.”

Then, for weeks, AFRICOM went dark. A follow-up email in late October went unanswered. Another in early November elicited a response from spokesperson Dave Hecht, who said that he was handling the request and would provide an update by week’s end. I’m sure you won’t be shocked to learn that he didn’t. So, I followed up yet again. On November 16th, he finally responded: “All questions now have answers. I just need the boss to review before I can release. I hope to have them to you by mid next week.” Did I get them? What do you think?

In December, Hecht finally replied: “All questions have been answered but are still being reviewed for release. Hopefully this week I can send everything your way.” Did he? Hah!

In January 2013, I received answers to some questions of mine, but nothing about those bases. By then, Hecht, too, had disappeared and I was left dealing with AFRICOM’s Chief of Media Engagement, Benjamin Benson. When asked about my questions, he replied that public affairs couldn’t provide answers and I should instead file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

To recap, six months later, Benson recommended I start again. And in good faith, I did. In 2016, three and a half years later, I finally received a partial response to that FOIA request: one page of partially redacted — not to mention useless — information about (yep!) Camp Lemonnier and nothing else.

I would spend years investigating the bases Davis claimed didn’t exist. Using leaked secret documents, I shed light on a network of African drone bases integral to U.S. assassination programs on the continent as well as the existence of a secret network of National Security Agency eavesdropping outposts in Ethiopia. Using formerly secret documents, I revealed an even larger network of U.S. bases across Africa, again and again. I used little-noticed open-source information to highlight activities at those facilities, while helping expose murder and torture by local forces at a drone base in Cameroon built-up and frequented by Americans. I also spotlighted the construction of a $100 million drone base in Niger; a previously unreported outpost in Mali apparently overrun by militants after a 2012 coup there by a U.S.-trained officer; the expansion of a shadowy drone base in the Horn of Africa and its role in lethal strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria; hundreds of drone strikes from Libya to Somalia and the resulting civilian casualties; and the flailing, failing U.S. war on terror all across Africa.

Not surprisingly, AFRICOM’s website never had much to say about such reporting, nor could you go there to find articles like:

“The AFRICOM Files: Pentagon Undercounts and Ignores Military Sexual Assault in Africa”

“Pentagon Document Shows U.S. Knew of ‘Credible’ Reports of Civilian Casualties After Its Attacks in Somalia”

“New Data Shows the U.S. Military Is Severely Undercounting Civilian Casualties in Somalia”

“Pentagon Stands by Cameroon — Despite Forensic Analysis Showing Its Soldiers Executed Women and Children”

“U.S. Troops in Africa Might be in Danger. Why Is the Military Trying to Hide It?”

You Know You’re on Target When You’re Getting a Lot of Flak(s)

In the years since, a parade of AFRICOM press officials came and went, replying in a by-then-familiar fashion. “Nick, we’re not going to respond to any of your questions,” Lieutenant Commander Anthony Falvo, head of its public affairs branch, told me in October 2017. Did he, I asked, believe AFRICOM needn’t address questions from the press in general or only from me. “No, just you,” he replied. “We don’t consider you a legitimate journalist, really.” Then he hung up.

That same month, I was inadvertently ushered behind the closed doors of the AFRICOM public affairs office. While attempting to hang up on me, a member of the staff accidentally put me on speakerphone and suddenly I found myself listening in to the goings on, from banal banter to shrieking outbursts. And, believe me, it wasn’t pretty. While the command regularly claimed its personnel had the utmost respect for their local counterparts, I discovered, for example, that at least certain press officers appeared to have a remarkably low opinion of some of their African partners. At one point, Falvo asked if there was any “new intelligence” regarding military operations in Niger after the 2017 ambush that killed those four American soldiers. “You can’t put Nigeriens and intelligence in the same sentence,” replied someone in the office. Laughter followed and I published the sordid details. That very month, Anthony Falvo shipped off (literally ending up in the public affairs office of the USS Gerald Ford).

Today, a new coterie of AFRICOM public affairs personnel field questions, but Falvo’s successor, Deputy Director of Public Affairs John Manley, a genuine professional, seems to be on call whenever my questions are especially problematic. He swears this isn’t true, but I’m sure you won’t be shocked to learn that he fielded my queries for this article.

After Col. Tom Davis — who left AFRICOM to join Special Operations Command (where, in a private email, he called me a “turkey”) — failed to respond to my interview requests, I asked AFRICOM if his defer-and-deny system was the best way to inform the American public. “We are not going to comment on processes and procedures in place a decade ago or provide opinions on personnel who worked in the office at that time,” said Manley.

“Our responsibility is to provide timely, accurate, and transparent responses to queries received from all members of the media,” Manley told me. Yes, me, the reporter who’s been waiting since 2012 for answers about those U.S. bases. And by AFRICOM standards, maybe that’s not really so long, given its endless failures in quelling terrorism and promoting stability in places like Burkina Faso, Libya, and Somalia.

Still, I give Manley a lot of credit. He isn’t thin-skinned or afraid to talk and he does offer answers, although sometimes they seem so far-fetched that I can’t believe he uttered them with a straight face. Though he agreed to discuss his replies further, I doubted that badgering him would get either of us anywhere, so I’ll just let his last one stand as a digital monument to my 10-year relationship with AFRICOM. When I asked if the public affairs office had always been as forthcoming, forthright, and helpful with my queries as possible, he unleashed the perfect capstone to my decade-long dance with U.S. Africa Command by offering up just one lone word: “Yes.”

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, and Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars: The Untold Story.

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch and a fellow at the Type Media Center. He is the author most recently of Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan and of the bestselling Kill Anything That Moves.

Copyright 2022 Nick Turse

ANTIWAR.COM

Ukraine: Will US Back Off as Russia Did on Cuba?

by Ray McGovern Posted onOctober 28, 2022

Sixty years ago today (October 28) the U.S. and Russia stepped back from the brink of nuclear war by making a deal. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev would yield to President John F. Kennedy’s demand that Soviet missiles be removed from Cuba; Kennedy pledged not to invade. There is an instructive analogy with Ukraine today.

Soviet documents that were revealed after the USSR imploded show how this all went down – and how we all would have "gone down," literally, were it not for the statesmanlike behavior of both leaders and their acute realization of the stakes involved.

Some of what I include below is drawn from a book by Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali that is based on those documents. They called it One Hell of a Gamble: The Secret History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The book is one hell of a book. US officials now dealing with the war in Ukraine would profit immensely by reading chapters 12 to 14.

On October 28, 1962, Khrushchev wrote Kennedy:

"I thank you for the sense of proportion you have displayed. … The Soviet Government has given a new order to dismantle the arms which you describe as offensive, and to crate and return them to the Soviet Union."

And so, we all got to live another 60 years – so far. The authors of One Hell of a Gamble, called particular attention to one exceedingly important fact; namely, that most of Khrushchev’s advisers had had personal experience of war – WWII, which left 26,000,000 Soviets dead. Neither Joe Biden (5 deferments during Vietnam), national security adviser Jake Sullivan, nor Secretary of State Antony Blinken have had such experience.

Medium-Range Nuclear Ballistic Missiles (MRBM)

In 1962, MRBMs already deployed in Cuba that could hit Washington, DC, and Strategic Air Command Headquarters in Omaha was the most urgent threat. With their short launch-to-target time (mere minutes) they threatened to upset the strategic balance and present an existential threat to the US.

Fursenko and Timothy Naftali note that unbeknown to the White House until 11 days later:

“The first shipment of nuclear warheads, on the Soviet freighter Indigirka, reached Mariel, Cuba on October 4, 1962. On board were 45 one-megaton warheads for the R-12s [MRBMs], twelve 2-kiloton warheads for the Luna [short-range] tactical weapons, six 12-kiloton bombs for the IL-28 bombers and thirty-six 12-kiloton warheads for the cruise missiles [to defend Cuban shores]. In sum, the ship carried the equivalent of roughly 45,500 kilotons of TNT, over twenty times the explosive power that was dropped by Allied bombers on Germany in all of the Second World War.”

On the evening of October 15, the day after a US U-2 reconnaissance mission over Cuba detected this ominous shipment, President Kennedy’s national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy was briefed on the photos, which included two 70-foot-long MRBMs at San Cristobal. Bundy briefed the President the next morning; the crisis was on.

Clearly, Kennedy had been provoked and later he made that abundantly clear to Khrushchev. Kennedy’s aggressive reactions were of dubious legality. But no one, no one said those actions were "unprovoked." The provoker, of course, was Khrushchev. Sending missiles to Cuba was a gambit; he thought he could get away with it; he misjudged; he folded.

For Khrushchev there was no existential threat in withdrawing the missiles – merely political embarrassment. He and Kennedy exchanged messages. Persuaded that the gambit had failed, and unwilling to risk a nuclear exchange, Khrushchev withdrew the missiles. To help Khrushchev save face, Kennedy promised not to invade Cuba.

U.S. Missiles in Turkey: A Private Deal

Khrushchev’s public letter, in which he agreed to dismantle and withdraw the missiles from Cuba, was aired on Radio Moscow on October 28. He also sent a private message to Kennedy, referring to the discussion Robert Kennedy had with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin the evening before. RFK told the ambassador that the President considered Khrushchev’s order to withdraw the missiles in return for a U.S. commitment not to invade a suitable way to resolve the affair.

As anticipated, Dobrynin raised the possible withdrawal of US missiles in Turkey, and RFK answered: "If that is the only obstacle to achieving a resolution … then the president doesn’t see any insurmountable difficulties in resolving this issue" (Fursenko and Naftali). RFK told Dobrynin that, due to NATO sensitivities, the US would need four or five months to remove the missile bases from Turkey and that Moscow would have to avoid announcing this publicly.

In his private letter of Oct. 28 to Kennedy, Khrushchev pointed out that he had acquiesced in the president’s wish that the understanding on Turkey not be made public, but added that the concessions made in his public letter were given "on account of your having agreed on the Turkish issue" – meaning RFK’s assurance to Dobrynin.

In his book, The Doomsday Machine, Daniel Ellsberg, who was an active participant from the Pentagon side, describes the RFK/Dobrynin understanding as a "private deal" with Moscow obligated not to reveal it. Ellsberg writes that RFK even rejected a proposal by Dobrynin that the oral understanding be confirmed in writing, and opines that, in any case, the promise would have had no effect on Khrushchev’s basic decision to withdraw the missiles. (As for the missiles in Turkey, the US did meticulously withdraw them, as promised.)

Ellsberg summarizes:

"Khrushchev had backed off; he had not only accepted the blockade but also removed his missiles, under threat of attack and without any compensating concession from JFK (except what I and most Americans assumed to be a meaningless promise not to invade Cuba)."

How is Ukraine Like Cuba?

Short answer: President Putin is convinced he may soon face the same kind of MRBM-type threat as President Kennedy faced 60 years ago. I know of no knowledgeable Russian expert who expects Putin to relent on Ukraine. (Surely there is no hint of this in his acrid speech yesterday at Valdai.) And I know of no serious military analyst who thinks – short of nuclear war – that the present government in Kyiv can "win," in any meaningful sense, on the ground.

It is worth spending 10 minutes watching this video in which Putin lays out in some detail his concerns over the possible emplacement of medium-range nuclear missiles on Russia’s periphery, giving him mere minutes to decide whether to retaliate with nuclear weapons.

Writing in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, former MIT Professor and Pentagon adviser Ted Postol noted that Western media dismiss Russia’s claim that U.S. "ABM" installations like the ones in Romania and Poland have an offensive capability as rhetorical obfuscation. Postol warns:

"If the missile systems in Romania and Poland were supplied with US cruise or hypersonic missiles and placed on Russia’s frontier, they would become fearsome offensive forces. Russian planners would have to assume that the missiles were loaded with nuclear warheads."

Putin and Biden Discuss MRBMS

In a video call between Biden and Putin on December 7, 2021,Putin told the US president that "Russia is seriously interested in obtaining reliable, legally fixed guarantees that rule out NATO expansion eastward and the deployment of offensive strike weapons systems in states adjacent to Russia." [Emphasis added.]

No such guarantee was provided at the time.

At the very end of December 2021, the Kremlin said Putin needed to talk with Biden right away.  Below is an excerpt from the Russian readout (followed by the readout from the next time the two talked).  Would Putin have reason to believe that Biden was overruled and persuaded not to honor his undertaking of Dec. 30 on this key issue?

• “Joseph Biden emphasized … that Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine.” Senior Putin adviser, Yuri Ushakov, pointed out approvingly that this was also one of Moscow’s chief goals in proposing security guarantees to the US and NATO. [Emphasis added.]
• Feb. 12, 2022, Ushakov laments results of a "follow-up" Putin-Biden call: explains that Biden did not address non-expansion of NATO, or non-deployment of strike weapons systems on Ukrainian territory … "To these items, we have received no meaningful response." [Emphasis added.].

In sum, MRBMS are a very large fly in the ointment. At this point, Biden’s promise of Dec. 30 matters little (save what it has done to mutual trust).

There will be no MRBM sites in Ukraine near the border with Russia. What eventually happens to the "ABM" installations in Romania and in Poland that can accommodate MRBMs is anyone’s guess. Given Russian sensitivities, however, at this point it would seem foolhardy to insert what the Russians call "offensive strike weapons" there.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

ANTIWAR.COM

The Growing Chorus for Peace in Ukraine

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies Posted onOctober 28, 2022

Ukraine has been wracked by shocking destruction and deadly violence since Russia invaded the country in February. Estimates of the death toll range from a confirmed minimum of 27,577 people, including 6,374 civilians, to over 150,000. The slaughter can only get more horrific as long as all sides, including the United States and its NATO allies, remain committed to war.

In the first weeks of the war, the United States and NATO countries sent weapons to Ukraine to try to prevent Russia from quickly defeating Ukraine’s armed forces and conducting a U.S.-style "regime change" in Kyiv. But since that goal was achieved, the only goals that President Zelenskyy and his Western allies have publicly proclaimed are to recover all of pre-2014 Ukraine and decisively defeat and weaken Russia.

These are aspirational goals at best, which require sacrificing hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of Ukrainian lives, regardless of the outcome. Even worse, if they should come close to succeeding, they are likely to trigger a nuclear war, making this the all-time epitome of a "no-win predicament."

At the end of May, President Biden responded to probing questions about the contradictions in his Ukraine policy from the New York Times Editorial Board, replying that the United States was sending weapons so that Ukraine "can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table."

But when Biden wrote that, Ukraine had no position at any negotiating table, thanks mainly to the conditions that Biden and NATO leaders attached to their support. In April, after Ukraine negotiated a 15-point peace plan for a ceasefire, a Russian withdrawal and a peaceful future as a neutral country, the United States and United Kingdom refused to provide Ukraine with the security guarantees that were a critical part of the agreement.

As now disgraced British prime minister Boris Johnson told President Zelensky in Kyiv on April 9th, the "collective West" was "in it for the long run," meaning a long war against Russia, but wanted no part in any agreement between Ukraine and Russia.

In May, Russian forces advanced through Donbas, forcing Zelensky to admit, by June 2nd, that Russia now controlled 20% of Ukraine’s pre-2014 territory, leaving Ukraine in a weaker, not a stronger position.

Six months after Secretary Austin declared in April that the new goal of the war was to decisively defeat and "weaken" Russia, President Biden is rejecting calls for a new peace initiative. So the United States and United Kingdom had no reservations about intervening to kill peace talks in April, but now that they’ve sold President Zelensky on fighting an endless war, Biden insists that he has no say in the matter if Zelensky rejects peace negotiations.

But it is axiomatic that wars end at the negotiating table, as Biden acknowledged to the Times. The perennial thorny question for war leaders is "When to negotiate?" The problem is that, when your side seems to be winning, you have little incentive to stop fighting. But when you appear to be losing, there is no incentive to negotiate from a weak position either, as long as you believe that the tide of war will sooner or later shift in your favor and improve your position. That was the hope on which Johnson and Biden convinced Zelensky to stake his country’s future in April.

Now Ukraine has launched localized counter-offensives and recovered parts of its territory. Russia has responded by throwing hundreds of thousands of fresh troops into the war and starting to systematically demolish Ukraine’s electricity grid.

The escalating crisis exposes the weakness of Biden’s position. He is gambling with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives, which he has no moral claim over, that Ukraine will somehow be in a stronger military position after a winter of war and power outages, with hundreds of thousands more Russian troops in the areas Russia controls. This is a bet on a much longer war, in which U.S. taxpayers will shell out for thousands of tons of weapons and millions of Ukrainians will die, with no clear endgame short of nuclear war.

Thanks to the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the US mass media, most Americans have no inkling of the deceptive way that Biden and his bubble-headed British allies cornered Zelensky into a suicidal decision to abandon promising peace negotiations in favor of a long war that will destroy his country.

The horrors of the war, the contradictions in Western policy, the blowback on European energy supplies, the specter of famine stalking the Global South and the rising danger of nuclear war are provoking a worldwide chorus of voices urgently calling for peace in Ukraine.

If you’re on a media diet of the thin gruel that passes for news in America these days, you may not have heard the calls for peace from UN Secretary General Guterres, Pope Francis or the leaders of 66 countries speaking at the UN General Assembly in September, representing the majority of the world’s population.

But there are also Americans calling for peace. From across the political spectrum, from retired military officers and diplomats to journalists and academics, there are "adults in the room" who recognize the dangerous contradictions of US policy on Ukraine, and are joining leaders from around the world in calling for diplomacy and peace.

Jack Matlock served as the last US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, from 1987 to 1991, after a 35-year career as a Soviet specialist in the US Foreign Service. Matlock was at the embassy in Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis, where he translated critical messages between Kennedy and Khrushchev.

On October 17, 2022, in an article in Responsible Statecraft titled "Why the US must press for a ceasefire in Ukraine," Ambassador Matlock wrote that as principal arms supplier to Ukraine and the sponsor of the most punitive sanctions on Russia, the United States "is obligated to help find a way out" of this crisis. The article concluded, "Until… the fighting stops, and serious negotiations get underway, the world is headed for an outcome where we all are losers."

Another veteran U.S. diplomat who has spoken out for diplomacy over Ukraine is Rose Gottemoeller, the Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019 after she served as President Obama’s senior adviser on arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation. Gottemoeller recently wrote in the Financial Times that she sees no military solution to the crisis in Ukraine, but that "discreet talks" could lead to the kind of "quiet bargain" that resolved the Cuban missile crisis 60 years ago.

On the military side, Admiral Mike Mullen was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 to 2011. After President Biden chatted at a fundraising party about the war in Ukraine leading to nuclear "Armageddon," ABC interviewed Mullen about the danger of nuclear war. "I think we need to back off that a little bit and do everything we possibly can to get to the table to resolve this thing," Mullen replied. "It’s got to end, and usually there are negotiations associated with that. The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned."

Economist Jeffrey Sachs was the director of the Earth Institute and now the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He has been a consistent voice for peace in Ukraine ever since the invasion. In a recent article on September 26, titled "The Great Game in Ukraine is Spinning out of Control," Sachs quoted President Kennedy in June 1963, uttering what Sachs called "the essential truth that can keep us alive today:"

"Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war," said JFK. "To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy – or of a collective death-wish for the world."

Sachs concluded, "It is urgent to return to the draft peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine of late March, based on the non-enlargement of NATO… The world’s very survival depends on prudence, diplomacy, and compromise by all sides."

Even Henry Kissinger, whose own war crimes are well documented, has spoken out on the senselessness of current US policy. Kissinger told the Wall Street Journal in August, "We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to."

In the US Congress, after every single Democrat voted for a virtual blank check for arming Ukraine in May, with no provision for peacemaking, Progressive Caucus leader Pramila Jayapal and 29 other progressive Democratic Representatives recently signed a letter to President Biden, urging him to "make vigorous diplomatic efforts in support of a negotiated settlement and ceasefire, engage in direct talks with Russia, explore prospects for a new European security arrangement acceptable to all parties that will allow for a sovereign and independent Ukraine, and, in coordination with our Ukrainian partners, seek a rapid end to the conflict and reiterate this goal as America’s chief priority."

Unfortunately, the backlash within their own party was so blistering that within 24 hours they withdrew the letter. Siding with calls for peace and diplomacy from all over the world is still not an idea whose time has come in the halls of power in Washington DC.

This is an extremely dangerous moment in history. Americans are waking up to the reality that this war threatens us with the existential danger of nuclear war, a danger most Americans thought we had survived once and for all at the end of the First Cold War. Even if we manage to avoid nuclear war, the impact of a long, bloody war will destroy Ukraine and kill millions of Ukrainians, cause humanitarian catastrophes across the Global South, and trigger a long-lasting global economic crisis.

That will relegate all humanity’s urgent priorities, from tackling the climate crisis to hunger, poverty and disease, to the back-burner for the foreseeable future.

There is an alternative. We can and must resolve this conflict through peaceful diplomacy and negotiation, to end the killing and destruction and let the people of Ukraine live in peace.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022.

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

ANTIWAR.COM

Judgment Day Is Fast Approaching

by Gilbert Doctorow Posted onOctober 28, 2022

Dear readers, to my great regret, I am once again duty bound to walk the streets bearing the sign "The End of the World is Nigh."

I watched the news digest program Sixty Minutes yesterday on Russian state television’s smotrim.ru platform. Before turning the microphone over to the panelists in talk show format, the first 30 minutes of the show presented a hair-raising video montage of excerpts from US, German, European, British news reporting about dirty bomb accusations, about the current exercises of the aircraft carrier George Bush Sr. in the Eastern Med and its loud message to Mr. Putin about nuclear attack capabilities, about the 2400 American ground assault troops just delivered to Romania and placed at the border with Moldova, ready to move in there and, one may safely assume, to continue up into Ukraine to face off with Russians around Odessa – Nikolaev at a moment’s notice. Well, the impression of this pending escalation was overwhelmingly that we are on the cusp of the war to end all wars. The US is game for it, whatever Biden mutters to the contrary reading from his teleprompter. The Russians are game for it. And so here we go!

On a less dramatic note but one from the same musical composition, I have just felt obliged to add a Postscript to my last essay on Rushi Sunak, noting that I was wrong about the kind of marching orders he has from the City of London: while he replaced most of the Truss cabinet ministers, he has retained Ben Wallace at Defense. Note that Wallace is calling for large increases in defense spending to support Britain’s contribution to the Ukrainian armed forces at the same time that Sunak is about to wield the knife on social services in the name of a balanced budget and austerity in times of inflation. The Sunak premiership will not last a year, assuming we have a year ahead of us before all hell breaks loose. He shares with Macron a background in working for US international bankers and the fact of being the youngest head of government in his respective country in two centuries. He also apparently shares the status of political lightweight, but unlike Macron, his position is very fragile because of British constitutional practices. I say that these developments fall in line with the general musical composition, because they show that the marching orders he had received from those who installed him in power, the City of London, are as ideologically driven as the newspaper they all read daily, the viciously anti-Russian Financial Times. And so I conclude that in the U.K., too, Capital is as removed from the real world as the lightweight and incompetent politicians who rule over us on the Continent.

What I cannot understand is how India, China and other big, serious players on the world stage do not take note that the rising escalation in the Russia-NATO confrontation and the lurch towards nuclear exchange will mean the end of life on the planet, their lives as well as ours. Why are they all silent? And where is the United Nations before the looming Armageddon? When General Assembly votes are dictated by one global hegemon and its lackeys, the U.N.’s relevance to keeping the peace is vitiated.

The avoidable tragedy of WWI is something that is foremost in my thoughts every time I stay in my Pushkin apartment outside Petersburg. We live 200 meters away from an entrance to the Catherine Palace park and less than a kilometer from the separate palace which Nicholas II used as a family home. Each time there I wonder to myself how they could have been so foolish as to throw European civilization to the winds, and, as regards the tsarist family, to throw away their own lives. Now I see similar foolishness daily watching the news, whether it is Russian news or Western mainstream broadcasters. I see the growing likelihood of our collective suicide in the weeks if not months before us.

Among patriotic Russians, there has long been a lot of criticism about the way the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine has been waged. People say that Putin has been too soft on the Ukrainians, that he should have destroyed the energy infrastructure in the first days of March, without waiting seven months and allowing the escalation to reach its present critical point. However, that is to ignore the political dimension of war making. And it is to ignore the reality that public opinion is a major restraint on what its President can or cannot do, irrespective of constitutional provisions and supposed authoritarianism at the top.

The Russian public was not ready to accept an all-out war on Ukraine in February. The personal, familial and historic ties binding the Russian and Ukrainian peoples together were simply too strong. Russians, including those in power, could hold out the hope that once the campaign ended, the sides would kiss and make up. It took all this time, it took the crossing of all Russian red lines in terms of attacks on the Russian homeland by artillery and rockets from across the border with Ukraine, it took the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines and the terrorist attack on the Kerch bridge for the Russian people to be psychologically prepared to murder Ukrainians by the tens of thousands of soldiers on the battlefield as you do in any normal war and to inflict great hardships on the civilian population.

However, the Kremlin cannot be let off so easily for its share of the blame as the world teeters towards nuclear war. I find it incredible that the professional intelligence analyst Vladimir Putin, whom all of our biographers describe only in relation to his KGB career, could have allowed himself to be so misled by his own intelligence advisers about Ukrainian capabilities and intentions before he decided to go in and denazify, demilitarize Ukraine on 24 February. That was a miscalculation of colossal proportions that resulted in serious military setbacks in the opening weeks of the war, which in turn emboldened United States and NATO decision-makers to go for the jugular and finally "take out" Russia. I will say no more.

Gilbert Doctorow is a Brussels-based political analyst. His latest book is Does Russia Have a Future? Reprinted with permission from his blog.

ANTIWAR.COM

Richmond to remove last Confederate statue after court battle

Court rules city can take down statue of Confederate general AP Hill

Abe Asher

The city of Richmond, Virginia, former capital of the Confederacy, can tear down its final remaining Confederate statue, a judge has said.

Circuit Court Judge David Eugene Cheek Sr ruled on Tuesday that the city can remove a statue of AP Hill, a Confederate general killed during the Third Battle of Petersburg that currently sits at an intersection of Laburnum Avenue and Hermitage Road.


The city has wanted to move the statue to its Black History Museum, but members of Hill’s family objected — arguing that the city didn’t have the authority to move the statue because it sits on the area where the general was buried and thus constitutes a burial site.

In court, the city argued that the statue actually constitutes a war memorial and falls under its jurisdiction. Mr Cheek, in a ruling first reported by CNN, agreed.

“We’re gratified by Judge Cheek’s ruling,” Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney told the network in a statement. “This is the last stand for the Lost Cause in our city.”

Recommended

Richmond seeks to move last city-owned Confederate monument

Pedestal where Lee statue stood in Va. capital fully removed

It’s been a long road to this moment for Richmond, which is now a heavily Democratic and majority non-white city and has been roiled by racial justice protests in recent years. The city began moving to take down its Confederate statues in earnest in 2017 following the deadly Unite the Right far right and neo-Nazi rally in nearby Charlottesville, and those efforts gained momentum in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in the spring and summer of 2020.

Richmond was long home to a number of notable Confederate monuments, many of which lined Monument Avenue in one of the city’s historic districts. Perhaps the most visible of those monuments, depiciting Confederate general Robert E Lee, was heavily vandalised during the summer of 2020 and removed last fall.

Monuments to Confederates J.E.B. Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, Matthew Fontaine Mauryand and Jefferson Davis that long stood on the avenue were also toppled or removed in the last two-plus years.

Scott Braxton Puryear, an attorney who represented the plantiffs in the case, told CNN that they had no comment on the ruling.

“We look forward to a successful conclusion of the legal process, which will allow us to relocate Hill’s remains, remove and transfer the statue to the Black History Museum and, importantly, improve traffic safety at the intersection of Hermitage and Laburnum,” Mr Stoney, who was first elected mayor in 2016, said in his statement.

 

Tonga’s first large-scale battery systems take country closer to achieving NDC climate targets

By Andy Colthorpe

28 October 2022 at 16:45

Tonga is getting closer to achieving NDC climate targets as it opens its first utility-scale battery energy storage system project

The grid-stabilising BESS (pictured during construction) is at the site of Tonga Power’s Popua Power Station,

 with the other at a separate site on Tongatapu.

Tonga’s first utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) project was officially opened at an event attended by the South Pacific Kingdom’s prime minister.

Prime Minister Siaosio Sovaleni, known also by the chiefly title he holds, Huákavameiliku, was the guest of honour as the two systems, delivered with support from groups including the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the UN Green Climate Fund, were unveiled.

The systems were commissioned in May this year, as reported by Energy-Storage.news at the time. Located on Tonga’s biggest island, Tongatapu, there is a short-duration system of 9.3MW/5.3MWh (7.2MW/3.8MWh usable) designed for grid stability applications and a 3.3-hour duration system of 7.2MW/23.9MWh (6MW/20.88MWh usable) for renewable load shift applications.

They were built as part of the multilaterally funded Tonga Renewable Energy Project (TREP). In addition to the BESS, renewable power projects and grid upgrades and energy management technologies will be deployed at various locations, including some of the country’s outer islands.

These include two hybrid solar-plus-storage projects featuring batteries, which are aimed for completion in November this year on two outer islands, Vavaú and Éua.

The battery systems connect to the grid of Tonga Power, Tonga’s sole electric utility, which announced the inauguration event via a sponsored post in local news outlet Matangi Tonga Online.

Installation and commissioning work was carried out by contractor Akuo, which supplied containerised BESS solutions. It all took place during the two-year pandemic-enforced closure of Tonga’s borders and Akuo Asia-Pacific CEO Jean Ballandras thanked fellow stakeholders for their cooperation in making it happen.

In May, it was noted that the addition of the two systems immediately enabled Tonga to double its use of renewable energy together with the completion of a 6MW solar PV power plant, taking it to 20 percent.

The country has recently brought forward its target for renewables adoption, from a previously set 70 percent goal by 2030, to 70 percent by the end of 2025. The target is part of its National Determined Contribution (NDA) climate action plan.

The BESS projects cost around US$16.7 million of investment, with the wider TREP project costing just over US$50 million. It is jointly funded by the Asian Development Bank, UN Green Climate Fund and the Australian government. Tonga Power said it was assisted in implementing the project by its own national government.

This story was written by Andy Colthorpe, originally published at Energy Storage News on 25 October 2022, reposted via PACNEWS.

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin praises PM Modi's independent foreign policy, calls him a 'patriot'

Calling India's development a tremendous one in its development from being a British colony to a modern state, Putin added that around 1.5 billion people and definite development results give reasons for everyone's respect and admiration for India

Asian News International October 28, 2022 08:10:16 IST

File photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian president Vladmir Putin. Image Courtesy PIB

Moscow: Russian President, in his annual address to the Valdai Discussion Club, a Moscow-based think tank, on Thursday lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s independent foreign policy, saying that a lot has been done under his leadership in India as he called him a patriot of the country, according to Reuters translation of Putin’s statement which he said in Russian.

“A lot has been done under the leadership of PM Modi. He is a patriot of his country. His idea of ‘Make in India’ matters both economic wise and in ethics. Future belongs to India, it can be proud of the fact that it’s the largest democracy in the world,” the Kremlin said at the Valdai Discussion Club, as per Reuters translation.

Calling India’s development a tremendous one in its development from being a British colony to a modern state, the Russian president added that around 1.5 billion people and definite development results give reasons for everyone’s respect and admiration for India.

“India has made tremendous progress in its development from being a British colony to a modern state. Almost 1.5 billion people & tangible development results give reasons for everyone’s respect & admiration for India,” he added.

He further emphasised ties between India and Russia, calling it a special relationship.

“It has been underpinned by a close ally relationship of many decades. We’ve never had any difficult issues and supported each other & that’s happening right now. I’m sure it’ll happen in future,” as per the Reuters translation of Putin’s statement.

Putin also underlined that PM Modi has asked him to increase the supply of fertilisers which is very important for Indian agriculture.

“We have increased volume by 7.6 times. Trade in agriculture has almost doubled,” he added, as per Reuters.

Putin’s address to the Kremlin-affiliated institute comes as Moscow continues to escalate the war in Ukraine more than eight months after Russia launched its invasion on 24 February.

Meanwhile, he also slammed the West for playing “dirty games” for global dominance in his high-profile address and said he is convinced that sooner or later “new centres of power will emerge in the multipolar world and the West will have to start talking as equals about our common future.”

However, he added that the US and its allies are not safe from the consequences of their own actions. Putin during the session said that the West cannot sit out crises it has caused. “Only a world united by common goals can act on the challenges it faces, the Russian president added.

“Power over the world is what the West has put at stake in the game it plays. This game is certainly dangerous, bloody and I would call it dirty.”

He highlighted that western nations, which want to impose their values and vision as universal, are robbing everyone, including themselves. “First of all, this eradicates the creative potential of the West itself,” he warned.

“There is a mercantile interest here too” the Russian leader added, reported RT.

KARMA IS A BITCH
Florida lawyer who opposed motorcycle helmet laws died in motorcycle crash while not wearing helmet

His girlfriend, who was also not wearing a helmet, also died in the crash.

Sulaiman Daud |  October 28, 2022, 



A lawyer in Florida, U.S., who opposed laws that mandated helmets for motorcycle riders, died in a motorcycle crash.

Ron Smith, of Pinellas County, was 66. His girlfriend Brenda Volpe, 62, also died in the crash. Neither were wearing helmets.

Aggressive advocate against motorcycle helmet laws

According to the Tampa Bay Times on Oct. 27, Smith was an "aggressive" advocate for changing the law in the 1990s, when riders in Florida were still required to wear helmets.

He was a member of a group that lobbied against the law, and represented clients who were charged for not wearing motorcycle helmets.

The requirement was changed in 2000 when the Florida state legislature passed a law that allowed motorcycle riders over the age of 21 to not wear helmets, as long as they had US$10,000 (S$14,000) in insurance coverage for injuries from motorcycle accidents.

On Aug. 20, Smith and Volpe crashed into a trailer attached to a pickup truck in another lane, after Smith lost control of his motorcycle while trying to slow down for traffic.

Impossible to say if helmets could have prevented deaths, but would have improved their odds of survival

Experts contacted by the Tampa Bay Times said it was impossible to say if wearing helmets would have prevented their deaths.

"It’s entirely possible that if they were wearing a helmet they might have survived, but again, we can’t say for sure. It certainly would have improved their odds," said Eric Teoh, who researched motorcycle safety for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety to the Times.

Autopsy reports seen by the Times indicated that blunt head trauma was the cause of Smith's death, while Volpe died of head trauma.

It added:

"Florida’s death rate increased by 25 per cent after its helmet law was repealed, according to one study, and the number of motorcyclists admitted to hospitals with head injuries jumped 82 per cent in the 30 months following the law change."

A PARTY OF SMALL SHOP KEEPERS
Key labour laws will be assigned to Smith's new Alberta jobs ministry: premier's office

Lisa Johnson - Yesterday- Edmonton Journal

Alberta’s UCP government is clarifying which new ministry will be in charge of labour laws in the province after a cabinet order failed to assign responsibility.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speaks to the media outside Government House following the swearing-in of her new cabinet ministers, in Edmonton Monday Oct. 24, 2022.

The order in council (OIC), approved Monday, set out which ministries oversee which legislation, but Alberta’s Opposition NDP and unions were quick to sound the alarm that no ministry appeared to be responsible for either the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) or the Labour Relations Code.

The OHSA sets out work safety rules, including the investigation of workplace deaths, while the labour code outlines rules for workers and employers around union certification and collective bargaining.

While the OIC did not list the Occupational Health and Safety Act, “this omission was inadvertent,” Becca Polak, Premier Danielle Smith’s press secretary, said Wednesday.

Related
10/3 podcast: Alberta's UCP — it's Danielle Smith's party now

Danielle Smith's adjustments to Alberta public service fall short of shakeup

Jobs, Economy and Northern Development Minister Brian Jean will take responsibility for both the OHSA and the Labour Relations Code, Polak confirmed.

That confirmation arrived after Smith said Monday the labour portfolio, which used to fall under labour and immigration, would be handled by two new ministries, with Kaycee Madu being sworn in as skilled trades and professions minister, and Jean as the minister for jobs, economy and northern development.

“Jobs is another word for labour, and that’s where the labour components of legislation are going to reside with (occupational health and safety) and employment standards,” said Smith.

Oversight ‘frustrating and disheartening’ for NDP

NDP labour critic Christina Gray said earlier Wednesday even though it appeared to be an oversight, it was frustrating and disheartening to see the government fail to assign such major responsibilities.

“It’s really important that the government in charge of the province of Alberta has eyes on all of its responsibilities, not its personal sovereignty priorities,” said Gray, referring to legislation Smith has promised in order for the province to refuse to enforce federal policies and laws.

Gray also disagreed with Smith’s characterization of the labour file, saying Smith appears to be focusing on jobs as an economic measure, rather than on workers.

“Jobs does not speak to the care of the working people of Alberta and the rights that they should have protected,” said Gray.

The clarification from the premier’s office came after United Nurses of Alberta director of labour relations David Harrigan had flagged the omission in the cabinet order on social media Tuesday , and on Wednesday, Gil McGowan, Alberta Federation of Labour president, questioned whether it was an administrative oversight, or an attempt to undermine unions and workplace health and safety.

lijohnson@postmedia.com