Friday 28 January 2022

Alexander Vindman risked his career to make public Donald Trump’s extortion of the Ukrainians.  He is the former director of European Affairs for the U.S. National Security Council.

He was interviewed on Chris Hayes, MSNBC.  These are excerpts.

•        “I think we saw this buildup (on the border of Ukraine) start to occur really at the beginning of 2021. And I think that it was on the expectation that Russia had to act. Ukraine was slipping through its fingers.”

•        “Back in 2014 when this confrontation started, when Russia launched its military offensive against Ukraine, it did so because it saw a country choosing its own destiny, asserting its sovereignty, choosing a path towards European integration, towards democracy. And really, this is a continuing enterprise in a lot of ways.”

•        “But the question is why now and it`s mainly because of a sense of opportunity, a sense of weakness within the United States. I have every reason to believe that if we had not had an insurrection on January 6….President Putin would not believe that there`s an opportunity, there`s a vulnerability within the United States.”

•        “…it’s going to be a human catastrophe.”

•        “It`s better to prevent and to do everything to avoid this catastrophic outcome rather than deal with the consequences of a reshaped geopolitical landscape.”

•        Hayes asked: “What`s the diplomatic off ramp?”

•        “It`s not that easy to take pieces off the off the table right now. I think frankly, it`s one of the places where this administration fell short. They thought maybe — they thought this was diplomatic coercion.”

•        “…we shouldn`t be just considering a diplomatic track. There`s also a track — a pressure track that makes a lot of sense right now. We have very anxious allies along Ukraine`s western border. Those allies are going to want some assurances that Article Five actually still means something.”

•        “I think we should be positioning — we talked about reactionary measures, positioning troops in Europe after an escalation. That is the wrong — a wrong way to look at it. We should be doing things now.”

•        “Right now, we don`t have a war yet. If we position troops in Europe and say this NATO Article Five is ironclad, will protect NATO interests. How much more benign does that seem that positioning many troops in in Eastern Europe when shots are fired when there`s — you know, when there`s Russian blood being spilled?

MSNBC’s Jose Diaz-Balart interviewed Rep. Jayapal 1/28/22

Jayapal is on television arguing that the U.S., by responding to the threat of the Russians is playing into escalating tensions.  Troop deployments and arms sales, risk “escalating the process” and putting negotiations in a worse place.  “Let the diplomacy do it’s work,” Jayapal stated.  “Focus on a diplomatic strategic.”  Don’t “rush to another war.”  Sanctions have a way of  “hurting the people of the country not the autocrats.” 

We can’t go in “without knowing what the situation is.”

CNN Anchor 1/28/22

The CNN anchor asked a guest if there would be a full Russian invasion or an incursion, not the “main cities, but just rural areas where there are native Russian speakers?”  This has been a theme lately, the assumption that a “minor incursion” into those regions where the people are primarily “Russian speaking” would not be considered so serious.  There is a distinction made between the “populated urban areas” and the rural areas where there are primarily Russian speakers.  This line of argument is taken directly from Russian propaganda which argues that Russia has a right to those areas where they have consciously populated the region with separatists and conducted a campaign to convince the population that the area “belongs” to Russia.

Article from Foreign Affairs. 1/27/22

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-01-27/putin-doctrine?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=twofa&utm_campaign=The%20Putin%20Doctrine&utm_content=20220128&utm_term=FA%20This%20Week%20-%20112017

•        The current crisis between Russia and Ukraine is a reckoning that has been 30 years in the making. It is about much more than Ukraine and its possible NATO membership. It is about the future of the European order crafted after the Soviet Union’s collapse.

•        The core element of this doctrine is getting the West to treat Russia as if it were the Soviet Union, a power to be respected and feared, with special rights in its neighborhood and a voice in every serious international matter.

•        The doctrine holds that only a few states should have this kind of authority, along with complete sovereignty, and that others must bow to their wishes. It entails defending incumbent authoritarian regimes and undermining democracies. And the doctrine is tied together by Putin’s overarching aim: reversing the consequences of the Soviet collapse, splitting the transatlantic alliance, and renegotiating the geographic settlement that ended the Cold War.

Garry Kasparov on MSNBC

Former chess champion and human rights activist Garry Kasparov burned up MSNBC yesterday saying what the Biden administration can’t or won’t.  He appeared on Stephanie Ruhl’s show and that of Jose Diaz-Balart.  Both hosts showed their lack of ability to conduct an intelligent interview without embarrassed themselves.

Stephanie Ruhl started off her interview with Kasparov by positing that Putin knew where the hide his money and that attempts to sanction him personally would be futile.

Kasparov quickly corrected her by pointing out that since Putin assumed office twenty years ago, the amount of money that is estimated to have been taken out of Russia is $2 trillion.  Putin, he maintained, controls most of this money even if indirectly. 

“You don’t have to sanction him personally.”  Kasparov noted and added that American intelligence knew full well where Putin stashed his money.  At this point, Kasparov continued, Putin regards the proposed sanctions as “nothing more than lip service.”

The governments of our European allies (especially Germany), maintained Kasparov, are filled with “corrupt politicians doing Putin’s bidding.”  They are standing in the way of effective sanctions. 

Since the invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea eight years ago, Germany has doubled the amount of gas it is buying from Russia.

Later, on Jose Diaz-Balart, Kasparov vehemently disagreed with a previous guest.  “Putin will do whatever he can get away with,” he stated. 

Kasparov continued that Europe had spent twenty years building dependence on Russia.  “So much time has been wasted.”  Kasparov reminded the audience that people like him had been warning for two decades.  “Putin is our problem, but he will become your problem.” 

He warned that the United States should not listen to “corrupt politicians” in Germany who are putting their own financial interests over that of European security.  “Where is the leverage here?” He asked.  The Biden administration “made a terrible mistake by entering these negotiations that convinced Putin that they could get away with this…”  “Putin senses American weakness.”

Diaz-Balart displayed his own weakness with an incredible statement: “The United States is over here seeing what’s happening over there.”  What else, he asked, can we do for you not to say we are weak?  I can think of about a hundred things.

This situation is “more about corruption and lack of political will” than serious economic concerns.  Kasparov continued.

“If Ukraine is invaded it will be the end of the global order that was built after WWII.” 

Kremlin claims long-awaited US and NATO responses to security demands fail to address Russia’s most pressing concerns.
— Read on www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/27/russia-weighs-us-nato-responses-to-security-demands-liveblog

Observations after Reading Around about Ukraine:

“There can be a catastrophe, even when Russia is not fully invading Ukraine.”  Ukraine World Podcast

William Cohen, CNN, 1/21/22

• Diplomacy is unlikely to succeed. 
• Putin knows exactly what he wants to do.  He wouldn’t put troops on the border and then withdraw because of threats.
• Putin is going to get something out of this.
• You don’t put 100,000 troops on the border for a training act.
• Cohen thinks that Putin is thinking: “Now would be the time to take action.”
• The West is not in a good position to respond.
• Putin is also counting on Donald Trump to come back into power.  Whatever sanctions the U.S. imposes will be undone then.
• Putin wants to have a “boot on the neck of the Europeans” when it comes to energy.
• The Russians “export trouble.”

“Expert” on corporate news:

• Russia might “take a little bit more territory” but not go as far as Kiev.
• The attack might be “just cyber…not an actual military incursion.”
• NYT Pentagon Reporter Helene Cooper: Defending Ukraine is not in the “strategic interests of the United States.”

Sanctions: Excluding Russia from the SWIFT system.

• Last week there were reports from Handelsblatt (quoted by Bloomberg) that Biden and the EU were no longer considering using as a sanction for a Russian invasion the removal of the Russians from the SWIFT international payments system.  This was, for some reason, not picked up by the corporate press in this country.
• The U.S. and the EU were said to be considering “targeted penalties” against major Russian banks instead.
• Germany was reported to be seeking exceptions from even those penalties to ensure oil and gas payments remained possible.
• Note: Garry Kasperov blasted Germany today on MSNBC, claiming that corruption in the Germany government was rife and that they had put economic gain above democracy.
• Shortly after these reports from Handelsblatt, the U.S. press started publishing articles quoting “experts” who said that the exclusion of Russia from SWIFT would not be that effective or damaging.
• Ukraine has called for Russia to be removed from SWIFT.  Evidently, the Ukrainians think that removal would help.
• Those now supporting a backdown on the SWIFT exclusion maintain that the move could destabilize financial markets and encourage a move to the Russian version of SWIFT.
• Other sources point out that the Russian version of SWIFT only includes one Chinese bank.  The rest of the users are in Russia.  Using this alternative system would require convincing others to sign up to the Russian system and face the severely limited communications possibilities and the fact that the Russian version is only open during business hours (unlike the SWIFT system which is open 24/7).
• Most sources, however, agree that the chance of excluding Russia is slim. 
• The probabilities of excluding Russia may be low, but the severity of this as a sanction is a different question entirely.  I have no way of evaluating the severity of the sanction.
• Before the reports in Handelsblatt, this exclusion was quoted as one of the powerful sanctions being considered.  Since then, the tide of evaluation in the U.S. has been that the sanction would not have as much an effect as previously thought.  This makes me suspicious of the later evaluations.
• Garry Kasperov, on MSNBC today, noted the SWIFT exclusion as one of the most powerful sanctions.
• The director General of the Kremlin-aligned Russian International Affairs Council compared the potential move to detonating a financial “nuclear bomb.”

Ukrainians

• The Ukrainians have been noticeably absent from the high level negotiations between the U.S. and the Russians.  There have been calls for nothing to be decided about Ukraine without Ukrainians.
• While the Ukrainians are happy to see the reinforcement of NATO countries in the region, they also do not want to become a “no man’s land” or a buffer state. 
• Rep. Michael McCaul has also noted the frustration in Ukraine about sanctions being threatened after an invasion, not before.  It was noted that sanctions could be implemented and then the Russians told that sanctions would be lifted if the troops on the Ukraine border were withdrawn.

Weapons

• The Washington Post (1/24/22) is reporting that the Defense Ministry of Belarus said that Russian troops continued to arrive in that country.
• Video has surfaced on social media of Russian military convoys and trains loaded with military equipment moving across southern Russia and Belarus.
• Germany has ruled out supplying Ukraine with defense weapons.

Ian Bremmer (Gzeromedia, 1/18/22)

• There have been cyber attacks against a number of websites in Ukraine within the past week.  These direct malware attacks against a number of government agencies is almost certainly done by Russia.
• The Russians are sending troops to Belarus for sudden and unannounced military exercises right on the Ukrainian border.
• They are also moving Russian personnel from Russia’s embassy in Kiev.
• If Putin is not given something significant, he will escalate.
• Cyber attacks could be devastating to Ukraine.  Previous attacks took 1% of the GDP off of Ukraine and people died in hospitals when they suddenly lost their ability to have data and connectivity.
• The president of Belarus is planning to change the constitution in February.  Belarus would no longer be formally neutral and no longer a non-nuclear state.

Quotes:

Zelensky

“There are no minor incursions…”

Ian Bremmer

“Don’t expect full-on invasion, but Putin isn’t bluffing.”

The U.S. pulling out of Afghanistan was “a debacle.”

Wilfred Jilge, historian Center for International Peace Operations, Berlin

“It’s a challenge for all Europeans.”

“There can be a catastrophe, even when Russia is not fully invading Ukraine.”

Sources:

Financial Times (1/17/22)

Moscow Times (4/20/21)

CNN

MSNBC

Ukraine World Podcast (#64)

Washinton Post (1/24/22)

Michael Flynn likened the White House’s messaging about the Russia-Ukraine standoff to the “hoax” of Russian interference in 2016 elections that landed Flynn an indictment.
— Read on www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/01/24/michael-flynn-once-indicted-over-russia-communication—voices-support-for-russia-ahead-of-potential-ukraine-invasion/

Ukraine gained independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991. Ever since, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has wanted Ukraine to join with Russia in forming a Eurasian Union. But many…
— Read on jennycohn1.medium.com/whats-all-the-fuss-about-ukraine-1ba8e53d99ee

Vladimir Putin’s aim is bigger than closing NATO’s “open door” to Ukraine and taking more territory.
— Read on www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/opinion/russia-ukraine-putin-biden.html

www.nytimes.com/2022/01/22/world/europe/ukraine-russia-coup-britain.html

www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/uk-accuses-russia-of-scheming-to-install-a-pro-kremlin-government-in-ukraine/2022/01/22/41c0999e-7bde-11ec-b79d-e53ef5e1fbe2_story.html

There has been a flurry of establishment corrections, obfuscations, explanations, and justifications since Biden’s “small incursion” statement on Wednesday.  It is difficult to analyze the different statements largely because they don’t make sense.

On the one hand, commentators have maintained that Biden was “just telling the truth.”  But, what truth was Biden telling?  The commentary largely focuses on the fact that the U.S. and all the NATO allies don’t completely agree on the appropriate response to Russian aggression.  So, the commentary goes, Biden was just saying out loud what everybody knows anyway.

But, that’s not what Biden said.  He didn’t only say that the allies don’t all agree on an appropriate response to Russian aggression.  And, this was not the important thing that he said.  What he said was that a “small incursion” would be considered less serious and therefore prompt less response from the allies.  What Biden was in fact saying was not that there was no agreement, but that there was agreement.  A “small incursion” would trigger a lesser response, perhaps no response at all.  This is a statement of fact, not a statement of disagreement. 

CNN reported Wednesday night that the Ukrainians were “shocked” by Biden’s statement.  I do not think the Ukrainians would have been shocked had Biden just said that there was some disagreement among the members of NATO about an appropriate response.

And, if in fact Biden was telling the truth about NATO disagreement, why has his administration been promising unprecedented sanctions, sanctions like nothing the Russians have ever seen?  If the allies are in that much disagreement, how was he able to repeatedly promise such a response?

What the commentary has largely involved is an attempt to deny the meaning of Biden’s words, to convince us that he didn’t say what he said.  I, for one, have had enough of that kind of behavior from the Republicans.  It’s yet again a “do you believe me or your lying ears” attempt.

As the CNN reporter on the ground in Ukraine said on Wednesday night, the United States had never, ever said that a “small incursion” would be met with diminished sanctions, or that there was even a consideration of a sliding scale on which aggression would be judged.  The Ukrainians had certainly not heard this before.  And, as president Zelensky tweeted, there are no “small incursions” against another country. 

William Cohen, commenting on CNN this morning, continued the effort to downplay Biden’s “small incursion” statement by saying that it was just an “error.”  Cohen, like most of the other establishment commentators, said that Biden was only telling the truth.  Cohen also said that Putin could not use Biden’s statement as a green light for an invasion. 

The question is why not.  What Biden was telling Putin was that as long as he confined his outrageous aggression to something they could all call a “small incursion” everything was fine.

Even when the White House Communications Director tried to “clear up” Biden’s statement, she did not. 

Wednesday’s statement from White House

“If any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border, that’s a renewed invasion, and it will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our Allies,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.”

But, cyber warfare is not “Russian military forces mov(ing) across the Ukrainian border.”  Missiles are not “Russian military forces mov(ing) across the Ukrainian border.”  Pro-Russian separatists taking over parts of the country with Russian assistance is not “Russian military forces mov(ing) across the Ukrainian border.  So, rather than return to the “aggression will provoke unprecedented sanctions” approach that seemed to be in effect before the press conference, we are still in a position where the Biden administration laid out the fact that “Russian military forces mov(ing) across the Ukrainian border” was the only thing that would trigger these (supposedly) unprecedented sanctions.

Had the White House really wanted to completely walk back what was called an “error” they would have said: Even a “small incursion” would trigger unprecedented sanctions.  They did not.

So, Biden has taken off the table a U.S. military defense of Ukraine.  He has taken off the table exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT program, and now he has put on the table the probability that anything short of “Russian military forces mov(ing) across the Ukrainian border” would be met with less opposition.

This is unconscionable.

Thursday 20 January 2022

I have very few illusions about the corporate media. 

I wrote a book in the early 90s about the media coverage of the invasion of Panama, an invasion which the military manipulatively named “Operation Just Cause.”  Within hours of what was clearly an invasion, NBC reporters were no longer calling it an invasion.  They were instead using the military propaganda term Operation Just Cause.  News anchors might as well have donned cheerleader outfits and jumped up and down with pompoms.  It was appalling.

In 1989, they took what was a clearly outrageous intervention in the affairs of another country and the kidnapping of a head of state, and a violation of international law and turned it into a celebration of American might.

Since this occurred in 1989, you would have thought I would have been worn down by now, that nothing could surprise me.  But, I don’t think I will ever lose my capacity to be appalled and disgusted and offended by the deliberate manipulation of the corporate press. 

A more recent high (or low) point in corporate media manipulation was the coverage by MSNBC of the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders.  I blame Sanders, by the way, for dragging me back into some kind of emotional investment in electoral politics.  I thought I was too cynical to fall for it again.  I was not.

Sanders was a candidate who not only had good policy as part of his platform, he was not ashamed of being a democratic socialist, and on top of that was a man of integrity. 

I watched with horror as MSNBC anchors and commentators lied, distorted and ridiculed Sanders.  There was no limit to their disparagement.  Chris Matthews charged on his program that Bernie Sanders wanted to have people like him executed in Times Square (Feb 8, 2020).   Another MSNBC commentator, an attorney and supposedly professional, said that no woman could ever vote for Sanders, he “made her skin crawl.”   Jason Johnson called the women who worked for Sanders an “island of misfit black girls.”  Commentators and hosts alike blithely maintained that Sanders couldn’t appeal to minority voters.  Then, Sanders won the Nevada primary on February 22, 2020.  Neoliberal democrats went into a panic.  Terrified by Sanders’ ability to appeal to voters of all stripes, MSNBC anchors (especially Joy Reid) went crazy. 

The DNC orchestrated a mass bow-out of all the corporate candidates in the race and bribed them to endorse one of the worst candidates of the lot, Joe Biden.  And the corporate press reacted as if it was a civil rights victory.  Rather than telling the truth, that the powerful in the party prevented regular people from choosing a candidate (as they had done in 2016) and installed their own, the corporate media gushed.

Then followed what I consider one of the most embarrassing examples of political theatre in decades, the Democratic National Convention.  It was a fawning, ass kissing, slavering, emotionally cheap People Magazine, full of personal melodrama (Biden’s dead wife and children, Biden’s dead son, Harris’ biracial upbringing, etc., etc., etc.)  (Note: One of the very lowest points was when Tammy Duckworth spoke and the speech began with the camera focused on her prosthetic legs). 

I do not like emotional manipulation of any sort and this was the cheapest, crassest display of emotional manipulation.  And, it went on for days.  There was virtually no policy, no serious discussion or debate.  But, there were hours of “inspiring” personal stories.  I thought if I heard another word about what a beautiful marriage the Biden’s had I was going to literally vomit.  But, the corporate press (MSNBC and CNN) couldn’t get enough of it.

The corporate media was in love with Biden, the fictional character they created for Biden.  Biden’s mediocrity, his ineptness as a political candidate (Obama didn’t even want to have him as a nominee), his slavish serving of banking interests, his anti-civil rights history mattered not at all.  And, here we are.

To anyone with an open mind, yesterday’s performance at the press conference, the second since Biden took office, was terrible.  Biden has a hard time talking, holding thoughts in his mind, staying on subject, and also confining himself to the talking points he’s been given.  Were he not facing an almost equally inept press, he would be trying to pull himself out of a greater disaster today.

But, just as the corporate media joined in enthusiastically to the love affair with Biden before the election, they protected him from the criticism he deserved for his performance yesterday.  Instead, they lauded him for speaking for almost two hours, the longest presser in the history of the world, according to them.  They praised him repeatedly for just not being Trump, a low bar.  And they dealt with Biden’s worst gaff (that a “small incursion” might be met with lesser sanctions) by simply ignoring it.

The general theme today in the media coverage was that Biden was being treated unfairly.  The line was: Biden just said what everybody already knew, that the European allies were not in complete agreement about what to do with regard to Russia’s impending invasion of Ukraine.  But, this was not the real gaff.  The corporate commentators talked about this to distract from what Biden really said that sent shock waves across Europe.

What Biden said was that there might be a calibrated reaction to a “small incursion” of Ukraine.  This was not what everybody already knew, especially not the Ukrainians.

Ukrainian officials were reported last night by CNN as being “shocked” by Biden’s statement.  And, as they pointed out, it almost gave the green light for Putin to conduct a “small incursion.”  Why would Biden talk about unprecedented sanctions and then admit that the U.S. was willing to look the other way over a “small incursion.” 

As Ukrainian president Zelensky tweeted today, there are no “small incursions” for Ukrainians.  We are talking about people’s lives and we are talking about aggression from the Russian state that hasn’t been seen since WWII.  And, we are talking about the West’s resolve in the face of authoritarianism and military intervention.

But today, the corporate media is writing this off (if they talk about the statement at all) as a small slip of the tongue.  Nothing to see here, move on.  It is unconscionable.  What Biden is talking about is trading off parts of Ukraine to appease the Russians. 

In addition, while the Biden administration is still acting as if unprecedented sanctions will be implemented if the Russians invade, he has already taken off the table excluding Russia from the SWIFT financial system.  Not one reporter, not one asked him about this.

So, Biden has taken off the table both military support to Ukraine and excluding them from the international economic system and now he is trading off parts of Ukraine to appease Putin.  It is unconscionable. 

Economic reprisals if the Kremlin invades Ukraine will not necessarily cover the world payments system
— Read on www.ft.com/content/21a9b239-f68c-4821-9586-8d60b8c044f0

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-17/u-s-eu-drop-idea-of-removing-russia-from-swift-paper-reports

For those who are interested in the increasingly serious situation on the border of Ukraine, the past few weeks have been tense.  Russia moved what have been estimated as 100,000 troops to the border of Ukraine and then intervened in the political situation of neighboring Belarus.  The West has issued threats, or promises, or murmurs about unprecedented sanctions which would be implemented if Russia invades Ukraine again, without being clear on what those sanctions might be.

In response to the growing crisis, a series of talks were arranged between the U.S., NATO allies and the Russians.  But, after a week, these talks were described in the press as having “collapsed.”

Tonight, Ukrainian intelligence is warning the West that there are not only more Russian troops on the border than previously reported (127,000 instead of 100,000) but also 35,000 militia members inside Ukraine who can be mobilized on Russia’s behalf if an invasion occurs. 

So what does the Biden administration do after talks have “collapsed” and more troops are reported on the border than ever before?  Biden agrees to take off the table one of the most serious of the sanctions, the plan to expel Russia from SWIFT, the world’s dominate international payments system.   

The Times of London is reporting that Europe and the U.S. have shelved this as an option even if Russia invades Ukraine.  At a time when the secretary-general of NATO has warned of a “real danger” of war, a strategic option that might seriously cripple the Russians is removed from the board.  This can only be called “preemptive surrender.”

Russia has claimed that it would send jet fighters, air-to surface missiles and anti-aircraft guns to the eastern frontiers in a joint exercise with Belarus.

A “bipartisan” group of senators is in Ukraine to talk to the president, Zelensky.  Richard Blumenthal has promised support and weapons to the Ukrainians in the event of an invasion.  But, it is hard to see this as anything but more performance art by the Democrats. 

Sources:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/west-drops-threat-to-russian-banking-over-ukraine-hxrlrcwrg

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-senators-promise-solidarity-weapons-ukraine-warning-putin-2022-01-17/