Asian fault lines of Biden’s war on Russia

M. K. Bhadrakumar

Indian Punchline | April 11, 2022

As relations with Tokyo sour, Moscow beefs up the coastal defence systems on the Kuril Islands that Japan claims as its own

The tremors of the United States’ tensions with Russia playing out in Europe are being felt in different ways already in Asia. The hypothesis of Ukraine being in Europe and the conflict being all about European security is delusional.

From Kazakhstan to Myanmar, from Solomon Islands to the Kuril Islands, from North Korea to Cambodia, from China to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the fault lines are appearing.

To be sure, extra-regional powers had a hand in the failed colour revolution recently to overthrow the established government in Kazakhstan, a hotly contested geopolitical landmass two-thirds the size of India, bordering both China and Russia, Washington’s sworn adversaries. Thanks to swift Russian intervention, supported by China, a regime change was averted. 

Staged Massacre in Bucha

Orinoco Tribune | April 05, 2022

The city of Bucha, in Ukraine, has recently come to the attention of the US and EU corporate media, for the purpose of criminalizing Russia for the supposed assassination of 300 civilians. However, the lack of evidence for these claims brings into doubt any allegations that the Russian military was involved.

After the Ukronazi regime of Volodimir Zelensky published images depicting corpses in Bucha, supposedly killed by the Russian military, in the middle of the street and in mass graves, calls have been issued for Russia to be tried internationally for war crimes.

Reuters correspondents confirmed that they had seen bodies strewn in the streets, with their hands and feet tied, as if they had been arrested.

Climate change and wars

Michael Roberts Blog | April 09, 2022

As the ugly war in Ukraine drags on, with more lives lost and atrocities (apparently) committed, energy and food prices hit yet more highs.  The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the UN publishes a monthly global price index.  The FAO Food Price Index reached yet another record high of 159.3 points in March, up 12.6% from February.

FAO Food price index

Bankers lie about fossil fuel finance

Despite promising cuts, the world’s biggest banks pour trillions into oil, gas and coal

Climate and Capitalism | March 31, 2022

The 13th annual Banking on Climate Chaos report exposes the stark disparity between public climate commitments being made by the world’s largest banks, and the reality of business-as-usual financing to the fossil fuel industry. To be blunt: when the big banks promised to cut funding to oil, gas and coal, they were lying.

The U.S. proxy war in Ukraine

John Bellamy Foster

The following is the text of a presentation by John Bellamy Foster given on March 31, 2022 to the advisory board of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. —Eds

MR Online | April 09, 2022

Thanks for inviting me to make this presentation. In talking about the Ukraine war, the essential thing to recognize at the outset is that this is a proxy war. In this regard, none other than Leon Panetta, who was CIA director and then secretary of defense under the Barack Obama administration, acknowledged recently that the war in Ukraine is a U.S. “proxy war,” though seldom admitted. To be explicit, the United States (backed by the whole of NATO) is in a long proxy war with Russia, with Ukraine as the battlefield. The U.S. role in this conception, as Panetta insisted, is to provide more and more weapons faster and faster with Ukraine doing the fighting, bolstered by foreign mercenaries.

Twitter IS “State-Affiliated Media”

Caitlin Johnstone

British politician and broadcaster George Galloway has made headlines in the UK with his threat to press legal action against Twitter for designating his account “Russia state-affiliated media”, a label which will now show up under his name every time he posts anything on the platform.

Galloway: He fights. Others may follow. The big question now is whether millions of manufactured morons can finally be shaken out of their brainwash.

“Dear @TwitterSupport I am not ‘Russian State Affiliated media’,” reads a viral tweet by Galloway. “I work for NO Russian media. I have 400,000 followers. I’m the leader of a British political party and spent nearly 30 years in the British parliament. If you do not remove this designation I will take legal action.”

Galloway argues that while his broadcasts have previously been aired by Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik, because those outlets have been shut down in the UK by Ofcom and by European Union sanctions he can no longer be platformed by them even if he wants to. If you accept this argument, then it looks like Twitter is essentially using the “state-affiliated media” designation as a marker of who Galloway is as a person, rather than as a marker of what he actually does.

Why Ukraine’s “Bucha Massacre” Story Isn’t Adding Up

Brian Berletic

THE NEW ATLAS | April 04, 2022

In essence, the dead observed in the satellite images were killed by Ukrainian mortars and artillery shelling. The bound/executed bodies are obviously much more recent. The New York Times refuses to differentiate for propaganda value. Description: The “Bucha Massacre” is being squarely blamed on Russia before any investigation can take place. Despite no likelihood of a real investigation taking place, there remains the question of why Russia would occupy and live side-by-side Ukrainians in Bucha but kill them during their otherwise orderly withdrawal? Or why Ukrainian forces who have tortured and killed prisoners of war, deliberately used the civilian population as shields during combat, and have nationwide tortured and taped its own civilian population to posts for infractions during the war would not immediately see the population of Bucha as “collaborators” and punish them accordingly.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Questions Abound About Bucha Massacre

The West has made a snap judgment about who is responsible for the massacre at the Ukrainian town of Bucha with calls for more stringent sanctions on Russia, but the question of guilt is far from decided, writes Joe Lauria.

Joe Lauria

Consortium News | April 04, 2022

Victims in Bucha. (Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Development Mikhail Fedorov/Wikimedia Commons)

Within hours of news Sunday that there had been a massacre at Bucha, a town 63 kms north of the Ukrainian capital, the verdict was in:  Russian troops had senselessly slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians as they withdrew from the town, leaving their bodies littering the streets. 

Unlike their judicial systems, when it comes to war, Western nations dispense with the need for investigations and evidence and pronounce guilt based on political motives: Russia is guilty. Case closed.

Except the case hasn’t even been opened yet and the sentence is already being proposed. French President Emmanuel Macron, for instance, has called for Russian coal and oil to be banned from Europe. “There are very clear indications of war crimes,” he said on France Inter radio Monday. “What happened in Bucha demands a new round of sanctions and very clear measures, so we will co-ordinate with our European partners, especially with Germany.”

The Military Situation In The Ukraine

Jacques Baude

Part One: The Road To War

For years, from Mali to Afghanistan, I have worked for peace and risked my life for it. It is therefore not a question of justifying war, but of understanding what led us to it. I notice that the “experts” who take turns on television analyze the situation on the basis of dubious information, most often hypotheses erected as facts—and then we no longer manage to understand what is happening. This is how panics are created.

The problem is not so much to know who is right in this conflict, but to question the way our leaders make their decisions.

Workers solidarity: Greek Railway Workers Reportedly Refuse to Transport NATO Tanks Toward Ukraine

One of the many reasons the fascist imperialists always go after organised workers and especially communists—those with the highest awareness.

The Greek working class has intensified protests against the country’s involvement in the imperialist maneuvers of the US and NATO alliance in Europe

Trade unions in the Greek city of Thessaloniki united in support of employees of private railway company TrainOSE after management attempted to clamp down on workers who refused to take part in the transfer of US and NATO military equipment from Alexandropoulos to Eastern Europe, the news portal of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) has reported.

TrainOSE reportedly threatened workers from the Thessaloniki Electric Locomotive Department, who refused to travel to Alexandropoulos to provide technical servicing of trains involved in transporting NATO military equipment out of the port city, with punitive action, pointing to their obligations under signed contracts.