Hungary PM Orbán vindicated, poll finds 71% of Europeans want ‘immediate end’ to Ukraine war and peace talks
Viktor Orbán claimed the recent polling showed that Brussels is not on the side of the European people
BY THOMAS BROOKE | REMIX NEWS | December 12, 2023
Bureaucrats in Brussels do not represent the European people, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has claimed after a recent study revealed that an overwhelming majority of Europeans want peace talks between Ukraine and Russia and an immediate end to the ongoing conflict.
The poll, conducted by Hungary’s Századvég Foundation, found that 71 percent of EU and U.K. citizens believe the war should “end immediately and the parties should be brought to the negotiating table,” while just 20 percent support its continuation until such a time that “Ukraine defeats Vladimir Putin”.
Similarly, 67 percent of respondents were against the deployment of their own countrymen to Ukraine, compared with 25 percent in favor of such a move.
Another question showed that respondents in every EU member state believed that the economic sanctions imposed by Brussels against Russia had been detrimental to the European Union, and saw the United States and China as the biggest winners of the policy.
Only non-EU Norway believed the sanctions had benefited their own country while just five European nations — Norway, Lithuania, Finland, Estonia, and Denmark — believed the move had been beneficial for Ukraine in its ongoing fight with Moscow.
A clear geographical divide between the northern and southern European nations was seen when asked about Europe’s foreign policy concerning China. A majority from every mainland European nation with the exception of Poland and the Baltic states called for more “peaceful economic cooperation” to be sought with the superpower, insisting a “tougher approach is not needed”.
However, Poland, the Baltics, the U.K. and Ireland, and Scandinavian nations believed a tougher approach is necessary “because of its relation to Russia”.
Europeans were also split on Brussels’ policy of sending military aid to Ukraine. Eastern European nations, with the exception of Poland and the Baltics, had a majority of respondents against the provision of weapons to Kyiv, while Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, France, and Italy were also against the move.
A majority in favor of military aid, however, was found in Scandinavian nations, the Baltics, the U.K., Spain, and Portugal
Commenting on the Századvég Foundation’s findings, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the numbers were “clear” that the European Union was out of touch with European citizens and its policy to continue funding Ukraine in its conflict with Russia contravene public opinion across the continent.
Hungary has long been an advocate for peace talks, much to the dismay of the European liberal elite which has chastised Orbán’s administration for refusing to toe the line of Brussels.
Hungary has also remained vehemently opposed to the European Commission’s plans to advance EU membership talks with Kyiv despite the ongoing conflict, with Hungarian officials warning Brussels it risks bringing “war to Europe”.
Another study by the Századvég Foundation published on Monday found that 72 percent of Hungarians supported their government’s stance against EU membership for Ukraine, a monthly mood-checker that has seen opposition against the move increase each month since September.
The conservative think-tank warned that if Ukraine joined, “almost all Member States would become net contributors or current agricultural subsidies would have to be reduced by an average of 20 percent” in order to accommodate “Ukrainian farmers working on the richest farmland in Europe”.
EU states consider ‘Plan B’ for Ukraine aid – FT
RT | December 12, 2023
Kiev’s main backers in the EU may overcome Hungarian opposition to the proposed allocation of $54 billion in long-term aid for Ukraine by providing funds outside of the bloc’s joint budget, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
The European Commission is seeking to provide the funding over the next four years through the so-called Ukraine Facility. The money is intended to help Kiev with its conflict with Russia, as well as for its reconstruction efforts.
Hungary, which has been highly critical of Brussels’ approach to the Ukraine crisis, has indicated that it would veto the decision during a summit of leaders on Thursday.
The Ukrainian government is counting on the money for its 2024 budget and has warned of “devastating consequences” if the EU comes up short, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba told journalists on Monday ahead of a meeting with his European counterparts in Brussels.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishina said a failure to allocate the money would be “a failure of the entire European Union” that would impact Kiev’s chances of getting more aid from the US as well.
According to the FT, Kiev’s supporters in Brussels want to sweeten the deal for Budapest by releasing EU budget funds that were frozen due to Hungary’s perceived lapses in the rule of law and corruption.
The alternative is to have the other 26 members pool resources, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the talks on what one of the sources called a “plan B.” Diplomats are privately discussing “the feasibility and technical details” of such a move.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell urged national leaders to “stubbornly support” Ukraine for the sake of bloc unity after the ministerial meeting.
Hungarian Minister for EU Affairs Janos Boka told the FT that his government was not likely to change its position. He claimed that the reported consent-for-frozen-funds deal would amount to “political blackmail not from Hungary, but against Hungary” by Brussels.
However, he added that it was feasible for assistance outside of the EU budget to be provided. This would involve “member state contributions, mutual member state guarantees, a much shorter planning period of one year instead of four years,” and would be “under the clear political leadership of the member states.”
Budapest has argued that the tens of billions of dollars and euros poured into Ukraine by Western donors have failed to end the bloodshed. Nations should instead pressure Kiev and Moscow into peace talks, the Hungarian government believes.
Russia says Ukraine’s uncompromising position and refusal to accept the reality on the ground is standing in the way of resolving the crisis. Moscow wants its neighbor to be “neutral, non-aligned and nuclear-free” as well as respectful of the rights of its ethnic Russian minority, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last week.
Russia’s goal “conquering Ukraine”, say Western media. Not so, say experts
By Uriel Araujo | December 12, 2023
The Ukrainian former defense minister Oleksii Reznikov recently stated that the Kremlin’s goal is to “destroy” Ukraine completely, “assimilating” its citizens into the Russian Federation. Such wild claims have not been much challenged by journalists and opinion-makers in the West. After all, according to Western media Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “plan” is and has always been “to conquer” Ukraine all along. This pervasive Western narrative, also pushed by Kyiv, far from being a kind of self-evident truth, is challenged by voices within the US Establishment such as Jeffrey Sachs and by many respected scholars in the West, including some who are very critical of Moscow. Such a one-sized narrative in fact removes any context regarding the current crisis and completely ignores Russian perspective, goals, and security concerns.
Although a harsh critic of Russia’s ongoing military campaign in Ukraine, Wolfgang Richter (a Senior Associate in the International Security Division at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik – SWP) acknowledged, for example, in a 2022 article that in December 2021, Moscow had “made clear in two draft treaties” what it was after: “preventing a further expansion of NATO to the east and obtaining binding assurances to this end.” The Alliance and Washington, however, according to Richter, “were not prepared to revise the principles of the European security order” and thus Moscow obviously “did not accept this and resorted to the use of force.”
According to this expert, although the US is “far from the theater of conflict in Europe”, French and British nuclear weapons and “the deployment of US sub-strategic nuclear weapons in Europe and NATO’s conventional forces on Russia’s borders” are indeed a security risk in the European continent from Moscow’s perspective. This is so, he argues, quite convincingly, because Russia understands that a future threat could arise from the new American intermediate-range weapons in the continent, which could even reach Russian strategic targets (in the European part of the country) “should Washington and NATO partners decide to deploy them.” Moreover, NATO’s enlargement “has created more potential deployment areas in Central and Eastern Europe.” The Kremlin sees the Atlantic Alliance today, after all, as merely an American tool to advance its geopolitical interests (to the detriment of Russian security).
Sometimes, critics claim that the fact that Moscow cooperated in varying degrees with NATO from the nineties to around 2010 “proves” that Russian claims about NATO’s enlargement should not be taken seriously. This fact, if anything, corroborates Moscow’s arguments.
In his 2018 associated professorship habilitation thesis, Sao Paulo University History Professor Angelo de Oliveira Segrillo describes Putin as a moderate (albeit ambiguously) “Westernist”, rather than an Eurasianist, citing as evidence for it the Russian President’s well know admiration for Peter the Great. Segrillo argues that Putin was never a radical Westernist such as Boris Yeltsin, but rather a pragmatic and moderate one, while also being a gosudarstvennik, that is, someone who advocates for a strong State, in line with Russia’s political tradition. The Brazilian professor thus compares Putin to the French leader Charles de Gaulle, who often opposed Washington and NATO not simply out of an “anti-Western stance” but as someone who is in a position of defending the national interests of one’s own country.
Alas, whether the aforementioned thesis is fully accurate or not, that being something which interests mostly historians and biographers anyway, one can in any case argue that far from being staunchly “anti-Western” due to the supposed personal inclinations of the President (as Western propaganda would have it), the Kremlin in fact has had to take a defensive and counter-offensive approach towards the US-led West over the latter’s many provocations and developments which, from a Russian perspective, constituted crossing red lines.
In the NATO-Russia Founding Act of May 1997, NATO in fact pledged to limit the number of stationed troops, promising not to bring about any “additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces”, while claiming it had no plan to deploy nuclear weapons in the accession countries. Such agreements eroded over several episodes, as Richter demonstrates. Countries that did not belong to the CFE started joining the Alliance in 2004 and, to make matters worse, Washington in 2007 established a permanent military presence on the Black Sea. The US had withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 which for the Kremlin was a threat to strategic stability, a perception enhanced by Washington’s 2007 bilateral agreements with the Czech and Poland to deploy missile defense systems in these countries (allegedly to counter an Iranian “threat”).
NATO’s war against Serbia in 1999 (denounced by Russia) had of course already violated the ban on the use of force, and the 1997 and 1999 agreements. Moreover, the brutal invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 demonstrated America’s capacity and willingness to break international law, by relying on a “coalition of the willing” of new Eastern European partners and allies (even without NATO consensus). One could also cite Western recognition of Kosovo’s (unilateral) declaration of independence and the 2008 offer of the prospect of joining NATO to Ukraine and Georgia which, according to Richter, was “the breaking point in NATO’s relations with Russia.”
The 2014 Crimea referendum and the Donbass War might have been the culmination of the erosion of an already declining European security order, argues Richter but such erosion “had already begun in 2002 with the growing potential for conflict between Washington and Moscow”, George W. Bush having played an important role in this.
Which brings us to the current situation. For American political scientist John Mearsheimer, if Kyiv and Moscow had reached a deal, which could have happened if it were not for Western interference, Ukraine today would control a greater share of territory. As he writes, “Russia and Ukraine were involved in serious negotiations to end the war in Ukraine right after it started on 24 February 2022”. Regarding that, he adds: “everyone involved in the negotiations understood that Ukraine’s relationship with NATO was Russia’s core concern… if Putin was bent on conquering all of Ukraine, he would not have agreed to these talks.” The main issue was NATO.
To sum it up, although at times Russia considered the possibility of engaging in further dialogue and cooperation with NATO, there have always been tensions about the Atlantic Alliance’s expansion, and Moscow security concerns pertaining to it, far from being a mere excuse, are in fact well-founded.
US Ruling Class Fears Trump Would Withdraw from NATO
Sputnik – 11.12.2023
The New York Times – generally considered a mouthpiece for US militarism and ruling class interests – published an article Saturday agonizing over the possibility that former President Trump would withdraw from NATO in a second term.
The report, although rife with opinion and speculation, was published as a news item in the Saturday edition of the controversial newspaper.
“For 74 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been America’s most important military alliance,” read the article. The authors went on to suggest there is “enormous uncertainty and anxiety” throughout Europe and among “American supporters of the country’s traditional foreign-policy role” (which has resulted in the death of at least 4.5 million since 2001).
“There is great fear in Europe that a second Trump presidency would result in an actual pullout of the United States from NATO,” said James G. Stavridis, a former NATO supreme allied commander. “That would be an enormous strategic and historic failure on the part of our nation.”
Despite NATO’s ostensible existence as an “alliance” between the United States and European countries Stavridis, like every other NATO supreme commander, is American.
Benjamin Norton, the founder and editor-in-chief of Geopolitical Economy Report, has derisively labeled the alliance as the “Nazi Arming and Training Organization” for their support of Nazi elements. Historically, the alliance elevated former German Nazis to key positions of power throughout the Cold War and supported terrorism, assassinations, psychological warfare, and false flag operations through a covert effort known as Operation Gladio.
The strategy was duplicated in Latin America where the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) utilized and provided safe haven for former Nazis like Klaus Barbie.
Despite ostensibly existing as an anticommunist alliance, NATO remained hostile to Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and continued expanding east in violation of the agreement with the country during the final days of the Cold War. Recently the US government-backed Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe laid bare the country’s intention to balkanize Russia in a conference advocating for “decolonization” even as the United States continues to support the “colonization” of the Gaza Strip.
Recently the consequences of US hegemony in Europe have been made clear as Germany endures a deep economic crisis brought about by the country’s participation in US-led sanctions on Russia.
Over 5,000 Israeli soldiers injured since Oct. 7, with 58% seriously: Israeli media
MEMO | December 9, 2023
More than 5,000 Israeli soldiers have been injured in Gaza since the conflict began on Oct. 7, with more than 2,000 officially recognized by the Ministry of Defence as disabled, an Israeli newspaper revealed on Saturday, adding that more than 58% of those injured suffered serious harm to their hands and feet, necessitating amputations.
“More than 5,000 wounded soldiers arrived in hospitals in Israel,” the daily Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported.
“More than 2,000 were officially recognized by the Ministry of Defense as disabled,” the daily added.
“We have never experienced anything similar to this. More than 58% of the wounded we receive have serious injuries to their hands and feet, including amputations,” Limor Luria, deputy director general and head of Israel’s Ministry of Defense’s Rehabilitation Department, told the newspaper.
“About 12% of injuries are internal consisting of damage to the spleen, kidneys, and rupture of internal organs,” Luria said.
“About 7% suffer from psychological distress, a number we know will rise sharply,” the official said.
The Israeli army said at least 420 soldiers have been killed since the outbreak of the Gaza conflict on Oct. 7.
Israel resumed its military offensive against the Gaza Strip on Dec. 1 after the end of a weeklong humanitarian pause with the Palestinian group, Hamas.
At least 17,487 Palestinians have been killed and more than 46,480 others injured in relentless air and ground attacks on the enclave since Oct. 7 following a cross-border attack by Hamas.
The Israeli death toll in the Hamas attack stood at 1,200, according to official figures.
Biden regime touts ‘year of suffering’ for Russian troops
RT | December 8, 2023
The White House wants to keep funding Ukraine in its conflict with Russia because it believes that in a year Moscow may be willing to concede to Kiev’s demands, an aide to Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said in an interview on Tuesday.
Jon Finer, Sullivan’s principal deputy, discussed the White House Ukraine strategy at an event hosted by the Aspen Institute, an influential US think-tank. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden’s request to allocate over $110 billion in foreign security aid, including for Ukraine, was blocked from a vote in the Senate.
Finer made a case for releasing the funds despite Kiev’s inability to secure any major successes on the battlefield during its summer counteroffensive. He said he disagreed with the notion that the operation “not going as far as people wanted reflects some degree of Ukrainian failure.” If Washington keeps bankrolling Kiev’s war effort for the next year, the Ukrainian government will maintain “a degree of parity” with Russia, he promised.
“Another year of funding and another year in which Russia will have to suffer on the battlefield is fundamentally a better position than we are in today without that funding,” Finer said. “I think there is no way to dispute that.”
By the end of 2024, Western nations will have ramped up arms production and be helping Ukraine do the same, the White House expects. Then Russia will have to either “come to the negotiating table on terms that would be acceptable to Ukraine” or face a stronger opponent, according to Finer’s expectations.
Kiev’s demands for peace include full control over pre-2014 Ukrainian territory, war reparations and a tribunal for the Russian leadership, as detailed last year by President Vladimir Zelensky. Moscow has dismissed it from the start as detached from reality.
Moscow has cited NATO expansion in Europe and the promised inclusion of Ukraine into the US-led military bloc as a threat to its national security. Preventing that outcome is imperative, senior Russian officials have said.
In the first weeks of hostilities, Ukraine and Russia came to a preliminary agreement on a truce, which would have seen Kiev drop its NATO aspirations and pledge neutrality. Then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Kiev to “make war instead,” David Arakhamia, who led the Ukrainian delegation at the talks in Istanbul, confirmed in a recent interview.
What Would Happen If the US Stopped Supporting Ukraine?
By Connor O’Keeffe – Mises Wire – 12/06/2023
Over the weekend, border-policy negotiations between Senate Democrats and Republicans fell apart. The talks were meant to firm up Republican support for the president’s massive $105 billion military support proposal ahead of Wednesday’s vote by including additional funds for border security in the spending package. Now, with no imminent approval of further aid to Ukraine, hawks in government and the media are trying to stoke panic about what will happen if Kyiv is cut off from US support.
In a letter to Congress Monday, White House budget director Shalanda Young told Congress the funds will dry up by the end of the year:
I want to be clear: without congressional action, by the end of the year we will run out of resources to procure more weapons and equipment for Ukraine and to provide equipment from U.S. military stocks. There is no magical pot of funding available to meet this moment. We are out of money—and nearly out of time.
Young goes on to forecast disaster for Ukraine if more money isn’t allocated. But is that really accurate? Are the Ukrainian people doomed if Washington stops funding the war?
If we’re going to understand what might happen in the absence of US involvement in Ukraine, we must first understand Washington’s actual effect on the war, the true nature of which has been laid out brilliantly in a series of recent columns by Ted Snider.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began with a bombardment of cruise missiles on February 24, 2022. Later that day, infantry and armored divisions rolled in from Russia, Belarus, and Crimea while paratroopers dropped in around the capital city of Kyiv.
Days later, as the shock and confusion of the initial offensive began to dissipate, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky attempted to set up indirect talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Zelensky called then–Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett and asked him to contact Putin and to serve as a mediator. Bennett agreed.
Over the next week, Bennett had a series of phone calls with Putin before traveling to Moscow and Berlin to help organize diplomatic communication channels. His effort culminated in a March 10 meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers in Turkey.
In the series of talks that followed, Bennett described both sides as making “huge concessions” in pursuit of a ceasefire.
But Kyiv’s Western backers were resistant to the truce. At a special summit on March 24, NATO decided not to support or approve the peace negotiations. Still, Zelensky and Putin kept at it. And on March 29, the two sides reached an agreement.
According to a draft unsealed this past June, Russia had agreed to pull its forces back to prewar boundaries. In exchange, Ukraine had agreed it would not seek NATO membership.
So why didn’t it happen? Well, it may have started to. In early April, Russia withdrew its forces from northern Ukraine, around Kyiv—an action Putin later said was related to the Istanbul agreement.
But then, according to Bennett, former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, and the leader of the Ukrainian delegation to the talks, David Arakhamia, the West pressured Zelensky to abandon negotiations and fight.
Assuming the best intentions, it’s possible officials in Washington and Brussels believed the Ukrainians could win enough battles to improve their leverage in future negotiations. But that is not what happened.
Instead, Washington bankrolled a horrifying twenty-one-month war of attrition that has cost the people of Ukraine greatly in land, lives, and limbs. After talks broke down, Russia laid permanent claim to tens of thousands of square miles of Ukrainian territory that it had earlier agreed to relinquish.
Last summer, Ukrainian forces began attempting to retake this land by force in the so-called counteroffensive. But they have since lost more territory than they have gained. Ukraine keeps its casualty count classified, but by the end of August US estimates had put it north of two hundred thousand. And it has likely climbed substantially with the ongoing struggle to break through heavy Russian minefields.
As their supply of military-aged men has dwindled, the average age of a Ukrainian soldier has climbed to forty-three. And now there is a push within the Ukrainian government to lower the draft age to begin conscripting those who have so far been too young to be eligible.
The Ukrainian people are being put through hell. And now even senior Ukrainian military officials admit there is no military path out.
If the purpose of stifling the Istanbul agreement was to help the Ukrainians gain more leverage, the West must admit failure before Ukraine loses even more.
And if Washington’s intentions were more nefarious—as comments from officials like Mitch McConnell, who have framed the war as an easy way to burden Russia without spilling American blood, suggest—that’s all the more reason to call off this horrific project.
That brings us back to the original question. What would happen if the United States stopped supporting Ukraine? We already know. Ukraine and Russia would work toward a deal. It won’t go as well for Ukraine as it did almost two years ago when they were stronger. But it’s not a path to fear. Because the alternative is that the White House gets its way and this brutal, unnecessary war carries on. And that’s so much worse.
UK special forces secretly operated in Ukraine – media
Ukrainian soldiers getting training from British troops in South East England, February 24, 2023. © Leon Neal / Getty Images
RT | December 6, 2023
British special forces operators were embedded with Ukrainian troops in the early days of the conflict, Declassified UK reported on Wednesday, citing the newly published book by Polish journalist Zbigniew Parafianowicz.
Parafianowicz is the Ukraine correspondent for the Polish daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna. His latest work, ‘Polska na Wojnie’ (Poland at War), examines Warsaw’s role in the neighboring conflict.
According to Declassified, at one point, a Polish government minister – who is not named – told Parafianowicz about a time in March 2022 when he was traveling from Kiev to Zhitomir.
“It was a time when the Russians were still standing in Bucha, and the route was a gray zone. It was possible to run into Russians. We passed the last checkpoint. The Ukrainians told us that we continue at our own risk,” the unnamed minister reportedly said. “Well, and who did we meet next? Ukrainian soldiers and … British special forces. Uniformed. With weapons.”
According to Parafianowicz’s source, the British and the Ukrainians worked together, driving around the countryside with artillery tracking radars, “learning about this war.”
The same official also said that Polish special forces based in Lublin had been in Brovary, a suburb of Kiev, “on the first day” of the hostilities. Poles – along with Brits and Americans – had been training the Ukrainian special forces since 2014, the minister said. According to Parafianowicz, Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS) had trained President Vladimir Zelensky’s security detail as well.
Another source, identified only as a high-ranking Polish officer, said that these commandos did not return to Poland, but “went in the opposite direction” – to Kharkov and parts of Donbass controlled by Ukrainians.
“They cooperated with the British,” the officer said. “Later, we worked out a formula for our presence in Ukraine … we were simply sent on paid leave. Politicians pretended not to see this.”
According to Declassified, some of these Polish commandos may have trained members of the neo-Nazi ‘Azov’ movement – specifically the ‘Kraken’ unit based in Kharkov – in the use of British-supplied NLAW rocket launchers. Social media posts identified them only as “instructors from NATO countries.”
Parafianowicz’s book appears to confirm previous media reports about NATO commandos fighting alongside Ukrainian troops. In April 2022, the French daily Le Figaro claimed that SAS and Delta Force operators had waged a “secret war” on behalf of Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s military operation. Shortly after those revelations, The Times said a number of SAS operators had returned to Ukraine to teach Kiev’s soldiers how to operate British-made anti-tank rockets. Last December, a British military publication admitted that up to 300 Royal Marines had been deployed to Ukraine for “discrete operations.”
Classified Pentagon documents that were leaked in April this year also showed at least 50 British special forces operators were still active in Ukraine as of March.
Analyst: US Claims to Desire Peace With China ‘Nullified’ by ‘Extraordinarily Belligerent’ Behavior
By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 06.12.2023
The US is pushing the Philippines into adopting a belligerent stance in a small territorial dispute with China as part of longstanding plans to weaken Beijing by starting a war in the South China Sea, an essential sea lane to the Chinese economy, a regional expert told Sputnik.
The monthslong standoff over Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea has continued to simmer as China and the Philippines challenge the other’s claim of sovereignty over the submerged coral reef and the United States inserts itself into the dispute.
On Monday, Beijing said that the American littoral combat ship USS Gabrielle Giffords “illegally intruded” in the waters near the shoal, which the US Navy claimed was “conducting routine operations in international waters … consistent with international law.”
Such maneuvers are called “Freedom of Navigation Operations” (FONOPS) and are designed to show US contempt for what it considers the “excessive” maritime claims of other nations according to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a treaty the US has never ratified.
“The US deliberately disrupted the situation in the South China Sea, seriously violated China’s sovereignty and security, seriously undermined regional peace and stability, and seriously violated international law and basic norms governing international relations, fully demonstrating that the US is the biggest threat to peace and stability in the South China Sea,” the southern command of the People’s Liberation Army said in a statement on the episode.
KJ Noh, a scholar, educator and journalist focusing on the Asia-Pacific, and a member of Veterans for Peace, told Sputnik on Tuesday that the US had thrown its weight behind Manila in the dispute in the hopes of turning what should be a small, peacefully-resolved territorial dispute into a casus belli with Beijing, allowing it to deal a mortal blow to the Chinese economy.
Noh referred to a recently published article in a Hong Kong-based newspaper highlighting how the US is violating international law in its purported push to “stop China from violating international law.”
“So what Alex Lo in the South China Morning Post is pointing out is that the US always talks the talk that, you know, that it is following the ‘rules-based international order’ – which is essentially US hegemony, it has nothing to do with international law. And at the same time, it is always criticizing and decrying China’s violations of the UNCLOS, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. And what Alex Lo is pointing out is that as the US encircles China with myriad bases and weaponizes them in order to create this massive threat projection platform, it is breaking the law, left, right and center.”
“And so, for example, he points out that in the Cocos Islands, which are possessed by Australia, the understanding is that the caucus islands are not supposed to be militarized. But even as we speak, the Australians are turning it into a platform to launch both submarines and planes. And so this is in direct violation of the understanding that Australia has with the United Nations.”
“And then the other very, very egregious violation is the Chagos Archipelago. Now, once again, you know, the Chagos Islands, the UK forced the Chagos Islanders off – essentially did an ethnic cleansing threatening them with genocide – and then force them off the islands and turned it into a base which it turned over to the United States. And this land, the Chagos Islands, should be given back to the Chagos Islanders. This was the ruling of the legitimate international courts, and the US and the UK have refused to do that.”
“And so all of this goes to show that the United States claims that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea applies to China, but in fact all the rulings and all the agreements that are part of international law the US routinely violates in order to escalate to war against China. So this is just a very, very good example of pointing out the extraordinary hypocrisy of the United States as it prepares for war.”
“The US actions are continually ratcheting up, continual escalation, continually accelerating the material conditions for war. All of this is direct preparation for war. And so whatever the US says in public or in diplomatic venues means nothing. It’s completely nullified by these extraordinarily belligerent – and as Alex Lo points out illegal – actions that the US is currently engaging in.”
“As the US escalates to war with China, the South China Sea, along with Taiwan Island in the East China Sea, and then the Korean Peninsula, will be the three main battlegrounds. The US is preparing these for kinetic war and in order to prepare this for kinetic war, the idea is to choke off the South China Sea. And once thier shooting war starts in the South China Sea, it doesn’t matter if the US wins it or not, just the disruption to trade and traffic will be enough to bring China down. China’s economy will shrink by 25 to 35% because $5.3 trillion worth of goods and most of China’s oil travels through the South China Sea. So this is the game plan.”
“And what they are doing is they’re weaponizing the Philippines as its key provocateur against China. And so inside that larger context, what the Philippines has done is they’ve run aground a rusting ship, the Sierra Madre, on the Second Thomas Shoal, which China claims – and that entire area that China claims, it’s actually contested between four countries, and these contestations would have been resolved peacefully, except for that the United States got involved on the part of the Philippines and then created this fraudulent tribunal by which it now claims that it has legitimate rights.”
“So since the Philippines has run aground a rusting ship on the Second Thomas Shoal in order to squat it, essentially they’re claiming squatter’s rights and they leave a bunch of sailors in there for months at a time. These sailors cannot get off the ship, you know, the reef is not self-sustaining, it’s mostly submerged. And the Chinese want them to leave and they want them to get that junked ship off the Thomas Shoal. It’s like if you were to leave your junked car on my lawn in order to claim it as yours. I mean I think you might be a little bit upset there.”
“So this is the essential contestation that’s happening. The Chinese assert that the Sierra Madre should be removed and the Philippines should not squat in that area, and the US is threatening to use this as a kind of casus belli that, you know, if China does anything against the Philippines, then the US will use the mutual defense treaty to get involved. So it’s a very delicate situation and essentially the US is trying to provoke war in the South China Sea.”
“We have to understand geostrategic and global war in terms of choke points: who controls the choke points determines who has strategic advantage. And in this case, the US is trying to gain or leverage strategic advantage by initiating a shooting war in the South China Sea. The US doesn’t have to win it, all you need is the congestion, that congestion will damage China. That’s the game plan that’s mapped out by Rand in their 2015 war document.”
UK nuclear site ‘leaking’ – The Guardian
Sellafield nuclear reprocessing facility November 26, 2001 in Cumbria, England © Getty Images / Graham Barclay/BWP Media/Getty Images
RT | December 5, 2023
Sellafield, regarded as the most hazardous nuclear site in Europe, has developed a leak in a massive radioactive waste silo that has prompted concerns about the facility’s safety measures, as well as potential dangers to the public and the environment, The Guardian has reported.
The two-square-mile (6km sq) plant, located in Cumbria in England’s northwest, is responsible for the storage and decommissioning of nuclear waste from nuclear weapons programs and power generation. It was previously used to generate nuclear power from 1956 to 2003.
However, the decades-old facility, Europe’s largest nuclear site, has a catalog of safety issues, the newspaper said, including asbestos and fire hazards. Perhaps more concerningly, though, are cracks in storage silos which have prompted diplomatic squabbles with affected countries, including the US, Norway and Ireland.
Damage to one silo of toxic radioactive waste has caused a leak of “potentially significant consequences,” The Guardian said on Tuesday, citing official documents seen by the outlet. It adds that the leak, which it says is likely to continue until 2050, could contaminate groundwater should the situation worsen further.
Scientists are attempting to assess the full risks of the leak using “ongoing radiological dose assessments” and statistical modeling, the newspaper added. In June, the UK’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ORR) said in a report that the risk presented by the leak is “as low as reasonably practicable.” However, the nuclear regulator remained concerned by the full impact of the leak and at what rate, if any, it may affect groundwater.
An unnamed expert who sits on a committee that monitors Sellafield and other nuclear sites told The Guardian : “It’s hard to know if transparency is put aside because no one’s brave enough to say ‘we simply don’t know how dangerous this is – other than certainly dangerous.’”
An EU report in 2001 warned that an accident at Sellafield could be more hazardous than that of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, which exposed about five million people in Europe to radiation. Sellafield contains substantially more radioactive material than the Chernobyl facility did at the time.
Reports of Sellafield’s crumbling facade have sparked US concerns about the safety standards at the site, according to diplomatic cables seen by the publication. It has also led to complaints from the governments of both Ireland and Norway – with Oslo worried about the potential of radioactive particles being carried towards its territory by winds across the North Sea.
Health problems brought on by exposure to nuclear radiation depend on the dose but can range from nausea and vomiting to cardiovascular disease and cancer. Extremely high exposure is, in most cases, fatal.
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Invisible harm from ionizing radiation
By Bjorn Hilt | International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War | December 8, 2015
Besides the terrible effects of the burst of light that causes eye damage, the heat that sets everything flammable on fire, the electromagnetic pulse that knocks out all electronic devices, and the blast that produces winds with ten times the force of a hurricane, demolishing everything, the detonation of nuclear weapons also leads to the emission of large amounts of ionizing radiation, which has serious deleterious effects on humans and many other species. Ionizing radiation is, in fact, a lurking danger as we cannot see it, we cannot smell it, we cannot hear it, and we cannot feel it immediately. But we certainly get harmed from it.
To reduce exposure to ionizing radiation and the risk of deleterious effects, we doctors usually warn our patients against having frequent examinations or procedures that involve x-rays. That is because x-rays are ionizing radiation that can harm your body in the same ways as radiation emitted by nuclear detonations. The main difference is that, for medical purposes, the radiation is applied in a controlled way.
The international standard unit for the dose of ionizing radiation is the Sievert. National guidelines in many countries warn against people having a cumulative dose of ionizing radiation exceeding 0.001 Sievert/year. The dose from a full body CT scan is 0.01 – 0.03 Sievert.
The ionizing radiation to which everybody in the vicinity of a nuclear detonation is exposed is so high and immediate that measuring in Sievert does not have much meaning. Such exposures are measured in Gray, where five Gray is reckoned to be lethal to 50% of those exposed (LD50). Even though these types of exposures are not directly comparable, for the common types of ionizing radiation, 1 Gray equals approximately 1.3 Sievert. … continue
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