In 1924, a grateful Congress voted to give a bonus to World War I veterans – $1.25 for each day served overseas, $1.00 for each day served in the States. The catch was that payment would not be made until 1945. However, by 1932 the nation had slipped into the dark days of the Depression and the unemployed veterans wanted their money immediately.
In May of that year, some 15,000 veterans, many unemployed and destitute, descended on Washington, D.C. to demand immediate payment of their bonus. They proclaimed themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force but the public dubbed them the “Bonus Army.” Raising ramshackle camps at various places around the city, they waited.
The veterans made their largest camp at Anacostia Flats across the river from the Capitol. Approximately 10,000 veterans, women and children lived in the shelters built from materials dragged out of a junk pile nearby – old lumber, packing boxes and scrap tin covered with roofs of thatched straw.
Discipline in the camp was good, despite the fears of many city residents who spread unfounded “Red Scare” rumors. Streets were laid out, latrines dug, and formations held daily. Newcomers were required to register and prove they were bonafide veterans who had been honorably discharged. Their leader, Walter Waters, stated, “We’re here for the duration and we’re not going to starve. We’re going to keep ourselves a simon-pure veteran’s organization. If the Bonus is paid it will relieve to a large extent the deplorable economic condition.”
June 17 was described by a local newspaper as “the tensest day in the capital since the war.” The Senate was voting on the bill already passed by the House to immediately give the vets their bonus money. By dusk, 10,000 marchers crowded the Capitol grounds expectantly awaiting the outcome. Walter Waters, leader of the Bonus Expeditionary Force, appeared with bad news. The Senate had defeated the bill by a vote of 62 to 18. The crowd reacted with stunned silence. “Sing America and go back to your billets” he commanded, and they did. A silent “Death March” began in front of the Capitol and lasted until July 17, when Congress adjourned.
A month later, on July 28, Attorney General Mitchell ordered the evacuation of the veterans from all government property, Entrusted with the job, the Washington police met with resistance, shots were fired and two marchers killed. Learning of the shooting at lunch, President Hoover ordered the army to clear out the veterans. Infantry and cavalry supported by six tanks were dispatched with Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur in command. Major Dwight D. Eisenhower served as his liaison with Washington police and Major George Patton led the cavalry.
By 4:45 P.M. the troops were massed on Pennsylvania Ave. below the Capitol. Thousands of Civil Service employees spilled out of work and lined the streets to watch. The veterans, assuming the military display was in their honor, cheered. Suddenly Patton’s troopers turned and charged. “Shame, Shame” the spectators cried. Soldiers with fixed bayonets followed, hurling tear gas into the crowd.
By nightfall the BEF had retreated across the Anacostia River where Hoover ordered MacArthur to stop. Ignoring the command, the general led his infantry to the main camp. By early morning the 10,000 inhabitants were routed and the camp in flames. Two babies died and nearby hospitals overwhelmed with casualties. Eisenhower later wrote, “the whole scene was pitiful. The veterans were ragged, ill-fed, and felt themselves badly abused. To suddenly see the whole encampment going up in flames just added to the pity.”
A 2014 explosion at a remote facility in New Mexico has exposed a cover-up of the mounting problems encountered in modernizing the United States nuclear weapons arsenal. What US officials have called “stockpile stewardship”—the maintenance of an aging supply of nuclear weapons without detonation—has failed its first major test: disposal of the waste from three-quarters of a century of weapons development.
The cause of the 2014 explosion? The inadvertent use of the wrong kind of kitty litter, the supposedly inert material prescribed for packing around the waste in steel storage barrels. While the Department of Energy (DOE) originally reported that the damage was only to one barrel, New Mexico state officials now say that the damage may involve as many as 500 barrels of radioactive waste.
The waste came from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the flagship of the US nuclear weapons complex, where instructions to pack the waste with “inorganic” material was reportedly misread as “in organic” material.
This error, which would be laughably absurd if the consequences weren’t so serious, neatly illustrates the high-tech/low-tech mashup that has made the storage of nuclear waste such a contentious issue over the past seven decades.
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Government regulations currently recognize at least three categories of the nuclear waste stored at various locations across the country: high-level, low-level, and mill tailings. Anti-nuclear activists believe that dividing the waste into multiple categories is actually a bureaucratic tactic designed to fool the public into believing that the government is taking care of this massive and potentially deadly problem.
The waste at WIPP—a byproduct of the US nuclear weapons complex dating back to 1942—is considered “transuranic” (TRU). This term refers to contamination by elements beyond uranium in the periodic table, including the plutonium used in nuclear bombs. This kind of waste is unstable and remains dangerously radioactive for a very long time.
For safety’s sake, TRU waste should be buried without possibility of human contact for more than a quarter million years. The US government has spent tens of billions to achieve that goal of virtually “permanent” storage. First proposed in the 1970s, the WIPP facility was completed in the 1990s and has been operational for about a dozen years.
But WIPP’s complex containment system was breached in last year’s fire and explosion, which spread plutonium for miles around the plant. Exactly what happened 2,000 feet underground to trigger this disaster is not known, because the DOE has not been forthcoming about the details. But the bits and pieces of the story unearthed so far are deeply disturbing.
Goodbye Kitty
WIPP’s radioactive waste is “in danger of explosion,” says Secretary Ryan Flynn of the New Mexico Environmental Department. Flynn warns that the facility poses an “imminent” and “substantial” threat to public health and the environment. In addition to the 369 at-risk barrels the state has identified at WIPP, at least another 100 barrels at a site in Texas are a source of concern. The exact location of these barrels has not been made clear.
The time bomb at WIPP began ticking when a truck fire followed by an unrelated explosion a few days later caused massive damage, according to the DOE report. Waste barrels were packed with commercially available “Swheat” brand organic kitty litter, rather than industry-standard “inorganic kitty litter.” The contents of the waste barrel reacted with the kitty litter and exploded in what US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz called a “thermal event,” which is government-speak for an explosion that generated an unusual amount of heat. The destruction seen on remote cameras sent to the site of the explosion shows flame-scorched drums oozing their deadly contents.
That crisis unfolded when workers heard what was described as a “green burst” and “popping noises” at the facility. A warning siren, the eerie harbinger of a nuclear accident, signaled a radiation release and emergency ventilation fans were switched on to exhaust the contaminated air through special filters—which failed. Thirteen workers underground at the time of the explosion tested positive for “internal radioactive contamination” from radioactive elements released by the explosion; another 21 workers on the surface were also exposed to radiation. Any unplanned exposure to radiation whatsoever is termed “dangerous” under US environmental law.
Because of the accident, it’s possible that WIPP will not be reopened for years and therefore won’t be able to receive waste from sites across the US.
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This has turned a spotlight on the other sites in the US capable of storing nuclear waste.
One is the upstate New York hamlet of West Valley, due south of Buffalo, which houses Cold War-era nuclear waste mixed with waste generated by nuclear power plants. Like WIPP, the West Valley facility has a history of failed containment.
A Wee Bit of History
Back in the 1940s, the top-secret Manhattan Project, the massive industrial operation that built America’s early nuclear arsenal during World War II, left a poisoned legacy beneath New York state’s greenery. That legacy now threatens the vast Great Lakes watershed and the region’s superb agricultural assets.
The 3,300-acre disposal site was the brainchild of former governor Nelson Rockefeller, who planned to make New York State a leader in what was to be the emerging industry of nuclear waste reprocessing.
During the war, weapons-grade uranium for the A-bomb was recovered from raw uranium ore at the still-operating uranium refinery located in the lakeside community of Port Hope, Ontario. The partially processed bomb fuel was shipped to top secret factories near Buffalo for further processing, before being sent on to processing facilities across the United States.
In those days, environmental protections were virtually unheard of. Wartime expediency dictated that waste from the project was often directly dumped into rivers, lakes and streams as well as into the air and into landfills.
The Manhattan Project was followed by more than four decades of Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union. According to former DOE advisor Robert Alvarez, expansion of the American nuclear arsenal during this period left some two million cubic meters of deadly radioactive waste
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims the waste volume is only half Alvarez’s estimate. That would still be enough to fill somewhere between one and two Empire State Buildings, depending on how waste is defined. By anyone’s estimate, the immense quantities of clothing, machinery, and other gear contaminated by plutonium and other cancer-causing radionuclides add up to a multi-billion-dollar disposal headache.
Go West, West Valley Waste
The radioactive waste currently held at West Valley’s waste facility was earmarked for WIPP. Now, activists and New Mexico officials say it may have to wait years longer for removal. According to Diane D’Arrigo of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an anti-nuclear group, if New Mexico’s WIPP stays offline, that means no West Valley waste goes west.
This poses serious environmental problems that earlier generations never foresaw. “The reality of West Valley is that it’s leaking into the Great Lakes,” D’Arrigo told WhoWhatWhy.
Government spokespeople have long maintained West Valley’s waste would never find its way from the site into the Great Lakes. Yet D’Arrigo told WhoWhatWhy, “Radioactivity is migrating into the [nearby] creeks and rivers, and plutonium has been found in Lake Ontario,” leading to mounting “concern that the waste can’t stay there.”
Upshot? Radioactive Musical Chairs
Joanne Hameister of the Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Waste, an advocacy group of local activists and national anti-nuclear organizations, says of the local waste, “We do not suggest moving it until there is a verifiably safe repository.” Don Hancock in New Mexico says that WIPP cannot take on that role. Former New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman supports a 2004 letter to the DOE which asserted that weapons waste from the N-Reactor stored at West Valley was mixed with commercial non-defense waste and therefore the senator wrote: “I ask that you do not dispose the West Valley’s non-defense (waste) at WIPP…”
Radioactive contaminants in “small amounts” have already reached the Great Lakes, according to a negotiator facilitating talks between the state and federal government over West Valley’s future, who spoke with WhoWhatWhy on promise of anonymity. The danger of contamination was reported in an article in The Buffalo News, which called West Valley “arguably Western New York’s most toxic location.”
The wetlands of West Valley have leached a plume containing the radioactive isotope strontium-90 that’s migrating downstream, according to government sponsored studies. DOE has also identified plutonium, strontium and cesium, all dangerous radioactive contaminants, throughout the soil structure at West Valley.
Between five and 50 kilograms of plutonium-239, a deadly carcinogen and potential bomb fuel, has infiltrated the soil underneath the site, says another knowledgeable source who requested anonymity. “Recordkeeping [in earlier decades] was not as precise as today and it’s difficult to reconstruct,” the source says. So no one knows for sure just how much uranium and/or plutonium has seeped from West Valley over the past 60 years. And with the explosion at WIPP, it could be another 60 years before a proper storage location for the waste from this notoriously leaky site is found.
Whether or not one believes the Manhattan Project’s lethal weapons should ever have been used, the old Roman dictum—“to the victors, the spoils”—was never more true. The spoils—the legacy of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—live on, intermingled with the radioactive offspring of “cheap power” in the wilds of West Valley.
“A secure nuclear deterrent,” said DOE Secretary Moniz at the dedication of a new nuclear weapons facility in Kansas City, “is part of a broader effort to transform our Cold War era infrastructure into a 21st century nuclear security enterprise.”
That transformation depends on solving 75 years of mismanagement by sweeping the waste 2,000 feet under the New Mexico desert. But recent events at WIPP cast further doubt on the notion that fallible human agencies can ever safeguard the inevitable byproducts of our nuclear enterprise.
Dramatic statements aside, we may want to ask, quite separately from the case with this Russian law, what could be considered as proper boundaries for engagement by international activists. In other words, the increasing power of NGOs in the post-Cold War period, manifest in their ever mounting number in operation and handling of ever more substantial quantities of money, raises questions about the roles and responsibilities of these new global, non-state actors. In particular, there is the question of developing an ethics of international activism that would facilitate moral assessments of the endeavors by agents operating in countries other than their own.
Elsewhere I have argued in favor of developing an ethics of international activism, which involved a process of formulating a series of constraints on what would constitute morally permissible agency in the context that includes delivering services abroad, directly or indirectly. In elaborating these ethical constraints I relied on the concept of “force multiplier.” The content of this idea and its official applications have explanatory importance in considering the correlation between post-Cold War phenomenal growth in the number of international NGOs and the emergence of the U.S. as the sole, unchallenged super-power ushering in the new “unipolar” world.
The fully developed proposal for an “ethics of international activism” consists of four constraints on morally permissible international activism: (C1) The Professionalism Constraint; (C2); The Integrity Constraint; (C3) The Respect for Sovereignty Constraint; and (C4) The Humility Constraint. As soon as these constraints are understood and correctly analyzed, an overarching principle emerges helping us realize that local activism must enjoy normative primacy (in all three normative spheres: moral, legal, and political) over international activism. At the same time, this gives us an idea of how to conceive of what could constitute legitimate international activism, that is one that respects the primacy of local activism.
Before introducing in a bit greater detail the elements of this ethics of international activism let us define “international activists” as altruists attracted by causes that originate in foreign lands. By calling them “altruists” I do not intend to prejudge the actions of international activists as necessarily morally good; I simply mean to indicate that they are ostensibly acting out of concern for the welfare of others, in this case those others are foreigners. We can make further progress in delineating more exactly who the “international activists” are by making more precise this notion of “causes that originate in foreign lands.” Most frequently those causes are expressed in terms of global protection, and respect for human rights. Thus, Amnesty International defines itself as a “global movement” of people “campaigning for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all,” while Human Rights Watch claims that it “works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the cause of human rights for all.”
We can achieve additional clarity by realizing that governments can also show interest in those same causes expressed in terms of human rights, but we would not count government administrators, operating in their official capacities, among “international activists”. Thus, The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor of the U.S. government, states that “protecting human rights around the world [is] central to U.S. foreign policy,” yet we would not consider State Department officials “international activists”. This is why organizations that want to count as groupings of international activists are quick to assert their independence. Consequently, international activists are not meant to be government officials, ideologues, corporate lobbyists, or missionaries on behalf of any religion; in fact, international activists are supposed to operate independently of any government, ideology, corporation, and religion. In the first instance, this then poses strong constraints on how to construe an ethics of international activism starting with The Professionalism Constraints:
(C1) It is considered morally impermissible for international activists to act on behalf of any government, ideology, corporation, or religion.
It stands to reason that if a person is genuinely motivated by the welfare of others from a country other than her own, then she must not be acting on behalf of her (or any other) government, should not promote any ideology (be it political, economic or otherwise), nor proselytize in favor of a religion. Thus, for example, international activists must not propagate in favor of a regime change in a country where such policy is pursued by, say, the U.S. government; they must not engage in promoting the economic ideology of free market and privatization in, say, a country with the socialist economic system (or any other); or attempt to convert, say, local Muslim population to Christianity.
A capability that, when added to and employed by a combat force, significantly increases the combat potential of that force and thus enhances the probability of successful mission accomplishment.
It is not difficult to document that this military term is widely used by U.S. officials, including a Democratic U.S. President, right wing think tankers, various academics, and even international activists themselves, suggesting that the Western NGOs do and should serve as force multipliers for U.S. armed forces in the variety of theaters of operations where the latter are continuously active. This, however, stands in direct opposition to the definitional component of “international activism” as agency that stems from concern for the welfare of others in foreign countries. The integrity of their actions is threatened if international activists operate in concert with U.S. armed forces or for the sake of U.S. government while ostensibly engaged to address basic needs of less fortunate humans in other countries. Consequently, an explicit moral constraint—The Integrity Constraint—defining the way international activists can satisfy the requirements of minimal integrity of their actions is necessary:
(C2) It is considered morally impermissible for international activists to serve as force multipliers for U.S. (or any other) armed forces or U.S. (or any other) government.
It is perhaps clear that The Integrity Constraint is already implied by The Professionalism Constraint. However, given the aggressive push by the U.S. officials to employ international activists as force multipliers, the impact of the phenomenon of revolving doors between government service and positions within human rights organizations, and the apparent happy acquiescence by many international activists to their newly given (post-Cold War) role, it is important to make The Integrity Constraint explicit.
Once human rights become indistinguishable from official political ideology, once human rights culture is usurped by the dominant powers, and once the argument for human rights is turned into an apologia for the imperial project by the sole super power while this transformation is not protested but supported by international activists in the Western countries, this gives us a clear sense of international activists serving as force multipliers or being “belligerent altruists”. However, the tension captured by this term must be resolved, and this brings us to the next constraint on the morally permissible character of international activism. In order to accomplish this we must remove the belligerent character of the post-Cold War practice by human rights organizations. We must counsel a return to the human rights discourse that respects sovereignty of nation states and permits at most “soft” intervention while opposing all attempts at decriminalizing aggression (through “humanitarian intervention,” R2P, “war on terrorism,” or similar constructs) and making sure that activists are not aiding and abetting aggression under any circumstances. This could be called Respect for Sovereignty Constraint:
(C3) It is considered morally impermissible for international activists to disrespect sovereignty, aid and abet aggression, and engage in anything beyond “soft” intervention.
To advance further with our goal of developing an ethics of international activism that would facilitate moral assessments of their endeavors we may engage in moral phenomenology of international activism. Moral phenomenology is the study of the experiential aspects of moral life. By investigating “what it is like” to undergo mental states that instantiate phenomenal properties when, say, judging that one “must engage” we might be able to formulate further moral constraints that can guide our moral evaluation of what international activists do. The idea is that the construction of constraints on moral permissibility of acting qua international activist can be aided via compelling phenomenological descriptions of specific experiential episodes.
By paying attention to moral phenomenology of activism a picture emerges according to which, for the activist, given the axiological nature of the cause for which she is fighting, all that is required to set her on the right path is that she be sincere and firm in her decision. Are there no obstacles to getting the purpose right, to honing in on what is unquestionably the right goal to make personal sacrifices for? What could be the source of such infallible knowledge or the experience that appears as if one is in the possession of it? These are appropriate questions! For, the activist possesses not only a firm conviction that the cause is right, but also a persuasion that no consideration could possibly put it in question. The position is tantamount to a person who has all the answers in advance, with no need to engage in the search for evidence. It is a position that readily presents answers, while the procedure that supplied them remains forever hidden, unexplored, and insignificant. Does this, therefore, mean that it isn’t, strictly speaking, important what will really be achieved (as in the saying “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”), but that whatever is accomplished is good enough—in the sense of being sufficient and not open to moral assessment other than automatic praise? Put differently, since the activist’s motivation procures the act’s rightness and its goodness, does this mean that there is no possible question to be raised here? Or, that no argumentation of any kind is required or possible in this case? The last remark indicates an ideological character of the situation—we are trading in a context wherein reasons do not function in their customary fashion, or not at all. This appears to make activism akin to ideology.
This discovered link between international activism and disposition to uncritical adoption of ideology indicates that the principal danger international activists face is their vulnerability to co-option by big powers through usurpation of the main (ideological) tenets that define sumum bonum on behalf of which they activate. In light of The Professionalism Constraint international activists are morally required to prevent such co-option and usurpation, but the ideological nature of activism substantially reduces the resistance capacity by activists in this respect. Hence, it should not be surprising that they end up converted into force multipliers with such ease. However, there is a defense available to them that could enhance their integrity and consists in the practice of humility. If activists avoid the attitude of epistemic arrogance with respect to the normative value of the cause they act to support, if they refuse to take their own comfort and conviction regarding the value of their cause as a sure mark of its unquestionable validity, they may have a way of protecting the moral purity of their engagement. This takes us to the final constraint in this exercise, to The Humility Constraint:
(C4) It is considered morally impermissible for international activists to take the strength of their conviction as a sufficient condition for the validity of their endeavor.
In light of the moral constraints, C1-C4, the overwhelmingly negative assessment of contemporary Western international activism is painfully obvious. If so, the question emerges, what must morally speaking be done about it? This question would have to be answered both from the perspective of the activists and those who find themselves on the receiving end of these would-be-good-but-bad-Samaritans.
From the perspective of the Western activists we should advise the following. Just as the old American saying goes that “all politics is local” so all activism should be local. In fact, the overarching duty for any activist-minded Westerner may be to go local, and thus deprive the imperialist project of an important body of force multipliers. On the other hand, if activities and projects by international activists hailing from the West cannot be deemed morally permissible, this should have legal consequences in the rest of the world: all countries outside the Empire, particularly countries targeted by international activists as potential theaters of their operations, ought to criminalize activities by international activists and “human rights organizations” on their territory when not in solidarity or in support of local movements. Paradoxically, the justification for this criminalization is grounded precisely in the real concern for the human rights of the inhabitants from those countries.
A clarification is in order at this point. When I state that all activism should be local this is not meant to preclude legitimate international activism. What I mean is to insist on the primacy of local activism in the sense that all international activism must recognize this primacy, and hence reduce itself to a supporting role. In short, the legitimate international activism engages in solidarity and support of pre-existing local movements. Recognizing this primacy of the local aspect of activism can be seen as the main condition of legitimacy for any international activism.
Gene Sharp was the mastermind of the disastrous regime change techniques which led to drastic fall in living standards and factual failures of states in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Ukraine
The conceptual apparatus and normative framework developed here can assist in diagnosing in a precise way what is wrong (morally speaking) with the Western “strategic non-violent action” and the projection of the so called “soft power”. In short, this design that uses non-violence as a form of warfare adopted by foreign policy makers in the U.S. who orchestrated various “color revolutions,” “Arab spring,” etc. must be deemed morally impermissible as it violates all four constraints developed and defended here and because it feigns respect for the primacy of local activism: while it is the local people that participate in a non-violent movement directed against their government, the movement itself is envisaged, funded, and its “local” leaders are trained by foreign organizations.
Returning now to the Russian law on the undesirable foreign NGOs, rather than quickly dismissing it as an assault on dissent, civil society or anything else we could avoid drama and hysteria by using the conceptual apparatus offered here in order to assess whether the response to international activism is excessive or legitimate, which at the same time gives us a very precise sense of what is rightly “undesirable”. To the extent that foreign NGOs violate the provision of the primacy of the local activism and the four moral constraints, issuing restrictions in the form of legal means may be entirely justified and defensible. In fact, this is a practice that would in all probability be justified the world over, in particular in what I like to call the “once developing world” (before they become victims of imposed neoliberal economic models) where the Western human rights organizations have been operating in total impunity.
Aleksandar Jokic is Professor of Philosophy at Portland State University. This article is based on his essay “Go Local: Morality and International Activism” Ethics & Global Politics Vol. 6, No. 1, 2013; pp. 39-62.
The Russian European dreamers have included Pushkin, Lenin, Gorbachev and, until relatively recently, President Vladimir Putin. They have all seen their country’s future as part of the “European house”. But history and events have not been kind to Russia. Napoleon’s invasion, revolution, two world wars, Stalin’s communism and, most recently, the expansion of NATO, have shattered the dream again and again.
At the end of the Cold War and with agreement on the NATO-Russia Founding Act it seemed that big steps towards that goal were being taken. First, Russia would have a seat at NATO’s table. Later it would join NATO. Later still, the European Union. Some said this would happen over ten years, others 20.
Then, smash, the dream came to an end as President Bill Clinton, bucking America’s academic foreign policy elite, decided to expand NATO’s membership to former members of the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact. George Kennan, America’s elder statesman on Russian issues, commented, “It shows so little understanding of Russian and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then the NATO expanders will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are – but this is just wrong.” He characterized it as the most dangerous foreign policy decision that the US had made since the end of the Second World War.
Defending Clinton and, later, George W. Bush and Barack Obama who continued the NATO expansion policy, their supporters have said that in expanding NATO eastward the West did not break its promise to Moscow not to.
But it did. As ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has said on many occasions there was a promise not to expand NATO “as much as a thumb’s width further to the East.” This is an echo of the US secretary of state, James Baker, when he spoke in St Catherine’s Hall in the Kremlin on February 9th 1990, saying, there would be “no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east”.
Some re-writing of history has gone on. Now Baker has ambiguously denied there was any such agreement.
There has even been an effort to show that Gorbachev himself denies that there was an agreement. And it is true that in the last few years he has said one thing and then another. This is perhaps because he is embarrassed that he never asked for the US/German commitments in writing. He has defended that decision arguing, “The Warsaw Pact still existed at the beginning of 1990. Merely the notion that NATO might expand to include countries in the alliance sounded completely absurd at the time”.
Nevertheless, the evidence that a commitment was made not to expand is strong. Rodrick Braithwaite who was the UK’s ambassador to the Soviet Union and then the new Russia, has written, “After Germany reunited, Václav Havel, the Czech president, called for Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary to enter NATO. The British prime minister and foreign secretary assured Soviet ministers that there was no such intention. NATO’s secretary general added that enlargement would damage relations with the Soviet Union.”
Jack Matlock, who was ambassador to Moscow for both Ronald Reagan and George Bush Senior, has said on a number of occasions that Moscow was given “a clear commitment” not to expand NATO.
Der Spiegel, the German political weekly, has been through the German and British archives. It found a minute of a conversation on February 10, 1990 when foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher spoke with Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze. Genscher said, “For us one thing is certain: NATO will not expand to the east.” Because the conversation revolved mainly around the future of East Germany Genscher added explicitly, “As far as the non-expansion of NATO is concerned this also applies in general.”
In a major speech on January 31 1990 in Tutzing, Genscher said there would not be “an expansion of NATO territory to the east, in other words, closer to the borders of the Soviet Union”.
The British foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, when meeting Genscher on February 6th 1990 to discuss Hungary’s forthcoming free elections, was told that the Soviet Union needed “the certainty that Hungary will not become part of the Western alliance.” The Kremlin, Genscher said, would have to be given assurances to that effect. Hurd agreed.
In April 2009 Gorbachev told the German newspaper Bild, “the West have probably rubbed their hands, rejoicing at having played a trick on the Russians.” It very much looks like it.
Moreover, the US gratuitously abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and decided also to employ missile defences in central Europe, thus undermining the so-called “nuclear balance”.
The West has taken advantage of a weakened Russian when instead it should have been paving the way for Russia to enter the “European House”. History will not smile kindly on the dangerous and counterproductive expansion of NATO.
In their bid to brand Canada a “warrior nation,” Stephen Harper’s Conservatives seek to glorify Canadian military history, regardless of its horrors.
On Saturday Canada’s Minister of Veteran Affairs released a statement to mark “113 years since the end of the South African war.” Erin O’Toole said, “Canada commemorates all those who served in South Africa, contributing to our proud military history.”
But the Boer War was a brutal conflict to strengthen British colonial authority in Africa, ultimately leading to racial apartheid. In the late 1800s the Boers, descendants of Dutch settlers, increasingly found themselves at odds with British interests in southern Africa. Large quantities of gold were found 30 miles south of the Boer capital, Pretoria, in 1886 and the Prime Minister of U.K.’s Cape Colony, Cecil Rhodes, and other British miners wanted to get their hands on more of the loot.
There was also a geostrategic calculation. The Boer gold and diamond fields in the Orange Free State and Transvaal were drawing the economic heart of southern Africa away from the main British colonies on the coast. If this continued London feared that the four southern African colonies might unite, but outside of the British orbit, which threatened its control of an important shipping lane.
Between 1898 and 1902 London launched a vicious war against the Boer. With Cecil Rhodes’ Imperial South African Association promoting anti-Boer sentiment in this country, some 7,400 Canadians fought to strengthen Britain’s position in southern Africa.
The war was devastating for the Boers. As part of a scorched-earth campaign the British-led forces burned their crops and homesteads and poisoned their wells. About 200,000 Boer were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Twenty-eight thousand (mostly children) died of disease, starvation and exposure in these camps.
In Another Kind of Justice: Canadian Military Law from Confederation to Somalia, Chris Madsen points out that, “Canadian troops became intimately involved in the nastier aspects of the South African war.” Whole columns of troops participated in search, expel and burn missions. Looting was common. One Canadian soldier wrote home, “as fast as we come up the country… we loot the farms.” Another wrote, “I tell you there is some fun in it. We ride up to a house and commandeer anything you set your eyes on. We are living pretty well now.” There are also numerous documented instances of Canadian troops raping and killing innocent civilians.
As with the Boer, the war was devastating for many Africans. Over 100,000 Blacks were held in concentration camps but the British failed to keep a tally of their deaths so it’s not known how many died of disease or starvation. Some estimate that as many as 20,000 Africans were worked to death in camps during the war.
Unlike the Boer, the plight of black South Africans didn’t improve much after the war. In Painting the Map Red: Canada and the South African War, 1899-1902, Carman Miller notes, “Although imperialists had made much of the Boer maltreatment of the Blacks, the British did little after the war to remedy their injustices.” In fact, the war reinforced white/British dominance over the region’s Indigenous population.
The peace agreement with the Boer included a guarantee that Africans would not be granted the right to vote before the two defeated republics gained independence. In The History of Britain in Africa, John Charles Hatch explains: “By the time that self-government was restored in 1906 and 1907, they [the Boer] were able to reestablish the racial foundations of their states on the traditional principle of ‘No equality in church or state.'” Blacks and mixed-race people were excluded from voting in the post-war elections and would not gain full civil rights for nine decades.
For Harper’s Conservatives the details of the Boer War are barely relevant. What matters is that Canadians traveled to a distant land to do battle beside a great empire. That’s the “warrior nation” they seek to create.
The following is an interview with Aleksander Vladimirovich Kolesnik, Deputy of the Parliament of Novorossiya. The interview was conducted by New Cold War.org on April 16, 2015 in the city of Donetsk.
How did you become involved in the movement for Novorossiya?
Aleksander Vladimirovich Kolesnik: I could not remain indifferent when during the winter of 2013-2014, the Maidan events were taking place and I saw how my former colleagues in the Department of Interior (police) where I once served were standing at Maidan Square, protecting the Ukrainian state and law and order but were being bullied and hurt by the crowd and even killed. They could only respond with their rubber clubs.
I served in Odessa way back during military conscription, and then I served in the police in Donetsk and Sumy. [1]
I did not share the so-called values that Maidan proclaimed. It was an aggressive movement of fascist youngsters, proclaiming a Nazi ideology at the state level. Such slogans as “Ukraine is for Ukrainians”, “Glory to the nation – death for enemies” and so on I cannot view as anything but a Nazi ideology.
Was it true, the slogans we heard about on Maidan Square such as “Hang the Moskals [Russians] on a branch”?
Of course. But you know, in a way, this was secondary to shaping my views. I was expecting this moment for 24 years. I assumed that sooner or later this would happen, because during the 24 years of Ukraine’s existence as an independent country [since 1991], there was a gradual but steady rise of Ukrainian nationalism, specifically at the state level. This was happening right before my eyes, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 when Ukraine separated.
Before, we could travel freely from Donetsk region [in Ukraine] to Rostov region [in Russia]. There were no border control posts. Then, customs and border posts and procedures began appearing. Inter-urban electric trains were abolished. Everything happened right before my eyes. It all happened gradually, but was aimed at reducing relations with Russia.
It turned into ridiculous measures, such as digging trenches along the border. Right now, Ukraine is building a wall.
During the Maidan events, it was in January [2014], I realized that I couldn’t just stand by. I joined a political party (organization), the Russian Bloc. It already had an active involvement in Crimea. There were units here which I joined, specifically the unit in Makiivka in Donetsk [an industrial city located 25 km from Donetsk city].
Was the Russian Bloc a party?
It was initially a party. At the call of the party leadership, we went to a rally in central Donetsk on March 1. Other pro-Russian organizations also took part in this rally. When I saw the masses of people, I realized that my compatriots share the same views with me.
According to police estimates, 60,000 of my compatriots took part in the March 1 rally, on Lenin Square. Not only was the central square full, so too were the adjacent streets. After this, I became actively involved in this process. As a representative of the Russian Bloc, I joined the Yugo-Vostok (South-East) Movement in mid-April, which was led by Oleg Tsarev. Other protesting organizations joined it as well, such as Oplot, Russkiy Vostok (Russian East), Berkut, and others. Together we began undertaking joint activities.
We actively organized rallies. We were the first to hold a motor rally which delivered humanitarian aid to Slavyansk. If you recall, by the end of April [2015], the city was blocked off by the National Guard of Ukraine. We loaded cars with humanitarian aid–there were approximately 100 cars provided voluntarily–we put up flags and we headed straight to the National Guard’s blockade posts.
It was right after Easter. Our women brought Easter bread along with us. When the soldiers of the National Guard stopped us, the women wished them a Happy Easter, gave them some Easter bread and asked if we could pass through. No one dared to refuse or shoot. This caused some confusion, but they let us go through.
After that, we took part in preparations for holding the referendums in Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts (regions). They were still oblasts of Ukraine at that time. The people’s republics had already been proclaimed, but we still needed to hold referendums.
After the referendums were held [May 11], when Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics were formed, an agreement was achieved by their leaders. The parliaments of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics authorized their representatives to create the parliament of Novorossiya.
We approved a constitutional act which proclaimed Novorossiya a confederal state. We adopted a battle flag of Novorossiya, which then became an insignia of the armed forces of Novorossiya.
When was the Novorossiya act adopted?
In July, I don’t quite remember the exact date.
Fifteen candidates from each republic were nominated, from among the deputies of the parliaments of two republics, and 15 representatives of public organizations from each republic were approved.
At the beginning of September, in deference to the first ceasefire agreement signed at Minsk [on Sept. 5], the Parliament of Novorossiya temporarily suspended its legislative work. The reason for this was the fact that, according to the Minsk agreement, an agreement with Ukrainian authorities on the status of the so-called districts of Donetsk and Lugansk was supposed to be reached. Since this status has not yet been determined, the status of the Parliament of Novorossiya is not determined either.
So we then became actively involved in humanitarian missions. And we facilitated measures to address the concerns of citizens in our respective districts. Deputies of the Novorossiya Parliament were assigned to districts. People would come with their problems and needs, which we tried to solve and fulfill.
This continues following the Minsk-2 agreement [Feb. 12, 2015]?
As I already mentioned, yes. Because of these Minsk agreements–where Novorossiya is not considered at all, the term Novorossiya is not even used–we cannot proceed with our work because it may be regarded as a violation of the agreements.
It is mainly because of the Minsk agreements that there are some structural difficulties. Everything has to be built from the bottom. We have first to create the mechanism of the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics. We could have adopted any kind of laws, but they would have been useless without an executive power system in place
What are your expectations of the Minsk 2 agreement?
We are expecting that as a result of the Minsk agreement there will finally be some sort of recognition of Lugansk and Donetsk republics. If the Ukrainian side wants the agreement to function, it will have to recognize the Republics. If not, the agreement has no future.
What about the borders of Donetsk and Lugansk? Right now, Ukraine holds half of their historic territory.
It is difficult to say. It all depends on how the situation will further evolve.
Personally, I don’t think there will be a lasting truce. The same thing happened during the first Minsk agreements–the Ukrainian authorities and army waited some time, conducted reconnaissance, brought more troops, and then began a new offensive.
Unfortunately, everyone here believes that war is inevitable. No ceasefire will lead to peace until the main contradictions causing the conflict in the first place are resolved.
What is meant by ‘Novorossiya’. Is this the territories of Lugansk and Donetsk regions alone?
Of course not. Historically, Novorossiya is the territory from Odessa to Kharkiv, the south and east of Ukraine.
I am not sure whether you know this or not, but the city of Dnepropetrovsk, which prior to the Revolution of 1917 was called Ekaterinoslav, was for some period of time called Novorossiysk.
So the political objective is to have Novorossiya include these historical borders?
That is our goal. Fighting on the side of the military forces of the Lugansk and Donest Republics are very many people from Odessa, Kherson, Zaporozhye, Kharkiv and Dnepropetrovsk.
Do you think people in these regions want to join Novorossiya?
Of course. You saw during the Russian Spring last year that people held mass demonstrations involving tens of thousands of people. These protests were suppressed very violently. One example was what happened at the Odessa Trade Union House on May 2. [Dozens of anti-Maidan and pro-autonomy protesters were killed that day in an arson attack by extremist forces acting in the name of the government which came to power in Kyiv on Feb. 21, 2014.]
What have been the results of the actions of the Kyiv government on the people in southeastern Ukraine?
The actions of Ukrainian authorities were mainly aggressive. There were no attempts to negotiate. As a result of this aggression, the people living in Lugansk and Donetsk republics became even more united. More and more people joined our army.
The actions of the government have had a very strong influence on events. After Ukrainian troops began shelling peaceful cities—housing and infrastructure, brutal, senseless shelling–even those people that shared pro-Ukrainian moods changed their views.
Did that change happen in Odessa and Kharkiv as well?
Of course. Our example inspired them. We communicated with a lot of protesting organizations in these cities. Unfortunately, whenever they tried to show any activity, they were immediately arrested by the Security Service of Ukraine.
My personal opinion is that the repressive methods are a dead end for Ukraine. Even here in the southeast, when everything was just beginning, they tried frightening the people with repression and by arresting people. But this didn’t help them in any way.
Moreover, I am convinced that the end of the Kyiv regime will come about by the actions of Ukrainians themselves – the people who inhabit the territory of so-called Malorossiya [historically, ‘Little Russia’]—because, I think, we think that these people are being deceived. No lie can last for a long time.
What would a republic of Novorossiya look like?
I believe, as do many people living here, that most importantly there should be support of close economic, cultural and political ties with Russia. Not just friendly relations. Customs borders should be eliminated. Customs controls at the actual border should serve only to facilitate the free movement of people, capital and goods.
What form, exactly, this will take I don’t know. Maybe Novorossiya will become a part of the Russian federation. Maybe it will join the Eurasian Economic Union, or join the EEU with the rest of Ukraine. The exact form is not the most important thing.
Every third citizen of the Russian Federation is Ukrainian by origin. Citizens of Ukraine have moved to Russia in big numbers in order to work, specifically to the North and Far East where gas and oil are extracted and mined. Why should we separate ourselves by borders with Russia when, instead, we can cooperate economically—buying natural gas at domestic Russian prices, for example? It is silly to turn our backs on this.
Yes, federation with Ukraine is possible, but only on the conditions that the Kyiv authorities be held responsible for their crimes, that a new government come to power and, accordingly, the politics with regards to Russia will change.
What about relations with other countries?
Mostly, we communicate only with the Russian Federation when it comes to external contacts.
There have been attempts to help us made by people from Turkey and Germany. They tried sending us humanitarian aid, but there were too many difficulties with such things as crossing borders, going through customs, and getting necessary documentation done.
Would social and economic policy in Novorossiya be different from that of Ukraine?
Yes, of course it will differ. Ukraine was a totally oligarchic state. Most of the members of Parliament there–not all, but many–were funded and sponsored by oligarchs. We have nothing against businessmen or private initiative. We have nothing against even oligarchs, but they should serve interests of the state.
Notes:
[1] Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych abolished compulsory military conscription in 2013. It was reintroduced in April 2014 as part of the ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ launched that month by the governing regime that came to power in Kyiv two months earlier.
The British government has spent £16 million storing and maintaining its unused nuclear submarines over the past five years, figures suggest.
The 19 laid-up submarines have been stored in Fife, Scotland, and Devonport, England since 1980 and 1994, respectively.
Figures obtained by the BBC in a Freedom of Information request found that of the 12 submarines at Davenport, eight were still fuelled and four were sitting without fuel. In Rosyth, Fife, all seven submarines are still fueled.
The cost of keeping them safe involves preventing any of the nuclear substances on board being released into the atmosphere.
Campaigners have called the cost a “huge embarrassment,” while the Ministry of Defense (MoD) said it takes its duties to manage the submarines “very seriously.”
The MoD revealed in documents that the “cost to the taxpayer of maintaining them safely is rising significantly as they age and as more submarines leave service,” adding that full dismantling of the subs could not take place until a site was found for the nuclear reactors.
Ian Avent, of Plymouth based campaign group Community Awareness Nuclear Storage and Radiation, told the BBC: “The big problem is that eight submarines on Devonport still have their fuel on board and that is potential for [a] disaster.
“The submarines are a huge embarrassment for the MoD.
“They need to make a decision soon on where they are going take the waste fuel, so dismantling can start.”
Jane Tallents, an anti-nuclear campaigner and adviser on the MoD’s submarine dismantling project, said: “The MoD dragged its feet after the first submarine was laid up but 12 years ago they decided to do something.
“It is a complicated project and there have been points where they have stalled and gone slowly but they have kept moving with it.”
The MoD said the submarines “undergo regular maintenance to keep them in a safe condition.”
John Large, an engineering consultant, said the “lack of decision and decisive management” was halting the decommissioning process.
“It also exposes the public, and the naval base workforce, to continuing radiological risk arising from untoward accident or incident,” he said.
An MoD spokesperson said: “As a responsible nuclear operator, the MoD takes its duty to manage the disposal of submarines very seriously.
“All activity is undertaken in a safe, secure, cost-effective and environmentally sound manner.”
What is a leftist? This question is always an important one but it looms especially large as another presidential election approaches in 2016. The confusion about this issue is caused by opportunism, wishful thinking, and by the need to feel comfortable within America’s narrative of dubious distinction.
In political discussions we often hear about disputes among those who claim to be on the left. Some may favor intervention in Syria or Ukraine or somewhere else targeted by the United States. Should leftists support Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton? Should leftists vote for Democrats who “disappoint” them?
Worthwhile debate can be separated from nonsensical chit-chat with a few hard questions. Does a policy in dispute promote neo-liberal schemes, increase mass incarceration, make war, steal other nations’ resources, enrich the already wealthy, impoverish the already poor or make one race dominant over others? If the answer is ever yes, then the issue in question is one that leftists can’t support and the people who promote these things can’t be supported either.
Why then do millions of people who think of themselves as progressives or left wing end up giving money, time and votes to people and organizations who continually flunk the litmus test? Some fear the status of “spoiler” even as the Democrats do less and less for their constituents. Some are opportunists who want to get a piece of the action. Others engage in fantasy and live in hope that the scoundrels will suddenly become ethical.
There is another very dangerous dynamic at work. Many people don’t want to find themselves outside of the popular narratives about America. They want to be included in the myth of a good and great country. They pin their hopes on someone they find acceptable standing atop a heap that is inherently corrupt.
Most people who call themselves progressives or who protested the war in Iraq didn’t really want fundamental change. They don’t have the stomach to challenge the assumptions upon which American aggressions are based. That is why they so quickly forgot their supposedly antiwar sentiments and clung so fiercely to Barack Obama. They want to wrap themselves in the flag or in being on a winning team but that means being a part of America’s horrendous tale of conquest, race based terrorism and numerous other oppressions.
The siren song of American superiority is strong. How often did antiwar activists or other progressives claim that a particular atrocity or outrageous act was “un-American.” Of course enslavement and genocide were very American so the claim always rang hollow, but the urge to want to be the good, patriotic American is still there and very, very strong.
Exceptionalism is a concept that is rarely questioned. Manifest Destiny and the violence that comes with it are still considered not just acceptable but noble and benevolent. That explains why Obama’s wars are accepted by the same people who protested against Bush.
It can be difficult to remain in opposition to the American state. It requires an ability to oppose not just war, or economic policy, but a desire for inclusion in a rotten system. The yearning for freedom expressed in the liberation movements was often little more than a yearning to be accepted or to have a seat at the table.
The black misleadership class is a perfect example of this phenomenon. They may have protested fifty years ago but they are now happy and comfortable getting big pay checks, recognition and occasional access to powerful people. The concerns of people behind bars in the American gulag or even poor struggling workers rarely cross their minds. That lack of concern is caused by political expediency for some and rank cynicism by others.
How many people who start out opposing the system really want to get rid of it and how many just want to be a part of it? There is always someone advising the resister to be “reasonable,” “pragmatic” or “realistic” and cling to the Democrats no matter what they do.
Leftists should want freedom from racism, freedom from predatory capitalism and freedom from imperialism. They should want that for themselves and for people all over the world. Anyone who gives the United States government a pass for intervening anywhere in the world is no leftist. It doesn’t matter if the intended target is a “dictator” or “tyrant” or “cruel to his own people.” These are weasel words used to promote violence and to hide inconvenient truths about America’s role in creating its own tyrannies.
The opportunists and even some sincere people will advise supporting the Democratic Party in the November 2016 election. The Republicans’ barely concealed racism and blatant misogyny will be held up as boogie men to frighten anyone who begins to think independently. Yet the Democrats can’t even provide the low hanging fruit of their past.
In 2009 and 2010 the Democrats controlled the White House and both Houses of Congress. If they were interested in raising the minimum wage they had a golden opportunity to do so. That type of treachery must be kept in mind when the “I’m disappointed in the Democrats but still support them” arguments are made.
Self-determination should be the question upper most in every mind. Who will stand independently when mealy mouthed liberals advise standing pat with failure? Who will speak up for Americans who want to free themselves from police violence, gentrification, job loss and surveillance? Who will speak up for people around the world who are subjected to drone strikes, occupations and interventions?
The people who are complicit or even just silent will have exposed themselves. When they counsel accommodation and still claim to be on the left they must be called out as liars. There should be little confusion about what it means to be a leftist.
“For in lapse of time men are constrained to see things they would not willingly suffer.” [1]
Canada’s recent international role includes being a serial participant in US-NATO wars of aggression – which at Nuremberg was deemed the greatest crime. Organized mass murder of people and the destruction of their infrastructure, not as an act of self defense; blowing babies to bloody bits, reducing homes to rubble, this is the stuff of ‘wars of aggression’.
The typical contemporary template for perpetrating wars of aggression is to demonize the victims, and to justify, even sanctify, the perpetrator. And it is not unknown in the modern era, progress being what it is, to explain to the victims that it was a beneficent act to conquer them, occupy them, plunder them, murder them, wound them, destroy their country.
The aggressor usually has a large military advantage, and in the modern context, destroying the designated victim may feature banal distant mechanical and electronic acts, push a button, turn a dial, the perpetrators remote and safe.
That many Canadians do not understand, or are in denial about, Canada’s crimes is testimony to the effectiveness of modern mass media’s ‘public perception management’. Pretty hard for busy people, including many people who work in the media and academia and the military and in politics, to find their way to the real, subjected as they are to a dizzying disinformation maze: a litany of lies and distortions and distractions called ‘news’, either presented with accomplished feigned sincerity, or in ignorance with real sincerity. It all gets very confusing, even for the most gifted manipulators. Rigorous censorship is practiced under the rubric of a free press, and endless trivia contaminate just about everyone. [2]
A diabolical aspect of the formal disinformation system is the provision of a wide range of pretend-to-be-honest ‘alternative’ media outlets. [3]
Then add to the disinformation system the seemingly systematic corruption of high profile regulatory agencies [4] and corporate- linked science, and a vast number of NGO’s that pretend to be serving some ideal, and the entire global public is enveloped in a rather overwhelmingly bewildering complex of disinformation. Our collective capacity for coherent policy, for intelligent cohesive societal decision, is just about nil. And this all comes just at the moment in human history – the nuclear age – when the best we have to offer would be our only chance of success.
But back to our story: On the other hand, some do understand that Canada has gone criminally militaristic. And most of those remain silent. Some are governed by fear, some don’t care, some embrace evil; some who do speak concoct bizarre justifications.
But Canada cannot escape ‘karmic justice’ for its international crimes. Shameful militarism elsewhere has inevitable insidious impact at home: You can’t endorse or commit mass murder of innocents based on lies without being a monster, or becoming one.
And there are other consequences: Fully forthright and knowledgeable discourse pertaining to international and national issues is now just about absent from Canadian mass media or politics: commentary offered either wallows in ignorance or is mere pretense, disingenuous theater. Real unfettered discourse is the forbidden; critical truths are silenced, lies and self-censorship are conjoined perniciously and normalized; integrity is marginalized. This is a recipe for the triumph of the worst elements, the empowerment of social pathology, ensuring societal dysfunction leading to catastrophe.
But this is not the way it had to go, for Canada.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, a different outcome had seemed quite possible: Canada previously had earned some honour as occasional peacemaker on a planet plagued by conflict; in international affairs, Canada was perceived as capable of periodic common sense and decency and fairmindedness, and sometimes, on a really good day, even verging on virtuous.
Within Canada, some decades ago, ‘The Just Society’ was proffered , without irony, as an honourable national ambition. The future seemed to offer unprecedented beneficial opportunity at home, and prospect was that Canada would be able to provide a significant helping hand abroad. After all, was there not modernity’s burgeoning repertoire of amazing new technology which could be allied to Canada’s wealth of natural resources, and its wealth of human decency, intelligence and creativity, to build a country of great accomplishment, and help to build a better world?
Consistent with such musing, not long ago, a pleasing self-identity – seriously fanciful, yes, but not entirely so – could be held by many Canadians: it went something like this: Canada was a special, safe, bountiful democracy endowed with a peace-loving, respectable conglomeration of peoples; and furthermore, Canada was a land of boundless opportunity, proceeding relentlessly from good to better. And many Canadians took satisfaction from the fact that Canada displayed – nothing extreme or eccentric mind you – something of an independent streak.
One important example of this independent streak was the establishment of the Bank of Canada in 1938 as a public institution – a national bank as public utility. The Bank of Canada was mandated to provide large amounts of interest free funds to Canadian governments, to be used for worthy public projects and infrastructure. This was done with great success until 1974. [5] [6] There is now, through a court case, an attempt being made to restore that previous beneficent function. The government of Canada is opposing it, and the media is censoring news of it. [7]
Another example of Canada’s independent streak is the establishment half a century ago of a universal health care system, which warts and all has been a tremendous success, and much different than the American for profit health services approach.
But back to the less and less pleasant story: An independent streak notwithstanding, there are the insistent facts and funnels of history and circumstance: For example, Canada had centuries ago been conquered by Britain, and somehow the head of the ‘royal’ aberration-prone bloodline of England retains sovereign powers of sorts, over Canadians. A pretend-democracy has been the result. [8] New citizens and those who work for governments in Canada are asked to swear allegiance to the British Monarch, not to be mistaken for the dwindling lovely orange butterfly that in great numbers graced Canada long before the British got here.
Another pertinent Canadian ‘fact of life’: Canada stretches across an entire continent right beside the United States, and is continually inundated by its ‘cultural’ emissions.
But for all that, there really was, for much of its history, an independent streak, and many Canadians, until recently, could take some satisfaction in the work in progress: a home-brewed , distinctive, modestly progressive, more or less pragmatic, socio-political experiment with great potential. Both in the eyes of Canadians and much of the planet. So it was that Canadians could, again until recently, travel the world with the Canadian flag pinned on, and expect to receive signs of approval. Americans caught on and it was not unknown for desperate reviled Americans to attempt to unsully themselves in foreign lands with a conspicuous maple leaf.
Sometimes, when occasion seemed to require it, – especially if the British were in a tough spot – Canada would majorly go to war, with reluctant French Canadian participation.
But Canada had over the generations displayed at least a somewhat judicious approach when it came to participating in wars.
Canada for example refused to get involved in Britain’s Suez conflict in the 1950s. Former Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson, Nobel Peace Prize winner at a time when that prize had less putrid connotation, as in say Kissinger and Obama, was famously verbally and physically abused by US President Lyndon Johnson for mildly chiding US policy in Indochina. Canadians made money from the war, but did not directly participate in the American carnage upon and mass murder of the Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians, during the so-called War in Vietnam. [9]
Prime Minister Jean Chretien signaled a residual Canadian reluctance to go to war by refusing to involve Canada militarily in the 2003 version of American (justified by lies) atrocities against Iraq. [10]
But tragically, as the twentieth century neared its end, and a new century began, Canada did not have what it takes to resist a deepening involvement on the hell-bent slippery slope of the geo-political agendas and machinations of those who control the United States.
And so it was that Canada did not remain marginally independent, and marginally judicious, and marginally good and a bit of an honest broker, and stay out of direct participation in clearly illegal and immoral wars. The NATO war of aggression, facilitated and justified by lies, [11] on Yugoslavia in 1999, included Canada’s direct participation. In 2001, based on the false flag lie of 9/11 2001, [12] Canada signed on to the falsehood-enabled ‘War on Terror’ aka Wars of Terror, and went to war in Afghanistan. [13]
Canada in 2004 took sordid part in the overthrow of the government of Haiti. And in 2011, Canada within NATO participated in mass murder and the destruction of the most successful country in Africa, Libya, again on the basis of brazen lies.[14]
The Canadian military, camouflaged by lies, has recently been killing people in the middle East, in a veiled attack on Syria under the guise of attacking the Western Powers-That-Be-concocted pathology that is ISIS. [15]
And now, Canadian people and weapons and lies are employed to support the war mongering leadership of Ukraine, a demented offspring of an American-engineered coup over the Ukrainian democracy in 2014. [16] And this offspring, true to its Nazi and fascism-tinged ideology and its murderous origins, launched a pitiless war of aggression on its own people. [17]
Among the reasons for Canada’s descent into international war criminality is Canadian continued participation in the so-called defense alliance NATO, long after NATO lost its nominal reason for being. NATO had long been infected by the hidden perversity of Gladio [18] before its more recent war criminality.
The process by which Canada lost its way also includes an economic ‘paradigm shift’ short decades ago. Canada’s Powers-That-Be, spouting lies, foisted upon reluctant Canadians greatly increased economic integration with the United States: So-called free trade, which was lauded by its prominent advocates as the certain route to national prosperity and jobs aplenty; not the basket case that is the current North American economy. [19]
This new policy trumped traditional wariness of, or strong repudiation of, significantly increased entanglement with the United States. Generations of Canadian politicians of all varieties had understood that the price of more formal economic union with the United States was less sovereignty and less independence.
Canada’s increased economic integration with the United States made Canada more involved with the attempt by those who dominate the US to achieve unrivaled global political, military and economic domination, a global empire: necessary to this massive criminal ambition, a hi-tech version of militarized police state/fascism has been put into place within the United States [20]; and abroad, the global domination project has made the US prolific in wars and war crimes, death squads, torture, destruction, subversion, and boundless cruelty.
Canada’s recent embrace of the demonic has culminated today in some utterly irresponsible national political and mass media behaviour: Currently Canada is simultaneously helping to raise the risk of a major war, including the risk of global nuclear war, by arming the Ukrainian crazies, while lying about Russia’s involvement, [21] and threatening Russia.
Canada’s devolution from peacekeeper to war monger happened while many Canadians dozed in the fading glow of the previously described self-congratulatory national image. But there were many signposts – some subtle, some glaring – that indicated ongoing cultural and societal deterioration [22]. But central to the deterioration was the hobbling of probing, free, full, unfettered public discourse, and the ever increasing power of dishonesty, in all its manifestations, throughout the culture.
And then there is Fukushima: Canadian politics and mass media are ignoring the ongoing global nuclear mega-catastrophe of Fukushima, ignoring the death of much of the life of the northern Pacific Ocean adjoining Canada, censoring news of it, lying about it, censoring news of greatly elevated levels of radioactivity across Canada and around the planet: Second hand tobacco smoke incurs much greater outrage. That’s about as crazy and stupid as it gets. [23]
Canadians are being kept in the dark regarding ways in which individuals and their families can at least mitigate the effects of increased exposures to radioactivity. [24] But that doesn’t address the big problem itself.
What must be done, pertaining to Fukushima, and nuclear energy and weapons, is the most widely and deeply searching honesty-anchored brain-storming effort that humanity can muster, at this very late date. And that effort must enlist and heed practical people of common sense and broad experience, for it is precisely the naivete and tunnel vision of the specialists and experts – the professionals – who got us into this, and never got us out. Experts are necessary; but very far from sufficient.
Nuclear power was born in iniquity, and began its global-reach poisoning enveloped in secrecy and lies. Nuclear power plants having proliferated, something like a Fukushima was inevitable, meaning slow motion ecocide. Thousands of nuclear weapons have long been poised to achieve a near instantaneous hell on earth. The nuclear age is madness merged with dishonesty and secrecy and a terminal technology. [25]
So is it to be with Sophocles, via Oedipus Rex: “… sorrows beyond all telling, sickness rife in our ranks, outstripping human invention of remedy, blight on barren earth, and barren agonies of birth, life after life from the wild-fire winging swiftly into the night.” [26]
Will a preponderance of people choose to sleep with eyes open or party towards the grave, or choose the fleeting comfort of make believe?
Or will a growing number begin to examine the bitter truth to be found in the mirror and in the world, and very late now do what they can to honour and protect earth’s wonders?
In any case, whatever is to be Canada’s or the planet’s fate, it will neither disturb not delight those previously vibrant, happy, bright-eyed Libyan children blown to bits by Canada in 2011; in Canada they did not even merit mention, let alone contrition, or mourning.
Notes:
Solon, via Herodotus, Clio 1, 32, via Baehr, translated by Henry Carey, M.A.
George Orwell aptly described the missing information as the biggest lie of all. See Operation Mockingbird regarding CIA’s long-ago-initiated attempt at controlling global communications. Senator Church’s hearings in the US in 1975 were quite revelatory. The CIA’s depredations are now conjoined to extremely concentrated ownership of mass media, with Zionism disproportionately influential, and the co-opting of much so-called alternative media. Recently, a prominent German Journalist has confessed to being a tool of CIA, along with just about all his colleagues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adz-cLDZGBU
Here the events of 9/11 were illuminating, as there was an obvious shortage of 9/11 truth telling in many prominent so-called alternative and dissident sources of news and analysis. For every forthright prominent voice on 9/11, like Paul Craig Roberts, there was a gaggle of deceivers posturing as truth-tellers.
For example, a little known book by Shiv Chopra, PhD, recounts his career at Health Canada: It is titled Corrupt to the Core. Is there any prominent regulatory agency on the planet that would not qualify for the same title?
Robust Canadian participation in WW2, the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Trans Canada Highway were financially facilitated by the Bank of Canada’s previous role. It should be noted that the potential productive capacity of Canadians, now, compared to 1945, is immeasurably greater. Yet back then Canada could carry out visionary huge projects, while today it wallows in financial and infrastructural – and visionary – insufficiency. After 1974, when the Bank of Canada’s interest free money and credit creation function was discontinued, the country quickly accumulated huge debts, and its ability to finance public projects was severely hampered. By 1974, after its first century, when the Bank of Canada became an appendage of the global private banking cartel, Canada had accumulated about 18 billion dollars of national debt; by 1991-92, on a national debt grown to 423 billion, the interest alone was 41 billion dollars. For a revealing chart see: https://ccc4mr.wordpress.com/2015/02/14/obviously-something-went-terribly-wrong-after-1974/ Also, after 1974, in addition to increased national financial difficulty, provincial and municipal governments also were greatly disadvantaged.
Pertinent words of wisdom from Mackenzie King, Canada’s 10th Prime Minister, 1938. “Once a nation parts with control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes that nation’s laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.”
In 2011 Canadians William Krehm and Ann Emmett along with the organization COMER (Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform) initiated a court case intending to restore the Bank of Canada to its previous role. Lawyer Rocco Galati represented them in court. The case’s first foray into the courts met with initial disappointment. In the words of Galati the court had argued that “the court had jurisdiction to hear the case, that my client had standing, that they had the right to bring the case forward, that there was public interest and individual interest standing.” But the claim was defeated in effect because the court felt it was outside its competence to decide. This initial court decision was described by Galati as “completely lacking in logic and in the application of the law.” But the case proceeded: In 2013 Galati appealed the case, and now in early 2015 the case found some success in Federal court, when three judges ruled that the case against the Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Finance Minister of Canada can proceed. News of the COMER lawsuit is hard to find. Galati: “I have a firm basis to believe that the Government has requested or ordered the mainstream media not to cover this case.” Galati added that the case is more important than all other cases he’s been involved in, and those had received “wall to wall” coverage by the press. He predicted the case will end in the Supreme Court.
The term ‘democracy’ refers to that political system which dignifies the citizens as a whole with sovereignty, a rare achievement indeed. Monarchy is something else entirely, and previously common. At the federal level in Canada, much potential power has been concentrated in the Prime Minister, or whoever influences or controls that person. The PM is not elected directly as such, but is merely the boss of the largest political party, which may have the support of a minority of citizens.
In Vietnam the Americans perfected ‘saving villages’ by obliterating everything in them, people, animals, houses, with chemical warfare thrown in for good measure; everything was saved from existing. Years later, with Canada’s support, ‘protection reaction strikes’ and ‘humanitarian interventions’ became fashionable, sometimes achieving similar results.
Curiously, both current Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and brief Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff supported the American 2003 version of their many atrocities against Iraq.
Michael Parenti’s To Kill a Nation is a succinct and powerful primer on the machinations and lies behind the deliberate destruction of Yugoslavia. For a revealing investigation of the pernicious mass media lying and censorship collusion in enabling war against Yugoslavia, see Peter Brock’s Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting (with the subtitle) Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia. Incidentally, since those who are involved in planning wars of aggression are deemed war criminals, and since the egregious dishonesty and manipulation skills of mass media are indispensable to creating public passive acceptance of or outright support for wars of aggression, justice would see media managers severely dealt with. For full fledged hypocrisy, involving Canada and the other ‘winners’ over Yugoslavia: the establishment of the International Criminal Court which put victims of aggression ont trial, and gave the United States a free pass for every international perversity. See for example John Laughland’s book Travesty,. The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice.
Everything about the official narrative on 9/11 is a lie. Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth offer much material on the demolition of the twin towers, and anyone in their right mind who finds out about World Trade Center Building #7′s 47 story free fall collapse later in the afternoon on September 11th, 2001, despite the 9/11 official commission’s omission of its occurrence, can hardly not raise an eyebrow…. The film ZERO is one of many exposes that offer a wake up regarding 9/11 to any remaining naive or sleepy or in denial folk. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1297858/
The Canadian troops sent to Afghanistan were told their ‘mission’ was about building bridges and schools and and human rights and letting girls go to school, and besides, Osama bin Ladin was hiding in some cave there, and so on. They were not told that the attack on Afghanistan was about controlling heroin flows and its vast profits, potential oil and gas pipelines, setting up military bases, geo-poliical agendas relating to Iran, Russia and China, getting secure access to rare earth minerals, or pouring profits into the Military Industrial Complex, for starters.
For heart rending and honest information about Libya and its the destruction see http://libyanwarthetruth.com/ and Joanne and James Moriarty. The UN Security Council’s lie-enabled ‘No Fly Zone’ was perversely used by NATO as a means for massive bombardment of Libya, resulting in vast but uncounted death, wounding and destruction, and many fleeing the country. Hell had been unleashed on one of the most lovely and successful and happy countries on the planet
The war against the former eastern Ukraine has included the use of banned by international law, phosphorus bombs and cluster bombs. These have been directed into civilian areas. www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUF-hPcu7Ks
Daniele Ganser’s book NATO’s Secret Armies published 2005 gives a useful country by country overview. Blowing up school buses for political advantage was a typical part of the repertoire.
The US now rivals the Soviet Gulag for record numbers of prisons and prisoners, with more prisoners by far than India and China combined. Lots of money to be made, lots of slave labour, lots of innocent people behind bars. And what are we to make of 80 thousand swat team raids last year? Are Police in America Now a Military, Occupying Force? By John W. Whitehead. And, US creation of death squads is not an ad hoc venture: There is a school: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13436.htm
www.uacrisis.com/ukrainian-general-no-russian-troops-are-fighting… Ukraine’s top general Viktor Muzhenko contradicts allegations of Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.
A few examples: Hunger in rich Canada? By 2008 there were guesstimated to be over 700 food banks in Canada, but in addition there were many hundreds of other hunger-relief efforts, including breakfast clubs, school meal programs, community kitchens, and emergency shelters providing food. Many people are helped privately by family members and friends. World class environmental disaster: The Alberta Tar Sands: see Andrew Nikiforuk’s Dirty Oil: Tar Sands and the Future of a Continent. Genetically mutilated foods are not labelled http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-06/meta-study-genetically-modified-food-virtually-all-independent-scientists-are-concer ; the addictive neurotoxic carcinogen aspartame is a nearly ubiquitous ingredient in food, and aluminum-bountiful geo-engineering takes place overhead without a murmur from Canadians. Echelon happened ages ago, and now: Canada’s electronic-intelligence agency intercepts citizens’ private messages without judicial warrants.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadian-intelligence-sweeps-often-intercept-private-data/article19868523/ And then there was that insane, unnecessary, portentous venture into nuclear energy.
See http://enenews.com/ for a large archive of material on Fukushima, Dana Durnford for vast photographic documentation of disastrous situation in the tidal pools and shorelines of British Columbia, as well as trenchant description oif situation at Fukushima. Jeff Rense at Rense.com has repeatedly interviewed Durnford. Also: Dana Durnford’s Post-Fukushima Odyssey: Documenting Ecocide on Canada’s West Coast. www.countercurrents.org/snefjella210415.htm
Eating organic foods low on the food chain, Spirulina and Chlorella, greenhouse gardening, high quality vitamin E combined with high quality selenium, are helpful. ENE news has a forum on mitigating radiation:http://enenews.com/forum-best-practices-combating-effects-radiation
Consistent with every book I have on nuclear weapons and energy, here are bits and pieces from Stewart Udall, former Secretary of the Interior in the US, in the foreword to Atomic Harvest: Hanford and the Lethal Toll 0f America’s Nuclear Arsenal: “…pattern of deceit that infected the nuclear weapons industry.” “…astounding levels of lethal contamination.” “Nothing in our past compares to the official deceit and lying that took place to protect the nuclear industry.” “…an elite corps of public officials were so willing to violate the basic rights of their fellow human beings [on behalf of] the nuclear establishment.” “… politicians and bureaucrats ran roughshod over democracy and morality.” “… the deception that poisoned the dialogue of democracy.”
Sophocles: King Oedipus, translated by E.F. Watling.
Robert Snefjella is an organic farmer living in Ontario, Canada
When you sign up to be in the United States military, in many ways the deck is stacked against you. You are required to go where you are told and to do what you are told — including, potentially, to kill people. You can forget the rosy representations the recruiter made before you enlisted. Plus, unlike in other jobs, you cannot quit. Nonetheless, there may still be a way out of being forced to participate in war’s killings — conscientious objection.
Bill Galvin, counseling coordinator at the Center on Conscience and War, provided in an interview last week on the Tom Woods Show an informative introduction to how a military member can seek US government-recognized conscientious objector status. While Galvin cautions that, “except for the very end of the Vietnam period, it’s always been difficult to get out of the military as a conscientious objector” in America, he also says that it can be done.
Galvin explains that, contrary to many people’s assumption, a conscientious objector does not have to be a member of a church that includes in its doctrine opposition to participation in war. In fact, Galvin states that even a person who is not religious can be recognized as a conscientious objector; philosophical belief regarding war can be a sufficient basis.
Some people may be skeptical of someone who chose to join the military and later decides that he does not want to take part in warfare. But, people do change their minds, especially when they find themselves in the middle of something that had always seemed rather abstract and is now very real. Galvin further argues that ‘virtually nobody who joins the military knows what they are getting into.” “Recruiters are trained salespeople,” he adds.
There is a big difference, Galvin continues, between saying “in the abstract ‘I would fight to defend my country’” and looking “down the barrel of your gun at a live human being.” Galvin also notes that some non-battlefield occurrences can trigger military members’ thought processes and lead to changes in their beliefs regarding war. He mentions, as examples of such triggering events, taking part in military training designed to overcome people’s aversion to killing, being surrounded by a culture that promotes killing, and being required to conduct searches of people’s private possessions.
Listen to the complete interview here, and visit here the website of the Center on Conscience and War. The center provides education regarding conscientious objection and helps people seeking to obtain government recognition of their conscientious objector status.
Today, May 30, 2015, is the 584th anniversary of the day on which Joan of Arc was burned at the stake by the British forces occupying France.
The “Maid of Orleans” had the ill luck to be captured while she was rallying her countrymen to throw off the English yoke and a pro-English Bishop, Pierre Cauchon, after a grossly unjust trial, sentenced her to death by fire. “Bishop, I die through you!” she reportedly told him.
Saint Joan, as she is known since her canonization by the Roman Catholic church, was only 19. Despicable as the Bishop’s conduct was, he at least made a pretense of a legal proceeding.
Contrast this with the conduct of President Barack Obama, who likely may be responsible for the drone killings of more than a thousand innocent civilians across the Middle East, and who dispenses entirely with legal niceties.
How is it that Bishop Cauchon is reviled for a single murder yet President Obama routinely wipes out human life on a grand scale and is not prosecuted? How is it that foreign leaders will shake his hand?
Perhaps an indifferent American public is proving Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin correct when he told U.S. ambassador to Moscow W. Averell Harriman, “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.”
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism(BIJ), London, a non-profit organization known for its meticulous research, reported last month that 515 U.S. drone strikes since 2002 have killed at least, 2,887 people in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
The drone strikes, inaugurated by President George W. Bush, “increased during the Obama administration as did the number of casualties,” the BIJ reports. And McClatchy news service, citing a leaked CIA document, reported “the CIA killed people who only were suspected…” of association with militant groups.
As for the right of President Obama to murder people, which is the correct description of what he is doing, Professor Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois and Magna Cum Laude graduate of Harvard Law School, says:
“The ‘honors’ graduate of Harvard Law School President Obama has set himself up as the sole Judge, Jury and Executioner of thousands of human beings in violation of international law, human rights law, the laws of war and the United States Constitution. Harvard Law School taught me that makes Obama a felon and a war criminal and impeachable.”
The president openly admits authorizing the drone killings. As pacifist/author David Swanson of Charlottesville, Va., pointed out in his book “War No More,” Obama killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, who “was never charged with a crime, never indicted, and his extradition never sought.” Indeed, many of President Obama’s drone victims could have been arrested and tried had the U.S. gone to local authorities with evidence of their culpability. We need to ask ourselves, “What kind of nation prefers to murder people without a trial? Would you call it Fascist, Communist?”
Swanson cites figures to show that, in Pakistan alone between 2004 and 2013, America made 372 drone strikes, killing between 2,566 and 3,570 individuals, of whom as many as 890 were civilians, including nearly 200 children—every one of them by definition—younger than Joan of Arc.
Imagine, on this 584th anniversary of her death, a nation called America, a country whose evil genius has invented the deadliest killing machines ever, a country spending a trillion dollars a year on war, with 1,000 military bases overseas, and 11 battle fleets patrolling the Seven Seas, and troops in 175 countries, and with its lying spokespersons claiming it is all for ‘defense,’ is turning the clock back to the Medieval Period. Apparently, Americans have lost their sense of proportion, their ethics, their faith, their humanity, and worst of all, even their pity for the victims of their crimes. Saint Joan, be with us today!
Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody emerged.
On July 6th, the New York Times published an astonishing investigation: In Ukraine, Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit. The article documents in grim detail how Chosen Company, an international volunteer battalion for Kiev, routinely executes Russian prisoners of war. It is the very first mainstream admission that this practice – a brazen breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a grave war crime – is widespread among Ukraine’s fighters, both foreign and homegrown. … continue
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