‘Why are we tempting nuclear annihilation?’ Watch Max Blumenthal address UN Security Council

 Is there anyone sane left on the planet who seriously believes that US/NATO support for Ukraine is motivated by a concern for self-determination?

If there is anyone who believes that NATO, i.e. US support for Ukraine and its supply of advanced weaponry to the Zelensky regime, is on account of its support for that country’s self-determination, then I can only suggest that they consult a psychiatrist.

How can the United States, which launched a war of aggression against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 and which supports Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinians, be seriously concerned with the principle of self-determination?

To those who have any doubts about what is happening and the threat it poses to the survival of humanity, I recommend that you watch the video below of a speech by Max Blumenthall of the Grayzone, which was targeted by Paul Mason on behalf of British Intelligence.  I’m not sure how Max managed to address them but the video is well worth watching.

Below the video I have included a transcript of the speech. Please watch and share.

To those who don’t understand the background to what is happening in Ukraine or the possible consequences of provoking a nuclear war, I recommend the two following videos of talks and interviews with John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at Chicago University and a member of the realist school of thought.

Tony Greenstein

Max Blumenthal addresses UN Security Council on Ukraine aid

Thank you to Wyatt Reed, Alex Rubinstein and Anya Parampil for helping me prepare this presentation. Wyatt has first hand experience with the subject as a journalist whose hotel in Donetsk was targeted with a US-made howitzer by the Ukrainian military in October 2022. He was 100 meters away when the strike hit, and was nearly killed.

My friend, the civil rights activist Randy Credico, is also here with me today. He was in Donetsk more recently, and was able to witness regular HIMARS attacks by the Ukrainian military on civilian targets.

I’m here not only as a journalist with over 20 years of experience covering politics and conflict on several continents, but as an American dragooned by my own government into funding a proxy war that has become a threat to regional and international stability at the expense of the welfare of my fellow countrymen and women.

The West's neo-Nazi friends in Ukraine who are also fighting for freedom!

This June 28, as emergency crews worked to clean up yet another toxic train derailment in the United States, this time on the Montana River, that further exposed our nation’s chronically underfunded infrastructure and its threats to our health, the Pentagon announced plans to send an additional $500 million worth of military aid to Ukraine.

The development came as Ukraine’s army enters the third week of a vaunted counter-offensive that CNN describes as “not meeting expectations,” and which even Volodymyr Zelensky says is “going slower than desired.”

As Ukraine’s military failed to breach Russia’s primary defense line, CNN reported that by June 12, Kiev quote “lost” 16 US-made armored vehicles sent to the country.

So what did the Pentagon do? It simply passed that bill down to average US taxpayers like myself, charging us another $325 million to replace Ukraine’s squandered military stock. There was zero effort to consult the US public’s position on the matter; and the vast majority of Americans likely did not even know the exchange took place.

The US policy I just described — which sees Washington prioritize unrestrained funding for a proxy war with a nuclear power in a foreign land while our own domestic infrastructure falls apart before our eyes — exposes a disturbing dynamic at the heart of the Ukraine conflict: an international Ponzi scheme that enables Western elites to seize hard earned wealth out of the hands of average US citizens and funnel itI into the coffers of a foreign government that even the Western-sponsored Transparency International ranks as one of the most corrupt in Europe.

The US government has yet to conduct an official audit of its funding for Ukraine. The American public has no idea where their tax dollars have gone.

That is why this week, The Grayzone published an independent audit of US tax dollar allocation to Ukraine throughout fiscal years 2022 and 2023. Our investigation was led by Heather Kaiser, a former military intelligence officer and veteran of US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We found a $4.48 million payment from the US Social Security Admin to the Kiev government.

We found $4.5 billion worth of payments from the United States Agency for International Development to pay off Ukraine’s sovereign debt, much of which is owned by the global investment firm BlackRock.

That alone amounts to $30 taken from every single US citizen at a time when 4 in 10 Americans are unable to afford a $400 emergency.

We found tax dollars earmarked for Ukraine padding the budgets of a television station in Toronto, a pro-NATO think tank in Poland, and, believe it or not, rural farmers in Kenya.

We found tens of millions to private equity firms, including one in the Republic of Georgia, as well as a million dollar payment to a single private entrepreneur in Kiev.

Our audit also revealed the Pentagon’s $4.5 million contract with a company called “Atlantic Diving Supply” to provide Ukraine with unspecified explosives equipment. This is a notoriously corrupt company that Thom Tillis, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, previously lambasted for its “history of fraud.”

Yet once again, Congress has failed to ensure these shady payments and massive arms deals are properly tracked.

In fact, much of the military and humanitarian aid shipped to Ukraine has simply vanished. Last year, CBS News quoted the director of a pro-Zelensky non-profit in Ukraine who reported that only around 30% of aid was reaching the front lines in Ukraine.

The embezzlement of funds and supplies is at least as troubling as the potential consequences of the illicit transfer and sales of military-grade weapons. Last June, the head of Interpol warned that the massive transfers of arms into Ukraine means “we can expect an influx of weapons in Europe and beyond,” and that “criminals are even now, as we speak, focusing on them.”

This May, a group of anti-Kremlin Russian neo-Nazis outfitted with gear supplied by the Ukrainian government, was hailed by Western politicians for carrying out terrorist attacks in Russian territory using American-made Humvees. Although the group, the so-called “Russian Volunteer Corps,” is led by a man who calls himself the “White King” and includes numerous open admirers of Adolf Hitler, the Western weaponization of this militia against Russian forces has not prompted any outcry from Congress.

And while the Biden administration has promised that it’s keeping tabs on the weapons sent, a State Department cable leaked last December conceded that “kinetic activity and active combat between Ukrainian and Russian forces create an environment in which standard verification measures are sometimes impracticable or impossible.”

The Biden administration not only knows that it can not track the weapons it is shipping to Ukraine, it knows it is escalating a proxy war against the world’s largest nuclear power, and is daring it to respond in kind.

We know they know this because back in 2014, President Barack Obama rejected demands to send lethal offensive weaponry to Kiev because, as the Wall Street Journal put it, he had a “long-standing concern that arming Ukraine would provoke Moscow into a further escalation that could drag Washington into a proxy war.”

When Donald Trump entered office in 2017, he attempted to hold the line on Obama’s policy, but was soon branded a Russian puppet by the Washington press corps and Democratic Party for refusing to send Raytheon’s Javelin missiles to the Ukrainian military. Trump’s reluctance to send the Javelins became part of the basis for his impeachment. He unsurprisingly relented.

As the US-made offensive weaponry began to reach the front lines of the Donbas, the collective West exploited the Minsk Accords to “give Ukraine time” to arm up, as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel put it.

In January 2022, the US announced a $200 million arms package to Ukraine. By the 18th of February, observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reported a doubling in ceasefire violations, with OSCE maps showing the overwhelming majority of targeted sites on the side of the pro-Russian separatist population in Donetsk and Lugansk. Five days later, Russia invaded Ukraine.

And since then, the US and its allies have been scurrying up the escalation ladder at every opportunity.

“Things we couldn’t give in January because it was escalatory were given in February,” a former State Department official complained after meeting with Ukrainian counterparts. “And things we couldn’t give in February we can in April. That has been the distinct pattern, starting with, for crying out loud, Stingers,” they said, referring to shoulder mounted missiles.

President Joe Biden himself said in March 2022, “The idea that we’re gonna send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks… don’t kid yourself, no matter what you all say, that’s called World War III.”

Just over a year later, Biden changed his tune, backing a plan to provide F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, and after pressuring Germany to send in the tanks he once feared would provoke World War III.

It would only take two months from receiving HIMARs systems from the US for the Ukrainian military to begin targeting critical infrastructure, using them to strike the Antonovsky Bridge over the Dnipro river, and again, two months later in a test strike on the Kakhovka Dam “to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings,” as the Washington Post reported.

Three weeks ago, the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed, triggering a major environmental catastrophe that caused mass flooding and contamination of the local water supply. Ukraine, of course, blames Russia for the attack, but has produced no evidence.

Around this time, Ukraine also baselessly accused Russia of planning a provocation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. This triggered a resolution by Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal (no relation to me) calling for NATO to intervene directly in Ukraine and attack Russia if such an incident occurred.

The move by Blumenthal and Graham thus established a de facto red line for initiating US military action, much like the one set down in Syria which, as a former US diplomat commented to journalist Charles Glass, “was an open invitation to a false flag.”

Will we see another Douma deception, but this time in Zaporizhzhia?

Why are we doing this? Why are we tempting nuclear annihilation by flooding Ukraine with advanced weapons and sabotaging negotiations at every turn?

We have been told by people like Sen. Dick Durbin that Ukraine is “literally in a battle for freedom and democracy themselves,” and we must therefore supply it with weapons “for as long as it takes,” as President Biden said. Anyone who opposes military aid to Ukraine opposes the defense of democracy, according to this logic.

So where is the democracy in Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to ban opposition parties, criminalize the media outlets of his legitimate political opponents, to jail his top political rival, round up his top deputies, raid Orthodox Churches and arrest clergymen?

Where is the democracy in the Ukrainian government’s imprisonment of Gonzalo Lira, a US citizen, for questioning the official narrative of their war effort?

And where is the democracy in Zelensky’s recent decision to suspend elections in 2024 on the grounds that martial law has been declared? Well, it seems that Ukraine’s democracy is harder to find these days than its military’s suddenly inconspicuous commander-in-chief, Valeriy Zaluzhny.

Senator Graham has offered a much more grim – and on-the-mark – rationale for supplying Ukraine with billions in weapons. As the senator boasted during a recent visit with Zelensky in Kiev, “The Russians are dying…it’s the best money we’ve ever spent.”

Graham, we should remember, has also said that we, the US, must fight this war to the last Ukrainian. While official casualty numbers are strictly classified, we must worry that Ukraine is well on its way to fulfilling the senator’s ghoulish fantasies.

As a Ukrainian soldier complained this month to Vice News, we don’t know what Zelensky’s “plans are, but it looks like extermination of its own population — like of the combat-ready and working-age population. That’s it.”

Indeed, military cemeteries in Ukraine are expanding almost as rapidly as the Northern Virginia McMansions and beachfront estates of executives from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and assorted Beltway contractors benefitting from the second highest level of military spending since World War Two.

These are the real winners of the Ukraine proxy war. Not average Ukrainians or Americans. Or Russians or even Western Europeans.

The winners are people like Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who spent his time between the Obama and Biden administrations launching a consulting firm called WestExec advisors which secured lucrative government contracts for intelligence firms and the arms industry. Blinken’s former partners at WestExec advisors include Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, CIA deputy director David Cohen, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, and almost a dozen current and former members of Biden’s national security team.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, for his part, is a former and possibly future board member of Raytheon, and ex-partner of the Pine Island Capital investment firm that collaborates with WestExec and which Blinken has advised.

Meanwhile, the current US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas Greenfield, is listed as a senior counsel at the Albright Stonebridge Group, a self-described “commercial diplomacy firm” that also finesses contracts for the intelligence sector and arms industry. This firm was founded by the late Madeleine Albright, who infamously declared that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children under the US sanctions regime was “worth it.”

So while middle-aged Ukrainian men are ripped off streets by military police and sent to the front lines, the financially and politically connected architects of this proxy war are planning to walk through the revolving door to reap unimaginable profits once their time in the Biden administration is over.

For them, a negotiated settlement to this territorial dispute means an end to the cash cow of close to $150 billion in US aid to Ukraine.

When the United States, a permanent member of this council, has fallen under the control of a government which seeks to perpetuate a proxy war for “as long as it takes,” which considers diplomacy synonymous with unilateral coercive measures to “turn the ruble to rubble,” as Biden has pledged to do; whose leadership subverts negotiations in order to pursue profit while refusing to properly inform its own citizens what they are paying for, and which pushes the sons and brothers of its supposed Ukrainian partners out onto a killing field in order to bludgeon a geopolitical rival; when both Zelensky and members of the US Congress are calling for preemptive strikes on Russia which contravene the spirit of Article 51 of the UN charter, this council must take action to enforce that charter.

Articles 33 – 38 of Chapter VI of that Charter are clear that the security council must use its authority to guarantee a pacific settlement of dispute, particularly when it threatens international security. That should not only apply to Russia and Ukraine. This council has an obligation to strictly monitor and restrain the US and the illegal military formation known as NATO.

John Mearsheimer: The West is playing Russian roulette

“Why is Ukraine the West’s fault”

In search of poetic justice – The Life of a Jewish anti-Zionist

ERIC LEVY - A LIFE DEDICATED TO THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 1928-2022

Below I’m happy to publish a passionate tribute to Eric Levy, a Jewish anti-Zionist who has just died aged 94, by Abbas Ali on behalf of In Minds, the Human Rights Group.

Eric was very active in many causes. He was active in Revolutionary Communist Group circles and took part in the non-stop picket outside South Africa House during the apartheid era. This was the picket which so annoyed the Met Police that they arrested Jeremy Corbyn. Eric was also a teacher and his photo was plastered on the cover of a tabloid because in class he showed support for the Irish republican movement. Eric was active in the civil rights movement and apparently he was friends with Paul Robeson and Claudia Jones.

A truly remarkable life. Below this is an article which appeared in Camden’s New Journal in January 2021 which details his arrest outside Westminster Magistrates Court because he ‘breached’ COVID regulations. The same regulations that Boris Johnson breached but which the Met refused to investigate until faced with court proceedings and even then didn’t issue him with questionnaires for most of the parties he attended.  Thus it ever was.

Tony Greenstein

ERIC LEVY - A LIFE DEDICATED TO THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE 1928-2022

We are honoured to call Eric Levy our brother, our comrade. We knew him as a passionate campaigner for justice. He played a prominent part in our campaigns since 2014.

As an ardent anti-Zionist Jew he was particularly dedicated to the cause of Palestine. He had visited Palestine and seen first-hand how Israeli apartheid was destroying Palestinian lives, how the indigenous Palestinians were being ethnically cleansed from their land to make way for white European colonists.

He was at the forefront of our campaigns for Palestinian rights, including campaigns against G4S and HP for complicity in torture of children; Addidas and Puma for complicity in ethnic cleansing and illegal settlements; De Beers for peddling Israeli blood diamonds; and the campaign for the release of Palestinian political prisoners tortured in Israeli dungeons.

But he was not limited to one cause. Wherever he saw injustice, he threw himself in to the struggle on the side of the oppressed. He opposed the invasion of Iraq and travelled to Iraq as a 'Human Shield'. He opposed the Saudi genocidal war in Yemen; and campaigned for the release of Bahraini political prisoners; and for the release of Sheikh Zakzaky caged by the brutal Nigerian regime; and perhaps what he is best remembered for - he ardently campaigned for the release of the journalist Julian Assange in the UK.

Mindful of his age and frailty we purposely didn't invite him to guerrilla projections, but there was no stopping him attend the Malcolm X remembrance projection in Brixton on a bitterly cold February night. He had particular affinity to the cause of black liberation.

Eric was arrested several times, both for blocking Israeli armaments, and for protesting Assange's unfair extradition hearings. We were awed and inspired by his bravery, and dedication.

Eric was a person with no ego, his only focus was the struggle. For many years, he wouldn't even tell us his age, in case it might lead to preferential treatment. Although he was a person of very modest means, yet he would refuse even the smallest of gifts, unless everyone was receiving it. He was a very caring person, always looking out for the more vulnerable members. Eric was particularly mindful that indigenous voices in the struggle were allowed to flourish.

We were truly privileged to have known Eric.

His dream was to continue the struggle for justice till his last breath. In fulfilling his dream, in his death at age 94, he has shown us how to live, how to live a life worth living. An inspiration for generations to come. We will miss you Eric.

Abbas Ali

Chair, Inminds Human Rights Group

In search of poetic justice

Thursday, 21st January 2021 — By John Gulliver

THIS extraordinary picture of a little stumbling gaunt-faced elderly man being arrested by several police officers at a demonstration outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court is haunt­ing. On the soundtrack from a mobile video snapped by, presumably, one of the demonstrators one can hear someone shouting: “He is 92… he will die… what are you doing?”

I was not at the demonstration that was held at a bail application by the jailed journalist Julian Assange outside the court on January 6. Assange was refused bail and is still held at the high security jail Belmarsh in south London while lawyers continue to argue for his extradition to the US on the ground that he committed espionage by releasing secret tapes.

I can confirm that the man in the picture is actually 92 and lives in the Camden Town area. I have seen him several times over the years as he is a regular presence at protest meetings and know him as Eric Levy.

He clearly has strong radical views that draw him to various causes. In the Iraq war – 17 years ago – he was among several “peace” campaigners who travelled to Baghdad and set up camp in various public buildings, such as electricity stations, to “warn” off US air attacks. But, surely, there was no need to arrest this frail old man – and the fact that so many police officers could waste their time doing so illustrates poor judgment or an unfair sense of persecution.

Oddly enough, I saw another side to Eric Levy many years ago at one of the regular evening poetry sessions that used to be run in a small community centre in Torriano Avenue, Kentish Town, by the late artist John Rety. These gatherings were usually exotic affairs where someone in the crowded small room would stand up and recite one of their new poems – and very good they often were.

In a crowded room, one session produced new poems by the great poet Dannie Abse and the avant garde poet and publisher John Calder, both of whom had suddenly appeared, to my delight, in the audience.

It was on this particular evening that suddenly Eric Levy, sitting at the back, suddenly stood up and wondered whether he could recite the Ode to Joy by the German poet Friedrich Schiller set to the melody of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.

I wondered what was going to emerge – and, then incredibly, this little man stilled the audience as his rich baritone voice rang out the beautiful poem that sounded so haunting in its native language.

Thus, there are many sides to a person, I discovered. And as I looked at the image of this harmless elderly man being hustled away by police officers, I wondered whether he serenaded them in the cells with the Ode to Joy – it would have given them food for thought.

• According to a Met Police statement issued yesterday (Wednesday), eight people were detained “for breaching coronavirus regulations” outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court on January 6. “They were later reported for consideration of a fixed penalty notice and ordered to leave the area,” said the Met. Presumably Eric Levy was one of them.

What Happened in Uvalde is Why the Police Should Be Defunded

 While a Gunman was Killing 19 children and their teachers in Ulvade Texan Police Handcuffed, Pepper Sprayed and Tasered the Parents Instead!

The Problem Isn’t Gun Law but America’s Violent Racist Society - Gun Law Reform Won’t Change That

Police Cowards in Uvalde

If ever there was a demonstration as to why the Police should be defunded, it was on display in Uvalde, Texas. Heavily armed Police stood outside the classroom where the gunman was murdering defenceless children because they didn’t have a key to the door!

They apparently believed all the children were dead but didn’t have the courage to find out for themselves if anyone was alive. It has taken a tragedy like Uvalde to demonstrate that the Police aren’t there to protect people but to protect property.

Police Justify Doing Nothing 

Heavily armed police refused to go into the school and instead saw their job as harassing and persecuting desperate parents. One parent, Angeli Rose Gomez, was handcuffed. When freed she jumped the fence and went in to rescue her child whilst these heavily armed cowards stood outside, pepper spraying and tasering distraught parents.

40% of Uvalde’s budget was spent on these entitled cowards. They should not only be sacked but prosecuted for gross negligence manslaughter. But of course they won’t because the Supreme Court has given them virtual immunity.

Police cowards Outside Uvalde school Texas Tackle Parents Instead of the Gunman

Texas Governor, the Christian bigot Greg Abbott, an anti-abortionist and pro-death penalty supporter, meanwhile spent the aftermath praising the pigs in uniform.

Of course when it comes to shooting an unarmed Black kid then these heroes will rise to the challenge but otherwise they are useless. Ulvade doubled the amount it was spending in one year on providing school security but the killer still ran past police and armed guards. Indeed he was outside for 12 minutes shooting but no one had the gall to tackle him.

He posted what he was intending to do on Fuckerberg’s Facebook but the Moderators, who are so quick to uphold ‘community standards’ when it comes to supporting the Palestinians saw nothing.

Texas's Far-Right Governor Greg Abbott Grandstanding

If nothing else this shows that there is a need for a different, community model of policing. If the parents had had the guns that the Police had then the gunman would have been neutralised far earlier. We need to get away from the idea that we need separate groups of Police to protect us.  The Police have as their priority the defence of the wealthy and property not people.

Meanwhile the far-Right Governor of Texas, Greg Abbot, pontificated about ‘evil’ stalking the land. Clearly he was not in possession of a mirror because it is Abbott who represents evil. Abbot blamed the murder of 19 children and 2 teachers on mental illness and virtually anything but himself and the armed goons who saw attacking the parents as more important than tackling a lone gunman.

His Democratic opponent Beto O’Rourke confronted Abbot over his do nothing approach. Of course Abbot is an easy target. He opposes gun control on principle. Abbot is a particularly vile creature. But it is easy to fall back on the panacea of gun control.

Norway has a very high rate of gun ownership and yet despite the USA having 50 times the population of Norway it has 10,000 times the murder rate. The reasons for the high rate of gun crime in the USA and in particular this phenomenon of shooting children in schools can’t simply be explained by lack of gun control.

The fact is that as a settler-colonial society which recently had slavery, the US is an endemically violent society. It is the only Western state that has the death penalty. To this day the USA maintains a concentration camps in Guantanamo. It has the highest rate of incarceration, some 2 million prisoners, some of whom are kept in conditions that amount to torture. Super-max prisons where inmates are kept in shackles and solitary confinement.

The US is responsible for a phenomenal amount of violence around the world, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Israel. The CIA has been given a license to torture and the US even has a training school for torturers and death squads, the School of the Americas which is now renamed the Institute for Security Cooperation.

If Israel maintains a violent occupation it does so courtesy of US weapons and subsidies. At the moment the US is doing its best to encourage a genocidal war in Ukrainian by supplying it with limitless weapons. The US is the world’s major arms supplier.  The US is the prime factor in violence in the world. Is it any wonder that US violence abroad is imported back home?

The US is of course a massively unequal society and the purpose of the Police is to keep it that way. Inequality breeds violence. The US can’t afford a national health service but it can afford 800 foreign bases and at spends at least $750 billion on its armed forces. It spends more than the next 9 countries put together on its military.

Why should anyone be surprised when this makes some people mentally ill enough to want to kill American kids? After all the US army has been killing children for years in its Drone Wars without any comeback.

The idea that gun control by itself can solve the problem of internal violence is a pipedream sown by the Democrats who, as the Ukraine war has proven, are worse imperialists than the Republicans. In Congress it was 57 Republicans who opposed the $40 billion to Ukrainian neo-Nazis. In the Senate it was 11 Republican Senators who voted against. 

Not one Democrat in Congress – not Sanders, not AOC, not Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib voted against supplying the Azov Battalion with nice, shiny new US weaponry.

It is a tragedy that 19 children and their teachers died in Texas but no one should be fooled that gun control by itself that will be the remedy.  The United States is a violent society and violence begets violence.

Tony Greenstein

See Parents reportedly handcuffed, tasered, and pepper sprayed by police during Uvalde school shooting

The death of war criminal Madeleine Albright should remind us of who it is that is now supporting ‘freedom’ in Ukraine

 Those who support sanctions against Russia should remember that in Iraq they killed ½ million children but left Saddam Hussein alone

Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State, on why the death of half a million Iraqi children from sanctions was 'a price worth paying'

One of the few instances of good news in the past few weeks has been the death of war criminal and former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in the Clinton regime. To bourgeois feminists what is important is that Albright was the first woman to become Secretary of State.

Albright, a fierce anti-communist, became famous for an interview she did with CBS 60 minutes in 1996.

Veteran journalist, Lesley Stahl, interviewed Albright about sanctions on Iraq, which she said had killed half a million children, thousands of them from leukaemia, because they couldn’t import the necessary drugs under the sanctions regime. Stahl told Albright that this was more than the number of children who died at Hiroshima, the most notorious of all American massacres (along with Nagasaki).  Stahl asked whether the price of getting rid of Saddam Hussein was worth it. Without batting an eyelid Albright replied that it was a difficult choice but ‘yes, we think the price is worth it’. 

Albright trying to effect regime change in Venezuela - always in the cause of democracy of course!

Let us not forget this was not a Republican Secretary of State, no Mike Pompeo or Donald Rumsfeld. This was Clinton’s choice of Secretary of State.  You might think that such a notorious and famous interview would merit at least a mention in our ‘free press’ when she died. Obituaries are supposed to include peoples’ bad as well as good sides.

Fleeing African and Indian students face racism at Ukraine border

I know that we are not supposed to talk ill of the dead but what is more important is to tell the truth about them.  Could anyone imagine an obituary of Adolf Hitler that dwelt on the fact that he got rid of unemployment and build the autobahns without mentioning the Holocaust?

Augusto Pinochet was another of the USA's 'democrats'

Yet without exception the press omitted all mention of this interview and Albright’s role in the murder, the cruel calculated murder of half a million children because they happened to be born in a state that had invaded the West’s artificial protectorate in the Middle East, Kuwait. After all the chemical weapons that Saddam had used in Halabja, when he killed 5,000 Kurds, had first been employed in the war against Iran in the 1980s. Indeed it was Germany and other western countries that had supplied Saddam with chemical weapons.

Yet without blinking an eye obituaries in the New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, Washington Post and of course our very own voice of the British Establishment, the BBC, failed even to mention this interview. This was no accidental omission. The BBC, which as we all know, is the voice of the British Establishment, wrote:

On the world stage, Albright advocated aggressively for US and democratic interests. Perhaps aided by her all-too close familiarity with communism and fascism, she was a fierce proponent of human rights and opposition to authoritarianism on the international stage, even if it meant military intervention.

Savour that if you will. Albright was a ‘fierce proponent of human rights’.  What you might ask, about the human rights of Iraq’s half a million children?  Were they not human beings with rights? Richard Medhurst has fun with this hypocrisy in his podcast War Criminal Madeleine Albright Dies at Age 84 and I recommend you watch it.

Madeleine Albright on regime change in Cuba

What did the Guardian, NYT and all the other lie sheets emphasise?  How Albright only found out in later life that she was born Jewish but her parents converted to Catholicism to save her from the Holocaust.  Almost all the headlines concentrated on the fact that she was the first woman Secretary of State.

I sometimes think that if only the Nazis had practised positive discrimination then we might have forgiven them for their atrocities. This is the kind of coverage which passes for serious analysis in the bourgeois press. It wasn’t just one paper but all of them indulged in this feminist imperialism that elevates sex over substance.

America’s first female secretary of state has died of cancer, aged 84 shouted the Economist. CNN’s take was Madeleine Albright, first female US secretary of state, dies. The New York Times variation was Madeleine Albright, First Woman to Serve as Secretary of State, Dies at 84.  Not forgetting the ‘liberal’ Guardian’s creative approach to this war criminal.  Diplomat and scholar of international relations who served as the first female US secretary of state. Only Ahmed Twaj writing for Al Jazeera broke the melody with his piece Let’s remember Madeleine Albright for who she really was.

I often ask myself what possible reason would there ever be for an authoritarian state to impose censorship in the USA or Britain when the newspapers and broadcasters fall over themselves to sing from the same songsheet? Why censor them when they are so good at self-censorship?

This is the same censorship that is currently being employed, along with a hefty dose of racism, the handmaiden of imperialism, when it comes to Ukraine and the refugee crisis.  In unison the BBC, CBS, CNN etc. praise god that the refugees are civilised like us. They are White unlike those Syrians and Afghans, who come from countries that are always at war. 

They forget to tell us that those wars only happen because we start them.  Praise for the fact that Ukrainian refugees are White is the message that comes across as Poland boasts of not allowing Muslims to enter at the same time as they find room for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.

Border guards in Poland and Ukraine are sifting out Black and non-White Ukrainians. In the case of Ukrainian border guards they are also preventing trans women from emigrating on the grounds that they are men.

Yet what does the imperialist left, from the SWP to Anti-Capitalist Resistance, have to say about this? Their answer is that self-determination is the most important issue in Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Russia must be condemned. NATO is irrelevant. The reasons for the invasion is irrelevant. This is the poverty of much of Britain’s far-left.  Even the formation of armed neo-Nazi militias as part of Ukraine’s military is a matter for the Ukrainians alone.

It takes dissident Tory contrarians like Peter Hitchens (ex-SWP!) to point out the obvious that it isn't alright that 'only' 20% of a Ukrainian army unit consists of fully fledged Nazis. That if NATO is arming fully fledged Nazis, forget the 'neo' then what does it say about Ukrainian resistance? What I wonder has happened to the brain dead SWP/ACR/AWL/RS21?

Thank God They Are White

This points to the utter degeneration of the British left. Lowkey is absolutely right when he says in his podcast with Electronic Intifada journalist Asa Winstanley that large sections of the British left now finds itself to the right of Henry Kissinger, who argued that Ukraine should be a bridge to not a bulwark against Russia. The podcast A History of NATO and Nazis, is well worth watching.

Although I have my criticised them in the past, the only group on the left that has resisted the patriotic hysteria and national chauvinism is the small Communist  Party of Great Britain for which I penned an article this week Key issue is not Russia (despite the appalling headline!).

Below is an excellent article by Michael Arria. See also Jonathan Cook’s If Putin is a war criminal, then Madeleine Albright was no less of one

Tony Greenstein

Albright with fellow war criminal Bill Clinton

Madeleine Albright’s legacy is a reminder that Clinton’s Iraq policy was murderous too

Madeleine Albright's honest appraisal of Iraq sanctions highlighted the brutality of U.S. foreign policy

By Michael Arria March 25, 2022 

Madeleine Albright has died at the age of 84. She was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State from 1997-2001, the first woman to ever hold that position. From 1993-1997 she was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. For some the enduring legacy of Albright won’t involve anything she did during her historic political career. She will be most remembered for something she said.

Something very rare happened on May 12, 1996. That evening viewers of CBS’ 60 Minutes witnessed a thorough and critical segment about U.S. foreign policy that was based around actual reporting. The program, which would go on to win correspondent Lesley Stahl an Emmy and a duPont-Columbia journalism award, was called “Punishing Saddam” and it detailed the U.S. government’s Iraq sanctions policy.

Let’s begin by stepping back. When it comes to Iraq, some Americans might view the Clinton years as an uneventful gap between Bush 1’s Gulf War and Bush 2’s Iraq War. “Eight Years of Peace, Progress, and Prosperity” went the Democratic mantra. However, the Iraqi people certainly experienced no peace during that era. After less than six months in office (in full violation of international law of course) Clinton lobbed 23 cruise missiles into the country. Three hit residential areas, killing nine people and wounding 12. The acclaimed Iraqi painter Layla Al Attar was one of the victims. Her husband and their housekeeper were also killed. Her daughter was blinded. The bombings continued from there. Operation Desert Strike occurred later that year, then there was Operation Desert Fox in 1998. In 1998 Clinton also signed the Iraq Liberation Act, instituting an official U.S. policy of “regime change” and planting the seeds for Bush’s war crimes.

Then there were the sanctions, which a UN-commissioned study found responsible for the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. Those numbers have been challenged in subsequent years, but it’s important to remember a couple things. The “Oil-for-Food” program’s first coordinator Denis Halliday quit his position in protest of the policy in 1998, calling it “genocidal.” The respected diplomat had worked at the U.N. for 34 years.

“When I got to Iraq in 1998, the hospitals in Baghdad, and also of course in Basra and other cities, were full of children suffering from leukemia,” Halliday told The Progressive last year. “Those children, we reckon perhaps 200,000 children, died of leukemia. At the same time, Washington and London withheld some of the medicines and treatment components that leukemia requires, again, it seemed, in a genocidal manner, denying Iraqi children the right to remain alive.” Dennis Halliday, UN Coordinator ‘Oil for Food’ programme

Halliday’s successor, Hans von Sponeck, quit a couple years later for the same reasons.

“For how long should the civilian population, which is totally innocent on all this, be exposed to such punishment for something they have never done?” he asked.” Hans von Sponeck, UN Coordinator Food for Oil Programme

So 26 years ago, Albright was interviewed by 60 Minutes as the Clinton administration’s spokesperson on the matter. Here was the most infamous portion of the exchange:

Stahl: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.

The striking thing about this exchange is Albright’s honesty. You almost never see a story like this in the mainstream media, but when you do the protocol is pretty consistent. We’re currently seeing it play out with pro-Israel groups and Amnesty International’s apartheid report. You smear and deflect, but you never actually acknowledge the crimes.

As I mentioned, the legacy of Albright’s comments is the compelling part. The deaths of Iraqi children were consistently cited by Osama bin Laden in interviews and recruitment videos. “A million innocent children are dying at this time as we speak, killed in Iraq without any guilt,” he declared about a month after the 9/11 attacks. At the time The Guardian looked into the claim and concluded that he was overstating things. However, the paper also quoted Dr Peter Pellett, a professor of nutrition at UMass, who served on multiple UN food and agriculture missions to Iraq: “All recent food and nutrition surveys have reported essentially the same story: malnourished children… increased mortality, and a general breakdown in the whole fabric of society.” When it came to Iraqi kids “Bin Laden’s propaganda may be exaggerated and one-sided. But he does perhaps have a point” the article admitted.

Even if you happened to watch and remember that 60 Minutes episode from 1996, the mainstream press certainly wasn’t acknowledging the Albright quote within the context of 9/11 after the towers fell. It’s doubtful that many Americans were reminded of it. Here’s Rahul Mahajan in FAIR from November 2001:

Albright’s quote, calmly asserting that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children, has been much quoted in the Arabic press. It’s also been cited in the United States in alternative commentary on the September 11 attacks. But a Dow Jones search of mainstream news sources since September 11 turns up only one reference to the quote–in an op-ed in the Orange Country Register. This omission is striking, given the major role that Iraq sanctions play in the ideology of archenemy Osama bin Laden; his recruitment video features pictures of Iraqi babies wasting away from malnutrition and lack of medicine.

A couple years after Albright made those comments she was questioned by students at Ohio State during an event that was televised by CNN. Albright (by then Secretary of State) had come to the campus with Defense Secretary William Cohen national security adviser, Samuel Berger to make the case for attacking Iraq. Again, a concept with roots far deeper than 2003.

Albright fielded a question from Jon Strange, who was a 22-year-old substitute teacher at the time. Here’s that exchange:

Strange: What do you have to say about dictators in countries like Indonesia, who we sell weapons to yet they are slaughtering people in East Timor. What do you have to say about Israel, who is slaughtering Palestinians, who imposed martial law. What do you have to say about that? Those are our allies. Why do we sell weapons to these countries? Why do we support them? Why do we bomb Iraq when it commits similar problems?

(WILD APPLAUSE)

Albright: There are various examples of things that are not right in this world and the United States is trying..I am really surprised that people feel it is necessary to defend the rights of Saddam Hussein, when we what ought to be thinking about is how to make sure that he does not use weapons of mass destruction.

Strange:  I’m not defending him in the least. What I am saying is that there needs to be consistent application of U.S. foreign policy. We cannot support people who are committing the same violations because they are political allies. That is not acceptable. We cannot violate U.N. resolutions when it is not convenient to us. You’re not answering my question Madam Albright.

“Madeleine was always a force for goodness, grace, and decency — and for freedom,” said President Biden in a statement after her death. Last week Biden sent Patriot missiles to Saudi Arabia after the country urgently requested them. On the campaign trail Biden declared that he would end U.S. support for and make Saudi Arabia a pariah, but Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has changed the calculus. Yemen is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, with 17 million people food insecure. 2.2 million of them are children. Biden presumably views it as a very hard choice, but ultimately thinks the price is worth it.

For more examples of how the BBC is essentially a propaganda extension of NATO see Skawkbox’s excellent

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