A 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 can be achieved. Here's how

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220602095102.html


Energy and environmental researchers pooled their knowledge to provide recommendations to fulfill the United States' climate pledge
June 2, 2022
DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Summary:To prevent the worst outcomes from climate change, the U.S. will need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% in the next eight years. Scientists from around the nation have developed a blueprint for success.




FULL STORY


The United States has set an ambitious goal to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 50% by 2030. Are we on track to succeed?


A new study by a team of scientists and policy analysts from across the nation suggests that there are multiple pathways to achieve this goal -- but big commitments will need to be made, immediately.

"This study should give policy makers and other energy stakeholders some level of comfort, by showing that everybody in the field is pointing in the same direction. The case for clean energy is stronger than ever before and our study shows that the 2030 emission target can be achieved," said Nikit Abhyankar, one of the study's authors and a scientist in the Electricity Markets & Policy Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). He notes that the most urgent actions will be to double the amount of renewable capacity built each year and transition predominately to electric vehicles within the next decade or so.

"With the right policies and infrastructure, we can reduce our emissions, while saving American consumers billions of dollars and generating new employment," he said.

Reducing GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 would put the United States on a path to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the target scientists say is required to avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis.

The study, published in Science, consolidates findings from six recently published techno-economic models that simulate the U.S. energy system operations in comprehensive detail. According to the authors, the separate models all agree on four major points:The majority of the country's greenhouse gas emissions come from power generation and transportation, so to reduce overall emissions by 50%, the electricity grid needs to run on 80% clean energy (up from today's 40%), and the majority of vehicles sold by 2030 need to be electric. Other important sources of GHG emissions reduction include electrification of buildings and industries.
The primary barrier to increased alternative energy use will not be cost, it will be enacting new policies. A coordinated policy response between states and the federal government will be necessary to succeed.
Thanks to advances in wind, solar, and energy storage technologies, powering the electric grid with renewables will not be more expensive; and electric vehicles could save every household up to $1,000 per year in net benefits.
A clean-energy transition would reduce air pollution, prevent up to 200,000 premature deaths, and avoid up to $800 billion in environmental and health costs through 2050. Many of the health benefits will occur in communities of color and frontline communities that are disproportionately exposed to vehicle, power plant, and industrial pollution.

"Our study provides the first detailed roadmap for how the United States can reach its 50% greenhouse gas emissions-reduction target by 2030," said lead author John Bistline, program manager in the Energy Systems and Climate Analysis Group at the Electric Power Research Institute. "This will require tripling the pace of historic carbon reductions, an ambitious but achievable target if stakeholders collaborate across all sectors. By comparing results across six independent models, we provide greater confidence about the policies and technology deployment needed to achieve near-term climate goals, laying the groundwork for an affordable, reliable, and equitable net-zero future."

According to Abhyankar, who led the development of one of the six models, "By 2030, wind, solar, coupled with energy storage can provide the bulk of the 80% clean electricity. The findings also show that generating the remaining 20% of grid power won't require the creation of new fossil fuel generators." He noted that existing gas plants, used infrequently and combined with energy storage, hydropower, and nuclear power are sufficient to meet demand during periods of extraordinarily low renewable energy generation or exceptionally high electricity demand. "And if the right policies are in place, the coal and gas power plants in the country that currently provide the majority of the nation's electricity would recover their initial investment, thereby avoiding risk of cost under-recovery for investors."

"Since announcing the nation's emissions reduction pledge at the 2021 United Nations climate conference, the United States has taken steps in the right direction," said Abhyankar. "But a lot still needs to happen. What we are hoping is that this study will give some level of a blueprint of how it could be done."

The other models used for this study were developed by the Electric Power Research Institute, Environmental Defense Fund, National Resources Defense Council, and the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.







Story Source:

Materials provided by DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Original written by Aliyah Kovner. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference: John Bistline, Nikit Abhyankar, Geoffrey Blanford, Leon Clarke, Rachel Fakhry, Haewon McJeon, John Reilly, Christopher Roney, Tom Wilson, Mei Yuan, Alicia Zhao. Actions for reducing US emissions at least 50% by 2030. Science, 2022; 376 (6596): 922 DOI: 10.1126/science.abn0661

Time crystals 'impossible' but obey quantum physics

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220602095115.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email

June 2, 2022
Lancaster University 

Summary:

Scientists have created a 'time-crystal' a two-body system in an experiment that seems to bend the laws of physics. A 'two-level system' is a basic building block of a quantum computer. Time crystals could perhaps be used to build quantum devices that work at room temperature. Time crystals were long believed to be impossible because they are made from atoms in never-ending motion. The discovery shows that not only can time crystals be created, but they have potential to be turned into useful devices.




FULL STORY


Scientists have created the first "time-crystal" two-body system in an experiment that seems to bend the laws of physics.


It comes after the same team recently witnessed the first interaction of the new phase of matter.

Time crystals were long believed to be impossible because they are made from atoms in never-ending motion. The discovery, published in Nature Communications, shows that not only can time crystals be created, but they have potential to be turned into useful devices.

Time crystals are different from a standard crystal -- like metals or rocks -- which is composed of atoms arranged in a regularly repeating pattern in space.

First theorised in 2012 by Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek and identified in 2016, time crystals exhibit the bizarre property of being in constant, repeating motion in time despite no external input. Their atoms are constantly oscillating, spinning, or moving first in one direction, and then the other.

EPSRC Fellow Dr Samuli Autti, lead author from Lancaster University's Department of Physics, explained: "Everybody knows that perpetual motion machines are impossible. However, in quantum physics perpetual motion is okay as long as we keep our eyes closed. By sneaking through this crack we can make time crystals."

"It turns out putting two of them together works beautifully, even if time crystals should not exist in the first place. And we already know they also exist at room temperature."

A "two-level system" is a basic building block of a quantum computer. Time crystals could be used to build quantum devices that work at room temperature.

An international team of researchers from Lancaster University, Royal Holloway London, Landau Institute, and Aalto University in Helsinki observed time crystals by using Helium-3 which is a rare isotope of helium with one missing neutron. The experiment was carried out in Aalto University.

They cooled superfluid helium-3 to about one ten thousandth of a degree from absolute zero (0.0001K or -273.15°C). The researchers created two time crystals inside the superfluid, and brought them to touch. The scientists then watched the two time crystals interacting as described by quantum physics.







Story Source:

Materials provided by Lancaster University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference: S. Autti, P. J. Heikkinen, J. Nissinen, J. T. Mäkinen, G. E. Volovik, V. V. Zavyalov, V. B. Eltsov. Nonlinear two-level dynamics of quantum time crystals. Nature Communications, 2022; 13 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30783-w

Hydrofoils: Major climate benefits when ships 'fly' over the surface

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220602095118.htm




Date:

June 2, 2022

Source:

Chalmers University of Technology

Summary:

Soon, electric passenger ferries skimming above the surface across the seas may become a reality. A research team has created a unique method for further developing hydrofoils that can significantly increase the range of electric vessels and reduce the fuel consumption of fossil-powered ships by 80 per cent. 



FULL STORY


Soon, electric passenger ferries skimming above the surface across the seas may become a reality. At Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, a research team has created a unique method for further developing hydrofoils that can significantly increase the range of electric vessels and reduce the fuel consumption of fossil-powered ships by 80 per cent.


While the electrification of cars is well advanced, the world's passenger ferries are still powered almost exclusively by fossil fuels. The limiting factor is battery capacity, which is not enough to power ships and ferries across longer distances. But now researchers at Chalmers and the marine research facility SSPA have succeeded in developing a method that can make the shipping industry significantly greener in the future. The focus is on hydrofoils that, like wings, lift the boat's hull above the surface of the water and allow the boat to travel with considerably less water resistance. A technology that in recent years has revolutionised sailing, by which hydrofoils make elite sailors' boats fly over the surface of the water at a very high speed. The researchers at Chalmers and SSPA now want to enable the sailboats' hydrofoil principle to be used on larger passenger ferries as well, resulting in major benefits for the climate.

"The electrification of ferries cannot be done without drastically reducing their water resistance. This method will allow the development of new foil designs that can reduce resistance by up to 80 per cent, which in turn would significantly increase the range of a battery powered ship. In this way, we could also use electric ferries on longer distances in the future," says research leader Arash Eslamdoost, Associate Professor in Applied Hydrodynamics at Chalmers and author of the study Fluid-Structure Interaction of a Foiling Craft published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering.

Even for ships that today run on fossil fuels the climate benefit could be significant, as similar hydrofoil technology could reduce fuel consumption by no less than 80 per cent.

Unique measurement method arouses broad interest

At the centre of the research project is a unique measurement technique that the researchers have put together in order to understand in detail how hydrofoils behave in the water when, for example, the load or speed increases or the positioning of the hydrofoil changes. Using the data collected from the experiments, the team has developed and validated a method to simulate and predict with great precision how the hydrofoil would behave under a variety of conditions. The method is unique of its kind and can now be used to develop the design of hydrofoils for electric powered hydrofoil ferries.

The study was conducted in collaboration with the research facility SSPA -- one of only a few of its kind in the world -- where Laura Marimon Giovannetti works as a researcher and project manager. She is the lead author of the study and has herself competed at the elite level for both the British and Italian national sailing teams. Today she is a research and development adviser to Sweden's Olympic committee and the Swedish national team with her sights set on helping the team win more medals at the Olympics in 2024. Marimon Giovannetti sees many possibilities for the unique measurement method developed by the team:

"At the Americas Cup in San Francisco Bay in 2013, it was the first time we saw a 72-foot sailing boat learning how to "fly" using hydrofoils during the competition. And since then, we've seen a huge increase in sailing boats with hydrofoils. With this new method and knowledge we are able to bring together a range of different branches of engineering -- naval architecture, advanced materials and aeronautics as well as renewable energy."

Paving the way for hydrofoils on electric ferries

Hydrofoil technology is not in itself a novelty, but was developed as early as the 60s and 70s. Back then the focus was on getting boats to travel at as fast as possible and the hydrofoils were made of steel, a heavy material with higher maintenance costs. Today's modern hydrofoils are made of carbon fibre, a much lighter and stiffer material that can maintain its rigidity even under high loads -- and can be tailored to the expected loads. Part of the research project was therefore to fully understand how a carbon fibre structure behaves underwater during different operational conditions. The research team's method developed in association with modern technology is now paving the way for the use of carbon fibre hydrofoils on larger passenger ships that can travel in a safe, controlled and climate-friendly way even at low speeds.

"You want the foil to be as efficient as possible, which means carrying as much weight as possible at as low a speed as possible with the least resistance. Our next goal is to use this method when designing more efficient hydrofoils for ferries in the future," says Eslamdoost.







Story Source:

Materials provided by Chalmers University of Technology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference: Laura Marimon Giovannetti, Ali Farousi, Fabian Ebbesson, Alois Thollot, Alex Shiri, Arash Eslamdoost. Fluid-Structure Interaction of a Foiling Craft. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, 2022; 10 (3): 372 DOI: 10.3390/jmse10030372

Canada rules Israeli settlement wine labels violate law

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/canada-rules-israeli-settlement-wine-labels-violate-law






Nora Barrows-Friedman Activism and BDS Beat 2 June 2022

The wine produced by the Psagot Winery is made from grapes sourced from five other Israeli settlement colonies. Debbie Hill UPI

In a legal defeat for Israeli settlement wineries, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has ruled – once again – that wines produced in Israeli settlement colonies cannot be labeled “product of Israel.”

The agency upheld its original 2017 declaration that wines made inside illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank were falsely labeled.

But immediately following that ruling, Israel lobby groups pressured the agency to reverse its decision – which it did, about 24 hours later.

For years, science professor and activist David Kattenburg has been urging the Canadian government to require Israeli settlement wineries to label their bottles with an accurate geographic origin.

In 2017, he discovered that two wines on sale in Canada with “product of Israel” labels were actually produced in the Psagot and Shiloh settlements in the occupied West Bank.

“What this meant to me was that Israel was claiming sovereignty over Palestinian territory on Canadian store shelves, because that’s what the label means,” Kattenburg told The Electronic Intifada.

“It comes down to Israel’s claim, really, that all these lands west of the Jordan River all belong to Israel. And by allowing this on Canadian store shelves, Canada is effectively saying, ‘Sure, we agree,’ although the Canadian government would deny that its acceptance of ‘product of Israel’ labels is tantamount to endorsing Israeli annexation,” Kattenburg explained.

The wine produced by the Psagot Winery, near Ramallah, is made from grapes sourced from five other settlements.

It was served at US Vice President Kamala Harris’ Passover seder on 15 April, drawing condemnation from human rights groups.





The Canadian government, led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, considers the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syria’s Golan Heights to be occupied territories, not part of Israel.



It maintains that Israel’s settlement colonies in these areas violate international law. But Trudeau, like his counterparts in the US and Europe, has consistently blocked attempts to hold Israel accountable at the international legal level.

And Israel has yet to face economic or political consequences from those allies, including Canada, over its settlement policies.





“A crime”

After the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s reversal, Kattenburg and his lawyer, Dimitri Lascaris, appealed to the Federal Court of Canada.

The court agreed with the food agency’s original decision, and ruled in July 2019 that the settlement wine labels were “false, misleading and deceptive.”

The Trudeau government, under heavy pressure from Israel lobby groups and Israeli government officials, soon appealed the ruling.

The federal appeals court dismissed the government’s submission, but sent the matter back to the food inspection agency to review its decision with new submissions from both Kattenburg and the Psagot Winery.

Amongst the evidence Kattenburg then filed to the court were land deeds showing that Psagot Winery is on stolen Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.

“All of those settlement wines from up and down [the West Bank] and in the Golan, they’re all yielding grapes that are generating juice for wine, and those grapes were grown on lands seized from Palestinians who still, many of them, own legal title to that land. It’s a crime,” Kattenburg said.
Working toward a ban

Civil and human rights groups in Canada welcomed the food agency’s 13 May ruling.





“It’s a major victory,” Lascaris told The Electronic Intifada. “What we have here right now is a clear cut, unequivocal decision that a product of Israel label standing alone – those are the key words, standing alone – is a violation of Canadian law.”



But, he said, Palestine solidarity campaigners like Kattenburg must prepare for ongoing fights even when the courts rule in favor of international law.

“When you get a victory, you have to protect it because they’ll try to claw it back. The defenders of the State of Israel tried to claw that victory back, and they’re very good at doing that,” he noted.

To that end, the food agency’s ruling failed to explicitly clarify how the settlement wine labels should be altered – a point that has “pleased” the Psagot Winery’s attorney, David Elmaleh.

Elmaleh told Canadian Jewish News that the agency’s ruling “appears to leave open the possibility” that the wines can remain labeled as “Product of Israel” by simply adding “Made in the Indigenous Jewish homeland in the Israeli-administered West Bank” or “Made in the Shomron on land administered by the State of Israel.”

Lascaris noted that although he and Kattenburg are preparing to fight Psagot’s revised label, they won’t have to go through another five years of litigation again since the food agency has already agreed with their complaint.

“If you’re going to let them sell [the wines] in Canada, what you need to make sure consumers understand is that they’re coming from occupied Palestinian territory and they’re coming from a settlement,” he said.

“Because only then will you know that you are buying a product that is produced by people who are violating international law, who are in fact committing a war crime. That’s what consumers who act in accordance with their conscience need to know and deserve to know and want to know,” Lascaris added.

He ​​explained that there are three open questions that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency must resolve: “Will the CFIA require the word occupied to be on the label? Will the CFIA require the word settlement to be on the label? And will the CFIA require the word Palestinian to be on the label? I really don’t know what they’re going to do. I don’t think we should make any assumptions.”

“But really what we want to see is a ban,” he said. “David [Kattenburg] and I are adamantly of the view that these products shouldn’t be allowed into Canada at all.”

A history of naked imperialism continues as Biden approves Somalia redeployment

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/05/21/us-somalia-imperialism-military-biden-redeploy/


TJ Coles·May 21, 2022








Biden has reversed Donald Trump’s withdrawal of US forces from Somalia and will redeploy Special Operations Forces. It is just the latest move in a long history of destructive US-UK meddling in the Horn of Africa.

Almost as soon as the administration of President Joseph Biden announced a redeployment of US Special Operations Forces to Somalia on May 16, the Western media began to spin the intervention.

As the BBC framed it, Biden’s deployment would “support the fight against militant group al-Shabab” (sic). The intervention coincides with the re-election of former Somalian President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who governed between 2012 and ‘17.

Similarly, the New York Times (NYT) reported that “Biden has approved a Pentagon request for standing authority to target about a dozen suspected leaders of Al Shabab, the Somali terrorist group that is affiliated with Al Qaeda.”

But are these motives true? Does Washington really want merely to defeat al-Shabab? Is al-Shabab actually linked to al-Qaeda and, if so, to what degree? As usual, the mainstream state-corporate media reportage is missing context and reference to international law.

As we shall see, the context behind the US redeployment is naked imperialism using counterterrorism as the latest in a long line of excuses to interfere in the politics of the strategically-significant country on the Horn of Africa. In terms of international law, signatories of the UN Charter have legal responsibilities to gain authorization from the Security Council before launching military operations –– something the Biden administration and its predecessors have never done in Somalia, or anywhere else, for that matter.

It is also worth tackling the Trump-era propaganda, which is double-edged. Trump supporters claimed that their hero ended America’s “forever wars,” as he “bombed the shit out of ISIS,” in his words, which often meant dumping munitions on Iraqi and Syrian women and children, while blowing Somalis to pieces via drone operators in numbers greater than during Obama’s term. It is accurate that Trump withdrew US ground forces from Somalia, though it appears to have been both an America First PR stunt and a device to make things difficult for the incoming Biden administration.

On the other side, the pro-war, neoliberal, anti-Trump establishment sought to portray Trump’s withdrawal of ground troops as a sign of American weakness in the face of globalized “Islamic” terrorists. By demonizing Trump and inaccurately reporting the motives of his withdrawal, the NYT, BBC and company were essentially clamoring for US militarism in Somalia: Trump bad so militarism good. And as usual, their reporting was absent of any critical or skeptical voices.
The real agenda: “acquire and maintain the capability to respond to any military contingency that could threaten U.S. interests”

Billionaire-backed, self-appointed “fact-checkers” like Snopes, PolitiFact often rate what they call “fake news” as having “missing context,” yet mainstream state-corporate media operate almost entirely on an unspoken doctrine of propaganda-by-omission. Researchers are left to piece together the kind of coherent recent-historical narratives that MSM refuse to provide. Somalia’s “missing context” can be summarized as follows:

In 1997, the US Space Command (which is still operational, though its duties are largely second to the Space Force) committed the Pentagon to achieving “full spectrum dominance” of land, sea, air, and space by the year 2020, “to protect US interests and investment,” which means elite corporate interests. Since then, numerous oil-rich and strategically-important nations have been occupied by the US and its allies. Various Pentagon departments, including the Central Command and Africa Command, divide the world into self-appointed Areas of Responsibility, based on the given region and/or nation’s strategic relevance to the Pentagon. This follows Britain’s colonial model.

In the 1950s, the Colonial Office described Aden—the Gulf between Yemen and Somalia—as “an important base,” from which forces could rapidly deploy to the energy-rich Middle East. In those days, the so-called Scramble for Africa (which began in the late-19th century) was justified under the doctrine of the “white’s man burden”: the mission to civilize the backward black races, as their lands and resources were plundered.

But Somalia gained independence in 1960 before being governed by the one-time CIA-backed dictator Siad Barre, who ruled from 1969 to ‘91. At the time, US support for Siad—including his killing of tens of thousands of political rivals—was justified as part of American Cold War policy.

With the Cold War over and Siad deposed, successive US administrations tested new “interventionist” doctrines, the first post-Cold War ideology being humanitarian intervention. Operation Restore Hope was launched in 1992 by the outgoing George H.W. Bush administration, supposedly to provide humanitarian relief during the famine triggered by the civil war. But a Fort Leavenworth paper reveals a hidden agenda: “Throughout our involvement with Somalia, our overriding strategic objective was simply to acquire and maintain the capability to respond to any military contingency that could threaten U.S. interests in the Middle East, Northeast Africa and the Red Sea area.”

Under an umbrella of Islamic political parties, known as the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), most of them non-extremist, Somalia enjoyed a short period of peace, stability, and an increase in living standards. Branches of the UN, Amnesty International, and the British foreign policy think-tank Chatham House have acknowledged that the ICU prevented “piracy,” provided schooling for large numbers of children, and reduced malnutrition.
The US and UK wage proxy war on the ICU, infiltrate the movement with Al Qaeda extremists

The attacks of 9/11 in 2001 provided the George W. Bush administration an excuse to sanction Somali banks, even though the 9/11 Commission cleared the banks of wrongdoing. Since then, Somalia has become a testing ground for the imposition of cashless societies.

Convinced that the more right-wing elements of the ICU were “al-Qaeda” fronts, the Joint Special Operations Command and CIA operated covertly in Somalia. Failing to destroy the ICU from within, the US and Britain backed an opposition government in exile comprised of Ethiopian and other warlords.

In December 2006, Ethiopia invaded Somalia as a US-British proxy war. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis fled to neighboring Kenyan and Ethiopian refugee camps, while others made the perilous journey in rickety boats to Yemen. The so-called Transitional Federal Government was comprised of killers and torturers funded by the British taxpayer and given homes and citizenship in the UK. The war reversed the ICU’s social achievements and thousands starved in successive famines.

The frightening-sounding al-Shabab simply means “the Youth,” and was the young persons’ wing of the ICU. In 2007, with the non-violent ICU destroyed by a campaign of US-British terror, al-Shabab turned to violence to defend its country against Ethiopian aggressors and Somali collaborators. British intelligence agencies saw their chance to infiltrate al-Shabab with terrorists and transform it from a nationalist militia into an extremist group that could then be used as pretext for more Western aggression against Somalia. And indeed, some of the high-profile terrorists operating in Somalia post-9/11 were US-British intelligence assets.

It is well-known that the British and American militaries helped fuel the rise of what was later known as “al-Qaeda” to battle the Soviets in 1980s’ Afghanistan. One Afghanistan-based terror cell at the time was a Somali group called Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, whose leader Ahmed Abdi Godane went on to lead al-Shabab after the ICU collapsed. In London, an MI5 double agent tasked with spying on mosques tried in vain to alert his handlers to the fact that Osama Bin Laden’s main UK connection, Abu Qatada, was training and sending fighters to half a dozen Muslim-majority countries, including Somalia. TIME had reported that Qatada was an asset of MI5.


A US puppet takes control in Somalia as drone war escalates

In 2010, with war still raging, US President Obama signed Executive Order 13536, describing Somalia — a country nearly 8,000 miles away with a GDP of less than $5 billion — as an “extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” As you wipe tears of laughter away, notice the emphasis on “foreign policy”: non-compliant regimes in Somalia might threaten total US operational freedom along the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

That year, the radicalized and infiltrated al-Shabab launched its first foreign attacks (in Uganda and later Kenya), prompting regional governments to join the US in “counterterrorism” operations. A year later, drone strikes against “al-Shabab” and other groups began, killing at least 300 people by 2017; tragedies small in comparison to the hundreds of thousands who died in multiple, human-made famines over the last decade.

In 2011, the group allegedly pledged allegiance to “al-Qaeda.” The 2012 election of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud provided the US with a client who was described by Obama’s National Security Council spokesperson, Caitlin Hayden, as committed to “strengthen[ing Somalia’s] democratic institutions and promot[ing] economic development.”

By 2016, Bush and Obama had launched a total of 41 confirmed strikes largely from the US base at Camp Lemonier in neighboring Djibouti. The Shabab leader, Godane, was killed in one such strike. His replacement is supposedly named Ahmad Umar, and is a shadowy bogeyman about whom little is known. By 2020, Trump alone had launched 40 drone strikes against Somalia, eliminating AFRICOM’s accountability protocols.
Exploiting “playgrounds for a new scramble in the Horn of Africa”

We cannot say that corporate-state media do not do their job. They have successfully kept the public ignorant and deluded on virtually every geopolitical issue of significance. Nor can we say that the “war on terror” has failed (i.e., that after 20 years terror groups still operate), because it is not designed to combat terrorism. It is designed to produce an endless cycle of tit-for-tat killings and to create extremist groups where none previously existed. Permanent counterterrorism is a thin smokescreen to justify “full spectrum dominance” to the voting and taxpaying American public whose purse is plundered to fund these wars.

As we see from recent history, professed justifications for bloody US interference in impoverished Somalia shift according to the political climate: countering the Soviets until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, preventing famine under the guise of 1990s’ humanitarian intervention, stopping “pirates” as European ships plunder the starving country’s fish stocks, and, for the last two decades, fighting endless hordes of post-9/11 terrorists; many of them incubated in London by protected intelligence assets.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence recently announced that 70 personnel are training 1,000 Somalis as part of the African Union’s so-called Transition Mission in Somalia, “protecting civilians from Al Shabaab and other terrorist groups.” A more plausible reason for the ongoing US-British involvement is offered by a policy paper published last year by the European University: “Strategic areas of the western shore and the Horn of Africa are being incorporated in the Red Sea geopolitical map and Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia and Eritrea have become playgrounds for a new scramble in the Horn of Africa.”

As excuses change, the geographies of power remain the same. These strategic interests are the real motivations for war. Ordinary people, as always, pay the price.

A new generation of US-trained extremists is fighting Russia. Are we prepared for the blowback?

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/05/31/us-trained-extremists-fighting-russia-blowback/




TJ Coles·May 31, 2022








US agencies have directly and indirectly trained and empowered Nazis and ultra-nationalists at home and abroad to fight Russians in Ukraine. This program follows the blueprint established by Western intelligence agencies in Afghanistan and Syria.

From 1978 (not ’79 as many believe), the administration of Jimmy Carter decided to “draw the Russians into the Afghan trap,” in the words of the President’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. US intelligence called on its British counterparts to activate networks of Afghan fighters. New generations of extremists joined the fight. Aid, arms, and training poured into Afghanistan. Support increased following the Soviet invasion in December 1979.

Throughout the 1980s, tens of thousands of jihadis from dozens of Muslim-majority countries were flown into the US, Britain, and Pakistan to receive training from the CIA, Green Berets, US Marines, and British SAS and MI6. The foreign extremists later rebranded themselves “al-Qaeda” and launched a series of spectacularly bloody attacks on strategically significant targets that provided justification for a global “war on terror” that continues to serve as ideological cover for contemporary US hegemony.

The multi-billion dollar CIA operation to arm and train the so-called freedom fighters, or Afghan mujahedin, was known as Operation Cyclone. Successive administrations repeated the pattern in the 2010s, initiating Operation Timber Sycamore in a failed effort to depose Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Operation Mermaid Dawn before it in a successful effort to remove Muammar Gaddafi and destabilize Libya.

Today, the CIA, US Special Forces, and other branches of government are training regular units in Ukraine. With US support, far-right elements of those units go on to train and recruit for Nazi paramilitary units and gangs. White nationalist Americans are allowed to travel to Ukraine and train paramilitaries and/or receive training, depending on the individual or group. State-corporate media have confirmed the existence of a major CIA training program involving “irregular” (i.e., terrorist) warfare, but we do not yet know the name of the operation.

As Alex Rubinstein reported for The Grayzone, corporate US media has promoted known US white nationalists fighting in Ukraine as heroes, while whitewashing their records of murder and political violence. And while the Department of Homeland Security expresses “concern” over potential blowback when these openly fascist combat veterans return to the US, the administration of Joseph Biden appears to be doing nothing to stop them from making their way to the battlefield.

The US program in Ukraine bears such striking similarities to Operation Cyclone it could be dubbed “Cyclone 2.0”. The nature of the proxy war has all but been admitted by former US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and the endgame of regime change in nuclear-armed Russia has been acknowledged by President Joe Biden.




In pursuing these objectives, US and British elites are taking a nuclear gamble. As even the DHS has warned, their empowerment of neo-Nazis could open a new chapter in the “war on terror” in which civilians will suffer blowback from battle-hardened extremists – imagine the Buffalo shooter with advanced tactical training. Millions will be considered by authorities to be potential white supremacists, ultranationalists, and Nazis. And under the pretext of fighting white extremism, a new phase of total surveillance and foreign “intervention” might begin in the Caucasus and Baltic regions.
Running the ratline to Ukraine behind volunteer non-profit cover

Typical of the kind of operations taking place, former US Marine Benjamin Busch, ex-Infantry Officer Adrian Bonenberger, and Iraq War veteran Matt Gallagher, traveled to Lviv in Western Ukraine to train dozens of what are described by US media as Ukrainian civilians. Gallagher revealed that US intelligence agents were facilitating travel. Border and justice agencies were not obstructing departures and returns.

“(I reached out to) some friends who work in various government jobs, not so much asking them for permission in any kind of official capacity,” Gallagher stated, “but just wanting to know if there were any potential consequences. The almost universal response to that was, as long as they (the people he was training) are actual citizens, as long as this is focused on self-defense, as long as this is not some covert military, paramilitary operation, you’ll be fine. Some fellow Wake Forest [University] graduates [in North Carolina], who I won’t name because they do work for Uncle Sam, were very helpful in collecting information.”

Operations of this sort laid the groundwork for a mass “volunteer” scheme. The creation of an international volunteer force reflects the interests of the Azov Battalion — the Nazi-linked paramilitary unit that has undergone through several name changes (e.g., Azov Movement, Azov Regiment), reportedly de-Nazified, and has supposedly integrated into regular Ukrainian armed units. In reality, the Azov’s political wing, the National Corps (formerly the Patriots of Ukraine), is described as neo-Nazi by contemporary Western experts and even the US Department of Justice.

In February 2018, Azov stated on Discord: “[We] will have the foreign legion set up within the next 18 months or so.” Chiding the Ukrainian government for blocking their efforts, the National Corps’ young leader, Olena Semenyaka, said: “we hope to create a foreign legion. There we could announce loud and clear when we seek volunteers.” If the far-right Ukrainian puppet government was too soft, Azov leadership did not need to worry because Uncle Sam was there to facilitate the creation of an international volunteer league.

Describing itself as a 501(C)3 non-profit pending (hence no info shows up on the IRS website at the time of writing), Volunteers for Ukraine (VFU) has no overt connections to Azov. It was founded in February 2022 as “United Peacekeepers for Ukraine.” The original website was an extension of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ International Legion of Ukraine website.

The public relations-minded operatives behind the site evidently decided that the dovish name of the organization (“Peacekeepers”) was not likely to encourage anti-Russian fighters to volunteer, so they changed it to Volunteers for Ukraine. At the time of writing, the VFU website features images of protestors holding signs that include “Kill Putin…” and “Putin = Hitler”—a rather stark departure from peacekeeping. The new site puts names and faces to the organization, including the professed founder, David Ribardo; a former US Infantry Officer and Afghanistan War veteran. Despite the imagery and recent references to combat, Ribardo claims that VFU is a “humanitarian aid organization.”

VFU’s Chief Operations Officer is combat veteran Phillip Chatham, a former Diplomatic Security Missions leader for numerous US lawmakers. “As an In-Country Operations Manager he maintained facility clearances with multiple intelligence agencies,” says the site. The organization is also run by numerous veterans and PR specialists. Promoting VFU on CNN, another veteran, “Seth,” described working with refugees in Poland thanks to “some very gracious donations from some sponsors.”

This offers insight into how such operations are run: anonymous major donors operate veteran pipelines to Ukraine in neighboring countries. Ribardo says that his job includes vetting volunteers to weed out fantasists, “combat tourists,” and extremists, ensuring that only well-trained US veterans enlist.

The number of veterans who have volunteered is not disclosed, but Ribardo says that the figures are unlike anything seen “since World War Two.”
Extremists and accelerationists: “We’re gonna send home a lot of bodybags”

Other Americans fighting in Ukraine’s regular units included: Dalton Kennedy, a member of North Carolina’s branch of the white supremacist Patriot Front; David Kleman of Georgia who has been photographed sporting Nazi imagery; and Army veteran David Plaster of Missouri. According to British press reports, Plaster has trained “thousands of Ukrainians in tactical medicine,” and headed a team that included even elderly veterans, like former Marine Dave Eggen, who said of Russians: “We are going to send home a lot of bodybags.”

One such figure told Buzzfeed that they were questioned by federal agencies but still allowed to travel. “I tell them I don’t have anything to hide. Then they let me go. Every time.” In addition to the above fighters, known fascists are signing up to fight.

By March this year, at least 3000 US citizens were allegedly on the Ukrainian battlefield. In April, John T. Godfrey, the State Department’s Acting Coordinator for Counterterrorism, said of American extremists going to fight: “when they return, they have skill – they typically come back more radicalized than when they left … [T]hey do have hard skills that they are able to, in some cases, use in attacking targets domestically.” In intelligence circles, this is called “blowback.”

In April, I filed a freedom of information request with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to obtain documents on travelers to Ukraine and its neighbors, including Georgia and Poland, from 2014 to the present. The aim was to measure the size of “Cyclone 2.” From logs and incident reports that had come to the attention of the DHS, I wanted to know how many people had been stopped and questioned about their trips by federal or local authorities. The DHS unlawfully ignored my request, as they have a habit of doing: no acknowledgement, no delayed response, nothing.

Had the department answered, it might have confirmed the story of people like “Alex”: a US armed forces veteran who was connected to Ukraine by an anonymous online account. “Alex” ended up in the extremist-heavy Shyrokyne (near Mariupol), fought with Ukraine’s openly fascist party the Right Sector, and ended up recruiting other Americans for the Azov Battalion. (The source is the US and British intelligence cut-out, Bellingcat.)

Newsweek encountered similar obstructions. It noted that Azov’s political wing, the National Corps, has been connected to the US white supremacist Rise Above Movement, Germany’s Third Path, Italy’s Casa Pound, and other extremist groups. In their efforts to assess the scale of such connections in the US, Newsweek reporters approached the Department of Justice, FBI, and DHS for comment. Silence was the answer.

Newsweek pointed to Cossack House in Kiev as the main Azov recruiting center. Loaned to the Azov Battalion by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, the center’s library includes Nazi literature and is described by the Azov National Corps leader Semenyaka as “a small state within a state.” The number of Americans currently there is not known.

In addition to white supremacists, members of accelerationist groups — those that want to hasten society’s collapse in order to remold it in their image — are also present in Ukraine.

Former Marine Mike Dunn from Virginia is an informant and once-influential figure in the politically fluid Boogaloo Bois, having commanded its Last Sons of Liberty Faction. “There hasn’t been much activity in the Boogaloo movement since I walked away,” he says. After being exposed as an informant, Dunn disappeared from the scene only to reappear in February this year announcing his intention to fight in Ukraine via Poland by signing up to an undisclosed recruiting station.

“I wouldn’t say that I am necessarily trying to advance the cause of the Boogaloo movement … But I will say that the Boogaloo movement is going to be represented over there.” But this makes little sense. Who would follow a fink to Ukraine, except for mercenaries and fellow feds? Also, didn’t Dunn leave the movement, so how could he represent it in Ukraine? “I have a few that are following me there, I have one going with me there,” he says.

Henry Hoeft, a former US Army Infantryman and Boogaloo Boy from Ohio, was cautioned by the FBI against fighting in Ukraine, but was simultaneously advised by the Bureau to call the US Embassy if he got into trouble. Hoeft says: “I get it. They don’t want to be implicated if Russia harms any of us, and they don’t want to escalate the conflict by saying that they’re sending American soldiers over.” (See also Hoeft’s Grayzone interview.)

Dunn, the Boogaloo former leader and informant, confirmed his presence in Washington DC during the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally, but claims that he arrived late and did not participate in storming the Capitol. The Ukrainian Right Sector’s Serhiy Dubynin, an influential media figure working for the major Ukrainian channel, Inter, was also at the Capitol that day, signifying that the DHS-FBI “open-door” policy included Ukrainian extremists who would network in the US and vice versa. Dubynin was photographed with Jake Chansley; the highly-decorated US Navy veteran and self-styled “QAnon Shaman.” Dubynin was heard urging the Stop the Steal demonstrators to escalate from peaceful protest to violence: “Come on! … Do it!”



Fascists and Satanists bring their “fetish for death” to Ukraine

Between 2015 and ‘16, several American extremists went to Ukraine to enlist in regular units. Others formed a Right Sector paramilitary spinoff which according to colleagues “had a fetish for death and torture.” Pluto being the Roman god of hell. Their unit was called Task Force Pluto (TFP), named for the Roman god of death, and was led by a US Army deserter-turned-mercenary, Craig Lang, who had also worked as a contractor for the Ukrainian military. Lang operated alongside Brian Boyenger, an Iraq War veteran who served as a sniper in Ukraine. Lang recruited Americans for Ukraine and Boyenger vetted them.

Other TFP members included former Marines Quinn Rickert and Santi Pirtle. The two compiled video evidence of Lang torturing and murdering a local man as well as beating and drowning a young female (age unknown), as an Austrian called Benjamin Fischer — nicknamed “Bin Laden” — allegedly administered adrenaline injections to keep her conscious during the torture. The Department of Justice requested the evidence from their Ukrainian counterparts.

By 2017, a US military deserter, Alex Zwiefelhofer, had joined Lang via the Right Sector in Ukraine. The pair had planned to fight al-Shabaab in Sudan and the Venezuelan military. Upon questioning Zwiefelhofer, North Carolinian authorities discovered child porn on his phone. (The UK-based satanic group, the Order of Nine Angles and its Tempel ov Blood (sic, ToB) offshoot in the US infiltrate secular far-right groups and encourage child rape, possibly as a honeytrap on behalf of the security services).

Influenced by the SIEGE philosophies of the elderly Nazi pedophile James Mason (not to be confused with the late actor), the Atomwaffen Division (AWD, now called the National Socialist Order) was an apocalyptic-accelerationist group founded in 2015 and disbanded five years later. Mason bragged of there being “a lot of action in Ukraine … That’s pretty impressive.”

Private First Class Jarrett Smith, stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, was a fan of Atomwaffen and a member of the Feuerkrieg Division, founded in the Baltics in late-2018. Smith was also a self-proclaimed satanist, likely connected to the ToB. That group’s leader, Joshua Caleb Sutter, was an FBI informant whose seemed determined to infiltrate and “satanize” Nazi groups with the aim of destroying them from within.

Before joining the Army, Smith was planning to go to Ukraine to fight with the Azov Battalion via his connections to Craig Lang. Before he could go, Smith was set up by an undercover FBI agent and a third party (either an informant or another agent) who put them in touch. The undercover agent contacted Smith through chat forums to ask how to make bombs. In an illustration of how the feds set up fanatical dupes, the agent also said: “Got a liberal texas mayor in my sights (sic)! Boom with that IED [improvised explosive device] and that dude’s dead.”

Via a far-right entity called the Military Order of Centuria, the newly rebranded Azov Movement has been trained by the militaries of America, Britain, Canada, and France.




DHS incident logs note that in December 2018, AWD member Kaleb Cole returned from London with fellow neo-Nazis, Aidan Bruce Umbaugh and Edie Allison Moore. They had visited, among other countries, Ukraine. The DHS log is heavily redacted. Andrew Dymock (alias Blitz), the leader of Britain’s Sonnenkrieg Division (a unit of the AWD), was a member of the occultist Order of Nine Angles and has been pictured wearing an Azov Battalion t-shirt. Neo-Nazi Andrew Dymock (left), sporting an Azov Battalion t-shirt, with a fellow member of Atomwaffen’s UK chapter

The Rise Above Movement (RAM) is a network of American fascists, some of whom have been convicted of using violence against leftist demonstrators. In 2018, a leading Azov fascist and killer, Sergey Korotkikh, hosted RAM members in Kyiv. National Corps leader Semenyaka also hosted RAM members Michael Miselis of Lawndale, Benjamin Drake Daley of Redondo Beach, and Robert Rundo of Huntington (Calif.). Later that year as RAM members were charged with violence in the US. FBI Special Agent Scott J. Bierwirth said: “the Azov Battalion … is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations.”

According to Time magazine, after the white supremacist Brenton Tarrant murdered 51 people in Christchurch, NZ in 2019, “an arm of the Azov movement helped distribute the terrorist’s raving manifesto.” Among the many countries he reportedly visited was Ukraine.

Today, the neo-Nazi Wotanjugend (Wotan Youth) praises Tarrant as a hero and has distributed his manifesto. Indicative of their sympathies, in April 2020 the Azov National Militia leader Cherkas Mykhailenko conducted an interview with Wotanjugend’s Alexei Levkin. The Azov’s Nazi recruiting station, Cossack House, has also sold Wotanjugend merchandise.
Dire predictions of Ukraine blowback

US intelligence agencies have allowed an open-door policy for veterans, militia, and fascists to travel to Ukraine and its neighbors to kill as many Russian soldiers as possible. The FBI monitors some of the combatants, intervenes in some cases, but typically does nothing. The DHS allows the foreign fighters to travel and return with minimal obstruction. The US charity, Volunteers for Ukraine, is one of the organizations that provides a veneer of legitimacy for the operations that otherwise include extremists.

In Ukraine, meanwhile, US Special Forces are training the National Guard and other regular units, thereby providing a further layer of professional cover. However, with US training, some of these regulars go on to train far-right and Nazi paramilitaries; some Ukrainian, some American. The American fascists return home with the potential to use that training against domestic targets.

Former FBI agent turned consultant, Ali Soufan, notes that in the 1990s, the Afghan Taliban took advantage of constant conflict in the Central Asian country. “Pretty soon the extremists took over. The Taliban was in charge. And we did not wake up until 9/11. This is the parallel now with Ukraine,” Soufan said.

A 2021 report by the Military Academy West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center reinforced his point, stating that the Ukraine conflict “served as a powerful accelerator” for global white supremacy.

Also that year, Elissa Slotkin, chair of the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism declared: “As a former CIA officer who has looked at foreign terrorist organizations in the Middle East most of my career, I was struck by the threat these white supremacist groups pose, the amount of contact they have with extremists in the U.S., the minimal intelligence and diplomatic reporting we have on these groups, and the relative lack of review taken by the U.S. Government.”

Slotkin recommended thirteen white supremacist-extremist organizations including the Azov Battalion be banned. Today, Azov earns gushing praise in Western media and Slotkin is an ardent proponent of massive arms shipments to the Ukrainian military that hosts it.

Caitlin Johnstone: Ukraine ‘Solves’ Nazi Problem With New Logo

 

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/06/02/caitlin-johnstone-ukraine-solves-nazi-problem-with-new-logo/ 

 

June 2, 2022

The change in insignia isn’t being made to correct a misperception, it’s being made to obscure a correct perception.

Flag of the Patriot of Ukraine party, whose members formed the core membership of Azov in 2014. The wolfsangel-like symbol (?) supposedly represents the words “National Idea” (Ukrainian: ???? ?????, Ideya Natsii), and has been used since 1991 by the Social-National Party of Ukraine. (MrPenguin20/Wikipedia)

By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
Problem solved.

British empire rag The Times has an article out titled “Azov Battalion drops neo-Nazi symbol exploited by Russian propagandists,” which has got to be the most hilarious headline of 2022 so far (and I’m including The Onion and other intentionally funny headlines in the running).

“The Azov Battalion has removed a neo-Nazi symbol from its insignia that has helped perpetuate Russian propaganda about Ukraine being in the grip of far-right nationalism,” The Times informs us. “At the unveiling of a new special forces unit in Kharkiv, patches handed to soldiers did not feature the wolfsangel, a medieval German symbol that was adopted by the Nazis and which has been used by the battalion since 2014. Instead, they featured a golden trident, the Ukrainian national symbol worn by other regiments.”

Yeah that’s how you solve Ukraine’s Nazi problem. A logo change.

Claiming it’s “Russian propaganda” to say the Azov Battalion uses neo-Nazi insignia, and is ideologically neo-Nazi, is itself propaganda. A month ago Moon of Alabama published an incomplete list of the many mainstream western outlets who have described various Ukrainian paramilitaries as such, so if it’s only “Russian propagandists” who’ve been saying the Azov Battalion is neo-Nazi then Silicon Valley social media platforms should immediately ban outlets like NBC News, the BBC, The Guardian, and Reuters.

Before this war started this past February it wasn’t seriously controversial to say that Ukraine has a Nazi problem except in the very most virulent of empire spinmeister echo chambers. Even in the early days of the conflict it was still happening with mainstream publications who hadn’t yet gotten the memo that history had been rewritten, like this NBC News article from March titled “Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real, even if Putin’s ‘denazification’ claim isn’t.”

An excerpt:

Just as disturbing, neo-Nazis are part of some of Ukraine’s growing ranks of volunteer battalions. They are battle-hardened after waging some of the toughest street fighting against Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine following Putin’s Crimean invasion in 2014. One is the Azov Battalion, founded by an avowed white supremacist who claimed Ukraine’s national purpose was to rid the country of Jews and other inferior races. In 2018, the U.S. Congress stipulated that its aid to Ukraine couldn’t be used “to provide arms, training or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.” Even so, Azov is now an official member of the Ukraine National Guard.

So plainly it is not “Russian propaganda” to highlight the established fact that there are neo-Nazi paramilitaries in Ukraine who are receiving weapons from the U.S. and its allies. The change in insignia isn’t being made to correct a misperception, it’s being made to obscure a correct perception.

The change in insignia is a rebranding to a more mainstream-friendly logo, very much like Aunt Jemima rebranding to Pearl Milling Company due to the Jim Crow racism the previous branding evoked. The primary difference is that the corporate executives of Pearl Milling probably aren’t still interested in turning America back into an apartheid state.

As journalist Alex Rubenstein noted on Twitter, al Qaeda in Syria went through a similar rebranding not long ago for the exact same reasons:

Indeed it is very normal for the U.S. and its allies to provide backing to fascistic extremists in order to advance imperial agendas, because those tend to be the armed factions in a given area who are willing to inflict the brutal acts of violence upon their countrymen necessary to facilitate those agendas.

From far right militias in Latin America to tyrannical jihadists in the Middle East, this pattern of backing murderous fascists and then having to manage public perception of their depravity has been going on a long time.

After the U.S. alliance began working with al Qaeda-aligned factions to push regime change Syria, it eventually became necessary for them to rebrand to appease public concerns about their image. When the U.S.-backed Contras were committing human rights atrocities in Nicaragua to stomp out the leftist Sandinistas, the Reagan administration was launching a massive perception management campaign to manipulate the way people see the situation.

In Ukraine, neo-Nazi paramilitaries just happen to have been the armed thugs who were depraved enough to do what the empire needed done on the ground. As Ukrainian-American peace activist Yuliy Dubovyk explained for Multipolarista, they were the ones who were willing to fire upon their own countrymen in the eastern part of the nation.

“The people in Donetsk and Luhansk were less lucky. The coup government dispatched the military to suppress their insurrections.

At first many Ukrainian soldiers refused to shoot at their own countrymen, in this civil war that their U.S.-backed government started.

Seeing the hesitation of the Ukrainian military, far-right groups (and the oligarchs that were backing them) formed so-called “territorial defense battalions,” with names like Azov, Aidar, Dnipro, Tornado, etc.

Much like in Latin America, where U.S.-backed death-squads kill left-wing politicians, socialists, and labor organizers, these Ukrainian fascist battalions were deployed to lead the offensive against the militias of Donetsk and Luhansk, killing Russian-speaking Ukrainians.”

The fact that factions like the Azov Battalion have been the ones willing to get their hands dirty in Ukraine has been a major factor in their ability to shore up influence over the nation’s affairs far in excess of their numbers, a dynamic described in detail by The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Alex Rubenstein.

As noted by journalist Aaron Maté, when Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine these extremists openly threatened to lynch him if he worked to make peace with Russia as he had pledged to do.

And on that note, it’s another reminder that the U.S. could easily have prevented this entire war by simply giving Zelensky protection from those factions so that he could enact the peace mandate he’d been elected to enact. But of course the U.S. would never do such a thing, because the U.S. always wanted this war, and because the U.S. does not actually believe in democratic mandates, and because the U.S. does not actually oppose Nazism.

Which is why when concerns were raised about arming neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine, the only offer on the table was a logo change.

 

 

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium.  Her work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking her on Facebook, following her antics on Twitter, checking out her podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following her on Steemit, throwing some money into her tip jar onPatreon or Paypal, purchasing some of her sweet merchandise, buying her books Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix, Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

 

This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com and re-published with permission.

 

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.