Canada and the International Fools-Based Order
https://worldbeyondwar.org/canada-and-the-international-fools-based-order/?utm_content=buffer7ff3e By Cymry Gomery, Coordinator, Montreal for a World BEYOND War, September 21st, 2022
Statement for World Peace Day, September 21st, 2022
On September 18, 2022, Canadian Minister of National Defence Anita Anand was interrupted as she made a speech promoting Canada’s participation in the war in Ukraine. Caught by surprise when an activist raised a banner with the words, ”Trudeau, Freeland, Anand, Joly : Stop the War – Peace with Ukraine and Russia” Anand invoked the NATO mantra: ”We are defending…. we are defending the International rules-based order to protect you, and everyone in this room, and our country safe [sic] ”
What is this rule-based order that politicians seem to call on whenever they are promoting war?
Some say that the rules-based order is only a vague concept invented by G7 countries to lull us into accepting their presumptive international hegemony. Nonetheless, there is a formal international body that sets rules: the United Nations. And, when it comes to war, or the potential for war, Chapter VI of the UN Charter enjoins all countries to seek to resolve their disputes through peaceful means. If this doesn’t work, they are to refer it to the UN Security Council (UNSC), which could recommend solutions.
But what if countries are considering war and they know in advance that the UNSC would not offer a resolution in their favor, because of their self-serving motives? Take, for example, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, widely considered to be a U.S. proxy war. However, not only the U.S., but also Europe, Canada, Australia and China—just about everyone with an army–has economic interests in this war, which can be seen as a geopolitical tug-of-war for valuable commodities like lithium, gas, and wheat.
How do Canadian interests stand to benefit from the Russia-Ukraine war? It is already happening :
- Canada increased oil and gas exports in 2022 as Russia’s former customer nations sought alternative energy supplies;
- The US, EU, Canada, Australia, China, and Russia are all very interested in the Lithium deposits in Ukraine, which are among the largest in the world. The outcome of this war determines which players nab the market for this key climate-change era mineral.
- Before the Russia-Ukraine war, Russia was expected to become one of the world’s largest exporters of hydrogen, and was poised to supply hydrogen fuel to Germany. However, Russia is now faced with economic sanctions and the unwillingness of the world’s most powerful nations and largest economies to do business with Russia. All this appears very convenient for Justin Trudeau and his government, who can now scoop up hydrogen exports to the EU.
So, how can we really keep a straight face when Anand invokes the International Rules-based order? Perhaps we should call it what it really is, an attempt to hoodwink the gullible public into thinking the Canadian government is sending weapons to Ukraine for altruistic, morally sound reasons, when in fact the Liberals are just doing what they do best : looking after the ”economy” (read corporate profits) and protecting their own assets.
On this International Day of Peace, we will put on our good faith hat (not to be confused with a fools cap) and respectfully ask the Canadian government to take these measures :
As the image below suggests, (Anand’s comment about our safety notwithstanding), defense spending is more indicative of a nation’s geopolitical aggressiveness than its concern for the well-being of its citizens.
The Canadian government (our representatives, in case they forgot) could use the money thus saved to implement the Green New Deal and basic income, to address climate change, to build houses, to protect Canada’s remaining wild spaces, to make national parks into Indigenous protected areas, and so much more.
We will need a nationwide consultation to decide on how best to spend this money creatively, in a life-affirming way, which is something we are not yet that experienced doing. But I am sure we will manage.
So, on this day dedicated to world peace, let’s chart a new course. Let us repudiate a foolish, nihilistic world order predicated on militarism and destruction, and vow henceforth to champion and advance a hopeful, loving world order that outlaws war.
New Zealand Calls It Quits On Aiding Ukraine’s Military
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/new-zealand-calls-it-quits-aiding-ukraines-military BY TYLER DURDEN, WEDNESDAY, SEP 28, 2022.
At a moment Washington continues what’s essentially an endless arms and financial aid pipeline to Ukraine, and as some defense officials express concerns over the Pentagon’s own dwindling stockpiles, one country says it’s giving up on arming Kyiv.
New Zealand, which is one of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing partners which includes the US, now says it can no longer keep up with supplying what Ukraine is asking for without depleting its stockpiles.
“The New Zealand government has expanded sanctions on key Russians, but cannot provide further military assistance as it has nothing Ukraine wants,” The Canberra Times reports Tuesday.
Defense Minister Peeni Henare said his country stands “ready to provide further lethal aid if Ukraine’s needs matched its stockpiles.”
The top defense official then confirmed it is currently the case that the military cannot keep up:
Asked on Tuesday whether New Zealand had considered further military support, Mr Henare said the requests didn’t match “on our current assessment and according to the requests in the donor meetings I’ve been on”.
“On those donor calls, they’ve come asking and it’s for HIMARS, land-to-air defence systems and also land-to-sea defence systems,” he said.
So far, New Zealand’s contribution has been meager – given also it’s a tiny Pacific island nation – compared to European countries, and has been focused on defensive equipment such as body armor.
“If they were things we were to procure, they would take years but that hasn’t stopped us providing military aid,” PM Jacinda Ardern commented this week on the logistical challenges in procuring and then shipping weapons abroad.
But as a major non-NATO ally of the United States and major intelligence-sharing partner, New Zealand is without doubt assisting the US mission in support of Ukrainian forces in this arena. It is also vowing more sanctions, and has typically signed off on whatever fresh US and EU anti-Russia sanctions are rolled out.
The Insanity That Grips Washington – militarism applauded in New York Times
You know you’re living in a profoundly sick society when the world’s most influential newspaper runs propaganda for World War III while voices pushing for truth, transparency and peace are marginalized, silenced, shunned, and imprisoned, writes Caitlin Johnston.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/09/28/the-insanity-that-grips-washington/ By Caitlin Johnstone, CaitlinJohnstone.com, 28 Sept 22,
The New York Times, which consistently supports every American war, has published an op-ed by a neoconservative think tanker titled “Biden’s Cautious Foreign Policy Imperils Us“.
This would be Joseph Biden, the president of the United States who has been consistently vowing to go to war with the People’s Republic of China if it attacks Taiwan, and whose administration has been pouring billions of dollars into a world-threatening proxy war in Ukraine which it knowingly provoked and from which it has no exit strategy.
With this administration’s acceleration toward global conflict on two different fronts, one could easily argue that Biden actually has the least cautious foreign policy of any president in history.
“In the aftermath of Vladimir Putin’s recent nuclear threat and call-up of reservists, it was reassuring for the leader of the free world to be unflinching,” writes the article’s author Kori Schake, who then adds, “Rhetoric aside, the administration has signaled in numerous other ways that Putin’s threats have constrained support for Ukraine.”
As though the possibility of nuclear war should not constrain U.S. proxy warfare in that country. As though the crazy thing is not the U.S. government’s insane nuclear brinkmanship with Russia, but its reluctance to go further.
More Money for War
Schake criticizes the fact that while Biden has been saying a PRC attack on Taiwan would mean a direct U.S. hot war with China, the U.S. military would need far more funding and far greater expansion to be able to win such a war, so it should definitely do those things instead of simply not rushing into World War Three.
“But worse are the real gaps in capability that call into question whether the United States could indeed defend Taiwan,” Schake writes, adding:
“The ships, troop numbers, planes and missile defenses in the Pacific are a poor match for China’s capability. The director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, has assessed that the threat to Taiwan between now and 2030 is ‘acute,’ yet the defense budget is not geared to providing improved capabilities until the mid-2030s. More broadly, the Biden administration isn’t funding an American military that can adequately carry out our defense commitments, a dangerous posture for a great power. The Democratic-led Congress added $29 billion last year and $45 billion this year to the Department of Defense budget request, a measure of just how inadequate the Biden budget is.”
As Shchake discusses the urgent need to explode the U.S. military budget [already at $777.7 billion] in order to defend Taiwan, The New York Times neglects to inform us that Schake’s employer, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), has been caught accepting a small fortune from Taiwan’s de facto embassy while churning out materials urging the U.S. government to go to greater lengths to arm Taiwan.
In a 2013 article titled “The Secret Foreign Donor Behind the American Enterprise Institute,” The Nation’s Eli Clifton reports that, thanks to a filing error by AEI, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office was found to have been one of the think tank’s top donors in 2009. Had that filing error not been made, we never would have learned this important information about AEI’s glaring conflict of interest in its Taiwan commentary.
AEI is one of the most prominent neoconservative think tanks in the United States, with extensive ties to Bush-era neocons like John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, and the Kristol and Kagan families, and has played a very active role in pushing for more war and militarism in U.S. foreign policy. Dick Cheney sits on its board of trustees, and Mike Pompeo celebrated his one year anniversary as C.I.A. director there.
Epitome of the Revolving Door
Schake herself is as intimately interwoven with the military-industrial complex as anyone can possibly be without actually being a literal Raytheon munition.
Her resume is a perfect illustration of the life of a revolving door swamp monster, from a stint at the Pentagon, to the university circuit, to the National Security Council, to the U.S. Military Academy, to the State Department, to the McCain-Palin presidential campaign, to the Hoover Institution, to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, to her current gig as director of foreign and defense policy studies at AEI.
Her entire career is the story of a woman doing everything she can to promote war while being rewarded with wealth and prestige for doing so.
And now here she is being granted space in The New York Times, a news media outlet of unrivaled influence where enemies of U.S. militarism and imperialism are consistently denied a platform, to tell us all that the Biden administration is endangering us not with its insanely reckless hawkishness, but by being too “cautious”.
One of the craziest things happening in the world today is the way westerners are being trained to freak out all the time about Russian propaganda, which barely exists in the west, even as we are hammered every day with extreme aggression by the immensely influential propaganda of the U.S.-centralized empire.
You know you are living in a profoundly sick society when the world’s most influential newspaper runs propaganda for World War Three while voices pushing for truth, transparency and peace are marginalized, silenced, shunned, and imprisoned.
Zelensky Reveals How Much US Taxpayers Give Ukraine Monthly
He immediately pivoted to repeating Kyiv’s longtime complaint that it’s not enough – because it’s never enough – though by and large the common American taxpayer seems oblivious amid the onslaught of constant war headlines.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/09/tyler-durden/zelensky-reveals-how-much-us-taxpayers-give-ukraine-monthly/ MCViewPoint, ByTyler Durden, Zero Hedge 28 Sept 22,
Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky boasted in a CBS “Face the Nation” interview which aired Sunday that Washington is providing him with a whopping $1.5 billion per month for state coffers as the country piles up a large war-time deficit.
“The United States gives us $1.5 billion every month to support our budget to fight” against Russia the Ukrainian leader explained, but pointed out there remains “a deficit of $5 billion in our budget.” He immediately pivoted to repeating Kyiv’s longtime complaint that it’s not enough – because it’s never enough – though by and large the common American taxpayer seems oblivious amid the onslaught of constant war headlines.
Zelensky said, after revealing the astonishing $1.5 billion in aid on a monthly basis figure, “But believe me, it’s not even nearly enough to cover the civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, universities, homes of Ukrainians. Why do we need this? We need the security in order to attract our Ukrainians to come back home.”
“If it’s safe, they will come, settle, work here and will pay taxes and then we won’t have a deficit of $5 billion in our budget. So it will be a positive for everybody,” the Ukrainian leader continued. “Because as of today the United States gives us $1.5 billion every month to support our budget to fight- fight this war. However, if our people will come back- and they do want to come back very much, they have a lot of motivation- they will work here.”
And then the United States will not have to continue, give us this support,” he concluded, though the way things are going it could be years before the US might “not have to continue” the nonstop aid. Zelensky appeared to be trying to present a strange “win-win” for American, though again if average US taxpayers grasped the full enormity of it, they certainly might question that narrative.
Ironically, or tiresomely, just a day after Zelensky complained “But believe me, it’s not even nearly enough”… Congress is poised to push through another $12 billion, according Reuters.
“Negotiators to a stop-gap spending bill in the U.S. Congress have agreed to include about $12 billion in new aid to Ukraine in response to a request from the Biden administration, a source familiar with the talks said on Monday,” Reuters detailed. “Earlier this month, U.S. President Joe Biden asked Congress to provide $11.7 billion in new emergency military and economic aid for Ukraine.”
It should be recalled that it was only in July that the Associated Press and NPR called attention to a hugely inconvenient fact and problem which never went away:
As it presses ahead with providing tens of billions of dollars in military, economic and direct financial support aid to Ukraine and encourages its allies to do the same, the Biden administration is now once again grappling with longstanding worries about Ukraine’s suitability as a recipient of massive infusions of American aid.
Those issues, which date back decades and were not an insignificant part of former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, had been largely pushed to the back burner in the immediate run-up to Russia’s invasion and during the first months of the conflict as the U.S. and its partners rallied to Ukraine’s defense.
But Zelenskyy’s weekend firings of his top prosecutor, intelligence chief and other senior officials have resurfaced those concerns and may have inadvertently given fresh attention to allegations of high-level corruption in Kyiv made by one outspoken U.S. lawmaker.
US, UK sabotaged peace deal because they ‘don’t care about Ukraine’: fmr. NATO adviser
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/09/27/us-uk-sabotaged-peace-deal/ AARON MATÉ· SEPTEMBER 27, 2022,
Former Swiss intelligence officer and NATO adviser Jacques Baud on the next phase of the Russia-Ukraine war and new allegations that the US and UK undermined a peace deal that could have ended it.
The West’s aim “is not the victory of Ukraine, It’s the defeat of Russia,” Baud says. “The problem is that nobody cares about Ukraine. We have just instrumentalized Ukraine for the purpose of US strategic interests — not even European interests.”
Guest: Jacques Baud. Former intelligence officer with the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service who has served in a number of senior security and advisory positions at NATO, the United Nations, and with the Swiss military.
Corrections:
- In his Sept. 21 speech, Putin did not make an explicit threat to use nuclear weapons. He vowed to “make use of all weapon systems available to us,” in the event of “a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people.”
On nuclear weapons, the US did not have a “No First Use” policy. On the 2020 campaign trail, Joe Biden said that he supported the idea of “No First Use.” He abandoned that in his presidential nuclear posture; but that was reversing his campaign stance, not official US policy.
USA government, Pentagon, happy to escalate to a nuclear war – at the behest of Volodymyr Zelensky ?
As I really dislike Rupert Murdoch’s News Corpse, Tucker Carlson, and the whole pro Trump brigade, it pains me to have to promote them in any way. BUT – if they happen to be telling the facts, with a credible interpretation of what is going on in Ukraine – can we afford to just dismiss them, while the “respectable” corporate Western media idolises Zelensky, and promotes the escalation of the war?
What are tactical nuclear weapons? An international security expert explains and assesses what they mean for the war in Ukraine
I believe Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine would not achieve any military goal. It would contaminate the territory that Russia claims as part of its historic empire and possibly drift into Russia itself. It would increase the likelihood of direct NATO intervention and destroy Russia’s image in the world.
The Conversation, Nina Srinivasan Rathbun, Professor of International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, 28 Sept 22,
Tactical nuclear weapons have burst onto the international stage as Russian President Vladimir Putin, facing battlefield losses in eastern Ukraine, has threatened that Russia will “make use of all weapon systems available to us” if Russia’s territorial integrity is threatened. Putin has characterized the war in Ukraine as an existential battle against the West, which he said wants to weaken, divide and destroy Russia.
U.S. President Joe Biden criticized Putin’s overt nuclear threats against Europe. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg downplayed the threat, saying Putin “knows very well that a nuclear war should never be fought and cannot be won.” This is not the first time Putin has invoked nuclear weapons in an attempt to deter NATO.
I am an international security scholar who has worked on and researched nuclear restraint, nonproliferation and costly signaling theory applied to international relations for two decades. Russia’s large arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, which are not governed by international treaties, and Putin’s doctrine of threatening their use have raised tensions, but tactical nuclear weapons are not simply another type of battlefield weapon.
Tactical by the numbers
Tactical nuclear weapons, sometimes called battlefield or nonstrategic nuclear weapons, were designed to be used on the battlefield – for example, to counter overwhelming conventional forces like large formations of infantry and armor. They are smaller than strategic nuclear weapons like the warheads carried on intercontinental ballistic missiles.
While experts disagree about precise definitions of tactical nuclear weapons, lower explosive yields, measured in kilotons, and shorter-range delivery vehicles are commonly identified characteristics. Tactical nuclear weapons vary in yields from fractions of 1 kiloton to about 50 kilotons, compared with strategic nuclear weapons, which have yields that range from about 100 kilotons to over a megaton, though much more powerful warheads were developed during the Cold War.
For reference, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, so some tactical nuclear weapons are capable of causing widespread destruction. The largest conventional bomb, the Mother of All Bombs or MOAB, that the U.S. has dropped has a 0.011-kiloton yield.
Delivery systems for tactical nuclear weapons also tend to have shorter ranges, typically under 310 miles (500 kilometers) compared with strategic nuclear weapons, which are typically designed to cross continents.
Because low-yield nuclear weapons’ explosive force is not much greater than that of increasingly powerful conventional weapons, the U.S. military has reduced its reliance on them. Most of its remaining stockpile, about 150 B61 gravity bombs, is deployed in Europe. The U.K. and France have completely eliminated their tactical stockpiles. Pakistan, China, India, Israel and North Korea all have several types of tactical nuclear weaponry.
Russia has retained more tactical nuclear weapons, estimated to be around 2,000, and relied more heavily on them in its nuclear strategy than the U.S. has, mostly due to Russia’s less advanced conventional weaponry and capabilities.
Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons can be deployed by ships, planes and ground forces. Most are deployed on air-to-surface missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, gravity bombs and depth charges delivered by medium-range and tactical bombers, or naval anti-ship and anti-submarine torpedoes. These missiles are mostly held in reserve in central depots in Russia.
Russia has updated its delivery systems to be able to carry either nuclear or conventional bombs. There is heightened concern over these dual capability delivery systems because Russia has used many of these short-range missile systems, particularly the Iskander-M, to bombard Ukraine.
Tactical nuclear weapons are substantially more destructive than their conventional counterparts even at the same explosive energy. Nuclear explosions are more powerful by factors of 10 million to 100 million than chemical explosions, and leave deadly radiation fallout that would contaminate air, soil, water and food supplies, similar to the disastrous Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown in 1986. The interactive simulation site NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein depicts the multiple effects of nuclear explosions at various yields………………………………
Tactical nuclear weapons are substantially more destructive than their conventional counterparts even at the same explosive energy. Nuclear explosions are more powerful by factors of 10 million to 100 million than chemical explosions, and leave deadly radiation fallout that would contaminate air, soil, water and food supplies, similar to the disastrous Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown in 1986. The interactive simulation site NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein depicts the multiple effects of nuclear explosions at various yields…………………….
While there is disagreement among experts, Russian and U.S. nuclear strategies focus on deterrence, and so involve large-scale retaliatory nuclear attacks in the face of any first-nuclear weapon use. This means that Russia’s threat to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent to conventional war is threatening an action that would, under nuclear warfare doctrine, invite a retaliatory nuclear strike if aimed at the U.S. or NATO.
Nukes and Ukraine
I believe Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine would not achieve any military goal. It would contaminate the territory that Russia claims as part of its historic empire and possibly drift into Russia itself. It would increase the likelihood of direct NATO intervention and destroy Russia’s image in the world.
Putin aims to deter Ukraine’s continued successes in regaining territory by preemptively annexing regions in the east of the country after holding staged referendums. He could then declare that Russia would use nuclear weapons to defend the new territory as though the existence of the Russian state were threatened. But I believe this claim stretches Russia’s nuclear strategy beyond belief.
Putin has explicitly claimed that his threat to use tactical nuclear weapons is not a bluff precisely because, from a strategic standpoint, using them is not credible. In other words, under any reasonable strategy, using the weapons is unthinkable and so threatening their use is by definition a bluff. https://theconversation.com/what-are-tactical-nuclear-weapons-an-international-security-expert-explains-and-assesses-what-they-mean-for-the-war-in-ukraine-191167
September 29 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “Hay! Alfalfa Is The Biggest Issue For Western Water” • All the reductions of water use cities can do will not be nearly enough to restore the Colorado River. But alfalfa farmers in one California irrigation district use far more water than the allotment for the state of Nevada. Alfalfa farms use almost […]
September 29 Energy News — geoharvey
AGL is quitting coal: What now on renewables, workers and the bottom line? — RenewEconomy
AGL Energy’s plan to quit coal power generation a decade ahead of schedule means a much bigger and faster pivot to renewables. How will it work? The post AGL is quitting coal: What now on renewables, workers and the bottom line? appeared first on RenewEconomy.
AGL is quitting coal: What now on renewables, workers and the bottom line? — RenewEconomy
Federal government tips $43m into decarbonising “hard to abate” sectors — RenewEconomy
ARENA launches grants program offering funds to companies in hard-to-abate sectors to integrate renewables and energy efficiency technologies. The post Federal government tips $43m into decarbonising “hard to abate” sectors appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Federal government tips $43m into decarbonising “hard to abate” sectors — RenewEconomy
Consumers want out of coal: De Brenni explains Queensland switch to renewables — RenewEconomy
Queensland energy minister tells the Energy Insiders podcast the plan to switch from coal to renewables was driven by climate impacts and consumer demand. The post Consumers want out of coal: De Brenni explains Queensland switch to renewables appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Consumers want out of coal: De Brenni explains Queensland switch to renewables — RenewEconomy
Energy Insiders: De Brenni on Queensland’s flip to renewables — RenewEconomy
Energy minister Mick de Brenni outlines how Queensland will make the switch from coal to 80 per cent renewables. Plus: Victoria’s storage target, and the latest from AGL. The post Energy Insiders: De Brenni on Queensland’s flip to renewables appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Energy Insiders: De Brenni on Queensland’s flip to renewables — RenewEconomy
Australia’s last coal holdout surrenders to the green energy revolution — RenewEconomy
The pace at which the defense of coal is falling by the wayside is extraordinary. Even Queensland, the state seen as the last hold out, has now mapped its exit. The post Australia’s last coal holdout surrenders to the green energy revolution appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Australia’s last coal holdout surrenders to the green energy revolution — RenewEconomy
September 27 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “Electric Vehicle Good, E-Bike Better, Cargo E-Bike Even Better” • “One bike that can do almost anything – commutes, trips to the store, daycare drop-off, leisure rides, and more.” So said the e-bike maker CERO, as it unveiled its CERO One. It’s all true! The CERO One feels like silk in motion to […]
September 27 Energy News — geoharvey
Antinuclear 