“The arrest, abuse, and intimidation of journalists in Iraq’s Kurdish region are deeply concerning and reflect a broader pattern of hostility toward press freedom,” said Sara Qudah, CPJ’s regional director. “Authorities must investigate these incidents transparently and ensure that journalists can report safely and without fear of retaliation or violence.”

In the early hours of July 9, Kurdish security forces, known as Asayish, arrested three journalists in Rovia, a subdistrict of the northern city of Duhok’s Bardarash area. The journalists — Taif Goran, a reporter for opposition-linked NRT TV; his camera operator, Rayan Sidqi; and Rizgar Kamil, a reporter for Westga News — had traveled to Erbil’s Khabat district to cover clashes between security forces and tribal fighters. After all journalists were blocked from entering the area, they returned to Rovia to broadcast live and were detained. They were released the afternoon of July 10, after more than 25 hours in custody.

Taif Goran told CPJ that at around midnight, during a live broadcast, five Asayish vehicles arrived and officers beat and blindfolded the journalists. “We were tortured and beaten as much as they could and pressured to quit journalism,” he said. “Later, we were moved to Bardarash and held in solitary cells that had been used as toilets, in 35-degree (95 F) heat with no ventilation or water for hours.”

Goran said they were forced to unlock their phones, which were returned on July 15 with all their data erased.

Kamil told CPJ that officers beat the men during the arrest and again at the Asayish office in the city of Rovia. “They called us traitors and chaotic,” he said. “My phone was reformatted, and my back still hurts from the beating.”

On July 14, three security personnel assaulted Hersh Qadir, head of NRT’s Erbil office, while he was covering a protest in Erbil’s Ainkawa district. He told CPJ that a man in plainclothes identifying himself as an Asayish officer ordered him not to broadcast.

CPJ contacted the Bardarash Asayish by phone, where officials confirmed the arrests but denied any assault or torture, offering no further explanation.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Lauren Wolfe.

The species in question is Homo sapiens, as the title has already revealed. Humans are not on any country’s endangered species list, even though many well-qualified analysts believe that extinction could easily occur in the coming few decades (1-2 human generations). Human collapse or disappearance is certainly more likely if the global political scene does not change dramatically and soon. Experts generally agree on the two most likely mechanisms underlying potential human extinction: (1) continued or increased greenhouse gas emissions; (2) nuclear war. Noam Chomsky (among many others) has repeatedly warned of these dual risks in recent years. Both mechanisms are promoted by increases in the human population size. One important consequence of either mechanism is that it will lead to the collateral extinction of a huge number of other species.  Thus, the relationships of the U.S. government with those of Russia and China, and all three countries’ policies regarding greenhouse gas emissions have major implications for the survival of a large fraction of the earth’s species.

The interdependence of the climate crisis and nuclear war is seldom analysed. However, both potential causes of human extinction act in part by producing climate changes that would destroy a large amount of global agricultural production for a significant period, and thereby cause mass starvation.  A large-scale nuclear war would immediately inject enough particulates into the stratosphere to cool the earth and eliminate agriculture in most areas for the following two years.¹ This, in turn, would probably kill almost all surviving human beings. Warming due to greenhouse gas production will also eliminate a good deal of agricultural and other plant production, leading to starvation.  Atmospheric warming effects would occur over a somewhat longer time span than those of a war, and the effects would vary greatly across space.  Although the consequences for human population size will initially be less dramatic, greenhouse-gas-driven climate changes will be much longer-lasting than those from a nuclear war. The effects of warming on human populations are already substantial.  The U.N. has recently assessed that hunger affects 122 million more people than it did four years ago.

Climate change is almost universally expected to raise international tensions, as different countries experience different changes in their weather patterns.  Greatly increased migration, water diversion/competition, food shortages, and other tensions provoked by the uneven effects of, and responses to warming are likely to generate military responses in some cases.  Those involving nuclear-armed states would have a potential escalate to the use of nuclear weapons.  In turn, the risk of war accelerates warming by diverting funding that could potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the high CO₂-producing activities of military production.  Thus, the two risk factors are mutually reinforcing.  As with all positive feedback loops, situations can change extremely rapidly.

If large-scale nuclear war occurs first, global warming will be basically irrelevant for the first two years of darkness.  Even without many humans left, warming could still be an issue after that, depending on the natural processes involved.  If global warming reaches a sufficiently advanced stage to cause mass mortality in the populations of one or more large countries first, nuclear war becomes much more likely as a result.

Either of the two likely causes of human extinction/near-extinction will also lead to large numbers of plants and animals going extinct, as the tolerance ranges of many species will be exceeded.  The occurrence of war would likely cause extinction of most of the vertebrate species currently on endangered species lists, with continued warming also representing a major cause of extinction. Vertebrates are less likely to be able to shelter in microenvironments with more suitable temperatures under either mechanism. Species with relatively small spatial ranges are most likely to go extinct.  Organisms with short generation times or resting stages that can persist for many years would have the best chances being able to survive either human-caused disaster. Having relatively long generation times, most vertebrates’ abilities to evolve quickly under new climate regimes are limited.  By leaving out the likely future actions by the human population under current governance, the current laws regarding endangerment of other species are ignoring one of the most likely drivers of their extinction.

How likely is it that future human actions will prevent these two linked threats to their own existence and that of many other species? The track record of past human responses to each of the threats has been abysmal.  More disturbing is the fact that the current global political system actually promotes both global military conflict and the higher emissions that fuel global warming.

The rise in greenhouse gases and global temperature are well-documented, so there is no question about risk increasing.  Greenhouse gas concentrations have continued to increase over the 3+ decades that there has been scientific consensus over the need for action to prevent further increases. There is less certainty about how rapidly human death rates will increase and standards of living decrease in response to the resulting climate change. It is still possible for these adverse effects to be slowed by some future emissions reductions.  However, the weather record for 2023 thus far is showing that previously predicted climate changes are likely to be underestimates.  Despite many previous international agreements to reduce CO₂ and methane emissions, those decreases have not occurred on a global scale (other than a brief blip due to covid lockdowns).  Ignoring targets has been economically advantageous to high-emission countries in the short term.  Increases in the size of the human population, and the distraction of conflicts between countries have concurrently made the targets more difficult to achieve.

The future change in the risk of nuclear war is much more difficult to quantify than is warming.  The only widely used measure of risk is the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock, which is now closer to midnight than ever before.  While the exact setting is not based on quantifiable components, there is no question that the decrease in remaining seconds does reflect greater risks.  The abrogation of nuclear treaties over the past ten years and the continual modernization of weapons stocks in the two largest nuclear powers (U.S. and Russia) over the past two decades have both increased risks. U.S.-Russia relations have been deteriorating steadily for the past two decades.  The war in Ukraine is currently the single process most likely to lead to the use of nuclear weapons.  Ending that conflict before the nuclear stage has become steadily less likely over its 550+ day course, as more Russians and Ukrainians have died, and as the U.S. and NATO continue to exceed many previous ‘red-lines’ in sending more and more-dangerous weapons to Ukraine (most recently, cluster munitions).  Greater numbers of commentators and government officials on both sides have argued for actual use of nuclear bombs.

Under the present system of largely country-based decision-making, averting extinction due to either war or warming requires implementing effective counteractive policies by the countries that contribute most to the risk factors. Fortunately, nuclear weapons are only possessed by a small number of the world’s countries, and most greenhouse gases are also produced by a relatively small subset of countries. Unfortunately, agreement within either of these groups of countries has not proven possible over the many decades since both problems were recognized.  The lack of effective international agencies regulating either process has meant that countries have been free to pursue policies that have (or appear to have) short-term local benefits. This is a common problem of decision making between competing entities, whether those entities are individuals or groups of individuals, and whether the species is human or nonhuman.

Both biological evolution and human decision making are driven by the short term consequences of actions to individual entities.²  Under modern political organization the entities are political leaders, who are likely to put more weight on winning the next election rather than on the persistence of their country. They are also likely to falsely equate these two goals.  Humans have an evolutionary history of inter-group conflict involving violence.  The ease of producing inter-group hatred and violence has been reflected in previous conflicts; for example, World War I,³ and both U.S.-led wars in Iraq.⁴  Western news outlets, reflecting the views of political leaders, have been generating highly biased news about Russia for many years now, making it easier to sustain support for the current war in Ukraine.  This is the main factor in the current risk for nuclear conflict.

There has not yet been any sign of a move towards a ceasefire or peace negotiations in the Ukraine war.  John Mearsheimer has recently written, “Is a meaningful peace agreement possible? My answer is no. We are now in a war where both sides – Ukraine and the West on one side and Russia on the other – see each other as an existential threat that must be defeated. Given maximalist objectives all around, it is almost impossible to reach a workable peace treaty.”⁵ This leaves the question of how a nuclear war can be avoided.  Mearsheimer’s article appeared before the recent NATO meeting at Vilnius.  This gathering ended up promising Ukraine eventual membership, even though preventing NATO membership was the stated primary motivation for the original Russian invasion.  It is a recipe for perpetual war.  That war could easily become nuclear if the Russian government felt itself to be losing, but the NATO summit guaranteed that the current members would keep arming Ukraine until it ‘won’ the conflict.  The war has already led to remarks by some U.S. and Russian politicians and academics that nuclear weapons should be used.

The current demonization of Russia in the West makes it very difficult for the U.S. to avoid sending troops or directly attacking Russia if Ukraine is clearly losing.  If, on the other hand Russia was clearly losing, its current government, or its successor would almost certainly use nukes (previous President Dmitri Medvedev has said so publicly).  The extreme negative commentary on Russia in western NATO/media also makes it almost impossible for the West to accept any peace proposal that would be acceptable to the Russians.  If any of the Eastern European NATO members independently chose to join the war before the U.S., it would be obliged to join them.  This would not be NATO’s first ill-advised military venture.  Over the last three decades NATO has grown greatly, engaged in several aggressive wars, and become more obviously an arm of U.S. foreign policy, which has itself become more militaristic.  Alfred de Zayas has recently written that, “The bottom line is that … NATO forces since the 1990s have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity…, what is important today is that world public opinion recognizes NATO as a threat to the peace and security of humankind. Its serial provocations constitute the greatest danger to our survival as a species.”⁶ de Zayas expands on this theme in a subsequent article.⁷ It is particularly disturbing that all NATO members have just agreed to contribute a minimum of 2% of their GDP to NATO. In the case of my country (Canada), this is $40-45 billion, approximately the same as the total federal contribution to health care in a country where the public health care system is rapidly falling apart.  Canada and the U.S., as well as many other western nations, are prioritizing death over life.

A growing number of academics have issued warnings of the risk of a nuclear war growing out of the Ukraine conflict. These include prominent academics like John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago), Alfred de Zayas (Geneva School of Diplomacy), Richard Falk (University of California, SB) and Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University). Prominent journalists, including Glenn Greenwald, Jonathan Cook, Seymour Hersh, Aaron Maté and Jackson Lears, have made similar warnings. These, and other critics of current Western government foreign policies are largely shut out of mass media. With growing provocations of both Russia and China by the U.S., it seems increasingly unlikely that peace can be maintained.  The uniformity and bellicosity of foreign policy views of the mainstream media in the West seems to be increasing much more rapidly than any indicator of climate change.

The immediate hope is that at least one of the two main countries involved in policy determination in the Ukraine war (the U.S. or Russia) will change policy and interrupt the immediate process of escalation before it is too late.  However, this possibility has been decreasing over time and seems likely to continue to do so.  A major reason is the already weak position of the U.S. president (and declared candidate for 2024) in public opinion polls.  Admitting that sending 50 – 100 billion dollars to Ukraine had not produced any positive results would likely make a Biden victory impossible.  Vladimir Putin also faces an election in 2024, but his current within-country approval rating is approximately double Biden’s, possibly giving him a greater ability to make locally unpopular decisions.

The degree of non-nuclear escalation that causes a nuclear war to begin is impossible to predict.  Even if war over Ukraine is avoided, there the growing possibility is that the U.S. will simply shift its main military focus from Russia to China.  Tensions have already been ramped up by unnecessary weapons transfers and top U.S. political figures visiting Taiwan.  The manufactured Chinese ‘spy-balloon’ scare in February has also generated hostility towards China for no apparent reason.  Canada has lately been generating tensions with China with vague unsubstantiated stories of Chinese ‘meddling’ in Canadian politics. Even the wording of these stories is strikingly similar to the now discredited ‘Russian meddling’ stories in the U.S.

The current lack of action on climate change, and negative action on avoiding war provide lessons on some general principles would be needed in an Endangered Human Species Act. It is obvious that international bodies must have more power that they currently do.  They must also be less susceptible to manipulation by wealthy countries than the U.N. is today.  All countries need to have greater separation between government and media; that is particularly true in the U.S., where intelligence agencies have interfered massively in online media. Humankind must acknowledge the susceptibility of individuals in one group to supporting violent conflict with those having other affiliations; steps must be taken by governments to counteract this psychological flaw.  In the longer term, a smaller global population size would reduce many of the pressures for between-country conflict, as well as energy use.

Even if they were favoured by most people in most nations, these suggested principles probably won’t be applied quickly enough to reverse the growing risk of self-annihilation during the remainder of this decade.  However, some movement on one or two of the factors mentioned here could provide a longer time window in which to achieve the others. If the intertwined risks of extreme climate change and nuclear war are avoided, it will preserve many thousands of other species as well as our own.

ENDNOTES

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Peter Abrams.

The species in question is Homo sapiens, as the title has already revealed. Humans are not on any country’s endangered species list, even though many well-qualified analysts believe that extinction could easily occur in the coming few decades (1-2 human generations). Human collapse or disappearance is certainly more likely if the global political scene does not change dramatically and soon. Experts generally agree on the two most likely mechanisms underlying potential human extinction: (1) continued or increased greenhouse gas emissions; (2) nuclear war. Noam Chomsky (among many others) has repeatedly warned of these dual risks in recent years. Both mechanisms are promoted by increases in the human population size. One important consequence of either mechanism is that it will lead to the collateral extinction of a huge number of other species.  Thus, the relationships of the U.S. government with those of Russia and China, and all three countries’ policies regarding greenhouse gas emissions have major implications for the survival of a large fraction of the earth’s species.

The interdependence of the climate crisis and nuclear war is seldom analysed. However, both potential causes of human extinction act in part by producing climate changes that would destroy a large amount of global agricultural production for a significant period, and thereby cause mass starvation.  A large-scale nuclear war would immediately inject enough particulates into the stratosphere to cool the earth and eliminate agriculture in most areas for the following two years.¹ This, in turn, would probably kill almost all surviving human beings. Warming due to greenhouse gas production will also eliminate a good deal of agricultural and other plant production, leading to starvation.  Atmospheric warming effects would occur over a somewhat longer time span than those of a war, and the effects would vary greatly across space.  Although the consequences for human population size will initially be less dramatic, greenhouse-gas-driven climate changes will be much longer-lasting than those from a nuclear war. The effects of warming on human populations are already substantial.  The U.N. has recently assessed that hunger affects 122 million more people than it did four years ago.

Climate change is almost universally expected to raise international tensions, as different countries experience different changes in their weather patterns.  Greatly increased migration, water diversion/competition, food shortages, and other tensions provoked by the uneven effects of, and responses to warming are likely to generate military responses in some cases.  Those involving nuclear-armed states would have a potential escalate to the use of nuclear weapons.  In turn, the risk of war accelerates warming by diverting funding that could potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the high CO₂-producing activities of military production.  Thus, the two risk factors are mutually reinforcing.  As with all positive feedback loops, situations can change extremely rapidly.

If large-scale nuclear war occurs first, global warming will be basically irrelevant for the first two years of darkness.  Even without many humans left, warming could still be an issue after that, depending on the natural processes involved.  If global warming reaches a sufficiently advanced stage to cause mass mortality in the populations of one or more large countries first, nuclear war becomes much more likely as a result.

Either of the two likely causes of human extinction/near-extinction will also lead to large numbers of plants and animals going extinct, as the tolerance ranges of many species will be exceeded.  The occurrence of war would likely cause extinction of most of the vertebrate species currently on endangered species lists, with continued warming also representing a major cause of extinction. Vertebrates are less likely to be able to shelter in microenvironments with more suitable temperatures under either mechanism. Species with relatively small spatial ranges are most likely to go extinct.  Organisms with short generation times or resting stages that can persist for many years would have the best chances being able to survive either human-caused disaster. Having relatively long generation times, most vertebrates’ abilities to evolve quickly under new climate regimes are limited.  By leaving out the likely future actions by the human population under current governance, the current laws regarding endangerment of other species are ignoring one of the most likely drivers of their extinction.

How likely is it that future human actions will prevent these two linked threats to their own existence and that of many other species? The track record of past human responses to each of the threats has been abysmal.  More disturbing is the fact that the current global political system actually promotes both global military conflict and the higher emissions that fuel global warming.

The rise in greenhouse gases and global temperature are well-documented, so there is no question about risk increasing.  Greenhouse gas concentrations have continued to increase over the 3+ decades that there has been scientific consensus over the need for action to prevent further increases. There is less certainty about how rapidly human death rates will increase and standards of living decrease in response to the resulting climate change. It is still possible for these adverse effects to be slowed by some future emissions reductions.  However, the weather record for 2023 thus far is showing that previously predicted climate changes are likely to be underestimates.  Despite many previous international agreements to reduce CO₂ and methane emissions, those decreases have not occurred on a global scale (other than a brief blip due to covid lockdowns).  Ignoring targets has been economically advantageous to high-emission countries in the short term.  Increases in the size of the human population, and the distraction of conflicts between countries have concurrently made the targets more difficult to achieve.

The future change in the risk of nuclear war is much more difficult to quantify than is warming.  The only widely used measure of risk is the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock, which is now closer to midnight than ever before.  While the exact setting is not based on quantifiable components, there is no question that the decrease in remaining seconds does reflect greater risks.  The abrogation of nuclear treaties over the past ten years and the continual modernization of weapons stocks in the two largest nuclear powers (U.S. and Russia) over the past two decades have both increased risks. U.S.-Russia relations have been deteriorating steadily for the past two decades.  The war in Ukraine is currently the single process most likely to lead to the use of nuclear weapons.  Ending that conflict before the nuclear stage has become steadily less likely over its 550+ day course, as more Russians and Ukrainians have died, and as the U.S. and NATO continue to exceed many previous ‘red-lines’ in sending more and more-dangerous weapons to Ukraine (most recently, cluster munitions).  Greater numbers of commentators and government officials on both sides have argued for actual use of nuclear bombs.

Under the present system of largely country-based decision-making, averting extinction due to either war or warming requires implementing effective counteractive policies by the countries that contribute most to the risk factors. Fortunately, nuclear weapons are only possessed by a small number of the world’s countries, and most greenhouse gases are also produced by a relatively small subset of countries. Unfortunately, agreement within either of these groups of countries has not proven possible over the many decades since both problems were recognized.  The lack of effective international agencies regulating either process has meant that countries have been free to pursue policies that have (or appear to have) short-term local benefits. This is a common problem of decision making between competing entities, whether those entities are individuals or groups of individuals, and whether the species is human or nonhuman.

Both biological evolution and human decision making are driven by the short term consequences of actions to individual entities.²  Under modern political organization the entities are political leaders, who are likely to put more weight on winning the next election rather than on the persistence of their country. They are also likely to falsely equate these two goals.  Humans have an evolutionary history of inter-group conflict involving violence.  The ease of producing inter-group hatred and violence has been reflected in previous conflicts; for example, World War I,³ and both U.S.-led wars in Iraq.⁴  Western news outlets, reflecting the views of political leaders, have been generating highly biased news about Russia for many years now, making it easier to sustain support for the current war in Ukraine.  This is the main factor in the current risk for nuclear conflict.

There has not yet been any sign of a move towards a ceasefire or peace negotiations in the Ukraine war.  John Mearsheimer has recently written, “Is a meaningful peace agreement possible? My answer is no. We are now in a war where both sides – Ukraine and the West on one side and Russia on the other – see each other as an existential threat that must be defeated. Given maximalist objectives all around, it is almost impossible to reach a workable peace treaty.”⁵ This leaves the question of how a nuclear war can be avoided.  Mearsheimer’s article appeared before the recent NATO meeting at Vilnius.  This gathering ended up promising Ukraine eventual membership, even though preventing NATO membership was the stated primary motivation for the original Russian invasion.  It is a recipe for perpetual war.  That war could easily become nuclear if the Russian government felt itself to be losing, but the NATO summit guaranteed that the current members would keep arming Ukraine until it ‘won’ the conflict.  The war has already led to remarks by some U.S. and Russian politicians and academics that nuclear weapons should be used.

The current demonization of Russia in the West makes it very difficult for the U.S. to avoid sending troops or directly attacking Russia if Ukraine is clearly losing.  If, on the other hand Russia was clearly losing, its current government, or its successor would almost certainly use nukes (previous President Dmitri Medvedev has said so publicly).  The extreme negative commentary on Russia in western NATO/media also makes it almost impossible for the West to accept any peace proposal that would be acceptable to the Russians.  If any of the Eastern European NATO members independently chose to join the war before the U.S., it would be obliged to join them.  This would not be NATO’s first ill-advised military venture.  Over the last three decades NATO has grown greatly, engaged in several aggressive wars, and become more obviously an arm of U.S. foreign policy, which has itself become more militaristic.  Alfred de Zayas has recently written that, “The bottom line is that … NATO forces since the 1990s have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity…, what is important today is that world public opinion recognizes NATO as a threat to the peace and security of humankind. Its serial provocations constitute the greatest danger to our survival as a species.”⁶ de Zayas expands on this theme in a subsequent article.⁷ It is particularly disturbing that all NATO members have just agreed to contribute a minimum of 2% of their GDP to NATO. In the case of my country (Canada), this is $40-45 billion, approximately the same as the total federal contribution to health care in a country where the public health care system is rapidly falling apart.  Canada and the U.S., as well as many other western nations, are prioritizing death over life.

A growing number of academics have issued warnings of the risk of a nuclear war growing out of the Ukraine conflict. These include prominent academics like John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago), Alfred de Zayas (Geneva School of Diplomacy), Richard Falk (University of California, SB) and Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University). Prominent journalists, including Glenn Greenwald, Jonathan Cook, Seymour Hersh, Aaron Maté and Jackson Lears, have made similar warnings. These, and other critics of current Western government foreign policies are largely shut out of mass media. With growing provocations of both Russia and China by the U.S., it seems increasingly unlikely that peace can be maintained.  The uniformity and bellicosity of foreign policy views of the mainstream media in the West seems to be increasing much more rapidly than any indicator of climate change.

The immediate hope is that at least one of the two main countries involved in policy determination in the Ukraine war (the U.S. or Russia) will change policy and interrupt the immediate process of escalation before it is too late.  However, this possibility has been decreasing over time and seems likely to continue to do so.  A major reason is the already weak position of the U.S. president (and declared candidate for 2024) in public opinion polls.  Admitting that sending 50 – 100 billion dollars to Ukraine had not produced any positive results would likely make a Biden victory impossible.  Vladimir Putin also faces an election in 2024, but his current within-country approval rating is approximately double Biden’s, possibly giving him a greater ability to make locally unpopular decisions.

The degree of non-nuclear escalation that causes a nuclear war to begin is impossible to predict.  Even if war over Ukraine is avoided, there the growing possibility is that the U.S. will simply shift its main military focus from Russia to China.  Tensions have already been ramped up by unnecessary weapons transfers and top U.S. political figures visiting Taiwan.  The manufactured Chinese ‘spy-balloon’ scare in February has also generated hostility towards China for no apparent reason.  Canada has lately been generating tensions with China with vague unsubstantiated stories of Chinese ‘meddling’ in Canadian politics. Even the wording of these stories is strikingly similar to the now discredited ‘Russian meddling’ stories in the U.S.

The current lack of action on climate change, and negative action on avoiding war provide lessons on some general principles would be needed in an Endangered Human Species Act. It is obvious that international bodies must have more power that they currently do.  They must also be less susceptible to manipulation by wealthy countries than the U.N. is today.  All countries need to have greater separation between government and media; that is particularly true in the U.S., where intelligence agencies have interfered massively in online media. Humankind must acknowledge the susceptibility of individuals in one group to supporting violent conflict with those having other affiliations; steps must be taken by governments to counteract this psychological flaw.  In the longer term, a smaller global population size would reduce many of the pressures for between-country conflict, as well as energy use.

Even if they were favoured by most people in most nations, these suggested principles probably won’t be applied quickly enough to reverse the growing risk of self-annihilation during the remainder of this decade.  However, some movement on one or two of the factors mentioned here could provide a longer time window in which to achieve the others. If the intertwined risks of extreme climate change and nuclear war are avoided, it will preserve many thousands of other species as well as our own.

ENDNOTES

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Peter Abrams.

As we have noted before, a systemic feature of state-corporate media is propaganda by omission. Missing out salient facts, informed commentary and context about the machinations of government and big business means that the public is less able to:

1. Understand the world around us;
2. Challenge state-corporate power; and
3. Bring about the fundamental changes in society that have never been more necessary.

Current examples are legion, as we will see in the selection that follows.

1. Journalists Pushing For Less Transparency

Last week, 21-year-old US airman Jack Texeira was arrested following, as BBC News put it: ‘[a] leak of highly classified military documents about the Ukraine war and other national security issues.’

Former UK diplomat Craig Murray pointed to a disturbing aspect of the case, namely, that Texeira was:

‘tracked down by UK secret service front Bellingcat in conjunction with the New York Times and in parallel with the Washington Post, not to help him escape or help him publish or tell people his motives, but to help the state arrest him.’

Bellingcat has been examined by, among others, Kit Klarenberg of the Grayzone who reported that the supposedly ‘independent, open-source investigations’ website has ‘accepted enormous sums from Western intelligence contractors’.

As for the New York Times and Washington Post, US journalist Glenn Greenwald noted:

‘It is indescribably shocking and sickening that the nation’s two largest media outlets were the ones who did the FBI’s work and hunted for the leaker and outed him.’

Almost as bad, he said, was that rather than press the government during a Pentagon press conference about the content of the leaked documents, journalists actually pushed for greater clampdowns on security leaks.

Murray added:

‘I am not at all surprised by Bellingcat, which is plainly a spook organisation. I hope this enables more people to see through them. But the behaviour of the New York Times and Washington Post is truly shocking. They now see their mission as to serve the security state, not public knowledge.’

He also observed that, over the past week or so, ‘nothing has been published [from the leaked material] that does not serve US propaganda narratives.’

Very little, if anything, has been reliably presented about Texeira’s motives in releasing these state documents. Murray warned readers to be sceptical of attempts to portray him as simply a ‘rampant Trump supporter’ or ‘inadequate jock’ trying ‘to boast to fellow gaming nerds.’

Murray concluded:

‘We should remain suspicious of attempts to characterise him: I am acutely aware of media portrayals of Julian Assange which are entirely untrue.’

2.  Cancelling Julian Assange

April 11 marked four years since Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, was forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and imprisoned in the high security Belmarsh prison. He and his lawyers have been fighting the prolonged threat of extradition to the US, where he would likely spend the rest of his life in a ‘Supermax’ prison. His ‘crime’ has been to expose the nefarious activities, including serious war crimes, of the US and its allies.

As Alex Nunns, author and former speechwriter for Jeremy Corbyn, noted:

‘Probably the world’s most significant and famous journalist has been in prison for four years today for his work – not in Egypt or China or Russia, but in Britain, a country that lectures others on free speech. His imprisonment is entirely political. He should be free.’

Media Lens has documented the grotesque smears and mischaracterisations of Assange over many years, not least by the Guardian, as well as the dearth of coverage of his plight and what that means for real journalism, freedom of speech and democracy.

In a piece for international media organisation Peoples Dispatch, political writer Amish R M summarised key facts that state-corporate media have buried about Assange. These include:

• The CIA plan to kidnap and assassinate Assange in London.
• The US prosecution is based on fabricated testimony from a repeat offender, currently serving a prison sentence for sexual abuse crimes in Iceland, and described as a ‘sociopath’ by court-ordered psychologists.
• The US spied on Assange while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy.

Earlier this month, Reporters Without Borders Secretary-General Christophe Deloire and Director of Operations Rebecca Vincent were barred access to visit Assange in Belmarsh prison, despite receiving confirmation that a visit would be permitted.

In a sane world, with responsible national media outlets, the above facts would be headline news. Both BBC and ITV News at Ten would devote significant coverage to Assange’s plight and there would be extensive follow-up reporting and commentary on the parlous consequences for journalism and society. Instead, there is virtual silence.

But there is space to document the plight of Russian journalists who contradict the Kremlin’s narratives. What about journalists in this country who might try to contradict the narratives of the White House and Downing Street? Have they, in fact, already been ‘purged’ from so-called ‘mainstream’ media outlets: the word used by John Pilger to describe his treatment by the Guardian? Where is the outrage about the dumping of dissenting voices in the ‘free’ western media?

BBC News would rather direct attention to: ‘The talk-show hosts telling Russians what to believe.’ Of course, you would never see a major feature by the famously ‘impartial’ BBC News on: ‘The talk-show hosts telling Britons what to believe’ on the war in Ukraine, or anything else for that matter.

Australian writer Caitlin Johnstone describes Assange as ‘the greatest journalist of all time’. She wrote recently:

‘Assange began his journalism career by revolutionizing source protection for the digital age, then proceeded to break some of the biggest stories of the century. There’s no one who can hold a candle to him, living or dead.

‘And now he’s in a maximum security prison, solely and exclusively because he was better at doing the best kind of journalism than anyone else in the world. That is the kind of civilization you live in. The kind that imprisons the best journalist of all time for doing journalism.’

3.  Nord Stream: ‘It May Be In No One’s Interest To Reveal More’

We have previously written about the blanket of silence over attempts to get to the truth of the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines that supplied Russian gas to Germany. US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s report pointing to the US as the most likely perpetrator of this terrorist act have been blanked, or summarily dismissed, by state-corporate media.

Following Seymour’s report, US officials released an assessment based on ‘new intelligence’, faithfully relayed by the media, that a ‘pro-Ukrainian group’ carried out the pipeline attack. Der Spiegel then carried a news report, echoed in coverage around the world, claiming that divers used a German chartered yacht to sabotage the pipelines. There was a modicum of scepticism; journalists are not totally inept or subservient to state narratives.

But media coverage still steered clear of examining the most likely explanation of US involvement; not least given that President Joe Biden had boasted in February 2022 that the US would ‘bring an end to it [Nord Stream]’ if Russia invaded Ukraine. As Reuters reported:

‘”If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the … border of Ukraine again, then there will be … no longer a Nord Stream 2. We, we will bring an end to it,’ Biden said. Asked how, given the project is in German control, Biden said: “I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.”’

Glenn Greenwald observed recently:

‘The NYT — after feeding the public several bullshit versions about who blew up Nord Stream (an environmentally devastating act of industrial terrorism) — now announces: “it may be in no one’s interest to reveal more.”

‘Maybe there’s a clue in the article’s last 2 paragraphs?’

Here are those last two paragraphs in question:

‘And naming a Western nation or operatives could trigger deep mistrust when the West is struggling to maintain a united front [over the war in Ukraine].

‘“Is there any interest from the authorities to come out and say who did this? There are strategic reasons for not revealing who did it,” said Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen, a Danish naval commander and military expert at the University of Copenhagen. “As long as they don’t come out with anything substantial, then we are left in the dark on all this — as it should be.”’

The NYT even emphasised the point in its tweet highlighting their article:

‘Intelligence leaks surrounding who blew up most of the Russian-backed Nord Stream pipelines last September have provided more questions than answers. It may be in no one’s interest to reveal more.’

So, if you still harbour the illusion that ‘mainstream’ journalism can be relied upon to report the truth to the public, rather than covering it up, you may have to reconsider what even the ‘best’ news media, including the NYT, the BBC and the Guardian, do routinely.

4. Propaganda Operations That Remain Hidden

One of the central tenets of western political ideology is that ‘we’ have free access to information, and that only ‘the other side’ does propaganda, a dirty word that we are not supposed to discuss; except, when it does get mentioned in polite company, it is termed ‘counter-disinformation’. In other words, it is information that is intended to ‘counter’ the ‘misleading’ narratives spun by ‘official enemies’.

Last month, the UK government announced ‘emergency funding’ of £4.1 million ‘to fight Russian disinformation’. The press release stated that this large sum would help the BBC World Service continue to bring:

‘independent, impartial and accurate news to people in Ukraine and Russia in the face of increased propaganda from the Russian state.’

Of course, we are expected to swallow the myth that we in the West already enjoy ‘independent, impartial and accurate news’ from the BBC.

But, as John McEvoy and Mark Curtis of the Declassified UK website recently highlighted:

‘Britain’s media routinely takes information from private groups countering Russian and other disinformation without saying these organisations are funded by the UK government and directed by people linked to the UK or US foreign policy establishment.’

The same authors reported earlier this month that the UK Foreign Office has given over £25 million since January 2018 to organisations targeting ‘disinformation’. Four of these organisations are directed by former members of the British and US foreign policy establishment and are focused overwhelmingly on ‘official enemies’.

McEvoy and Curtis observed:

‘These organisations tend to focus on Russian war crimes and information operations, particularly in Ukraine, while failing to conduct comparable investigations into Britain, the US or NATO.

‘Much of these groups’ research is thus unidirectional, presenting malign information operations as the sole domain of enemies identified by the UK government. The impact is likely to be one-sided information entering the public news arena.’

Indeed, unsuspecting members of the public will have no idea that analysis from supposedly ‘independent’ experts commenting on the war in Ukraine often comes from Foreign Office-funded organisations.

In particular, Declassified UK noted of two such organisations:

• 25 Guardian and Observer articles referenced the Atlantic Council Digital Forensic Research Lab, none of which mention its funding by the UK and US governments.
• The Centre for Information Resilience were referenced 29 times in the UK media, with only one article mentioning its UK government funding.

Also buried by state-corporate media is the extent and nature of the UK’s global militarism since 1945. Curtis reported earlier this year that:

‘Britain has deployed its armed forces for combat over 80 times in 47 countries since the end of the Second World War, in episodes ranging from brutal colonial wars and covert operations to efforts to prop up favoured governments or to deter civil unrest.’

Faithful consumers of British media over this period, right up to the present day, are meant to believe that successive UK governments have been acting out of benign intent in such foreign ‘interventions’. To unearth the reality requires digging deeper and further than the tightly-restricted domain overseen by state-corporate media.

Concluding Remarks

The above sections are but a taste of the systematic blanking, sidelining and even smearing of those who present facts and perspectives that challenge state-corporate policies and pronouncements. In an era of volatile international tensions, threat of nuclear conflict, class warfare against the majority of the population, inhumanity towards refugees, and the overarching spectre of the climate crisis, the propaganda system needs to be exposed and replaced by genuine public-interest media.

Do you think electing establishment stooge Sir Keir Starmer is a solution to any of this? Or do you see that his promotion by establishment media, not least the Guardian, is how the establishment seeks to perpetuate its own interests?

Alex Nunns, mentioned earlier, recently noted that when Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader it ‘gave the Labour right the fright of their lives’. Nunns explained:

‘Suddenly the right saw the left as an existential threat. Whatever electoral benefits there were to having the left in the tent were outweighed by the risk of the Labour right permanently losing the party they saw as their property.’

Starmer and his supporters in the party are determined to ensure that the prospects of a left-wing Labour leadership are permanently crushed. Banning Corbyn from standing for Labour in the next General Election is:

‘about sending a message, first to the left, and second to the establishment, that they have nothing to fear from a tamed Labour Party. They want to prove that the insurgent, radical leftism that Corbyn represented will never be repeated.’

In this very real sense, the current Labour Party is part of the established interests that are determined to suppress grassroots opposition to endless war, class exploitation and the steps required to avert the worst of the onrushing climate catastrophe.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

Ages ago, I was born in Denmark, and I still hold a Danish passport. Quite often, I visit the homepage of the Danish Broadcasting Company – Danmarks Radio (DR). It is public service, regulated by laws passed by the Danish People’s Parliament – “Folketinget.”

I sadly admit that there is an element of masochism in my visits to DR. In the particular fields of news reporting on global affairs, security politics and peace/war, this public service’s long-term trend has been down in quality and out of relevance.

Sometimes I visit it only to see how biased the coverage of a certain event or decision in the mentioned fields is. I have often written an admittedly wry comment on social media or on my online home and blog, Jan Oberg. Why?

Because I believe that public service has a fundamentally important role to play in a democratic society serving only to inform and educate its citizenry, promote healthy informed debates and consciousness-raising, as well as convey reasonably broad-minded perspectives about its own country, the world and the relations between the two.

No such thing is happening at DR anymore. Anyone without special education can write about international affairs, even former sports reporters or youth department journalists. The main work they do is to cut and paste, translate and edit news and information that comes exclusively from the US and other Western news media and bureaus like Reuters and the Guardian. Correspondents abroad serve two functions; if they are in the West, they are explaining benevolently what the US, NATO, and EU do; if in China or elsewhere, it’s only negative stories, good news twisted into caricatures or non-existent. The only themes, foci and narratives promoted are those – again – of the US and selected European media.

Enigmatically, it is as if the Internet, with its incredible wealth of information and perspectives accessible from a chair at a desk with a computer, does not exist in the minds of these people. Diversity of stories, perspectives and backgrounds – as well as the fine principle of struggling to be unbiased, ‘objective’ and fair as well as triple-checking sources – are qualities of the past. The state and the media have become one.

The ethos is remarkably similar. No originality. The old-type of correspondents who lived in a region for years, spoke the language, followed the local media and told her/his audiences something original – all the result of that correspondent’s on-site investigative journalism – is dead and gone. So is the idea that each media’s outstanding feature was to bring something new, new perspectives on old stories and new stories – that is, being different from other media.

Today, it seems, the outstanding feature is to be as politically correct and isomorphic with the leading Western mainstream media as possible. In short, hellishly boring, predictable and fundamentally unable to ask critical questions about Western policies – markedly so about war and peace – and giving full blast to Russo- and Sino-phobia – by coincidence, the main designated adversaries of the US and its uni-polar global dominance.

The recent coverage of the NATO-Russia conflict and the war in Ukraine is an empirically strong example. But far from the first. The decline in international news reporting took off shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union and accelerated with NATO’s illegal bombing (both in terms of international law, the UN Charter and NATO’s Treaty) and 9/11.

Today’s Denmark, in contrast to earlier times, is an extremely loyal follower of the United States in everything foreign policy, security and warfare. It’s been a leading bomber nation since its participation in NATO’s war on Serbia/Kosovo in 1999. So these trends pertain in the extreme to the Danish Broadcasting Company as well as, say, the Swedish (which I shall deal with in a follow-up article to this).

In a more detailed analysis, I have dealt with my personal experiences with this type of media over almost 50 years. I regret that I have found so little positive to say.

Let me now turn to one concrete and extremely important case – DR’s cancellation of Seymour Hersh’s report on who destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline in September 2022.

The Danish Broadcasting, DR, cancels Hersh’s Nord Stream report and promotes US “Intelligence” (CIA) instead

The case begins here on February 8, 2023. DR editor-in-chief, Lotte Stensgaard, writes that one earlier news telegram with mention of Hersh’s report has been deleted. In translation*:

“Here was previously an article on Russia’s reaction to unsubstantiated information on Nord Stream

By Lotte Stensgaard

DR Nyheder reported on 8 February that the Russian Foreign Ministry called on the US to respond to allegations made by US journalist Seymour Hersh, who in his blog claims that the US was involved in the explosions on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.

However, Seymour Hersh’s post is based on one anonymous source and no evidence has been provided to substantiate the claim of US involvement in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 explosions, nor has it been possible to verify the information.

Therefore, the telegram does not fulfil DR’s ethical guidelines and has therefore been removed.”

Later, I wanted to know what motivated this quite unusual action in the light of the fact that the counter story published by the New York Times about Nord Stream being destroyed by a “pro-Ukrainian” group in a yacht immediately received substantial coverage at several editorial offices of the Danish Broadcasting Company.

So I wrote to Lotte Stensgaard, thus:

“Dear Lotte Stensgaard,

Based on what you write about Seymour Hersh’s report not living up to DR’s ethical guidelines (and therefore being taken down), would you please help me with an explanation of why the new analysis published in the New York Times, which indicates that it is a “pro-Ukrainian” group’s deed, has received such a relatively large amount of attention and analysing comments on DR.dk, TV-Avisen and other editorial departments in your house – and why it to a greater extent lives up to DR ethical guidelines.

Thank you in advance.

Kind regards

Jan Øberg.”

The answer I received was this:

“Dear Jan
Thank you for your enquiry.

Your email has been sent for reply in our official enquiry system. In future, you are welcome to write directly into this system when you contact us via this contact page: https://dr.custhelp.com/

Here you can choose, among other things, whether it is an error, a question, praise or a complaint.

Kind regards
Lotte”

I was surprised that the editor-in-chief deliberately avoided responding to a question about a text she has written herself, so I replied:

“Dear Lotte Stensgaard

Oh yes, I know that system very well.

But now it was you, as editor, who wrote the article about what I perceive as an editorial policy decision.

That’s why I sent it to you and not to the system. But if you yourself do not want, can or are allowed to answer, then I can not do much about it.

Kind regards
Jan.”

That was March 14. On April 4 came the following explanation written by editor-in-chief of DR News, Thomas Falbe:

“Dear Jan Oberg

Thank you for your enquiry. The debate about who was behind the sabotage of the two Nordstream pipelines is important, and DR has no interest or motive to suppress that discussion. When we chose to remove the article, which only quoted the blog post from Seymour Hersh, it was because the article contained so many undocumented claims based on a single anonymous source that it appeared to be almost pure speculation.

So it was not only that it was based on anonymous sources that was the reason why we decided to remove the article altogether. It was an assessment that the journalistic quality behind the article was so poor that it made no sense to add a number of reservations to our original quote story, as we would then have to make reservations about virtually the entire content. That’s why we decided to remove the article altogether.

It’s not because we want to steer the debate in a certain direction, for example, to suppress a discussion about the possibility that the US could have been behind the blast. If that were the case, it would be an extremely important story that we would publish as soon as the evidence was available.

We have discussed the theory of a possible US role on several occasions, but in formats where it is possible to contextualise and critically assess what is presented. For example, here in Orientering Udsyn, and similarly here in Restart.

When we later chose to go into the coverage of another theory, namely the one put forward by a number of German media and The New York Times about a Ukrainian-minded group, it was because these were authority sources that confirmed a concrete investigative trail. At the same time, it plays a role that these media have known and established editorial processes and a long track record of credible treatment and presentation of information without bias in relation to conclusions. I do not believe this was the case with the article by Seymour Hersh.

DR Nyheder will continue to do journalism on the blowing up of the Nordstream pipelines. Still, we will do so on the basis of documentation and sources whose claims can be verified before we publish. The story is too important for us to print every available claim that might be made on the internet, giving it a stamp of credibility just by mentioning it on our platforms. It’s all about journalistic standards, and not about the content of the story.

Regards
Thomas Falbe
Editor-in-Chief, DR News.”

What to make of this?

• My question was obviously a sensitive one since it was transferred/elevated to the news editor-in-chief through a standard Q&A procedure; the author of the article was not supposed to deal with the policy decision conveyed in her text.

• Who is Thomas Falbe? According to his Linkedin profile, he has a Danish education in journalism with a recent degree from INSEAD, The Business School for the World, in Leadership Excellence through Awareness and Practice. It seems that he has lived most of his professional life at DR. He served as a US correspondent for DR 2005-2008. On the profile, his “Top Voices” are the Business Insider and EU President Ursula von der Leyen. He uses both Linkedin and Twitter, where he now and then mainly reposts colleagues’ posts and info about DR programs.

• In his reply to me, editor Falbe turns down three times that this could be about politics: DR has no interest in ‘suppressing discussion,’ that it is all about ‘journalistic standards and not content,’ and that DR does not want to ‘steer the debate.’ I did not even hint that it did. One does not have to be a psychologist to sense what this is about here: There is this elephant in the room, and its name is – right, you guessed it – never failing political correctness vis-a-vis the US.

• What makes me say that? The fact that you’ll search in vain at the Danish Broadcasting’s news homepage over the years for examples of critical perspectives on one US-led war after the other, NATO expansion, US/Western China Cold War policies and accusations, Ukraine, etc – and find only negative, slanted demonising perspectives on, say, Russia and China.

Hersh’s analysis simply cannot be treated otherwise. It doesn’t fit the pattern, which by the way, repeated itself throughout the Western mainstream media, including the New York Times itself (where Hersh worked for years). Hersh’s report was indeed suppressed.

• Thomas Falbe’s description of Hersh’s report – not the least compared with what he says about the counter-narrative’s qualities – is rather ignorant, if not pathetic. As a professional journalist, he can not be ignorant about Hersh’s unique and world-renowned investigative journalism over decades and his absolutely unique connections with the inside of power circles in Washington. Given the mediocre journalism quite often displayed by DR – I have documented a few of them over the years – one can safely assume that no one at the DR news section can carry Hersh’s socks.

• Falbe also ignores – deliberately, as a professional news editor – the piquant well-documented fact that both US President Biden and Undersecretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, are on record for having stated that the US would destroy Nord Stream if Russia invaded Ukraine – Biden at a press conference standing next to German chancellor Olaf Scholz. I wrote about it in Danish here and in English here, and included YouTube clips of it on September 28, 2022, right after the destruction. Mr Falbe conveniently overlooks that Hersh’s report is simply much better aligned with official US foreign policy than the alternative “pro-Ukrainian” story Falbe defends so miserably.

• If you do not want to suppress discussion, why not simply tell your audience that two reports are saying completely different things, offer their main content, strong and weak sides, and then let people judge for themselves? That would be classical journalism rather than opinion/influencer journalism that is embedded in DR’s patronizing cancellation of an indisputably important report.

• As for the counter story promoted by the New York Times, here is what Reuters – a source frequently used by DR – told the world about it on March 7, 2023 (my italics added):

“New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukraine group – likely comprised of Ukrainians or Russians – attacked the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September, but there are no firm conclusions, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Reuters could not independently verify the report. And:

“The U.S. intelligence review suggested those who carried out the attacks opposed Russian President Vladimir Putin “but does not specify the members of the group, or who directed or paid for the operation,” the New York Times wrote.

“Officials who have reviewed the intelligence said they believed the saboteurs were most likely Ukrainian or Russian nationals, or some combination of the two. U.S. officials said no American or British nationals were involved,” according to the New York Times report.”

This is what makes Mr Falbe characterises to me as “authority sources that confirmed a concrete investigative trail. At the same time, it plays a role that these media have known and established editorial processes and a long track record of credible treatment…”

• US intelligence – there are several agencies, but one globally infamous is the CIA – reviewed by “US officials” who suggest and believe this and that – meets the journalistic standards of DR according to its news editor-in-chief, Thomas Falbe. He believes these “sources whose claims can be verified before we publish.” (!)

In terms of context and motives, it seems to be a forbidden thought to him that the US could have an interest in covering up the story and presenting a counter story after Biden and Nuland had themselves pointed out the US as the culprit.

It’s completely incomprehensible from a journalistic perspective why anonymous ‘intelligence’ and ‘US officials’ who ‘believe’ this or that should be anything but biased in this particular case or why their hypothesis should be more credible than Hersh’s (backed up the US president).

What is not so incomprehensible is that an ally of the US can not present perspectives which go against US interests. And in this particular case, also Denmark’s interest. The Danish government may have had prior knowledge about the action that happened just south of the Danish island of Bornholm. Or it has been taken by surprise. Whichever is true, the government has neither the civil courage nor any interest in publicly pointing to the US as the culprit – but every interest in removing the attention from the US (and Hersh’s story) and making it look like some Ukrainians/Russians were out in a yacht hired in Poland and placed some explosives 80 meters down on the seabed.

Mr Falbe emphasises that DR will continue to do journalism about the destruction of Nord Stream. That remains to be seen. The Western mainstream media have closed down the Nord Stream destruction story long ago, do not put pressure on those who were to investigate it and avoid analysing the destruction’s thoroughly negative consequences for European friend and allies. Imagine the media attention if China or Russia had destroyed Nord Stream.

Remember, ignorance is strength, as Orwell wrote in 1984.

• Finally, what about Mr Falbe’s description of the New York Times (‘the media’) as having a ‘known and established editorial processes and a long track record of credible treatment and presentation of information without bias in relation to conclusions’?

Well, it is either self-delusional, incredibly naive, devoid of factual knowledge or revealing a standard-biased mainstream mode of operation of which every decent person in public service and truly free media ought to be ashamed.

Harsh words? Perhaps, but based on empirical facts instead of fake à la Falbe.

Please find below a short reading list of predominantly American sources that proves – solidly documents – how CIA has infiltrated the media since the beginning of the first Cold War. They also show how the New York Times is one of the least trustworthy and most biased media in this field of international affairs. I would add that, in its editorials and choice of feature articles, it has always been pro-war – also now concerning the NATO-Russia conflict as it plays out in Ukraine. Against all hard evidence, the NYT promoted the lie that Iraq under Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear weapons – as a main pretext for the US invasion and occupation – with blind political correctness.

To work in places like the Western mainstream media, including public service, you must disregard this sort of disinformation, propaganda and lies and convince yourself that you promote freedom of the media – remember Orwell, ‘freedom is slavery’ – in sharp contrast to authoritarian, illiberal state media elsewhere.

Or you’ll have to quit.

Recommended reading and watching

Carl Bernstein, in Rolling Stone 1977
The CIA and the media
How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up
(“By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.”)

Wikipedia
CIA influence on public opinion in the US and abroad

Wikipedia
Operation Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes.

School History
Operation Mockingbird Facts and Worksheets

The New York Times, December 26, 1977
Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A.

The New York Times, December 27, 1977
C.I.A. Established Many Links To Journalists in U.S. and Abroad

Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato Institute, 2021
How the National Security State Manipulates the News Media
The American people, who count on the news profession to provide them with accurate, independent information about foreign affairs, are the ultimate victims.

Frances Stonor Saunders, 1999
Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War

Noam Chomsky & Edward S Herman, 1988
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Caitlin Johnstone, 2023
The US Could Use Some Separation Of Media And State

Former CIA director Mike Pompeo about the CIA’s lying and more…

Notes

* The translations from Danish to English are of the complete correspondence, with nothing omitted. They were done by Deepl and checked and adjusted by the author.

The top cartoon is by Luka Lagator – more here.

The second cartoon is by Toso Borkovic – more here and here.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jan Oberg.

The United Nations Security Council on Monday rejected a Russia-led effort to launch a fresh international probe into last year's sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in the wake of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh's reports accusing the U.S. of carrying out the attack.

Brazil and China supported Russia's resolution while the U.S., France, the United Kingdom, and other Security Council members abstained, leaving the proposal short of the nine votes needed for passage.

The Security Council said in a press release that, if adopted, the resolution would have requested that the secretary-general establish "an international, independent investigation commission to conduct a comprehensive, transparent, and impartial international investigation of all aspects of the act of sabotage on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines—including identification of its perpetrators, sponsors, organizers, and accomplices."

Ahead of Monday's vote, Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said that "without an objective and transparent international investigation, the truth will not be uncovered as to what happened."

Robert Wood, the deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N., countered that the Biden administration "was not involved in any way" in the Nord Stream explosions and accused Russia of attempting to "discredit the work of ongoing national investigations and prejudice any conclusions they reach that do not comport to Russia's predetermined and political narrative."

Denmark, Sweden, and Germany told the U.N. Security Council last month that their investigations into the Nord Stream blasts—which nations agree was an act of deliberate sabotage rather than an accident—are still ongoing.

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department told reporters that the Biden administration is "not a party" to those investigations "because there are countries on whose sovereign territory this attack occurred, and we're deferring it to them."

The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill reported over the weekend that Russian officials have complained in letters to the U.S. and European governments that "they have been barred from examining evidence gathered from the sites where the blasts occurred."

Scahill noted that "despite Russia's majority ownership of the pipelines, Russian officials said, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden have rejected Russia's repeated requests for a joint investigation—confirming their 'suspicions that these countries are trying to conceal evidence, or to cover up the sponsors and perpetrators of these acts of sabotage.'"

"Denmark and Sweden have cited procedural matters and national regulations as to why they aren't collaborating with Russia," Scahill added. "But it's pretty obvious that they have also adopted the position that Russia should be viewed as a suspect in the sabotage and wouldn't want to invite it into the probe, particularly given Russia's invasion of Ukraine."

Citing an anonymous source, Hersh reported last month that U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline system, believing it posed a threat to "western dominance." According to Hersh, the Biden White House was particularly concerned about Nord Stream 2, which would have carried gas from Russia to Germany.

Germany put the pipeline on hold a day before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Weeks after Hersh published his initial report, The New York Timesran a story alleging that "intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials" implicates a shadowy "pro-Ukrainian group" in the Nord Stream attack.

Last week, Hersh alleged that U.S. intelligence agencies have been "feeding" the Times and other outlets false information in an attempt to cover up the Biden administration's involvement in the Nord Stream operation. Hersh also blasted the U.S. press corps for failing to ask why the Biden administration has thus far been unwilling to launch its own investigation.

At a congressional hearing a day after Hersh published his follow-up story, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) asked U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken whether he can "assure the world that no agency of the U.S. government blew up those pipelines or facilitated that action."

"Yes," Blinken responded, "yes I can."

Scahill noted Saturday that he asked the Biden White House Hersh's question about why American intelligence agencies have not formally announced a probe of the Nord Stream attack.

"In a statement, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson did not directly address any of my questions," Scahill wrote.

Instead, she repeated the White House's dismissal of Hersh's reporting as "totally false concoctions."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

The Russian government has accused Germany, Denmark, and Sweden of a cover-up in their investigations into the sabotage attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines last September. Moscow, with the support of China, plans to introduce a resolution before the United Nations Security Council on Monday calling for an independent international investigation.

The White House declined to answer questions from The Intercept about whether the U.S. has ordered its own investigation, saying only that it is supporting its allies in their individual probes. Germany, along with Denmark and Sweden, are each conducting separate investigations but say they are cooperating with one another.

In a series of letters to European governments and the United States in February, made public by Moscow earlier this month, Russian officials complained that they have been barred from examining evidence gathered from the sites where the blasts occurred. Despite Russia’s majority ownership of the pipelines, Russian officials said, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden have rejected Russia’s repeated requests for a joint investigation — confirming their “suspicions that these countries are trying to conceal evidence, or to cover up the sponsors and perpetrators of these acts of sabotages.”

Russia has been doing its own investigation into the sabotage, including underwater surveys. It has not, to date, released any forensic evidence to support its assertion that “Anglo-Saxon” powers or the U.S. were behind the explosions. At a U.N. Security Council meeting in February, Russia’s representative Vassily Nebenzia cited investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s report accusing the U.S. of carrying out the attack. “This journalist is telling the truth,” he said. “This is more than just a smoking gun that detectives love in Hollywood blockbusters. It’s a basic principle of justice; everything is in your hands, and we can resolve this today.”

Russia is effectively arguing that the three national probes, which are backed by the U.S., are part of the Nord Stream bombing plot.

The Andromeda, a 50-foot recreational sailing yacht, which German investigators searched recently and suspect a six-person crew used it to sail to the Baltic Sea and plant explosives, seen on March 17, 2023 near Dranske, Germany.

Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

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Hersh is staking his storied and well-earned reputation as one of the premiere muckrakers in modern U.S. history on the veracity of this one story.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Jeremy Scahill.

For more than a decade, Russia has exerted influence in the region by supplying Germany and other Western European nations with natural gas via Nord Stream 1. The completion of Nord Stream 2 in late 2021 effectively doubled the amount of relatively inexpensive gas flowing from Russia to Western Europe, further weakening US influence over European nations, including its NATO allies.

On February 7, 2022, in a joint press briefing with German chancellor Olaf Scholz, President Biden asserted that if Russia invaded Ukraine, then “we will bring an end” to Nord Stream 2. Several weeks later, Victoria Nuland, Biden’s Undersecretary of State, reiterated this position.

Biden and Nuland’s indirect references to the attack “dismayed” those planning the pipeline mission, Hersh reported, but their remarks “also created an opportunity.” Senior CIA officials determined that the pipeline mission “no longer could be considered a covert option” because the president had discussed it publicly. Downgraded in status from a covert operation to a highly classified intelligence operation, the mission no longer required the briefing or oversight of Senate and House leadership.

A desire to avoid informing Congress also explained a previous decision to task divers from the US Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center with the mission, Hersh reported. Covert operations involving United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) “must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership.” Navy divers could conduct the operation without the need to brief congressional leaders who might leak information and expose the mission.

Hersh’s sources detailed not only the planning of the mission but also how it was carried out. Norway served as the mission’s base, taking advantage of expanded US and Norwegian military facilities, including a newly refurbished US submarine base, which became operational in 2021, and the expansion of a Norwegian air base equipped with Boeing P8 Poseidon patrol planes capable of long-range surveillance.

To minimize the likelihood of Russia’s advanced underwater surveillance technologies detecting the mission, the US and Norway used the Baltic Operations 22 military training exercise as cover. On the day of the explosion, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane dropped a sonar buoy, sending a signal to Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 and triggering the powerful C4 explosives that Navy divers had previously planted on the pipelines.

As of March 1, 2023, Hersh’s exposé has been mostly ignored or belittled by the establishment press. The Washington Post and the New York Post have covered the story, but worked hard to discredit it. Both publications cited White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson, who dismissed the article as “false and complete fiction.” The story has also been picked up by independent outlets including Democracy Now!, MintPress News, and Jacobin, but most establishment outlets have not taken Hersh’s reporting seriously, despite his established record of accurate investigative reporting on controversial US military operations.

Source: Seymour Hersh, “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline,” Substack, February 8, 2023.

Student Researcher: Reagan Haynie (Loyola Marymount University)

Faculty Evaluator: Mickey Huff (Diablo Valley College)

The post Seymour Hersh Alleges US Role in Nord Stream Pipeline Blast appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Vins.

When the New York Times (3/7/23) makes a claim based on anonymous US officials, other media take note—because everyone knows anonymous US officials wouldn’t lie to the New York Times.

The New York Times (3/7/23) on Tuesday ended its month-long boycott of veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s February 8 story claiming the US destroyed the Nord Stream gas pipeline.

The Times didn’t challenge Hersh’s story. It barely mentioned it. Instead, the Times reported “new intelligence” that “suggests” a pro-Ukrainian group was responsible.

No firm details are provided, simply speculation, and the only sources cited are anonymous US officials.

Hersh’s source also is unnamed, but is described as having “direct knowledge of the operational planning” of the operation. In contrast to the Times story’s lack of specifics, Hersh’s 5,000-word narrative provides extensive details of how US officials—at the direction of President Joe Biden—planned and executed the operation, using US Navy divers who used the cover of a NATO naval exercise in June to plant explosives, which were remotely detonated September 26.

Strikingly different treatment

The response of the nation’s major news organizations to the two stories also couldn’t have been more different.

While big news internationally, Hersh’s story was not reported by any of the major US corporate broadcast networks—NBC, ABC and CBS—or the public broadcasters, PBS and NPR. Nor did the nation’s major cable outlets, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, cover the story (FAIR.org, 3/3/23).

The Washington Post (3/7/23) proves that it too is able to find government officials willing to promote the official line with no accountability.

The Washington Post ignored Hersh’s story for two weeks, and then mentioned it (2/22/23) only after Russia cited Hersh’s story in calling for a UN investigation of the bombing. But the Post didn’t hesitate to follow the Times later Tuesday with its own story (3/7/23), headlined “Intelligence Officials Suspect Ukraine Partisans Behind Nord Stream Bombings, Rattling Kyiv’s Allies.” Like the Times, the Post relied solely on anonymous sources to attribute responsibility for the sabotage, who provided little in the way of details about how the bombing was accomplished.

In a striking example of how differently the large corporate news outlets treat Hersh, the Post credited its rival newspaper for breaking the story, but did not mention Hersh at all.

The Post story did add one significant development—that shortly after the Times story was published, German news media had reported that investigators in Europe “had identified a small team of saboteurs using a yacht rented from a company in Poland that was ‘apparently owned by two Ukrainians.’”

‘First significant lead’

Fox News (3/7/23) also jumped on the Times story later Tuesday, but added nothing new. Hersh’s story was mentioned in two sentences at the end of the story and described as a “blog post” that “the White House last month dismissed….”

CNN (3/8/23) also reported the Times story within 24 hours, but with a new element: “The German prosecutors’ office told CNN Wednesday they searched a boat in January that was suspected of carrying explosives.” The CNN story did not mention Hersh.

If the New York Times says so, it’s news (MSNBC, 3/8/23).

That same day, MSNBC ran a segment featuring NBC News reporter Molly Hunter (3/8/23), who repeated the Times’ claim that its story was “the first significant lead” in the investigation of the bombing. It also failed to mention Hersh.

A statement from German officials confirming that investigators in January had searched a vessel suspected of carrying explosives used in the bombing was reported by NBC News (3/8/23) and the Associated Press. The AP dispatch was picked up by ABC News (3/8/23) and PBS (3/8/23). All credited the Times story; none mentioned Hersh.

NPR did its own report Wednesday (3/8/23), which referenced a high Ukrainian government official “questioning recent reports that a pro-Ukraine group was behind the undersea bombings.” The official was quoted saying the reports by the Times and Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper (3/7/23), which first reported the suspected involvement of a yacht, “had ‘lots of assumptions and anonymous conjecture but not real facts.’”

While giving voice to skepticism about the Times story, NPR did not discuss Hersh’s alternative take.

Summarizing the scorecard, all three major cable news outlets—CNN, MSNBC and Fox News—publicized the Times story within a day of publication. Of the five major corporate and public broadcasters, NBC, ABC, PBS and NPR carried the story; only CBS remained silent.

As for Hersh, the blackout remains, with the sole exception of the two sentences totaling 49 words shirt-tailed to the Fox News report.

AP embarrasses itself

What’s not known about Nord Stream explosions (AP, 3/8/23): how to spell Seymour Hersch [sic].

After months of few developments in the probes, American investigative journalist Seymour Hersch, known for past exposes of US government malfeasance, self-published a lengthy report in February alleging that President Joe Biden had ordered the sabotage, which Hersch said was carried out by the CIA with Norwegian assistance.

That report, based on a single, unidentified source, has been flatly denied by the White House, the CIA and the State Department, and no other news organization has been able to corroborate it. Russia, followed by China, however, leaped on Hersch’s reporting, saying it was grounds for a new and impartial investigation conducted by the United Nations.

The misspelling was not corrected until the next day.

Zero times any number is zero

Snopes (2/10/23) has not yet run a piece criticizing the New York Times article (3/7/23) for relying on anonymous sourcing.

AP wasn’t alone in casting doubt about Hersh’s story by stressing it is “based on a single, unidentified source,” while failing to note the Times piece also rested entirely on anonymous “US officials.”

A Business Insider piece (2/9/23) published the day after Hersh posted his story, derided his account of the bombing as an “evidence-free theory,” noting his claims “appear to rely on a single unnamed source.”

Republished by Yahoo! (2/9/23) and MSN (2/9/23), the Business Insider article was the primary source of an article by the factchecking site Snopes (2/10/23), with the headline “Claim That US Blew up Nord Stream Pipelines Relies on Anonymous Source.”

It can be argued that the New York Times was exempted from such criticism because it didn’t rely on just one source; the plural “US officials” appears 16 times in the story.

But if Hersh’s unnamed source has zero credibility, then so does each source included under the umbrella of “US officials” at the Times. The laws of mathematics should apply: Zero times any number is still zero.

The post Anonymous Sources Are Newsworthy—When They Talk to NYT, Not Seymour Hersh appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by David Knox.

Scores of hits from publications across the globe pop up from an internet search for veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s claim that the US destroyed Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipeline.

The British news agency Reuters (2/9/23) ran at least ten stories on Seymour Hersh’s Nord Stream report; the US AP didn’t run one.

But what is most striking about the page after page of results from Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo in the weeks following the February 8 posting of Hersh’s story isn’t what is there, but what is not to be found:

•  The Times of London (2/8/23) reported Hersh’s story hours after he posted it on his Substack account, but nothing in the New York Times.
• Britain’s Reuters News Agency moved at least ten stories (2/8/23, 2/9/23, 2/12/2, 2/15/23, among others), the Associated Press not one.
• Not a word broadcast by the major US broadcast networks—NBC, ABC, CBS—or the publicly funded broadcasters PBS and NPR.
• No news stories on the nation’s major cable outlets, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.

Is there justification for such self-censorship? True, Hersh’s story is based on a single anonymous source. But anonymous sources are a staple of mainstream reporting on the US government, used by all major outlets. Further, countless stories of lesser national and international import have been published with the caveat that the facts reported have not been independently verified.

Doubts about Hersh’s story aside, by every journalistic standard, the extensive international coverage given the story, as well as the adamant White House and Pentagon denials, should have made it big news in the United States.

More important, if Hersh got it wrong, his story needs to be knocked down. Silence is not acceptable journalism.

News blackout

The online magazine Newsweek (2/8/23) was one of the few notable US outlets to cover Hersh’s report as a news story.

What’s not in doubt is the remarkable breadth of the news blackout surrounding Hersh’s story. The only major US newspaper to cover it as breaking news was the New York Post (2/8/23).

It did appear on the opinion pages—but not the news columns—of two major dailies. The Los Angeles Times (2/11/23) mentioned Hersh’s story in the 11th paragraph of a weekly round-up by the letters editor. On the New York Times  opinion page (2/15/23), Ross Douthat included Hersh in a column headlined “UFOs and Other Unsolved Mysteries of Our Time.”

Fox News firebrands Tucker Carlson (2/8/23) and Laura Ingraham (2/14/23) collectively gave Hersh’s story a few minutes on their cable TV shows, but their network didn’t post a news story. On Fox News Sunday (2/19/23), National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby was asked about Hersh’s claims. But, again, Fox News didn’t do a separate news report.

Newsweek (2/8/23) has covered the story , but focusing mainly on White House denials and Russia’s reaction. Bloomberg News (2/9/23) ran a four-paragraph follow-up that also stressed the Russian response, but provided no details of Hersh’s account of the bombing.

The Washington Post’s first mention of the story (2/22/23) came two weeks after it was posted. Again, Russian reaction was the hook, as seen in the headline: “Russia, Blaming US Sabotage, Calls for UN Probe of Nord Stream.”

‘Discredited journalist’

Focusing on a story’s acceptance by an official enemy (Business Insider, 2/9/23) is a good tactic for promoting unquestioning rejection of information that challenges official narratives.

Arguably the most influential coverage of Hersh’s story came from Business Insider (2/9/23), which posted what can justly be called a hit piece, given its blatantly loaded headline: “The Claim by a Discredited Journalist That the US Secretly Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline Is Proving a Gift to Putin.”

The Business Insider article was picked up by Yahoo! (2/9/23) and MSN (2/9/23). It also was the primary source of an article in Snopes (2/10/23), the only major factchecking site to weigh in on Hersh’s claims. But Snopes, which bills itself as “the definitive Internet reference source for researching urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors and misinformation,” didn’t check any disputed facts. Instead, it starts with an ad hominem attack, asking “Who is Seymour Hersh?”

Snopes answers that rhetorical question by summarizing his body of work—uncovering the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1970, revealing the secret bombing in Cambodia and the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq—but emphasizing that “his later work, however, has been controversial and widely panned by journalists for promoting conspiratorial claims that hinge on dubious anonymous sources or speculation.”

Snopes’ presentation is hardly even-handed. No defenders of Hersh are cited in the four-paragraph overview of his work, which includes seven hyperlinks to sources. That looks impressive. But clicking on the links reveals four are to the same source: the Business Insider hit piece.

Snopes’ failure to acknowledge multiple links to the same source isn’t just sloppy, it’s misleading, because most readers don’t check to see if the same source is cited repeatedly.

It’s likely Snopes used the Business Insider piece a fifth time—the last without attribution. The Snopes article’s final sentence states: “Hersch [sic] was asked by the Russian news agency TASS about the identity of his source. He told them that, ‘It’s a person, who, it seems, knows a lot about what’s going on.’ ”

The Business Insider piece ends with a paragraph with the same misspelling of Hersh’s name, the same TASS link and identical—word for word — translation of his response. (It doesn’t help Snopes’ credibility as a factchecker that Hersh’s name was originally misspelled two other times in the article.)

Much of the remainder of Snopes’ article consists of quotes from Hersh’s story, followed by commentary disparaging Hersh’s reliance on a single, unnamed source. Since that’s something Hersh readily acknowledges, it’s hard to see the informational value of the Snopes article.

Competition, not just critics

While several bloggers have challenged details in Hersh’s account, no news outlet has answered the only question that matters: Who blew up the pipeline?

Waiting for official explanations appears to be a dead end. Sweden, Denmark and Germany have launched investigations, but have not indicated when—or if—results would be released.

The giants of US journalism—the New York Times, Washington Post and the major broadcast networks—have the resources to try and solve the mystery. And it’s certainly possible that one or more of them are working to do just that. But the pipelines were destroyed five months ago. Since then, Seymour Hersh is the only journalist to offer an explanation of who was responsible.

There should be others. Hersh needs competition, not just critics.

The post Major US Outlets Found Hersh’s Nord Strom Scoop Too Hot to Handle appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by David Knox.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, the bloodshed continues as Russian troops battle Ukrainian soldiers while the US and NATO pour in weapons. Russian troops have taken control of much of the eastern region, the Donbass.

How did we get here and what is driving the process?

The Rise of the US Exceptionalism

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, influential neoconservatives said it was time for US interests and priorities to be dominant. There was only one superpower. This was to be a New American Century with no challengers. This perspective went from being a fringe element to increasingly influential. Over the course of the 1990s, it took hold and became US foreign policy. They said it explicitly: The US should not permit any country to challenge US supremacy and dominance.

With the Soviet Union gone and Russia in disarray, there was no counter-force in international organizations or the United Nations. The US manipulated existing agencies and created new institutions to its advantage. History and international agreements were rewritten. For example, with US and Israeli pressure, the UN resolution affirming that Zionism is a form of racism was overturned.

US foreign policy became increasingly aggressive. Sanctions on Iraq, aimed to drive the country into total submission, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Children were especially vulnerable to sickness from contaminated water. Chlorine for purification was prohibited while the US hailed itself a leader in gender equality with the first female Secretary of State, Madeline Albright.

Recalcitrant countries were subject to attack. The multi-ethnic country of Yugoslavia was a prime target. Divisions were promoted while the CIA funded an extremist separatist army. NATO went on the attack, bombing Serbia without authorization from the UN Security Council. The plan was clear: divide and conquer.

Simultaneously, the creation of the European Union in 1993 made it harder for individual countries to act in their own best interests and easier for the US to dominate the whole.

The military alliance binding them together is NATO – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Although this is a military alliance, there is no doubt which country is paramount. The US spends more than all others combined.

The September 11 attacks in 2001 were a watershed moment. The attacks provided a “Pearl Harbor” moment and justification for increased US aggression abroad. The official explanation of who carried out the attacks and why has been seriously challenged. Whoever perpetrated the attacks, neoconservatives used 9-11 to push their agenda. The US commenced their attack and occupation of Afghanistan.

The next major violation of international law was the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Iraq was devastated, extremism and sectarianism exploded. Today, US troops remain there despite the Iraqi parliament and government requesting they leave.

Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction as claimed by US “intelligence”. Instead, a form of chemical weapons was created in Iraq by the US military. Dust from depleted uranium bullets and missiles vaporized and mixed with the environment. Iraq has experienced a huge increase in birth defects and cancer.

Russia Restabilizes

While this was happening, Russia was starting to restabilize under the Putin administration. After a decade of chaos, corruption and the collapse of the communist safety net, Russia was getting back on its feet in the early 2000s. The standard of living and life expectancy started to increase. Western advisors were no longer in charge. Oligarchs were no longer able to rob at will.

Even though the Warsaw Pact has ceased to exist, NATO refused to disband. On the contrary, despite promises to Russian leaders, NATO expanded in 1999, 2004 and 2009.

When NATO invited Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO in 2008, Russia loudly said NO. They said that would cross a red line for them. NATO was clearly an OFFENSIVE alliance and to permit it on the Ukraine border less than 500 miles from Moscow would jeopardize Russian security. Russia kept asking that security for ALL be considered.

War in Libya and Syria

Unrest in Libya erupted in early 2011. Western media started propagating stories of pending massacres and the UN Security Council, with China and Russia abstaining, authorized a “no fly zone” and “necessary measures to protect civilians”. This became the pretext for the US plus NATO and other allies to attack Libyan government forces. They overthrew the Libyan government and unleashed a civil war that continues to today. Later evidence revealed the sensational claims of rape and pending massacre were falsehoods, just like in the past.

At the same time, the West and allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey were funding, training and supporting extremists and foreigners travelling to Syria. After the overthrow of the Libyan government, the CIA took control of Libyan military arsenals and started sending weapons to jihadists in Syria.

Extremists were trained in camps in Turkey on the Syrian border. Weapons were flown into Incirlik US Air Base in southern Turkey. Thus started the US war on Syria which continues to today.

In the Fall of 2013, a sarin gas attack killed hundreds of civilians in outer Damascus. Neocons were itching to attack Syria as they had attacked Libya and Iraq. President Obama claimed, “We know the Assad regime was responsible.” He also said “I believe we should act. That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes us exceptional.”

The US attack was deterred after Russia persuaded Syria to give up all their chemical weapons – which had been developed as a deterrent against Israel’s nuclear weapons. Russian Putin praised the agreement but cautioned, “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.”

Later, Seymour Hersh revealed that the chemical attacks were not carried out by the Syrian government as claimed by Obama. Rather, they had been perpetrated by Syrian extremists with Turkish support. The purpose was to provide a pretext for US and NATO direct attacks on Syria.

War in Ukraine

Meanwhile, 1200 miles north of Damascus, protests in the Maidan main square of Kyiv Ukraine were growing in intensity. There was a combination of peaceful protesters and a small but violent faction of ultra nationalist extremists. Western billionaires and US agencies were instrumental in promoting pro-western organizations and the Ukraine protests. US politicians and officials such as Victoria Nuland and John McCain showed up to offer symbolic and tangible support.

On February 7, 2014, Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador planned who would take leadership after the pending Ukraine coup. Nuland summed it up: “Yats is the guy” (Arseny Yatsenyuk). Referring to a compromise agreement preferred by European leaders, Nuland said, “Fuck the EU.” From the conversation, we also know that Jake Sullivan (current National Security Advisor) and then Vice President Biden were involved. US neoconservatives were not satisfied with a mixed Ukraine. They wanted an anti-Russia Ukraine.

With the Winter Olympics in Sochi Russia drawing toward a close, someone decided to expedite the coup. Timing is important. On February 20, snipers killed over 50 protesters and police to ignite the events. Ukrainian-Canadian Professor Ivan Katchanovoski of the University of Ottawa has rigorously researched the events and shows that the shootings were by snipers located in opposition controlled buildings.

On the first day of the coup government, on 27 February, they removed Russian as an official language despite 30% of the population having it as a first language. It would be comparable to a coup in Ottawa Canada with the coup government removing French as an official language of Canada. The new leader was the same Arseny Yatsenyuk as planned by Nuland weeks earlier.

Opponents of the coup government were attacked with 42 killed in Odessa. In Crimea, they quickly organized a referendum on whether to secede from Ukraine. With 83% turnout, 97% of the population said they wanted to join the Russian Federation. In eastern Ukraine north of Crimea, called the Donbas, there was also a majority of the population deeply opposed to the coup and coup government. They confronted the authorities and many military units defected to join the secessionists. The regions were cut off by the Kiev government, with pensioners no longer receiving retirement checks and government services stopped. The Ukrainian Army attacked and thousands died. The regions were excluded from national elections. Eventually they organized themselves as the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples Republics. Thus the war in Ukraine did not begin one year ago; it began nine years ago, in February 2014.

In late 2014 and again in 2015, peace agreements to resolve the civil war in Ukraine were signed in Minsk. France and Germany were to help insure the implementation. Russia supported this as a way to resolve the conflict. The UN Security Council passed a resolution endorsing the agreement.

Instead of implementing this, Kiev ignored their promises while the US and NATO began arming and training the Ukraine Army. In effect, Ukraine became an unofficial member. The arming and NATO-ization continued and escalated. First it was only “defensive” weapons. Then, under Trump, they began supplying “offensive” weapons.

NATO plans to destabilize and weaken Russia were explicit. The Pentagon thinktank, the RAND Corporation, published reports discussing strategic options to weaken and destabilize Russia. The longer term goal: to break it up as plotted by Brzezinkski in his US foreign policy bible The Grand Chessboard.

It has recently been revealed by the former Ukrainian, French and German leaders that the 2015 Minsk peace agreement was a ruse. By their own statements and admissions, it was never a genuine effort to peacefully resolve the civil war in eastern Ukraine. The goal was to stall for time while NATO trained and equipped the Ukrainian Army, to solidify the anti Russian attitude and crush those not in agreement.

NeoCons do not want peace in Ukraine

The neocons driving Washington’s foreign policy do not want to end the Ukraine war; they want to prolong it. They dream of repeating what happened in the 1980’s when Russian intervention in Afghanistan led to the weakening and ultimate breakup of the Soviet Union. The former boss of Jake Sullivan, Hillary Clinton, said explicitly in March “That [Afghanistan] is the model that people are now looking toward.”

The immorality of US policy is breathtaking. Afghanistan went through hell beginning in 1979 as the US and Saudi Arabia supported and armed religious fanatics to destabilize Afghanistan and create trouble for the Soviet Union. Afghanistan has endured over four decades of conflict and extremism and is still suffering.

Today, US neocons running foreign policy are sacrificing Ukraine with the same goal of undermining Russia. They could not live with a neutral Ukraine and have promoted and allied with ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi Ukrainian elements. Previously Washington did not want anything to do with the neo-Nazis but this has changed.

NeoCons and Syria

The US has also allied with extremists in Syria. In late 2014 and early 2015, ISIS and Nusra (the Syrian Al Qaeda) made major assaults. Syrian and foreign extremists poured across the Turkish border. There were dozens of Canadians, hundreds of Brits, thousands of Europeans and North Africans. The Canadian and British secret services were well aware of the plans of their citizens who were being recruited by Al Qaeda and ISIS. They did nothing because, as Jake Sullivan said, “AQ [Al Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”

With weapons and training from western military and intelligence forces, the extremists were able to capture a large area of northern Syria and the outskirts of Damascus.

In September 2015 Russia came to the assistance of the Damascus government. They provided airplanes and pilots to attack the advancing extremists. Uninvited, the US began also overflying Syria and then establishing US bases in the east and south. They rarely attacked ISIS but attacked Syrian troops at critical times. Then they began cultivating Kurdish secessionist elements. They rebranded them as the “Syrian Democratic Forces”. They are still there today – stealing the Syrian nation’s wealth in oil and wheat. The US has imposed draconian sanctions on the majority of the country. The dirty war on Syria continues.

Neoconservative belief in US supremacy and impunity are exemplified by former Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Morell. In an 2016 interview, he was outraged that Russia supported the Syrian government resisting extremist attacks. In a 2016 interview, Morell publicly suggested “covertly” killing Russians who are on the ground in Syria. “They got to pay a price for what they’re doing. Just like we made the Russians pay a price in Afghanistan …. We have to make them want to go home.”

Russian Intervention in Ukraine

One year ago, Russia troops went into Ukraine with the stated goal of de-nazifying and de-militarizing the country. Many Ukrainian civilians have fled the fighting with more that 3 million going to Russia, by far the most of any country.

Did Russia have a choice? They could have continued waiting, hoping for a change in attitude by the US and NATO. They tried. In December 2021 Russia proposed peace treaties with the US and NATO. Instead of negotiating, the US and NATO dismissed the proposals out of hand.

The US-Ukraine Stategic Partnership, signed in November 2021, made it clear there was no intention to respect the will of the overwhelming majority of people in Crimea or to implement the Minsk Agreement to resolve the eastern Ukraine conflict peacefully. On the contrary, Ukraine with US support was building its forces to attack the Donbass and perhaps Crimea.

After 30 years of NATO provocations and escalating threats, Russia acted. While this has been condemned in the West, there is widespread understanding and support for their position in the Global South. A recent poll indicates that a big majority continue to feel positively about Russia.

What happens in Ukraine will have a profound impact on the globe. The “New American Century” dreamed by US hawks has been challenged.

It is high time to end US delusions of superiority and exceptionalism. The USA should become a normal nation.

We need a multipolar world with respect for the UN Charter and international law.

Let the people in Crimea and the Donbass choose their destinies. Let the war end and Ukrainians recover and prosper in an independent country which is neither a tool of the US or Russia. Let Syria rebuild and recover without the cruel US sanctions.

Let the US turn from fomenting conflicts, undermining and attacking other countries to reforming and improving itself.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Rick Sterling.

Photograph Source: Hossam el-Hamalawy – CC BY-SA 2.0

Late last week (June 29, 2008) the New Yorker released a 6,000 word story by Seymour Hersh under the vague title, “Preparing the Battlefield”. The lead paragraph ran as follows:

“Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.”

Beyond the assertion in the second paragraph that secret ops against Iran by US military and CIA are being “significantly expanded”, that was about it so far as hot news was concerned. There’s actually incredibly little detail in the 6,000 words about the actual Finding. Most of the rest of Hersh’s essay led the reader in discursive fashion  through comical interludes of zero political consequence, fairly stale news, (such as the scale of differences between the White House and Admiral Fallon) and lengthy cites from Col. Sam Gardiner about the internal political situation in Iran. As traditional in Hersh’s pieces, there was a quote from Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. officer.

The comical interludes consisted of quotations, relayed with apparent seriousness by Hersh, from Democrats tying to rationalize the fact that the leaders of their party, now in a majority in Congress, had meekly signed on to Bush’s request for up to $400 million in secret funding.

Here’s a sample of whining and mumbling from Rep David Obey: “I suspect there’s something going on, but I don’t know what to believe. Cheney has always wanted to go after Iran, and if he had more time he’d find a way to do it. We still don’t get enough information from the agencies, and I have very little confidence that they give us information on the edge.”

And here’s another from an unnamed Democratic whiner: “A member of the House Appropriations Committee acknowledged that, even with a Democratic victory in November, ‘it will take another year before we get the intelligence activities under control.’ He went on, ‘We control the money and they can’t do anything without the money. Money is what it’s all about. But I’m very leery of this Administration.’ He added, ‘This Administration has been so secretive.’”

As Hersh’s hodge-podge narrative got play over the weekend, CounterPunchers read his supposed disclosures with an impatient and knowing sigh. They, after all, had learned of the Finding back on May 2, when Andrew Cockburn disclosed its contents here, with a good deal more pep and hard information, under the headlines, “Democrats Okay Funds for Covert Ops SECRET BUSH “FINDING” WIDENS WAR ON IRAN”.

Here the first 256 words of  Andrew Cockburn’s CounterPunch exclusive, a brisk narrative against Hersh’s 6,000-word boustrophedonic plod, but – as is instantly apparent – far more informative:

Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, “unprecedented in its scope.” Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials.  This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups.

Similarly, covert funds can now flow without restriction to Jundullah, or “army of god,” the militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan – just across the Afghan border — whose leader was featured not long ago on Dan Rather Reports cutting his brother in law’s throat. Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west Iran.  Further afield, operations against Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime. All this costs money, which in turn must be authorized by Congress, or at least a by few witting members of the intelligence committees.  That has not proved a problem.  An initial outlay of $300 million to finance implementation of the finding has been swiftly approved with bipartisan support, apparently regardless of the unpopularity of the current war and the perilous condition of the U.S. economy.

There are interesting differences between Andrew Cockburn and Hersh’s stories, not least on the matter of assassinations. CounterPunch’s story, in the lead, cites “assassination of targeted [Iranian] officials”, as part of the purview of the Finding. More than 1,100 words into his story Hersh gestures tactfully to  “potential defensive lethal action by U.S. operatives in Iran”. In other words, if President Ahmadinejad suddenly detected a CIA operative about to stab him and drew out his revolver, the operative would be entitled, in self defense, to kill Ahmadinejad first. That’s the way the Agency is. Punctilious to a fault.

Actually, it’s at this point, after the hokum about “potential defensive legal action” that Hersh detonates a real bombshell. He admits in print that someone got the story before him, something he disdained to do in the case of My Lai, initially excavated with incredible courage by the late Ron Ridenhour. Nor, in the case of Abu Ghraib has Hersh been keen to correct admiring interviewers and remind them that this was a scoop of CBS News. But in this New Yorker he writes: “(In early May, the journalist Andrew Cockburn published elements of the Finding in Counterpunch, a newsletter and online magazine.)”

He probably felt he had to. Hersh had called Andrew Cockburn’s home phone in Washington DC in early June, clearly peeved to have discovered that the  Finding had been described in detail on May 2 in CounterPunch. (By then it was not exactly a closely guarded secret, except to the traditional, near-dead U.S. press. At the time Hersh called, just under a million readers around the world had clicked directly onto the story on our site.) We would not go so far as to surmise that Hersh learned of the Finding from our story. But we do infer that Hersh’s stated informant on what was in the Finding, referred to by Hersh three times as “a former senior intelligence official”, as “the person familiar with the Finding” and as “the former senior intelligence official” knew less than what Andrew Cockburn’s source told him and thus what CounterPunch readers learned in timely fashion, and had their knowledge further enhanced by Andrew Cockburn’s follow-up story on May 30, “Petraeus’s Iran Obsession” which disclosed, with pertinent detail, something readers of the New Yorker will not have learned, that  “So far, according to former officials with knowledge of the finding, the results have been in line with most other U.S. initiatives in the region, i.e. the strengthening of Iran.”

This piece was originally published in the July 1, 2008 edition of CounterPunch.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeffrey St. Clair - Alexander Cockburn.

On February 7, Seymour Hersh – arguably the most credible investigative journalist of our era – published a bombshell exposé revealing that the United States was guilty of blowing up the Nord Stream II undersea pipeline that was supposed to deliver natural gas from Russia to the Federal Republic of Germany.

Hersh’s revelations were based entirely on classified information leaked to him by a member of the government with first-hand knowledge of the planning and implementation of the attack on the pipeline – a member of the government who clearly broke the law by violating his fiduciary duty not to reveal classified information to an unauthorized source.

Like Chelsea Manning, who had revealed classified information to Julian Assange, for which she was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison, Hersh’s source, if identified, would surely also be convicted and sentenced to similar long-term imprisonment.

But Hersh’s source has not been identified. However – Hersh himself has. According to the same logic under which Assange was indicted for publishing classified information, and now faces up to 175 years in prison, Hersh, too, should be indicted and face comparable long-term imprisonment.

So why is Sy Hersh still free?

Hersh broke the same laws that the U.S. government accuses Julian Assange of breaking. But unlike Assange, a foreigner whom the U.S. has unsuccessfully been trying to extradite from England for years, Hersh is an American citizen living right here in the United States – easy to find, cuff, indict, convict and throw in prison for the rest of his life.

So why is Sy Hersh still free?

Surely the classified information that Hersh has revealed is even more dangerous to the safety of the U.S. than what Assange revealed. Hersh showed that the U.S. had committed an unprovoked act of war against Russia. This gives Russia an absolute legal right to retaliate under Chapter VII, Article 51, of the United Nations Charter, which cites self-defense as an exception to the prohibition against the use of force.

Since Russia happens to be a nuclear power, its potential retaliation could trigger World War III and wipe out not just the U.S. but the entire human race. Therefore, in any comparison of who has placed the U.S. in greater danger – Julian Assange is a piker compared to Sy Hersh.

So why is Sy Hersh still free?

The answer is this. Although President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland would love to throw Sy Hersh into a maximum security prison for the rest of his life, as punishment for revealing their complicity in blowing up the Nord Stream II pipelines – they don’t dare to. If they did, it would be tantamount to admitting that … what Hersh published is true.

Which would be embarrassing, to say the least, because Biden and Company have spent every day since February 7 denying that Hersh’s revelations are true. In other words, they claim he made it all up – which means, according to them, that he did not publish classified information. Therefore he cannot be guilty of any crime.

That’s the frustrating double bind in which Biden now finds himself. It must drive him crazy. Because the day he sends federal agents to put the cuffs on Sy Hersh, that is the day he and Blinken and Nuland will have to admit that they lied, that Hersh’s exposé is true, and that they did indeed order the destruction of the Nord stream pipelines.

So of course that day will never come, and Sy Hersh will remain a free man. Which is why, at least this one time, I am glad that our leaders are liars.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Steve Brown.

Seymour Hersh is the pre-eminent investigative journalist of our time.  He has won five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more than a dozen other prizes for investigative reporting. In 1970, Mr. Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War. In 2004, Mr. Hersh exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in a series of pieces in The New Yorker. Among his many books are The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, The Dark Side of Camelot, The Samson Option, The Killing of Osama Bin Laden, and his latest, a memoir of his storied, decades-long career, entitled simply Reporter.

The pipeline industry all know that Russia didn’t [sabotage the Nord Stream pipeline]. Everybody knows they did not do it. There might have been some vagueness about who. But they were pretty sure all along who. Because who else threatened to do it, but the President and his Under Secretary Victoria Nuland? They’re the two that went public with it— much to the dismay of the people actually doing the covert operation.

 Seymour Hersh

We always saw the Russians’ great abundance of gas and the Russian delivery of gas to Europe—from Jack Kennedy in 1962— we saw it as weaponizing gas.

Seymour Hersh

It’s a famous notion that the CIA and all those secret groups, they don’t work for the Constitution. They work for the Crown. They work for the President.

Seymour Hersh

Mickey Huff is the director of Project Censored and the founder and host of The Project Censored Show, a weekly syndicated public affairs program. He is professor of social science, history, and journalism at Diablo Valley College. He has authored and edited several books including ​​United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (and what we can do about it), Let’s Agree to Disagree, The Media and Me: A Guide to Critical Media Literacy for Young People, and Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2023: The News That Didn’t Make the News—And Why.

[The Norfolk Southern crash] is a bipartisan disaster. It’s a direct example of what happens with regulatory capture. And it shows, once again, the gross failure of the corporate media— they’ll cover balloons, and the Super Bowl, and a bunch of other distractions, instead of things that really matter to working class Americans.

Mickey Huff, co-editor of State of the Free Press 2023: The News That Didn’t Make the News—And Why

You’re not allowed to ask the tough questions, Ralph. And anybody who’s been in the press pool long enough knows that. They don’t have to be told that. The censorship doesn’t have to be directly from the government, or even from the corporate owners. Reporters know that if they ask questions that don’t get answered too often, and get overlooked, they’re going to get yanked. They’re going to get called back to the office. They might end up losing their jobs because they don’t have copy and they don’t have stories.

Mickey Huff, co-editor of State of the Free Press 2023: The News That Didn’t Make the News—And Why

Encourage members of the press not to forget [the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq on March 19th]. That was a massive war crime— over a million innocent Iraqis died, the country destroyed, falling apart to this day— and Bush and Cheney are luxuriating in the US without any accountability whatsoever. There’s a lot of talk now on the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But very little talk about the US and its sociocide destruction of the Iraqi people. And I think that illustrates how important it is to ask questions on subjects that have been taboo or censored.

Ralph Nader

This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

The first reports noted three leaks in both the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipeline systems. A fourth was subsequently revealed. Then came news that the first explosion had taken place in a Russian built section of the pipeline. Der Spiegel summed up the various questions. Was Moscow behind it? Or the United States, which had always been implacably opposed to the project? And what of Ukraine or perhaps “rogue” agents? For those wishing for a more savoury sauce, there was babbling that Mossad might have been behind it.

Statements were issued in number, some more equivocal than others in attributing blame. The Council of the European Union, in promising a “robust and united response” to the incidents, declared that “all available information indicates those leaks are the result of a deliberate act.”

Gerhard Schindler, former chief of the German Federal Intelligence Service, insisted that the damage, sustained at depths of 80 metres in the Baltic Sea, required “sophisticated technical and organisational capabilities that clearly point to a state actor.” Russia, he continued, was the only power that could be seriously considered “especially since it stands to gain most from this act of sabotage.”

In the black and white world of most Ukrainian officials, the damage had to have been inflicted by Moscow. An advisor to the Ukrainian president, Mykhailo Polodyak, called the incident “a terrorist attack planned by Russia and an act of aggression towards [the EU].”

In this bluster and bombast, it was striking to note the absence of any alternatives. Over the course of last summer, Washington had issued a pointed warning to several of its European allies that the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines would be the subject of threat, even potential attack. The nature of such warnings, based on US intelligence assessments, was vague. The hostility of the Biden administration was not.

In the scheme of things, the outing of the US role in this affair by the establishment’s tolerated contrarian is unsurprising and far from stunning. According to Seymour Hersh, the culprits were well trained deep-water divers who had gone through the US Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center. Under the cover of a NATO exercise named BALTOPS 22, the divers planted devices that would be remotely triggered three months later.

The claims made in the article were coolly dismissed by various officials. White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson responded with a swat. “This is false and complete fiction.” Ditto the waspish spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency, Tammy Thorp: “This claim is completely and utterly false.” For his part, Biden accused Russia for “pumping out disinformation and lies”.

But as Hersh writes, the decision to sabotage the pipelines had few opponents in Washington’s national security community. Weaning Europe off its dependence on Russian energy supplies has been a goal near and dear to US policy makers. The issue lay in how best to execute the action without clear attribution.

To keep the cloak of secrecy firmly fastened, resort was made to US Navy divers rather than units from the Special Operations Command. In the case of the latter, covert operations must be reported to Congress. The Gang of Eight, comprising the US Senate and House leadership, must also be briefed. No such protocols exist in the context of the Navy.

Even now the denials continue. On February 19, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby flatly rejected the suggestion that the United States was behind the explosions. “It’s a completely false story. There is no truth to it, Shannon,” he told the host Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday. “Not a shred of it. It is not true. The United States, and no proxies of the United States, had anything to do with that, nothing.”

When pressed by Bream on whether there was an obligation to inform Congress of such an operation, Kirby replied that “we keep Congress informed appropriately of things both classified and unclassified. But I can tell you now, regardless of the notification process, there was no US involvement in this.”

The European Commission’s Press Officer Andrea Masini has opted for the line that revelations from an investigative reporter are less trustworthy than official investigations. “We do not comment on speculations about the perpetrators of sabotage against the Nord Stream pipelines. The only basis for any possible response can be the outcome of an official investigation. Such investigations are the responsibility of the competent authorities of the Member States concerned.”

Hersh’s revelations, drawn from a source with intimate knowledge of the sabotage operations, and the brimming hostility Washington has shown towards cheap Russian natural gas and its nexus with the European energy market, seem far from speculative. The plotters have been outed, and what an inglorious bunch they look.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

My title comes from a 19th century author whose name does not matter nor would it mean much if I mentioned him.  It’s an old truth that has not changed a bit over the centuries.  I think, however, it would be more linguistically accurate to say that most people want to be deceived, for the world, the earth doesn’t give a damn, as the French poet Jacques Prévert reminds us in “Song in the Blood”:

There are great puddles of blood on the world
where’s it all going all this spilled blood
is it the earth that drinks it and gets drunk
funny kind of drunkography then
so wise . . . so monotonous . . .
No the earth doesn’t get drunk
the earth doesn’t turn askew
it pushes its little car regularly its four seasons
rain . . . snow
hail . . . fair weather
never is it drunk
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It doesn’t give a damn
The earth

But people, the thinking reeds as Pascal called us, we, who through the support of wars and violence of all sorts, care just enough to want to be deceived as to what we are doing by making so much blood that is inside people get to the outside for the earth to drink.

I could, of course, quote liberally from truth tellers down through history who have said the same thing about self-deception with all its shades and nuances. Those quotations are endless.  Why bother?  At some very deep level in the recesses of their hearts, people know it’s true.  I could make a pretty essay here, be erudite and eloquent, and weave a web of wisdom from all those the world says were the great thinkers because they are now dead and can no longer detect hypocrisy.

For the desire to be deceived and hypocrisy (Greek hypokrites, stage actor, a pretender) are kissing cousins.  I write this to try to say something of value about the mass idiocy of the media’s daily barrage of lies and stupidities that pass for news on the front pages and newscasts of the corporate media.  And the people who believe them.

It is not easy.  No matter how obviously absurd the claims about Chinese “spy” balloons, the shooting down of unidentified flying objects, reports of how Russia is losing the war in Ukraine, all the support for presidents and prime ministers who shill for the war industries, etc. – a list that could be extended indefinitely on a daily basis – these media are relentless in presenting government propaganda juxtaposed with trivia.

When you think they must realize they have gone too far since even a moron could see through their fabrications, they double down.  And I am referring only to what they do report, not what they omit – e.g. how the U.S. has restricted aid to the earthquake victims in Syria or Seymour Hersh’s report on the U.S. blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, two examples of terror by a terrorist state that must be protected at all costs.  This is the protection racket by omission and commission.

Maybe an anecdote would help. A week ago, I ran into an old friend at a coffee shop.  Hersh’s article, aspects of which I question, had just come out and I asked him if he had seen it.  He said he hadn’t but didn’t know anything about such pipelines being blown up.  I was stunned.  A devout consumer of mainstream media, yet he somehow missed this major September 2022 event in the U.S. war against Russia that was reported widely by the media he relies upon.  Those media went on to suggest that Russia blew up its own pipelines, a claim beyond ridicule but one that was part of its war propaganda narrative.  My friend is a guy who has strong opinions about everything and finds NPR, the Guardian, the New York Times, CNN, etc. to be credible news sources.  How could he have missed one of the major stories of 2022, one that the New York Times,etc. was reporting on into December, still suggesting that Russia did the deed?  How could he have missed the pipeline story whose reverberations spread through all aspects of the U.S. war against Russia via Ukraine when it was referenced in so many reports of gas and oil prices, a cold winter for Europe, and so many other issues? Its ramifications are manifold and have been reported as such, but he had never heard of it. I was stunned.

I wanted to quote him Dylan’s facetious words from “The Ballad of the Thin Man”: “’Cause something is happening/And you don’t know what it is/Do you, Mister Jones?”  But I did not.

I have spent a week wondering how it is possible that he didn’t know anything about the pipeline explosions. I am sure he wasn’t lying to me. So how to explain it?

In the interim, as I have been trying to comprehend these matters, the Super Bowl with its mesmeric half-time spectacle replete with crotch grabbing has come and gone, and I have read an interesting article by Ethan Strauss, a sports journalist, “Why America Needs Football. Even its Brutality” that raises important questions.

Much has been written about football’s violence and the injuries it causes, the most recent example being the near fatal injury to Damar Hamlin of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills that garnered headlines for weeks (even though why he suffered cardiac arrest has been left unanswered since that would raise the COVID vaccine problem, which is also taboo).  Strauss notes the many arguments calling for the banning of football – the war game – because of its violence.  He notes that it is very true that football is very violent but that this is part of its great appeal.  He writes:

And the NFL gives Americans that war, as spectacle, week after week.

Today, at 6:30 p.m., eastern time, begins the biggest spectacle of them all: the Super Bowl, where we channel those ancient animal spirits into a highly commercialized event that ends with fireworks and a shiny trophy.

We should celebrate that.

He doesn’t argue for the celebration of war, which he opposes, but for the war-like game of football.  To Malcolm Gladwell’s statement in support of the banning of football as “a moral abomination” – “This is a sport that is living in the past that has no connection to the realities to the game right now and no connection to American society.” – he responds quite rightly that Gladwell is wrong:

In 2022, 82 of the top 100 TV shows in America were NFL games, and the top 50 most viewed sporting events were football games or events that immediately followed football games. By contrast, in 2016, only 33 of the top 50 were football-related. The country has lost interest in so much else, but football remains a huge draw and, in fact, is gaining relative market share.

Americans love violence, not just the military propaganda that precedes the Super Bowl game, but the smashing hits that players make and take in the games.  It is hard to deny.  Strauss goes on to show how over ninety percent of former NFL players who suffer from daily lifelong pain say they would do it again.  The violence is intoxicating and Americans get drunk on it.  It is the American Way.

I don’t agree with all of Strauss’s points or assumptions, especially his imperative that “we have war within us, whether or not there’s one to wage,” but he clearly is right that despite all the rhetoric about how terrible violence is, there is something about it that Americans love.  D. H. Lawrence’s point a century ago still applies: “The essential America soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.  It has never yet melted.”

But this killer soul must be hidden behind a wall of deceptions as the U.S. warfare state ceaselessly wages wars all around the world.  It must be hidden behind feel good news stories about how Americans really care about others, but only others that they are officially allowed to care about.  Not Syrians, Yemenis, Russian speakers of the Donbass, Palestinians, et al.  The terrorist nature of decades upon decades of U.S. savagery and the indifference of so many Americans go hand-in-hand but escape notice in the corporate media.  The major theme of these media is that the United States government is the great defender of freedom, peace, and democracy.  Every once in a while, a scapegoat, one rotten apple in the barrel, is offered up to show that all is not perfect in paradise.  But essentially it is one massive deception.

There’s a make-believe quality to this vast spectacle of violent power and false innocence that baffles the mind.  To see and hear the corporate masked media magicians’ daily reports is to enter a world of pure illusion that deserves only sardonic laughter but sadly captivates so many adult children desperate to believe.  This is so even as the propagandists’ trial balloons are popped in the society of the comedic spectacle.

But back to my friend I mentioned earlier. He hates violence in all its forms, is strongly opposed to war, and has a most compassionate heart, yet he remains devoted to the media that have lied us – and continue to do so – into war after war, a media that clearly fronts for the warfare state.  I still can’t explain how he knew nothing about the pipeline explosions.  Nor can I explain his allegiance to the media that lie to him daily.

Even as his government, led by that very media, leads the world toward nuclear annihilation, he remains true to his media informants.

I am stunned.

In the Blood

Born in a normal time,
The periodic slaughter of millions
By the civilized nations of the earth
I grew to adulthood half-crazed
With fear and numbed wonder.

I always wished to believe otherwise,
That people were good at heart,
Wanted to live in mutual peace
And tend the green earth as if
It were a garden
As if pity vivified all living things.

Somehow the blood that was in me
Said otherwise,
Spoke truth to the power
Of my wish,
While everywhere around me lay the lie.

But my blood, this blood that became me
While millions were being butchered
And Bing Crosby crooned I’m dreaming
Of a white Christmas,
This red blood said otherwise.

Do not accept the way they say
“Good Morning”
And the way they nod as they pass,
As though they didn’t want to kill
Each other.

Do not believe their eyes
And the way they pray to the skies
To save them.
Do not believe their beliefs,
All lies woven to deceive.
For at heart they truly hate
The green earth.

Do not believe the way they say
“Good Evening”
For they wish the darkest night
To descend upon us,
The nothingness of their knowledge
To swallow all.

That is what will release them,
That is all.

Thus my blood spoke to me,
A child of a sanguine century,
Born in a normal time,
The periodic slaughter of millions
By the civilized nations of the earth.

And despite all appearances,
I have never believed them.
Never.  Not at all.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

When the Nord Stream pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia to Germany were damaged last September, U.S. officials were quick to suggest Russia had bombed its own pipelines. But according to a new report by the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, it was the U.S. Navy that carried out the sabotage, with help from Norway. Citing a source “with direct knowledge of the operational planning,” Hersh writes on his Substack blog that planning for the mission began in December of 2021. The White House and the Norwegian government have since denied the claims. Hersh joins us for an in-depth interview to discuss his report and says the U.S. decision to bomb the pipelines was meant to lock allies into support for Ukraine at a time when some were wavering. “The fear was Europe would walk away from the war,” he says. Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for his reporting on the My Lai massacre. His reporting on CIA spying on antiwar activists during the Vietnam War era helped lead to the formation of the Church Committee, which led to major reforms of the intelligence community, and in 2004, he exposed the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The revelations contained Seymour Hersh’s analysis of the evidence pointing to US authorship of the blowing up of the  Nordstream pipelines[1] is compelling, and in a normal world this would cause a governmental crisis, a condemnation of the terror attack by the US Congress, a call for an internal investigation into illegal activities by the CIA and Pentagon, an international investigation under UN auspices, a cautious statement by the UN Secretary-General, a Protest by the United Nations Environmental Programme, a generalized media uprising, and even require the Biden Administration to step down in the light of the magnitude of the gross violation of the UN Charter and international treaties.

It is mind-boggling:  The country that claims to be a defender of international law engages is a brazen terror operation conducted in the name of the American people, who certainly would oppose the US government involvement in false flag operations and outright State terrorism.

Of course, the White House and the Pentagon immediately denied responsibility and tried to smear Seymour Hersh.  What else is new?  Even the Romans said it:  If you did it, deny it, stonewall!  Si fecisti, nega!  Hersh, a former reporter for the Associated Press and New York Times, as well as a longtime contributor to the New Yorker, quoted White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson as calling his report “false and complete fiction.” CIA spokesperson Tammy Thorp wrote: “This claim is completely and utterly false.”  This reminded me of my childhood.  I recall my teachers referring to the expression “tira la piedra y esconde la mano” – throw the stone and hide your hand – and impressing on me that such behaviour was unethical.

Long before the Hersh revelations. all the evidence pointed at the United States and its NATO allies.  After all, the United States had done everything possible to prevent the completion of the Nordstream pipeline, imposed illegal sanctions on enterprises engaged in its construction, threatened, blackmailed, bullied.  Moreover, the attack had been announced. On 7 February 2022, prior to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Biden had stated: “If Russia invades … there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2 …We will bring an end to it.” All of this would have been confirmed if the Swedish investigation had been transparent[2], if the German and Russian owners of Nordstream had been allowed to see the evidence. But also Sweden stonewalled.

Edward Snowden, the CIA analyst and whistleblower who alerted the American people and the world about the unconstitutional practices of the National Security Agency, rubbished the US denials[3].  On 8 February he tweeted:  “Can you think of any examples from history of a secret operation that the White House was responsible for, but strongly denied?  Besides, you know, that little ‘mass surveillance’ kerfuffle. pic.twitter.com/AF1GyO2cmBIn He also shared a news article from April 1961 showing US Secretary of State Dean Rusk denying the US role in the Bay of Pigs invasion, assuring the American people that the invasion was not ‘staged from American soil’. Rusk claimed that “the Cuban affair was one for the Cubans themselves to settle”, insisting that the invasion was carried out by Cubans without any support from the US.

Moral High Ground

It is surrealistic that in West claims that it wants a “rules based international order” and that the war in Ukraine is about re-establishing that order.  The US and NATO pretend that they are battling Russia from a moral high-ground,  The mainstream media tends to support this untenable narrative.

Objectively speaking, the West does not occupy any moral high-ground vis-à-vis Russia.  The West’s record of imperialism and colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, the West’s more recent aggressions against the peoples of Indo-China, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were more serious and more murderous than the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Western actions have entailed war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in total impunity, thereby creating “precedents of permissibility”, which are now being followed by Russia and others.

The problem is that we in the United States, most Brits in England and Germans in Germany actually believe our own propaganda.  It is not a matter of hypocrisy, but one of faith. Since grammar school we are indoctrinated into believing that we are the good guys by definition and that we have a mission to bring democracy and human rights to the rest of the world.  This may sound amazing to a Chinese, an Indian or an African, but the brainwashing of the American and European population has been phenomenally successful.

That is why Seymour Hersh’s evidence is not likely to have much of an impact with the American public. It simply bounces off.  People believe what they want to believe, as Julius Caesar wrote in De bello civile, quae volumus, ea credimus libenter, we believe what we want to believe.  Or worse, like St. Augustin wrote Mundus vult decipi – the world wants to be deceived.  Thus, the American people will continue holding on to our claim of “exceptionalism” and our religious fervour that we are right and everyone else is wrong. I myself believed that. It took me decades to liberate myself from the spell.

There are some who would hope that the Seymour Hersh report would make people reassess the Ukraine war and the behaviour of its participants, that it might lead some in the Western alliance to take a different position and realize that the war cannot be won militarily, unless we want to further escalate and move on to a nuclear confrontation.  Mediation would appear to be the only way out.

Alas, we are caught in our own web, we are locked into our politically necessary lies and cognitive dissonance.  Of course there are politicians and academics who realize how incoherent the system is, how dysfunctional the EU and NATO.  But the mainstream media has been successful in conditioning our minds to the necessity of “consensus” among the Western powers.  That is why the dissenting Hungarian President Victor Orban[4] is so viciously attacked by NATO governments and in the mainstream media.  Meanwhile the Croatian President Zoran Milanovic[5] has also expressed dissent with the EU and US leadership, calling for peace talks in Ukraine.  Milanovic doubts whether Crimea[6] could ever return to Ukraine, because it should never have been in Ukraine in the first place, and the vast majority of Crimeans do not want to be Ukrainians. In Germany it is the Left-wing party’s Sarah Wagenknecht[7] and Oskar Lafontaine who oppose the war in Ukraine, in the United States the Republican Congressman from Pensacola, Florida, Matt Gaetz, who does not want to send further military aid to Ukraine.  Professors John Mearsheimer, Richard Falk, Jeffrey Sachs and others agree that the Ukraine war cannot be won and that it is necessary to devise a viable compromise, a quid pro quo, to end the fighting before it escalates into a nuclear confrontation. Yet, we seem to be sleepwalking toward Apocalypse.

It is odd that the US government can carry out a war like this without a declaration of war, how it can squander a hundred billion dollars without democratically asking the American people whether that is what they really want.  Notwithstanding the importance of Seymour Hersh’s revelations and their implications for the institutions of government, nothing is likely to change.  The stranglehold of the mainstream media is such that the reports of a serious investigative journalist can be brushed aside if they do not conform with the desired political narrative. In our dysfunctional democracy, there are many facts without consequences, reports without consequences, books without consequences.  The train is running fast – and the dynamic does not favour stopping it.

Prolonging the war as long as possible

The Ukraine conflict that started in 2014 festered into a war that has now lasted for a year, killed as many as 200,000 soldiers and civilians and cost billions of dollars and euros. Will it continue indefinitely?

I cannot look into the crystal ball. There have been several valid mediation efforts by Turkish President Erdogan[8] and Israeli Prime Minister Bennett – both of them torpedoed by Washington[9]. There have been appeals for mediation by Pope Francis, Mexican President Lopez Obrador and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula. The fact remains that Washington wants to prolong the war and will continue fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.

Therefore, this proxy war is likely to continue for as long as there is money to be made, and the military-industrial complex has already made billions, as indeed also the oil industry whose profits for 2022 are astronomical.

Even if Putin were to score significant military successes in Ukraine, the war will not end, because the US will not let Zelinsky sue for peace.  The war will continue escalating until everybody is exhausted or until there is a human miscalculation or a computer glitch that unleashes nuclear war.

I would like to see a coalition of Presidents for Peace who would insist in the UN Security Council and General Assembly that the war must end immediately, because the risk of nuclear annihilation is too great.  For the rest of the world it is irrelevant whether Crimea is in Ukraine or in Russia.  Most Latin Americans, Africans and Asians do not even know what Crimea is.  We in the West have no right to destroy the planet over our purely US/European/Russian querelle.

What country has enough clout to weigh in and try to formulate viable peace proposals?  Maybe China and India should call for an international peace conference that calls on all parties to stop the fighting and cease threatening the survival of the rest of the planet.  While condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the conference should also condemn the provocations by the United States and NATO, which started as a legitimate defence alliance and over the past 30 years morphed into a criminal organization within the meaning of articles 9 and 10 of the Statute of the International Military Tribunal for Nuremberg, 1945.

Notes.

[1] https://www.ibtimes.sg/us-bombed-russias-nord-stream-gas-pipeline-after-months-long-planning-by-white-house-seymour-68965

https://nypost.com/2023/02/08/seymour-hersh-claims-us-navy-behind-nord-stream-2-pipeline-explosion/

https://www.commondreams.org/news/seymour-hersh-nord-stream

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/02/09/nord-stream-report-n2619370

[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-shuns-formal-joint-investigation-nord-stream-leak-citing-national-2022-10-14/

https://www.politico.eu/article/sweden-denmark-germany-nord-stream-investigation-tests-eu-intelligence-sharing-around-the-baltic/

[3] https://www.ibtimes.sg/edward-snowden-rubbishes-us-denial-role-nord-stream-gas-line-bombing-cites-bay-pigs-invasion-68971

[4] https://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-viktor-orban-is-telling-ukraine-to-quit-russia-war/

[5] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/croatian-president-zoran-milanovic-criticizes-tank-deliveries-to-ukraine

[6] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/crimea-will-never-again-be-part-ukraine-croatian-president-2023-01-30/

[7] https://philosophia-perennis.com/2023/02/10/alice-schwarzer-und-sahra-wagenknecht-manifest-fuer-frieden/

https://www.emma.de/artikel/manifest-fuer-frieden-340057

[8] https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/erdogan-to-reiterate-mediation-offer-to-end-ukraine-war:-sou

[9] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/03/turkish-president-erdogan-mediate-ukraine-russiahttps://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-03-13/ty-article/.premium/ukraine-u-s-signal-to-israel-mediation-attempts-arent-enough/00000180-5ba7-def0-a3c3-5fff6b2d0000https://thegrayzone.com/2023/02/06/israeli-bennett-us-russia-ukraine-peace/

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Alfred de Zayas.

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a story Wednesday alleging that the United States was behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline system last year, citing a single unnamed source "with direct knowledge of the operational planning."

According to Hersh, who published the story on his new Substack, the September attack on the Russia-to-Germany gas pipelines was carried out by the U.S. Navy "under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22" and with the help of the Norwegian navy and secret service.

Last June, with the authorization of President Joe Biden, U.S. Navy divers planted "remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines," Hersh reported.

Adrienne Watson, a White House National Security Council spokesperson, told the Russian state-owned outlet TASS that Hersh's reporting is "false and complete fiction." The White House gave the same statement to Reuters and to Hersh himself, who over the course of his decades-long career has famously exposed U.S. forces' massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians and shined light on the torture of detainees at the U.S-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

In recent years, Hersh has drawn growing backlash from mainstream media outlets and the federal government for casting doubts on the official U.S. narrative surrounding the killing of Osama bin Laden and questioning whether bin Laden really masterminded the September 11 attacks. Hersh has also drawn criticism for relying too heavily on anonymous sources.

In his Wednesday piece, Hersh reported that "Biden's decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington's national security community about how to best achieve that goal."

“This is not kiddie stuff," the anonymous source told Hersh, calling the pipeline attack "an act of war" that would be seen as such if it was traced back to the U.S.

According to Hersh, who provided a detailed account of the closed-door deliberations that preceded the pipeline attack, "there was a vital bureaucratic reason" for the Biden administration's decision to rely on graduates of the U.S. Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center to carry out the operation.

"The divers were Navy only, and not members of America's Special Operations Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership," he continued. "The Biden administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022."

As for why the U.S. would be compelled to sabotage the Nord Stream system, Hersh wrote:

From its earliest days, Nord Stream 1 was seen by Washington and its anti-Russian NATO partners as a threat to western dominance. The holding company behind it, Nord Stream AG, was incorporated in Switzerland in 2005 in partnership with Gazprom, a publicly traded Russian company producing enormous profits for shareholders which is dominated by oligarchs known to be in the thrall of Putin. Gazprom controlled 51% of the company, with four European energy firms—one in France, one in the Netherlands and two in Germany—sharing the remaining 49% of stock, and having the right to control downstream sales of the inexpensive natural gas to local distributors in Germany and Western Europe. Gazprom’s profits were shared with the Russian government, and state gas and oil revenues were estimated in some years to amount to as much as 45% of Russia's annual budget.

America's political fears were real: Putin would now have an additional and much-needed major source of income, and Germany and the rest of Western Europe would become addicted to low-cost natural gas supplied by Russia—while diminishing European reliance on America. In fact, that's exactly what happened...

Nord Stream 1 was dangerous enough, in the view of NATO and Washington, but Nord Stream 2, whose construction was completed in September of 2021, would, if approved by German regulators, double the amount of cheap gas that would be available to Germany and Western Europe.

The Biden administration wasn't quiet about its opposition to Nord Stream 2, which never became operational after Germany put the process on hold just days before Russian forces invaded Ukraine in late February of last year.

"If Russia invades—that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine—then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2," Biden said during a press conference on February 7. "We will bring an end to it."

"I promise you, we will be able to do it," the U.S. president added.

Citing his unnamed source, Hersh reported that "several of those involved in planning the pipeline mission were dismayed by what they viewed as indirect references to the attack" by Biden and other U.S. officials.

“The plan was for the options to be executed post-invasion and not advertised publicly," Hersh wrote. "Biden simply didn't get it or ignored it."

Hersh reported that a number of options were considered to sabotage the pipelines.

"The Navy proposed using a newly commissioned submarine to assault the pipeline directly," the journalist wrote. "The Air Force discussed dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely. The CIA argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone involved understood the stakes."

The CIA denied Hersh's reporting, calling it "completely and utterly false."

Ultimately, according to Hersh, Norwegian officials proposed that the June NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea—sponsored annually by the United States Sixth Fleet naval unit—"would be the ideal cover to plant the mines" on the pipelines.

According to the reporting:

The Americans provided one vital element: they convinced the Sixth Fleet planners to add a research and development exercise to the program. The exercise, as made public by the Navy, involved the Sixth Fleet in collaboration with the Navy's "research and warfare centers." The at-sea event would be held off the coast of Bornholm Island and involve NATO teams of divers planting mines, with competing teams using the latest underwater technology to find and destroy them.

"It was both a useful exercise and ingenious cover," Hersh wrote. "The C4 explosives would be in place by the end of BALTOPS22, with a 48-hour timer attached. All of the Americans and Norwegians would be long gone by the first explosion."

The White House later had second thoughts about the proposed two-day detonation window, according to Hersh, and opted for a plan by which "the C4 attached to the pipelines would be triggered by a sonar buoy dropped by a plane on short notice."

"On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy," Hersh wrote. "The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission."

After conducting separate investigations into the pipeline explosions, which unleashed a large sum of planet-warming methane into the atmosphere, both Sweden and Denmark concluded that the blasts were a result of deliberate sabotage, pointing to traces of explosives found at the scene.

Neither country has publicly assigned blame.

In the days following the attack, speculation and baseless allegations circulated rapidly, with some European officials pointing to Russia while Moscow suggested that the U.S. or the U.K. may have been responsible.

While it remains impossible to verify Hersh's account without access to his source or other corroborating evidence, Wednesday's story put the international whodunit back up for serious consideration and generated a fresh round of questions about the possible U.S. role.

Ishaan Tharoor, a foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Post, wrote on Twitter that while he is "not going to wade into debates over the sourcing and reporting" in Hersh's story, "it is without a doubt a bit odd how this whole story quietly went away once it became clear it didn't make any sense as an act of Russian sabotage."

"And of course, when the explosion actually happened, some folks in the transatlantic, anti-Kremlin space cheered it happily as a successful act of anti-Russian sabotage," Tharoor added, an apparent reference to a European member of Parliament's since-deleted tweet thanking the U.S. for the Nord Stream explosions.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

On August 5 and August 6, Asayish security forces in several locations in Iraqi Kurdistan interfered with the work of at least 20 journalists and media workers with detentions, harassment, raids, and the closure of at least one media outlet, according to multiple news reports, local press freedom groups Kurdistan Journalists’ Syndicate, the Metro Center for Journalists Rights and Advocacy, and the Press Freedom Advocacy Association in Iraq, and several journalists affected who spoke to CPJ. 

All of the journalists were covering or preparing to cover demonstrations on August 6 by the opposition party New Generation Movement over taxes, fuel prices, and employment opportunities, according to those sources. 

“Authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan have reached a new low with their detention and harassment of reporters and media workers seeking to cover civil unrest,” said CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator Sherif Mansour, in Washington, D.C. “Iraqi Kurdistan was once a haven for the free press in the Middle East but now the region is a prime perpetrator of press freedom violations.” 

On Friday, August 5, the day before the demonstrations, security forces detained Taif Goran and Biryar Nerwayi, reporters at privately owned television broadcaster NRT, in front of the channel’s office in the city of Duhok in western Iraqi Kurdistan, according to the broadcaster’s report, and Goran, who spoke to CPJ on the phone. Goran told CPJ that “the security forces didn’t tell us any legal reason behind our arrest” and that the two were released without charge on bail after 27 hours in custody. Goran said that the forces also confiscated equipment from the office including five cameras, two livestream boxes, five microphones, and two tripods, which were all returned when the journalists were released.

NRT is owned by the Kurdish businessman Shaswar Abdulwahid, the leader of the New Generation Movement, who called for the protests.

On Saturday August 6, Asayish forces raided the privately owned website and TV outlet Rast Media office in the city of Duhok and shut it down without giving any reasons, according to the outlet’s Facebook post and Omed Baroshky, director of Rast News, who spoke to CPJ on the phone. Baroshky told CPJ that “we have completed all the legal procedures to work freely as a media outlet, but they asked us to shut it down and go home anyway.” As of August 9, the office has remained closed. 

On the same day at 10:00 a.m. in Erbil, the regional capital, five plainclothes security officers raided the home of Ayub Ali Warty, a reporter at broadcaster Kurdish News Network, which is affiliated with the opposition Gorran party, and detained the journalist, according to Warty, who spoke to CPJ over the phone and posted about the incident on Facebook. The officers escorted him to Asayish headquarters for investigation before releasing him at midnight, he said. Warty said he was verbally abused, but did not provide details of the insults. 

“During the investigation, I was told that if I want to live as a critical journalist, Erbil is not the right place,” he said. He said that he was forced to sign a blank paper without knowing the reason, and was told the paper “could put me in jail for 300 years.” When he was released without charge, Warty said the officers told him he was arrested “by mistake.” 

Also on Saturday in Erbil, NRT reporters Rizgar Kochar, Omed Chomani, and Hersh Qadir were detained by officers in plain clothes, according to two videos posted on Facebook by the broadcaster and Qadir, who told CPJ via phone that the officers also raided his home. Qadir said they were arrested in front of their office, and when they asked about the officers’ identity “they stressed that they are Asayish forces and we have to go with them.” He said the officers turned the journalists over to armed security forces who placed them in hoods and took them to the Asayish headquarters in Erbil. He said he believes that “the only reason was to prevent us from covering the demonstrations.” Qadir said the three were released without charge after six hours and after they were forced to sign documents without being allowed to read them. 

Also on Saturday, NRT reporters Diyar Mohammed and Soran Mohammed and NRT cameraman Mahmoud Razgar were arrested by security forces while covering a protest in the town of Chamchamal, in Sulaymaniyah governorate in eastern Iraqi Kurdistan, according to a Facebook post by the broadcaster and Soran Mohammed, who spoke to CPJ on the phone. Soran Mohammed told CPJ that security forces blocked the crew’s camera, ordered the journalists to go with them to their headquarters in the city, and seized their equipment including two cameras, one tripod, and two microphones. The officers told the journalists that they would remain in custody until the demonstrations were dispersed, he said. The three were released without charge three hours later, but the officers kept their equipment until Sunday, he said. 

On the same day in the city of Sulaymaniyah, a crew with independent news website Westga News, made up of chief editor and owner Sirwan Gharib, photographer Zanyar Mariwan, and editors Hevar Hiwa and Arkan Jabar, was arrested by security forces while covering demonstrations, according to a Westga News statement and Gharib, who spoke to CPJ via phone call. In the statement, Westga News said “the team was there to cover the demonstrations in an impartial and professional manner, and their arrest is against the laws and freedom of the press.” Gharib said the crew was detained for almost four hours before it was released without charge. 

In the same city on Saturday, Zhilya Ali, reporter for the privately owned internet television channel and news website Diplomatic, was detained with the outlet’s cameraman Azhi Abdulqadir the moment they stepped out of a taxi when they arrived to cover a protest, Ali told CPJ via phone. In a Facebook post, Ali said the two were arrested and brought to Asayish headquarters in order “to be prevented from covering the demonstrations.” Ali told CPJ that the security forces confiscated her phone, which they returned after she and the cameraman were released without charge two hours later. 

Also on Saturday, Hardi Osman, reporter for the independent website Peregraph was detained for five hours while he was trying to cover the protests in Sulaymaniyah city, according to a tweet by his employer and the reporter who spoke to CPJ over the phone. He said that the forces took him to Asayish headquarters before transferring him to a section of Kani Goma prison. 

He said that the forces also seized his equipment, including his phone, his microphone, and a voice recorder, and forced him to fill out a form asking “very personal questions” — details of which he did not provide to CPJ — before he was released without charge and without the equipment. He said he retrieved the equipment from Asayish headquarters on Tuesday.

Also in Sulaymaniyah city on Saturday, Awder Omer, video reporter for news website NasKurd, was covering a protest live on the website’s Facebook page when two members of the Asayish forces seized his phone and confiscated and broke his mobile internet modem, he told CPJ via phone. “They told me to leave and not cover the protests,” he said. 

On the same day in the city of Kalar, in Sulaymaniyah governorate Mohammed Mahmood, reporter for the independent broadcaster Radio Deng, was detained by security forces while covering a protest and held for five hours before he was released without charge, according to a Facebook post by the radio station and Mahmood, who spoke to CPJ via phone. 

Mahmood said that security forces interrupted his reporting on Facebook Live for Radio Deng and asked him to delete his footage. When he refused, he said they beat him on his legs and arms and took him to Asayish headquarters, where they asked him to sign a paper which they would not allow him to read. When he refused again, he said they beat him again. 

On Saturday also in Sulaymaniyah, journalist Snur Karim and camera operator Mohammed Azad Majeed of the U.S.-Congress funded Voice of America Kurdish were detained by Asayish security forces for two hours while covering a protest on Facebook Live for the outlet, according to an email from Voice of America public relations officer Anna Morris and a VOA statement provided to CPJ. 

In the statement, VOA said the team had received permission from local authorities to report there but was detained for “several hours.” Their mobile phones and microphone were seized and later returned, Morris said. 

Morris told CPJ the two were taken to a prison where Karim was forced to sign a “pledge” without being allowed to read it and was asked personal questions about her family, car, lifestyle, and political views. 

When contacted by CPJ via messaging app for comment on the arrests, raids, closures, and alleged beatings, Sulaymaniyah governorate Asayish security forces spokesperson Yasin Sami directed CPJ to a Facebook post by the Sulaymaniyah security directorate, a committee representing local government, police, and Asayish forces, denying the arrests. CPJ called Duhok Asayish director Zeravan Baroshku who said security forces were acting on a “court order” but would not comment further. CPJ also contacted Erbil Asayish spokesperson Ashti Majeed for comment via messaging app and phone call, but didn’t receive any response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.