US preparing for nuclear war, expert warns

 

     

     By Reginald Johnson

   

    

    As the war between Russia and Ukraine grows more intense, a former UN weapons inspector and intelligence analyst is warning that military officials in the United States are now actively preparing for a nuclear war with Russia.

 Scott Ritter, a former Iraq weapons inspector and intelligence official with the US Marines, claimed that as one option the United States is considering actually starting a nuclear war with Russia by firing a preemptive strike to knock out all of Russia’s nuclear weaponry and emerge victorious, despite maintaining massive human losses.

 “It is high time for everyone from every walk of life to understand the path we are currently on,” said Ritter. “Left unchecked, events are propelling us down a highway to hell that leads to only one destination – a nuclear Armageddon that everyone agrees can’t be won, and yet the United States is at this very moment preparing to ‘win.’ “

 Ritter added, “a nuclear exchange with Russia, even if the United States were able to execute a surprise preemptive nuclear strike, would result in the destruction of dozens of American cities and more than 100 million Americans.

  “And this is if we ‘win,’ ” he said. “And we know that we can’t ‘win’ a nuclear war. And yet we are actively preparing to fight one,” he said.

  Ritter added, “This insanity must stop. Now.”

 Ritter made his comments in his Substack column “On the Brink” posted November 24.

   The former weapons inspector spoke out as the Ukraine war has taken a dangerous turn after President Biden gave approval to Ukraine to fire US-made long-range ballistic missiles at Russia. The green light reversed a previous decision by Biden in September not to allow Ukraine to use the missiles, out of concern that such attacks would lead to a confrontation with Russia, which has the largest nuclear stockpile in the world.

  With the approval granted, Ukraine on November 19 fired six US “ATACMS”  missiles at Russia, near the city of Bryansk. On November 20, Ukraine launched up to a dozen British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles against a Russian command post in the Kursk province. Russia responded on November 21, firing a new intermediate range missile called the “Oreshnik” against Ukraine, destroying a major arms factory in Dnipropetrovsk. The facility was used by Ukraine and NATO to produce short and intermediate range missiles.

Ukraine has been fighting Russia almost three years. Now there are worries the conflict could go nuclear. (Wikimedia photo)

 Meanwhile, Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced that his country has changed its nuclear use doctrine, lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.

  The ATACMS and Storm Shadow missile attacks met the threshold for a nuclear response by Russia, Ritter said.

 “Russia has decided not to invoke its nuclear doctrine at this juncture,” said Ritter, “opting instead to eject the operational use of the Oreshnik missile as an intermediate non-nuclear deterrence measure.”

  But the question is, how long will the Russians hold off on going nuclear – if Ukrainian attacks continue?

 It’s clear the risk of a nuclear war starting is the greatest since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the United States and Russia came extremely close to going to war over the placement of Russian missiles on Cuban soil.

 Ritter is a widely respected analyst and commentator on foreign-policy and military issues. He gained fame in 2003 when he called out the Bush administration’s bogus claims that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction. The administration used the WMD claim to launch an invasion of Iraq, triggering a seven-years-long war, which took 1 million lives.

  Investigations after the war began confirmed what Ritter had said – there were no WMD.

 Despite the severity of the crisis in Eastern Europe – with the possibility that a nuclear war could take place – American media, including progressive media, don’t appear to be overly concerned. Most of the press attention in recent weeks has been focused on the wars in Gaza and Lebanon or Donald Trump’s cabinet picks and most recently the decision by President Biden to pardon his son Hunter. There have been few segments on TV concerning the Ukraine War and the imminent danger of a nuclear confrontation between the US and Russia.

  A few commentators in the conservative media have been sounding the alarm about a possible nuclear war. One of them is Rob Finnerty of Newsmax, who has spent several recent shows talking about the dangerous situation in Ukraine.

  “Russia has more nuclear weapons than any other country on the planet and now Ukraine is firing missiles deep into Russia, and those missiles were made in the United States,” he said.

 “Those are just the facts.  The United States is no longer in a proxy war with Russia. We are at war with Russia,” he said.

  Finnerty criticized Biden for green-lighting the Ukrainian missile attacks, which he said undermine President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for ending the Ukraine war. Trump takes office on January 20.

 “We are a lot closer to World War III then we were yesterday,” Finnerty said.

 

   (A panel discussion about the danger of a nuclear war starting in Ukraine will take place this Saturday in Washington, D.C. The event, called “No Nuclear War --- A Call to Reason” will take place at the National Press Club and run from 4 to 7 pm.  Moderated by Ritter, panel participants include Lawrence Wilkerson, Max Blumenthal, Garland Nixon, Dan Kovalik and Margaret Kimberley.  To reserve a seat, go to www.nonuclearwar.com)

Right-wing media smears student protesters, genuflects to Israel

                                                          

                                                         OPINION

    By Reginald Johnson 

 

 

  The bias being shown by right-wing media towards the college students protesting Israel's brutal war on Gaza is really extraordinary and quite frankly, shameful.

 Citing little or no hard evidence to back up their characterizations, commentators on FOX and Newsmax are labeling university protesters as “pro-Hamas sympathizers,” “anti-Semites,” and even terrorists.

I heard Jesse Waters on FOX call the campus protesters “Hamas lunatics” and “Jihadists.”  Sean Hannity and other talk show hosts on FOX say much the same thing.

  Dick Morris, a pollster/commentator who years ago worked for the Clintons and who I thought was a fairly critical thinker, said on Newsmax recently that the campus protests were a burgeoning form of “Naziism.”  Really? Naziism?

  Morris offered no video to back up his wild claim --- showing, say, large numbers of students marching around shouting “Seig Heil!” while waving swastikas or calling for Jews to be killed. No. Zero proof. This is just incredibly irresponsible and I think defammatory.

It is true that a small minority of people in and around the demonstrations, some wacky extremists, have said irresponsible things. A few people have uttered anti-Semitic comments or said stupid things like  “Long-live Hamas!”

 But from what I’ve seen, the vast majority of the students are involved in legitimate and constructive protest. They’re calling out the utter brutality and carnage that is going on in Gaza perpetrated by the Israeli military and saying they don’t want their schools to be in any way associated with helping the Israeli state. They are saying they want a cease-fire in this terrible war and they want aid to be sent in to help the people of Gaza. Again, this is the message from the vast majority of demonstrators and I have not seen any evidence to show otherwise.

 I saw FOX News show a clip of one person shouting from the outside of a protest that the slaughter of October 7 should be take place “again and again and again.” This clip was shown repeatedly over a number of days but it was just one person ---  there were no other people picking up the chant. This person was either a sick extremist or possibly a provocateur sent in by people who support Israel and are trying to discredit the student protest movement.

 The fact that FOX would show this kind of a clip of just one person repeating a depraved chant over several days and then acting as if it was somehow indicative of the way many protesters feel is really the height of the irresponsibility. You have to wonder sometimes whether that news organization is being paid by somebody to carry out this kind of propaganda.

  FOX talking heads have also been claiming recently, without evidence, that protesters in different places are shouting “Death to America!” But again no videos are shown.

 Another claim from right-wing outlets is that Gaza War  protesters are advocating  the “destruction of Israel” because they are chanting “From the river to the sea Palestine shall be free.” This is a complete smear. The meaning of the chant is that Palestinians who are NOT free now in their homeland because they are under military siege in Gaza and under a nearly 60-year Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, should be set free.  They’re saying that the Palestinians should have their rights and freedoms just like Israelis have in their country.

 The false accusation relating to the use of this slogan is particularly irresponsible given the fact that it is the Israelis going back to the Zionist leaders who were pushing for an Israeli state in the 1920s and 1930s who were using the same line --- declaring that from the Meditteranean Sea to the Jordan River there should be a Jewish homeland. Likud Party members wrote in their charter in 1970 that from ‘the river to the sea Israel should have sovereignty.’

 As recently as early October last year, prior to the October 7 attack, the foreign minister of Israel was saying the same thing about Israel’s rights, restating that from the sea to the river Israel should have dominion. So it is complete hypocrisy by Israelis and their allies in the US media to be saying that the use of this line by pro-Palestinian activists is ‘threatening’ and irresponsible. Israelis are using it themselves.

   Meanwhile, there has been little effort by FOX or Newsmax, especially, to send reporters to the demonstrations and make a concerted effort to find out what the protesters are thinking. The basic “Why?” question of journalism is not being asked. Why are you here?

 If they did ask this, they’d find people deeply concerned about the slaughter going on in Gaza, considered by international officials to be a genocide. They desperately want a ceasefire in Gaza and an immediate delivery of massive amounts of food to the area, to stave off a famine.

 But right-wing outlets don’t want to hear about genocide or war crimes or famine created by Israel blocking deliveries, because such truths hurt Israel, and they’re on Israel’s side.

 Some of the show hosts are very open about this. For instance, I heard Greg Kelly on Newsmax say one night,  “I’m rooting for Israel.”

 So shows on FOX and Newsmax are not journalism, they’re propaganda for Israel. These stations cannot call themselves “news” outlets anymore. They’re in public relations.

(By the way I have watched the conservative channels in recent years, in addition to the others, simply get a more balanced picture about American politics and also to hear discussions about important issues that you don’t hear on the other channels such as the attack on civil liberties including censorship and curbs on free speech. So they have had their moments in the past but relating to the Gaza war and Israel these stations have been a disaster.)

Coverage by the so-called moderate or liberal cable news channels like CNN and MSNBC of the student protests and the Gaza war has been a little bit better. Their coverage is not outright public relations like FOX and Newsmax. But then again, the reporting is not very strong, either. MSNBC has been spending recent weeks obsessively covering the Trump trials and devoting precious little time to this absolutely horrendous war going on in the Middle East. Reporting on the Trump circus day and night is really not very good journalism.

CNN, from what I can see, has not been covering the war terribly well either, but there have been a few segments that I thought were good.

The only TV/cable news outlets that have been doing a good job on the protests and the Gaza war are of course, foreign-based, namely Euronews and BBC. BBC in particular has been doing a nice job, making a real effort to talk with people on the ground whether they are demonstrators in the US or Palestinians themselves who are being directly impacted by the war. They’ve delved into the issue of genocide, talking with officials of the UN and human rights organizations. There’s also been interviews with leaders of the Palestinian Authority and leaders of Arab countries.

 The BBC has also aired a number of interviews with Israeli officials to get their side. This is the way it’s supposed to be done.

 I've also heard a lot of good things about al-Jazeera coverage, but I can't get this on cable TV. I'll have to check it out on-line.

 I'm not going to focus on print media coverage, because I'm not reading papers much. I gave up on the New York Times several years ago after they blew it on the Russia-gate affair and have been uncritical in their coverage of the Hunter Biden scandal. The Times reportedly did a poor job on the big story they put out in December on alleged sexual assaults by Hamas fighters against Israeli hostages. Many questions have been raised about the accuracy of the claims.

  Two tabloids in New York, the Post and Daily News are hopelessly pro-Israel and their coverage of campus protests has been very disparaging.

 So that's a smattering of the quality of the Gaza War coverage by the print media. Not too good. But there may be exceptions.

 It is time some protests land at the door of FOX, Newsmax and the New York Times over their one-sided coverage of the Gaza-Israel War.