Watch the ‘Arming Ukraine’ Film CBS Pulled After Gov’t Pressure

The arrest of journalist Roman Protasevich after his flight was diverted May 23 to the Belarusian capital of Minsk has generated more negative publicity for Belarus’ government and has raised questions about the extent of the new Cold War.

Protasevich, 26, is editor of outlawed Telegram channels that had stirred opposition to President Aleksandr Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994. Telegram is a messaging application used on smartphones. High-profile individuals, media outlets and organizations also use it to broadcast one-way communications to their followers.

After the arrest, the Biden administration announced it would re-impose economic sanctions on state-owned companies in Belarus, and that it would add names to the list of sanctioned officials associated with “ongoing abuses of human rights and corruption.”

Dismissing Lukashenko’s claim that Protasevich’s flight contained a bomb threat, the New York Times editorialized that Lukashenko had “gone too far” in “hijacking a commercial airliner to kidnap an opposition journalist.” Aside from urging the U.S. response be “swift,” the Times referred to Lukashenko’s attempt as a “Jason Bourne plot.”

However, when former Bolivian President Evo Morales’ flight was forced to land in Vienna in 2013 because U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden was thought to be on board, the incident was dismissed as a mistake.

Belarus is one of the last remaining socialist countries in the world and a close ally of Russia, a country the United States has targeted for decades via the first “Cold War”—when it was the former Soviet Union—and thereafter with neoliberal policies and NATO troops at its border. This puts Belarus particularly at risk for U.S. subversion.

The U.S. government has funded opposition movements against Lukashenko, who has been caricatured as a brutal dictator and a “throwback to the regional bosses of the Soviet era,” as the Times depicted him.

While some aspects of the criticism are accurate, Lukashenko has a considerable degree of popular support in Belarus because he resisted Western-imposed privatization programs in the 1990s and preserved a social safety net, resulting in low poverty and inequality levels.

The opposition movement has been depicted heroically even though it was photographed during anti-regime protests in August flying the pre-revolutionary flag, implying its goal was to reverse socialist-type economic programs.

 

Far-Right Links

Some of its members have ties to far right-wing networks in Europe that went unreported in the media.

A May 26 profile in the Times depicted Protasevich as a precocious young man who had bravely “resisted his country’s tyranny since he was 16” when he “first witnessed what he described as the ‘disgusting brutality’ of Mr. Lukashenko’s rule.”

His first arrest came when he watched a “clapping protest”—considered an offensive gesture in Belarus—against Lukashenko, causing him to be expelled from high school and his mother to resign as an army academy teacher.

After being forced to abandon his university studies, Protasevich became an opposition journalist in Poland, helped establish a Telegram channel to resist Lukashenko and joined forces with opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Lithuania.

Left out of the fawning portrait was Belarusian courts had determined the Telegram channels he had worked for, Belamova and Nexta, were “extremist” and first set up by people such as Igor Losik, who had served as consultants with the U.S. propaganda organ, Radio Free Europe.

Protasevich furthermore enlisted in a militia that fought alongside the neo-Nazi Azov battalion in eastern Ukraine against Russian backed separatists, was wounded in battle and reportedly worked for the Azov battalion’s press service.

 

Protasevich’s selfie in an explicitly neo-Nazi brand Sva Stone. It’s extremely unlikely that one can wear these T-shirts without being “in”. pic.twitter.com/brpsUgEpPw

— Volodymyr Ishchenko (@Volod_Ishchenko) May 26, 2021

Photographed in a T-shirt featuring far-right iconography, Protasevich is even suspected of being the young man featured with an assault rifle and military uniform on the front of Azov’s propaganda magazine, which is emblazoned with a large neo-Nazi symbol.

 

Media’s Anti-Russia Bias

Fitting a century-long pattern of Russophobia, the Times has led the charge for a new Cold War against Russia and has supported regime change in Belarus.

When protests broke out over a contested election last summer, the Times erroneously predicted Lukashenko’s downfall many times, and in April chose not to report on a coup as well as an assassination plot led by an opposition politician holding a U.S. passport.

The biased coverage of Belarus has extended to alternative media like Counterpunch.

On May 31, it ran an article by an anti-Lukashenko playwright, Andrei Kureichik, titled “The Taking of Roman Protasevich,” which used hyperbolic language in characterizing Belarus as a “terrorist and criminal state.” In another exaggeration, Kureichik claimed Lukashenko had established “open air concentration camps” by “employing military weapons and special equipment against peaceful civilians without restrictions or liability.”

No mention was made of Protasevich’s ties to the Azov battalion in the article, nor about foreign backing of the anti-Lukashenko movement. The latter was confirmed by Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus, who tricked Nina Ognianova, a National Endowment for Democracy (NED) senior European program officer, into admitting the NED had trained and funded the leaders of the protest movement that was working to overthrow Lukashenko.

After writing a book about U.S. bombardiers in World War II titled, Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team, famed author John Steinbeck wrote: “We were all part of the war effort… correspondents were not liars, but it is in the things not mentioned that the untruth lies.”

These words apply very well to corporate media outlets—and sometimes even to the alternative press—when it comes to their coverage of Belarus, where it is in the things not mentioned that the untruth lies.

Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and author of four books on U.S. foreign policy including, Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again (Monthly Review Press, 2018), with John Marciano.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch.

More than 11,000 Yemeni children have been killed or injured since the escalation of fighting in Yemen in 2015, the United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported on Sunday, December 11. The Saudi-led international coalition intervened in the conflict in Yemen in 2015.

Commenting on the number of children killed or maimed in the Yemen war, Catherine Russell, executive director of the UNICEF, noted that this was at best a conservative figure and that “the truce toll of this conflict is likely to be far higher.”

Russell was on a visit to the country where the Saudi-led international coalition, backed by the United States and its European allies such as the United Kingdom and France, is waging a war against the Houthi forces who control capital Sanaa since March 2015. The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and devastated what was already the poorest country in the Arab world.

Saudi Arabia accuses the Houthis of being an Iranian proxy, responsible for displacing Yemen’s rightful government in 2014-15. The Houthis have denied the Saudi allegations and claimed that they are fighting against the corrupt ruling classes of their country, who do not serve the people but act as facilitators of international loot of Yemeni resources.

Russell called for the immediate resumption of the UN-mediated ceasefire which had ended in October this year. In April this year, for the first time in seven years of war, both the warring sides had agreed to a two-month ceasefire. The ceasefire was extended twice, and the country experienced a rare six months of relative peace. However, both parties refused to extend the ceasefire beyond October after the UN failed to devise substantial grounds for its indefinite extension.

Millions on the Verge of Death 

Russell noted that in the period since the ceasefire ended, 62 Yemeni children have been killed and “hundreds of thousands more remain at risk of death from preventable diseases or starvation.”

According to the UNICEF, around 11 million Yemeni children are directly affected by the war and around 2.2 million of them are extremely malnourished. A quarter of these 2.2 million children are below the age of five and extremely susceptible to deadly diseases such as cholera and measles, among others.

UNICEF also noted that regular immunization in the country has been badly affected due to the war, with over 28 percent children missing their routine vaccinations.

The Saudi-led coalition, apart from waging its ground and air offensive in populated areas, has also imposed a crippling air, sea and land blockade of the country since 2015, preventing the supply of essentials including food, fuel, and medicine. The blockade has been identified as the main reason for the large-scale starvation in Yemen, which has pushed millions to the verge of death due to hunger and lack of medicines and healthcare equipment.

Underlining the causes of their refusal to extend the UN-mediated ceasefire, the Houthis highlighted the failure to address the central issue of the Saudi blockade which would have “alleviated the suffering of Yemeni people.” Throughout the period of the ceasefire, the Houthis had been raising the issue of insufficient easing of the blockade and had accused the Saudi-backed forces of violating the norms of the truce.

The scale of destruction caused by the war and the blockade has forced the UN to categorize Yemen as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.”

On the Ho Chi Minh Trail, by Sherry Buchanan (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, Illinois, 2021)

The U.S. war on Vietnam is one of the most popularly and publicly criticized U.S. wars in the West—perhaps only now being superseded by the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. Many filmmakers took their shot at a “critical” portrayal of the imperialist conflict—Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” Oliver Stone’s “Platoon,” Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” and so on. Though, the context behind the conflict, what happened during the war, its repercussions, and—most importantly—the Vietnamese people’s perspective all still remain widely misunderstood, misinterpreted, and vastly oversimplified in the minds of the majority of those who live in the belly of the beast (the U.S. empire).

This was the deficit which author Sherry Buchanan purported to, in part, address in her book, On the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The cover insert of the book explains:

“Buchanan reveals the stories of the women who defended the Trail against the sustained American bombing campaign—the most ferocious in modern warfare—and of the artists who drew them. She focuses on what life was really like for the women and men under fire, bringing a unique perspective to the history of the Vietnam War.” 

The prospect of approaching the conflict from an art-centered perspective with a focus on the women who were absolutely vital to the trail—and, as such, the triumph of the revolution—was welcome, refreshing and exciting. However, throughout the book the author demonstrates her inability to remove her red-, white- and blue-colored glasses as well as a clear lack of understanding peoples’ liberation movements that struggle against imperialism, ultimately leaving the reader with an experience that is more trite than enlightening. 

Buchanan’s book follows the author as she re-traces the trail—known locally as the Trường Sơn Road—from the north to south. The country was split in half during the war, with the north pumping out Vietnamese communist guerilla fighters and the south occupied by the U.S. military. Along the way, she visits historic sites and conducts interviews. Beginning in Hanoi, the author looks to loosely follow the trail as history unfolded. She visits Hòa Bình province, where revolutionaries trained before setting off on the trail, and the site of the infamous U.S. Marine Corps base at Khe Sanh. She takes us through the country of Laos, where the Trail Command had been headquartered during the Tết Offensive, and winds up in Ho Chi Minh City—the current name of Saigon, the former capital of the U.S.-backed puppet state, South Vietnam. Interviews with artists who traveled the trail as cultural troops for the People’s Army provide some fascinating anecdotes about life on the trail. Former combatants and youth volunteers shared stories of how they struggled against occupation and a bombing campaign that dwarfed the campaigns of the allies in WWII combined. During this war, 3 million people died. Most were Vietnamese, while only 58,000 were U.S. military personnel.

Despite the author’s ignorance, which prevented any contextualization of her interviews, their impact is nonetheless profound. By the end of the book, the collective commitment the Vietnamese people had to their revolutionary struggle is unquestionable. Almost every exchange Buchanan and her companions had with non-Westerners on their journey both underscored this theme and humanized the war. This is what—intentionally or not—the author successfully conveys in her book. 

Each chapter is dedicated to one of several locations she visited. In an introduction and at the beginning of every chapter, Buchanan provides brief historical context about these sites, which includes explaining the events in the war that involved them. She’s eager to be critical of the United States here, offering statistics and figures that easily show the grotesque violence the empire unleashed during the war. The author even goes as far as questioning official U.S. government statistics and countered with the Vietnamese state’s data. (p. 165) However, this is where Buchanan’s book falls into the banal trap of performative criticism. Reminiscent of Oliver Stone’s TV series, “Untold History of the United States” (2012-13), providing facts and statistics that counter the imperial narrative (while important) do not nearly equate to an anti-imperialist analysis. While Buchanan is critical of the war, she is not critical of U.S. imperialism or, by extension, the question of national self-determination, which was at the core of the conflict covered in her book.

Buchanan wastes no time making her position clear in the first chapter. She includes a long, melodramatic interview with an actor who had joined the National Liberation Front (or Việt Cộng). But decades after the country reunited as one Vietnam, that person is critical of the revolution. The author is sure to include a tirade that frames China as an enemy of the Vietnamese people, standing in opposition to the United States’ “rule of law” and “freedom.” (p. 47) She continues this Cold War-era hysteria by leveling stereotypical anti-communist criticisms against the current communist-run Vietnamese state—authoritarianism, repression, corruption. But where is the “unique perspective” described on the cover flap? Buchanan provides no context, no opposing arguments, no critical thinking. She continues this theme of intentional ignorance throughout the rest of the book. In chapter 2, when visiting the Temple of Lady Triệu, she questions whether the revolution was feminist. (p. 67) This despite quoting Ho Chi Minh’s thoughts on the oppression of women under colonialism and Buchanan noting that the Women’s Union funds the feminist temple. Interestingly, the author fails to ask any of the Vietnamese women she interviewed about the feminist character of the revolution, nor makes any attempt to answer with statistics. In fact, the performative question in and of itself displays her ignorance about the goals of the revolution and the subject she claims to cover in the book. 

Buchanan doesn’t stop at feigned ignorance. She actively stokes the racist, anti-communist fires within the Western psyche. In this way, the author completely fails the people whose perspective she claimed to value. Throughout the chapters, she does not shy away from throwing unsubstantiated claims of despotism or repression at the Vietnamese state. Yet, she spends no energy or effort speaking to the gains of the revolution. It’s as if Buchanan is uninterested in the obstacles that the people—including women—overcame to rebuild after the war or what the state has been able to provide its citizens. This is an excusable error for a book that claims to portray the experiences of the women who fought and defended the Ho Chi Minh trail. The author underlines her imperialist opinion of Vietnamese feminism with the usual Red Scare trimmings. She puts “liberated” in quotation marks when referring to territory from which the People’s Army and Việt Cộng expelled the imperialists, uses the term “indoctrinated” when referring to those who fought for the north, and even quotes a deacon who complains church land was “stolen by the locals” following the triumph of the revolution. (p. 208) In fact, in the final chapter, the author almost unconsciously praises what she perceives as capitalism creeping into the country, salivating over the presence of restaurants that serve $200 meals (p. 233) and designer stores (p. 246). If only Buchanan could see her own internalized indoctrination here, celebrating inaccessibility while belittling a popular guerilla movement which resisted the most violent war machine ever created. 

Toward the conclusion of the book, as Buchanan enters Ho Chi Minh City, she intensifies her hollow attacks on the Vietnamese state. She devotes a large portion of the final chapter to another sensationalized scene when they visit two cemeteries—one for soldiers who fought for the revolution and one for those who fought for imperialist interests. Rather than contemplate the complex legacy of a Cold War-era invasion that divided a people or the violent colonialism that made the long war for liberation a necessity, she simplistically insinuates the state is vengeful and petty. Perhaps the most telling interaction Buchanan records in the book, though, is an unplanned encounter with a U.S. veteran who fought for the empire. Again here, the author fails to seek a “unique perspective.” Instead, she glorifies the invader, who claims he “worked with fighter pilots to help them do what they could to not injure civilians” (p. 220), and empathizes with his crocodile tears about being called a “baby killer” upon his return to the United States. Buchanan feigns pushback against his unproven claims that “the government (of Vietnam) treated [the highland indigenous peoples] terribly, cutting off women’s breasts and men’s achilles tendons,” and that “when [he] got to Vietnam [he] was told (reviewer’s italics) that the Việt Cộng came into villages and routinely killed a baby or a child to terrorize the people.” (p. 221) In the epilogue, she returns to this interaction by honoring the “courage” it took for this vet to return to the country to “do something (reviewer’s italics).” (p. 249)

Sherry Buchanan’s On the Ho Chi Minh Trail, while exciting in its proclaimed focus, is yet another example of the pitfalls of liberalism. The author’s misconception that criticizing a few isolated events equates to a “unique,” let alone anti-imperialist, perspective leads the book to speak more to the depressing ignorance of so-called progressives in the West than to the experiences of Vietnamese women during the war. While many of the anecdotes conveyed in the book humanized the war in a way that was certainly refreshing, Buchanan’s displaced patriotism undermines any meaningful significance. Despite her supposedly critical view of the war, the author ultimately served to defend pillars that uphold U.S. imperialism. If anything, what the book highlights for the reader is the importance of understanding what anti-imperialism means. Without it, criticisms of the West coming from liberals essentially equate to nothing more than white saviorism. The only allyship from the West of any value is true, revolutionary solidarity—solidarity that rejects Western capitalist assumptions of supremacy and stands firm in its defense of all anti-imperialist movements. 

Nick Flores is a co-founder of and organizer with Bushwick, Brooklyn-based G-REBLS, a grassroots organization as well as a member organization of the Black Alliance for Peace’s Solidarity Network. Nick holds a double-major bachelor’s degree in history and Latin American studies.