Terrible analysis of Ukraine War. Supports war hawks and neocons who returned in force to the Biden administration, State Department, and US Congress. I am stunned by how little McKibben understands by what is actually happening and is in support of more weapons, more death, more destruction, and more profits for the weapons industry while Ukrainians pay a great price for this proxy war between NATO and Russia. Where is the call for negotiations and diplomacy to prevent the destruction of our planet from planned or accidental nuclear war? He may be Third Act's guru, but not mine. Medea Benjamin and Code Pink should give him a good spanking for this destructive analysis. He should stick to things he understands and not lead those who care about both the environment and peace down a destructive path.
thank you for checking in. I've opposed American wars of aggression, and I oppose this Russian one--but I've done my best to highlight the way that we can,as I said in the piece, focus on "weapons" like heat pumps. And I'm very glad that we managed to get the Defense Production Act to commit $250 million to that task--to me, it's a good use of money, and a good symbol. Oh, and I'm not trying to be anyone's guru--I've never risen higher in the ecclesial hierarchy than Methodist Sunday School teacher!
Joe, you're on the right side of history but your anger and borderline disrespect are uncalled for. Bill is obviously not that sophisticated in this area, but that's ok, he's doing incredible work in the climate sphere. Madea Benjamin, Chris Hedges and Jeffery Sachs explain the whole Ukraine situation perfectly. I am hoping that Bill will eventually react appropriately to what Sy Hersh just revealed - that Biden and the Norwegians destroyed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, releasing a cataclysmic amount of climate destroying methane. (Biden gave a speech just before the provoked invasion, promising he would do exactly that - when someone tells you who they are, believe them!) Of course they will bend over backwards to justify it - the cost of war, it's all the dastardly Putin's fault, etc.,, but let's at least get that immensely destructive rat on the table. I fully support Bill in all of his other super-positive endeavors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fv_nKyF_5g
The anger was justified related to this ridiculous article. Regardless of whether McKibben is "sophisticated enough" to weigh in on geopolitical/war analysis, and he's not, he chose to do it in a very aggressive manner and he was adding to false establishment narratives. So he gets what he asks for when he runs his mouth considering we can already read the same garbage about that war from CNN/MSNBC/Fox/PBS/BBC/NOR/Guardian/Intercept MSM outlets 24/7 and we don't need yet another of the gazillion establishment voices adding more lies to the mix. He could've just pointed to Heather Cox Richardson for a propaganda mouthpiece and Substack and saved us time reading this rehash.
While I would certainly wish this war had not happened and that Russia had been able to solve their border security dispute with a negotiated settlement like they attempted to do, the United States deliberately pushed them over the edge in 2021 and then refused to negotiate in Dec. 2021 through Feb. 2022. John Mearsheimer has indicated at times that rush I had a few choices at the point at which day sent troops over to try to push for a settlement after their articulated border security fears were unheeded.
The United States also sent Boris Johnson to deliberately interfere with negotiations underway between Kiev and Moscow in March/April 2022.
We have heard since then multiple fake stories by Ukraine accusing Russia of attacking itself and predicting false flags to prepare us for the usual lies that the United States engages in the past decades since at least the 1950s to start wars and launch regime change coups.
Every time the US doesn't like a foreign elected leader's choices to benefit their people, we explore with our NGOs, CIA & State dept replacing the leader for a puppet of our choosing, as in the 2014 Ukraine govt coup with Biden's state dept aide Victoria Nuland caught on a phone tap in Russia breezily discussing her choices for replacement leader.
Our dirty fingers are seen in the 1950 Iran coup, coup attempts or US military attacks since then places like the Congo, Guatemala, S. Vietnam, El Salvador, Panama, Grenada, Iraq, Venezuela, and many more. War hawks in parties approve of these gambits.
Most despicable is the misuse of psyops pawns like Greta Thunberg and McKibbon to misstate facts on war acts harming the environment by one state and blame it on another.
Russia did not bomb the dam that flooded its troop positions. Russia did not bomb its own bridge. Russia did not bomb its own pipeline, which it could easily turn off and on. Any idiot could tell you this but Greta Thunberg was persuaded to call Russia an Eco terrorist for flooding at sound troops when that is obviously not what it did. In fact Ukraine had bombed that dam weeks before the final flooding when it gave way. We see who the eco-terrorists in shameless liars are.
Best not to jump on the bandwagon linking arms with state liars. The truth will come out in plenty of independent journalist have explained the situation which apparently Thunberg and McKibben haven't bothered to read. Evidently they while McKim is aware enough of Substack to try to write in it, apparently he only reads the establishment storylines by CNN and a couple of estsblishment propagandist historians that have a presence in Substack. Why he doesn't just focus on independent journalist when he's looking at Substack, I don't know. You can find establishment voices multiple different places, but he apparently doesn't read any independent journalists or critical voices like GrayZone/Blumenthal/Klarenberg/Parampil, Scott Ritter, Prof John Mearsheimer, Ray McGovern, Jeffrey Sachs, Scott Horton, Aaron Maté/K. Halper, Matt Taibbi, Patrick Lawrence, Lee Camp/Mint Press, Scheerpost, Chris Hedges, The Real News Network, Consortium News, Noam Chomsky, The Duran, Caitlin Johnstone, Jimmy Dore, etc.
if a writer is on the Ukrainian death list for journalists, McKibben hasn't read them. He's just going to read what the state department and Pentagon spoonfeed establishment journalists.
We're talking about Russia as a gas station and not noticing that the reason we blew up their pipeline and pushed regime change in Ukraine in 2014 is that we want to control all gas trade in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe? We wouldn't let the elected president, Yanukovych make a more financially sound deal for the Ukrainians with the country giving him the best utilities deal in negotiations; we simply launch the queue when we saw that Ukraine's neighbor had negotiated more favorable utilities contracts that was hard for Yanukovych to turn down. Instead of negotiating a better deal, we just got our NGOs to help overthrow him lickety-split. Then when the border states that had voted for Yanukovych refused to support the new puppet government, Nazi wolfsangel-bearing troops were in reactivated for the first time since Stepan Bandera in World War II; these "Azov" troops we funded started bombing ethnic Russians in the Donbas for demanding autonomy. Rep. John Conyers wrote a spending amendment to defund them and other Nazi units but ultimately we Pentagon pushed the funding through.
So Russia is being called names like a gas station while we are blowing up pipe lines and trying to force our own higher priced gas on Europeans from our gas station. Pointing fingers and other countries when ours are not clean is despicable.
There is no reason to be setting off the biggest methane release in history if our president really cared about the environment and then casting blaming on the Ukrainians, not noted for their navy, was really cowardly and pathetic.
Biden was caught on video insisting that we would find a way to end their pipeline if they entered Ukraine and he made good on this threat. The Pentagon had probably already planned it as a contingency before he said it.
Which gas station is the worst? If you're going to point out the flaws of others, tend to our own flaws first.
Interesting....reminds me of Schrodinger's cat problem in physics.....except maybe we start using a new postulate: "If at least two whistleblowers (who are willing to ID themselves so that Hersh's access to deep state US Empire whistleblowers is permanently compromised and they volunteer to be Julian Assanged/Edward Snowdened) don't attest to something having happened, then by definition it didn't happen."
Seymour Hersh uses the same methods every major news outlet including the NY Times uses for breaking news involving intelligence sources or whistleblowers but when his content is inconvenient for the establishment, suddenly they feign surprise. Just as with all the other tactics used to discredit great journalists including the shameful treatment of Matt Taibbi by the bungling Mehdi Hasan, who nitpicked an acronym without understanding the two at issue were closely linked.
If you're going to attack Hersh for his trust in that source, you will need to do the same with a lot of major stories in the Washington Post and NY Times by others going back decades.
I love the detail you put in to this. It's a fantastic reminder to never stop fighting for what really matters, and how the average person can make a difference.
Sorry that my husband, a true environmentalist and a great fan of yours, isn’t around (he died in 2012) to see this fight. He did what he could from voting for Barry Commoner to spending his ten years of retirement in a small boat 1/4 liter of diesel per hour’s cruising) watching climate change on French canals and rivers. He taught me to fight the battle too.
"...It’s been a long year since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, expecting to crush the much smaller nation in days...."
This is surely not any more true than when the US military invaded Afghanistan 20 years ago supposedly to find a former CIA asset. They left there barely a year or two ago, still pretending to have "won".
In the process they in fact helped to break the back of US democracy, and accountability too.
What's worse in Ukraine, is they have now baited not only Russia, but all of continental Europe, into a very expensive and deadly quagmire. Because the US militaries industries, with their lobbyist at the head of "Department of Defense", and woman who is rather obviously the CIA's top ranking "hawk" as defacto head of State Dept, regardless of her actual job title there.
These two are running the show and need perpetual war to fill the coffers of their backers and fulfil their ideological delusions.
Thank you for the point about democracy. The thing that drives me crazy is when people don't see that the first priority has to be willing elections. https://www.losingmyreligions.net/
Here in northeast Michigan, just above Saginaw Bay, we live in what's jokingly referred to as a 'whistle-stop' railroad township. No red blinking lights or crossing bars to fall, only STOP signs. Last year they posted signs saying the speed of trains was increasing. Surely if that was a Federally based change, then all the trains are running faster. Maybe you can find out, Bill, because it certainly would figure in derailments going up.
Regional banks/credit unions are just as good. Don't make it too complicated. Beneficial State bank is excellent, run as a non-profit by Kat Tayler, partner of billionaire Dem Tom Steyer. They've created products specifically for that huge swath of residents that are typically "un-banked' by the big corporate fossil fuel lending banks.
Thanks for a very informative newsletter. I'm away from Vermont for a few months and have signed up for a 3rd Act event in downtown Tucson outside the Chase Bank! It will be fun to be with like-minded people. I'm sure you know that Amazon and Whole Foods' credit cards are tied to 'dirty banks' and my husband's mortgage to another. Refinancing is something he won't consider. It seems harder than just cutting up a card and much more expensive. I wish I had a personal adviser!
Terrible analysis of Ukraine War. Supports war hawks and neocons who returned in force to the Biden administration, State Department, and US Congress. I am stunned by how little McKibben understands by what is actually happening and is in support of more weapons, more death, more destruction, and more profits for the weapons industry while Ukrainians pay a great price for this proxy war between NATO and Russia. Where is the call for negotiations and diplomacy to prevent the destruction of our planet from planned or accidental nuclear war? He may be Third Act's guru, but not mine. Medea Benjamin and Code Pink should give him a good spanking for this destructive analysis. He should stick to things he understands and not lead those who care about both the environment and peace down a destructive path.
thank you for checking in. I've opposed American wars of aggression, and I oppose this Russian one--but I've done my best to highlight the way that we can,as I said in the piece, focus on "weapons" like heat pumps. And I'm very glad that we managed to get the Defense Production Act to commit $250 million to that task--to me, it's a good use of money, and a good symbol. Oh, and I'm not trying to be anyone's guru--I've never risen higher in the ecclesial hierarchy than Methodist Sunday School teacher!
Joe, you're on the right side of history but your anger and borderline disrespect are uncalled for. Bill is obviously not that sophisticated in this area, but that's ok, he's doing incredible work in the climate sphere. Madea Benjamin, Chris Hedges and Jeffery Sachs explain the whole Ukraine situation perfectly. I am hoping that Bill will eventually react appropriately to what Sy Hersh just revealed - that Biden and the Norwegians destroyed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, releasing a cataclysmic amount of climate destroying methane. (Biden gave a speech just before the provoked invasion, promising he would do exactly that - when someone tells you who they are, believe them!) Of course they will bend over backwards to justify it - the cost of war, it's all the dastardly Putin's fault, etc.,, but let's at least get that immensely destructive rat on the table. I fully support Bill in all of his other super-positive endeavors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fv_nKyF_5g
The anger was justified related to this ridiculous article. Regardless of whether McKibben is "sophisticated enough" to weigh in on geopolitical/war analysis, and he's not, he chose to do it in a very aggressive manner and he was adding to false establishment narratives. So he gets what he asks for when he runs his mouth considering we can already read the same garbage about that war from CNN/MSNBC/Fox/PBS/BBC/NOR/Guardian/Intercept MSM outlets 24/7 and we don't need yet another of the gazillion establishment voices adding more lies to the mix. He could've just pointed to Heather Cox Richardson for a propaganda mouthpiece and Substack and saved us time reading this rehash.
While I would certainly wish this war had not happened and that Russia had been able to solve their border security dispute with a negotiated settlement like they attempted to do, the United States deliberately pushed them over the edge in 2021 and then refused to negotiate in Dec. 2021 through Feb. 2022. John Mearsheimer has indicated at times that rush I had a few choices at the point at which day sent troops over to try to push for a settlement after their articulated border security fears were unheeded.
The United States also sent Boris Johnson to deliberately interfere with negotiations underway between Kiev and Moscow in March/April 2022.
We have heard since then multiple fake stories by Ukraine accusing Russia of attacking itself and predicting false flags to prepare us for the usual lies that the United States engages in the past decades since at least the 1950s to start wars and launch regime change coups.
Every time the US doesn't like a foreign elected leader's choices to benefit their people, we explore with our NGOs, CIA & State dept replacing the leader for a puppet of our choosing, as in the 2014 Ukraine govt coup with Biden's state dept aide Victoria Nuland caught on a phone tap in Russia breezily discussing her choices for replacement leader.
Our dirty fingers are seen in the 1950 Iran coup, coup attempts or US military attacks since then places like the Congo, Guatemala, S. Vietnam, El Salvador, Panama, Grenada, Iraq, Venezuela, and many more. War hawks in parties approve of these gambits.
Most despicable is the misuse of psyops pawns like Greta Thunberg and McKibbon to misstate facts on war acts harming the environment by one state and blame it on another.
Russia did not bomb the dam that flooded its troop positions. Russia did not bomb its own bridge. Russia did not bomb its own pipeline, which it could easily turn off and on. Any idiot could tell you this but Greta Thunberg was persuaded to call Russia an Eco terrorist for flooding at sound troops when that is obviously not what it did. In fact Ukraine had bombed that dam weeks before the final flooding when it gave way. We see who the eco-terrorists in shameless liars are.
Best not to jump on the bandwagon linking arms with state liars. The truth will come out in plenty of independent journalist have explained the situation which apparently Thunberg and McKibben haven't bothered to read. Evidently they while McKim is aware enough of Substack to try to write in it, apparently he only reads the establishment storylines by CNN and a couple of estsblishment propagandist historians that have a presence in Substack. Why he doesn't just focus on independent journalist when he's looking at Substack, I don't know. You can find establishment voices multiple different places, but he apparently doesn't read any independent journalists or critical voices like GrayZone/Blumenthal/Klarenberg/Parampil, Scott Ritter, Prof John Mearsheimer, Ray McGovern, Jeffrey Sachs, Scott Horton, Aaron Maté/K. Halper, Matt Taibbi, Patrick Lawrence, Lee Camp/Mint Press, Scheerpost, Chris Hedges, The Real News Network, Consortium News, Noam Chomsky, The Duran, Caitlin Johnstone, Jimmy Dore, etc.
if a writer is on the Ukrainian death list for journalists, McKibben hasn't read them. He's just going to read what the state department and Pentagon spoonfeed establishment journalists.
We're talking about Russia as a gas station and not noticing that the reason we blew up their pipeline and pushed regime change in Ukraine in 2014 is that we want to control all gas trade in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe? We wouldn't let the elected president, Yanukovych make a more financially sound deal for the Ukrainians with the country giving him the best utilities deal in negotiations; we simply launch the queue when we saw that Ukraine's neighbor had negotiated more favorable utilities contracts that was hard for Yanukovych to turn down. Instead of negotiating a better deal, we just got our NGOs to help overthrow him lickety-split. Then when the border states that had voted for Yanukovych refused to support the new puppet government, Nazi wolfsangel-bearing troops were in reactivated for the first time since Stepan Bandera in World War II; these "Azov" troops we funded started bombing ethnic Russians in the Donbas for demanding autonomy. Rep. John Conyers wrote a spending amendment to defund them and other Nazi units but ultimately we Pentagon pushed the funding through.
So Russia is being called names like a gas station while we are blowing up pipe lines and trying to force our own higher priced gas on Europeans from our gas station. Pointing fingers and other countries when ours are not clean is despicable.
There is no reason to be setting off the biggest methane release in history if our president really cared about the environment and then casting blaming on the Ukrainians, not noted for their navy, was really cowardly and pathetic.
Biden was caught on video insisting that we would find a way to end their pipeline if they entered Ukraine and he made good on this threat. The Pentagon had probably already planned it as a contingency before he said it.
Which gas station is the worst? If you're going to point out the flaws of others, tend to our own flaws first.
Hersh wrote on Substack earlier this month, based on a single anonymous source, that the U.S. was involved in the sabotage of the pipelines.
Really? A SINGLE, ANONYMOUS source?
Interesting....reminds me of Schrodinger's cat problem in physics.....except maybe we start using a new postulate: "If at least two whistleblowers (who are willing to ID themselves so that Hersh's access to deep state US Empire whistleblowers is permanently compromised and they volunteer to be Julian Assanged/Edward Snowdened) don't attest to something having happened, then by definition it didn't happen."
Seymour Hersh uses the same methods every major news outlet including the NY Times uses for breaking news involving intelligence sources or whistleblowers but when his content is inconvenient for the establishment, suddenly they feign surprise. Just as with all the other tactics used to discredit great journalists including the shameful treatment of Matt Taibbi by the bungling Mehdi Hasan, who nitpicked an acronym without understanding the two at issue were closely linked.
If you're going to attack Hersh for his trust in that source, you will need to do the same with a lot of major stories in the Washington Post and NY Times by others going back decades.
He's not saying the war is a good thing. He's merely saying it will be better if oil will not give authoritarians money to fund wars.
I love the detail you put in to this. It's a fantastic reminder to never stop fighting for what really matters, and how the average person can make a difference.
Sorry that my husband, a true environmentalist and a great fan of yours, isn’t around (he died in 2012) to see this fight. He did what he could from voting for Barry Commoner to spending his ten years of retirement in a small boat 1/4 liter of diesel per hour’s cruising) watching climate change on French canals and rivers. He taught me to fight the battle too.
now that sounds like a retirement!
It was indeed “quite a retirement.” Only in France was it affordable for two ex-teachers, one a boatman and the other a French teacher!
"...It’s been a long year since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, expecting to crush the much smaller nation in days...."
This is surely not any more true than when the US military invaded Afghanistan 20 years ago supposedly to find a former CIA asset. They left there barely a year or two ago, still pretending to have "won".
In the process they in fact helped to break the back of US democracy, and accountability too.
https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar
What's worse in Ukraine, is they have now baited not only Russia, but all of continental Europe, into a very expensive and deadly quagmire. Because the US militaries industries, with their lobbyist at the head of "Department of Defense", and woman who is rather obviously the CIA's top ranking "hawk" as defacto head of State Dept, regardless of her actual job title there.
These two are running the show and need perpetual war to fill the coffers of their backers and fulfil their ideological delusions.
That's where democracy is dying.
Excellent inclusive article, timely too, thank you!🇺🇸🌎
The fossil fuel industry wish I contributed to Yoko Ono's Wish Tree: https://www.dropbox.com/s/s939oqah4gnu6x3/Yoko%20Ono%27s%20Wish%20tree.mp4?dl=0
Thank you for the point about democracy. The thing that drives me crazy is when people don't see that the first priority has to be willing elections. https://www.losingmyreligions.net/
Here in northeast Michigan, just above Saginaw Bay, we live in what's jokingly referred to as a 'whistle-stop' railroad township. No red blinking lights or crossing bars to fall, only STOP signs. Last year they posted signs saying the speed of trains was increasing. Surely if that was a Federally based change, then all the trains are running faster. Maybe you can find out, Bill, because it certainly would figure in derailments going up.
Hey Bill - Could you provide a list of recommended national banks that would be good alternatives to the big fossil fuel supporting banks?
Regional banks/credit unions are just as good. Don't make it too complicated. Beneficial State bank is excellent, run as a non-profit by Kat Tayler, partner of billionaire Dem Tom Steyer. They've created products specifically for that huge swath of residents that are typically "un-banked' by the big corporate fossil fuel lending banks.
For all of you struggling with how best to replace your credit card with one that does not finance fossil fuels, I offer my Fossil Fuel Free Credit Card Guide http://climateaction.center/fossil-fuel-free-credit-card
Thanks for a very informative newsletter. I'm away from Vermont for a few months and have signed up for a 3rd Act event in downtown Tucson outside the Chase Bank! It will be fun to be with like-minded people. I'm sure you know that Amazon and Whole Foods' credit cards are tied to 'dirty banks' and my husband's mortgage to another. Refinancing is something he won't consider. It seems harder than just cutting up a card and much more expensive. I wish I had a personal adviser!
mortgages are hard; thankfully, credit cards somewhat less so! thanks for joining in with the Arizonans!