[Peace-discuss] Three Members of Congress Just Reignited the Cold War While No One Was Looking

[David Johnson via Peace-discuss]

<http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/12/16/three-members-congress-just-re
ignited-cold-war-while-no-one-was-looking>
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/12/16/three-members-congress-just-rei
gnited-cold-war-while-no-one-was-looking

on

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

by

 
<http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/three_congressmen_just_reignited_the_co
ld_war_while_no_one_was_looking_2014> TruthDig

Three Members of Congress Just Reignited the Cold War While No One Was
Looking

by

 <http://www.commondreams.org/author/dennis-kucinich> Dennis Kucinich

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Description:
http://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_large/public/views
-article/war_world_iii.jpg?itok=tUN8aQXA

We've superimposed the congressional record on top of a photo of the chamber
of the House of Representatives. It shows H.R. 5859 passing by unanimous
consent in the span of one second. (Photo: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

 

 

Late Thursday night, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a
far-reaching Russia sanctions bill, a hydra-headed incubator of poisonous
conflict. The second provocative anti-Russian legislation in a week, it
further polarizes our relations with Russia, helping to cement a
Russia-China alliance against Western hegemony, and undermines long-term
America's financial and physical security by handing the national treasury
over to
<http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/no_to_war_hot_or_cold_with_russia_20141
201> war profiteers.
Here's how the House's touted "unanimity" was achieved: Under a
parliamentary motion termed "unanimous consent," legislative rules can be
suspended and any bill can be called up. If any member of Congress objects,
the motion is blocked and the bill dies.
At 10:23:54 p.m. on Thursday, a member rose to ask "unanimous consent" for
four committees to be relieved of a Russia sanctions bill. At this point the
motion, and the legislation, could have been blocked by a single member who
would say "I object."  No one objected, because no one was watching for
last-minute bills to be slipped through.
Most of the House and the media had emptied out of the chambers after
passage of the $1.1 trillion government spending package.  
  
The Congressional Record will show only three of 425 members were present on
the floor to consider the sanctions bill. Two of the three feigned
objection, creating the legislative equivalent of a 'time out.' They entered
a few words of support, withdrew their "objections" and the clock resumed.  
According to the
<http://clerk.house.gov/floorsummary/floor.aspx?day=20141211&today=20141214>
clerk's records, once the bill was considered under unanimous consent, it
was passed, at 10:23:55 p.m., without objection, in one recorded,
time-stamped second, unanimously. 
Then the House adjourned.
I discovered, in my 16 years in Congress, that many members seldom read the
legislation on which they vote. On Oct. 24, 2001, House committees spent
long hours debating the Patriot Act. At the last minute, the old bill was
swapped out for a version with draconian provisions. I voted against that
version of the Patriot Act, because I read it. The legislative process
requires attention.
Legislation brought before Congress under "unanimous consent" is not read by
most members simply because copies of the bill are generally not available.
During the closing sessions of Congress I would often camp out in the House
chamber, near the clerk's desk, prepared to say "I object" when something of
consequence appeared out of the blue. Dec. 11, 2014, is one of the few times
I regret not being in Congress to have the ability to oversee the process.
The Russia Sanctions bill that passed "unanimously," with no scheduled
debate, at 10:23:55 p.m. on Dec. 11, 2014, includes:
1. Sanctions of Russia's energy industry, including Rosoboronexport and
Gazprom.
2. Sanctions of Russia's defense industry, with respect to arms sales to
Syria.
3. Broad sanctions on Russians' banking and investments.
4. Provisions for privatization of Ukrainian infrastructure, electricity,
oil, gas and renewables, with the help of the World Bank and USAID.
5. Fifty million dollars to assist in a corporate takeover of Ukraine's oil
and gas sectors.
6. Three hundred and fifty million dollars for military assistance to
Ukraine, including anti-tank, anti-armor, optical, and guidance and control
equipment, as well as drones.
7. Thirty million dollars for an intensive radio, television and Internet
propaganda campaign throughout the countries of the former Soviet Union.
8. Twenty million dollars for "democratic organizing" in Ukraine.
9. Sixty million dollars, spent through groups like the National Endowment
for Democracy, "to improve democratic governance, and transparency,
accountability [and] rule of law" in Russia. What brilliant hyperbole to
pass such a provision the same week the Senate's CIA torture report was
released.
10. An unverified declaration that Russia has violated the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, is a nuclear "threat to the United
States" and should be held "accountable."
11. A path for the U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty, which went into
force in 1988. The implications of this are immense. An entire series of
arms agreements are at risk of unraveling. It may not be long before NATO
pushes its newest client state, Ukraine, to abrogate the Non-Proliferation
Treaty, which Ukraine signed when it gave up its nuclear weapons, and
establish a renewed nuclear missile capability, 300 miles from Moscow.
12. A demand that Russia verifiably dismantle "any ground launched cruise
missiles or ballistic missiles with a range of between 500 and 5,500
kilometers ..."-i.e., 300 and 3,300 miles.
 <http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c113:H.R.5859:> Read the
legislation, which Congress apparently didn't.
As reported on
<http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/ukraine/budget.htm>
GlobalSecurity.org, earlier that same day in Kiev, the Ukrainian parliament
approved a security plan that will:
1. Declare that Ukraine should become a "military state."
2. Reallocate more of its approved 2014 budget for military purposes.
3. Put all military operating units on alert.
4. Mobilize military and national guard units.
5. Increase military spending in Ukraine from 1 percent of GDP to 5 percent,
increasing military spending by $3 billion over the next few years.
6. Join NATO and switch to NATO military standards.
Under the guise of democratizing, the West stripped Ukraine of its
sovereignty with a U.S.-backed coup, employed it as a foil to advance NATO
to the Russian border and reignited the Cold War, complete with another
nuclear showdown.
The people of Ukraine will be less free, as their country becomes a
"military state," goes into hock to international banks, faces structural
readjustments, privatization of its public assets, decline of social
services, higher prices and an even more severe decline in its standard of
living. 
In its dealings with the European Union, Ukraine could not even get
concessions for its citizens to find work throughout Europe. The West does
not care about Ukraine, or its people, except for using them to seize a
strategic advantage against Russia in the geopolitical game of nations.
Once, with the help of the West, Ukraine fully weighs in as a "military
state" and joins the NATO gun club, its annual defense budget will be around
$3 billion, compared with the current defense budget of Russia, which is
over $70 billion.
Each Western incitement creates a Russian response, which is then given as
further proof that the West must prepare for the very conflict it has
created, war as a self-fulfilling prophecy. 
That the recent Russia sanctions bill was advanced, "unanimously," without
debate in the House, portends that our nation is sleepwalking through the
graveyards of history, toward an abyss where controlling factors reside in
the realm of chance, what Thomas Hardy termed "crass casualty." Such are the
perils of unanimity.

 

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