radiofree.asia

Author: Binoy Kampmark

  • Poland’s Nuclear Weapons Fascination

    With the Ukraine War and the retreat of the United States from what has routinely been called Europe’s security architecture, states are galloping to whatever point of presumed sanctuary is on offer. The general presumption is that the galloping is done in the same step and rhythm. But Europe, for all the heavy layers of union driven diplomacy, retains its salty differences.

    Poland is particularly striking in this regard, having always positioned itself as a defender against the continent’s enemies, perceived or otherwise. This messianic purpose was well on show with the exploits of King John III Sobieski in his triumphant defence of Vienna against the Ottoman Empire in 1683. The seemingly endless wars against Russia, including the massacres and repressions, have also left their wounding marks on a fragile national psyche.

    These marks continue to script the approach of Warsaw’s anxiety to its traditional enemy, one that has become fixated with a nuclear option, in addition to a massive buildup of its armed forces and a defence budget that has reached 4.7% of its national income. While there is some disagreement among government officials on whether Poland should pursue its own arsenal, a general mood towards stationing the nuclear weapons of allies has taken hold. (As a matter of interest, a February 21 poll for Onet found that 52.9 percent of Poles favoured having nuclear weapons, with 27.9 percent opposed.)

    This would mirror, albeit from the opposite side, the Cold War history of Poland, when its army was equipped with Soviet nuclear-capable 8K11 and 3R10 missiles. With sweet irony, those weapons were intended to be used against NATO member states.

    The flirtatious offer of French President Emmanual Macron to potentially extend his country’s nuclear arsenal as an umbrella of reassurance to other European states did make an impression on Poland’s leadership. Prudence might have dictated a more reticent approach, but Prime Minister Donald Tusk would have none of that before the Polish parliament. In his words, “We must be aware that Poland must reach for the most modern capabilities also related to nuclear weapons and modern unconventional weapons.” According to the PM, “this is a race for security, not for war.”

    The Polish President, Andrzej Duda, is also warm to the US option (he has been, over his time in office, profoundly pro-American), despite Tusk’s concerns about a “profound change in American geopolitics”. He was already ruminating over the idea in 2022 when he made the proposal to the Biden administration to host US nuclear weapons, one that was also repeated in June 2023 by then-Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. To have such weapons in Poland was a necessary “defensive tactic […] to Russia’s behaviour, relocating nuclear weapons to the NATO area,” he explained to the BBC. “Poland is ready to host this nuclear weapon.”

    Duda then goes on to restate a familiar theme. Were US nuclear weapons stored on Polish soil, Washington would have little choice but to defend such territory against any threat. “Every kind of strategic infrastructure, American and NATO infrastructure, which we have on our soil is strengthening the inclination of the US and the North Atlantic Alliance to defend this territory.” To the Financial Times, Duda further reasoned that, as NATO’s borders had moved east in 1999, “so twenty-six years later there should also be a shift of the NATO infrastructure east.”

    Much of this seems like theatrical, puffy nonsense, given Poland’s membership of the NATO alliance, which has, as its central point, Article 5. Whether it involves its protection by a fellow NATO ally using conventional or nuclear weapons, hosting such nuclear weapons is negated as a value. Poland would receive collective military aid in any case should it be attacked. But, as Jon Wolfsthal of the Federation of American Scientists reasons, an innate concern of being abandoned in the face of aggression continues to cause jitters. Tusk’s remarks were possibly “a signal of concern – maybe to motivate the United States, but clearly designed to play on the French and perhaps the British.”

    The crippling paranoia of the current government in the face of any perceived Russian threat becomes even less justifiable given the presence of US troops on its soil. According to the government’s own information, a total of 10,000 troops are present on a rotational basis, with US Land Forces V Corps Forward Command based in Poznań. In February, Duda confirmed to reporters after meeting the US envoy to Ukraine Gen. Keith Kellogg that there were “no concerns that the US would reduce the level of its presence in our country, that the US would in any way withdraw from its responsibility or co-responsibility for the security of this part of Europe.”

    Duda goes further, offering a sycophantic flourish. “I will say in my personal opinion, America has entered the game very strongly when it comes to ending the war in Ukraine. I know President Donald Trump, I know that he is an extremely decisive man and when he acts, he acts in a very determined and usually effective way.” With those remarks, we can only assume that the desire to have massively lethal weapons on one’s own soil that would risk obliterating life, limb and everything else is but a sporting parlour game of misplaced assumptions.

    The post Poland’s Nuclear Weapons Fascination first appeared on Dissident Voice.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Sporting Contradictions: Athletes, the Olympics and Climate Change

    Photograph Source: Ank Kumar – CC BY-SA 4.0

    The time has come for arguably the sporting world’s most famous mafia organisation to select its new chief.  The various turf-conscious representatives of the International Olympic Committee will be busy with the task of finding a replacement for Thomas Bach when ballots are cast at Costa Navarino, Greece on March 20.

    Seven candidates have made the list.  They show little risk of cleaning the body’s spotty image.  Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr.’s candidacy is a lovely reminder of his father, who was himself made IOC president in 1980.  That Samaranch was not shy about his fascist sympathies, defending, not infrequently, the rule and legacy of Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco.  “I was with many, many Spaniards with Franco,” he stated at a news conference in 1999.  While the father’s sins should not be visited upon the son, the very fact that a bid is being made for the IOC presidency suggests that this apple did not fall so far from the tree.

    In a flawed effort to influence the candidates and what might be called their vision for the games, over 400 athletes from 90 countries have added their names to a letter urging the candidates to prioritise climate change in their policies.  That they think their views make the slightest difference is almost charming.  That they pick climate change as the issue suggests they have slumbered in a deep, uninterrupted sleep.

    The IOC has certainly shown interest in easily gulled athletes in recent years.  At points, it has been rather cunning and ruthless in using these unsuspecting sorts to spruce an unrecoverably tarnished brand. The organisation, most notably, trumpeted the role played by some 6,000 sporting individuals in laughable anti-corruption education campaigns during the Paris Olympic Games last year, and the Youth Olympic Games held at Gangwon.

    The letter itself has also been pushed by athletes who are already in the employ of the IOC apparatus.  Sailor and British Olympian Hannah Mills, one of the document’s key proponents, is called, without any sense of irony, an IOC sustainability ambassador.  With a sense of wonder, she reflects on the devastation caused by the LA wildfires and how it proved something of an epiphany: “the time is now to set a course for a safe, bright future.”

    The letter asks the incoming president “that over the years and the course of your presidency one issue be above all others: the care of the planet.”  The rise in temperatures and extreme weather were “already disrupting competition schedules, putting iconic venues at risk and affecting the health of athletes and fans.”  Rising heat levels had also raised “real concerns about whether the Summer Games can be held safely in future years, and Winter Games are becoming harder to organise with reliable snow and ice conditions diminishing annually.”

    A few of the IOC candidates, mindful of the letter’s publicity, reacted on cue.  Prince Feisal Al Hussein of Jordan professed being impressed by the “powerful message from Olympians around the world”.  World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe expressed his willingness to meet the signatories to “share ideas and initiatives”.

    The letter itself is an exercise in mushy contradiction.  The Olympics, pushed by an organisation that runs on the blood of corruption, must count as an environmental and social welfare calamity.  Staging them entails disruptive construction, the depletion of resources, the alteration of landscape.  Their purpose, far from encouraging good will and the stirrings of the social conscience, lies in a promotion of the relevant city and government often at the expense of the disadvantaged citizenry, a naked, propagandistic display of the regime of the day.

    The IOC has unashamedly claimed to be a promoter of green policies.  In 2021, it committed to reducing its direct and indirect emissions in the order of 30 per cent, and 50 per cent by 2030.  It puts much stock in the Olympics Forest project, a shiny enterprise that conceals what has come to be described as “carbon colonialism”, which involves the use of misleading carbon offsets and the exploitation of states in the Global South.  Little wonder that this cynical body has been identified as a greenwashing culprit par excellence, a point utterly missed by the letter’s signatories.

    The 2024 Paris Olympics, described by organisers as “historic for climate” and “revolutionary” in nature, proved nothing of the sort.  Jules Boykoff, well versed on the politics of the Olympics, preferred a different view, calling the games a “recycled version of green capitalism that is oblivious in its incrementalism, vague with its methodology and loose with its accountability.”

    If care of the planet is what these athletes sincerely want, a swift abolition of the Olympics, along with a virtuous cancellation of the IOC, would achieve their goals.  At the very least, the games should be dramatically shrunk.  Iconic avenues would be spared.  The safety of athletes and fans would not be an issue.  Why wait for extreme weather to either modify or even do away with the games altogether?  Dear incoming IOC president, you can end the whole charade once and for all.

    The post Sporting Contradictions: Athletes, the Olympics and Climate Change appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Sporting Contradictions: Athletes, the Olympics, and Climate Change

    The time has come for arguably the sporting world’s most famous mafia organisation to select its new chief. The various turf-conscious representatives of the International Olympic Committee will be busy with the task of finding a replacement for Thomas Bach when ballots are cast at Costa Navarino, Greece on March 20.

    Seven candidates have made the list. They show little risk of cleaning the body’s spotty image. Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr.’s candidacy is a lovely reminder of his father, who was himself made IOC president in 1980. That Samaranch was not shy about his fascist sympathies, defending, not infrequently, the rule and legacy of Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco. “I was with many, many Spaniards with Franco,” he stated at a news conference in 1999. While the father’s sins should not be visited upon the son, the very fact that a bid is being made for the IOC presidency suggests that this apple did not fall so far from the tree.

    In a flawed effort to influence the candidates and what might be called their vision for the games, over 400 athletes from 90 countries have added their names to a letter urging the candidates to prioritise climate change in their policies. That they think their views make the slightest difference is almost charming. That they pick climate change as the issue suggests they have slumbered in a deep, uninterrupted sleep.

    The IOC has certainly shown interest in easily gulled athletes in recent years. At points, it has been rather cunning and ruthless in using these unsuspecting sorts to spruce an unrecoverably tarnished brand. The organisation, most notably, trumpeted the role played by some 6,000 sporting individuals in laughable anti-corruption education campaigns during the Paris Olympic Games last year, and the Youth Olympic Games held at Gangwon.

    The letter itself has also been pushed by athletes who are already in the employ of the IOC apparatus. Sailor and British Olympian Hannah Mills, one of the document’s key proponents, is called, without any sense of irony, an IOC sustainability ambassador. With a sense of wonder, she reflects on the devastation caused by the LA wildfires and how it proved something of an epiphany: “the time is now to set a course for a safe, bright future.”

    The letter asks the incoming president “that over the years and the course of your presidency one issue be above all others: the care of the planet.” The rise in temperatures and extreme weather were “already disrupting competition schedules, putting iconic venues at risk and affecting the health of athletes and fans.” Rising heat levels had also raised “real concerns about whether the Summer Games can be held safely in future years, and Winter Games are becoming harder to organise with reliable snow and ice conditions diminishing annually.”

    A few of the IOC candidates, mindful of the letter’s publicity, reacted on cue. Prince Feisal Al Hussein of Jordan professed being impressed by the “powerful message from Olympians around the world”. World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe expressed his willingness to meet the signatories to “share ideas and initiatives”.

    The letter itself is an exercise in mushy contradiction. The Olympics, pushed by an organisation that runs on the blood of corruption, must count as an environmental and social welfare calamity. Staging them entails disruptive construction, the depletion of resources, the alteration of landscape. Their purpose, far from encouraging good will and the stirrings of the social conscience, lies in a promotion of the relevant city and government often at the expense of the disadvantaged citizenry, a naked, propagandistic display of the regime of the day.

    The IOC has unashamedly claimed to be a promoter of green policies. In 2021, it committed to reducing its direct and indirect emissions in the order of 30 per cent, and 50 per cent by 2030. It puts much stock in the Olympics Forest project, a shiny enterprise that conceals what has come to be described as “carbon colonialism”, which involves the use of misleading carbon offsets and the exploitation of states in the Global South. Little wonder that this cynical body has been identified as a greenwashing culprit par excellence, a point utterly missed by the letter’s signatories.

    The 2024 Paris Olympics, described by organisers as “historic for climate” and “revolutionary” in nature, proved nothing of the sort. Jules Boykoff, well versed on the politics of the Olympics, preferred a different view, calling the games a “recycled version of green capitalism that is oblivious in its incrementalism, vague with its methodology and loose with its accountability.”

    If care of the planet is what these athletes sincerely want, a swift abolition of the Olympics, along with a virtuous cancellation of the IOC, would achieve their goals. At the very least, the games should be dramatically shrunk. Iconic avenues would be spared. The safety of athletes and fans would not be an issue. Why wait for extreme weather to either modify or even do away with the games altogether? Dear incoming IOC president, you can end the whole charade once and for all.

    The post Sporting Contradictions: Athletes, the Olympics, and Climate Change first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Militarising Europe: The EU Defence Spending Bug

    We live in dangerous times, and politicians are happy to be cheerleaders of that supposed fact. They do not care to reassure; they merely care to strike fear into hearts and feed the sort of pernicious despondency that encourages conflict. Hope is not a political currency worth trading. These days, fear is the bankable asset, easily cashed at a moment’s notice.

    The March 6 meeting of the Special European Council was a chance for 27 leaders of the European Union to make that point. It was time to cash in on the Russia threat and promote a strategic vision that spoke of elevated dangers. It was, in other words, a good time to be throwing money at the militaries of the various member states.

    The language was clear from the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, a figure who has become increasingly hawkish in pushing the barrow of the military-industrial complex. Announced on March 4, her ReArm Europe plan entails various measures intended to free up to EUR 800 billion in defence funding. A notable one is enabling member states to use the escape clause of the Stability and Growth Pact to bypass the Excessive Deficit Procedure. Without giving too much by way of details, von der Leyen claims that EUR 650 billion of “fiscal space” could be created were EU countries to increase defence spending by 1.5% of GDP. So much, it would seem, for the bloc’s emphasis on fiscal frugality.

    Another measure involves the provision of EUR 150 billion of loans to member states under Article 122 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) that will go into such defence initiatives as air and missile defence, artillery, missiles, armed drones and anti-drone systems, and cyber security. But this is not all: this initiative is not only intended for European defence but aiding Ukraine and, it follows, prolonging the war.

    Vague suggestions are also on the table. Von der Leyen babbles about “cohesion policy programmes” that might be used to increase military expenditure, with money drawn from the EU budget. Private capital will also be raised through the Savings and Investment Union and the European Investment Bank.

    The five-point agreement that emerged from the summit was approved by 26 of the 27 members. (Hungary did not disappoint in vetoing the leaders’ statement). It spoke to such compulsory conditions as Ukrainian participation in peace talks, and European involvement on matters touching upon its security. “Ukraine’s, Europe’s, transatlantic and global security,” the statement pompously reads, “are intertwined”. EU funding in the order of EUR 30.6 billion was also promised for 2025.

    The move brings some unwanted attention to the workings of EU policy. Of interest here is the issue of using Article 122, an emergency provision that is non-legislative in nature and has been previously used in responding to the COVID pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In other words, it is an executive pathway that purposely bypasses the European Parliament.

    Resorting to the article in this instance did not impress Manfred Weber, who leads the European People’s Party (EPP) group in the Parliament. “Bypassing Parliament with Article 122 is a mistake,” opined Weber to his colleagues in the Strasbourg plenary. “Europe’s democracy stands on two pillars: its citizens and its member states, (and) we need both for our security.”

    European Parliament president Roberta Metsola also urged EU leaders at the March 6 summit that, “Working through the European Parliament, especially on decisions of this magnitude, is a way of fostering trust in our union.” While “swift action” was needed, “acting together is the only way of ensuring broad and deep public backing.”

    In a non-legislative resolution, 419 MEPs encouraged member states to, amongst other matters, increase defending expenditure by at least 3% of GDP, create a bank for defence, security and resilience and pursue a system by which European defence bonds might be used to pre-finance military investment. While these approving members thought Europe was “facing the most profound military threat to its territorial integrity since the end of the Cold War”, 204 chose to vote against it, with 46 deciding to abstain.

    In the process of reaching the final resolution, it is worth noting that certain MEPs from The Left and The Greens/EFA attempted to include an amendment that was rejected by 444 votes. “The Parliament,” it read, “deplores the choice to use Art. 122 […] for the new EU instrument meant to support members states defence capabilities; expresses deep concern for being excluded from decisional process”.

    While the March summit suggested a new turn towards bellicose militarism, the trend is unmistakable and troublingly inexorable: Europe is spending more on defence, and was doing so even before the return of Donald Trump to the White House. In 2024, military budgets increased by 11.7% in real terms, with a number of countries reaching the target of 2% of GDP expenditure agreed by NATO members in 2014. Throughout Europe, the merchants of death, an eloquent, accurate term coined in the 1930s, can only be crowing.

    The post Militarising Europe: The EU Defence Spending Bug first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Aggrieved Speculation: The Trump Illness Hypothesis

    Photo by Marco Zuppone

    The critics are utterly beside themselves in trying to understand the bruising odds and turns of Donald J. Trump, the reality showman and business tycoon who became US president twice.  One particular group that have become prominent are the aggrieved and estranged.  Former employees who were given their marching orders after brief spells in Trump’s administration have made a career in podcasting and punditry on the man whose bilious orbit they seemingly cannot escape.  A common theme to their recent criticism is that of mental health.  Trump, we are told, is unhinged, a true nutter.

    The aggrieved, war loving John Bolton, who had spells in the administration of George W. Bush and a brief one as Trump’s national security advisor, has been particularly noisy in pushing the illness hypothesis.  When asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins whether Trump’s claim that Russia’s Vladimir Putin was not a dictator could be seen as a negotiating ploy, Bolton would have none of it.  “I think it’s an indication his mind is full of mush, and he says whatever comes into it.  He believes Vladimir Putin is his friend, and you know, you don’t call your friends [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky] a dictator.”

    Bolton also falls for the old, almost laughable mistake when trying to understand Trump: that facts necessarily matter in that world.  When Trump met the current Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lieutenant General Dan Caine, in Iraq during his first term, the president offered a rather different account to that of Bolton’s.  The former claimed that Caine had told him that the campaign against the ISIS group could be “finished in one week”, that he sported a Make America Great Again hat, and claimed he would “kill” for the president.

    Bolton, who accompanied Trump on that visit, was adamant:  “There was no chance that Trump had a conversation with General Caine that bore any resemblance to what he’s described.  I never saw Caine wear a MAGA hat.”  (In a tossup between who to trust between these men, Bolton might just prevail.)

    Another former employee who had reiterated similar points of mental decline is Anthony Scaramucci, who spent a mere 11 days in the first Trump administration as communications director before being sacked.  After being a firm loyalist, the born again commentator and financier known as the Mooch could confidently claim to Vanity Fair in 2019 that Trump was “crazy, everything about him is terrible”.

    Having failed in spectacular fashion, along with fellow pundits, to read the premonitory signs of a Trump victory over Kamala Harris, he has returned to the theme of the mad man, or at least the ill man.  Some of these views were expressed just prior to a visit to the White House by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.  In the Off Air… with Jane and Fi podcast, Scaramucci took it as given that “Trump’s obviously got something wrong with him.  I would say to Keir Starmer the guy is unwell and he’s surrounded by willing sycophants that want to pretend he’s not unwell.”  One did not need to be “a rocket scientist to know that something’s wrong”.

    While it did not come from one of the estranged or aggrieved, the most telling remark on Trump’s health was offered by Democratic political consultant and strategist James Carville.  In a posted video, Carville felt speculatively adventurous after the turbulent February 28 meeting between the US president and his Ukrainian counterpart, President Zelensky.  “I want to seek the possibility that maybe I had a point considerably earlier than this when I pointed out on this very channel that Trump had red splotches on his hand which I was told by a number of medical professionals that when you see that condition the first thing you suspect is syphilis.”  There you have it.  Analysis can end, there and then.

    Many of these criticisms stem from dross from the first Trump administration, when opinion pieces questioning the man’s faculties and sanity became a feature.  Often, they were slipshod and lazy, seduced by the Trump canard.  Trump derangement syndrome is, after all, a hard thing to shake.  His effect on US politics and its analysis has been so profound as to turn critics and commentators into replicates of his dislike of factual analysis.  Just as book reviewers, as Cyril Connolly remarked, are bound to have their critical faculties blunted by the poor quality of books available for review, Trump as both subject and method has cut through the undergrowth of sensible discourse.  The illness hypothesis is yet another example of this.

    Embracing such a proposition avoids the more fundamental point about Trump: that he does know more than you think about what he wants and how he wants to achieve it.  He is most certainly a disturbed human being, infantilised, insecure, and prone to hazes of narcissism, but he can hardly be dismissed as a person without certain cerebral functions.

    With a vengeful conviction lacking in his first iteration, he is shaping aspects of US government that are both remarkable and disconcerting.  On the international stage, he has finally stripped bare the cant pursued by the liberal and neoconservative internationalists who insist on a policing role for Washington in the name of “rules”.  For them, the messianic role of the United States will guard the world against such nasties as rule-bending autocrats.  The MAGA philosophy has its dangers and problems, but the mental illness of its chief proponent is not one of them.

    The post Aggrieved Speculation: The Trump Illness Hypothesis appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • The Trump Illness Hypothesis

    The critics are utterly beside themselves in trying to understand the bruising odds and turns of Donald J. Trump, the reality showman and business tycoon who became US president twice. One particular group that have become prominent are the aggrieved and estranged. Former employees who were given their marching orders after brief spells in Trump’s administration have made a career in podcasting and punditry on the man whose bilious orbit they seemingly cannot escape. A common theme to their recent criticism is that of mental health. Trump, we are told, is unhinged, a true nutter.

    The aggrieved, war loving John Bolton, who had spells in the administration of George W. Bush and a brief one as Trump’s national security advisor, has been particularly noisy in pushing the illness hypothesis. When asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins whether Trump’s claim that Russia’s Vladimir Putin was not a dictator could be seen as a negotiating ploy, Bolton would have none of it. “I think it’s an indication his mind is full of mush, and he says whatever comes into it. He believes Vladimir Putin is his friend, and you know, you don’t call your friends [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky] a dictator.”

    Bolton also falls for the old, almost laughable mistake when trying to understand Trump: that facts necessarily matter in that world. When Trump met the current Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lieutenant General Dan Caine, in Iraq during his first term, the president offered a rather different account to that of Bolton’s. The former claimed that Caine had told him that the campaign against the ISIS group could be “finished in one week”, that he sported a Make America Great Again hat, and claimed he would “kill” for the president.

    Bolton, who accompanied Trump on that visit, was adamant: “There was no chance that Trump had a conversation with General Caine that bore any resemblance to what he’s described. I never saw Caine wear a MAGA hat.” (In a tossup between who to trust between these men, Bolton might just prevail.)

    Another former employee who had reiterated similar points of mental decline is Anthony Scaramucci, who spent a mere 11 days in the first Trump administration as communications director before being sacked. After being a firm loyalist, the born again commentator and financier known as the Mooch could confidently claim to Vanity Fair in 2019 that Trump was “crazy, everything about him is terrible”.

    Having failed in spectacular fashion, along with fellow pundits, to read the premonitory signs of a Trump victory over Kamala Harris, he has returned to the theme of the mad man, or at least the ill man. Some of these views were expressed just prior to a visit to the White House by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In the Off Air… with Jane and Fi podcast, Scaramucci took it as given that “Trump’s obviously got something wrong with him. I would say to Keir Starmer the guy is unwell and he’s surrounded by willing sycophants that want to pretend he’s not unwell.” One did not need to be “a rocket scientist to know that something’s wrong”.

    While it did not come from one of the estranged or aggrieved, the most telling remark on Trump’s health was offered by Democratic political consultant and strategist James Carville. In a posted video, Carville felt speculatively adventurous after the turbulent February 28 meeting between the US president and his Ukrainian counterpart, President Zelensky. “I want to seek the possibility that maybe I had a point considerably earlier than this when I pointed out on this very channel that Trump had red splotches on his hand which I was told by a number of medical professionals that when you see that condition the first thing you suspect is syphilis.” There you have it. Analysis can end, there and then.

    Many of these criticisms stem from dross from the first Trump administration, when opinion pieces questioning the man’s faculties and sanity became a feature. Often, they were slipshod and lazy, seduced by the Trump canard. Trump derangement syndrome is, after all, a hard thing to shake. His effect on US politics and its analysis has been so profound as to turn critics and commentators into replicates of his dislike of factual analysis. Just as book reviewers, as Cyril Connolly remarked, are bound to have their critical faculties blunted by the poor quality of books available for review, Trump as both subject and method has cut through the undergrowth of sensible discourse. The illness hypothesis is yet another example of this.

    Embracing such a proposition avoids the more fundamental point about Trump: that he does know more than you think about what he wants and how he wants to achieve it. He is most certainly a disturbed human being, infantilised, insecure, and prone to hazes of narcissism, but he can hardly be dismissed as a person without certain cerebral functions.

    With a vengeful conviction lacking in his first iteration, he is shaping aspects of US government that are both remarkable and disconcerting. On the international stage, he has finally stripped bare the cant pursued by the liberal and neoconservative internationalists who insist on a policing role for Washington in the name of “rules”. For them, the messianic role of the United States will guard the world against such nasties as rule-bending autocrats. The MAGA philosophy has its dangers and problems, but the mental illness of its chief proponent is not one of them.

    The post The Trump Illness Hypothesis first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • More Guns, Less Butter: Starmer’s Defence Spending Splash

    Photograph Source: Prime Minister’s Office – OPL 3

    The urge to throw more money at defence budgets across a number of countries has become infectious.  It was bound to happen with Donald Trump’s return to the White House, given his previous insistence that US allies do more to fatten their own armies rather than rely on the largesse of Washington’s power.  Spend, spend, spend is the theme, and the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has shown himself willing to join this wasteful indulgence.

    On February 25, just prior to his visit to Washington, Starmer announced that spending on defence would reach 2.5% of GDP from April 2027.  In the next parliament, it would rise to 3%.  “In recent years,” states a UK government press release, “the world has been reshaped by global instability, including Russian aggression in Ukraine, increasing threats from malign actors, rapid technological change, and the accelerating impacts of climate change.”

    Almost predictably, the term “Cold War” makes its retro appearance, with the spending increase the largest since that conflict of wilful misunderstandings and calculated paranoia.  Russia figures prominently, as do “malign actors” who have burdened “the working people of Britain” with “increased energy bills, or threats to British interests and values.”

    The governing Labour Party has also gone a bit gung-ho with the military-industrial establishment.  In an open letter reported by the Financial Times, over 100 Labour MPs and peers thought it wise that ethical rules restricting investment by banks and investment firms in defence companies be relaxed.  Financial institutions, the letter argues, should “rethink ESG [environmental, social and governance] mechanisms that often wrongly exclude all defence investment”.  It was also important to address the issue of those “unnecessary barriers” defence firms face when “doing business in the UK”.  Among such barriers are those irritating matters such as money laundering checks banks are obliged to conduct when considering the finance needs of defence and security firms, along with seeking assurances that they are not financing weapons banned under international law.

    That these uncontroversial rules are now being seen as needless barriers to an industry that persists in shirking accountability is a sign of creeping moral flabbiness.  Across Europe, the defence and arms lobbyists, those great exploiters of fictional insecurity, are feeling more confident than they have in years.  They can rely on such figures as European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, who stated on March 4 that, “We are in an era of rearmament. And Europe is ready to massively boost its defence spending.”

    To pursue such rearmament, Starmer has decided to take the axe to the aid budget, reducing it from its current level of 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3% in 2027.  It was, as the press release goes on to mention, a “difficult choice” and part of “the evolving nature of the threat and the strategic shift required to meet it”.  The Conservatives approved the measure, and the populist Reform UK would have little reason to object, seeing it had been its policy suggestion at the last election.

    It was a decision that sufficiently troubled the international development minister, Anneliese Dodds, to quit the cabinet.  In a letter to the prime minister, Dodds remarked that, while Starmer wished “to continue support for Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine; for vaccination; for climate; and for rules-based systems”, doing so would “be impossible … given the depth of the cut”.

    Making the Office of Overseas Development Assistance absorb such a reduction would also see Britain “pull-out from numerous African, Caribbean and Western Balkan nations – at a time when Russia has been aggressively increasing its global presence.”  It would be isolated from various multilateral bodies, see “a withdrawal from regional banks and a reduced commitment to the World Bank”.  Influence would also be lost at such international fora as the G7 and G20.

    Defence establishment figures have also regarded the decision to reduce aid with some consternation.  General Lord Richards, former Chief of Defence Staff, saw the sense of an increase in military spending but not at the expense of the aid budget.  “The notion that we must weaken one to strengthen the other is not just misleading but dangerous,” opined Richards in The Telegraph.  “A lack of investment and development will only fuel greater instability, increase security threats and place a heavier burden on our Armed Forces.”

    The aid budgets of wealthy states should never be seen as benevolent projects.  Behind the charitable endeavour is a calculation that speaks more to power (euphemised as “soft”) than kindness.  Aid keeps the natives of other countries clothed, fed and sufficiently sustained not to want to stray to other contenders.  The sentiment was expressed all too clearly by a disappointed Dodds: a smaller UK aid budget would embolden an already daring Russia to fill the vacuum.  How fascinating, then, that a daring Russia, its threatening posture inflated and exaggerated, is one of the primary reasons prompting an increase in Britain’s defence spending in the first place.

    The post More Guns, Less Butter: Starmer’s Defence Spending Splash appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • More Guns, Less Butter: Starmer’s Defence Spending Splash

    The urge to throw more money at defence budgets across a number of countries has become infectious. It was bound to happen with Donald Trump’s return to the White House, given his previous insistence that US allies do more to fatten their own armies rather than rely on the largesse of Washington’s power. Spend, spend, spend is the theme, and the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has shown himself willing to join this wasteful indulgence.

    On February 25, just prior to his visit to Washington, Starmer announced that spending on defence would reach 2.5% of GDP from April 2027. In the next parliament, it would rise to 3%. “In recent years,” states a UK government press release, “the world has been reshaped by global instability, including Russian aggression in Ukraine, increasing threats from malign actors, rapid technological change, and the accelerating impacts of climate change.”

    Almost predictably, the term “Cold War” makes its retro appearance, with the spending increase the largest since that conflict of wilful misunderstandings and calculated paranoia. Russia figures prominently, as do “malign actors” who have burdened “the working people of Britain” with “increased energy bills, or threats to British interests and values.”

    The governing Labour Party has also gone a bit gung-ho with the military-industrial establishment. In an open letter reported by the Financial Times, over 100 Labour MPs and peers thought it wise that ethical rules restricting investment by banks and investment firms in defence companies be relaxed. Financial institutions, the letter argues, should “rethink ESG [environmental, social and governance] mechanisms that often wrongly exclude all defence investment”. It was also important to address the issue of those “unnecessary barriers” defence firms face when “doing business in the UK”. Among such barriers are those irritating matters such as money laundering checks banks are obliged to conduct when considering the finance needs of defence and security firms, along with seeking assurances that they are not financing weapons banned under international law.

    That these uncontroversial rules are now being seen as needless barriers to an industry that persists in shirking accountability is a sign of creeping moral flabbiness. Across Europe, the defence and arms lobbyists, those great exploiters of fictional insecurity, are feeling more confident than they have in years. They can rely on such figures as European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, who stated on March 4 that, “We are in an era of rearmament. And Europe is ready to massively boost its defence spending.”

    To pursue such rearmament, Starmer has decided to take the axe to the aid budget, reducing it from its current level of 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3% in 2027. It was, as the press release goes on to mention, a “difficult choice” and part of “the evolving nature of the threat and the strategic shift required to meet it”. The Conservatives approved the measure, and the populist Reform UK would have little reason to object, seeing it had been its policy suggestion at the last election.

    It was a decision that sufficiently troubled the international development minister, Anneliese Dodds, to quit the cabinet. In a letter to the prime minister, Dodds remarked that, while Starmer wished “to continue support for Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine; for vaccination; for climate; and for rules-based systems”, doing so would “be impossible … given the depth of the cut”.

    Making the Office of Overseas Development Assistance absorb such a reduction would also see Britain “pull-out from numerous African, Caribbean and Western Balkan nations – at a time when Russia has been aggressively increasing its global presence.” It would be isolated from various multilateral bodies, see “a withdrawal from regional banks and a reduced commitment to the World Bank”. Influence would also be lost at such international fora as the G7 and G20.

    Defence establishment figures have also regarded the decision to reduce aid with some consternation. General Lord Richards, former Chief of Defence Staff, saw the sense of an increase in military spending but not at the expense of the aid budget. “The notion that we must weaken one to strengthen the other is not just misleading but dangerous,” opined Richards in The Telegraph. “A lack of investment and development will only fuel greater instability, increase security threats and place a heavier burden on our Armed Forces.”

    The aid budgets of wealthy states should never be seen as benevolent projects. Behind the charitable endeavour is a calculation that speaks more to power (euphemised as “soft”) than kindness. Aid keeps the natives of other countries clothed, fed and sufficiently sustained not to want to stray to other contenders. The sentiment was expressed all too clearly by a disappointed Dodds: a smaller UK aid budget would embolden an already daring Russia to fill the vacuum. How fascinating, then, that a daring Russia, its threatening posture inflated and exaggerated, is one of the primary reasons prompting an increase in Britain’s defence spending in the first place.

    The post More Guns, Less Butter: Starmer’s Defence Spending Splash first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • France and the Delusions of Nuclear Deterrence

    Emmanuel Macron[/caption]The singular antics of US President Donald Trump, notably towards supposed allies, has stirred the pot regarding national security in various capitals. From Canberra to Brussels, there is concern that such assumed, if unverifiable notions as extended nuclear deterrence from Washington are valid anymore. America First interests certainly bring that into question, as well it should. If the imperium is in self-introspective retreat, this is to the good. But the internationalists beg to differ, wishing to see the United States as imperial guarantor.

    In Europe, the fear at the retreat of Washington’s nuclear umbrella, and the inflation of the Russian threat, has caused flutters of panic. On February 20, 2025, Friedrich Merz, chairman of the Christian Democratic Union and the incoming German chancellor, floated the idea that other states consider shouldering Europe’s security burden. “We need to have discussions with both the British and the French – the two European nuclear powers – about whether nuclear sharing, or at least nuclear security from the UK and France, would apply to us.”

    Merz has also explicitly urged European states to accept the proposition that “Donald Trump will no longer unconditionally honour NATO’s mutual defence commitment”, making it incumbent on them to “make every effort to at least be able to defend the European continent on its own.”

    On March 1, French President Emmanuel Macron showed signs of interest. In an interview with Portuguese TV RTP, he expressed willingness to “to open this discussion … if it allows to build a European force.” There had “always been a European dimension to France’s vital interests within its nuclear doctrine.”

    On March 5, in an address to the nation, Macron openly identified Russia as a “threat to France and Europe”. Accordingly, he had decided “to open the strategic debate on the protection of our allies on the European continent by our (nuclear) deterrent.” The future of Europe did not “have to be decided in Washington or Moscow.”

    The matter of France’s European dimension has certainly been confirmed by remarks made by previous presidents, including Charles de Gaulle, who, in 1964, stated that an attack on a country such as Germany by the then Soviet Union would be seen as a threat to France.

    Domestically, Macron’s offer did not go down well in certain quarters. It certainly did not impress Marie Le Pen of the far-right National Rally. “The French nuclear deterrent must remain a French nuclear deterrent,” she declared in comments made on a visit to the Farm Show in Paris. “It must not be shared, let alone delegated.” This was a misunderstanding, came the response from Defence Minister Sébastien Lecornu. The deterrent “is French and will remain French – from its conception to its production to its operation, under a decision of the president.”

    A number of countries meeting at the European Union emergency security summit in Brussels showed interest in Macron’s offer, with some caution. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk suggested that “we must seriously consider this proposal.” Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nausėda thought the idea “very interesting” as “a nuclear umbrella would serve as really very serious deterrence towards Russia.” Latvian Prime Minister Evika Siliņa was not inclined to commit to a stationing of French nuclear weapons on Latvian territory: it was “too soon” to raise the issue.

    Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, on the other hand, found the debate “premature”, as “our security is guaranteed by close cooperation with the United States”. He certainly has a point, given that the United States still, at present, maintains an extensive nuclear arsenal on European soil.

    The trouble with deterrence chatter is that it remains hostage to delusion. Strategists talk in extravagant terms about the genuine prospect that nuclear weapons can make any one state safer, leading to some calculus of tolerable use. Thus we find the following comment from Benoît Grémare of the Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3: “[T]he fact remains that without US support, the balance of power appears largely unfavourable to France, which has a total of 290 nuclear warheads compared to at least 1,600 deployed warheads and nearly 2,800 stockpiled warheads on the Russian side.”

    While Grémare acknowledges that France’s thermonuclear arsenal, along with the M51 strategic sea-to-land ballistic missile, would be able to eliminate major Russian cities, Russia would only need a mere “200 seconds too atomise Paris” if its Satan II thermonuclear weapons were used. “This potential for reciprocity must be kept in mind amid the mutual bet of nuclear deterrence.”

    Logic here gives way to the presumption that such weapons, rather than suggesting impotence, promise formidable utility. This theoretical, and absurd proposition, renders the unthinkable possible: that Russia just might use nuclear weapons against European countries. Any such contention must fail for the fundamental point that nuclear weapons should, quite simply, never be used. Instead, they should be disbanded and banned altogether, in line with the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Unfortunately, the French offer of replacing the US nuclear umbrella in Europe perpetrates similar deadly sins about deterrence.

    The post France and the Delusions of Nuclear Deterrence first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Europe’s Ukrainian Predicament

    Photograph Source: Christophe Licoppe / European Union – CC BY 4.0

    There is something deeply moving about the ignorance and scatty nature of politicians.  At points, it can even be endearing.  In the apparently wide wake left by the mauling of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in front of the press at the Oval Office on February 28, backers of Kyiv’s war effort were wondering: What next?  How do we prevent Ukrainian defeat at the hands of Russia?  Having irresponsibly cuddled, coddled and insisted that Ukraine was in with more than a sporting chance to bloody and beat the clumsy Russian Bear that shows no signs of stepping down and hibernating, they now find themselves without a war sponsor in the United States.

    The previous US President Joe Biden had been more than willing to keep the war machine fed by proxy, furnishing Zelensky handsomely.  The Washington war establishment purred, happy that Ukrainians were doing the dying and bleeding Russia’s soldiery white.  Cant and righteousness were in abundant supply: the Ukrainians were foot soldiers wrapped in civilisation’s flag, democracy worn on their sleeves.  Accusations from the Russian side that Ukrainian nationalism was also adulterated by a history of fascist inclination were dismissed out of hand.  A country famously seized by kleptocrats, with a spotty, ill-nourished civil society, had been redrawn as a westward looking European state, besieged by the Oriental Barbarism of the East.

    If words of support could be counted as weapons, then Zelensky would have had a fresh arsenal in the aftermath of his tongue lashing by President Donald Trump and his deputy J.D. Vance.  Much of these were provided by leaders gathered at Lancaster House on March 1 hosted by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.  Starmer, for his part, promised that Europe would continue sustaining Ukraine’s efforts and, were a peace deal to arise, aid the country in improving its defences to ensure that “Ukraine can draw on munitions, finance and equipment to defend itself”.

    French President Emmanuel Macron tried to clarify any doubt that had arisen in the Oval Office savaging.  “There is an aggressor: Russia.  There is a victim: Ukraine.  We were right to help Ukraine and sanction Russia three years ago – and to keep doing so.”  The “we” in this case, Macron went on to add, involved “Americans, the Europeans, the Canadians, the Japanese, and many others.”

    Germany’s Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz also declared that “we must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war”, affirming that “we stand with Ukraine”.  The country’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, thought it prudent to point out that the Oval Office brawl “underlined that a new age of infamy has begun”, adding that Russia would be withstood “even if the US withdraws support, so that it [Ukraine] can achieve a just peace and not a capitulation”.

    Other leaders expressed supportive words of standing.  Donald Tusk of Poland: “Dear [Zelensky], dear Ukrainian friends, you are not standing alone.”  Spain’s Pedro Sánchez: “Ukraine, Spain stands with you.”  Canada’s Justin Trudeau: “[we] will continue to stand with Ukraine and Ukrainians in achieving a just and lasting peace.”

    When they were not standing, many of these effusively supportive leaders were scrambling, teasingly suggesting a bloc of military support that may, somehow, be formed in the absence of US involvement.  This would comprise the sillily worded “coalition of the willing” (that expression, when used in 2003, saw the United States, UK and Australia, along with a motley collective, violate international law in invading Iraq).  Such a coalition, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen dreamily envisaged, would transform Ukraine into a “steel porcupine that is indigestible for potential invaders”.

    This imaginatively foolish and recklessly irresponsible undertaking does little to patch up the irreplaceable role the US plays in a number of areas, not least the budgetary coverage of NATO, coupled with the promise for military intervention in the event a member state is attacked.  Macron has, at stages, taken pot shots at NATO as cerebrally obsolete, a brain dead creature best be done away with.  But these articulations, beyond such reports as NATO 2030, have not resulted in anything significant that would cope with an absentee US.

    European states, furthermore, are divided ahead of the March 6 summit, where the EU will supposedly approve some 20 billion euros for the purchase of missiles and air defence equipment for Ukraine.  Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in a letter to European Council President António Costa, offered the view that the EU, “following the example of the United States – should enter into direct discussions with Russia on a ceasefire and sustainable peace in Ukraine”.

    Slovakia’s Prime Minister, Robert Fico, was even harder in his response, suggesting that financial and military assistance to Kyiv could be refused were ceasefire efforts not pursued, rejecting such notions as “peace through strength” being advocated by various EU members.  It was also incumbent, Fico went on to insist, that any settlement “explicitly include a requirement to reopen the transit of gas through Ukraine to Slovakia and Western Europe.”

    With this in mind, and the pressing, crushing implications of power, not as fantasy, but as coarsening reality, other options must be entertained.  Given their lack of punch and prowess, one arising from years fed by the devitalising US teat, European states are simply playing with toy soldiers.  Eventually, they will have to play along if peace in Ukraine, however much detested in its form, is to be reached.

    The post Europe’s Ukrainian Predicament appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Europe’s Ukrainian Predicament

    There is something deeply moving about the ignorance and scatty nature of politicians.  At points, it can even be endearing.  In the apparently wide wake left by the mauling of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in front of the press at the Oval Office on February 28, backers of Kyiv’s war effort were wondering: What next?  How do we prevent Ukrainian defeat at the hands of Russia?  Having irresponsibly cuddled, coddled and insisted that Ukraine was in with more than a sporting chance to bloody and beat the clumsy Russian Bear that shows no signs of stepping down and hibernating, they now find themselves without a war sponsor in the United States.

    The previous US President Joe Biden had been more than willing to keep the war machine fed by proxy, furnishing Zelensky handsomely.  The Washington war establishment purred, happy that Ukrainians were doing the dying and bleeding Russia’s soldiery white.  Cant and righteousness were in abundant supply: the Ukrainians were foot soldiers wrapped in civilisation’s flag, democracy worn on their sleeves.  Accusations from the Russian side that Ukrainian nationalism was also adulterated by a history of fascist inclination were dismissed out of hand.  A country famously seized by kleptocrats, with a spotty, ill-nourished civil society, had been redrawn as a westward looking European state, besieged by the Oriental Barbarism of the East.

    If words of support could be counted as weapons, then Zelensky would have had a fresh arsenal in the aftermath of his tongue lashing by President Donald Trump and his deputy J.D. Vance.  Much of these were provided by leaders gathered at Lancaster House on March 1 hosted by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.  Starmer, for his part, promised that Europe would continue sustaining Ukraine’s efforts and, were a peace deal to arise, aid the country in improving its defences to ensure that “Ukraine can draw on munitions, finance and equipment to defend itself”.

    French President Emmanuel Macron tried to clarify any doubt that had arisen in the Oval Office savaging.  “There is an aggressor: Russia.  There is a victim: Ukraine.  We were right to help Ukraine and sanction Russia three years ago – and to keep doing so.”  The “we” in this case, Macron went on to add, involved “Americans, the Europeans, the Canadians, the Japanese, and many others.”

    Germany’s Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz also declared that “we must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war”, affirming that “we stand with Ukraine”.  The country’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, thought it prudent to point out that the Oval Office brawl “underlined that a new age of infamy has begun”, adding that Russia would be withstood “even if the US withdraws support, so that it [Ukraine] can achieve a just peace and not a capitulation”.

    Other leaders expressed supportive words of standing.  Donald Tusk of Poland: “Dear [Zelensky], dear Ukrainian friends, you are not standing alone.”  Spain’s Pedro Sánchez: “Ukraine, Spain stands with you.”  Canada’s Justin Trudeau: “[we] will continue to stand with Ukraine and Ukrainians in achieving a just and lasting peace.”

    When they were not standing, many of these effusively supportive leaders were scrambling, teasingly suggesting a bloc of military support that may, somehow, be formed in the absence of US involvement.  This would comprise the sillily worded “coalition of the willing” (that expression, when used in 2003, saw the United States, UK and Australia, along with a motley collective, violate international law in invading Iraq).  Such a coalition, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen dreamily envisaged, would transform Ukraine into a “steel porcupine that is indigestible for potential invaders”.

    This imaginatively foolish and recklessly irresponsible undertaking does little to patch up the irreplaceable role the US plays in a number of areas, not least the budgetary coverage of NATO, coupled with the promise for military intervention in the event a member state is attacked.  Macron has, at stages, taken pot shots at NATO as cerebrally obsolete, a brain dead creature best be done away with.  But these articulations, beyond such reports as NATO 2030, have not resulted in anything significant that would cope with an absentee US.

    European states, furthermore, are divided ahead of the March 6 summit, where the EU will supposedly approve some 20 billion euros for the purchase of missiles and air defence equipment for Ukraine.  Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in a letter to European Council President António Costa, offered the view that the EU, “following the example of the United States – should enter into direct discussions with Russia on a ceasefire and sustainable peace in Ukraine”.

    Slovakia’s Prime Minister, Robert Fico, was even harder in his response, suggesting that financial and military assistance to Kyiv could be refused were ceasefire efforts not pursued, rejecting such notions as “peace through strength” being advocated by various EU members.  It was also incumbent, Fico went on to insist, that any settlement “explicitly include a requirement to reopen the transit of gas through Ukraine to Slovakia and Western Europe.”

    With this in mind, and the pressing, crushing implications of power, not as fantasy, but as coarsening reality, other options must be entertained.  Given their lack of punch and prowess, one arising from years fed by the devitalising US teat, European states are simply playing with toy soldiers.  Eventually, they will have to play along if peace in Ukraine, however much detested in its form, is to be reached.

    The post Europe’s Ukrainian Predicament first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Zelensky: Victim of Colosseum Politics

    Photograph Source: President Of Ukraine – CC0

    There was a revolting tabloid quality to the Oval Office reception given to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 28, but then again, President Donald Trump is a tabloid brute, a man incarnated from the nastiest, shallowest precepts of yellow press clippings and, ultimately, the reality television empire that gave him a crown and forever enshrined him in the culture of brash Americana.  From the foamy cable television rot of the republic, Trump’s progress was inexorable.

    With such ingredients, the White House has become a studio, with the statesmanship of the bullying show paramount.  The electors are to be entertained by what might be called colosseum politics.  They want bread, but are very keen on the circuses.  They want season tickets to the MAGA tent where they can witness muscular events.  They want to know that the US will recoup what it gives, with interest.

    When the satirically gifted Hugh Hector Munro (“Saki”) warned that being a pioneer was never wise, seeing as the Early Christian tended to get the fattest lion, it would be better to say that the lions here – Trump and his shock troop deputy J.D. Vance – seemed to have been on lettuce offerings and stale water for a week.  The lean, mean duo were remorselessly and disgracefully hungry, making sure the Ukrainian leader was subject to a battering that proved unusually long.  (These Oval office briefings before the press are usually short, snappy matters: a few anodyne questions; a few general remarks that barely ripple.)

    It was also evident that Zelensky had not gotten the brief about Trump, prompting Marek Magierowski in the National Interest to describe him as “a worse psychologist than [French President] Emmanuel Macron and [UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer], who had paid a visit to the White House just before him and, to some extent, ‘charmed’ the US president.”

    Unlike the two leaders who had come before him, Zelensky thought it wise to engage in a squabble about Russian intentions and the character of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the factual record (always dangerous in dealing with Trump, who regards facts as, as best, malleable), a duel that saw shock trooper Vance weigh in.  According to the Veep, Zelensky was not there to “litigate” the matter before the American public, which is precisely what he and Trump seemed to be doing.  This was the language of prefects and school masters, with the student reluctant to play along.

    It was a salient reminder that support for Ukraine has iced over, that it is no longer the blue-eyed boy of US politics, Western civilisation’s consecrated prop against Russian savagery.  Republican Senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham even went so far as to demand that the Ukrainian leader “either … resign and send somebody over and we can do business with, or he needs to change.”

    Trump’s opponents have fumed at the president for having laid an ambush for the Ukrainian leader and promoting Russian talking points, naturally exonerating previous administrations for their contributory role (former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s intervention comes to mind) in feeding the conflict.  “Zelenskyy flew to Washington,” quipped Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Jake Auchincloss, “but he walked into the Kremlin.”

    What remains crudely apparent is that Zelensky had been given ample warning about what awaited but seemingly failed to see the billowing smoke signals.  At a Saudi-sponsored investment meeting in Florida, Trump had declaredthat the Ukrainian leader was only “really good” at one thing: “playing Joe Biden like a fiddle.”  He was also a “dictator” who had refused to have elections.  “He’s low in the Ukrainian polls.  How can you be high with every city being demolished?”

    Zelensky had also done little for his own cause last year by injudiciously involving himself in the US elections, speaking at a Kamala Harris campaign rally and paying a visit to a munitions plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania last September.  “It is in places like this where you can truly feel that the democratic world can prevail,” Zelensky stated at the time.

    That the visit was also conveniently located in a battleground state that the presidential contenders had to win hardly helped his case in the Oval Office skirmish.  Vance could not resist unsheathing his sword.  “You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October,” he snapped.  “Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who is trying to save your country.”

    As a result of colosseum politics, no deals were reached, and certainly not one regarding US access to Ukrainian rare earth minerals, leaving Zelensky to seek solace in the bosom of weak European powers unhinged by the values of Trumpland.  The lustre of the cause, at least across the pond, has not entirely vanished, though European support is hardly likely to swing matters on or off the battlefield for Kyiv.

    The post Zelensky: Victim of Colosseum Politics appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Navy exercise sees anti-China hysteria grow Down Under

    Navy exercise sees anti-China hysteria grow Down Under A live-fire exercise conducted by the Chinese Navy has stirred anti-China sentiment through the media and Opposition, branding the ALP as weak. read now…

    This post was originally published on Independent Australia.

  • Zelensky: Victim of Colosseum Politics

    There was a revolting tabloid quality to the Oval Office reception given to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 28, but then again, President Donald Trump is a tabloid brute, a man incarnated from the nastiest, shallowest precepts of yellow press clippings and, ultimately, the reality television empire that gave him a crown and forever enshrined him in the culture of brash Americana.  From the foamy cable television rot of the republic, Trump’s progress was inexorable.

    With such ingredients, the White House has become a studio, with the statesmanship of the bullying show paramount.  The electors are to be entertained by what might be called colosseum politics.  They want bread, but are very keen on the circuses.  They want season tickets to the MAGA tent where they can witness muscular events.  They want to know that the US will recoup what it gives, with interest.

    When the satirically gifted Hugh Hector Munro (“Saki”) warned that being a pioneer was never wise, seeing as the Early Christian tended to get the fattest lion, it would be better to say that the lions here – Trump and his shock troop deputy J.D. Vance – seemed to have been on lettuce offerings and stale water for a week.  The lean, mean duo were remorselessly and disgracefully hungry, making sure the Ukrainian leader was subject to a battering that proved unusually long.  (These Oval office briefings before the press are usually short, snappy matters: a few anodyne questions; a few general remarks that barely ripple.)

    It was also evident that Zelensky had not gotten the brief about Trump, prompting Marek Magierowski in the National Interest to describe him as “a worse psychologist than [French President] Emmanuel Macron and [UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer], who had paid a visit to the White House just before him and, to some extent, ‘charmed’ the US president.”

    Unlike the two leaders who had come before him, Zelensky thought it wise to engage in a squabble about Russian intentions and the character of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the factual record (always dangerous in dealing with Trump, who regards facts as, as best, malleable), a duel that saw shock trooper Vance weigh in.  According to the Veep, Zelensky was not there to “litigate” the matter before the American public, which is precisely what he and Trump seemed to be doing.  This was the language of prefects and school masters, with the student reluctant to play along.

    It was a salient reminder that support for Ukraine has iced over, that it is no longer the blue-eyed boy of US politics, Western civilisation’s consecrated prop against Russian savagery.  Republican Senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham even went so far as to demand that the Ukrainian leader “either … resign and send somebody over and we can do business with, or he needs to change.”

    Trump’s opponents have fumed at the president for having laid an ambush for the Ukrainian leader and promoting Russian talking points, naturally exonerating previous administrations for their contributory role (former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s intervention comes to mind) in feeding the conflict.  “Zelenskyy flew to Washington,” quipped Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Jake Auchincloss, “but he walked into the Kremlin.”

    What remains crudely apparent is that Zelensky had been given ample warning about what awaited but seemingly failed to see the billowing smoke signals.  At a Saudi-sponsored investment meeting in Florida, Trump had declared that the Ukrainian leader was only “really good” at one thing: “playing Joe Biden like a fiddle.”  He was also a “dictator” who had refused to have elections.  “He’s low in the Ukrainian polls.  How can you be high with every city being demolished?”

    Zelensky had also done little for his own cause last year by injudiciously involving himself in the US elections, speaking at a Kamala Harris campaign rally and paying a visit to a munitions plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania last September.  “It is in places like this where you can truly feel that the democratic world can prevail,” Zelensky stated at the time.

    That the visit was also conveniently located in a battleground state that the presidential contenders had to win hardly helped his case in the Oval Office skirmish.  Vance could not resist unsheathing his sword.  “You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October,” he snapped.  “Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who is trying to save your country.”

    As a result of colosseum politics, no deals were reached, and certainly not one regarding US access to Ukrainian rare earth minerals, leaving Zelensky to seek solace in the bosom of weak European powers unhinged by the values of Trumpland.  The lustre of the cause, at least across the pond, has not entirely vanished, though European support is hardly likely to swing matters on or off the battlefield for Kyiv.

    The post Zelensky: Victim of Colosseum Politics first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Zelensky: Victim of Colosseum Politics

    There was a revolting tabloid quality to the Oval Office reception given to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 28, but then again, President Donald Trump is a tabloid brute, a man incarnated from the nastiest, shallowest precepts of yellow press clippings and, ultimately, the reality television empire that gave him a crown and forever enshrined him in the culture of brash Americana.  From the foamy cable television rot of the republic, Trump’s progress was inexorable.

    With such ingredients, the White House has become a studio, with the statesmanship of the bullying show paramount.  The electors are to be entertained by what might be called colosseum politics.  They want bread, but are very keen on the circuses.  They want season tickets to the MAGA tent where they can witness muscular events.  They want to know that the US will recoup what it gives, with interest.

    When the satirically gifted Hugh Hector Munro (“Saki”) warned that being a pioneer was never wise, seeing as the Early Christian tended to get the fattest lion, it would be better to say that the lions here – Trump and his shock troop deputy J.D. Vance – seemed to have been on lettuce offerings and stale water for a week.  The lean, mean duo were remorselessly and disgracefully hungry, making sure the Ukrainian leader was subject to a battering that proved unusually long.  (These Oval office briefings before the press are usually short, snappy matters: a few anodyne questions; a few general remarks that barely ripple.)

    It was also evident that Zelensky had not gotten the brief about Trump, prompting Marek Magierowski in the National Interest to describe him as “a worse psychologist than [French President] Emmanuel Macron and [UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer], who had paid a visit to the White House just before him and, to some extent, ‘charmed’ the US president.”

    Unlike the two leaders who had come before him, Zelensky thought it wise to engage in a squabble about Russian intentions and the character of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the factual record (always dangerous in dealing with Trump, who regards facts as, as best, malleable), a duel that saw shock trooper Vance weigh in.  According to the Veep, Zelensky was not there to “litigate” the matter before the American public, which is precisely what he and Trump seemed to be doing.  This was the language of prefects and school masters, with the student reluctant to play along.

    It was a salient reminder that support for Ukraine has iced over, that it is no longer the blue-eyed boy of US politics, Western civilisation’s consecrated prop against Russian savagery.  Republican Senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham even went so far as to demand that the Ukrainian leader “either … resign and send somebody over and we can do business with, or he needs to change.”

    Trump’s opponents have fumed at the president for having laid an ambush for the Ukrainian leader and promoting Russian talking points, naturally exonerating previous administrations for their contributory role (former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s intervention comes to mind) in feeding the conflict.  “Zelenskyy flew to Washington,” quipped Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Jake Auchincloss, “but he walked into the Kremlin.”

    What remains crudely apparent is that Zelensky had been given ample warning about what awaited but seemingly failed to see the billowing smoke signals.  At a Saudi-sponsored investment meeting in Florida, Trump had declared that the Ukrainian leader was only “really good” at one thing: “playing Joe Biden like a fiddle.”  He was also a “dictator” who had refused to have elections.  “He’s low in the Ukrainian polls.  How can you be high with every city being demolished?”

    Zelensky had also done little for his own cause last year by injudiciously involving himself in the US elections, speaking at a Kamala Harris campaign rally and paying a visit to a munitions plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania last September.  “It is in places like this where you can truly feel that the democratic world can prevail,” Zelensky stated at the time.

    That the visit was also conveniently located in a battleground state that the presidential contenders had to win hardly helped his case in the Oval Office skirmish.  Vance could not resist unsheathing his sword.  “You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October,” he snapped.  “Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who is trying to save your country.”

    As a result of colosseum politics, no deals were reached, and certainly not one regarding US access to Ukrainian rare earth minerals, leaving Zelensky to seek solace in the bosom of weak European powers unhinged by the values of Trumpland.  The lustre of the cause, at least across the pond, has not entirely vanished, though European support is hardly likely to swing matters on or off the battlefield for Kyiv.

    The post Zelensky: Victim of Colosseum Politics first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ho Hum at Sea: Anti-China Hysteria Down Under

    Photograph Source: Eric Murata – http://www.defenseimagery.mil; VIRIN: 970325-N-4015M-003 – Public Domain

    The conduct of live-fire exercises by the People’s Liberation Army Navy Surface Force (the Chinese “communists”, as they are called by the analytically strained) has recently caused much murmur and consternation in Australia.  It’s the season for federal elections, and the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, thinks he’s in with more than a fighting chance.  Whether that chance is deserved or not is another matter.

    The exercise, conducted in international waters by a cruiser, frigate and replenishment ship, involved what is said to have been poor notice given to Australian authorities on February 21.  But the matter has rapidly burgeoned into something else: that what the Chinese task fleet did was mischievously remarkable, exceptional and snooty to convention and protocols.  It is on that score that incontinent demagogy has taken hold.

    Media outlets have done little to soften the barbs.  A report by ABC News, for instance, notes that Airservices Australia was “only aware of the exercises 40 minutes after China’s navy opened a ‘window’ for live-fire exercises from 9.30am.”  The first pickup of the exercises came from a Virgin Australia pilot, who had flown within 250 nautical miles of the operation zone and warned of the drills.  Airservices Australia was immediately contacted, with the deputy CEO of the agency, Peter Curran, bemused about whether “it was a potential hoax or real.”

    Defence Chief Admiral David Johnston told Senate estimates that he would have preferred more notice for the exercises – 24-48 hours was desirable – but it was clear that Coalition Senator and shadow home affairs minister James Paterson wanted more.  Paterson had thought it “remarkable that Australia was relying on civilian aircraft for early warning about military exercises by a formidable foreign task group in our region.”  To a certain extent, the needlessly irate minister got what he wanted, with the badgered Admiral conceding that the Chinese navy’s conduct had been “irresponsible” and “disruptive”.

    Wu Qian, spokesperson for the China National Ministry for Defence, offered a different reading: “During the period, China organised live-fire training of naval guns toward the sea on the basis of repeatedly issuing prior safety notices”.  Its actions were “in full compliance with international law and international practice, with no impact on aviation flight safety”.  That said, 49 flights were diverted on February 21.

    Much was also made about what were the constituent elements of the fleet.  As if it mattered one jot, the Defence Force chief was pressed on whether a Chinese nuclear-powered submarine had made up the task force.  “I don’t know whether there is a submarine with them, it is possible, task groups occasionally do deploy with submarines but not always,” came the reply.  “I can’t be definitive whether that’s the case.”

    The carnival of fear was very much in town, with opposition politicians keen to blow air into the balloon of the China threat across the press circuit.  The shadow defence minister Andrew Hastie warned listeners on Sydney radio station 2GB of “the biggest peacetime military buildup since 1945”, Beijing’s projection of power with its blue-water navy, the conduct of two live-fire exercises and the Chinese taskforce operating within Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone off Tasmania.  Apparently, all of this showed the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, to be “weak” for daring to accept that the conduct complained of was legal under international law.  “Now that may be technically right, but that misses the deeper subtext, and that is China is now in our backyard, and they’ve demonstrated that we don’t have the will to insist on our national interest and mutual respect.”

    There are few voices of sensible restraint in Australia’s arid landscape of strategic thinking, but one could be found.  Former principal warfare officer of the Royal Australian Navy, Jennifer Parker, commendably remarked that this hardly warranted the title of “a crisis”.  To regard it as such “with over-the-top indignation diminishes our capacity to tackle real crises as the region deteriorates.”  Australia might, at the very least, consider modernising a surface fleet that was “the smallest and oldest we’ve had since 1950.”

    Allegations that Beijing should not be operating in Australia’s exclusive economic zone, let alone conduct live-fire exercises in international waters, served to give it “a propaganda win to challenge our necessary deployments to North-East Asia and the South China Sea – routes that carry two-thirds of our maritime trade.”

    The cockeyed priorities of the Australian defence establishment lie elsewhere: fantasy, second hand US nuclear-powered submarines that may, or may never make their way to Australia; mushy hopes of a jointly designed nuclear powered submarine specific to the AUKUS pact that risks sinking off the design sheet; and the subordination of Australian land, naval and spatial assets to the United States imperium.

    Such is the standard of political debate that something as unremarkable as this latest sea incident has become a throbbing issue that supposedly shows the Albanese government as insufficiently belligerent.  Yet there was no issue arising, other than a statement of presence by China’s growing navy, something it was perfectly entitled to do.

    The post Ho Hum at Sea: Anti-China Hysteria Down Under appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Ho Hum at Sea: Anti-China Hysteria Down Under

    The conduct of live-fire exercises by the People’s Liberation Army Navy Surface Force (the Chinese “communists”, as they are called by the analytically strained) has recently caused much murmur and consternation in Australia. It’s the season for federal elections, and the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, thinks he’s in with more than a fighting chance. Whether that chance is deserved or not is another matter.

    The exercise, conducted in international waters by a cruiser, frigate and replenishment ship, involved what is said to have been poor notice given to Australian authorities on February 21. But the matter has rapidly burgeoned into something else: that what the Chinese task fleet did was mischievously remarkable, exceptional and snooty to convention and protocols. It is on that score that incontinent demagogy has taken hold.

    Media outlets have done little to soften the barbs. A report by ABC News, for instance, notes that Airservices Australia was “only aware of the exercises 40 minutes after China’s navy opened a ‘window’ for live-fire exercises from 9.30am.” The first pickup of the exercises came from a Virgin Australia pilot, who had flown within 250 nautical miles of the operation zone and warned of the drills. Airservices Australia was immediately contacted, with the deputy CEO of the agency, Peter Curran, bemused about whether “it was a potential hoax or real.”

    Defence Chief Admiral David Johnston told Senate estimates that he would have preferred more notice for the exercises – 24-48 hours was desirable – but it was clear that Coalition Senator and shadow home affairs minister James Paterson wanted more. Paterson had thought it “remarkable that Australia was relying on civilian aircraft for early warning about military exercises by a formidable foreign task group in our region.” To a certain extent, the needlessly irate minister got what he wanted, with the badgered Admiral conceding that the Chinese navy’s conduct had been “irresponsible” and “disruptive”.

    Wu Qian, spokesperson for the China National Ministry for Defence, offered a different reading: “During the period, China organised live-fire training of naval guns toward the sea on the basis of repeatedly issuing prior safety notices”. Its actions were “in full compliance with international law and international practice, with no impact on aviation flight safety”. That said, 49 flights were diverted on February 21.

    Much was also made about what were the constituent elements of the fleet. As if it mattered one jot, the Defence Force chief was pressed on whether a Chinese nuclear-powered submarine had made up the task force. “I don’t know whether there is a submarine with them, it is possible, task groups occasionally do deploy with submarines but not always,” came the reply. “I can’t be definitive whether that’s the case.”

    The carnival of fear was very much in town, with opposition politicians keen to blow air into the balloon of the China threat across the press circuit. The shadow defence minister Andrew Hastie warned listeners on Sydney radio station 2GB of “the biggest peacetime military buildup since 1945”, Beijing’s projection of power with its blue-water navy, the conduct of two live-fire exercises and the Chinese taskforce operating within Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone off Tasmania. Apparently, all of this showed the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, to be “weak” for daring to accept that the conduct complained of was legal under international law. “Now that may be technically right, but that misses the deeper subtext, and that is China is now in our backyard, and they’ve demonstrated that we don’t have the will to insist on our national interest and mutual respect.”

    There are few voices of sensible restraint in Australia’s arid landscape of strategic thinking, but one could be found. Former principal warfare officer of the Royal Australian Navy, Jennifer Parker, commendably remarked that this hardly warranted the title of “a crisis”. To regard it as such “with over-the-top indignation diminishes our capacity to tackle real crises as the region deteriorates.” Australia might, at the very least, consider modernising a surface fleet that was “the smallest and oldest we’ve had since 1950.”

    Allegations that Beijing should not be operating in Australia’s exclusive economic zone, let alone conduct live-fire exercises in international waters, served to give it “a propaganda win to challenge our necessary deployments to North-East Asia and the South China Sea – routes that carry two-thirds of our maritime trade.”

    The cockeyed priorities of the Australian defence establishment lie elsewhere: fantasy, second hand US nuclear-powered submarines that may, or may never make their way to Australia; mushy hopes of a jointly designed nuclear powered submarine specific to the AUKUS pact that risks sinking off the design sheet; and the subordination of Australian land, naval and spatial assets to the United States imperium.

    Such is the standard of political debate that something as unremarkable as this latest sea incident has become a throbbing issue that supposedly shows the Albanese government as insufficiently belligerent. Yet there was no issue arising, other than a statement of presence by China’s growing navy, something it was perfectly entitled to do.

    The post Ho Hum at Sea: Anti-China Hysteria Down Under first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Fiendish Experiments: Trump’s Guantánamo Bay Migrant Detentions

    Guantánamo Bay has been a fiendish experiment in US law for decades. The fiendishness lies in the subversion. Operating as a naval base in Cuba, this contentious facility has been the site and location for the cruelties of paranoia and empire, a place where such laws as due process are subverted, and the presumption to innocence soiled. In this contorted way, the civilian and military branches have mingled and corrupted, the result proving a nightmare for legal authorities keen to ensure that such a facility does, at the very least, observe that sad, dusty relic known as the rule of law.

    Legal sharpshooters have been baffled by the latest experiment with the facility, this time from the Trump administration and its efforts to use it as a detention centre for unwanted migrants. On January 29, the US president directed the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security “to take all appropriate actions to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States”. Furthermore, the secretaries were directed “to address attendant immigration enforcement needs identified” by the departments. The first flight transferring migrants from US soil to the facility took place on February 4 this year.

    The intention is to house up to 30,000 people, but it is already clear that not all, contrary to what the president claims, are “the worst criminal aliens threatening the American people.” Some have been found to be of a “low-threat” category, hardly the sort to terrify the peace of mind of your average US citizen. Yet again, we find himself inhabiting a world of dismal illusions.

    Such an authorisation can hardly be said to fall within the all too conveniently expansive 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which focuses on the interminable prosecution of the formerly known Global War on Terror. The MOC is its own beast, a separate instrument controversial for “housing” (as opposed to “detaining”) its residents. It is located on the Leeward side of the base and was created to house Caribbean migrants interdicted at sea in the 1990s.

    The entities relevant to running the MOC are the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) responsible to the Department of Homeland Security. Interdicted migrants are assessed to see if they deserve “protected” status, one that is granted if the individual has a genuine fear of harm arising if they are returned to their country or origin. Historically, during the phase of their assessment, migrants receive a basic set of services in healthcare, housing, education, and job training.

    The use of the island to deal with immigrants has been a blighted practice undertaken by US administrations since the 1970s. The Ford and Carter administrations held Haitians at the base as they awaited asylum interviews. After a cessation of immigration detention onsite under the Reagan administration, the unsavoury practice was resumed in 1991. Again involving Haitians, only this time in greater numbers, given the military coup, some 12,500 were transferred to a shoddy, makeshift camp. Under Bill Clinton’s presidency, the camp was emptied, but the rights of those interdicted was systematically stripped to enable them to be repatriated. In 1994, the camp, in all its squalid ingloriousness, was reopened to house Cubans and Haitians in their tens of thousands.

    The issue of valid authorisation is not a mere semantic quibble. Trump’s actions have consequential disturbances to the rule of law. The administration is seemingly pushing, not merely a smudging of the categories in terms of dealing with migrants, but their obliteration. What we are left with is a nasty mixture of terror and malfeasance, a point that utterly repudiates basic protections offered by the UN Refugee Convention.

    Nor is it clear whether the administration can legally carry out these measures. The MOC migrants being transferred will not be deprived of legal rights afforded them under the US Constitution, which include access to the judicial system and legal counsel, due process protections which cover arbitrary or indefinite detention, the right to appropriate conditions of confinement, and the right to seek release from unlawful detention. It is also important to distinguish those immigrants interdicted at sea who seek asylum in the United States, and those already on US soil. A case is currently pending on the issue before US Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, D.C., though a court date is yet to be set.

    In terms of both cost and logistics, this detention measure is also untenable. It has been estimated that the average cost for an immigration detention bed will be quintupled from its current annual total of $57,378. Ensuring access to legal counsel and guaranteeing humane treatment will also present a nightmarish scenario for the authorities, given the scale of the expansion sought by Trump.

    So far, lawyers from the Justice Department have unconvincingly claimed that the limited availability of phone calls to counsel located off the base was a “reasonable and consistent” measure when it comes to the “temporary staging” of migrants with final deportation orders to other countries.

    The Trump administration’s waspish approach to unwanted immigrants replicates the pattern of deterrence and demonisation used by other countries (member states in the European Union and Australia comes to mind) that have treated unwanted arrivals as an interchangeable commodity with political objects and national security: the terrorist, the hardened criminal, the deviant, the immoral figure best barred from entering their borders. But at the very least, a firmly established legal system, if mobilised correctly, has some prospect of sinking this hideous experiment.

    The post Fiendish Experiments: Trump’s Guantánamo Bay Migrant Detentions first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Israel’s Annexation Drive: The West Bank and Expelling Palestinian Refugees

    Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

    It has the feeling of a ghastly ending, one pushed along by desperation and eagerness.  First, levelling Gaza and turning it to an uninhabitable moonscape, with the promise of a territory free of Palestinians.  Then, displacing and destroying the already precarious holdings of Palestinian residents in the West Bank, all the time subjecting them to curfews, arrests and detentions while aiding vigilante Jewish settlers, firming up the system of segregation and snuffing out any prospect of autonomy.

    The campaign of rendering the Palestinian cause for sovereignty extinct has become an article of faith for Israel’s security forces, and spectators stare, glumly, at its crude, unceasing momentum.  On February 23, the IDF announced that tanks from the 188th Armoured Brigade were being deployed to Jenin as part of what it claims are “counterterrorism efforts”, a feature of an operation dubbed “Iron Wall”.  The justification for the decision lay in the planting of three bombs on empty buses in the Tel Aviv area.  These prematurely detonated on February 20.  Two further explosive devices were discovered on additional buses, but these failed to cause any casualties.

    The impetus for the failed bombings, it was argued, came from the West Bank, though we are none the wiser about any further details, since a gag order was imposed on February 21, intended to last till March 12.

    The move is ominous as being the first time tanks have been used in the West Bank since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.  Defence Minister Israel Katz also issued a chilling instruction to the IDF to clear “nests of terror”, to eliminate infrastructure and destroy weapons “on an extensive scale.”  But this operation, as with others conducted by the IDF, is characteristically brutal, involving the effective expulsion of 40,000 Palestinians from refugee camps.  According to Katz, “40,000 Palestinians have so far been evacuated from the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps, and are now empty of residents.  UNRWA [UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees] activity in the camps has also been stopped.”

    The measure taken here has the rank smell of permanent displacement, albeit dressed up as a calculated, temporary action intended to protect Israeli security.  The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates was in no doubt that the latest efforts perpetuated Israel’s “genocide, displacement and annexation”.  The Knesset’s Cabinet Committee for Legislation has also expressed its proprietary feelings towards the territory this month by approving a bill replacing the term “West Bank” with “Judea and Samaria”.  On January 29, the Knesset passed a preliminary reading of a bill permitting Israeli settlers to register themselves as legal owners of property in the West Bank.

    The IDF, according to Katz, have been “instructed … to prepare for a long stay in the camps that were cleared, for the coming year, and not allow residents to return and the terror to return and grow.”  He spoke of not returning “to the reality that was in the past”, suggesting an even more radical targeting of Palestinian refugees, blended, as they are, in the mash of “terror centres” and “battalions and terror infrastructure” aided by “the Iranian evil axis, in an attempt to establish an eastern terror front”.

    The Israeli operation has also involved raids against Kobar and Silwad north of Ramallah, the Beitunia neighbourhood of Ramallah, and Hebron.  The long term plan here is to establish corridors similar to the Netzarim Corridor in Gaza, intended for the movement of IDF personnel and equipment.  Al Jazeera reports that the IDF, in addition to conducting mass expulsions, is also engaged in destroying roads, imposing and enforcing lengthy curfews, blocking critical access points to towns, executing arrests and seizing homes for military use.

    No arrangements have been put in place for the Palestinian expellees, leaving them to seek temporary and precarious shelter in community centres, event halls and mosques.  The cessation of UNRWA activity in the West Bank camps has also effectively concluded the most vital link of aid to the refugees.

    The Israeli advocacy group, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), has noted shortages in food, power and medical supplies, along with incessant IDF efforts to obstruct “Red Crescent vehicles and humanitarian services, delaying their ability to provide first aid or transport patients for … treatment”.

    The blunt savagery of these latest actions, as with the broader campaign against militant groups by Israel, continues the reductive logic that celebrates force over peace, the use of weapons over considerations of diplomacy.  The direct targeting of refugee camps in the West Bank shows that the Israeli method is one distinctly hostile to the approach Winston Churchill described as “meeting jaw to jaw”.  In doing so, Israeli is fecundly engendering the next generation of fighters that will, in due course, return the deadly serve with remorseless dedication.  In the short term, there is also a serious risk that the West Bank operations will fray an already withering truce between Hamas and Israel in Gaza.  Not that this seems to bother Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who promises a return to full scale war in Gaza if necessary.

    The post Israel’s Annexation Drive: The West Bank and Expelling Palestinian Refugees appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • ASIO’s endless threats and the power of fear

    ASIO’s endless threats and the power of fear ASIO’s Mike Burgess warns of spies, social decay, and looming threats — keeping fear alive as the national security state tightens its grip read now…

    This post was originally published on Independent Australia.

  • The Comical, Frightening Aussie Spy Chief, Mike Burgess

    Photograph Source: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YqS_Av–58 – View/save archived versions on archive.org and archive.today – CC BY-SA 4.0

    Never allow intelligence chiefs to speak publicly.  Their prerogative lies in lying, their reassurance, cool deception.  While the attractions of transparency are powerful, the result of a garrulous spook is always going to be unreliable.

    In Australia, a comically looking individual by the name of Mike Burgess terrorises and terrifies the local populace as head of the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the domestic spy agency.  It will surprise no one familiar with this approach that it resembles several that have come before.  Keep them frightened, soften them for the next encroaching round, and await ever larger budgets for the already fattened calf known as the national security state.

    In his 2025 threat assessment, the chief tries to be bracingly calm and reassuring, even as he delivers the frightening blows.  “Fortunately, I was born with the glass-half-full gene.”  He tells us the agency is “always looking ahead”, which is encouraging.  Prior to making that point, he says that he had “focused on past and present threats.”  With pointless contradiction assured, the theme is set for clotting clichés, grammatical torments and trying formulations. “This year’s Assessment is future focused.  And I think it’s fair to say it’s the most significant, serious and sober address so far.”

    Those wishing to waste their unrecoverable time listening to the address then realise that the agency has become a victim of public relations capture and trend shopping.  Sections have been created that would make your run of the mill moronic university manager sigh.  There is, for instance, a “Futures Team” (think “Future Fellows” or “Deans of the Future” – their reality is never the now but always deferred) that supposedly “pours over classified intelligence, reviews open source information, consults experts and uses structured analytical techniques to develop in-depth assessments about future trajectories and vulnerabilities.”

    The only thing missing from this froth is the use of artificial intelligence (appropriate for ASIO), which is bound to do the job as competently as any in the “Futures Team”.  For all we know, this is already being done, the machine component triumphant, the human minds lazily tempted.

    The predictable banalities follow in the Burgess show.  “Australia has entered a period of strategic surprise and security fragility.”  If so, Australia has been entering for a very lengthy period, given the number of addresses Burgess has given.  Like an academic who rises to the top on the strength of one idea and one paper eternally rewritten, the director can be relied upon to bore with ideas that have come before, ribboned and stringed for effect.  “Over the next five years, a complex, challenging and changing security environment will become more dynamic, more diverse and more degraded.”

    The Australian public, it would seem, is not playing along with the authorities.  How dare they question and debate the norms they have been told are so sacred to servile stability?  “Social cohesion” – a vacuous term – is apparently eroding.  Institutions are no longer trusted, while intolerance grows.  Truth is being assailed (Burgess is a true comic as spy chief), “undermined by conspiracy, mis- and disinformation.”  For an entity that specialises in all three, this is fabulously funny.

    The terrifying world, it would seem, is replete with “multifaceted, merging, intersecting, concurrent and cascading threats.”  He is concerned “about young Australians being caught up in webs of hate, both religiously and ideologically motivated”.  There is a sense that individuals are seeking “hybrid beliefs”, cherry-picked from a garden of tempting varieties.  Environmentalists of the left commune with Hitler in their beliefs.  Islamic State propaganda converses with neo-Nazi dogma.  Students of history will hardly find these couplings odd, but looking ahead will do that to you.

    In terms of concrete threats, one is singled out as numinous.  One can only cringe at the identification of what Burgess calls “the A-team”.  This mysterious “Australia team” is supposedly dedicated to combing “professional networking sites for Australians with access to privileged information, and then use false, anglicised personas to approach their targets.”  Their targets are offered “consulting opportunities” and generous sums for reporting on Australian trade, politics, economics, foreign policy, defence and security.  This does really sound like money poorly spent by the “A-team”, but who are we to judge?  Some people are evidently living it up.

    Magical thinking also figures in domestic spy land.  We find that questioning the imbecilic foreign policy decision by Australian governments to purchase and construct fantasy nuclear-propelled submarines as servitors of the US empire is bound to be the product of “foreign interference”.  The agency “has identified foreign services seeking to target AUKUS to position themselves to collect the capabilities, how Australia intends to use them, and to undermine the confidence of our allies.”

    In his 2024 address, Burgess quotes the words of Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley to the Australian Parliament after establishing ASIO: “It is not usual to discuss the detailed activities of a security service.  Much of the value of such a service lies in the fact that it works quietly. Members of the organisation should not be unduly prominent at cocktail parties, but should devote themselves to the tasks allotted to them.”

    Burgess, ever the funny man, then takes a stab at humour, claiming to be more permissive than the former Australian PM: “given the work my people do, I would never begrudge them the odd cocktail party now and then”.  If only his agents, and Burgess, spent more time at such events and less time babbling on the stage, we would all be better off.

    The post The Comical, Frightening Aussie Spy Chief, Mike Burgess appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Israel’s Annexation Drive: The West Bank and Expelling Palestinian Refugees

    It has the feeling of a ghastly ending, one pushed along by desperation and eagerness.  First, levelling Gaza and turning it to an uninhabitable moonscape, with the promise of a territory free of Palestinians.  Then, displacing and destroying the already precarious holdings of Palestinian residents in the West Bank, all the time subjecting them to curfews, arrests and detentions while aiding vigilante Jewish settlers, firming up the system of segregation and snuffing out any prospect of autonomy.

    The campaign of rendering the Palestinian cause for sovereignty extinct has become an article of faith for Israel’s security forces, and spectators stare, glumly, at its crude, unceasing momentum.  On February 23, the IDF announced that tanks from the 188th Armoured Brigade were being deployed to Jenin as part of what it claims are “counterterrorism efforts”, a feature of an operation dubbed “Iron Wall”.  The justification for the decision lay in the planting of three bombs on empty buses in the Tel Aviv area.  These prematurely detonated on February 20.  Two further explosive devices were discovered on additional buses, but these failed to cause any casualties.

    The impetus for the failed bombings, it was argued, came from the West Bank, though we are none the wiser about any further details, since a gag order was imposed on February 21, intended to last till March 12.

    The move is ominous as being the first time tanks have been used in the West Bank since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.  Defence Minister Israel Katz also issued a chilling instruction to the IDF to clear “nests of terror”, to eliminate infrastructure and destroy weapons “on an extensive scale.”  But this operation, as with others conducted by the IDF, is characteristically brutal, involving the effective expulsion of 40,000 Palestinians from refugee camps.  According to Katz, “40,000 Palestinians have so far been evacuated from the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps, and are now empty of residents.  UNRWA [UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees] activity in the camps has also been stopped.”

    The measure taken here has the rank smell of permanent displacement, albeit dressed up as a calculated, temporary action intended to protect Israeli security.  The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates was in no doubt that the latest efforts perpetuated Israel’s “genocide, displacement and annexation”.  The Knesset’s Cabinet Committee for Legislation has also expressed its proprietary feelings towards the territory this month by approving a bill replacing the term “West Bank” with “Judea and Samaria”.  On January 29, the Knesset passed a preliminary reading of a bill permitting Israeli settlers to register themselves as legal owners of property in the West Bank.

    The IDF, according to Katz, have been “instructed … to prepare for a long stay in the camps that were cleared, for the coming year, and not allow residents to return and the terror to return and grow.”  He spoke of not returning “to the reality that was in the past”, suggesting an even more radical targeting of Palestinian refugees, blended, as they are, in the mash of “terror centres” and “battalions and terror infrastructure” aided by “the Iranian evil axis, in an attempt to establish an eastern terror front”.

    The Israeli operation has also involved raids against Kobar and Silwad north of Ramallah, the Beitunia neighbourhood of Ramallah, and Hebron.  The long term plan here is to establish corridors similar to the Netzarim Corridor in Gaza, intended for the movement of IDF personnel and equipment.  Al Jazeera reports that the IDF, in addition to conducting mass expulsions, is also engaged in destroying roads, imposing and enforcing lengthy curfews, blocking critical access points to towns, executing arrests and seizing homes for military use.

    No arrangements have been put in place for the Palestinian expellees, leaving them to seek temporary and precarious shelter in community centres, event halls and mosques.  The cessation of UNRWA activity in the West Bank camps has also effectively concluded the most vital link of aid to the refugees.

    The Israeli advocacy group, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), has noted shortages in food, power and medical supplies, along with incessant IDF efforts to obstruct “Red Crescent vehicles and humanitarian services, delaying their ability to provide first aid or transport patients for … treatment”.

    The blunt savagery of these latest actions, as with the broader campaign against militant groups by Israel, continues the reductive logic that celebrates force over peace, the use of weapons over considerations of diplomacy.  The direct targeting of refugee camps in the West Bank shows that the Israeli method is one distinctly hostile to the approach Winston Churchill described as “meeting jaw to jaw”.  In doing so, Israeli is fecundly engendering the next generation of fighters that will, in due course, return the deadly serve with remorseless dedication.  In the short term, there is also a serious risk that the West Bank operations will fray an already withering truce between Hamas and Israel in Gaza.  Not that this seems to bother Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who promises a return to full scale war in Gaza if necessary.

    The post Israel’s Annexation Drive: The West Bank and Expelling Palestinian Refugees first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Cowardice and cancellation: Creative Australia and the Venice Biennale

    Hysteria surrounds the dropping of Lebanese-born artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino from the 2026 Venice Biennale, argues Binoy Kampmark.

    Two men

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Gloominess and Magical Thinking

    Never allow intelligence chiefs to speak publicly. Their prerogative lies in lying, their reassurance, cool deception. While the attractions of transparency are powerful, the result of a garrulous spook is always going to be unreliable.

    In Australia, a comically looking individual by the name of Mike Burgess terrorises and terrifies the local populace as head of the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the domestic spy agency. It will surprise no one familiar with this approach that it resembles several that have come before. Keep them frightened, soften them for the next encroaching round, and await ever larger budgets for the already fattened calf known as the national security state.

    In his 2025 threat assessment, the chief tries to be bracingly calm and reassuring, even as he delivers the frightening blows. “Fortunately, I was born with the glass-half-full gene.” He tells us the agency is “always looking ahead”, which is encouraging. Prior to making that point, he says that he had “focused on past and present threats.” With pointless contradiction assured, the theme is set for clotting clichés, grammatical torments and trying formulations. “This year’s Assessment is future focused. And I think it’s fair to say it’s the most significant, serious and sober address so far.”

    Those wishing to waste their unrecoverable time listening to the address then realise that the agency has become a victim of public relations capture and trend shopping. Sections have been created that would make your run of the mill moronic university manager sigh. There is, for instance, a “Futures Team” (think “Future Fellows” or “Deans of the Future” – their reality is never the now but always deferred) that supposedly “pours over classified intelligence, reviews open source information, consults experts and uses structured analytical techniques to develop in-depth assessments about future trajectories and vulnerabilities.”

    The only thing missing from this froth is the use of artificial intelligence (appropriate for ASIO), which is bound to do the job as competently as any in the “Futures Team”. For all we know, this is already being done, the machine component triumphant, the human minds lazily tempted.

    The predictable banalities follow in the Burgess show. “Australia has entered a period of strategic surprise and security fragility.” If so, Australia has been entering for a very lengthy period, given the number of addresses Burgess has given. Like an academic who rises to the top on the strength of one idea and one paper eternally rewritten, the director can be relied upon to bore with ideas that have come before, ribboned and stringed for effect. “Over the next five years, a complex, challenging and changing security environment will become more dynamic, more diverse and more degraded.”

    The Australian public, it would seem, is not playing along with the authorities. How dare they question and debate the norms they have been told are so sacred to servile stability? “Social cohesion” – a vacuous term – is apparently eroding. Institutions are no longer trusted, while intolerance grows. Truth is being assailed (Burgess is a true comic as spy chief), “undermined by conspiracy, mis- and disinformation.” For an entity that specialises in all three, this is fabulously funny.

    The terrifying world, it would seem, is replete with “multifaceted, merging, intersecting, concurrent and cascading threats.” He is concerned “about young Australians being caught up in webs of hate, both religiously and ideologically motivated”. There is a sense that individuals are seeking “hybrid beliefs”, cherry-picked from a garden of tempting varieties. Environmentalists of the left commune with Hitler in their beliefs. Islamic State propaganda converses with neo-Nazi dogma. Students of history will hardly find these couplings odd, but looking ahead will do that to you.

    In terms of concrete threats, one is singled out as numinous. One can only cringe at the identification of what Burgess calls “the A-team”. This mysterious “Australia team” is supposedly dedicated to combing “professional networking sites for Australians with access to privileged information, and then use false, anglicised personas to approach their targets.” Their targets are offered “consulting opportunities” and generous sums for reporting on Australian trade, politics, economics, foreign policy, defence and security. This does really sound like money poorly spent by the “A-team”, but who are we to judge? Some people are evidently living it up.

    Magical thinking also figures in domestic spy land. We find that questioning the imbecilic foreign policy decision by Australian governments to purchase and construct fantasy nuclear-propelled submarines as servitors of the US empire is bound to be the product of “foreign interference”. The agency “has identified foreign services seeking to target AUKUS to position themselves to collect the capabilities, how Australia intends to use them, and to undermine the confidence of our allies.”

    In his 2024 address, Burgess quotes the words of Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley to the Australian Parliament after establishing ASIO: “It is not usual to discuss the detailed activities of a security service. Much of the value of such a service lies in the fact that it works quietly. Members of the organisation should not be unduly prominent at cocktail parties, but should devote themselves to the tasks allotted to them.”

    Burgess, ever the funny man, then takes a stab at humour, claiming to be more permissive than the former Australian PM: “given the work my people do, I would never begrudge them the odd cocktail party now and then”. If only his agents, and Burgess, spent more time at such events and less time babbling on the stage, we would all be better off.

    The post Gloominess and Magical Thinking first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Cowardice and Cancellation: Creative Australia and the Venice Biennale

    The Cowardly Lion, from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – Illustration by W.W. Denslow – Public Domain

    Cowardice is the milk that runs in the veins of many event organisers, especially when it comes to those occasions that might provoke the unmanaged unexpected.  The same organisers will claim to be open minded, accommodating to stirring debate, and open to what is trendily termed in artistic lingo as “provocations”.

    The dropping by Creative Australia of Lebanese-born artist Khaled Sabsabi as Australia’s representative for the 2026 Venice Biennale, along with the curator of the pavilion’s artistic team, Michael Dagostino, shows that true artistic subversion is not the game, and uncontroversial subservience the form.  If an arts body fears that the milch cow will be starved, if not killed altogether, they will slight, blight and drop the artist in question and prostrate before Mammon’s moneyed throne.

    In Australia’s febrile, philistine and increasingly hysterical atmosphere on matters controversial, debate that supposedly tests what is tepidly termed social cohesion has been cut and mauled to the point of non-recognition.  Journalists are given to following strict talking points on matters of international interest, from President Donald Trump (criticism of all his moves, marvellous) to the issue of Israel (criticism, not quite so marvellous, entailing avoidance of such words as “massacre”, “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”).

    Criticism of Israel’s policies in levelling Gaza and creating an open-air theatre of massacre in real time have led agitating voices in both Israel and Australia to claim that the demon of antisemitism is more virulent than usual.  Threats have been inflated and the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, inspired to secure votes in the months leading up to the federal election.  A pathology has taken root, from art circles to universities.

    It began with an intervention by the Australian newspaper, an outlet that Israel can rely on as its pro bono propagandistic emissary down under.  The paper’s sympathetic correspondent, Yoni Bashan, had been embedded with Israeli forces in Gaza.  After receiving a number of messages, Bashan took an interest in Creative Australia’s choice for the biennale, thinking he had scored a coup by going through Sabsabi’s previous work.  This preschool hackwork found a 2007 video installation titled You, which features Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of the Lebanese Shiite militia group Hezbollah.

    Nasrallah, whose voice and image appears in the montage, was slain in the latest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.  The buffoonish, hatchet assessment (“I’m not an arts reporter,” Bashan conceded in a podcast, calling the art industry “a bit too fluty for me”) claimed that Creative Australia’s selection of Sabsabi was a “creative form of racism”.  Instead of understanding the broader context of the horrors of war which Sabsabi has been preoccupied with, himself a refugee from the Lebanese civil war, the paper was thrilled to have uncovered a terrorist sympathiser.

    The falsely revelatory nature of the Australian’s intervention, coupled with a discussion in the Australian Parliament that also scorned a 2006 video titled Thank you very much showing the 9/11 attacks and then US President George W. Bush, was pitifully juvenile.  Tony Burke’s expression of shock was craven, a capitulation that necessitates his immediate resignation as Minister for the Arts.  Within hours of the parliamentary exchange – one could hardly call it a debate – Creative Australia convened an emergency board meeting that unanimously endorsed cancelling the contract regarding the Venice Biennale representation featuring Sabsabi and Dagostino.  It had taken all but six days from the announcement that praised the artist’s work for exploring “human collectiveness” and questioning “identity politics and ideology, inviting audiences to do the same.”

    Thankfully, this indecent chapter did provoke resignations and stinging criticism.  Mikala Tai, an important figure in Creative Australia’s visual arts departments over the last four years, wrote to Chief Executive Adrian Collette stating that she had resigned “in support of the artist.”

    To the list of resignations can be added artist and board member, Lindy Lee and Simon Mordant, twice commissioner at the Venice Biennale, who told ABC Arts that he “immediately resigned” his role and terminated financial support. “There was a question asked in parliament [on Thursday, February 13] and that subsequently resulted in an unprecedented move by Creative Australia to rescind the contract.”  For Mordant, he could not think of any other situation “in any country in the world” where something of this nature had happened, and “certainly” not in Australia.

    To its credit, Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), which accepted You and exhibited it in 2009, rightly wondered how the decision was reached.  In a statement to the Australian Financial Review on February 21, the gallery expressed concern with “the lack of transparency in Creative Australia’s process.”  The decision had “major ramifications for the arts in Australia and the reputation of Australia in the world at a time when creating space for diverse artist voices and ideas has never been more important.”

    Other galleries have been committedly cowardly and silent on the decision, even those whose funding does not depend on Creative Australia.  The Art Gallery of NSW, which ran Sabsabi’s solo show in 2019, is a case in point, merely stating that it was “not commenting on this matter at this time”.  Liz Ann Macgregor, who ran the MCA for over two decades till 2021, offers a cast iron reason for the cringeworthy reticence.  “I think people are second-guessing that they might upset some of their donors if they say something.”

    The teams shortlisted to join the biennale pavilion were also keen to express their views in an open letter addressed to the Creative Australia board.  “We believe that revoking support for the current Australian artist and curator representatives for Venice Biennale 2026 is antithetical to the goodwill and hard-fought artistic independence, freedom of speech and moral courage that is at the core of arts in Australia, which plays a crucial role in our thriving and democratic nation.”

    The letter goes on to ask the salient question.  “If Creative Australia cannot even stand by its expert-led selection for a matter of hours, abandoning its own process at the first sign of pressure, then what does that say about its commitment to artistic excellence and freedom of expression?”  The answer: everything.

    The post Cowardice and Cancellation: Creative Australia and the Venice Biennale appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Cowardice and Cancellation: Creative Australia and the Venice Biennale

    Cowardice is the milk that runs in the veins of many event organisers, especially when it comes to those occasions that might provoke the unmanaged unexpected.  The same organisers will claim to be open minded, accommodating to stirring debate, and open to what is trendily termed in artistic lingo as “provocations”.

    The dropping by Creative Australia of Lebanese-born artist Khaled Sabsabi as Australia’s representative for the 2026 Venice Biennale, along with the curator of the pavilion’s artistic team, Michael Dagostino, shows that true artistic subversion is not the game, and uncontroversial subservience the form.  If an arts body fears that the milch cow will be starved, if not killed altogether, they will slight, blight and drop the artist in question and prostrate before Mammon’s moneyed throne.

    In Australia’s febrile, philistine and increasingly hysterical atmosphere on matters controversial, debate that supposedly tests what is tepidly termed social cohesion has been cut and mauled to the point of non-recognition.  Journalists are given to following strict talking points on matters of international interest, from President Donald Trump (criticism of all his moves, marvellous) to the issue of Israel (criticism, not quite so marvellous, entailing avoidance of such words as “massacre”, “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”).

    Criticism of Israel’s policies in levelling Gaza and creating an open-air theatre of massacre in real time have led agitating voices in both Israel and Australia to claim that the demon of antisemitism is more virulent than usual.  Threats have been inflated and the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, inspired to secure votes in the months leading up to the federal election.  A pathology has taken root, from art circles to universities.

    It began with an intervention by the Australian newspaper, an outlet that Israel can rely on as its pro bono propagandistic emissary down under.  The paper’s sympathetic correspondent, Yoni Bashan, had been embedded with Israeli forces in Gaza.  After receiving a number of messages, Bashan took an interest in Creative Australia’s choice for the biennale, thinking he had scored a coup by going through Sabsabi’s previous work.  This preschool hackwork found a 2007 video installation titled You, which features Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of the Lebanese Shiite militia group Hezbollah.

    Nasrallah, whose voice and image appears in the montage, was slain in the latest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.  The buffoonish, hatchet assessment (“I’m not an arts reporter,” Bashan conceded in a podcast, calling the art industry “a bit too fluty for me”) claimed that Creative Australia’s selection of Sabsabi was a “creative form of racism”.  Instead of understanding the broader context of the horrors of war which Sabsabi has been preoccupied with, himself a refugee from the Lebanese civil war, the paper was thrilled to have uncovered a terrorist sympathiser.

    The falsely revelatory nature of the Australian’s intervention, coupled with a discussion in the Australian Parliament that also scorned a 2006 video titled Thank you very much showing the 9/11 attacks and then US President George W. Bush, was pitifully juvenile.  Tony Burke’s expression of shock was craven, a capitulation that necessitates his immediate resignation as Minister for the Arts.  Within hours of the parliamentary exchange – one could hardly call it a debate – Creative Australia convened an emergency board meeting that unanimously endorsed cancelling the contract regarding the Venice Biennale representation featuring Sabsabi and Dagostino.  It had taken all but six days from the announcement that praised the artist’s work for exploring “human collectiveness” and questioning “identity politics and ideology, inviting audiences to do the same.”

    Thankfully, this indecent chapter did provoke resignations and stinging criticism.  Mikala Tai, an important figure in Creative Australia’s visual arts departments over the last four years, wrote to Chief Executive Adrian Collette stating that she had resigned “in support of the artist.”

    To the list of resignations can be added artist and board member, Lindy Lee and Simon Mordant, twice commissioner at the Venice Biennale, who told ABC Arts that he “immediately resigned” his role and terminated financial support. “There was a question asked in parliament [on Thursday, February 13] and that subsequently resulted in an unprecedented move by Creative Australia to rescind the contract.”  For Mordant, he could not think of any other situation “in any country in the world” where something of this nature had happened, and “certainly” not in Australia.

    To its credit, Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), which accepted You and exhibited it in 2009, rightly wondered how the decision was reached.  In a statement to the Australian Financial Review on February 21, the gallery expressed concern with “the lack of transparency in Creative Australia’s process.”  The decision had “major ramifications for the arts in Australia and the reputation of Australia in the world at a time when creating space for diverse artist voices and ideas has never been more important.”

    Other galleries have been committedly cowardly and silent on the decision, even those whose funding does not depend on Creative Australia.  The Art Gallery of NSW, which ran Sabsabi’s solo show in 2019, is a case in point, merely stating that it was “not commenting on this matter at this time”.  Liz Ann Macgregor, who ran the MCA for over two decades till 2021, offers a cast iron reason for the cringeworthy reticence.  “I think people are second-guessing that they might upset some of their donors if they say something.”

    The teams shortlisted to join the biennale pavilion were also keen to express their views in an open letter addressed to the Creative Australia board.  “We believe that revoking support for the current Australian artist and curator representatives for Venice Biennale 2026 is antithetical to the goodwill and hard-fought artistic independence, freedom of speech and moral courage that is at the core of arts in Australia, which plays a crucial role in our thriving and democratic nation.”

    The letter goes on to ask the salient question.  “If Creative Australia cannot even stand by its expert-led selection for a matter of hours, abandoning its own process at the first sign of pressure, then what does that say about its commitment to artistic excellence and freedom of expression?”  The answer: everything.

    The post Cowardice and Cancellation: Creative Australia and the Venice Biennale first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Second Endings: Terminating Neighbors (Again)

    Neighbours title card – Fair Use

    Soppy, soapy and interminable, the Australian series Neighbours, the staple for millions of British (and Australian) watchers for years, their tonic and medication from reality, is being terminated for the second time.

    In 2022, steady followers and dedicated fanatics of this program of irritating suburban geniality were met with the news that Channel 5 would be concluding its support for a series that had incubated such Australian performers and thespians as Margot Robbie, Guy Pearce and Kylie Minogue.  Fremantle Media, the program’s producer, had failed to secure another broadcaster in the UK as a replacement, despite the 1.5 million regular viewers that would tune in each day it was run.

    Then came Amazon MGM Studios, which decided to give a blast of oxygen to the 37-year-old relic that had already passed 9,000 episodes.  It took a mere four months to do so, possibly helped by the ratings for what was meant to be a farewell episode studded with stars.  The streaming service Prime Video became the conduit, the new program returning as Neighbours: A New Chapter.

    Salvation jobs tend to be rare in show business, and the whole industry remains inherently and manically brutal.  A sure signal that Neighbours might be in trouble was the 2024 move by Amazon to cease its Freevee service, which had been responsible for broadcasting the revived variant globally.

    The language being used in this latest withdrawal of support is an object study in euphemistic endings.  “We are sad to announce that Neighbours will be resting from December 2025,” read an official statement on the program on February 21.  But the viewers were assured that the axe, while inevitable in its deployment, would not do away with those episodes scheduled to run on the global Amazon Prime Video channel, and Australia’s Channel Ten four times a week until then.  These would still have “all the big soapie twists and turns that our viewers love”.

    A spokesperson for Amazon, in confirming the company’s withdrawal of support, stood by the remit in saying little on the reasons behind the decision.  The language used was that of putting down a beloved pet that had endured that bit longer because of a noble intervention.  “Forty years is an incredible milestone and we are proud that Amazon MGM Studios was able to have a small part of bringing further episodes to Freevee and Prime Video customers over the last two years, spanning 400 episodes.”

    Things were left to Neighbour’s executive producer, Jason Herbison, to soften matters and offer a sliver of hope.  First, there was the soap’s enduring popularity in the UK.  There was also the show’s first Daytime Emmy nomination in 2024.  “As this chapter closes, we appreciate and thank Amazon MGM Studios for all they have done for Neighbours – bringing this iconic and much-loved series to new audiences globally.  We value how much the fans love Neighboursand we believe there are more stories of the residents of Ramsay Street to tell in the future.”

    These stories will remain either in cold storage or floating in purgatory unless an international backer can be found.  It fills barrels of irony that Australia’s longest running soap drama would need the broadcasting heft from overseas to sustain it.  The Australian backer, Channel Ten, claims that funding it alone will not pass muster.

    Placed in that precarious situation, the program’s success does not merely depend on a steadfast series of ratings in one market.  Neighbours, with its sedate, soft treading approach to human relations in a fictional Melbourne suburb, appeals in a very specific way to British audiences.  For them, this is Australia imagined as sun, pools and conviviality.  Disputes irk but are eventually resolved.  As the BBC press release described it in October 1986, the show “is down-to-earth, centres on ordinary families, with a particular emphasis on young people and the problems they face.”

    When the wedding of Scott and Charlene, played respectively by Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue, aired in 1988, 19.7 million British viewers tuned in.  This was stupendous for a production that had initially been savaged for its corniness, comical awfulness and its seeming inertia.  It was also the sort of success that enraged critics for challenging the enduring supremacy of Britain’s own EastEnders and Coronation Street.

    The actual city of the program’s setting is irreverent in terms of weather, teasing, toying and frustrating the visitor with lengthy spells of overcast doom, occasional spits of rain, and then, variable temperatures.  The latter phenomenon drives the local resident to travel equipped with a wardrobe of clothing options: raincoat, warm jacket, short sleeved shirts.  Ramsay Street, with its particular pretentious brand of sunny friendliness, should have been located in Sydney, though this remains the unmentionable heresy.

    Taking the temperature of the broader public reaction to the decision, and bafflement abounds.  Why would, asked one follower of the program, take away “YOUR number one show!” screeched one at Amazon.  But Amazon, according to The Sun, was not happy with its broader returns.  It is a global beast with global appetites, a coded way of saying that success, to be genuine, had to be an American one.

    An unnamed source (of course), told the paper that Fremantle had been given “two years to see if it worked, but sadly, they just didn’t get the viewers.”  Fremantle’s hunt for the cash for continued production will have to start in earnest, but short of returning to a British backer, the prospects look decidedly final for a show that has lasted well beyond its time.

    The post Second Endings: Terminating Neighbors (Again) appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Terminating Neighbours (Again)

    Soppy, soapy and interminable, the Australian series Neighbours, the staple for millions of British (and Australian) watchers for years, their tonic and medication from reality, is being terminated for the second time.

    In 2022, steady followers and dedicated fanatics of this program of irritating suburban geniality were met with the news that Channel 5 would be concluding its support for a series that had incubated such Australian performers and thespians as Margot Robbie, Guy Pearce and Kylie Minogue.  Fremantle Media, the program’s producer, had failed to secure another broadcaster in the UK as a replacement, despite the 1.5 million regular viewers that would tune in each day it was run.

    Then came Amazon MGM Studios, which decided to give a blast of oxygen to the 37-year-old relic that had already passed 9,000 episodes.  It took a mere four months to do so, possibly helped by the ratings for what was meant to be a farewell episode studded with stars.  The streaming service Prime Video became the conduit, the new program returning as Neighbours: A New Chapter.

    Salvation jobs tend to be rare in show business, and the whole industry remains inherently and manically brutal.  A sure signal that Neighbours might be in trouble was the 2024 move by Amazon to cease its Freevee service, which had been responsible for broadcasting the revived variant globally.

    The language being used in this latest withdrawal of support is an object study in euphemistic endings.  “We are sad to announce that Neighbours will be resting from December 2025,” read an official statement on the program on February 21.  But the viewers were assured that the axe, while inevitable in its deployment, would not do away with those episodes scheduled to run on the global Amazon Prime Video channel, and Australia’s Channel Ten four times a week until then.  These would still have “all the big soapie twists and turns that our viewers love”.

    A spokesperson for Amazon, in confirming the company’s withdrawal of support, stood by the remit in saying little on the reasons behind the decision.  The language used was that of putting down a beloved pet that had endured that bit longer because of a noble intervention.  “Forty years is an incredible milestone and we are proud that Amazon MGM Studios was able to have a small part of bringing further episodes to Freevee and Prime Video customers over the last two years, spanning 400 episodes.”

    Things were left to Neighbour’s executive producer, Jason Herbison, to soften matters and offer a sliver of hope.  First, there was the soap’s enduring popularity in the UK.  There was also the show’s first Daytime Emmy nomination in 2024.  “As this chapter closes, we appreciate and thank Amazon MGM Studios for all they have done for Neighbours – bringing this iconic and much-loved series to new audiences globally.  We value how much the fans love Neighbours and we believe there are more stories of the residents of Ramsay Street to tell in the future.”

    These stories will remain either in cold storage or floating in purgatory unless an international backer can be found.  It fills barrels of irony that Australia’s longest running soap drama would need the broadcasting heft from overseas to sustain it.  The Australian backer, Channel Ten, claims that funding it alone will not pass muster.

    Placed in that precarious situation, the program’s success does not merely depend on a steadfast series of ratings in one market.  Neighbours, with its sedate, soft treading approach to human relations in a fictional Melbourne suburb, appeals in a very specific way to British audiences.  For them, this is Australia imagined as sun, pools and conviviality.  Disputes irk but are eventually resolved.  As the BBC press release described it in October 1986, the show “is down-to-earth, centres on ordinary families, with a particular emphasis on young people and the problems they face.”

    When the wedding of Scott and Charlene, played respectively by Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue, aired in 1988, 19.7 million British viewers tuned in.  This was stupendous for a production that had initially been savaged for its corniness, comical awfulness and its seeming inertia.  It was also the sort of success that enraged critics for challenging the enduring supremacy of Britain’s own EastEnders and Coronation Street.

    The actual city of the program’s setting is irreverent in terms of weather, teasing, toying and frustrating the visitor with lengthy spells of overcast doom, occasional spits of rain, and then, variable temperatures.  The latter phenomenon drives the local resident to travel equipped with a wardrobe of clothing options: raincoat, warm jacket, short sleeved shirts.  Ramsay Street, with its particular pretentious brand of sunny friendliness, should have been located in Sydney, though this remains the unmentionable heresy.

    Taking the temperature of the broader public reaction to the decision, and bafflement abounds.  Why would, asked one follower of the program, take away “YOUR number one show!” screeched one at Amazon.  But Amazon, according to The Sun, was not happy with its broader returns.  It is a global beast with global appetites, a coded way of saying that success, to be genuine, had to be an American one.

    An unnamed source (of course), told the paper that Fremantle had been given “two years to see if it worked, but sadly, they just didn’t get the viewers.”  Fremantle’s hunt for the cash for continued production will have to start in earnest, but short of returning to a British backer, the prospects look decidedly final for a show that has lasted well beyond its time.

    The post Terminating Neighbours (Again) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Feeling Very Fine: Picasso the Printmaker at the British Museum

    Pablo Picasso, 1904, Le repas frugal (The Frugal Meal)

    This is Pablo Picasso the way he is rarely seen – at least in so far as the hundred or so pieces at the British Museum’s Picasso: Printmaker have been displayed.  The viewer is treated to dazzling marked draughtsmanship that also evinces a mastery of techniques: the use of drypoint and etching, lithographs, linocuts and aquatints.

    The span of the work humbles.  From the early 1900s (Picasso moved to Paris in 1904, keeping an address at the Washhouse Boat in Montmartre), we find the almost shocking A Frugal Meal, where the much diminished couple sit together in strained impoverishment, their minds abstracted by distance from each other.  Struck by malnutrition, we see the sagging bodies, the skeletal fingers, the piece of bread on the side of an empty plate, wine partially filling one glass.  Made with a salvaged copper plate, the work also heralds Picasso’s first serious attempt at printmaking.

    In 1905, the print Salomé announces a serious yet teasing effort by Picasso to depict the body of the naked dancer before Herod much “like a blind man who pictures an arse by the way it feels”. The outstretched leg suggests the Moulin Rouge.

    To the end, we get a sampling of the 347 Suite of etchings from 1968, where the playful, irreverent artist is in full, zesty swing.  Along the way, we find Picasso the cubist (Still Life with a Bottle of Marc (1911)), where he keeps fused company with Georges Braque, and the choice morsels from the Vollard Suite (1930-7), where the lure of classical art, animal sexuality and playful mythology is most evident.

    The Minotaur is a randy villain governed by instinct, the masculine, beast hybrid that galvanises the work throughout.  He connives in the bacchanalian excesses that artist-man-Picasso also engages in.  Ignobly, the Minotaur ravishes or suggests it, evident in Minotaur Caressing a Sleeping Woman (1933).

    In the lubricious mix are other creatures of Greek mythology.  The intentions of the faun in Faun Uncovering a Woman(1936), with a nod to Rembrandt’s depiction of Jupiter and Antiope, are unambiguous.  Here, Picasso plays with lust, longing and discomforting moments of predatory assumption.  But then comes the masterful 1934 Blind Minotaur being led by a Little Girl in the Night, its aquatint with scraper effect producing a moving work: a sightless minotaur vulnerable, punished for its misdeeds, holding a dove, walking under a sky carpeted with stars.

    This theme of visited punishment and regret is also found in The Little Artist (1954), a colour crayon transfer lithograph made after the end of Picasso’s relationship with Françoise Gilot.  Three figures dominate: the two children he shares with her, flat and downcast, and Gilot, protectively shadowing them in forbidding form.

    The 347 sequence is schoolboy randy and remorselessly mocking.  The sublime Renaissance painter Raphael, who the biographer and rumour tiller Giorgio Vasari claimed expired after too much over vigorous intercourse with his lover, La Fornarina, keeps company with unmatched voyeurism, including the Pope’s leering antics.  The shift to the contemporary scene is evident in giving the French war hero and President Charles de Gaulle a noticeable member as he consults the female form.

    Violence, ever present in the Picasso oeuvre, finds expression in the gladiatorial, ceremonial form of the bullfight. Looking at the displayed prints brings Ernest Hemingway to mind, whose perspective on such a brutal spectacle in Death in the Afternoon (1932) is fine stuffing for Picasso’s moral universe.  “So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after”.  The bullfight was “very normal” to Papa Hemingway, with its messages on life, death, mortality and immortality.  At the conclusion of the battle between bull and man, “I feel very sad but also very fine.”

    Much about Picasso tends to get absorbed into the outsized man’s legacy. The lovers, the infidelities, his preoccupation with violent themes, and the “woman” question.  But this exhibition is exhilarating for offering the viewer the sources that moved Picasso while also providing offerings that do, inevitably, show the man at his throbbing, priapic best (and worst).  Two young ladies were utterly captivated by the generously erotic depictions, with one squealing in delight, “Now she does have a cunt!”

    Beyond the land that is purely mired in cunt and cock, however, we see a delicious lithographic tribute to Lucas Cranach the Elder with its variations, focusing on King David’s lusty longing for the woman he sees bathing, Bathsheba.  Picasso renders the king menacing in intention, his head expansive, his harp disproportionately large.  One senses sympathy for Bathsheba at the inevitable dishonouring.

    There are also reverential tributes to the masters of Spanish painting.  El Greco, Velázquez and Goya tower.  The latter links the two in terms of a shared interest in the bullfight and their subversion of conventional forms of beauty.

    By the time one reaches the end, where the master offers the viewer his own reflection in Picasso, His Work and His Audience (1968) it behoves the spectator to wonder whether feeling fine is, in fact, the sentiment to entertain.  For many, it is bound to be.  Others, bothered by the desecrations, the defiling, and more besides, are bound to be troubled.  But most are unlikely to have even wanted to see Picasso in the first place.

    British Museum, November 7, 2024 to March 30, 2025

    The post Feeling Very Fine: Picasso the Printmaker at the British Museum appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

    This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

  • Feeling Very Fine: Picasso the Printmaker at the British Museum

    This is Pablo Picasso the way he is rarely seen – at least in so far as the hundred or so pieces at the British Museum’s Picasso: Printmaker have been displayed.  The viewer is treated to dazzling marked draughtsmanship that also evinces a mastery of techniques: the use of drypoint and etching, lithographs, linocuts and aquatints.

    The span of the work humbles. From the early 1900s (Picasso moved to Paris in 1904, keeping an address at the Washhouse Boat in Montmartre), we find the almost shocking A Frugal Meal, where the much diminished couple sit together in strained impoverishment, their minds abstracted by distance from each other. Struck by malnutrition, we see the sagging bodies, the skeletal fingers, the piece of bread on the side of an empty plate, wine partially filling one glass. Made with a salvaged copper plate, the work also heralds Picasso’s first serious attempt at printmaking.

    In 1905, the print Salomé announces a serious yet teasing effort by Picasso to depict the body of the naked dancer before Herod much “like a blind man who pictures an arse by the way it feels”. The outstretched leg suggests the Moulin Rouge.

    To the end, we get a sampling of the 347 Suite of etchings from 1968, where the playful, irreverent artist is in full, zesty swing.  Along the way, we find Picasso the cubist (Still Life with a Bottle of Marc [1911]), where he keeps fused company with Georges Braque, and the choice morsels from the Vollard Suite (1930-7), where the lure of classical art, animal sexuality and playful mythology is most evident.

    The Minotaur is a randy villain governed by instinct, the masculine, beast hybrid that galvanises the work throughout.  He connives in the bacchanalian excesses that artist-man-Picasso also engages in. Ignobly, the Minotaur ravishes or suggests it, evident in Minotaur Caressing a Sleeping Woman (1933).

    In the lubricious mix are other creatures of Greek mythology.  The intentions of the faun in Faun Uncovering a Woman (1936), with a nod to Rembrandt’s depiction of Jupiter and Antiope, are unambiguous.  Here, Picasso plays with lust, longing and discomforting moments of predatory assumption.  But then comes the masterful 1934 Blind Minotaur being led by a Little Girl in the Night, its aquatint with scraper effect producing a moving work: a sightless minotaur vulnerable, punished for its misdeeds, holding a dove, walking under a sky carpeted with stars.

    This theme of visited punishment and regret is also found in The Little Artist (1954), a colour crayon transfer lithograph made after the end of Picasso’s relationship with Françoise Gilot.  Three figures dominate: the two children he shares with her, flat and downcast, and Gilot, protectively shadowing them in forbidding form.

    The 347 sequence is schoolboy randy and remorselessly mocking.  The sublime Renaissance painter Raphael, who the biographer and rumour tiller Giorgio Vasari claimed expired after too much over vigorous intercourse with his lover, La Fornarina, keeps company with unmatched voyeurism, including the Pope’s leering antics.  The shift to the contemporary scene is evident in giving the French war hero and President Charles de Gaulle a noticeable member as he consults the female form.

    Violence, ever present in the Picasso oeuvre, finds expression in the gladiatorial, ceremonial form of the bullfight.  Looking at the displayed prints brings Ernest Hemingway to mind, whose perspective on such a brutal spectacle in Death in the Afternoon (1932) is fine stuffing for Picasso’s moral universe.  “So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after”.  The bullfight was “very normal” to Papa Hemingway, with its messages on life, death, mortality and immortality.  At the conclusion of the battle between bull and man, “I feel very sad but also very fine.”

    Much about Picasso tends to get absorbed into the outsized man’s legacy. The lovers, the infidelities, his preoccupation with violent themes, and the “woman” question.  But this exhibition is exhilarating for offering the viewer the sources that moved Picasso while also providing offerings that do, inevitably, show the man at his throbbing, priapic best (and worst).  Two young ladies were utterly captivated by the generously erotic depictions, with one squealing in delight, “Now she does have a cunt!”

    Beyond the land that is purely mired in cunt and cock, however, we see a delicious lithographic tribute to Lucas Cranach the Elder with its variations, focusing on King David’s lusty longing for the woman he sees bathing, Bathsheba.  Picasso renders the king menacing in intention, his head expansive, his harp disproportionately large.  One senses sympathy for Bathsheba at the inevitable dishonouring.

    There are also reverential tributes to the masters of Spanish painting.  El Greco, Velázquez and Goya tower.  The latter links the two in terms of a shared interest in the bullfight and their subversion of conventional forms of beauty.

    By the time one reaches the end, where the master offers the viewer his own reflection in Picasso, His Work and His Audience (1968) it behoves the spectator to wonder whether feeling fine is, in fact, the sentiment to entertain.  For many, it is bound to be.  Others, bothered by the desecrations, the defiling, and more besides, are bound to be troubled.  But most are unlikely to have even wanted to see Picasso in the first place.

    British Museum, November 7, 2024 to March 30, 2025

    The post Feeling Very Fine: Picasso the Printmaker at the British Museum first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.