Australian National Anti-Corruption Commission NACC ignores huge Australian War Crimes & Carbon Debt
I have made 5 huge successive Submissions to the newly formed Australian National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC). However my 2 most serious Submissions – on horrendous Australian war crimes (Submission #2: 6 million Afghan avoidable deaths from deprivation under Australian and US Alliance occupation in gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention) and on horrendous, planet-threatening Carbon Debt (Submission #3: an enormous $5 trillion fraud perpetrated on Australian children, grandchildren and future generations) – were rejected by the NACC on the basis that the NACC had “not been able to identify a clear allegation of corrupt conduct as defined by the National Anti-Corruption Commission Act (2022). As a result, the Commission is unable to take any further action in this matter”. My 5 Submissions are summarized below with the rejected Submissions asterisked.
(1). “Submission To National Anti-Corruption Commission: Australian Labor Government’s Lying For Apartheid Israel”. On a bipartisan Coalition Opposition and Labor Government basis, Zionist-subverted and US-beholden Australia is second only to the US as a fervent a supporter of Apartheid Israel and hence of the evil crime of Apartheid that is condemned by the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Departure from fervent support for the Zionist-subverted US and for Apartheid Israel means potential political oblivion for Coalition and Labor MPs noting that Australian Federal MPs receive huge remuneration. MPs and governments should not lie and benefit from lying (fraud and corruption) and should not lie in the interest of inimical foreign governments (treason). Apartheid Israel and its Zionist agents have damaged Australians, Australian institutions and Australia in numerous serious ways. However the Australian Labor Government lies for Apartheid Israel in 15 matters.
*(2). “Submission To Australian National Anti-Corruption Commission Over Huge But Ignored Australian War Crimes”. Variously as UK or US lackeys Australians have invaded about 85 countries with 30 of these invasions being genocidal. In the last 80 years (i.e. within living memory) Australia has violated all circa 80 Indo-Pacific countries variously through occupation and invasion (most countries), complicity in US regime-changing coups (8 countries), and through disproportionate climate criminality (impacting all countries). The Brereton Report found that 39 Afghans had allegedly been unlawfully killed by Australian soldiers. However successive Australian Governments and their public servants have grossly violated Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention by criminally rejecting their unequivocal demand for Occupier provision to the Conquered Afghan Subjects of life-sustaining food and medical services “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”. Now 6,000,000 (Afghans passively murdered over 20 years by the US Alliance including Australia) / 39 (Afghans allegedly unlawfully killed by Australian soldiers) = 154,000 i.e. the passive mass murder of 6,000,000 Afghans (mostly women and children) by Australian and US Alliance politicians is 154,000 times worse than the alleged unlawful killing of 39 Afghans by Australian soldiers. Of course all war crimes should be thoroughly investigated and the perpetrators tried and punished, but in my opinion no Australian soldier should be tried for any of these 39 alleged unlawful killings of Afghans before the politicians complicit in the 154,000 times greater war crime (the passive mass murder of 6,000,000 Afghans) are exposed and tried. The same argument applies to horrendous avoidable deaths from deprivation in the Australia-complicit WW2 Bengali Holocaust (6-7 million Indian avoidable deaths, 1942-1945) and Iraqi Holocaust (3 million avoidable deaths, 1990-2011).
*(3). “Submission To Australian National Anti-Corruption Commission: Corporations & Governments Ignore Huge Carbon Debt”. Australia is among world-leading climate criminal countries in 16 areas. Corporations, governments and Mainstream media conspire to fraudulently and corruptly ignore Australia’s huge and inescapable Carbon Debt that totals (in USD) about $5 trillion, is increasing at up to about $0.7 trillion each year, and at $69,000 per head per year for under-30 year old Australians. The Carbon Debt of the World is $250 trillion and increasing at $13 trillion each year. This is appalling intergenerational injustice because this ever-increasing and inescapable Carbon Debt will have to be paid by our children, grandchildren and future generations. The damage-related Carbon Price is about $200 per tonne CO2-equivalent but the global applied average is merely $2 per tonne CO2-equivalent. A general principle of national law and the Natural Law is that people are recompensed in full for damage done to them by others but this is rejected in relation to deadly Carbon Pollution by a greedy, fraudulent, corrupt, and traitorous Australian Mainstream (except notably for the science-informed and humane Australian Greens). Carbon Pollution from carbon fuel burning kills about 7 million people each year but the previous Coalition Government’s response to the IMF demand to adopt a modest $75 per tonne CO2-equivalent Carbon Price to save 4 million lives by 2030 was a simple “No”. The present climate criminal Labor Government ignores Australia’s huge exported greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution and supports over 100 new coal and gas extraction projects. Australia has 0.33% of the world’s population but its annual Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution is 5.4% of the World’s total annual GHG pollution. In the absence of requisite action (atmospheric pollution by GHGs is increasing at record high rates) the direst expert prediction is that 10 billion people will die this century in a worsening Climate Genocide en route to a sustainable population in 2100 of only 1 billion people.
(4). “Submission To Australian National Anti-Corruption Commission: Huge & Fraudulent University Fees Exposed”. Education is a basic human right and all education should be free for all. However the commodification and corporatizing of higher education has meant that free university education presently only obtains in about 25 countries. Australian universities charge impoverished local and overseas students hugely excessive tuition fees whereas Accredited Remote Learning (ARL) can deliver top quality, reading-based courses and accrediting examinations essentially for free. All societies and nations need to have a large complement of expert scholars and scientists for a variety of economic, health, national security and national prestige reasons – however why should impoverished, circa 20 year old undergraduate students have to pay for this? Tertiary education provision in Australia can be vastly cheaper off-campus than on-campus. Thus off-campus university education can be essentially cost-free by simply involving students reading prescribed texts and addressing other teaching materials, with qualifications established by expert accrediting examinations. This indeed was the de facto off-campus scheme during the Covid-19 Pandemic except that huge full fees were dishonestly applied to local and overseas students. The student debt from fees presently totals A$74 billion, a massive fraud perpetrated on Australian students, and indeed one of the biggest frauds in Australian history.
(5). Submission To Australian National Anti-Corruption Commission, NACC: Mainstream Media Lying”. Australian Mainstream media (MSM), including the publicly-funded ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation), and the dominant US Murdoch empire media have an appalling and ongoing record of lying by omission and lying by commission. Lying by omission is far, far worse than repugnant lying by commission because the latter at least permits public refutation and public debate (subject, of course, to the will of MSM gate-keepers). Democracy ideally requires an informed electorate but driven by ever-increasing wealth inequity Western democracies (including Australia) have become kleptocracies, plutocracies, Murdochracies. lobbyocracies, corporatocracies and dollarocracies in which Big Money corruptly purchases public perception of reality, votes, more political power and hence more private profit. Although individual journalists can have certain opinions and biases, lying by omission and lying by commission by media is fraud and corruption when perpetrated for personal gain, and treason when perpetrated in the interests of inimical foreign governments such as those of Apartheid Israel and pro-Apartheid America. Experience of Australian MSM mendacity over many decades instructs that the serious examples of fraud, corruption and treason in my 5 Submissions will be resolutely ignored by cowardly and mendacious Australian MSM presstitutes. Australia can be saved from fraudulent MSM in part by (a) publicly exposing and listing all MSM falsehoods on the Web, and (b) banning foreign MSM ownership.
KARACHI: The Apex Committee of the National Action Plan on Tuesday resolving to expel illegal foreign residents and take strict action against their businesses and properties, constituted a task force to scrutinize and do away with fake identity cards and business activities.
APP reported that the committee which met here under Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, also decided to widen the scope of ongoing action against illegal activities like drug smuggling, hoarding, smuggling of currency and eatables, illegal money transfer and power theft, a PM Office press release said.
Attended by Chief of Army Staff General Asim Munir, relevant federal ministers, provincial chief ministers and heads of civil and military law enforcement agencies, the Apex Committee decided that movement at the border would be subject to the passport and visa, in a view to document the processes.
The task force that would work under the interior ministry would help scrutinize the fake identity cards, businesses and properties in order to get rid of the same.
The participants of the meeting reviewed the internal security situation in the country with a view to overcome the challenges durably.
They resolved that despite all odds, the government would ensure implementation of the constitution and the law as per the public aspirations.
The forum reiterated that the use of force was only the state’s mandate and no individual or group would be allowed to use the same. Besides, there was no room for armed political organisations or groups and the people involved in such activities would be dealt away with strictly.
In the meeting, it was also highlighted that Islam was a religion of peace and the state would never allow anyone to interpret the religion just to serve own political interests.
The rights and religious freedom of the minorities were the component of Islam and Constitution of Pakistan and the state would ensure their provision.
The Apex Committee stressed that those spreading propaganda and disinformation should be dealt with strictly under cyber laws.
The participants were informed that technical procedures were being devised for the awareness and implementation of the laws, which were being promulgated keeping in view the observance of the law and the convenience of the people.
The forum reiterated its resolve that the principles of faith, unity and discipline would be followed in the true spirit and tireless efforts would be continued for the development of the country.
KARACHI: Caretaker Minister for Information and Broadcasting Murtaza Solangi on Tuesday categorically stated that all illegal immigrants, residing in Pakistan, would have to leave the country within 28 days, according to APP.
“All illegal immigrants have 28 days to leave Pakistan,” said the minister in a post on X formerly Twitter.
The decision regarding the illegal immigrants was taken by the National Apex Committee which met earlier in the da
KARACHI: The Interim government has decided to evict 1.1 million foreigners living illegally in the country because of their alleged involvement in funding, and facilitating terrorists and other illegal activities, as some 7 lacs Afghans have not renewed their proof of residence in Pakistan.
Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported that in the first phase, illegal residents, in the second phase, those with Afghan citizenship and in the third phase, those with proof of residence cards will be expelled.
“Illegally resident foreigners pose a serious threat to the security of Pakistan,” APP quoted a source privy to the development and added that the plan for eviction of illegally residing Afghan citizens has also been approved as this lot is involved in funding, facilitating, and smuggling terrorists whereas 7 lacs Afghans have not renewed their proof of residence in Pakistan.
It has been informed that in the first phase, illegal residents will be deported along with those who do not renew their visas.
In the second phase, those with Afghan citizenship will be deported, in the third phase, those with proof of residence cards will be deported.
The Ministry of Interior has prepared a plan in consultation with the stakeholders and the Afghan government.
In the meantime, the ministry has also issued directives to the concerned to compile a record of Afghans living without permits and prepare a transportation plan to bring them to the Afghan border.
In the second phase, those with Afghan citizenship will be deported, in the third phase, those with proof of residence cards will be deported.
The Ministry of Interior has prepared a plan in consultation with the stakeholders and the Afghan government.
In the meantime, the ministry has also issued directives to the concerned to compile a record of Afghans living without permits and prepare a transportation plan to bring them to the Afghan border.
A key function of state-corporate media is to keep the public pacified, ignorant and ill-equipped to disrupt establishment power.
Knowledge that sheds light on how the world operates politically and economically is kept to a minimum by the ‘mainstream’ media. George Orwell’s famous ‘memory hole’ from ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ signifies the phenomenon brilliantly. Winston Smith’s work for the Ministry of Truth requires that he destroys documents that contradict state propaganda:
When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.
— Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949, Penguin edition, 1982, p. 34
The interests of power, hinging on the domination of an ignorant population, are robustly maintained:
In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.
— Ibid., p. 36
As the Party slogan puts it:
Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
— Ibid., p. 31
In today’s fictional ‘democracies’, the workings of propaganda are more subtle. Notably, there is a yawning chasm between the rhetoric of leaders’ professed concern for human rights, peace and democracy, and the realpolitik of empire, exploitation and control.
As Declassified UKobserved earlier this year, the UK has planned or executed over 40 attempts to remove foreign governments in 27 countries since the end of the Second World War. These have involved the intelligence agencies, covert and overt military interventions and assassinations. The British-led coup in Iran 70 years ago is perhaps the best-known example; but it was no anomaly.
If we broaden the scope to British military interventions around the world since 1945, there are as many as 83 examples. These range from brutal colonial wars and covert operations to efforts to prop up favoured governments or to deter civil unrest, including British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1953, Egypt in the 1950s, Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011 (more on this below).
The criminal history of the US in terms of overthrowing foreign governments, or attempting to do so, was thoroughly documented by William Blum, author of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower.
These multiple invasions, coups and wars are routinely sold to the public as ‘humanitarian interventions’ by Western leaders and their propaganda allies of the ‘mainstream’ media.
A Feted War Criminal
Tony Blair, the arch British war criminal, is largely treated by the UK political and media classes as a wise elder statesman on domestic and world affairs. It sums up the way this country is run by a corrupt and blood-soaked establishment. Proving the point, the Financial Times recently tweeted:
Sir Tony Blair is back. Once vilified as a “war criminal” by some in Labour, his influence within the party is growing again under Sir Keir Starmer. The FT speaks to the former UK premier: https://on.ft.com/3PDkIpE
You’ve got to love the FT’s insistence on using ‘Sir’, as though that bestows some measure of respectability on a man who waged devastating wars of first resort in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Costs of War project, based at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, estimates that the total death toll in post-9/11 wars – including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen – could be at least 4.5-4.7 million. Blair is one of the Western leaders who shares complicity for this appalling death toll. That fact has been essentially thrown down the memory hole by propaganda outlets who welcome him with open arms.
Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark once explained how, following the 9/11 attacks, the US planned to ‘take out’ seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. It is remarkable that this testimony, and compelling footage, has never been deemed credible evidence by ‘mainstream’ media.
The notion that Blair was ‘once vilified’ as a war criminal – and let’s drop those quotation marks around ‘war criminal’ – as though that is no longer the case is ludicrous. In any case, what does the carefully selected word ‘vilify’ actually mean? According to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, it can mean two things:
1: to utter slanderous and abusive statements against: defame;
2: to lower in estimation or importance.
The FT would presumably like to implant in readers’ minds the idea that Blair has been unjustly accused of being a war criminal; that the suggestion is a slander. But Blair, along with Bush and the Cheney gang, was one of the chief accomplices behind the mass terrorist attack on Iraq in 2003. It was the ‘supreme international crime’, judged by the standards of the Nuremberg trials held after the Second World War.
The accompanying FT photograph of a supposedly statesman-like ‘Sir’ Tony Blair was overlaid with a telling quote:
[Britain’s] a country that is in a mess. We are not in good shape.
Unmentioned is that Blair had a large part to play in creating today’s mess in Britain. Other than his great crimes in foreign affairs, he is an ardent supporter of the destructive economic system blandly titled ‘neoliberalism’. He continued along the path laid down by Tory leader Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Indeed, when Thatcher was once asked what she regarded as her greatest achievement, she replied: ‘Tony Blair and New Labour’.
As for Blair, he has described Thatcher in glowing terms as ‘a towering political figure’ whose legacy will be felt worldwide. He added:
I always thought my job was to build on some of the things she had done rather than reverse them.
The current Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer – another ‘Sir’ and stalwart of the establishment – is unashamedly casting himself as a Blairite figure. They have even appeared in public together to ‘bask in each other’s reflected glory’, as one political sketch writer noted.
It says everything that Sir Keir Starmer, the UK’s former director of public prosecutions, is actively seeking to rehabilitate him.
That’s the same Starmer who helped smear his leftwing predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.
The ‘Unprovoked’ Invasion of Ukraine
The mass-media memory hole is proving invaluable in protecting the public from uncomfortable truths about Ukraine. Western leaders’ expression of concern for Ukraine is cover for their desire to see Russian leader Vladimir Putin removed from power and Russia ‘weakened’, as US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin admitted earlier this year. Austin was previously a board member of Raytheon Technologies, a military contractor, stepping down with a cool sum of $2.7 million to join the Biden administration: yet another example of the ‘revolving door’ between government and the ‘defence’ sector.
Australian political analyst Caitlin Johnstone noted recently that:
Arguably the single most egregious display of war propaganda in the 21st century occurred last year, when the entire western political/media class began uniformly bleating the word “unprovoked” in reference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Pointing out that the West ‘provoked’ Russia is not the same as saying that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was justified. In fact, we were clear in our first media alert following the invasion:
Russia’s attack is a textbook example of “the supreme crime”, the waging of a war of aggression.
As Noam Chomsky pointed out, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was totally unprovoked, but:
nobody ever called it “the unprovoked invasion of Iraq.” In fact, I don’t know if the term was ever used; if it was, it was very marginal. Now you look it up on Google, and hundreds of thousands of hits. Every article that comes out has to talk about the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Why? Because they know perfectly well it was provoked. That doesn’t justify it, but it was massively provoked.’
Bryce Greene, a media analyst with US-based Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), observed that US policy makers regarded a war in Ukraine as a desirable objective:
One 2019 study from the RAND Corporation—a think tank with close ties to the Pentagon—suggested that an effective way to overextend and unbalance Russia would be to increase military support for Ukraine, arguing that this could lead to a Russian invasion.
The rationale was outlined in a Wall Street Journalopinion piece by John Deni of the Atlantic Council, a US think tank with close links to the White House and the arms industry, headlined “The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine”. Greene summarised the logic:
Provoking a war would allow the US to impose sanctions and fight a proxy war that would grind Russia down. Additionally, the anti-Russian sentiment that resulted from a war would strengthen NATO’s resolve.
Greene added:
The consensus among policymakers in Washington is to push for endless conflict, no matter how many Ukrainians die in the process. As long as Russia loses men and material, the effect on Ukraine is irrelevant. Ukrainian victory was never the goal.
It’s just a well–documented fact that the US and its allies provoked this war in a whole host of ways, from NATO expansion to backing regime change in Kyiv to playing along with aggressions against Donbass separatists to pouring weapons into Ukraine. There’s also an abundance of evidence that the US and its allies sabotaged a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine in the early weeks of the war in order to keep this conflict going as long as possible to hurt Russian interests.
She continued:
We know that western actions provoked the war in Ukraine because many western foreign policy experts spent years warning that western actions would provoke a war in Ukraine.
But you will search in vain for substantive reporting of such salient facts and relevant history – see also this piece by FAIR – in ‘mainstream’ news media.
A recent interview with the influential US economist and public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs, former director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, highlighted just how serious these media omissions are in trying to understand what is going on in Ukraine. In a superb 30-minute exposition, Sachs presented vital truths, not least that:
I think the defining feature of American foreign policy is arrogance. And they can’t listen. They cannot hear red lines of any other country. They don’t believe they exist. The only red lines are American red lines.
He was referring here to Russia’s red-line plea to the West not to continue expanding NATO right up to its borders; something, as mentioned above, Western foreign policy experts have been warning about for more than three decades. Would Washington ever allow a Russian sphere of influence to extend to US borders, with Mexico and Canada under the ‘evil spell’ of the Kremlin? Of course not.
It’s pretty clear in early 2014 that regime change [in Ukraine] – and a typical kind of US covert regime change operation – was underway. And I say typical because scholarly studies have shown that, just during the Cold War period alone, there were 64 US covert regime change operations. It’s astounding.
What is also astounding, but entirely predictable, is that any such discussion is impermissible in ‘respectable’ circles.
Sachs described how the US reassured Ukraine after the Minsk II agreement in 2015, which was intended to bring peace to the Donbass region of Ukraine:
Don’t worry about a thing. We’ve got your back. You’re going to join NATO.
The role of Biden, then US Vice-President and now President, was to insist that:
Ukraine will be part of NATO. We will increase armaments [to Ukraine].
On 17 December 2021, Putin drafted a security agreement between Russia and the United States. Sachs read it and concluded that it was ‘absolutely negotiable’, adding:
Not everything is going to be accepted, but the core of this is NATO should stop the enlargement so we don’t have a war.
Sachs, who has long had high-level contacts within successive US administrations, then described an exchange he had over the telephone with the White House. ‘This war is avoidable’, he said. ‘Avoid this war, you don’t want a war on your watch.’
But the White House was emphatic it would give no commitment to stop enlargement. Instead:
No, no! NATO has an open-door policy [i.e. any country can supposedly join NATO.]
Sachs responded:
That’s a path to war and you knowit. You’ve gotto negotiate.
These people do not understand anything about diplomacy. Anything about reality. Their own diplomats have been telling them for 30 years this is a path to war.
Sachs also related how Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky was so taken aback when the Russian invasion began on 24 February 2022, that he started saying publicly, within just a few days, that Ukraine could be neutral; in other words, not join NATO. This was the essence of what Russia was seeking. But the Americans shut down that discussion, as Sachs went on to explain.
By March 2022, Ukrainian and Russian officials were holding negotiations in Turkey. Meanwhile, Naftali Bennett, who was then Israel’s Prime Minister, was making progress in mediating between Zelensky and Putin, as he described during a long interview on his YouTube channel. But, ultimately, the US blocked the peace efforts. Sachs paraphrased Bennett’s explanation as to why:
They [the US] wanted to look tough to China. They were worried that this could look weak to China.
Incredible! The US’s primary concern is to look strong to China, its chief rival in world affairs. This recalls the motivation behind the US dropping atomic bombs on Japan at the end of the Second World War as a show of might to the Soviet Union.
Infamously, Boris Johnson, then the British PM, travelled to Ukraine in April 2022, presumably under US directive, telling Zelensky not to negotiate with Russia.
If we had truly democratic, impartial news media, all these facts would be widespread across national news outlets. BBC News correspondents would continually remind viewers and listeners how the West provoked Russia, then blocked peace efforts. Instead, the memory hole is doing its job – inconvenient facts are disappeared -and we are bombarded with wall-to-wall propaganda about Russia’s ‘unprovoked’ invasion of Ukraine.
Libya: A Propaganda Masterclass
The memory-hole phenomenon is a huge factor in media coverage of Libya which, as we wrote last week, has suffered terribly in recent flooding and the collapse of two dams. The city of Derna was washed into the sea after 40cm of rain fell in twenty-four hours, leaving 20,000 people dead.
But vital recent history has been almost wholly buried by state-corporate media. In 2011, NATO’s attack on Libya essentially destroyed the state and killed an estimated 40,000 people. The nation, once one of Africa’s most advanced countries for health care and education, became a failed state, with the collapse of essential services, the re-emergence of slave markets and raging civil war.
The massive bombing, heavily involving the UK and France, had been enthusiastically championed (see our 2011 media alerts here and here) by Western politicians and state-corporate media, including BBC News, as a ‘humanitarian intervention’ to get rid of an ‘autocratic dictator’, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
The tipping point was the alleged threat of a massacre by Gaddafi’s forces in Benghazi. A senior government official serving under then Prime Minister, David Cameron, stated:
There was a very strong feeling at the top of this government that Benghazi could very easily become the Srebrenica of our watch. The generation that has lived through Bosnia is not going to be the “pull up the drawbridge” generation.
The reference was to the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in July 1995 by Bosnian Serb forces. The threat of something similar happening in Benghazi was a relentless theme across the airwaves and newspaper front pages. The Guardian, in line with the rest of the supposed ‘spectrum’ of British newspapers, promoted Cameron as a world-straddling statesman. The Arab Spring had ‘transformed the prime minister from a reluctant to a passionate interventionist.’ The paper dutifully helped his cause with sycophantic pieces such as the bizarrely titled, ‘David Cameron’s Libyan war: why the PM felt Gaddafi had to be stopped.’
In August 2011, serial Guardian propagandist Andrew Rawnsley responded to NATO’s overthrow of the Libyan government:
Libyans now have a chance to take the path of freedom, peace and prosperity, a chance they would have been denied were we to have walked on by when Muammar Gaddafi was planning his rivers of blood. Britain and her allies broadly got it right in Libya.
The BBC’s John Humphrys opined that victory had delivered ‘a sort of moral glow.’ (BBC Radio 4 Today, 21 October 2011)
There are myriad other examples from the Guardian and the rest of the ‘MSM’. The pathology of this propaganda blitz was starkly exposed by a 2016 report into the Libya war by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. The report summarised:
The result was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIL in North Africa.
As for the alleged threat of a massacre by Gaddafi’s forces in Benghazi, the repeated rationale for the intervention, the report commented:
the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence…Gaddafi’s 40-year record of appalling human rights abuses did not include large-scale attacks on Libyan civilians.’ (Our emphasis)
More on this, and the propaganda blitz that enabled NATO’s attack on Libya, can be found in our 2016 media alert, “The Great Libya War Fraud“.
Behind the rhetoric about removing a dictator was, of course, the underlying factor of oil; as it so often is in the West’s imperial wars. In 2011, Real News interviewed Kevin G. Hall, the national economics correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers, who had studied WikiLeaked material on Libya. Hall said:
As a matter of fact, we went through 251,000 [leaked] documents… Of those, a full 10 percent of them, a full 10 percent of those documents, reference in some way, shape, or form oil.’ (‘WikiLeaks reveals US wanted to keep Russia out of Libyan oil,’ The Real News, 11 May 2011)
British oil giants BP and Shell are returning to the oil-rich north African country just over a decade after the UK plunged it into chaos in its 2011 military intervention, which the British government never admitted was a war for oil.
There were additional ‘benefits’ to the West. As WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange explained in an interview with John Pilger, Hillary Clinton intended to exploit the removal of Gaddafi as part of her corporate-funded bid to become US president. Clinton was then US Secretary of State under President Barack Obama:
Libya’s war was, more than anyone else’s, Hillary Clinton’s war…who was the person who was championing it? Hillary Clinton. That’s documented throughout her emails [leaked emails published by WikiLeaks]’.
Assange added:
She perceived the removal of Gaddafi, and the overthrow of the Libyan state, something that she would use to run in the election for President.
You may recall Clinton’s gleeful response to the brutal murder of Gaddafi:
We came, we saw, he died.
Also, as Assange pointed out, the destruction of the Libyan state generated a catastrophe of terrorism and a refugee crisis, with many drowning in their attempts to cross the Mediterranean to Europe:
Jihadists moved in. ISIS moved in. That led to the European refugee and migrant crisis. Because, not only did you have people fleeing Libya, people then fleeing Syria, destabilisation of other African countries as the result of arms flows, the Libyan state itself was no longer able to control movement of people through it…. [Libya] had been effectively the cork in the bottle of Africa. So, all problems, economic problems, civil war in Africa – people previously fleeing those problems didn’t end up in Europe.
Very little of the above vital history and context to the recent catastrophic flooding in Libya is included in current ‘mainstream’ news reporting. At best, there is token mention. At worst, there is deeply deceitful and cynical rewriting of history.
A report on the Sky News website went about as far as is permissible in detailing the reality:
Libyans are worn down by years and years of poor governance many of which date back to 2011 and the NATO-backed ousting of the country’s autocratic dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, during the period which became known as the Arab Spring.
Gaddafi was killed and the country dived into instability with rival armed militias vying for power and territory.
An article for the BBC News Africa section gave an even briefer hint of the awful truth:
Libya has been beset by chaos since forces backed by the West’s NATO military alliance overthrew long-serving ruler Col Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011.
This was the only mention in the article of Western responsibility for the disaster. The shameful propaganda censorship was highlighted when the article was posted by the BBC Africa Twitter/X account. So many readers pointed out the glaring omissions that a Twitter/X warning of sorts appeared under the BBC’s tweet:
Readers added context they thought people might want to know.
Then:
Due to NATO intervention in Libya, several problems such as the lack of a unified government, the re-emergence of slave markets and collapse of welfare services have made the country unable to cope with natural disasters.
If such ‘context’ – actually, vital missing information – were to regularly appear under BBC tweets because of reader intervention, it would be a considerable public service; and a major embarrassment for the self-declared ‘world’s leading public service broadcaster’.
A major reason for the appalling death toll in the Libyan city of Derna was that two dams had collapsed, sending 30 million cubic metres of water into the city in ‘tsunami-like waves’. These dams were built in the 1970s to protect the local population. A Turkish firm had been contracted in 2007 to maintain the dams. This work stopped after NATO’s 2011 bombing campaign. The Turkish firm left the country, their machinery was stolen and all work on the dams ended. This was mentioned briefly in a recent Guardianarticle, but NATO’s culpability was downplayed and it certainly did not generate the huge headlines across the ‘MSM’ that it warranted.
Further crucial context was also blatantly flushed down the media’s memory hole: NATO had deliberately destroyed Libya’s water infrastructure in 2011. Investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed reported in 2015:
The military targeting of civilian infrastructure, especially of water supplies, is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Yet this is precisely what NATO did in Libya, while blaming the damage on Gaddafi himself.
Ros Atkins, who has acquired a huge profile as an expert ‘explainer’, with the moniker ‘BBC News Analysis Editor’, narrated a video for the BBC News website ‘on the floods in Libya – and the years of crisis there too.’ Once again, NATO’s appalling role in the 2011 destruction of the country was glossed over. The BBC’s ‘explanation’ explained virtually nothing.
Meanwhile, the Guardian ran a wretched editorial which is surely one of the worst Orwellian rewritings of history it has ever published:
Vast fossil fuel reserves and regional security objectives have encouraged foreign powers to meddle in Libya.
As noted above, that was emphatically not the story in 2011 when the Guardian propagandised tirelessly for ‘intervention’. The editorial continued:
Libyans have good reason to feel that they have been failed by the international community as well as their own leaders.
In fact, they were also failed by Guardian editors, senior staff, columnists and reporters who did so much to sell ‘Cameron’s war’ on Libya. Nowhere in the editorial is NATO even mentioned.
And beneath this appalling, power-serving screed was a risible claim of reasons for supporting the Guardian:
Our fearless, investigative journalism is a scrutinising force at a time when the rich and powerful are getting away with more and more, in Europe and beyond.
This assertion is an audacious reversal of truth from one of the worst perpetrators of memory-hole journalism in the Western world.
Monday, September 11, 2023 marked the 22nd Anniversary of the NYC 9/11, a day of global mourning, the beginning, or activation, of a crime of biblical proportions like never before in history remembered. Activation stands for onslaught of a colossal War on Humanity. What the small supremacist elite calls War on Terror is nothing less than an endless war on mankind. A war waged by a death cult. The preparation for the war started decades or probably hundred-plus years before.
Two planes hitting the twin towers of the NYC World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11, 2001 – probably remote-controlled – because most pilots admit this kind of close-curved maneuver necessary to hit the towers was impossible to carry out by a pilot.
The world was told the perpetrators were a group of some 12 Saudi terrorists. An outright lie. One of the first ones – to be followed by countless others – all in the name of instilling fear to control mankind, to eventually upgrade the war to a killing machine – leading onto the infamous UN Agenda 2030, alias the Great Reset, and the all-digitizing, QR-code -crowned Fourth Industrial Revolution, what Klaus Schwab, WEF’s founder and CEO proudly claims as his brainchild.
Who else could come up with a new world order based on linearism, digitalized transhumanism, 180-degrees opposite of what life, the universe is – an infinite multitude of dynamism – life in multiple dimensions, evolving naturally as a cog in the universe’s endless wheel?
Right there on NYC’s 9/11, more than 3000 people were killed. Thousands more followed in the immediate aftermath.
The third building that collapsed a day later – seemingly out of the blue – was apparently ripe with documented evidence of the crime. Almost silence by the media.
And to this day, nobody knows what happened to the people on the plane that apparently crashed into an open field in Pennsylvania. No debris and no people were ever found. Here too, no media coverage, no investigation – just destined to be forgotten.
What happened to the dozens of policemen and firefighters who were near the WTC towers and in their basements, reporting on hearing explosions underground and in the lower strata of the extremely solid constructions just before they collapsed in the well-known style of purposeful city demolition techniques? Most of them were never seen again. “Victims” of the accident?
Overall, since the NYC-9/11 millions of people were killed in the aftermath of the trigger to the so-called war on terror, which, in fact, was meant to be — and is — a war on humanity.
The onslaught of wars began. The US invasion of Afghanistan, barely a month after the suspected auto-coup of the 9/11 Twin Towers implosion. The pretext was Osama Bin Laden, an Al Qaeda CIA recruit, who, the George W. Bush Administration lied, having orchestrated the 9/11 attack from Afghanistan, had to be eliminated by invading the mountainous and resources-rich Afghanistan landlocked in the center of Asia.
Al Qaeda was a CIA creation of the late 1980’s, already then as an instrument to justify the coming war on terror.
True reasons for invading Afghanistan were several: The Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India Gas Pipeline, also known as Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline, or TAPI Pipeline, was to bring natural gas from the world’s second largest gas fields in Galkynysh, Turkmenistan, discharging 33 billion cubic meters of gas per year to the Gulf of India. Washington wanted control over this largest gas transit, potentially disrupting US petrol giants market dominance.
The ever-closer relations between Afghanistan and China were a thorn in the eyes for US political supremacy, and finally the extreme mineral riches especially rare earths, vital for production of electronics and chips used for military equipment as well as for multiple civilian uses.
Afghanistan was the first “leg” on the endless “War on Terror”.
The Afghanistan invasion was followed by the May 2003 Iraq invasion, one of the hydrocarbon richest countries in the Middle East, with a leader, Saddam Hussein, who was at the point of defying OPEC rules of trading hydrocarbons in US-dollars only. Saddam wanted to trade Iraq’s hydrocarbons in Euros. Iraq was also labeled an al Qaeda terrorist country.
A “Shock and Awe” attack should eliminate the country’s leader and bring Iraq to her knees before the almighty US of A. By now we know that it did not exactly happen that way. It was probably also planned as an endless war.
Iraq – another “War on Terror” – emanating from the 9/11 auto-attack.
Syria. From 2011 forward Washington’s secret service created a “civil war” applying the principle of divide to conquer. In September 2014 the conflict culminated in the US intervening, siding with the [US-created] Syrian rebels, fighting the Islamic State, the so-called “Operation Inherent Resolve” in what was labeled international war against the Islamic State.
In truth, Washington wanted to get rid of the highly popular and democratically elected Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad. Again, the interest was control over the large Syrian oil and mineral resources.
Also, under the flag of “War on Terror”.
Coincidentally – though, there are no coincidences – the Ukraine war also started in [February] 2014, by the US instigated coup against the democratically elected Viktor Yanukovych. Remember Victoria Nuland’s recorded phone conversation with the US Ambassador in Kiev – “f**k Europe”? And the recent admission by NATO boss, Jens Stoltenberg, that the Ukraine War started already in 2014?
Other US-initiated wars and conflicts followed. In Sudan in 2006 / 2007 after the broken Darfur Peace Agreement; in Pakistan in 2011 under the pretext and on the heels of several targeted killings in Karachi, leaving hundreds of people dead. US presence never left the country, as Pakistan was attempting establishing closer relations with China.
To the “war on terror” may also be counted the October 2011 US / French / NATO lynching of Libyan President, Muammar Gaddafi, leaving the country as of this day in a state of constant civil strife and mafia-like killings and enslavement of refugees. Gaddafi was about to introduce the Gold Dinar as a unified currency for Africa to liberate Africa from French and US/K currency exploitation.
The NYC 9/11 was — and is — a war instrument that until this day has not been fully recognized as what it was supposed to be – a precursor to possibly the planned final phase for civilization as we know it, the UN Agenda 2030, alias The Great Reset, leading to the full digitization of humanity into transhumanism and simply a One World Order (OWO), run by full control via digitization of everything, complemented with Artificial Intelligence (AI).
It is the plan. A scary plan, a plan with the purpose of instilling fear. Thus, it is hoped, making the population defenseless against a tyrannical take-over.
This plan will not materialize.
Lest we forget, it is important to point out that there was another 9/11 “event” 50 years back that took place in Chile. It also killed instantly hundreds of people, and over the following 16 years, until General Pinochet’s demise in March 1990, tens of thousands of people disappeared and were killed.
The purpose of the US-instigated and Henry Kissinger executed military coup in Chile was to get rid of the “uncomfortable” democratically elected, socialist-leaning, President Salvador Allende so that the United States could implement and test a “Chicago Boys” designed neoliberal economic system to run an entire country. Later to be repeated throughout Latin America, a remedy to make sure Latin America would keep their US “Backyard” status, for a long time to come.
The “Chicago Boys” were a group of Chilean and international economists, most of whom were educated in the 1970s and 1980s by arch-conservative Milton Friedman at the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago.
Also, not to forget, the major coup planner and instigator, was the then Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, under Richard Nixon’s presidency. Kissinger later received the Nobel Peace Prize for his alleged peace efforts in the Vietnam war which he also “directed”, and following his ordered bombing of Cambodia and Laos to bloody rubble with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of deaths. Remember the infamous “Killing Fields” in Cambodia? Well, that was also Henry Kissinger, arguably the most notorious war criminal still alive.
Earlier this year, Henry Kissinger turned 100. This could be natural old age, or it could be old age enhanced by adrenochrome.
Is it sheer coincidence that the Santiago Chile and the NYC Nine-Eleven massacres are exactly 50 years apart? A half a century.
There are no coincidences. Just connecting the dots.
As a reminder 911 is the emergency-call number in the United States. That is hardly a coincidence.
Kissinger is a close buddy, ally and advisor of Klaus Schwab, CEO of the controversial World Economic Forum (WEF). As of this day, Kissinger’s advice is sought by leaders around the world.
In July 2023, Kissinger was received by China’s President Xi Jinping, who apparently greeted Kissinger with a comment, “old friends” like him will never be forgotten. The irony is subtle. The US-initiated meeting was apparently meant to mend frayed ties between Washington and Beijing.
A tremendous attribute for President Xi. He is always open for initiatives potentially leading to improved relations, harmony, and peace.
Back to NYC-9/11
What we, especially the western world’s humanity, currently are living is a colossal crime never seen and recorded before in known history.
After 9/11 for many, and for a long time for most, flying has become a nightmare and a huge business for a few. The long security lines, the manual checking – often more reminiscent of groping – of passengers, who often for some medical reasons, have a hard time passing through the control machines without the red-light flashing.
The first US Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge and associates, became insanely rich by launching the manufacturing of the airport security machines that were imposed worldwide, and which are being constantly upgraded.
Backtracking
9/11 sparked “wars on terror” – alias on humanity — that may have had several phases of activation.
The Club of Rome, first unofficially meeting in 1956 in Rome, was formally created in 1968 as an initiative of David Rockefeller with Aurelio Peccei, Alexander King and Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, founder and President of Africa’s Agang party, and others.
The Club of Rome issued in 1972 the infamous report “Limits to Growth” (LTG), arguing against continued economic and population growth, setting the first marks for a massive eugenist agenda, a population reduction down to about 500 million people from today’s 8 billion-plus, a reduction of about 95%.
Dennis Meadows, one of the main authors of the Club of Rome’s “The Limits of Growth”, is a member of the World Economic Forum. He propagates as of this day massive population reduction. See this.
This eugenist plan is as of this day the blueprint for what we are living. It is the core for UN Agenda 2030, the Great Reset and All-digitization.
From it was born covid, the worldwide coercive vaxx mandate, possibly more lab-made “viruses” to come, as well as the climate change hoax, justifying geoengineering of weather, causing droughts, floods, never-seen-before hurricanes and tornadoes, Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) caused forest and other fires, like the destruction of Lahaina on Maui, and others – all bringing about poverty, famine, misery, and death.
Closing the circle with NYC’s 9/11 setting the stage 22 years ago.
There is no waiting. We must resist with heart and soul and peaceful spirits. We shall never forget 9/11 and what it triggered, and we shall overcome.
Since 9/11, US wars have become widespread, everyday affairs that most Americans know next to nothing about. The largest wars like Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have a limited place in public consciousness, but the dozens of secret operations taking place across the planet are alien to most of us. How does the war machine work today, and how do government, the media, and new technologies help to obscure war from the public? Norman Solomon tackles these questions on The Marc Steiner Show in a discussion around his new book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.
Studio / Post-Production: David Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us.
I want to share a quote with you that really popped in my head after finishing reading War Made Invisible, by Norman Solomon, How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine. And as I introduce Norman to us all once again, think about this: America has been at war for 93% of our time of existence on this planet, 231 years out of 247 years, as a nation, since 1776. That means that only 20 years since the birth of this nation have we been at peace. Why is that? Who are we? Why do these wars keep taking place, and now wars are even more dangerous than they ever were because we don’t see them, feel them, or hear them, which is what Norman Solomon writes about in huge detail and graphically for us to understand where we sit.
The book again, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine. Norman, welcome back. Good to have you with us.
Norman Solomon:
Thanks, Marc.
Marc Steiner:
So you’ve written about war many times before but there’s something that really struck me as I read this book and finished it again which is how insidious the war machine has become, even since my time during the Vietnam War or my father’s time in World War II. There’s an insidiousness into the way it is hidden from us and how much more powerful and horrendous it’s become.
Norman Solomon:
Insidious is a good word. It has worked its way into, you might say, the wallpaper of the media echo chambers. It’s ironic that media technology now has a capacity to convey to us, at least within the limits of any technology, the ways in which wars harm human beings and cause such desolation and such suffering. So with better technology than ever, we get less and less. And that’s driven by who dominates and controls the technology and the fact that as these wars have gone on in this century, they’ve become more and more abstracted. There are fewer and fewer so-called boots on the ground. We’re above it all, literally and figuratively, bombing from the air, sending drones from many thousands of miles away. So the end result is that these abstractions become more and more acute, even as the military-industrial media complex makes killing more and more so-called normal.
Marc Steiner:
I was going to wait till later to say this but I wanted to throw it out here early because I thought you very profoundly addressed it in your books, especially towards the end of the book, which is how we see it in some places and we don’t see it in other places. We might see it in Europe, we might see it in Ukraine, but we don’t see it, whether it was our wars in Afghanistan or Iraq or what we’ve done all throughout and continue to do all throughout the continent of Africa, and how race and racism is tied into all this and winds its way through in the wars that grip all the people who are involved.
Norman Solomon:
I think of it as a series of Venn diagrams: The overlays where there are these factors that determine largely whether, as people in the US through US media, we see, hear, and read about wars in terms of empathetic graphic detail or not. One is race. As you mentioned and has really occurred to me in the course of writing this book, racism has had so much of an effect on US foreign policy and military intervention and yet we hear virtually nothing about that in mass media, certainly not from politics in Washington. Whereas when you think about it, the last few years, because of the wonderful movements that have consolidated behind Black Lives Matter and so forth, structural racism, systemic racism, is being talked about, not enough, but a lot more. And yet, that discourse exists only about domestic policy.
And something that stunned me as I was working on this book was to realize that in the more than 20 years of the so-called War on Terror, the victims of US firepower around the world have been virtually all people of color. It’s hidden in plain sight. And when I realized that and wrote a whole chapter in the book about it, when the book came out, I sent a little op-ed to a number of daily newspapers and they all rejected it and what struck me is I’ve never read a piece to that effect. It’s not like I was saying stuff that had been repeated before. So, this is almost a taboo subject.
And then when you overlay that with the nationalism, the jingoism, and the ideology out of Washington, when the designated enemies of the US kill people in war, such as Russians slaughtering people in Ukraine, that is empathetically reported. But when the US has slaughtered people in Afghanistan or Iraq, another big power invading another country illegally, very little empathy.
Marc Steiner:
I’m going to have to read this one thing, one of the quotes. You have many powerful quotes in this, we’ll get to a few of them in the course of our conversation. But you have this one from Kelebogile Zvobgo and Meredith Loken and I want to read it to give the perspective on what you’re saying. The quote is, “Race is not a perspective on international relations; it’s a central organizing feature of world politics… And today race shapes threat perception and responses to violent extremism, inside and outside the ‘war on terror.’ Yet one cannot comprehend world politics while ignoring the race and racism. Race continues to shape our international and domestic threat perceptions.”
And that really is key. What’s happening in Ukraine is horrendous. What’s happening across many places but we don’t have the same empathetic structure as when it happens anywhere in the continent of Africa or in Asia or in Latin America. And much of the media backing what America does or ignoring those conflicts, unless they happen in Europe, exasperates the racism that grips this world.
Norman Solomon:
When you overlay the factors of personal, institutional racism for us foreign policy and warfare with the agendas of the geopolitical power of corporate-driven US foreign policy and access to raw materials, geopolitical positioning and all that, you get a great example of that, a very sad and horrible one.
When you think about if you drive around your neighborhood, certainly around mine, and this is the case in so much of the US, you will see Ukrainian flags displayed in solidarity with the people being bombed and strafed and murdered by the invading force, the Russian force. And I’m all for that.
Marc Steiner:
Absolutely, right.
Norman Solomon:
And I’m all for the empathetic US media coverage of the people in Ukraine. The spin, the political lack of historical context and so forth, that’s another matter. But in terms of the suffering on the ground in Ukraine, and that has caused this outpouring of emotion and support, including the display of Ukrainian flags, okay, that’s part of what being human should be, empathizing, what journalism should be.
I can’t find in my neighborhood, and I’m not aware of anywhere in the US, a display of Yemeni flags. People in Yemen have been slaughtered with US government support since 2015, under three presidencies. You had under Obama, then Trump, then Biden. There’s a bit of a ceasefire now but for seven or eight years the killing of people with US government active support, shipping of billions of dollars worth of arms sales to Saudi Arabia leading the killing in Yemen, the UN saying almost 400,000 people have died in that war, the largest cholera epidemic in human history. How can it be that the US, as a country, as a people, as media are so empathetic towards people invaded and killed in Ukraine but not in Yemen? And that is a clear instance of how corrupted, how morally corrosive this environment is for us, personally and politically, and in terms of media coverage.
Marc Steiner:
I’m curious. As I read your book, and especially after I finished it, thinking about all the things you posited… Let me give one of the stats here and talk about what you think is happening and why it has happened this way because war has always been part of humankind. I can’t think of a period of human history where it has not existed but we are reaching a point now where it could literally destroy the place we live, this entire planet.
And you write how we spent $50 billion a year over the last 20 years, that’s $2.1 trillion going to five firms: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. The sheer size of the amount of money that we spend on war and preparing for war and it’s war that’s not like the war that people saw that were troops on the ground; This is a war that’s unseen. And now you couple that with the world of artificial intelligence and how that is beginning to even expand the notion of war without boots on the ground. So tell me what you think that dynamic together means for us now and where do you think that takes us?
Norman Solomon:
I think it means for us and it takes us further into a realm, a status quo, a so-called normality, where the more ubiquitous the power of the military industrial complex is, the less it’s talked about and the less it’s objected to. I think of how then-senator Harry Truman during World War II gained a lot of acclaim for chairing hearings on Capitol Hill as a senator, investigating what was very derisively, critically called war profiteering. And I really can’t remember any uproar in recent years in the US throughout the entire so-called war on terror, about war profiteering. As you mentioned, a few corporations making a killing, literally and figuratively, by increasingly selling aerospace products of one or another, but all tools of the trade of the killing industry. And yet, we get virtually no critical coverage.
Even on Capitol Hill among progressives, there is talk about, yes, the military budget is too high. But we are not hearing about that very essence, the core of the military-industrial complex, which is much more pervasive and much more powerful even since then-outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower coined the term in 1961.
Marc Steiner:
The military-industrial complex, right?
Norman Solomon:
Yes, the military-industrial complex.
Marc Steiner:
There’s so much in this book. It’s jam-full of interesting analysis that you put into all of this. For me, there’s a real question here about the world we are entering and what you think the response can be and how it can be developed. Because one of the things, the Vietnam War… And I started reading some more about the Vietnam War and media after reading your book. And while much of the media went along with the war and glorified the war, it also exposed the war at the same time which meant to expose the American public and the rising numbers of people who were opposed to the Vietnam War.
But I wonder, given where we are now, how do you think you begin to build a movement that’s truly against the wars that we propagate around the world and the wars that our children are going to face? Where do you think this takes us? And how do you think we address it and oppose it and stop it?
Norman Solomon:
It seems to me that a foundation for any powerful movement is realism, not fatalism. On the contrary, willingness and eagerness to challenge the status quo and make the world a whole lot better, turn around these horrible, terrible trends, but a realism that says we must do all we can to make the world better for the next generations, and in the case of the nuclear age now, make the world possible.
And so I think of a couple of quotes. One is from Antonio Gramsci, the great anti-fascist imprisoned under Mussolini, who talked about the need for what he called “pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.” So on the one hand, the realism, no sugarcoating like we get so often from mass media, unfortunately from the Biden Administration, about the status quo. Sugarcoating is not going to do it. We need a pessimism of the intellect, as Gramsci called it, and optimism of the will, which we could refer to as a determination, insistence. This is humanity that has to galvanize our own creative life-affirming power.
And another quote that comes to mind is one that I actually close this book on from James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” That as a foundation, and then we have to organize like crazy. And that has many components. I’m sometimes asked, what is the thing that all of us should do? And my answer is, there’s nothing that all of us should do. We need to build and create and grow movements the way we’d have a healthy forest. We don’t say, “Well, we just need a lot of good trees,” or, “We need a lot of good ground cover or soil.” We need all the above and so much more.
And so in a nutshell, I think a healthy movement of course has to sustain and support much more effectively independent alternative progressive media, certainly the Real News among the outlets that are vital. We’ve got to support what exists, not take anything for granted, and find ways to greatly expand the power of media and communications, local, regional, international, and make communication not vertical but horizontal so we can really organize.
And then the last point I would make, which is broad, but I think absolutely crucial. We have to organize, we have to put more resources, time, energy, thought and cooperation into how we can counter the power of the military industrial complex bringing us the specter of nuclear annihilation and this climate emergency that is so terrible and ominous for future generations, and we have to run counter to our training because our training through mass media and political culture is to be passive. The corporate media really just encourages us to buy things and maybe vote once in a while. We need to turn that around and really make change from the grassroots.
Marc Steiner:
I’m going to put this in perspective a bit. You have this great quote in here from the Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Iraq Family Health Survey that I covered, and it talks about that the casualties in the war, almost 4,500 Americans killed, 32,000 wounded. It’s the post-war, the cost of almost $1 trillion worth of care for veterans. But then this quote, “The foregoing cost could conceivably be justified if the Iraq intervention had improved the United States’ strategic position in the Middle East, but this clearly is not the case. The Iraq war has strengthened anti-US elements and made the position in the United States and its allies more precarious.”
Now, clearly that’s a kind of pro-American Defense Department statement on one level, but on the other hand, it really exposes, in not enough depth, what these wars have done in terms of helping create the terrorism, the dysfunction, the failed states, and the authoritarianism across the planet. And that’s the connection people don’t make I think.
Norman Solomon:
That was a quote yes, from the Center for American Progress aligned by the Clinton clan 10 years into the Iraq war, and they were simply totting up the balance sheet. They were saying basically, as I write in the book, the war was a flop. They thought it would be great for US power in the Middle East and so forth. It hasn’t panned out that way. So they do the calculus of was the war worth it in strictly monetary terms, in terms of geopolitical power? And even on its own terms, these wars, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the century from the US, they haven’t been successful. At the same time, Raytheon, Boeing, other huge military contractors, they never lose a war.
And so just as with the horrible war going on in Ukraine right now with refusal to engage in genuine diplomacy from Washington or from Moscow, the arms dealers, they’re just doing great. I mean, this is a war that is a dream for the military industrial complex of the US of 2023 and beyond. They just see billions of dollars of profits.
And looking at it just from a macrocosm, this is a system that is insane. Daniel Ellsberg, in his last and just such a vital book, The Doomsday Machine, quotes Nietzsche, the philosopher, who says that, “Madness in individuals is rare, but madness in nations and governments is routine.” And I think we’re coming to the extreme of that where diplomacy has become a dirty word in the United States and the double standards, what Orwell would call the doublethink that we’ve been talking about, is so ingrained that we have a kind of an atmosphere now politically and in media in terms of US militarism that I would compare to what happened in the months after 9/11 and happened during the McCarthy era.
Yes, this is a different point in history, but the squelching of real challenge and open debate about US militarism is really extreme and it’s part of our challenge, as we were talking about a couple of minutes ago, to build movements just to say, we’re going to create new dialogue, we’re going to ask key questions because we know that the questions being framed right now are suicidal and omnicidal globally. These are questions that are mainstream, like, how do we defeat the Russians? How do we counter the Chinese threat in the South China Sea, for instance, without asking why does the South China Sea have its middle name? It’s called the South China Sea because it’s pretty close to China.
And here we have the United States that has proclaimed, and we started out, you were talking Marc, I think quite rightly, about how almost the entire history of the United States has engaged, been involved in some kind of warfare. The Monroe Doctrine, from the very beginning, we get to run this hemisphere. Now that’s not enough. We need to also say that the surrounding area of China, Chinese military vessels are a threat. I mean, this is this sort of hubris and arrogance that is normalized coming from the power centers in Washington. Unless we break that mold and shatter that acceptance of such suicidal, global, omnicidal approaches, we will be stuck in what Martin Luther King Jr. called the Madness of Militarism.
Marc Steiner:
And that last quote, I’ve been thinking about that a lot given that we are at the 60th anniversary of The March on Washington. I’ve been contemplating his words a lot recently and what those struggles were like then.
But one of the things I think I really want to raise with you and talk to you about when it comes to this is you really lay out the devastation that these wars have created in the countries where we’ve launched these wars, Afghanistan, Iraq, what’s happening in Yemen and more, the deaths, the complete disruption of society that’s taken place.
And we are also in a time, as I said earlier, and I really want to probe this with you because I know you think about this a great deal and it comes out in the book, which is the last war that really affected masses of people in this country that we fought as a nation was Vietnam. And since then, there’s been a great disconnect between the American populace, between our consciousness, and the wars we fight. And it’s an odd twist because it also is entangled in all of our struggles and the draft. What we’ve done in some respects is create a professional army that is disconnected from the rest and one that is deeply connected to war, to remote war, and the devastation its causing.
That’s what I kept thinking about as I was reading your book, is that we’ve come into a really much more dangerous place when it comes to global hegemony and war and the disconnect we all feel from it.
Norman Solomon:
The disconnect has become much more severe even while the risks have become more extreme. Nuclear superpowers based in Moscow and Washington, increasingly in conflict. It’s the Doomsday Clock from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the closest it’s ever been, I think 90 seconds now, to apocalyptic midnight. And yet there’s sort of a sleepwalking towards catastrophe that independent progressive media outlets such as this one and social movements have got to directly challenge.
The reality is that as much as we are told the United States is an exceptional nation, the indispensable nation, actually just indispensable to itself as I say in the book, the reality is we live on a globe that is spherical. What goes around comes around. We’ve learned that with the climate emergency, we’ve learned that with COVID. It’s a sort of a derangement, this kind of US bravado, this jingo narcissism that exempts us, we think or we’re told we should think or assume, from the realities that we’re on this one human planet, this one planet together with human beings.
And so what goes around does come around, and that underscores that just because there are a few boots on the ground now in other countries and missile strikes, drone attacks and so forth are more and more central to US warfare doesn’t mean we are at war, and people at the other end of the missiles and bombs, they know that we are at war. They are being besieged, they are being sacrificed by people who vote appropriations on Capitol Hill and will never know their names or see their faces.
And then another part of what goes around comes around is the savage attacks on US budgets, the escalating military spending while, whether you’re in Baltimore, San Francisco, or anywhere else in this country, you’re not far from places where people are grievously suffering from lack of adequate healthcare, education, housing, infant care, elderly care. That is a reality. That’s part of what the militarized society brings to people and takes away from human lives.
I think about how, as you mentioned, Marc, in the last few days, justifiably, there’s been a lot of media coverage of the 60th Anniversary of The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the beautiful “I Have a Dream” speech. Four years later, Martin Luther King gave his speech at Riverside Church beyond Vietnam where he called the United States the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet. I’m afraid that, overall in this century, has still been true. One of the things that he said, which is virtually never mentioned in mass media, is that out-of-control military spending, then as now, in ’67, he said that, “That spending is,” and I’m quoting here, “a destructive demonic suction tube taking away just the vital resources to sustain life in our own country.” And so that demonic suction tube is with us right now, and it’s part of the invisibility of war and living in a warfare state.
Marc Steiner:
As you said that, and in all kinds of thread that runs through your book is the human cost of war that you have seen in your own travels to different parts of the globe, the cost it is to this country and our own future with dystopian poverty coursing its way through every major urban and rural area of our country, and I think that that’s something that really most Americans are not aware of in terms of what we spend and what we are doing with federal money and what could be done to keep everyone afloat in America. I mean, I think that’s the imbalance that’s part of, to me, is part of the subtext of your book.
Norman Solomon:
One of the realities is that the proportion of discretionary spending from the federal government on the military keeps going up. It’s now about 55% of discretionary spending that Congress votes and the President signs. That’s going to the military, the Pentagon, nuclear weapons and so forth.
As you mentioned that, Marc, one thing comes to mind that is a tough political nut to crack, so to speak. And yet I think it’s a challenge, but we got to look at it. And that is when you consider US foreign policy, with the exception of climate change and so forth, it’s very difficult to find substantive differences between the so-called leadership of the Democratic and Republican Party, say, on Capitol Hill. They’re both on the war train. They both want to drive the war train. They might disagree on how much military aid should go to Ukraine without diplomacy, but very few voices calling for diplomacy. They may disagree on exactly how much resources should be diverted from the Ukraine War to confronting China. Republicans tend to want to shift more of the hostility towards China, but there is a virtual consensus from both parties on Capitol Hill about US militarism.
And then you get to domestic policy and the Republican Party is neofascist, and it is ridiculous for anyone to claim that there’s not a significant difference between the Republican and Democratic parties on domestic policy. We have a neoliberal Democratic Party in domestic policy, and we have a neofascist Republican Party on domestic policy.
And so for progressives, I think we’re going to be facing, we’re already facing this dilemma, this terrible knot to try to untie or cut through in some way, whether it’s a Gordian Knot or not, I don’t know, but basically we have these two parties that are so similar in foreign policy and so diametrically, or at least so profoundly different under the circumstances, on domestic policy. It’s not to praise Democrats, of course. Bernie Sanders is right. There’s so much wrong with the Democratic Party, but to inflate the two for domestic policy is ridiculous, out of touch with reality. And yet, we have to somehow square this circle because we’re coming into an election year.
Marc Steiner:
I was thinking, I’m going to close with this, it made me think of this as I finished your book. I actually, I’m going to get some copies, several copies of your book, and send them to my grandsons and why? All three of them are in the military. And I remember going in saying to myself, when they were going in, saying to myself, “They’re all going into,” what I called at the moment, “the intellectual ends of the service.” They’re not going to be “in combat.” But then I realized, stepping back in my own analysis, that they’re all going to be in combat because that’s where combat’s going.
Norman Solomon:
That’s a great point. I mean, I have friends who have been in the military and they were behind computer consoles in the United States, and the people they were targeting were pixels on the screen.
Marc Steiner:
Not human beings on the ground. I mean, I think the way you put it in part of the book is near the end of the book when you talked about how we know intimately the lives of so many people who were killed in the 9/11 attacks on this country, who they were, what they did, what their hobbies were, their families, what they left behind. But we don’t know anything about the human beings or the intimacy of the lives of the human beings that we have been part of killing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, or any other part of the globe.
Norman Solomon:
One of the most powerful parts of the book to me, maybe the most powerful, involves the interview I did with Daniel Ellsberg, the great activist, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower a couple of years ago. And I sat with Dan Ellsberg on the porch next to his house, and he talked about exactly that point that you’re making, Marc. He said that he was really struck after 9/11 how the New York Times devoted tremendous journalistic resources to finding pictures and researching about the lives of everybody who was killed on 9/11, these little pictures, and would have a few words about, as Dan said, insight into what made them human. They liked to skydive or they were golfers or they were pianists, just to convey that they were really human beings whose lives were extinguished by this horrible act of mass murder that we call 9/11.
And then Dan went on to say, “This could have been done after the Shock and Awe Attack on Baghdad after US troops arrived in the capitol of Iraq.” He said, “It would’ve been possible to find the names and find pictures of people who had been killed by the US attack on their city.” And then he paused and he said, “Of course, nothing like that ever happened. Nothing like that would happen from the New York Times.”
Marc Steiner:
And that’s true. That was a great quote. He was a great human being. One of my great pleasures in my life is meeting him numerous times and doing interviews with him. He had so much to teach us about where we’ve come from and where we’re going. And I know you two were very close.
Norman Solomon:
Dan used to say, and he would convey this in many ways, he appreciated being told that he inspired people, and then he would pause and he would say words to the effect, “Most important, what are you inspired to do?”
Marc Steiner:
Exactly, exactly. I was thinking about what you were just saying as well. I knew a number of people who were killed in the 9/11 attacks, and I have a number of friends who are Iraqi-Americans and Afghan-Americans now whose families were killed in Shock and Awe and killed in the wars in Afghanistan, two of the most unnecessary wars that ever existed in this country’s history, modern history anyway. The other wars made little sense either, but I think that you kind of made me think maybe it’d be interesting to have a conversation between all those people.
Norman Solomon:
Absolutely.
Marc Steiner:
About war.
Norman Solomon:
Yeah, yeah. The poet William Stafford, who I quote in the book, he wrote a poem called Every War Has Two Losers, and one side usually, or often, suffers much more than the other, but war is so corrosive. There’ve been times in my life, and I think for a whole lot of people, even if we’ve worked on war issues, well, I’ve wanted to think, “Well, I don’t think I really want to focus on that anymore. There’s so much else to work on.” And of course there is. There’s so many multidimensional problems and challenges, human realities that we need to encounter and try to improve the world about. Somehow though war is at such a core of what is ailing our country and the world, what is causing so much suffering, so much social dysfunction, and far worse than dysfunction, so much cruelty that is institutionalized. War is at the core.
Marc Steiner:
War is at the core. And Norman, I want to say one thing before we conclude, is that A, your books, all of them, this book is exceptionally well-written, and in your way of writing, you have the heart of a prose poet that makes it very easy to read because it could be a godawful tome and it’s not.
Norman Solomon:
Thanks, Marc.
Marc Steiner:
And I do want to encourage everybody to really check this book out. War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine by the wonderful Norman Solomon, who is kind of warning us about where we’ve been, where we are, and where we could be going. It’s a book that needs to be read, and I would encourage everybody to take this to their book groups in your neighborhoods and your friends, read it together, wrestle with it, and let us know what you think about what you wrestled with here. You can write to me at mss@therealnews.com. I’d love to get back to you on this. It’s really an important book, War Made Invisible by Norman Solomon.
And Norman, it is always a joy to talk to you. Pleasure to talk to you. I appreciate the work you do. You can’t talk about war as a joy, but it’s always a treat to talk with you and appreciate the work you’ve done in taking the time with us here today.
Norman Solomon:
Thank you so much, Marc, and thanks for the Marc Steiner Show.
Marc Steiner:
I hope you enjoyed our conversation today with Norman Solomon about his book, War Made Possible: How the US Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, and I really encourage everyone out there to read it, share it, talk about it with your friends. It’s really a very important book, one that’ll make you think, and you can really wrestle with the ideas that pop up.
And I want to thank you all for joining us today, and I especially want to thank David Hebden, Kayla Rivara behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you’ve thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll write you right back. And while you’re here, please go to www.therealnews.com/support, become a monthly donor and become part of the future with us.
I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
During the 54th session, Ghana, Fiji, Hungary, Ireland and Uruguay will present a draft resolution on cooperation with the UN. ISHR urges all States to support the adoption of a HRC resolution that strengthens the UN’s responses to reprisals.
On 28 September, the Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights, Ilze Brands Kehris, will present the Secretary General’s annual Reprisals Report to the Council in her capacity as UN senior official on reprisals. States raising cases is an important aspect of seeking accountability and ending impunity for acts of reprisal and intimidation against defenders engaging with the UN. It can also send a powerful message of solidarity to defenders, supporting and sustaining their work in repressive environments.
Anexa Alfred Cunningham (Nicaragua), a Miskitu Indigenous leader, woman human rights defender, lawyer and expert on Indigenous peoples rights from Nicaragua, who has been denied entry back into her country since July 2022, when she participated in a session of a group of United Nations experts on the rights of Indigenous Peoples. States should demand that Anexa be permitted to return to her country, community and family and enabled to continue her work safely and without restriction.
Vanessa Mendoza (Andorra), a psychologist and the president of Associació Stop Violències, which focuses on gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive rights, and advocates for safe and legal abortion in Andorra. After engaging with CEDAW in 2019, Vanessa was charged with ‘slander with publicity’, ‘slander against the co-princes’ and ‘crimes against the prestige of the institutions’. She has been indicted for the alleged “crimes against the prestige of the institutions” involving a potentially heavy fine (up to 30,000 euros) and a criminal record if convicted. States should demand that the authorities in Andorra unconditionally drop all charges against Vanessa and amend laws which violate the rights to freedom of expression and association.
Kadar Abdi Ibrahim (Djibouti) is a human rights defender and journalist from Djibouti. He is also the Secretary-General of the political party Movement for Democracy and Freedom (MoDEL). Days after returning from Geneva, where Kadar carried out advocacy activities ahead of Djibouti’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), intelligence service agents raided his house and confiscated his passport. He has thus been banned from travel for five years. States should call on the authorities in Djibouti to lift the travel ban and return Kadar’s passport immediately and unconditionally.
Hong Kong civil society (Hong Kong): Until 2020, civil society in Hong Kong was vibrant and had engaged consistently and constructively with the UN. This engagement came to a screeching halt after the imposition by Beijing of the National Security Law for Hong Kong (NSL), which entered into force on 1 July 2020. States should urge the Hong Kong authorities to repeal the offensive National Security Law and desist from criminalizing cooperation with the UN and other work to defend human rights.
Maryam al-Balushi and Amina al-Abduli (United Arab Emirates), Amina Al-Abdouli used to work as a school teacher. She was advocating for the Arab Spring and the Syrian uprising. She is a mother of five. Maryam Al Balushi was a student at the College of Technology. They were arrested for their human rights work, and held in incommunicado detention, tortured and forced into self-incriminatory confessions. After the UN Special Procedures mandate holders sent a letter to the UAE authorities raising concerns about their torture and ill treatment in detention in 2019, the UAE charged Amina and Maryam with three additional crimes. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found their detention arbitrary and a clear case of reprisals for communicating with Special Procedures. In April 2021, a court sentenced them to three additional years of prison for “publishing false information that disturbs the public order”. States should demand that authorities in the UAE immediately and unconditionally release Maryam and Amina and provide them with reparations for their arbitrary detention and ill-treatment.
Other thematic debates
At this 54th session, the Council will discuss a range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights and issues through dedicated debates with the:
Special Rapporteur on truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence
Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences
Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances
Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and waste
ID on HC oral update on drivers, root causes and human rights impacts of religious hatred constituting incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence
In addition, the Council will hold dedicated debates on the rights of specific groups including with the:
Independent Expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons
Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Country-specific developments
Afghanistan
The Council will hold an Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan on 11 September, and on the OHCHR report on Afghanistan on 12 September, and will consider a resolution on the human rights situation in Afghanistan at this session.
ISHR supports the call of Afghan human rights defenders to the Council to renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan. We also support the call to establish a parallel independent investigative mechanism in the upcoming September session and to ensure meaningful follow up to the joint report of the Special Rapporteur and the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, as well as continuation of a dedicated discussion at the Council on the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan. Accountability for widespread human rights violations, including gender apartheid and other crimes against humanity, is imperative to securing sustainable peace and development in the country.
Algeria
We urge States to demand that Algeria, a Council member, end its crackdown on human rights defenders and civil society organisations, amend laws aimed at silencing peaceful dissent and stifling civil society, and immediately and unconditionally release arbitrarily detained human rights defenders and activists, including in the interactive dialogue with the Working Group on arbitrary detention. Since the beginning of the Hirak pro-democracy movement, the Working Group has issued at least 6 decisions of arbitrary detention, highlighting Algerian legislation that is inconsistent with international law, violations of due process and the right to a fair trial, as well as violations to the right to freedom of expression, discrimination based on language, ethnicity and religion. They have also condemned Algeria’s abuse of counter-terrorism legislation. States should call on Algeria to implement the recommendations of the working group.
We also urge States to address the case of reprisals against HRDs Kaddour Chouicha and Jamila Loukil, members of the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LADDH) before its dissolution by the Algerian authorities. They were prevented from traveling to attend the pre-session organized by UPR-info, a clear case of reprisals against human rights defenders attempting to cooperate with the UPR. Chouicha, Loukil and other HRDs are charged in a criminal case, which includes ‘enrollment in a terrorist or subversive organization active abroad or in Algeria’. They are still awaiting trial as the authorities postponed their court session on 15 June 2023. If convicted of these charges, they face up to twenty years imprisonment.
Bahrain
Civil society organisations, including ISHR, have requested States to urge Bahraini authorities to unconditionally release all those sentenced for their political opinions, including human rights defenders Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja and Abduljalil Al-Singace, and in the meantime, to ensure that they are provided with life-saving medical care to prevent an imminent tragedy. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2023/08/20/500-bahraini-prisoners-on-hunger-strike-over-conditions/]
Burundi
The Council will hold an Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Burundi on 22 September. As serious human rights violations persist in Burundi and the Government has failed to hold perpetrators accountable or take the concerns raised by Burundian and international actors seriously, the Council should not relax its scrutiny. The Council should extend the Special Rapporteur’s mandate for a further year.
China
31 August marked one year since the release of the groundbreaking OHCHR report finding possible crimes against humanity committed by the Chinese government in Xinjiang. This Council session also marks one year since the failure of the Council, and most of its Council Members, to stand by principle against Beijing’s coercion and promote a dialogue on the human rights of Uyghurs. Since that time, the recommendations of the OHCHR’s report have been echoed by the CERD in its Urgent Action decision on Xinjiang, by the CESCR and CEDAW in their respective Concluding Observations, and by 15 Special Procedures mandates in their seven benchmarks on Xinjiang. Yet, in a surprise visit to the region in August, President Xi Jinping reiterated its hardline policy and called for further efforts to ensure ‘social stability’ and ‘control illegal religious activities’. States should take collective action to urge China to implement key recommendations from the OHCHR Xinjiang report, and from relevant UN Treaty Bodies and Special Procedures, with a focus on root causes of violations that commonly affect Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese human rights defenders, including the abuse of national security laws and measures.
States should further ask for the prompt release of human rights defenders targeted by the Chinese government’s renewed crackdown on human rights lawyers, including lawyer Lu Siwei at risk of refoulement from Laos, activists Chang Weiping, Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong, recently convicted to lengthy prison sentences, as well as Yu Wensheng and Xu Yan, detained en route to meet with EU diplomats in Beijing. Ten years after the detention, and subsequent death in custody, of woman human rights defender Cao Shunli on her way to attend China’s UPR in Geneva, the Council must also pierce the veil of impunity for egregious cases of reprisals, and call on China to acknowledge its responsibility, bring perpetrators to justice and provide adequate remedy. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2023/09/05/human-rights-lawyer-gao-zhisheng-and-the-practice-of-enforced-disappearances-joint-letter/]
Egypt
Recent arrests and arbitrary detention of several media figures, dissidents and their family members in Egypt are indicative of the ongoing crackdown on basic freedoms and liberties in the country, and reflect a lack of genuine political will to improve the human rights situation by the Egyptian government. In the last ten years, Egyptian human rights organisations have recorded the enforced disappearance of no less than 3,000 citizens for varying periods of time, death by mistreatment and medical negligence of at least 1,200 people in detention centers, the sexual assault of at least 655 people and their family members, and the extrajudicial killing of more than 750 people. The continued silence on Egypt by States at the Council will only encourage further violations. NGOs continue to urge States to ensure appropriate action on Egypt at the Council though the establishment of a monitoring and reporting mechanisms on the human rights crises in the country. As an immediate step, States should deliver a follow-up joint statement condemning the human rights situation in the country and calling on the Egyptian government to refrain from continuing to carry out wide-spread human rights violations.
Israel/OPT
While Israel rejected all the recommendations on the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and refugee return made by states during its UPR review, States should reiterate their commitment to putting an end to 75 years of denial of the Palestinian’s people inalienable rights to return and self-determination.
During HRC 53, civil society welcomed the resolution put forward by the OIC to ensure the full implementation of the United Nations database of businesses involved in Israeli’s settlement enterprise in the occupied Palestinian territory. States must ensure that the mandate is implemented in full as it represents a question of credibility to the Council, including by ensuring that the budget adopted in the fifth committee of the General Assembly later this year is in line with the programme budget implications (PBI).
Russia
The Council will hold an Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the Russian Federation on 21 September. The Council will also be called upon to renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur (HRC Resolution 51/25). ISHR strongly supports the renewal of the mandate and urges States to oppose Russia’s candidacy to the Human Rights Council.
The human rights situation in Russia continues to deteriorate, while Russia also continues to perpetrate atrocity crimes in Ukraine In recent months, Russia has enacted laws providing immunity against war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the ‘State’s interests’, intensified its assault against LGBT persons, adopted further measures to repress civil society and silence independent journalists, and continued to arbitrarily imprison human rights defenders. Of further and direct relevance to the Council, Russia adopted a new law on 28 April 2023 which criminalises assistance, cooperation or confidential communications with international bodies, which may include the HRC and its mechanisms. These regressive developments, and the lack of any improvement in the human rights situation in the country, clearly warrant the extension of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur.
With respect to Russia’s candidacy for the Council, ISHR only campaigns against countries based on strict and objective criteria. Russia manifestly fulfils all of these criteria, being a country: (1) responsible for a pattern of reprisals against those who cooperate with the UN; (2) responsible for the repression of civil society (Russia is ranked as ‘closed’ (scoring 17/100 in the Civicus Monitor); and (3) directly responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine according to the HRC-mandated CoI. On ISHR’s HRC candidate scorecards, Russia scores just 1/20 on objective criteria.
Saudi Arabia
In light of the ongoing diplomatic rehabilitation of crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi authorities’ brazen repression continues to intensify. Some notable recent trends as documented by ALQST include, but are not limited to: the further harsh sentencing against individuals for peaceful social media use, including a death sentence issued against a man for tweets, the prosecution of women such as Manahel al-Otaibi over her choice of clothing and support for women’s rights, the ongoing forcible disappearance of prisoners of conscience including Mohammed al-Qahtani [see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/78383825-0b3f-4bca-883a-b81e1baecd09]and Essa al-Nukheifi beyond the expiry of their sentences, and; regressive developments in relation to the death penalty, including a surge in executions (95 individuals were executed in 2023 so far), and several young men at imminent risk of execution for crimes they allegedly committed as minors. Human Rights Watch has documented the brutal massacre of migrants at the Yemen border, in what may amount to further crimes against humanity. ISHR continues to call for States at the Council to adopt a resolution mandating an independent international monitoring and investigative mechanism on massive human rights violations perpetrated in and by Saudi Arabia.
Sudan
On 12 September, the Council will hold Interactive Dialogue on the High Commissioner’s oral update on Sudan.
Sudanese Women Rights Action published a report “laying an overview of the conditions of women’s rights and gender equality in Sudan as an extended crisis started on October 25th, 2021, when the military took over the power in Sudan, ending the transitional period on a bloody note…the report presents verified information about the crises scope, context, and responses from a gender perspective based on the needs on the grounds, the challenges, and the recommended interventions according to local actors and women activists.” ISHR urges the implementation of the recommendations identified by women activists including to “Pressure both fighting parties to commit to sustainable Ceasefire; Pressure the fighting parties to open humanitarian corridors; Provide urgent funding to the humanitarian aid interventions; Ensure protection and evacuation of women and WHRDs from fighting areas”. Ahead of HRC54, ISHR joined over 110 NGOs in reiterating a call on the Council to establish an independent investigative mechanism on Sudan with a mandate to investigate human rights violations and abuses in Sudan, collect and preserve evidence, and identify those responsible.
Tunisia
We regret that the Council failed to exercise its prevention mandate and address the deteriorating human rights situation in Tunisia during HRC 53, during which the High Commissioner and UN Special Procedures raised alarm at the escalating pattern of human rights violations and the rapidly worsening situation in Tunisia following President Kais Saied’s power grab on 25 July 2021. In the last two years in Tunisia there has been a significant erosion of the rule of law, attacks on the independence of the judiciary, reprisals against independent judges and lawyers and judges associations, a crackdown on peaceful political opposition and abusive use of “counter-terrorism” law in politicised prosecutions, as well as attacks on freedom of expression and threats to freedom of association.
In an open letter against the “Memorandum of Understanding on a Strategic and Comprehensive Partnership between the European Union (EU) and Tunisia” and against the EU’s border externalisation policies, 379 researchers and members of civil society decried the use of vulnerable populations as scapegoats to mask the failures of public policy in Tunisia. While Tunisian authorities were persecuting Black African foreign nationals, including migrants, asylum seekers and refugees – deporting at least 1,200 sub-Saharan nationals to the borders with Libya and Algeria, in inaccessible and militarised desert zones, leaving them abandoned without water and food – the signing of the Memorandum effectively gave Tunisia “a blank check, following a strategy that is all the more irresponsible given its inefficacy”. Unless States tackle “the structural socio-economic causes of so-called irregular migration”, and radically rethink access to mobility, “this security approach to border management will only make crossings more deadly and strengthen smugglers”. Addressing these grave violations cannot be done without also urgently addressing the rule of law crisis in the country.
Venezuela
The UN’s fact-finding mission on Venezuela (FFM) will report to the Council on 25 and 26 September. The Mission will focus on the situation for human rights defenders in the country – an essential focus given the existing and proposed legislation adversely affecting civic space, and the threats and attacks HRDs face. The recent sentencing of 6 union leaders, denounced by UN Special Rapporteurs, is a clear example of the criminalisation of HRDs, as is the continued detention of the HRD Javier Tarazona, since July 2021, and that of many other real or perceived opposition figures. The continuing impunity in regard to the killing of defender Virgilio Trujillo Arana a year ago is an example of how little will exists to prevent attacks against HRDs.
In its first report in 2020, the FFM stated that it had reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity had been carried out in Venezuela, with the principal targets of violations including social activists and political leaders at the forefront of protests. The recommendations made by the FFM at that time have not been implemented. We recall that Venezuela continues to refuse to engage with the FFM or allow it to enter the country.
States must participate in the interactive dialogue with the FFM to highlight the essential role of HRDs; express utmost concern at the ongoing, systematic threats, attacks and restrictions against civic space, and urge the Venezuelan authorities to take immediate steps to implement the recommendations issued by the UN human rights system. States must speak out forcefully in support of the FFM and its work, and encourage other states to do the same. This vital accountability mandate must be supported and its recommendations echoed, so that victims of violations in the country can believe that one day justice will be done.
Other country situations:
The High Commissioner will provide an oral update to the Council on 11 September 2023. The Council will consider updates, reports and is expected to consider resolutions addressing a range of country situations, in some instances involving the renewal of the relevant expert mandates. These include:
Interactive Dialogue on the report of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar and Interactive Dialogue on the OHCHR report on Myanmar
Interactive Dialogue on the report of the High Commissioner on Nicaragua and oral update by the Group of Experts on Nicaragua
Interactive Dialogue on the report of the OHCHR on Sri Lanka
Interactive Dialogue with the Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia
Interactive Dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic
Interactive Dialogue on the interim oral update of the High Commissioner on the situation of human rights in Belarus
Interactive Dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine and Interactive Dialogue on the High Commissioner oral update on Ukraine
Enhanced Interactive Dialogue on the report of the High Commissioner and experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo
Interactive Dialogue on the oral update of OHCHR on technical assistance and capacity-building for South Sudan
Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Cambodia and presentation of the Secretary-General’s report
Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Expert on Somalia
Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Expert on the Central African Republic
Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on the interim report on Haiti
Presentation of the High Commissioner’s report on cooperation with Georgia
Presentation of the High Commissioner’s report on cooperation with Yemen
Council programme, appointments and resolutions
Appointment of mandate holders
The President of the Human Rights Council has proposed candidates for the following mandates:
Special Rapporteur on minority issues
Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants
Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism
Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity
Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, several members
Resolutions to be presented to the Council’s 54th session
At the organisational meeting on 28 August resolutions were announced (States leading the resolution in brackets):
From rhetoric to reality: a global call for concrete action against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance (Africa Group)
Technical assistance and capacity-building in the field of human rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Africa Group)
Question of the death penalty (Benin, Belgium, Costa Rica, France, Mexico, Mongolia, Republic of Moldova, Switzerland)
Special Rapporteur on truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence – mandate renewal (Argentina, Morocco, Switzerland)
Human rights and Indigenous Peoples (Guatemala, Mexico)
Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan – mandate renewal (EU)
Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Burundi – mandate renewal (EU)
Working Group on enforced or involuntary disappearances – mandate renewal (Argentina, France, Japan, Morocco)
Implementation of the UN declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas (Bolivia)
Technical assistance and capacity-building for Yemen in the field of human rights (Lebanon on behalf of the Arab Group)
Special Rapporteur on Russia – mandate renewal (Luxembourg on behalf of 26 EU countries)
Right to privacy in the digital age (Austria, Brazil, Germany, Liechtenstein, Mexico)
A world of sports free from racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance (Brazil and Africa Group)
Cooperation with the United Nations, its representatives and mechanisms in the field of human rights (Fiji, Ghana, Hungary, Ireland, Uruguay)
The core group on Sudan (Germany, Norway, UK, US) announced that they are considering presenting a resolution on Sudan at this session. The core group on Syria (Germany, France, Italy, Jordan, Netherlands, Qatar, Turkiye, UK, USA) also announced that they are considering presenting a resolution on the human rights situation in Syria.
Read here the three year programme of work of the Council with supplementary information.
Read here ISHR’s recommendations on the key issues that are or should be on the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council in 2023.
Minister says women visiting the lakes of Band-e-Amir have not been wearing their hijabs properly
The Taliban have banned women from visiting one of Afghanistan’s most popular national parks, adding to a long list of restrictions aimed at shrinking women’s access to public places.
Thousands of people visit Band-e-Amir national park each year, taking in its stunning landscape of sapphire-blue lakes and towering cliffs in the country’s central Bamiyan province.
Just 25% of the $3.23bn needed for the UN humanitarian response plan has been raised. Women and girls will be hit worst by this shortfall
Two years ago today, international troops and diplomats hastily withdrew from Kabul and Taliban rule returned to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan was already in the grip of a humanitarian crisis, after decades of conflict and with the intensifying impact of climate change. Since then, the significant deterioration of the country’s economy has turned that crisis into a catastrophe.
Six refugees from Afghanistan died in the Channel when the boat they were travelling to the UK on capsized. Predictably, the Mail on Sunday ran a suitably horrid front page, while GB News screamed about ‘taxpayer cash’ – and less predictably (but becoming more the norm), the Labour Party under Keir Starmer gave both of them a run for their money.
Six refugees dead, yet who’s to blame?
As Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported, on Saturday 12 August, six people died and 61 others were rescued including children. They were mostly from Afghanistan, with some coming from war-torn Sudan.
A spokesperson for the Utopia56 humanitarian group blamed border “repression” for the tragedy. They told AFP that the difficulty of securing legal passage only:
increases the dangerousness of crossings and pushes people to take more and more risks to reach England.
Previously, five people died at sea and four went missing while trying to cross to Britain from France last year. In November 2021, 27 people also died when a boat capsized in the Channel.
Of course, this is also a Europe-wide problem. As the Canary‘s Afroze Fatima Zaidi recently wrote:
“The United Nations has registered more than 17,000 deaths and disappearances in the central Mediterranean since 2014, making it the most dangerous migrant crossing in the world”.
The Tories (and their mates in the corporate media) in the UK are quick to blame anyone except themselves, of course. The Mail on Sunday‘s front page on 13 August was a case in point. It ran with the headline:
Was French patrol boat to blame for migrant drownings?
I mean, really? An old law of journalism: when there’s a question-mark in the headline, the answer is invariably ‘no’ pic.twitter.com/LG0wxPRtR6
So, the Tories and the Mail on Sunday‘s responses were predictable. But what of the Labour Party?
Labour: courting the right
Sky News interviewed the shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson. Her response to the deaths of six people from Afghanistan? First, blame the Tories:
Labours Bridget Phillipson is asked about six refugees drowning in the channel, & in her reply she talks about the criminal gangs & the asylum backlog. She doesn't mention creating safe routes so people fleeing war & persecution don't have to drown trying to get here pic.twitter.com/FpzNWlrNd5
And next, say Labour would do everything except open legal routes for refugees to get here by:
As more refugees drown in the channel, Bridget Phillipson is asked what Labour would do differently. She mentions a new cross border police unit, ending the Rwanda scheme, processing cases more quickly, and getting more return agreements.
Oh, and she dropped everyone’s favourite right-wing talking point on right-wing GB News – that the asylum system is costing the good-old British taxpayer a “fortune”:
'It's all about having a fairer system that deals with cases quickly.’
Shadow Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, says the Government's 'total failure' in tackling the asylum process is 'costing us all the fortune'.
The same line former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib used:
'It's certainly leaving our taxpayers' pockets and not delivering the effect that we wish of it.'
Ben Habib says France's attempts to stop migrants crossing the Channel into the UK is a 'pantomime' and questions where the UK's funding is going. pic.twitter.com/4StGNMUVrJ
The fact Labour are now sending front-bench members onto GB News says a lot about the kind of voter it wants to attract.
Colonialist UK: where Ukrainians matter more than Afghans
Back in the real world, the six people who drowned will likely have families mourning in Afghanistan. It didn’t have to be this way. The government has a resettlement scheme for Afghans in place – yet it has barely let anyone in:
Thousands of Afghans are eligible to enter the UK via the government's Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy, but only six have been allowed to enter on this route since 22 December 2022.
Compare the six people from Afghanistan the government has resettled with the 10,000 Ukrainians that we accepted a week in May 2022. As LBC host Sangita Myska summed up regarding the Tories detaining refugees on the Bibby Stockholm barge:
if they were 39 white men from Ukraine walking up that gangplank into that barge, I’m telling you now there would be a hue and cry, the like of which you have never seen.
I love Sangita for saying what many are not willing to say
The double standards in the UK against migrants of colour has never been clearer. It cannot be denied @SangitaMyska
Regardless of race and background, these migrants are human beings and deserve the same treatment and… pic.twitter.com/IxR2yrlVeW
— KWAJO- Social Issues Campaigner (@Kwajotweneboa) August 12, 2023
It’s almost as though people in the UK don’t value and respect the lives of Black and brown people. They merely tolerate us. They don’t value us as human beings; they see us as cockroaches to keep out of the way. Ukrainian people are considered as a whole – their culture, their traditions, their communities. Black and brown people don’t get that luxury. This is because white people only consider fellow white people to have inalienable rights.
You’d expect the Mail on Sunday and GB News to push these racist, colonialist mindsets. But Labour? Well, that’s where we’re at, now.
Having read and savoured his previous work The Kite Runner some years ago, I knew any subsequent books by this author would be good. And indeed, this one is.
For me, I cannot separate the stories Hosseini weaves from my experience with many Afghan students who I taught during the 1980’s in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Hayward, California (USA).
Then living as refugees fleeing conflict, their stories have stuck in my mind and forged deep, happy and fond memories.
From 1979 to 1989 Russia invaded Afghanistan. Thousands of refugees came to the United States and other countries in order to save their lives.
I taught English as a second language to adults who came to our California city.
They left an indelible mark on me. What I remember most is their resilience, warm sense of humour, and positive attitude, even though they didn’t know where they’d be in the future.
They missed their country and their loved ones terribly. They had little money but always brought food to share. We had some wonderful meals together.
Hosseini undertook a difficult task: he had two women as main characters in “A Thousand Splendid Suns”.
One, though younger, is more worldly and has felt true love. The other has led a sequestered, joyless existence.
The book tracks their lives, and is clearly dedicated to long-suffering women who, for cultural and historical reasons, have lived under a heavy yoke of oppression.
They are often locked into arranged marriages, and find themselves at the mercies of strict husbands and governments. Hosseini’s characters therefore bear the scars of people whose whole lives are controlled.
These two main characters do not like each other at first, but painstakingly, they begin to defend each other. They slowly develop a friendship as they fight to survive hardships and deadly rocket attacks while protecting the children.
Although at one time, women in the capital of Kabul went to university and held professional jobs, and had much greater freedoms than today, these were taken away by traditional governments on pain of death.
Post-Taliban takeover, such advancements are absent today – and were at the time of Hossein’s story, with Afghani women’s fates seemingly determined for them.
We, as readers, are however spellbound by the characters’ resilience and refusal to give up hope.
As a feminist, I greatly respect Hosseini. The issues he illuminates are both particular to his home country and human rights in general.
“A Thousand Splendid Suns” is therefore definitely worth a read – as are Hosseini’s other works. Without a shadow of a doubt.
Through Hosseini. we can appreciate the resilience, strength and courage of millions of Afghani men and women and gain a small insight into their world.
I look forward to reading his other books. They of course offer plenty to discover.
Tashakor (thank you) Mr. Hosseini for raising our consciousness.
While the United States, along with its allies, left Afghanistan in August 2021 in spectacularly humiliating circumstances, the departure was never entirely complete, nor bound to be permanent. Since then, Washington has led the charge in handicapping those who, with a fraction of the resources, defeated a superpower and prevailed in two decades of conflict.
In a fit of wounded pride, the United States has, in turn, sought to strangulate and asphyxiate the Taliban regime, citing human rights and security concerns. The Taliban’s Interim Foreign Minister, Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi, makes the not unreasonable point that “the ongoing crisis is the imposition of sanctions and banking restrictions by the United States.”
In May this year, Idaho Republican Senator Jim Risch, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led 18 of his righteous colleagues in introducing the Taliban Sanctions Act, promising more chastising. Ostensibly, the Act seeks to impose “sanctions with respect to terrorism, human rights abuses, and narcotics trafficking committed by the Taliban and others in Afghanistan.”
The brief for prosecuting an even more aggressive stance against the Taliban never ceases to bulk, be it to arrest the mistreatment of women and their inexorable marginalisation, or the claim that the country is now essentially a bandit state which is both a danger to itself and its neighbours. “Over a year into Taliban rule, breakdown of the state, bankruptcy of financial institutions, economic collapse and diplomatic isolation have pushed Afghan society to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe,” writes a former senior advisor to Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister, Arian Sharifi, currently an academic at Princeton University’s School of International Affairs.
Sharifi goes on to analyse the Taliban in what resembles a portrait of the ramshackle government he served. “The Taliban today is deeply divided, making it unable to pursue a unified course of action.” They also ruled a country with “more than 20 terrorist groups with a long-standing presence in Afghanistan.”
In typical good taste, Sharifi delicately ignores his role in having advised a corrupt government whose strings were firstly pulled, then abandoned, by Washington and its allies. His poisonous pen fails to acknowledge the attempt by his own past sponsors to systematically contribute to that very failure, bankruptcy and ruin. He can, however, take some hope in recent reports suggesting that Afghanistan will again become a playground for what British imperialists dubbed in the 19th century the Great Game, the Anglo-Russian competition for influence over Central Asia.
In recent months, Afghanistan has again piqued the interest of eager strategists drawing their salaries from the US government and assorted think tanks. Such interest has nothing at all to do with the good citizenry of the Taliban-controlled state, be it the welfare of women or purported links to terrorist groups. They concern the presence of lithium reserves in the Chapa Dara district of Kunar province and, almost inevitably, a fear that the People’s Republic of China might muscle in.
In 2010, a US Department of Defense memorandum valued the extent of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth as between $1 trillion and $3 trillion. And that was before the skyrocketing value of specific minerals that are becoming critical in the global energy transition.
As the Washington Postreports, the eightfold rise in the mineral’s market price around the time of the Taliban takeover in August 2021 enticed “hundreds of Chinese mining entrepreneurs to Afghanistan.” The paper describes in tones of awe and alarm Chinese traders filing Kabul’s hotels, then making their way to the hinterlands to seek lithium reminiscent “of a 19th-century gold rush.”
Foreign Policy columnist Lynne O’Donnell also points an accusing finger at China for yet again “mucking about in Afghanistan’s mineral-rich playground.” Doing so is evidently the prerogative of Western states. She mocks the suggestion that this move in the energy transition stakes might “mean that billions of dollars will be pouring into securing a prosperous future for one of the world’s poorest countries. It probably won’t.” Remarkably, China is reproached for treating the country as a political, rather than economic matter.
The interest in such minerals is bound to only grow; the International Energy Agency, predicts that the growth in demand for lithium by 2040 will be by a factor 40 times, with graphite, cobalt and nickel in the order of 20-25 times.
The Post also seems troubled by another fact: that the Taliban have woken up to the value of lithium, and its vital role in the manufacture of Electric Vehicles (EVs) and battery storage. (How dare they?) “The tremendous promise of lithium […] could frustrate Western efforts to squeeze the Taliban into changing its extremist ways.” The absence of the United States also meant that Chinese companies could “aggressively” position themselves to exploit the resource, thereby tightening Beijing’s “grasp of much of the global supply chain for EV minerals.”
In April, the Taliban’s Ministry of Mine and Petroleum announced the interest of a Chinese company, Gochin, in investing $10 billion in the country’s lithium deposits. According to the Ministry, some 120,000 direct jobs would arise from the investment, with a million indirect jobs being created.
Whatever the merits of such extravagant announcements (China’s 2007 copper mining project valued at $3 billion failed to provide predicted returns), it was the sort of thing bound to make the Washington establishment livid. The object of the Biden administration has been to corner the rare minerals market and prize out China, best seen in efforts to classify Australia as a “domestic source” for US defence interests. Doing so would give unqualified access to the island continent’s own impressive lithium reserves. (53% of the world’s lithium supply is mined in Australia.)
A traditional, potentially violent rivalry over the resources of yet another country, is in the offing. Only this time, the narrative will be slightly different: the competitors, notably the United States, habitually prone to cant and hustling, will argue that the mission to secure such minerals will be less a case of manifest destiny than environmental duty. The cry will be: Save the Planet; Invade Afghanistan.
Bassim Al Shaker (Iraq), Symphony of Death 1, 2019
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) held its annual summit on 11–12 July in Vilnius, Lithuania. The communiqué released after the first day’s proceedings claimed that ‘NATO is a defensive alliance’, a statement that encapsulates why many struggle to grasp its true essence. A look at the latest military spending figures shows, to the contrary, that NATO countries, and countries closely allied to NATO, account for nearly three-quarters of the total annual global expenditure on weapons. Many of these countries possess state-of-the-art weapons systems, which are qualitatively more destructive than those held by the militaries of most non-NATO countries. Over the past quarter century, NATO has used its military might to destroy several states, such as Afghanistan (2001) and Libya (2011), shattering societies with the raw muscle of its aggressive alliance, and end the status of Yugoslavia (1999) as a unified state. It is difficult, given this record, to sustain the view that NATO is a ‘defensive alliance’.
Currently, NATO has thirty-one member states, the most recent addition being Finland, which joined in April 2023. Its membership has more than doubled since its twelve founding members, all countries in Europe and North America that had been part of the war against the Axis powers, signed its founding treaty (the Washington Treaty or the North Atlantic Treaty) on 4 April 1949. It is telling that one of these original members – Portugal – remained under a fascist dictatorship at the time, known as Estado Novo (in place from 1933 until 1974).
Article 10 of this treaty declares that NATO members – ‘by unanimous agreement’ – can ‘invite any other European state’ to join the military alliance. Based on that principle, NATO welcomed Greece and Turkey (1952), West Germany (1955), and Spain (1982), expanding its membership at the time to include sixteen countries. The disintegration of the USSR and communist states in Eastern Europe – the purported threat that compelled the need for NATO to begin with – did not put an end to the need for the alliance. Instead, NATO’s increasing membership has doubled down on its ambition to use its military power, through Article 5, to subdue anyone who challenges the ‘Atlantic Alliance’.
Nino Morbedadze (Georgia), Strolling Couple, 2017.
The ‘Atlantic Alliance’, a phrase that is part of NATO’s name, was part of a wider network of military treaties secured by the US against the USSR and, after October 1949, against the People’s Republic of China. This network included the Manila Pact of September 1954, which created the Southeast Asian Treaty Organisation (SEATO), and the Baghdad Pact of February 1955, which created the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO). Turkey and Pakistan signed a military agreement in April 1954 which brought them together in an alliance against the USSR and anchored this network through NATO’s southernmost member (Turkey) and SEATO’s westernmost member (Pakistan). The US signed a military deal with each of the members of CENTO and SEATO and ensured that it had a seat at the table in these structures.
At the Asian-African Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia in April 1955, India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru reacted strongly to the creation of these military alliances, which exported tensions between the US and the USSR across Asia. The concept of NATO, he said, ‘has extended itself in two ways’: first, NATO ‘has gone far away from the Atlantic and has reached other oceans and seas’ and second, ‘NATO today is one of the most powerful protectors of colonialism’. As an example, Nehru pointed to Goa, which was still held by fascist Portugal and whose grip had been validated by NATO members – an act, Nehru said, of ‘gross impertinence’. This characterisation of NATO as a global belligerent and defender of colonialism remains intact, with some modifications.
Slobodan Trajković (Yugoslavia), The Flag, 1983.
SEATO was disbanded in 1977, partly due to the defeat of the US in Vietnam, and CENTO was shuttered in 1979, precisely due to the Iranian Revolution that year. US military strategy shifted its focus from wielding these kinds of pacts to establishing a direct military presence with the founding of US Central Command in 1983 and the revitalisation of the US Pacific Command that same year. The US expanded the power of its own global military footprint, including its ability to strike anywhere on the planet due to its structure of military bases and armed flotillas (which were no longer restricted once the 1930 Second London Naval Treaty expired in 1939). Although NATO has always had global ambitions, the alliance was given material reality through the US military’s force projection and its creation of new structures that further tied allied states into its orbit (with programmes such as ‘Partnership for Peace’, set up in 1994, and concepts such as ‘global NATO partner’ and ‘non-NATO ally’, as exemplified by Japan and South Korea). In its 1991 Strategic Concept, NATO wrote that it would ‘contribute to global stability and peace by providing forces for United Nations missions’, which was realised with deadly force in Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2003), and Libya (2011).
By the Riga Summit (2006), NATO was confident that it operated ‘from Afghanistan to the Balkans and from the Mediterranean Sea to Darfur’. Nehru’s focus on colonialism might seem anachronistic now, but, in fact, NATO has become an instrument to blunt the global majority’s desire for sovereignty and dignity, two key anti-colonial concepts. Any popular project that exerts these two concepts finds itself at the end of a NATO weapons system.
Shefa Salem al-Baraesi (Libya), Kaska, Dance of War, 2020.
The collapse of the USSR and the Eastern European communist state system transformed Europe’s reality. NATO quickly ignored the ‘ironclad guarantees’ offered by US Secretary of State James Baker to Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in Moscow on 9 February 1990 that NATO’s ‘forces would not move eastward’ of the German border. Several states that bordered the NATO zone suffered greatly in the immediate period after the fall of the Berlin Wall, with economies in the doldrums as privatisation eclipsed the possibility for their populations to live with dignity. Many states in Eastern Europe, desperate to enter the European Union (EU), which at least promised access to the common market, understood that entry into NATO was the price of admission. In 1999, Czechia, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO, followed in 2004 by the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, and Slovakia. Eager for investments and markets, by 2004 many of these countries waltzed into the Atlantic Alliance of NATO and the EU.
NATO continued to expand, absorbing Albania and Croatia in 2009, Montenegro in 2017, and North Macedonia in 2020. However, the breakdown of some US banks, the waning attraction of the US as the market of last resort, and the entry of the Atlantic world into a relentless economic depression after 2007 changed the context. No longer were Atlantic states reliable as investors or as markets. After 2008, infrastructure investment in the EU declined by 75% due to reduced public spending, and the European Investment Bank warned that government investment would hit a twenty-five-year low.
ArtLords (including Kabir Mokamel, Abdul Hakim Maqsodi, Meher Agha Sultani, Omaid Sharifi, Yama Farhard, Negina Azimi, Enayat Hikmat, Zahid Amini, Ali Hashimi, Mohammad Razeq Meherpour, Abdul Razaq Hashemi, and Nadima Rustam), The Unseen Afghanistan, 2021.
The arrival of Chinese investment and the possibility of integration with the Chinese economy began to reorient many economies, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, away from the Atlantic. In 2012, the first summit between China and central and eastern European countries (China–CEEC summit) was held in Warsaw (Poland), with sixteen countries in the region participating. The process eventually drew in fifteen NATO members, including Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (in 2021 and 2022, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania withdrew from the initiative). In March 2015, six then-EU member states – France, Germany, Italy, Luxemburg, Sweden, and the UK – joined the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Four years later, Italy became the first G7 country to join the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Two-thirds of EU member states are now part of the BRI, and the EU concluded the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment in 2020.
These manoeuvres towards China threatened to weaken the Atlantic Alliance, with the US describing the country as a ‘strategic competitor’ in its 2018 National Defense Strategy – a phrase indicative of its shifting focus on the so-called threat of China. Nonetheless, as recently as November 2019, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that ‘there [are] no plans, no proposal, no intention to move NATO into, for instance, the South China Sea’. However, by 2020, the mood had changed: a mere seven months later, Stoltenberg said, ‘NATO does not see China as the new enemy or an adversary. But what we see is that the rise of China is fundamentally changing the global balance of power’. NATO’s response has been to work with its partners – including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea – ‘to address… the security consequences of the rise of China’, Stoltenberg continued. The talk of a global NATO and an Asian NATO is front and centre in these deliberations, with Stoltenberg stating in Vilnius that the idea of a liaison office in Japan is ‘on the table’.
The war in Ukraine provided new life to the Atlantic Alliance, driving several hesitant European countries – such as Sweden – into its ranks. Yet, even amongst people living within NATO countries there are groups who are sceptical of the alliance’s aims, with the Vilnius summit marked by anti-NATO protests. The Vilnius Summit Communiqué underlined Ukraine’s path into NATO and sharpened NATO’s self-defined universalism. The communiqué declares, for instance, that China challenges ‘our interests, security, and values’, with the word ‘our’ claiming to represent not only NATO countries but the entire international order. Slowly, NATO is positioning itself as a substitute for the UN, suggesting that it – and not the actual international community – is the arbiter and guardian of the world’s ‘interests, security, and values’. This view is contested by the vast majority of the world’s peoples, seven billion of whom do not even reside in NATO’s member countries (whose total population is less than one billion). Those billions wonder why it is that NATO wants to supplant the United Nations.
Since the end of the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has distinctly strayed from its original purpose. It has become, almost shamelessly, the vessel and handmaiden of US power, while its burgeoning expansion eastwards has done wonders to upend the applecart of stability.
From that upending, the alliance started bungling. It engaged, without the authorisation of the UN Security Council, in a 78-day bombing campaign of Yugoslavia – at least what was left of it – ostensibly to protect the lives of Kosovar Albanians. Far from dampening the tinderbox, the Kosovo affair continues to be an explosion in the making.
Members of the alliance also expended material, money and personnel in Afghanistan over the course of two decades, propping up a deeply unpopular, corrupt regime in Kabul while failing to stifle the Taliban. As with previous imperial projects, the venture proved to be a catastrophic failure.
In 2011, NATO again was found wanting in its attack on the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. While it was intended to be an exemplar of the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine, the intervention served to eventually topple the doomed Colonel Gaddafi, precipitating the de-facto partitioning of Libya and endangering the very civilians the mission was meant to protect. A continent was thereby destabilised. The true beneficiaries proved to be the tapestry of warring rebel groups characterised by sectarian impulses and a voracious appetite for human rights abuses and war crimes.
The Ukraine War has been another crude lesson in the failings of the NATO project. The constant teasing and wooing of Kyiv as a potential future member never sat well with Moscow and while much can be made of the Russian invasion, no realistic assessment of the war’s origins can excise NATO from playing a deep, compromised role.
The alliance is also proving dissonant among its members. Not all are exactly jumping at the chance of admitting Ukraine. German diplomats have revealed that they will block any current moves to join the alliance. Even that old provoking power, the United States, is not entirely sure whether doors should be open to Kyiv. On CNN, President Joe Biden expressed the view that he did not “think it’s ready for membership of NATO.” To qualify, Ukraine would have to meet a number of “qualifications” from “democratisation to a whole range of other issues.” While hardly proving very alert during the interview (at one point, he confused Ukraine with Russia) he did draw the logical conclusion that bringing Kyiv into an alliance of obligatory collective defence during current hostilities would automatically put NATO at war with Moscow.
With such a spotty, blood speckled record marked by stumbles and bungles, any suggestions of further engagement by the alliance in other areas of the globe should be treated with abundant wariness. The latest talk of further Asian engagement should also be greeted with a sense of dread. According to a July 7 statement, “The Indo-Pacific is important for the Alliance, given that developments in that region can directly affect Euro-Atlantic security. Moreover, NATO and its partners in the region share a common goal of working together to strengthen the rules-based international order.” With these views, conflict lurks.
The form of that engagement is being suggested by such ideas as opening a liaison office in Japan, intended as the first outpost in Asia. It also promises to feature in the NATO summit to take place in Vilnius on July 11 and 12, which will again repeat the attendance format of the Madrid summit held in 2022. That new format – featuring the presence of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, or the AP4, should have induced much head scratching. But the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Washington’s beady eyes in Canberra, celebrated this “shift to taking a truly global approach to strategic competition”.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is also much in favour of such competition, warning member states of Beijing’s ambitions. “We should not make the same mistake with China and other authoritarian regimes,” he suggested, alluding to a dangerous and flawed comparison between Ukraine and Taiwan. “What is happening in Europe today could happen in Asia tomorrow.”
One of the prominent headscratchers at this erroneous reasoning is French President Emmanuel Macron. Taking issue with setting up the Japan liaison office, Macron has expressed opposition to such expansion by an alliance which, at least in terms of treaty obligations, has a strict geographical limit. In the words of an Elysée Palace official, “As far as the office is concerned, the Japanese authorities themselves have told us that they are not extremely attached to it.” With a headmaster’s tone, the official went on to give journalists an elementary lesson. “NATO means North Atlantic Treaty Organization.” The centrality of Articles 5 and 6 of the alliance were “geographic” in nature.
In 2021, Macron made it clear that NATO’s increasingly obsessed approach with China as a dangerous belligerent entailed a confusion of goals. “NATO is a military organisation, the issue of our relationship with China isn’t just a military issue. NATO is an organisation that concerns the North Atlantic, China has little to do with the North Atlantic.”
Such views have also pleased former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, whose waspish ire has also been trained on the NATO Secretary-General. In his latest statement, Stoltenberg was condemned as “the supreme fool” of “the international stage”. “Stoltenberg by instinct and policy, is simply an accident on its way to happen”. In thinking that “China should be superintended by the West and strategically circumscribed”, the NATO official had overlooked the obvious point that the country “represents twenty percent of humanity and now possesses the largest economy in the world … and has no record for attacking other states, unlike the United States, whose bidding Stoltenberg is happy to do”.
The record of this ceramic breaking bloc speaks for itself. In its post-Cold War visage, the alliance has undermined its own mission to foster stability, becoming Washington’s axe, spear and spade. Where NATO goes, war is most likely. Countries of the Indo-Pacific, take note.
SAS soldiers implicated in war crimesshould be named, a lawyer for alleged victims has said. In the opening session of an inquiry into the deaths during the Afghan war, the lawyers argued that blanket anonymity should not be given to members of the secretive unit.
One SAS soldier is said to have personally killed 35 Afghans. Legal representatives for the families claim soldiers carried out around 80 extrajudicial killings at the height of the war between 2010 and 2013.
Secret war crimes
Ministry of Defence (MoD) lawyers argued that identifying SAS soldiers would put them at risk. Further, they claimed that the MOD itself was expert enough at national security matters to say so. The inquiry is being led by lord Justice Haddon-Cave.
Defence secretary Ben Wallace made a rare move by acknowledging that the SAS were present in Afghanistan. Parliamentary convention is to never comment on special forces activity.
Allegations of a cover-up by the military have also circulated in the press. The NGO Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) said:
The inquiry also examines accusations of a systematic cover-up involving the highest echelons of the SAS and military investigators.
Referring to an earlier war crimes investigation conducted by the Royal Military Police named Operation Northmoor, AOAV said:
Upon being asked by Operation Northmoor investigators to examine the main computer server at the SAS headquarters in London, SAS commanders initially resisted. Subsequent orders to preserve all data were reportedly defied, with a significant quantity of data allegedly being erased before investigators could examine it.
Justice, finally?
Law firm Leigh Day is representing the families involved. When the MoD announced the inquiry in 2022, lawyer Tessa Gregory said:
Our clients have been fighting for years to find out what happened to their loved ones.
She said the military had tried to make sure the allegations never saw the light of day:
When they first issued these judicial review proceedings the Secretary of State for Defence contended that our clients’ pleas for a fresh investigation into the killings of their relatives were unarguable and sought to have their claims dismissed outright.
But ultimately, it had been the MoD’s own records which forced the statutory inquiry into existence, Gregory said:
Those documents show that members of the British army, including at the highest level, were raising serious and sustained concerns that UK Special Forces were carrying out extrajudicial killings in Afghanistan.
The MoD wants the inquiry heard in secret wherever possible. However, the BBC, Guardian, and others are currently pursuing a legal challenge in the interests of transparency. Other nations like Australia have had major trials around Afghan war crimes. However, the UK is yet to address these issues seriously.
This has an obvious deleterious effect on UK credibility. If British politicians want, for example, to point to other nations’ war crimes, they must be willing to hold themselves to the same standard.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is one of the key people driving US foreign policy. He was mentored by Hillary Clinton with regime changes in Honduras, Libya and Syria. He was the link between Nuland and Biden during the 2014 coup in Ukraine. As reported by Seymour Hersh, Sullivan led the planning of the Nord Stream pipelines destruction in September 2022. Sullivan guides or makes many large and small foreign policy decisions. This article will describe Jake Sullivan’s background, what he says, what he has been doing, where the US is headed and why this should be debated.
Background
Jake Sullivan was born in November 1976. He describes his formative years like this:
I was raised in Minnesota in the 1980s, a child of the later Cold War – of Rocky IV, the Miracle on Ice, and ‘Tear down this wall’. The 90s were my high school and college years. The Soviet Union collapsed. The Iron Curtain disappeared. Germany was reunified. An American-led alliance ended a genocide in Bosnia and prevented one in Kosovo. I went to graduate school in England and gave fiery speeches on the floor of the Oxford Union about how the United States was a force for good in the world.
Sullivan’s education includes Yale (BA), Oxford (MA) and Yale again (JD). He went quickly from academic studies and legal work to political campaigning and government.
Sullivan made important contacts during his college years at elite institutions. For example, he worked with former Deputy Secretary of State and future Brookings Institution president, Strobe Talbott. After a few years clerking for judges, Sullivan transitioned to a law firm in his hometown of Minneapolis. He soon became chief counsel to Senator Amy Klobuchar who connected him to the rising Senator Hillary Clinton.
Mentored by Hillary
Sullivan became a key adviser to Hillary Clinton in her campaign to be Democratic party nominee in 2008. At age 32, Jake Sullivan became deputy chief of staff and director of policy planning when she became secretary of state. He was her constant companion, travelling with her to 112 countries.
The Clinton/Sullivan foreign policy was soon evident. In Honduras, Clinton clashed with progressive Honduras President Manuel Zelaya over whether to re-admit Cuba to the OAS. Seven weeks later, on June 28, Honduran soldiers invaded the president’s home and kidnapped him out of the country, stopping en route at the US Air Base. The coup was so outrageous that even the US ambassador to Honduras denounced it. This was quickly over-ruled as the Clinton/Sullivan team played semantics games to say it was a coup but not a “military coup.” Thus the Honduran coup regime continued to receive US support. They quickly held a dubious election to make the restoration of President Zelaya “moot”. Clinton is proud of this success in her book “Hard Choices.”
Two years later the target was Libya. With Victoria Nuland as State Department spokesperson, the Clinton/Sullivan team promoted sensational claims of a pending massacre and urged intervention in Libya under the “responsibility to protect.” When the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorizing a no-fly zone to protect civilians, the US, Qatar and other NATO members distorted that and started air attacks on Libyan government forces. Today, 12 years later, Libya is still in chaos and war. The sensational claims of 2011 were later found to be false.
When the Libyan government was overthrown in Fall 2011, the Clinton/Sullivan State Department and CIA plotted to seize the Libyan weapons arsenal. Weapons were transferred to the Syrian opposition. US Ambassador Stevens and other Americans were killed in an internecine conflict over control of the weapons cache.
Undeterred, Clinton and Sullivan stepped up their attempts to overthrow the Syrian government. They formed a club of western nations and allies called the “Friends of Syria.” The “Friends” divided tasks who would do what in the campaign to topple the sovereign state. Former policy planner at the Clinton/Sullivan State Department, Ann Marie Slaughter, called for “foreign military intervention.” Sullivan knew they were arming violent sectarian fanatics to overthrow the Syrian government. In an email to Hillary released by Wikileaks, Sullivan noted “AQ is on our side in Syria.”
Biden’s adviser during the 2014 Ukraine Coup
After being Clinton’s policy planner, Sullivan became President Obama’s director of policy planning (Feb 2011 to Feb 2013) then national security adviser to Vice President Biden (Feb 2013 to August 2014).
In his position with Biden, Sullivan had a close-up view of the February 2014 Ukraine coup. He was a key contact between Victoria Nuland, overseeing the coup, and Biden. In the secretly recorded conversation where Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine discuss how to manage the coup, Nuland remarks that Jake Sullivan told her “you need Biden.” Biden gave the “attaboy” and the coup was “midwifed” following a massacre of police AND protesters on the Maidan plaza.
Sullivan must have observed Biden’s use of the vice president’s position for personal family gain. He would have been aware of Hunter Biden’s appointment to the board of the Burisima Ukrainian energy company, and the reason Joe Biden demanded that the Ukrainian special prosecutor who was investigating Burisima to be fired. Biden later bragged and joked about this.
In December 2013, at a conference hosted by Chevron Corporation, Victoria Nuland said the US has spent five BILLION dollars to bring “democracy” to Ukraine.
Sullivan helped create Russiagate
Jake Sullivan was a leading member of the 2016 Hillary Clinton team which promoted Russiagate. The false claim that Trump was secretly contacting Russia was promoted initially to distract from negative news about Hillary Clinton and to smear Trump as a puppet of Putin. Both the Mueller and Durham investigations officially discredited the main claims of Russiagate. There was no collusion. The accusations were untrue, and the FBI gave them unjustified credence for political reasons.
Jake Sullivan is a good speaker, persuasive and with a dry sense of humor. At the same time, he can be disingenuous. Some of his statements are false. For example, in June 2017 Jake Sullivan was interviewed by Frontline television program about US foreign policy and especially US-Russia relations. Regarding NATO’s overthrow of the Libyan government, Sullivan says, “Putin came to believe that the United States had taken Russia for a ride in the UN Security Council that authorized the use of force in Libya…. He thought he was authorizing a purely defensive mission…. Now on the actual language of the resolution, it’s plain as day that Putin was wrong about that.” Contrary to what Sullivan claims, the UN Security Council resolution clearly authorizes a no-fly zone for the protection of civilians, no more. It’s plain as day there was NOT authorization for NATO’s offensive attacks and “regime change.”
Planning the Nord Stream Pipeline destruction
The bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines, filled with 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas, was a monstrous environmental disaster. The destruction also caused huge economic damage to Germany and other European countries. It has been a boon for US liquefied natural gas exports which have surged to fill the gap, but at a high price. Many European factories dependent on cheap gas have closed down. Tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs.
Seymour Hersh reported details of How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline. He says, “Biden authorized Jake Sullivan to bring together an interagency group to come up with a plan.” A sabotage plan was prepared and officials in Norway and Denmark included in the plot. The day after the sabotage, Jake Sullivan tweeted
I spoke to my counterpart Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe of Denmark about the apparent sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines. The U.S. is supporting efforts to investigate and we will continue our work to safeguard Europe’s energy security.
Ellerman-Kingombe may have been one of the Danes informed in advance of the bombing. He is close to the US military and NATO command.
Since then, the Swedish investigation of Nord Stream bombing has made little progress. Contrary to Sullivan’s promise in the tweet, the US has not supported other efforts to investigate. When Russia proposed an independent international investigation of the Nord Stream sabotage at the UN Security Council, the resolution failed due to lack of support from the US and US allies. Hungary’s foreign minister recently asked,
How on earth is it possible that someone blows up critical infrastructure on the territory of Europe and no one has a say, no one condemns, no one carries out an investigation?
Economic Plans devoid of reality
Ten weeks ago Jake Sullivan delivered a major speech on “Renewing American Economic Leadership” at the Brookings Institution. He explains how the Biden administration is pursuing a “modern industrial and innovation strategy.” They are trying to implement a “foreign policy for the middle class” which better integrates domestic and foreign policies. The substance of their plan is to increase investments in semiconductors, clean energy minerals and manufacturing. However the new strategy is very unlikely to achieve the stated goal to “lift up all of America’s people, communities, and industries.” Sullivan’s speech completely ignores the elephant in the room: the costly US Empire including wars and 800 foreign military bases which consume about 60% of the total discretionary budget. Under Biden and Sullivan’s foreign policy, there is no intention to rein in the extremely costly military industrial complex. It is not even mentioned.
US exceptionalism 2.0
In December 2018 Jake Sullivan wrote an essay titled “American Exceptionalism, Reclaimed.” It shows his foundational beliefs and philosophy. He separates himself from the “arrogant brand of exceptionalism” demonstrated by Dick Cheney. He also criticizes the “American first” policies of Donald Trump. Sullivan advocates for “a new American exceptionalism” and “American leadership in the 21st Century.”
Sullivan has a shallow Hollywood understanding of history: “The United States stopped Hitler’s Germany, saved Western Europe from economic ruin, stood firm against the Soviet Union, and supported the spread of democracy worldwide.” He believes “The fact that the major powers have not returned to war with one another since 1945 is a remarkable achievement of American statecraft.”
Jake Sullivan is young in age but his ideas are old. The United States is no longer dominant economically or politically. It is certainly not “indispensable.” More and more countries are objecting to US bullying and defying Washington’s demands. Even key allies such as Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are ignoring US requests. The trend toward a multipolar world is escalating. Jake Sullivan is trying to reverse the trend but reality and history are working against him. Over the past four or five decades, the US has gone from being an investment, engineering and manufacturing powerhouse to a deficit spending consumer economy waging perpetual war with a bloated military industrial complex.
Instead of reforming and rebuilding the US, the national security state expends much of its energy and resources trying to destabilize countries deemed to be “adversaries”.
Conclusion
Previous national security advisers Henry Kissinger and Zbignew Brzezinski were very influential.
Kissinger is famous for wooing China and dividing the communist bloc. Jake Sullivan is now wooing India in hopes of dividing that country from China and the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).
Brzezinski is famous for plotting the Afghanistan trap. By destabilizing Afghanistan with foreign terrorists beginning 1978, the US induced the Soviet Union to send troops to Afghanistan at the Afghan government’s request. The result was the collapse of the progressive Afghan government, the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and 40 years of war and chaos.
On 28 February 2022, just four days after Russian troops entered Ukraine, Jake Sullivan’s mentor, Hillary Clinton, was explicit: “Afghanistan is the model.” It appears the US intentionally escalated the provocations in Ukraine to induce Russia to intervene. The goal is to “weaken Russia.” This explains why the US has spent over $100 billion sending weapons and other support to Ukraine. This explains why the US and UK undermined negotiations which could have ended the conflict early on.
The Americans who oversaw the 2014 coup in Kiev, are the same ones running US foreign policy today: Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland and Jake Sullivan. Prospects for ending the Ukraine war are very poor as long as they are in power.
The Democratic Party constantly emphasizes “democracy” yet there is no debate or discussion over US foreign policy. What kind of “democracy” is this where crucial matters of life and death are not discussed?
Robert F Kennedy Jr is now running in the Democratic Party primary. He has a well informed and critical perspective on US foreign policy including the never ending wars, the intelligence agencies and the conflict in Ukraine.
Jake Sullivan is a skilled debater. Why doesn’t he debate Democratic Party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr over US foreign policy and national security?
The 53rd session of the UN Human Rights Council started 19 June (to end on 14 July 2023). Thanks to the – as usual – excellent documentation prepared by the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) I will highlight the themes mostly affecting HRDs.
To stay up-to-date you can follow @ISHRglobal and #HRC53 on Twitter, and look out for its Human Rights Council Monitor. During the session, follow the live-updated programme of work on Sched.
Here are some highlights of the session’s thematic discussions
Human rights of migrants
The Council will consider a resolution on the human rights of migrants this session, where a big problem is the criminalisation of the provision of solidarity and support, including rescues at sea, by migrant rights defenders.
Reprisals
..States raising cases is an important aspect of seeking accountability and ending impunity for acts of reprisal and intimidation against defenders engaging with the UN. It can also send a powerful message of solidarity to defenders, supporting and sustaining their work in repressive environments.
Anexa Alfred Cunningham (Nicaragua), a Miskitu Indigenous leader, woman human rights defender, lawyer and expert on Indigenous peoples rights from Nicaragua, who has been denied entry back into her country since July 2022, when she participated in a session of a group of United Nations experts on the rights of Indigenous Peoples. States should demand that Anexa be permitted to return to her country, community and family and enabled to continue her work safely and without restriction.
Vanessa Mendoza (Andorra), a psychologist and the president of Associació Stop Violències, which focuses on gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive rights, and advocates for safe and legal abortion in Andorra. After engaging with CEDAW in 2019, Vanessa was charged with ‘slander with publicity’, ‘slander against the co-princes’ and ‘crimes against the prestige of the institutions’. She has been indicted for the alleged “crimes against the prestige of the institutions” involving a potentially heavy fine (up to 30,000 euros) and a criminal record if convicted. States should demand that the authorities in Andorra unconditionally drop all charges against Vanessa and amend laws which violate the rights to freedom of expression and association.
Kadar Abdi Ibrahim (Djibouti) is a human rights defender and journalist from Djibouti. He is also the Secretary-General of the political party Movement for Democracy and Freedom (MoDEL). Days after returning from Geneva, where Kadar carried out advocacy activities ahead of Djibouti’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), intelligence service agents raided his house and confiscated his passport. He has thus been banned from travel for five years. States should call on the authorities in Djibouti to lift the travel ban and return Kadar’s passport immediately and unconditionally.
Hong Kong civil society (Hong Kong): Until 2020, civil society in Hong Kong was vibrant and had engaged consistently and constructively with the UN. This engagement came to a screeching halt after the imposition by Beijing of the National Security Law for Hong Kong (NSL), which entered into force on 1 July 2020. States should urge the Hong Kong authorities to repeal the offensive National Security Law and desist from criminalizing cooperation with the UN and other work to defend human rights.
Maryam al-Balushi and Amina al-Abduli (United Arab Emirates), Amina Al-Abdouli used to work as a school teacher. She was advocating for the Arab Spring and the Syrian uprising. She is a mother of five. Maryam Al Balushi was a student at the College of Technology. They were arrested for their human rights work, and held in incommunicado detention, tortured and forced into self-incriminatory confessions. After the UN Special Procedures mandate holders sent a letter to the UAE authorities raising concerns about their torture and ill treatment in detention in 2019, the UAE charged Amina and Maryam with three additional crimes. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found their detention arbitrary and a clear case of reprisals for communicating with Special Procedures. In April 2021, a court sentenced them to three additional years of prison for “publishing false information that disturbs the public order”. States should demand that authorities in the UAE immediately and unconditionally release Maryam and Amina and provide them with reparations for their arbitrary detention and ill-treatment.
Other thematic reports
At this 53rd session, the Council will discuss a range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights through dedicated debates with the mandate holders and the High Commissioner, including:
The Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association
The Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity
The Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of expression
The Special Rapporteur on the right to health
The Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary of arbitrary executions
The Special Rapporteur on promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change
The Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance
The Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises
The High Commissioner on the importance of casualty recording for the promotion and protection of human rights
The Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide
In addition, the Council will hold dedicated debates on the rights of specific groups including:
The Working Group on discrimination against women and girls
The Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences
The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants
The Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children
The Special Rapporteur on independence of judges and lawyers
#HRC53 | Country-specific developments
Afghanistan
The Human Rights Council will hold its Enhanced Interactive Dialogue on Afghanistan, with the Special Rapporteur on the situation in Afghanistan and the Working Group on Discrimination against Women in Law and Practice. The joint report of the two mandates follows up from an urgent debate held last year on the situation of women and girls in the country. Their visit to the country concluded that there exist manifestations of systemic discrimination violating human rights and fundamental freedoms in both public and private lives. ISHR has joined many around the world to argue that the situation amounts to gender apartheid, and welcomes the call of the two mandate holders to develop normative standards and tools to address this as “an institutionalised system of discrimination, segregation, humiliation and exclusion of women and girls”. The gravity and severity is urgent, and requires that States act on the ongoing calls by Afghan civil society to establish an accountability mechanism for crimes against humanity.
Algeria
On 15 June, fifteen activists and peaceful protesters will face trial in Algiers on the basis of unfounded charges which include ‘enrolment in a terrorist or subversive organisation active abroad or in Algeria’ and ‘propaganda likely to harm the national interest, of foreign origin or inspiration’. The activists were arrested between 23 and 27 April 2021, and arbitrarily prosecuted within one criminal case. If convicted of these charges, they face a prison sentence of up to twenty years. This case includes HRDs Kaddour Chouicha, Jamila Loukil and Said Boudour who were members of the LADDH before its dissolution by the Administrative Court of Algiers following a complaint filed by the Interior Ministry on 29 June 2022. We urge States to monitor the prosecution closely, including by attending the trial. We also urge States to demand that Algeria, a HRC member, end its crackdown on human rights defenders and civil society organisations, amend laws used to silence peaceful dissent and stifle civil society, and immediately and unconditionally release arbitrarily detained human rights defenders.
China
The recent findings of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in March, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in May, and the seven key benchmarks on Xinjiang by 15 Special Rapporteurs add up to wide range of UN expert voices that have collectively raised profound concern at the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers and HRDs in mainland China. Seldom has the gap between the breadth of UN documentation on crimes against humanity and other grave violations and the lack of action by the Human Rights Council in response to such overwhelming evidence been so flagrant: the Council’s credibility is at stake. ISHR calls on the Council to promptly adopt a resolution requesting updated information on the human rights situation in Xinjiang, and a dialogue among all stakeholders on the matter. Governments from all regions should avoid selectivity, put an end to China’s exceptionalism, and provide a meaningful response to atrocity crimes on the basis of impartial UN-corroborated information.
The recent convictions of prominent rights defenders Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong to 12 and 14 years in jail respectively, and the recent detention of 2022 Martin Ennals awardee Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan for ‘subversion of State power’ a year after his release, point to the need for sustained attention to the fate of HRDs in China. States should address in a joint statement the abuse of national security and other root causes of violations that commonly affect Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese HRDs. States should also ask for the prompt release of human rights defenders, including human rights lawyers Chang Weiping, Yu Wensheng and Ding Jiaxi, legal scholar Xu Zhiyong, feminist activists Huang Xueqin and Li Qiaochu, Uyghur doctor Gulshan Abbas, Hong Kong lawyer Chow Hang-tung, and Tibetan climate activist A-nya Sengdra.
Egypt
Since the joint statement delivered by States in March 2021 at the HRC, there has been no significant improvement in the human rights situation in Egypt despite the launching of the national human rights strategy and the national dialogue. The Egyptian government has failed to address, adequately or at all, the repeated serious concerns expressed by several UN Special Procedures over the broad and expansive definition of “terrorism”, which enables the conflation of civil disobedience and peaceful criticism with “terrorism”. The Human Rights Committee raised its concerns “that these laws are used, in combination with restrictive legislation on fundamental freedoms, to silence actual or perceived critics of the Government, including peaceful protesters, lawyers, journalists, political opponents and human rights defenders”. Egyptian and international civil society organisations have been calling on the HRC to establish a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the human rights situation in Egypt, applying objective criteria and in light of the Egyptian government’s absolute lack of genuine will to acknowledge, let alone address, the country’s deep-rooted human rights crisis.
Israel and OPT
Civil society continues to call on the OHCHR to implement, in full, the mandate provided by HRC resolution 31/36 of March 2016 with regards to the UN database of businesses involved in Israel’s illegal settlement industry. The resolution mandated the release of a report containing the names of the companies involved in Israel’s settlement enterprise, to be annually updated. The initial report containing a list of 112 companies was released by the OHCHR in February 2020, three years after the mandated release date and despite undue political pressure. Since then, the UN database has not been updated. UN member states should continue to call on the OHCHR to implement the mandate in full and publish an annual update, as this represents a question of credibility of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Council.
The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel will present its second report to the Council on 20 June. Member states should continue to support the work of the CoI to investigate the root causes of the situation in line with its mandate with a view to putting an end to 75 years of denial of the Palestinian’s people inalienable rights to self-determination and return. As the Palestinian people commemorate 75 years of Nakba (the destruction of Palestinian homeland and society), the CoI needs to address the root causes of the situation, including by investigating the ongoing denial of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and the return of refugees, as well as the ongoing forcible displacement of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line in the context of Israel’s imposition of a system of colonial apartheid.
In addition, on 10 July, the Council will hold an interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.
Saudi Arabia
In light of the ongoing diplomatic rehabilitation of crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi authorities’ brazen repression continues to intensify, as ALQST has documented. Some notable recent trends include, but are not limited to: the further harsh sentencing of activists for peaceful social media use, such as women activists Salma al-Shehab (27 years), Fatima al-Shawarbi (30 years and six months) and Sukaynah al-Aithan (40 years); the ongoing detention of prisoners of conscience beyond the expiry of their sentences, some of whom continue to be held incommunicado such as human rights defenders Mohammed al-Qahtani and Essa al-Nukheifi, and; regressive developments in relation to the death penalty, including a wave of new death sentences passed and a surge in executions (47 individuals were executed from March-May 2023), raising concerns for those currently on death row, including several young men at risk for crimes they allegedly committed as minors. We call on the HRC to respond to the calls of NGOs from around the world to create a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the ever-deteriorating human rights situation in Saudi Arabia.
Nicaragua
Continued attention should be paid by States at the HRC to the steadily worsening situation in Nicaragua. On 2 June, the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights raised ‘growing concerns that the authorities in Nicaragua are actively silencing any critical or dissenting voices in the country and are using the justice system to this end’. The OHCHR reports 63 individuals arbitrarily detained in May alone, with 55 charged with ‘conspiracy to undermine national integrity’ and ‘spreading false news’ within one single night, without access to a lawyer of their choosing. States should express support for the monitoring and investigation work of the OHCHR and the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN), and call on the Nicaraguan government to release the remaining 46 political prisoners, revoke its decision to strip deported political prisoners off their nationality, and take meaningful measures to prevent, address and investigate violence by armed settlers against Indigenous Peoples and Afro-descendants.
Russia
Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has also been accompanied by a domestic war of repression against human rights defenders, independent journalists and political dissent. Most recently, Russia has adopted a sweeping new law criminalising assistance to or cooperation with a range of international bodies, including the International Criminal Court, ad hoc tribunals, foreign courts and arguably even the UN Human Rights Council itself. This law is manifestly incompatible with the right to communicate and cooperate with international bodies, and a flagrant and institutionalised case of reprisal. With Russian authorities having been found by a UN-mandated Commission of Inquiry to be possibly responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes, and having a closed and highly repressive environment for civil society (ranking 17/100 in the CIVICUS Monitor), Russia is plainly unfit to be elected to the UN Human Rights Council and should be regarded as an illegitimate candidate. States should support and cooperate with the mandate of the new Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Russia, as well as with the Commission of Inquiry into human rights violations and abuses associated with Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.
Sudan
Since the beginning of the war in Sudan on 15 April 2023, increasing numbers of Sudanese WHRDs are receiving threats and subject to grave danger. WHRDs are facing challenges in evacuating from Sudan and face further protection risks in neighboring countries. Sudanese women groups and WHRDs are risking their lives to provide support, solidarity, and report on the rising numbers of sexual and gender-based violence crimes. Many survivors are trapped in fighting areas unable to access support, and the occupation of hospitals by RSF is hindering women’s access to health services. The Council must urgently establish an international investigation in Sudan with sufficient resources, including to investigate the threats and reprisals against WHRDs for their work, and to document sexual and gender-based violence. During the debate with the High Commissioner and designated expert on Sudan on 19 June, we urge States to condemn sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). States should highlight the impacts of the war on women and girls, including sexual and reproductive health as well as lack of support services for survivors of SGBV. States should reaffirm the importance of participation of women and their demands, and amplify the critical work of WHRDs on the ground despite the imminent risks to their lives and safety. States should also condemn the increasing threats against WHRDs and demand their effective protection.
Venezuela
On 5 July, the High Commissioner will present his report on the human rights situation in Venezuela, which will include an assessment of the level of implementation of UN recommendations already made to the State. The Council focus on Venezuela remains critical at a time when some States’ efforts to normalize relations with Venezuela risk erasing human rights from key agendas. Council members and observers should actively engage in the interactive dialogue with the High Commissioner to make evident that the human rights situation in the country remains at the heart of their concerns. The human rights and humanitarian situation in the country remains grave. Human rights defenders face ongoing and potentially increasing restrictions. We urge States to:
Express concern about the NGO bill, sitting with the Venezuelan National Assembly, and call for it to be withdrawn. The potential implications of this bill are to drastically shrink civic space, including by criminalising the work of human rights defenders;
Call for the release of all those detained arbitrarily – including defender Javier Tarazona who has been held since July 2021 and whose state of health is deteriorating;
Call for the rights of human rights defenders and journalists to be respected including during electoral periods, with a mind to Presidential elections next year; and
Call on Venezuela to engage fully with all UN agencies and mechanisms, including OHCHR, and develop a clear plan for the implementation of UN human rights recommendations made to it.
Tunisia
Civil society organisations have raised alarm at the escalating pattern of human rights violations and the rapidly worsening situation in Tunisia following President Kais Saied’s power grab on 25 July 2021 leading to the erosion of the rule of law, attacks on the independence of the judiciary, a crackdown on peaceful political opposition and abusive use of “counter-terrorism” law, as well as attacks on freedom of expression. The High Commissioner has addressed the deteriorating situation in the three latest global updates to the HRC. Special Procedures issued at least 8 communications in less than one year addressing attacks against the independence of the judiciary, as well as attacks against freedom of expression and assembly. Despite the fact that in 2011 Tunisia extended a standing invitation to all UN Special Procedures, and received 16 visits by UN Special Procedures since, Tunisia’s recent postponement of the visit of the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, is another sign of Tunisia disengaging from international human rights mechanisms and declining levels of cooperation. The upcoming session provides a window of opportunity for the Council to exercise its prevention mandate and address the situation before the imminent risk of closure of civic space in Tunisia and regress in Tunisia’s engagement with the HRC and its mechanisms is complete.
Syria
On 5 July, the Council will hold an interactive dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on Syria. In a report to the Human Rights Council in 2021, the Commission of Inquiry on Syria called for the establishment of a mechanism to reveal the fate of the missing and disappeared. On 28 March 2023, during the 77th session of the UN General Assembly, the Secretary-General and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights briefed UN Member States on the situation of the missing in Syria, and the findings of the study conducted by the Secretary-General as mandated by Resolution UNGA 76/228. The study concluded that in order to address the situation of the missing in Syria and its impact on families’ lives, it is necessary to create an institution to reveal the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared and to provide support to their families. As discussions are taking place in the UNGA to adopt a resolution establishing a humanitarian institution to reveal the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared, civil society, led by the Truth and Justice Charter, urges States to support the families of the missing to know the truth about the fate and whereabouts of their loved ones by voting in favour of the resolution at the UNGA.
Other country situations
The High Commissioner will present the annual report on 19 June. The Council will hold an interactive dialogue on the High Commissioner’s annual report on 20 June 2023. The Council will hold debates on and is expected to consider resolutions addressing a range of country situations, in some instances involving the renewal of the relevant expert mandates. These include:
Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Eritrea
Interactive Dialogues with the High Commissioner and the Special Rapporteur on Myanmar
Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Burundi
Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Ukraine
Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Belarus
Interactive Dialogue with the Fact-Finding Mission on Iran
Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Expert on Central African Republic
Appointment of mandate holders
The President of the Human Rights Council has proposed candidates for the following mandates:
Special Rapporteur on minority issues (Mr Nicolas Levrat, Switzerland)
Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants (Ms Anna Triandafyllidou, Greece)
Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism (Mr Ben Saul, Australia).
Resolutions to be presented to the Council’s 53rd session
At the organisational meeting on 5 June the following resolutions (selected) were announced (States leading the resolution in brackets):
Human rights situation in Syria (Germany, France, Italy, Jordan, Netherlands, Qatar, Turkey, USA, UK)
New and emerging digital technologies and human rights (Austria, Brazil, Denmark, South Korea, Morocco, Singapore)
Civil society space (Chile, Ireland, Japan, Sierra Leone, Tunisia)
Independence and impartiality of the judiciary, jurors and assessors, and the independence of lawyers – mandate renewal (Australia, Botswana, Hungary, Maldives, Mexico, Thailand)
Human rights of migrants (Mexico)
Mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus – mandate renewal (EU)
Mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Eritrea – mandate renewal (EU)
Business and human rights – mandate renewal (Russian Federation, Ghana, Argentina and Switzerland)
Extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions – mandate renewal (Finland, Sweden)
Situation of human rights of Rohiynga muslims and other minorities in Myanmar (Pakistan on behalf of OIC)
Adoption of Universal Periodic Review (UPR) reports
During this session, the Council will adopt the UPR working group reports on Argentina, Benin, Czechia, Gabon, Ghana, Guatemala, Japan, Pakistan, Peru, Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and Zambia.
Panel discussions
During each Council session, panel discussions are held to provide member States and NGOs with opportunities to hear from subject-matter experts and raise questions. 5 panel discussions are scheduled for this upcoming session:
Panel discussion on the measures necessary to find durable solutions to the Rohingya crisis and to end all forms of human rights violations and abuses against Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar
Annual full-day discussion on the human rights of women [accessible panel]. Theme: Gender-based violence against women and girls in public and political life
Annual full-day discussion on the human rights of women [accessible panel]. Theme: Social protection: women’s participation and leadership
Annual panel discussion on the adverse impacts of climate change on human rights [accessible panel]. Theme: Adverse impact of climate change on the full realisation of the right to food
Panel discussion on the role of digital, media and information literacy in the promotion and enjoyment of the right to freedom of opinion and expression [accessible panel]
Downing Street crisis meeting hears that about 8,000 who arrived under Operation Warm Welcome will be evicted this summer with nowhere to go
Thousands of Afghan refugees in the UK face homelessness this summer, the government was warned last week at a secret crisis meeting in Downing Street.
Council officials told No 10 and Home Office civil servants that about 8,000 Afghan refugees, allowed into the country in 2021 under the slogan Operation Warm Welcome, are due to be evicted from hotels as early as August because of a government deadline, yet have nowhere to go.
A famous SAS soldier has lost a multi-million defamation trial in Australia. Victoria Cross winner Ben Roberts-Smith was found not to have been defamed over media claims of murder in Afghanistan. The case has been referred to as a ‘proxy’ war crimes trial.
Australian cases of this kind tell a story about the wars. And, for that matter, about the responses of the occupying nations. Australia has had major inquiries and cases have reached the courts. Meanwhile, the UK chose to legislate to protect past and future war criminals.
Hero soldier?
For decades, Western soldiers have been lionised by governments and the press to stave off criticism of wars like Afghanistan. This is nowhere truer than the Special Forces. Political expediency meant that elite troops were overused in Afghanistan and Iraq. Partly because their deaths were not as politically loaded as regular forces.
Australian SAS soldier Roberts-Smith is an example of this. The Australian SAS, like its British and American counterparts went rogue. In each case, they started to act like unaccountable gangs.
When accused of involvement in war crimes, this hero of the Australian right-wing sued for defamation. He just lost his case on most of the allegations made. Over a year long case, the court heard how the SAS was a factional, rogue force, riven by internal rivalry. This allegedly included ‘blooding’. This is a practice where new recruits were made to extrajudicially kill captives to prove themselves.
One of the allegations included an incident in 2012 when Roberts-Smith was said to have kicked a prisoner off a cliff before another SAS soldier shot the prisoner. Another allegation was that he killed an old man found hiding in a compound. The man’s prosthetic leg was then turned into a macabre drinking vessel at the regimental bar.
While the former corporal can’t be jailed for the findings in a civil defamation case, they are very damaging. He may well have to pay out millions in damages to the newspapers in question. The Guardianreported:
The onus of proof in the defamation case rested with the newspapers, who were required to prove to the civil standard of “balance of probabilities” that the allegations they had published were true.
The newspapers appear to have won this time.
UK parallels
British SAS troops are also accused of war crimes in Afghanistan. An inquiry into these is finally underway. Yet the UK government has gone to great lengths to make sure UK war crimes cases never come to court. It has even tried to rewrite the law to protect itself from accountability.
The Overseas Operations Act, as the Canary has argued, makes war crimes much harder to bring to court. It is at once an establishment stitch-up, and a betrayal of the UK troops it claims to protect.
Not satisfied with this, the Tories are now pursuing a separate bill for the north of Ireland. Again, this would prevent victims of British and paramilitary violence from getting justice. This includes the families of British soldiers.
Ultimately, the cult of the elite warrior which developed during the so-called ‘war on terror’ has collapsed. Far from being superhuman heroes, special forces units have shown themselves to be entirely fallible.
And, as anyone with half a brain would expect of military units with a death cult ethos, they are perfectly capable of descending into complete savagery.
Like Cicero in the Roman Republic, there are always a handful of chroniclers who can see and articulate clearly the social, cultural, and political realities of empires in terminal decline. They call out the bankruptcy of an inept and corrupt ruling class, blinded by hubris, as well as a populace that has checked out of civic life and is entranced by bread and circus spectacles. In his trilogy Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, Chambers Johnson does a masterful job of showing how and why we are disintegrating. So does Andrew Bacevich, who, in his newest book of essays, On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century, writes about the debacles that have beset the American empire since the Vietnam War, a conflict he fought in as a young army officer. Bacevich warns that Americans’ inability to be self-critical, to dissect and understand the litany of disasters that have followed on the heels of Vietnam, including decades of fruitless warfare in the Middle East, will have terrible consequences for us and much of the rest of the globe.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Adam Coley Audio Post-Production: Tommy Harron
Transcript
Chris Hedges: At the end of any empire, there are always a handful of chroniclers who, like Cicero in the ancient Roman Republic, see clearly the looming disintegration of empire. They call out the bankruptcy of an inept and corrupt ruling class blinded by hubris, as well as a populace that has checked out of civic life and is entranced by the bread and circus of spectacles. Chambers Johnson in his trilogy on American empire: Blowback; The Sorrows of Empire; and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic does a masterful job of showing how and why we are disintegrating.
So does Andrew Bacevich, who in his newest book of essays, On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century, writes about the debacles that have beset the American empire since the Vietnam War, a conflict he fought in as a young Army officer. He warns that our inability to be self-critical, to dissect and understand the litany of disasters that have followed on the heels of Vietnam, including the 20 years of fruitless warfare in the Middle East, will have terrible consequences for us and much of the rest of the globe.
Joining me to discuss his new book is Andrew Bacevich, the president and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. A West Point graduate and retired Army colonel. He is also professor emeritus of History and International Relations at Boston University. His other books include The New American Militarism; The Limits of Power; America’s War for the Greater Middle East; and After The Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed.
Andrew, I want to begin with what you call the Church of America the Redeemer. You say this is a virtual congregation, albeit one possessing many of the attributes of a more traditional religion. The church has its own holy scripture, authenticated on July 4, 1776 at a gathering of 56 prophets, and it has its own saints, prominent among them, the good Thomas Jefferson, chief author of the sacred text – Not the bad Thomas Jefferson, who owned and impregnated enslaved people – Talk about the Church of America the Redeemer, and what happens when you don’t pay fealty to that church?
Andrew Bacevich: Well, if you don’t pay fealty to it, I think you probably get ignored and end up being somewhat frustrated, which would be, I think, the way I would describe myself with regard to my writing efforts. But what’s the Church of the Redeemer? Well, I guess the essay itself is another way of approaching and commenting on the notion of American exceptionalism, which rests on a conviction that we are, indeed, the chosen people, the new chosen people, and as the new chosen people, that we have a divinely inspired mission. And the mission is to transform the world in our own image. This, I think, is something that, in many respects, we can trace back to the founding of the republic, even to the colonial era. I think it is something that really achieved maturity beginning in 1945 and has persisted down to the present moment despite the accumulation of evidence that says that we’re not exceptional, and that the prophets that we look to in many respects have feet of clay.
Chris Hedges: I mean, 1945, you could argue that after World War II, of course, in many ways, at least for some parts of the world, and particularly Europe, America was the redeemer. And yet, since Vietnam, this kind of rhetoric is at complete odds with the reality of how we project power and what we do in the world. And I want you just to address that disconnect between the language we use to describe ourselves to ourselves and what’s actually happening.
Andrew Bacevich: What a great question, and I can’t give you a satisfactory answer. The persistence of myth when facts and reality contradict the myth is a bit of a puzzle. You’ve put your finger, I think, on the key point, and that is that even if at the end of World War II, and arguably for the next couple of decades, it would be at least plausible to be patting ourselves on the back as the savior of the world, that notion has become implausible since Vietnam. There was an effort to revive it in the aftermath of 9/11 when George W. Bush embarked upon his great crusade, the one that we called global war on terrorism. Certainly the expectations that informed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 traced their origin back to the claims made at the end of World War II and early in the Cold War. But we saw in Iraq that the facts simply demolished those expectations.
So you put your finger on the main question, I think: why does the myth persist? Again, I don’t have a very good answer, although I think that, to some degree, it persists because those who wield power in the United States, whether we’re talking political power, economic power, those who wield power have an interest in sustaining the myth. Because as long as the myth persists, so does their elevated status.
Chris Hedges: Well, if their reference point is Vietnam or the 20-year debacle in the Middle East, the myth itself implodes. And so, in a way, it has to be anchored in the past, because it’s impossible to anchor it in the present.
Andrew Bacevich: But in a way it doesn’t implode. I mean, it ought to implode.
Chris Hedges: Right.
Andrew Bacevich: Let’s talk about the Afghanistan War. Longest war in our country’s history – Not the biggest, by any means, if we look at the number of Americans and other than Americans killed, wounded. The most expensive, I think, arguably, in terms of dollar cost. 20-year effort, ends in abject failure. And one might say, well, obviously, clearly then the nation is going to step back and reflect deeply on the cause and consequences of this failure. But as you know and I know, that didn’t happen. I mean, it is astonishing how quickly both our political elites in Washington and the country more broadly have turned aside from Afghanistan. And now today, as you and I speak, we’re all gung-ho to wage a proxy war, underline a proxy war in Ukraine, as if the debacle of Afghanistan, the parallel debacle of Iraq, never happened.
Chris Hedges: Well, there was a story, I can’t remember if it was Churchill or somebody went to Paris after World War II, and the French were talking about lessons of the war, and it was all about World War I, which of course they won. But it has something of that kind of utter denial of reality because reality is just so unpalatable. And I wonder if that’s a feature of all late empires, where no one’s held accountable, there’s no self reflection, and it’s a collective self-delusion. Does that characterize… I think you could argue it characterizes any late empire.
Andrew Bacevich: Yeah, I’m not a student of comparative empires, but if we take the little I know of a couple of cases, one would be France. France, in the wake of World War II, determined to cling to its empire in Indochina and in Algeria, an effort that came nowhere near to succeeding and simply exacted great costs, both of France and of these former colonial territories. That was an empire that didn’t learn, that was an empire that didn’t read the writings on the wall.
I think you can say the same thing about the Brits. Certainly, in the wake of World War II, British leaders recognized that the pre-war British Empire was unsustainable, but they exerted themselves to try to maintain a privileged status. And that didn’t work. And I think here the most illustrative case is the Suez crisis of 1956, when the Brits tried to reassert control of the Suez Canal, and more broadly were attempting to reassert indirect control of Egypt, and I suppose more broadly of the Middle East. And of course that flopped terribly. So yeah, it’s not just us. I think you probably can make a case that empires cling to the past even when the signs clearly indicate that there’s no way to resuscitate the past.
Chris Hedges: I want to ask you a question as a historian. You quote the great historian, Carl Becker, “For all practical purposes, history is for us, and for the time being, what we know it to be.” And then you go on and say, “The study of the past may reveal truths, Becker allowed, but those truths are contingent, incomplete, invalid only for the time being. Put another way, historical perspectives conceived in what Becker termed the ‘specious present’ have a sell-by date.” Can you explain that idea?
Andrew Bacevich: Well, and that’s not the past that Americans want to conjure up. We want to be able to pick the parts of the past that are relevant. I think, absolutely, the classic example of this is the run-up to World War II, the narrative that everybody knows: the failed effort to appease Hitler, American reluctance to intervene in the European war, once it began, on behalf of Great Britain. These are the shake-your-finger lessons that have persisted since then down to the present moment.
Another way, I think, of saying that is that our prevailing notions of history are exceedingly narrow and exceedingly selective. And basically the process of selection is one that aims to reassure ourselves. To reassure ourselves that the myths that we believe in can be sustained. That disappointments, whether it’s the disappointment of the Vietnam War, whether it’s the disappointment of the Afghanistan war, that those are mere merely passing moments, and that if we exert ourselves, if we try hard enough, if we send our soldiers off to enough wars, that we can somehow turn this thing around. I think that’s very much what’s going on with regard to the US proxy participation in the Ukraine War, that, by God, if we can defeat Russia, then we’ll be back on top. We’ll be number one. Let the Chinese see what we’ve done to the Russians, and then let’s see what they say at that time. But it all involves this… Recognize the truths, the realities that I want to and ignore the ones that I find inconvenient.
Chris Hedges: You write that the process of formulating new history to supplant the old is organic rather than contrived – And this is the point I found really interesting – It comes from the bottom up, not the top down. What do you mean by that?
Andrew Bacevich: Well, I think I was suggesting what it ought to be. It ought to be organic, that we ought to recognize voices that, perhaps, have been ignored or taken less than seriously. I think here an example is the 1619 Project, although it cuts both ways. I’m a critic of the 1619 Project. I think that the effort to – And people will accuse me of being unfair to the supporters of that project – But I think the notion of contriving a new narrative of American history that basically revolves around the African American experience goes too far. That doesn’t say that it’s wrong. I think it’s not wrong. And I think the positive aspect of the 1619 Project – And it’s achieving great success in that regard – Is that it does belatedly provide due acknowledgement of the place of Black Americans in our history, going all the way back to the founding of Anglo America in the early part of the 17th century.
So Black Americans are no longer a footnote. They’re no longer the people we say, well, we credit them for the creation of jazz. Or, wasn’t Jackie Robinson a wonderful guy? That they now become integral to the larger narrative. I guess my problem is that integral to the narrative should not mean taking over the narrative, that there is another story. And I think a proper appreciation of history would certainly acknowledge the role of African Americans since the founding of Anglo America. But also, we have to keep all the white guys in, and all the white women, and all the ethnic groups, and everybody else. It’s a complex story and we shouldn’t try to oversimplify it.
Chris Hedges: Well, I don’t want to get into a debate on the 1619 Project. However, it’s not just about Blacks or African Americans, it’s about the institution of slavery as a social and an economic force and the reverberations of that institution, which white historians have sought to erase.
Andrew Bacevich: Well, I’ll disagree with you a little bit. I don’t think they’ve sought to – Well, they tried to erase it until sometime in the 20th century, then I think it was acknowledged, but it tended to be treated as a peripheral issue. And the 1619 – Maybe I’m wrong – The 1619 Project says, no, it’s not peripheral, it’s central. And frankly, I’m willing to acknowledge central. I’m not willing to acknowledge dominant.
Chris Hedges: Well, but it took until the ’50s till you got historians like Kenneth Stamp, Leon Litwack –
Andrew Bacevich: John Whit Franklin.
Chris Hedges: And then you had W. E. B. Du Bois, of course, but Du Bois was kind of pushed out of that narrative.
I want to talk about this, of what you call the present American moment. And you raised this question about, when it’s clear that a war is a mistake – We know from the Afghan papers that the policy makers and the military leaders understood that they were never going to quote-unquote, “win,” in Afghanistan. The same thing that they understood, we know, from the Vietnam War through the Pentagon Papers. But you ask why those in power insist on its perpetuation regardless of the costs and consequences. And that’s a question I want you to try and answer.
Andrew Bacevich: It’s because they’re in power. They want to remain in power. And if George W. Bush had gone on national TV circa what, 2004, 2005, he went on TV and said, I got a great idea. It’s called the surge, and we’re going to persist. If he’d gone on TV and said, boy, we screwed up. This is a disaster, and I’m responsible for this disaster. Well, this would’ve been an act of great courage on his part, but it would’ve been quite surprising, because President George W. Bush, like every other president down to and including President Biden, sought power, achieved power, and will cling to power as long as possible. Not because they’re evil people, but because that’s the way politics works. And I think that’s one of the reasons why there’s so much dishonesty that permeates our politics, because the perceived penalties of honesty are unacceptable.
Chris Hedges: But why does Obama perpetuate it? He didn’t start it. It wasn’t his war.
Andrew Bacevich: Well [laughs], we’d have to ask him, I guess, but I think my answer is that we see frequent references to the president of the United States as the most powerful person on the planet. I think that’s wildly misleading. Whoever is US president actually wields pretty limited power. You and I could make a pretty long list of the things that presidents can’t do, might want to do but are unable to do because they are constrained. Constrained by circumstance globally, constrained by other nations, but they’re also constrained by circumstances at home.
And I think President Obama, who I hold in high regard, was an acutely intelligent politician who understood the constraints that he labored under and, to a large degree, accepted them. Now, we might regret that. We might say, God, I wish Obama had pushed harder to bring about the kind of change that he seemed to want. But I think that, at the end of the day, whether ’cause he was being advised or whether this was his own thinking, he conformed, he went along, he accepted the constraints. And I think that’s a reality of American politics. I suppose it’s a reality of politics wherever you are.
Chris Hedges: You draw parallels between the Vietnam War and Iraq. I’m just going to run through them quickly and then have you comment. You say both were avoidable, both turned out to be superfluous. Both were costly distractions. In each instance, political leaders in Washington and senior commanders in the field collaborated in committing grievous blunders. Thanks to that incompetence, both devolved into self-inflicted quagmires. Both conflicts left behind a poisonous legacy of unrest, rancor, and bitterness – Although perhaps more so Vietnam. And finally, with both political and military elites alike, preferring simply to move on, neither war has received a proper accounting. To what extent has that inability to learn the lessons of Vietnam contributed to the debacles that we have repeated since Vietnam?
Andrew Bacevich: I think to a very great extent. Now, I wouldn’t have said that, I think, 20 or 25 years ago. My own appreciation of Vietnam has substantially evolved, so that several of those items that you ticked off reflect the position I have more or less recently come to. When I was a serving soldier, very much accepting the framework of the Cold War as the proper lens to examine and think about international politics, it was possible to conclude that the Vietnam War was necessary. If you took seriously what turns out to be bogus, but if you took seriously the notion that there was this thing called monolithic communism that posed a threat to the well-being of the United States and of our allies, then you can make the case that it was necessary for the US to employ US forces to try to prevent the collapse of the Republic of Vietnam.
From where we are today, all of that is utterly bogus, and really makes you want to weep. I mean, that our leaders fell for such a load of crap, sold it to the American people, who bought it. We’re conscious of the anti-war movement. Okay, let’s be conscious of the number of American soldiers who were told to go fight in Southeast Asia and said, yes sir, yes sir, and followed orders. 58,000 people were killed, and we’re just talking the Americans. The number of Vietnamese killed, of course, was orders of magnitude greater, and for what? For nothing.
I’m meandering here, but I guess my point is that sometimes, at least for somebody like me, it takes a while to come to a proper understanding of the event and to put it in a historical context that is, if not entirely true, at least closer to the truth than what back in the day we were getting from Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara and Dean Ruskin and William Westmoreland. But sometimes it takes a while to figure all that out.
Chris Hedges: Well, but those who do figure it out at the time – And I think this really represents your marginalization – Those who do figure it out in the moment and decry it are pushed to the margins.
Andrew Bacevich: I think that’s true. I think that’s true. The power of the establishment, the influence of the establishment, the power of those myths that we referred to a little while ago, makes it very difficult to advance an alternative point of view and have it be embraced and accepted. And I think we have seen that over and over and over again with the most pernicious results.
Chris Hedges: Well, you have a media that won’t disseminate it. We’re getting to the end, and I just want to read a passage you write towards the end of the book, “I am by temperament a conservative, and a traditionalist wary of revolutionary movements that more often than not end up being hijacked by nefarious plotters more interested in satisfying their own ambitions than pursuing high ideals. Yet, even I am prepared to admit that the status quo appears increasingly untenable. Incremental change will not suffice. The challenge of the moment is to embrace radicalism without succumbing to irresponsibility.” Can you explain what you mean by all that?
Andrew Bacevich: [Laughs] I mean, I guess the pertinent question is what does this radicalism look like?
Chris Hedges: Well, exactly.
Andrew Bacevich: What does this radical –
Chris Hedges: Yeah, there you go.
Andrew Bacevich: I’m not sure I know, Chris. It took me a while to reach the conclusion that incremental change just isn’t going to hack it. I think that probably it was the Trump period that brought me to that conclusion. I’ve never believed that Trump himself is as important as the many in the mainstream media seem to want to pretend. But I think that the Trump moment, this nationalist populist reaction from the right signals that the republic is in serious danger. And I don’t know that incrementalism – Joe Biden is an incrementalist – I don’t know that incrementalist offers a sufficient response to what we experienced when Trump was riding high. But I don’t have the six-point plan that is going to move the country back in a better direction. I wish I did, but I don’t.
Chris Hedges: Well, doesn’t it look something like FDR, the New Deal?
Andrew Bacevich: Well… I don’t know. I mean, yes in the sense that’s, in my estimation, I think in many people’s estimation, he was far and away the most effective reformer of the 20th century down to the present moment. And that he himself was not a radical. In many respects he was a reformer. He had to reform the system in order to save the system. And he did that with not perfect skill, but very considerable skill. On the other hand, Chris, it’s not 1933. We are not the nation that we were in 1933 – 1933 being the year that the New Deal began. And so, as much as I admire what Roosevelt accomplished, and I genuinely do, I’m not sure that the New Deal actually serves as a proper blueprint.
Chris Hedges: Well, because we’re post-industrial –
Andrew Bacevich: Primarily in the realm –
Chris Hedges: We’re a post-industrial society. That would be a big difference.
Andrew Bacevich: That’s one big difference, I think. And also, the New Deal was designed to benefit white people.
Chris Hedges: Well, yes.
Andrew Bacevich: It was a predominantly white society, and Roosevelt treated African Americans as an afterthought. They were not excluded from the benefits of the New Deal, but certainly African Americans – Or, we say African Americans, or Brown Americans, or Native Americans, or Asian Americans, their interest did not figure in a large way in Roosevelt’s agenda. And today, a reform program would have to be far more inclusive, I think, than was the New Deal.
Chris Hedges: Great. That was Andrew Bacevich, On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century. I want to thank The Real News Network and its production team: Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley, David Hebden, Darian Jones, and Kayla Rivara. You can find me at chrishedges.substack.com.
(Readers sensitive to discussion of inappropriate adult behavior toward children may want to skip this one.)
There’s a really gross video going around of the Dalai Lama kissing a young boy on the lips and telling him to suck his tongue while an adult audience looks on approvingly. A tweet from Tibet.net last month shows a video clip of the Tibetan spiritual leader with the child and says the encounter took place during his “meeting with students and members of M3M Foundation,” though Tibet.net’s clip cuts out the sexually inappropriate part of the encounter.
Here is a hyperlink to a video of the interaction. For those who understandably do not wish to see such a thing but are comfortable with a text description, here’s a new write-up from News.com.au:
The Dalai Lama has raised eyebrows after kissing a young Indian boy on the lips and asking him to “suck” his tongue at a recent event.
Footage of the bizarre interaction, which occurred last month during an event for India’s M3M Foundation, has gone viral on social media.
The leader of Tibetan Buddhism, Tenzin Gyatso, was hosting students and members of the foundation at his temple in Dharamshala, India, where he lives in exile.
In the video, the boy approaches the microphone and asks, “Can I hug you?”
The 87-year-old says “OK, come” and invites him on stage.
The Dalai Lama motions to his cheek and says “first here” and the boy gives him a hug and kiss.
He holds the boy’s arm and turns to him, saying “then I think fine here also” as he points to his lips.
The spiritual leader then grabs the boy’s chin and kisses him on the mouth as the audience laughs.
“And suck my tongue,” the Dalai Lama tells the boy, sticking out his tongue.
They press their foreheads together and the boy briefly pokes out his tongue before backing away, as the Dalai Lama gives him a playful slap on the chest and laughs.
What is it with power-adjacent clergymen and child molestation, anyway? As Michael Parenti noted in 2003, sexual abuse was commonplace in the tyrannical environment of feudal Tibet, over which the 14th Dalai Lama would still preside had it not been forcibly annexed by the PRC in the 1950s. While the slogan of “Free Tibet” has long been used as a propaganda bludgeon by the west against China particularly and against communism generally, the truth of the matter is that Tibet was quantifiably a far more tyrannical and oppressive place to live back when it was supposedly “free”.
I went to see the Dalai Lama a long time ago when he came to speak at Melbourne, and I remember what stood out the most for me was how completely lacking in depth or profundity it was. As someone with an intense interest in spirituality and enlightenment I always found it perplexing that someone so highly regarded in the circles I moved in had nothing to say on such matters besides superficial, Sesame Street-level remarks about being nice and trying to make the world a better place. Probably no one alive today is more commonly associated with Buddhism and spiritual awakening in western consciousness than the Dalai Lama, yet everything I’ve ever read or heard from him has struck me as unskillful, unhelpful and vapid when compared to the words of other spiritual teachers.
That confusing discrepancy cleared up after I got into political analysis and learned that the Dalai Lama is probably not someone who should be looked to for spiritual guidance, and is actually far too messed up inside to have accomplished much inner development as a person.
Take an interview he did back in September 2003, a solid six months after the invasion of Iraq. The Dalai Lama told AP that he believed the US invasion of Afghanistan was “perhaps some kind of liberation” that could “protect the rest of civilization,” as was the USA’s brutal intervention in Korea, and that the US invasion of Iraq was “complicated” and would take more time before its morality could be determined. In 2005, years after the invasion, after normal mainstream members of the public had realized the war was a disaster, the Dalai Lama stillsaid “The Iraq war — it’s too early to say, right or wrong.”
This is plainly someone with a broken moral compass. These are basic, bare-minimum assessments that any normal person with any degree of psychological and emotional health can quickly sort out for themselves, and he still winds up basically on the same side of these issues as some of the worst people on earth.
I used to think it odd that the Dalai Lama has nothing to offer but vapid kindergarten pop spirituality, then I learned he was a well-paid CIA agent for many years.https://t.co/wBfqsLm3rtpic.twitter.com/2DmGsgll5B
But I guess that’s about the best anyone could expect from a literal CIA asset. His administration received $1.7 million a year from the Central Intelligence Agency through the 1960s, and it’s reported that he himself personally received $180,000 a year from the CIA for decades.
Many friends of Tibet and admirers of the Dalai Lama, who has always advocated nonviolence, believe he knew nothing about the CIA program. But Gyalo Thondup, one of the Dalai Lama’s brothers, was closely involved in the operations, and [CIA veteran John Kenneth] Knaus, who took part in the operation, writes that “Gyalo Thondup kept his brother the Dalai Lama informed of the general terms of the CIA support.” According to Knaus, starting in the late 1950s, the Agency paid the Dalai Lama $15,000 a month. Those payments came to an end in 1974.
The CIA is easily the most depraved institution in the world today, so it would be reasonable to expect the moral development of someone so intimately involved with it to be a bit stunted. Ten or fifteen years ago it would’ve surprised me to learn that I would one day type these words, but it turns out the Dalai Lama is a real asshole.
It’s rare to find a spiritual teacher who has expanded their consciousness inwardly enough to have useful things to say about enlightenment, and of those who do it’s extremely rare to find one who has also expanded their consciousness outwardly enough to discuss world events from a place of wisdom and understanding as well. The Dalai Lama is as far from this as you could possibly get: he has lived his life in cooperation with the most unwise institutions on earth, and he is less inwardly developed than most people you might pass on the street.
People should stop looking up to this freak.
__________________
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All staff in Afghanistan ordered to stay home for 48 hours to give officials time to negotiate with Taliban
United Nations staff in Afghanistan have been ordered to stay at home for 48 hours to give UN officials time to persuade the Taliban not to go ahead with their plan to ban all female Afghan employees of the UN from working.
The UN said the ban would lead to even less humanitarian aid reaching Afghanistan.
As with all matters regarding United States policy, Australia will, if not agree outright with Washington, adopt a non-committal position — “quiet diplomacy”. Binoy Kampmark reports.
Last year, the short-term facility in Kent ballooned into a vast, unsafe camp holding thousands of people, including children. How did our asylum system get so broken – and what does it reveal about Rishi Sunak’s promise to stop the small boats?
In late September last year, a Home Office employee walked into a newly opened section of the Manston short-term holding facility in Kent and realised that conditions there were spiralling out of control: “It had got way beyond what was ethical and humane.”
The site, a collection of marquees in the grounds of a former army barracks near a disused airport, was overcrowded, and staff were improvising increasingly unsuitable makeshift expansions. “There were people who’d been sleeping on a mat on the floor of a marquee for 20 days. We’d run out of space, so we were opening old bits of the site. They’d put some mats on the floor of the gym – a really old building. It looked like it was about to fall down. None of it had been set up with decent hygiene facilities, bedding or anything. You walked in and your heart just sank. I had a feeling of: ‘Oh my God, what have we got into here?’” says the official, who asked not to be identified.
March 18, 2023, marks the 20-year anniversary of the illegal US invasion of Iraq. Two decades later, over a million Iraqis have been killed, 37 million people have been displaced by the War on Terror, and none of the architects of the worst crime of the century have been held accountable.
In commemoration of the millions of lives lost and destroyed by the Iraq War and its consequences, The Real News Network is airing an exclusive showing of Norman Solomon’s War Made Easy, the acclaimed 2007 documentary produced by the Media Education Foundation at the height of the Iraq War. This film was co-directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp, and is being shared with the permission of the filmmakers.
This critically acclaimed look at American war propaganda exhumes five decades of remarkable archival footage to show how presidents from both parties have relied on fear-driven political spin and craven media complicity to sell a succession of wars to the American people. The result is an invaluable introduction to how propaganda, public relations, and perception management function in democratic societies. Essential viewing for courses in media studies, political science, journalism, and US history.
GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR: Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world, and that God will preserve it always. These proceedings are closed.
1940s NEWSREEL VOICEOVER: The final United Nations victory has been won. The war is over. Peace is here.
A crowd of two million review the greatest parade of arms ever witnessed.
This is the news that electrified the world. Unconditional surrender. A new world of peace.
GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR: Today the guns are silent … The skies no longer rain death … The entire world lies quietly at peace.
VOICES OF NEWS REPORTERS: On the way American infantrymen once again hit the road toward Korea’s capital city of Seoul. On the way American infantry men …
And US Marines were ordered into the Dominican Republic as a rebel force collapses … Meanwhile US Marines have also taken center stage in South Vietnam … This is what the war in Vietnam is all about …
The first wave of Marines landed in Grenada … encounter some twelve hundred US Marines would land in Grenada for several days along with …
Most of the Libyans were terrified with last night’s heavy bombing raid … President Bush’s decision to neutralize Panama’s General Manuel Noriega … Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror is over… This is the beginning of the war in Iraq …
SEAN PENN: Since World War II we have seen a dramatic escalation in United States military actions around the globe, ranging from missile strikes and rapid troop deployments, to all out wars and occupations.
The reasons for these military interventions have varied, each involving complex geopolitical interests in different parts of the world at different times in US history. But the public face of these wars has not reflected this complexity.
Over the past five decades deliberation and debate about US military actions have largely been left to a closed circle of elite Washington policy makers, politicians and bureaucrats whose rationales for war have come into public view only with the release of leaked or declassified documents, often years after the bombs have been dropped and the troops have come home.
In real time, officials have explained and justified these military operations to the American people by withholding crucial information about the actual reasons and potential costs of military action – again and again choosing to present an easier version of war’s reality … a steady and remarkably consistent storyline designed not to inform, but to generate and maintain support and enthusiasm for war.
Nationally syndicated columnist and author Norman Solomon began to notice the basic contours of this official storyline during the war in Vietnam.
NORMAN SOLOMON: As a teenager I read about the war in Vietnam as it escalated. I saw the footage on television.
VIETNAM ERA REPORTER (UNIDENTIFIED): In combat there are no niceties. A dead enemy soldier is simply an object to be examined for documents and then removed as quickly as possible, sometimes crudely.
NORMAN SOLOMON: People that I knew began to go to Vietnam in uniform of the US military. And as time went on I began to wonder, particularly as I became draft age, about the truthfulness of the statements coming from the White House and top officials in Washington.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: We fight for the principle of self-determination. That the people of South Vietnam should be able to choose their own course, choose it in free elections, without violence, without terror and without fear.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And through that process I began to really wonder about whether we were getting more truth or lies.
SEAN PENN: In the years since, Solomon has focused his attention on a set of striking parallels between the selling of the Vietnam War and the way Presidents have rallied public support for subsequent military actions.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Looking back on the Vietnam War, as I did many times, I had a very eerie feeling that while the names of the countries changed, and of course each circumstance was different, there were some parallels that cried out for examination.
Rarely if ever does a war just kind of fall down from the sky. The foundation needs to be laid, and the case is built, often with deception.
COLD WAR PROPAGANDA FILM: In the background was the growing struggle between two great powers to shape the post-war world. Already an iron curtain had dropped around Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria …
It can’t happen here? Well, this is what it looks like if it should …
Chief of police is hustled off to jail. Public utilities are seized by Fifth Columnists. Editor who operates under a free press, he goes to jail too …
This will account for some of the enemy, but some will get through to your home …
SEAN PENN: The use of propaganda to arouse public support for war is not new. Leaders throughout history have turned to propaganda to transform populations understandably wary of the costs of war into war’s most ardent supporters – invoking images of nationalism, and channeling fear and anger towards perceived enemies and threats.
And in the United States since World War II, government attempts to win public support for military actions have followed a similar pattern.
FIFTIES PROPAGANDA FILM: We are living in an era marked by the growth of socialism. It’s basic godless philosophy —
Lying, dirty … It’s goal of world conquest — Shrewd, godless …
Its insidious tactics — Murderous, determined … And its cunning strategy — It’s an international criminal conspiracy.
NORMAN SOLOMON: It’s the same sort of message that’s utilized today and often identical techniques.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH (MONTAGE): States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.
These are barbaric people.
Servants of evil.
The cult of evil.
A monumental struggle of good versus evil. But good will prevail.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Whether it’s the Soviet Union or Al Qaeda, it provides a way to legitimize US plans for war.
You have the comparison between the enemy leader and Hitler.
PETER JENNINGS, ABC: President Bush called Saddam Hussein a little Hitler again today.
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: We are dealing with Hitler revisited.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them.
NORMAN SOLOMON: We don’t get information that would help us put the images in perspective
PRESIDENT REAGAN: This mad dog of the Middle East … I find that he’s not only a barbarian, but he’s flakey.
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: The drug indicted, drug related, indicted dictator of Panama …
NEWS REPORTER (UNIDENTIFIED): And to support their claim that Noriega was out of control, ghoulish evidence of Satanic practices with dead animals that one official called “kinky.”
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And as Aldous Huxley said long ago – it’s more powerful to often leave things out than it is to tell lies. For instance, quite often the US government directly helped the dictators that we’re now being told must be overthrown. And it’s that selectivity of history that’s a very effective form of propaganda.
SEAN PENN: This selective view of reality, buttressed by these fear-based appeals, represents a larger pre-war pattern: the repeated claim that the United States uses military force only with great reluctance —
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: We still seek no wider war.
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: The United States does not start fights.
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: America does not seek conflict.
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: I don’t like to use military force.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH: Out nation enters this conflict reluctantly
SEAN PENN: And only for the most virtuous of reasons: first and foremost, to spread freedom and democracy.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: We want nothing for ourselves, only that the people of South Vietnam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way.
NORMAN SOLOMON: The rhetoric of democracy is part of the process of convincing people that even though unpleasant things must be done sometimes in its name, like bombing other countries, democracy is really what it’s about.
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: The United States has been engaged in an effort to stop the advance of communism in Central America by doing what we do best: by supporting democracy.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And it’s almost as though repeating it enough times makes it so.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: Our cause of liberty, our cause of freedom, our cause of compassion and understanding.
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: People want democracy, peace, and the chance for a better life and dignity and freedom.
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: We want to lift lives around the world, not take them.
NORMAN SOLOMON: These are forms of propaganda that are insidious, because they tug at our heartstrings.
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: We must get the Kosovo refugees home safely. Mine fields will have to be cleared. Homes destroyed by Serb forces have to be rebuilt. Homeless people in need of food and medicine —
NORMAN SOLOMON: Of course, we want to help other people. These are propaganda messages that say don’t just think of yourself, America can’t just be selfish. It makes bombing other people ultimately seem like an act of kindness, of altruism.
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: Today, our armed forces joined our NATO allies in air strikes against Serbian forces responsible for the brutality in Kosovo.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: It was another devastating hit against Yugoslavia’s capital.
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: We are upholding our values, protecting our interests and advancing the cause of peace.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Belgrade’s largest heating plant up in flames.
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: And even as planes of the multinational forces attack Iraq, I prefer to think of peace, not war.
NORMAN SOLOMON: If my motives are pure, then the fact that I’m killing people may not be too upsetting. As a matter of fact, it may indicate that I’m killing people for very good reasons.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: America will stand with the allies of freedom to support democratic movements in the Middle East and beyond, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And so, you have kind of the high-ground president with the lofty motives being proclaimed. We’re told that peace is being sought, alternatives to war are being explored. And that’s kind of, you know, the official story.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: And I am continuing and I am increasing the search for every possible path to peace.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Whether we’re talking about President Johnson or President Nixon or the president today, you have one chief executive after another in the White House saying how much they love peace and hate war.
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: We maintain our strength in order to deter and defend against aggression, to preserve freedom and peace.
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: No one, friend or foe, should doubt our desire for peace.
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: The United States wants peace. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We seek peace. We strive for peace.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Every president of the last half-century has gone out of his way to say that he wanted peace and wanted to avoid war.
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: I pledged in my campaign for the presidency to end the war in a way that we could win the peace.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Even while ordering military action. NIXON WHITE HOUSE TAPES:
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people?
HENRY KISSINGER: That would drown about 200,000 people. PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Well, no, no, no. I’d rather use the nuclear bomb. HENRY KISSINGER: That, I think, would just be too much. PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: The nuclear bomb? Does that bother you? HENRY KISSINGER: [inaudible] PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christ’s sake.
NORMAN SOLOMON: So you have this paradox, in a way, of the President, who has just ordered massive military violence and lethal action by the Pentagon, turning around and saying, I want to oppose violence and promote peace.
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: I respect your idealism. I share your concern for peace. I want peace as much as you do.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Actually, war becomes perpetual when it’s used as a rationale for peace.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
NORMAN SOLOMON: As Americans, we like to think that we’re not subjected to propaganda from our own government, certainly that we’re not subjected to propaganda that’s trying to drag the country into war, as in the case of setting the stage for the invasion of Iraq.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
DONALD RUMSFELD: Weapons of mass destruction. ARI FLEISCHER: Botulin, VX, Sarin, nerve agent. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Iraq and al-Qaeda. RICHARD ARMITAGE: Al-Qaeda.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Iraq and al-Qaeda. UNIDENTIFIED: Terrorism. DONALD RUMSFELD: Cyber-attacks. ARI FLEISCHER: Nuclear program.
COLIN POWELL: Biological weapons. DONALD RUMSFELD: Cruise missiles, ballistic missiles. ARI FLEISCHER: Chemical and biological weapons. DONALD RUMSFELD: Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
ARI FLEISCHER: President Bush has said Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Tony Blair has said Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Donald Rumsfeld has said Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Richard Butler has said they do. The United Nations has said they do. The experts have said they do. Iraq says they don’t. You can choose who you want to believe.
NORMAN SOLOMON: The war propaganda function in the United States is finely tuned, it’s sophisticated, and most of all, it blends into the media terrain.
SHEPARD SMITH: The White House says it can prove that Saddam Hussein does have weapons of mass destruction, claiming it has solid evidence.
DAN RATHER: The White House insisted again today it does have solid evidence that Saddam Hussein is hiding an arsenal of prohibited weapons.
NORMAN SOLOMON: It’s necessary to provide a drumbeat media echo effect.
JOHN GIBSON: They might fight dirty, using weapons of mass destruction — chemical, biological or radioactive.
WILLIAM SCHNEIDER: There are ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda — BILL O’REILLY: Anthrax, smallpox. TOM BROKAW: Dirty bomb. BRIAN WILLIAMS: Dirty bomb.
BRIT HUME: Iraq-al-Qaeda connection.
WILLIAM SCHNEIDER: Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda share the same goal: they want to see — both of them — both of them want to see Americans dead.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And I was very struck by the acceptance, the tone of most of the media coverage, as the sabers was rattled, as the invasion of Iraq gradually went from possible to probable to almost certain.
DAVID LEE MILLER: The President essentially giving Saddam forty-eight hours to get out of Dodge. War now seems all but inevitable.
GREGG JARRETT: Short of a bullet to the back of his head or he leaves the country, war is inexorable.
UNIDENTIFIED: Well, I think that’s exactly right. War is inevitable, and it is approaching inexorably.
WOLF BLITZER: Is war with Iraq inevitable right now? LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER: I think it’s 95% inevitable. CHRIS BURY: You, at this point, right now tonight, don’t see any other option but war.
RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Do you? CHRIS BURY: I’m asking you, Ambassador.
WESLEY CLARK: I agree. I don’t think there’s a viable option for the administration at this point. We’re way too far out front in this.
MAJOR BOB BEVELACQUA: You sent us over there, guys. Let’s get on with it. Let’s get it over with.
MSNBC AD: Showdown Iraq. If America goes to war, turn to MSNBC and “The Experts.”
NORMAN SOLOMON: And in many ways, the US news media were equal partners with the officials in Washington and on Capitol Hill in setting the agenda for war.
MSNBC AD: We’ll take you there.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And although it’s called the liberal media, one has a great deal of difficulty finding an example of major media outlets, in their reporting, challenging the way in which the agenda setting for war is well underway. And when that reporting is so much a hostage of official sources, that’s when you have a problem.
CNN: US officials tell CNN —
CNN REPORTER: Bush official says —
CNN REPORTER: Analysts say —
AARON BROWN: Pentagon officials tell us —
DAVID MARTIN: According to US intelligence —
NORMAN SOLOMON: Often, we’re encouraged to believe that officials are the ones who make news.
JOHN KING: US officials say — US officials say that — US officials here say — Officials here at the White House tell us —
NORMAN SOLOMON: They are the ones who should be consulted to understand the situation.
COLIN POWELL: I just pull these two things out — I’ve laundered them, so you can’t really tell what I’m talking about, because I don’t want the Iraqis to know what I’m talking about, but trust me. Trust me.
NORMAN SOLOMON: If history is any guide, the opposite is the case: the officials blow smoke and cloud reality, rather than clarify.
VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.
PAUL WOLFOWITZ: The notion that it will take several hundred thousand US troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq are wildly off the mark.
DONALD RUMSFELD: So the money’s going to come from Iraqi oil revenue, as everyone has said. They think it’s going to be something like $2 billion this year. They think it might be something like $15, $12 [billion] next year.
PAUL WOLFOWITZ: A country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.
TOM BROKAW: National Security Advisors Ken Adelman and Richard Perle, early advocates of the war, said the war would be a cakewalk.
NORMAN SOLOMON: The sources that have deceived us so constantly don’t deserve our trust, and to the extent that we give them our trust, we set ourselves up to be scammed again and again.
REPORTER: There are reports that there is no evidence of a direct link between Baghdad and some of these terrorist organizations.
DONALD RUMSFELD: There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.
REPORTER: Excuse me, but is this an “unknown unknown”? DONALD RUMSFELD: I’m not — REPORTER: Just several unknowns, and I’m wondering if this is an unknown unknown. DONALD RUMSFELD: I’m not going to say which it is. REPORTER: But, Mr. Secretary, do you believe —
DONALD RUMSFELD: I’m right here. I’m right here. REPORTER: If you believe something —
SEAN PENN: In the run-up to the war in Iraq, the failure of mainstream news organizations to raise legitimate questions about the government’s rush to war was compounded by the networks’ deliberate decision to stress military perspectives before any fighting had even begun.
AARON BROWN: We’ve got generals and, if you ask them about the prospects for war with Iraq, they think it is almost certain.
SEAN PENN: CNN’s use of retired generals as supposedly independent experts reinforced a decidedly military mindset, even as serious questions remained about the wisdom and necessity of going to war.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Often journalists blame the government for the failure of the journalists themselves to do independent reporting. But nobody forced the major networks like CNN to do so much commentary from retired generals and admirals and all the rest of it. You had a top CNN official named Eason Jordan going on the air of his network and boasting that he had visited the Pentagon with a list of possible military commentators, and he asked officials at the Defense Department whether that was a good list of people to hire.
EASON JORDAN: Oh, I think it’s important to have experts explain the war and to describe the military hardware, describe the tactics, talk about the strategy behind the conflict. I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said, for instance, at CNN, here are the generals we’re thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war, and we got a big thumbs up on all of them. That was important.
NORMAN SOLOMON: It wasn’t even something to hide, ultimately. It was something to say to the American people on its own network, “See, we’re team players. We may be the news media, but we’re on the same side and the same page as the Pentagon.” And that really runs directly counter to the idea of an independent press, and that suggests that we have some deep patterns of media avoidance when the US is involved in a war based on lies.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: My fellow Americans —
SEAN PENN: In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson falsely claimed that an attack on US gun ships by North Vietnamese forces in the Gulf of Tonkin gave him no choice but to escalate the war in Vietnam.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: …that renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action and reply.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Routinely, the official story is a lie or a deception or a partial bit of information that leaves out key facts.
US NAVY FILM, 1964: In international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin, destroyers of the United States Navy are assigned routine patrols from time to time. Sunday, August the 2nd, 1964, the destroyer Maddox was on such a patrol. Shortly after noon, the calm of the day is broken as general quarters sound. In a deliberate and unprovoked action, three North Vietnam PT boats unleash a torpedo attack against the Maddox.
NORMAN SOLOMON: The official story about the Gulf of Tonkin was a lie.
DEFENSE SECRETARY ROBERT MCNAMARA: The destroyer was carrying out a mission of patrol in those waters, in international waters, when it was attacked.
NORMAN SOLOMON: But it quickly became accepted as the absolute truth by the news media, and because of the press’s refusal to challenge that story, it was much easier for Congress to quickly pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was pivotal, because it opened the floodgates to the Vietnam War.
SEN. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT: I think it’s a very clear demonstration of the unity of the country behind the policies that are being followed by the President in South Vietnam and, more specifically, of the action that was taken in response to the attack upon our destroyers.
NORMAN SOLOMON: At that point, the facts were secondary. In the case of the Washington Post reporting, I asked more than three decades later whether there had ever been a Post retraction of its reporting on the Gulf of Tonkin events, and I called the newspaper and eventually reached the man who had been the chief diplomatic correspondent for the paper at the time, Murrey Marder, and I said, “Mr. Marder, has there ever been a retraction by the Washington Post of its fallacious reporting on the Gulf of Tonkin?” And he said, “I can assure you it never happened. There was never any retraction.” And I asked why. And he said, “Well, if the news media were going to retract its reporting on the Gulf of Tonkin, it would have to retract its reporting on virtually the entire Vietnam War.”
Fast forward a few decades, you have President George W. Bush saying that to an absolute certainty there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that intelligence sources told him that clearly, which was not at all the case.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Secretary of State Powell will present information and intelligence about Iraq’s illegal weapons programs, its attempts to hide those weapons from inspectors and its links to terrorist groups.
SEAN PENN: The failure of American news media to check government distortion reached new heights when, on the eve of war, the highly respected Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the United Nations to make the case that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
COLIN POWELL: Saddam Hussein’s intentions have never changed. He is not developing the missiles for self-defense. These are missiles that Iraq wants in order to project power, to threaten and to deliver chemical, biological and, if we let him, nuclear warheads.
AARON BROWN: Today, Secretary of State Powell brought the United Nations Security Council, the administration’s best evidence so far.
NORMAN SOLOMON: After Colin Powell’s speech to the UN, immediately the US press applauded with great enthusiasm.
AARON BROWN: Did Colin Powell close the deal today, in your mind, for anyone who has yet objectively to make up their mind?
HENRY KISSINGER: I think for anybody who analyzes the situation, he has closed the deal.
SEAN HANNITY (MONTAGE): This irrefutable, undeniable, incontrovertible evidence today …
Colin Powell brilliantly delivered that smoking gun today … Colin Powell was outstanding today …
I mean, it was lockstep — it was so compelling, I don’t see how anybody, at this point, cannot support this effort.
ALAN COLMES: He made a wonderful presentation. I thought he made a great case for the purpose of disarmament.
MORT KONDRACKE (MONTAGE): It was devastating, I mean, and overwhelming …
Overwhelming abundance of the evidence. Point after point after point with — he just flooded the terrain with data.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: It’s the end of the argument phase. America has made its case.
BRIT HUME: The Powell speech has moved the ball.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I think the case is closed.
NORMAN SOLOMON: But at the time, it was quite possible to analyze and debunk what he was saying.
SEAN PENN: Whereas the British press and other international news sources immediately raised legitimate questions about the accuracy of Powell’s presentation. the major US news media were virtually silent about the factual basis of his claims and near unanimous in their praise.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Even the purportedly antiwar New York Times editorialized the next day that Colin Powell had made a sober case, a factual case. One of the great myths and part of the war propaganda cycle is, way after the fact, to claim that it couldn’t have been known at the time that US officials were lying us into war. And in point of fact, it was known at the time and said by many people who were not allowed on the networks, by and large.
SEAN PENN: One such critical voice belonged to MSNBC’s Phil Donahue, one of the few mainstream media commentators who consistently challenged the official storyline coming out of Washington.
PHIL DONAHUE: And, you know, we’re all now — everybody’s righteous, what a terrible Hitler this is. We were mute when he was doing that. He was our SOB, and now we’re sending our sons and daughters to war to fix that mistake. It doesn’t seem fair to me.
SEAN PENN: Despite being the highest-rated program on MSNBC, Donahue’s show was abruptly cancelled by the network just three weeks before the start of the war.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Phil Donahue was an antiwar voice on MSNBC, one of the cable news channels, and a memo that was leaked as the Donahue show was cancelled is very explicit. It said, we don’t want this to be a face of NBC as the United States goes into war. This guy puts antiwar voices on our network.
JIM JENNINGS: The American people need to know there is no just cause for this war.
PHYLLIS BENNIS: But there’s no evidence that there is even a weapon that exists in that country yet.
JEFF COHEN: Journalists, too many of them — some quite explicitly — have said that they see their mission as helping the war effort. And if you define your mission that way, you’ll end up suppressing news that might be important, accurate, but maybe isn’t helpful to the war effort.
NORMAN SOLOMON: We don’t want to have that kind of public persona, when then we’d be vulnerable to charges that we’re unpatriotic. It will make it more difficult to keep
pace with the flag wavers at FOX or CNN, or whatever. And more broadly, news media are very worried, not only government pressure, but advertiser pressure, criticism from readers, listeners and viewers. “Gee, our soldiers are in the field. You got to support them. Don’t raise these tough questions.”
PAT BUCHANAN: It seems to me that the right thing to do for patriots when American lives are at risk and Americans are dying is to unite behind the troops until victory is won. Now, on this show, Buchanan and Press, we’ve had a good debate for eight months on this conflict, but now it seems when the war comes, the debate ends. I think unity, Bill, is essential at this time, or at least when the guns begin to fire.
NORMAN SOLOMON: It’s a very effective tactic, at least in the short run, to a large extent, to say, look, you’ve got to support the troops.
PRO-WAR COUNTER-PROTESTER: You’re killing the troops! You’re killing the troops!
NORMAN SOLOMON: And that’s an effort to conflate supporting the troops with supporting the President’s policies.
BILL O’REILLY: Once the war against Saddam begins, we expect every American to support our military, and if they can’t do that, to shut up.
SEAN PENN: In addition to Phil Donahue, many other journalists have been silenced for crossing the mythical line known as objectivity.
BRIT HUME: Today, NBC fired journalist Peter Arnett this morning for participating in an interview on Iraqi state-controlled television.
PETER JENNINGS: Arnett criticized American war planning and said his reports about civilian casualties in the Iraqi resistance were encouraging to antiwar protesters in America.
NORMAN SOLOMON: If you’re pro-war, you’re objective. But if you’re antiwar, you’re biased. And often, a news anchor will get no flak at all for making statements that are supportive of a war and wouldn’t dream of making a statement that’s against a war.
TED KOPPEL: I must say, I was trying to think of — I was trying to think of something that would be appropriate to say on an occasion like this, and as is often the case, the best you can come up with is something that Shakespeare wrote for Henry V, “Wreak havoc and unleash the dogs of war.”
NORMAN SOLOMON: And that is a tip-off to just how skewed the media terrain is. We should keep in mind that CNN, which many believe to be a liberal network, had a memo from their top news executive, Walter Isaacson, in the fall of 2001, as the missiles were falling in Afghanistan, telling the anchors and the reporters, “You need to remind people,
any time you show images on the screen of the people who are dying in Afghanistan, you’ve got to remind the American viewers that it’s in the context of what happened on 9/11,” as though people could forget 9/11.
NIC ROBERTSON: We talked to several people who told us that various friends and relatives had died in the bombing there in that collateral damage. Nic Robertson, CNN, Kandahar, Afghanistan.
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN: And we would just remind you, as we always do now with these reports from inside the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, that you’re seeing only one side of the story, that these US military actions that Nic Robertson was talking about are in response to a terrorist attack that killed 5,000 and more innocent people inside the United States.
BILL HEMMER, CNN: And we juxtapose what we’re hearing from the Taliban with a live picture of the clean-up that continues in Lower Manhattan, Ground Zero, again, a twenty-four-hour operation that has not ebbed. 5,000 killed that day back on Tuesday, September 11, their biggest crime, as civilians, going to work that day.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And yet, we know statistically — the best estimates tell us — that more civilians were killed by that bombing in Afghanistan than those who died in the Twin Towers in New York. And the moral objections that could be raised to slaughtering civilians in the name of retaliation against 9/11, those objections were muted by the phrase “war on terror,” by the way in which it was used by the White House and Congress and also by the news media.
SEAN PENN: Free flows of information have been further blocked by a more general atmosphere of contempt for antiwar voices.
MICHELLE MALKIN: Among them are a group called CODEPINK, which is headed by Medea Benjamin, who’s a terrorist sympathizer, dictator-worshiping propagandist.
BILL O’REILLY: The far-left element in America is a destructive force that must be confronted.
RUSH LIMBAUGH: Some Americans, sadly, not interested in victory, and yet they want us to believe that their behavior is patriotic. Well, it’s not.
STEVE MALZBERG: To call the president stupid, he doesn’t know much about anything, that’s just great. Go with Danny Glover and Susan Sarandon. You fit in perfect.
NEWT GINGRICH: To in any way be defending a torturer, a killer, a dictator — he used chemical weapons against his own people — is pretty remarkable, but it’s a very long tradition in the Democratic Party.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Pay no heed to the peaceniks and the left-wing rock stars. They’ve had their fifteen minutes of fame.
JONAH GOLDBERG: These people are essentially useless. They are reflexively opposed to war. It’s a principled position, but it’s the wrong position, and you can’t take them seriously as a strategic voice.
WOLF BLITZER: Millions and millions of useful people out there?
NORMAN SOLOMON: If you want to have democracy, you’ve got to have the free flow of information through the body politic. You can’t have these blockages. You can’t have the manipulation.
SEAN PENN: While mainstream journalists have rarely called attention in real time to failure of news media to provide necessary information and real debate, they have repeatedly pointed to their own failures well after wars have been launched.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: During the course of this war, there was a lot of snap-to in press coverage: we’re at war, the world’s changed, we have to root for the country to some extent. And yet, it seems something missing from this debate was a critical analysis of where it was taking us.
JIM LEHRER: Those of us in journalism never even looked at the issue of occupation. CHRIS MATTHEWS: Because?
JIM LEHRER: Because it just didn’t occur to us. We weren’t smart enough. You’d have had to gone against the grain.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Right. You’d also come off as kind of a pointy head trying to figure out some obscure issue here —
JIM LEHRER: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: — when it’s good guys and bad guys.
JIM LEHRER: Yeah, negative. Negativism.
NORMAN SOLOMON: News media, down the road, will point out that there were lies about the Gulf of Tonkin or about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: I’m sorry to say, but certainly television, and perhaps to an extent my station, was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at FOX News.
WOLF BLITZER: We should have been more skeptical.
NORMAN SOLOMON: But that doesn’t bring back any of the people who have died, who were killed in their own country or sent over by the President of the United States to kill in that country. So, after the fact, it’s all well and good to say, “Well, the system worked” or “The truth comes out.” But when it comes to life and death, the truth comes out too late.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.
[news montage]
SEAN PENN: Once public support is in place and war is finally under way, the news media necessarily turns from covering the rationales for war to covering war itself.
NORMAN SOLOMON: When the President decides he wants the US to go to war, then the war becomes the product.
Particularly in the early stages, news coverage of war is much more like PR about war.
SEAN PENN: Influencing the nature of this war coverage has been a priority of one administration after another since Vietnam, when conventional wisdom held that it was negative media coverage that turned the American people against the war and forced US withdrawal. Since that time, and beginning with new urgency during the 1991 Gulf War, the Pentagon has worked with increasing sophistication to shape media coverage of war.
As then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney noted about the importance of public perceptions during the first Iraq War, “Frankly, I looked on it as a problem to be managed. The information function was extraordinarily important. I did not have a lot of confidence that I could leave it to the press.”
NORMAN SOLOMON: So for the invasion of Grenada and invasion of Panama in ’83 and ’89, then the Gulf War in early 1991, it was like a produced TV show, and the main producers were at the Pentagon. They decided, in the case of the Gulf War, exactly what footage would be made available to the TV stations. They did nonstop briefings, utilizing the increasing importance of cable television. They named it Operation Desert Storm.
DAN RATHER: Breaking news of what’s now officially called Operation Desert Storm. TOM BROKAW: Good evening. Operation Desert Storm rages on.
NORMAN SOLOMON: All that sort of stuff was very calculated, so you could look at that as an era of media war manipulation from the standpoint of the US government. Then you had a different era. You had the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
DAN RATHER: Scores of American reporters have now joined US military units in Kuwait as part of the Pentagon’s effort to make any war with Iraq what the Pentagon calls a media-friendly campaign. Another part that effort is on display at the US Military Command Center in Qatar. A Hollywood set designer was brought in to create a $200,000 backdrop for official war briefings.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And tied in with that is the worship of Pentagon technology.
HANSON HOSEIN: I’ve fallen almost in love with the F/A-18 Super Hornet, because it’s quite a versatile plane.
BRIAN WILSON: I’ve got to tell you, my favorite aircraft, the A-10 Wart Hog, I love the Wart Hogs.
JOHN ELLIOTT: This morning, around 4:00 a.m. local time, the first three took off. And when you’re 300 feet away from them, when they do it, you hear it in your shoes and feel it in your gut.
SEAN PENN: The Pentagon’s influence on war coverage has also been evident in the news media’s tendency to focus on the technical sophistication of the latest weaponry.
GREGG JARRETT: Should they have used more? Should they, you know, use a MOAB, the mother of all bombs, and a few daisy cutters? And, you know, let’s not just stop at a couple of cruise missiles.
JAMIE McINTYRE: The newest, biggest, baddest US bomb —
GENERAL BARRY MCCAFFREY: We’ll pound them with 2,000-pound bombs and then go in —
PAT BUCHANAN: 2000-pound bombs in urban areas? GENERAL BARRY MCCAFFREY: Oh, sure.
LESTER HOLT: I’m holding in my hand here the F-117 Stealth Fighter, was used in these attacks significantly —
GRETA VAN SUSTERN: How do you steer this thing? I mean, there’s no — you have a stick, is that right?
PILOT: Sure. Both of us have a matching center stick with left throttles. You can do every —
NORMAN SOLOMON: Every war, we have US news media that have praised the latest in the state-of-the-art killing technology, from the present moment to the war in Vietnam.
WALTER CRONKITE: B-57s — the British call them Canberra jets — we’re using them very effectively here in this war in Vietnam to dive-bomb the Vietcong in these jungles beyond Da Nang here. Colonel, what’s our mission we’re about to embark on?
AIR FORCE COLONEL: Well, our mission today, sir, is to report down to the site of the ambush seventy miles south of here and attempt to kill the VC.
WALTER CRONKITE: The colonel has just advised me that that is our target area right over there. One, two, three, four, we dropped our bomb, but now a tremendous G-load as we pull out of that dive. Oh, I know something of what those astronauts must go through.
Well, colonel.
AIR FORCE COLONEL: Yes, sir.
WALTER CRONKITE: It’s a great way to go to war.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And there’s a kind of idolatry there. Some might see it as worship of the gods of metal.
UNIDENTIFIED: That’s the JDAM. It is a 2,000-pound bomb that is deadly accurate, and that is the thing that is allowing us — allowed us in Afghanistan and will allow us in this next conflict to be terribly accurate, terribly precise and terribly destructive.
SEAN PENN: In fact, even as US military technology has become increasingly sophisticated with the development of so-called smart bombs and other forms of precision-guided weaponry, civilian casualties now greatly outnumber military deaths, a grim toll that has steadily increased since World War I.
TEXT BOX (MOTION GRAPHIC): During World War I, 10% of all casualties were civilians.
During World War II, the number of civilian deaths rose to 50%.
During the Vietnam War 70% of all casualties were civilians.
In the war in Iraq, civilians account for 90% of all deaths.
UNIDENTIFIED: This is the beginning of the shock-and-awe campaign, according to one official, this is going to be the entire nine yards.
TOM BROKAW: It was a breathtaking display of firepower.
NORMAN SOLOMON: There’s kind of an acculturated callousness towards what happens at the other end of US weapons.
LESTER HOLT: Behind the flight deck, the weapons officer who goes by the call sign Oasis, will never see the ground or the target, for that matter. The airfield is simply a fuzzy image on his radar.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And this is another very insidious aspect of war propaganda. There’s a bias involved, where, because the United States has access to high-tech military weaponry, that somehow to slaughter people from 30,000 feet in the air or a thousand feet in the air from high-tech machinery is somehow moral, whereas strapping on a suicide belt and blowing people up is seen as the exact opposite.
DONALD RUMSFELD: The targeting capabilities, and the care that goes into targeting, to see that the precise targets are struck, and that other targets are not struck, is as impressive as anything anyone could see. The care that goes into it, the humanity that goes into it, to see that military targets are destroyed to be sure, but that it’s done in a way and in a manner and in a direction and with a weapon that is appropriate to that very particularized target. The weapons that are being used today have a degree of precision that no one ever dreamt of.
SEAN PENN: Within this war friendly news frame the Defense Department has also been successful in shaping actual war reporting. Its influence reached new levels with the embedding of journalists during the war in Iraq.
NEWS REPORT: The Pentagon tightly controlled the media during the 1991 Persian Gulf War – limiting where reporters could go and often restricting access to small groups of pool reporters. This time the Pentagon is doing an about face after running more than 230 journalists through media boot camps, the Pentagon is inviting more than 500 media representatives to accompany US combat units to war.
SEAN PENN: Despite being widely praised as a new form of realism in war coverage, the strategy of embedding reporters has raised new questions about the ability of war reporters to convey balanced information to the American people.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Rather than being kept far away, they were embraced and smothered and participated in the process of being smothered. They were brought along, hundreds and hundreds of them, with the Marines, with the Navy, with the Army. They became, in a sense, part of the invading apparatus. You didn’t have embedded reporters with people who were being bombed; you only had embedded reporters with the bombers.
NEWS REPORTER: Last night a tremendous light show here, just a tremendous light show.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And it was through the eyes of the invaders that so much of the reporting was done.
WALTER ROGERS, CNN: It was a gradual process of getting to know and trust each other. And for them trusting me was knowing I would not blow their objective and get us all shelled with artillery.
NORMAN SOLOMON: People who were correspondents for the major US TV networks would express in no uncertain terms that they had been bonding very closely with the US soldiers
SHEPARD SMITH: We have a number of correspondents in bed [SIC] with our troops across the region.
PETER JENNINGS: Very deeply embedded in a personal way with the marines he is traveling with …
NORMAN SOLOMON: And you had correspondents saying that you know, “I would do virtually anything for them, they would do anything for me.” There was all this camaraderie.
RICK LEVENTHAL, FOX NEWS: We had guys around us with guns and they were intent on keeping us alive, because, they said, “You guys are making us stars back home and we need to protect you.”
NORMAN SOLOMON: That’s very nice, but it has nothing to do with independent journalism, which we never need more than in times of war. It was a very shrewd effort by the Pentagon to say, “You want access, here’s plenty of access.”
DONALD RUMSFELD: I doubt that in a conflict of this type there’s ever been the degree of free press coverage as you are witnessing in this instance.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And the embedding process was actually a new wrinkle in an old game – which was, and is, propaganda for war.
SEAN PENN: Praise for the embedding process as a step forward in balanced war reporting has often invoked comparisons to media coverage of the Vietnam War.
NORMAN SOLOMON: A myth has kind of grown up after the Vietnam that the reporting was very tough, that Americans saw on their television sets the brutality of the war as it unfolded. And people often hark back to that as a standard that should now be rediscovered or emulated.
MORLEY SAFER: This is what the war in Vietnam is all about.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Yes, there was exceptional reporting, but it was the exception. And so you had the Zippo lighters being used by the GI’s burning down the huts of a village that Morley Safer on CBS reported. Well, people mention that actually because it wasunusual. Andinpointoffactverylittleaboutthetremendousviolenceinthatwar
was conveyed through the television set, especially when the US government was responsible for the human suffering. That is in a way the most taboo – to show in detail, graphic human detail, what’s involved when bombs, missiles, mortars paid for by US taxpayers do what their designed to do … which is to kill and to maim.
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: I know that this is a great concern, I think it’s part of the Vietnam syndrome.
WALTER CRONKITE: The Vietnam Syndrome that President Reagan mentioned was a reference to America’s attempt to forget its most unpopular war.
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: This will not be another Vietnam. Our troops will have the best possible support in the entire world and they will not be asked to fight with one hand tied behind their back.
SEAN PENN: Like President Reagan before him, President George H.W. Bush explicitly set out during the first Gulf War to rid the national psyche of the so-called Vietnam Syndrome, the common belief after the bloody and protracted conflict in Vietnam that the American public no longer had the stomach for war unless guaranteed swift, easy and decisive victory.
DOCUMENTARY NARRATOR FROM TV SPECIAL “INSIDE THE PENTAGON”: Precision weapons and the strategic use of air power helped make the Gulf War an enormous operational victory for the Pentagon, helping it move past the legacy of Vietnam.
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: It’s a proud day for America, and by God we’ve kicked Vietnam Syndrome once and for all. Thank you very, very much.
NORMAN SOLOMON: The idea is that supposedly the public is not willing to back strong military action because people have become too skittish about US casualties. In fact, if you look at the actual course of public opinion there’s been a real willingness to support wars without exception at the beginning.
Public support for the Second World War never fell below 77%, according to opinion polls. But during the Vietnam War, public support fell to about 30%, and within a couple of years of the US occupation of Iraq public support was down to almost 30% among the US population.
So what’s the difference? In one case, WWII, the US public never felt that the war was fundamentally based on deception. But if it emerges that the war can’t be won quickly, and that the war was based on deceptions, then people have turned against the war.
So, first, the public has to be sold on the need to attack. Then, after the war’s under way, withdrawal needs to be put forward as an unacceptable option.
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Withdrawal of all American forces from Vietnam would be a disaster.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: Let no one think for a moment that retreat from Vietnam would bring an end to conflict.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We’re not leaving, so long as I’m the President. That would be a huge mistake.
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: Our allies would lose confidence in America.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: To yield to force in Vietnam would weaken that confidence.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Any sign that says we’re going to leave before the job is done simply emboldens terrorists.
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: A retreat of the United States from Vietnam would be a communist victory, a victory of massive proportions and would lead to World War III.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: If this little nation goes down the drain and can’t maintain their independence, ask yourself what’s going to happen to all the other little nations.
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: It would not bring peace. It would bring more war.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And many propaganda lines become stock and trade of those who started the war in the first place.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of “cut and run.”
REP. J.D. HAYWORTH: The American people will not stand for surrender. REP. JEAN SCHMIDT: Cowards cut and run. REP. PATRICK MCHENRY: They’re advocating a policy called “cut and run.” KARL ROVE: That party’s old pattern of cutting and running.
REP. CHARLIE NORWOOD: If we high-tailed it and cut and run — PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH (MONTAGE): We won’t cut and run. Cut and run.
Cut and run. We will not cut and run. Cut and run. ANDERSON COOPER: Cut and run. Cut and run. How do you respond? PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH (MONTAGE): We will stay the course. We must stay the course. We stay the course. We will stay the course. And we’re not going to cut and run, if I’m in the Oval Office.
NORMAN SOLOMON: All a president has to do is start a war, and these arguments kick in that you can’t stop it. So it’s a real incentive for a president to lie, to deceive, to manipulate sufficiently to get the war started. And then they’ve got a long way to go without any sort of substantive challenge that says, hey, this war has to end.
NEWS ANCHOR: Then appealing for public support for his peace policy, Mr. Nixon said, “The enemy cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans,” he said, “can do that.”
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: The peacemakers are out there in the field. The soldier and the statesman need and welcome the sincere and the responsible assistance of concerned Americans. But they need reason much more than they need emotion. They must have a practical solution and not a concoction of wishful thinking and false hopes, however well-intentioned and well-meaning they may be. It must be a solution that does not call for surrender or for cutting and running now. Those fantasies hold the nightmare of World War III and a much larger war tomorrow.
NORMAN SOLOMON: During the Vietnam War public opinion polls were showing after a few years into the early 1970’s that a majority of Americans felt the war was wrong, even immoral and yet the war continued because the momentum was there.
NEWS ANCHOR: Vice President Agnew’s target tonight, as he put it, was the professional pessimist. Most of those, the Vice President explained at a rally for California Republicans, are Democrats and it was all the kind of rhetoric Republican crowds have been enjoying on this tour.
VICE PRESIDENT AGNEW: In the United States today we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.
NORMAN SOLOMON: The same has been the case in terms of the occupation of Iraq.
VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians for losing their memory or their backbone but we’re not going to sit by and let them rewrite history.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And that’s an insidious process because often those who oppose a war are simply discounted.
SHEPARD SMITH: Congressman John Murtha, the first Vietnam Vet to serve in Congress, a man awarded a bronze star and two purple hearts, choking back tears as he talked about his change of heart.
CONGRESSMAN JOHN MURTHA: It’s time to bring them home. They’ve done everything they can do, the military has done everything they can do. This war has been so mishandled, from the very start, not only was the intelligence bad, the way they disbanded the troops, there’s all kinds of mistakes that have been made. They don’t deserve to continue to suffer. They’re the targets.
NORMAN SOLOMON: As an original supporter of the war and somebody known as a hawk – pro-military – inside the Congress, John Murtha, despite his credentials, he was not taken terribly seriously.
BRITT HUME, FOX NEWS: This guy has long passed the day when he had anything but the foggiest awareness of what the heck is going on in the world, and that sound byte is naiveté writ-large. And the man is an absolute fountain of such talk.
NORMAN SOLOMON: His recommendations to pull out US troops, discounted by pundits.
RICH LOWRY, FOX NEWS: Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha once again sounding like the grim reaper when it comes to the war on terror.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Murtha’s running a psyop against his own people …
CRAIG MINNICK: As a veteran, I consider it my duty to defend those who defend America against repeated public attacks by a politician who cares nothing more than political and personal gain than the welfare of our fellow Americans on the battlefield.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And yet you looked at the polls and you found that a large amount of Americans totally were in his corner on this.
CONGRESSMAN JOHN MURTHA: I go by Arlington cemetery every day. And the Vice President – he criticizes Democrats? Let me tell you, those gravestones don’t say Democrat or Republican. They say American! [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]
NORMAN SOLOMON: And almost any analysis of public opinion data, laid side-by- side with what news media are or are not advocating in terms of editorials, will show that the media establishment is way behind the grassroots. In February of 1968, the Boston Globe did a survey of 39 different major US daily newspapers. The Globe could not find a single paper that had editorialized for withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam.
PROTESTORS AT NIXON STADIUM SPEECH: 1-2-3-4 we don’t want your stinkin’ war.
SEAN PENN: And even when calls for withdrawal have eventually become too loud to ignore, officials have put forward strategies for ending war that have had the effect of prolonging it – in some cases, as with the Nixon administration’s strategy of Vietnamization, actually escalating war in the name of ending it.
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: In the previous administration, we Americanized the war in Vietnam. In this administration, we are Vietnamizing the search for peace.
NORMAN SOLOMON: It’s the idea that, OK, the war has become unpopular in the United States, so let’s pull out some US troops and have the military burden fall on the allies inside that country.
NEWS REPORTER: White House officials say it is obvious that the South Vietnamese are going to have to hack it on their own.
NORMAN SOLOMON: The model is to use air power while pulling out US troops and training Vietnamese to kill other Vietnamese people. And several decades later, in effect, that is a goal of George W. Bush’s administration.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Our strategy can be summed up this way: As the Iraqi’s stand up, we will stand down.
NORMAN SOLOMON: The rhetoric about shifting the burden of fighting the insurgency onto the shoulders of Iraqi people themselves is very enticing for a president because it’s a way of saying to people in the United States, “Hey, we’re going to be out of there, it’s just a matter of time.”
DONALD RUMSFELD: There isn’t a person at this table who agrees with you that we’re in a quagmire and that there’s no end in sight.
NORMAN SOLOMON: The media and political focus on the word quagmire is a good example of how an issue can be framed very narrowly.
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN: The criticism would be that you’re in a situation from which there’s no good way to extricate yourself.
DONALD RUMSFELD: Then the word clearly would not be a good one.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Talking about a quagmire seems to be a positive way of fomenting debate because then we can argue about whether the war is actually working out well.
SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY: We are now in a seemingly intractable quagmire. SENATOR CHUCK HAGEL: That terrible word quagmire.
ROBERT DALLEK, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: This could be or seems to be a kind of quagmire.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Quagmire is really a false sort of a critique because it says really the problem here is what the war is doing to the United States. Are we able to win.
ANDERSON COOPER: Are we winning in Iraq? BILL O’REILLY: Do you want the United States to win in Iraq? DAVID GERGEN, CNN: I can’t tell who’s winning and who’s losing. SENATOR CARL LEVIN: Do you believe that we are currently winning in Iraq? DEFENSE SECRETARY ROBERT GATES: We are not winning but we are not losing. SECRETARY COLIN POWELL: We are losing. GENERAL GEORGE CASEY: We’re winning it. NEWS REPORTER TO SOLDIER: You’re winning this war? SOLDIER: I couldn’t tell you.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And a big problem with the media focus is that it sees the war through the eyes of the Americans, through the eyes of the occupiers, rather than those who are bearing the brunt of the war in human terms.
WALTER CRONKITE: We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders both in Vietnam and Washington to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds.
NORMAN SOLOMON: In early1968, Walter Cronkite told CBS viewers that the war couldn’t be won.
WALTER CRONKITE: It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And that was instantly, and through time even more so, heralded as the tide has turned. As Lyndon Johnson is reputed to have said when he saw Cronkite give that report, “I’ve lost middle America.” And it was presented as not only a turning point, quite often, but also as sort of a moral statement by the journalistic establishment.
Well, I would say yes and no. It was an acknowledgement that the United States, contrary to official Washington claims, was not winning the war in Vietnam, and could not win. But it was not a statement that the war was wrong. A problem there is that if the critique says this war is bad because it’s not winnable, then the response is, “Oh yeah, we’ll show you it can be winnable, or the next war will be winnable.”
AMERICAN TROOPS AT IRAQI HOME: Open the door, open the door.
NORMAN SOLOMON: So that critique doesn’t challenge the prerogatives of military expansion or aggression, if you will, or empire. And a deeper critique says, “Whether you can win or not, either way, empire enforced at the point – not of a bayonet but of the cruise missile — that’s not acceptable.”
SEAN PENN: Over the last five decades we have witnessed a wave of US military interventions – a series of bombings, invasions, and long-term occupations. Undertaken, we have been told, with the most noble of intentions … and paid for with the lives of young Americans and countless others around the world.
NORMAN SOLOMON: What has occurred with one war after another is still with us. These dynamics are in play in terms of the US occupation of Iraq, looking at other countries such as Iran, and the future will be replicated to the extent that we fail to understand what has been done with these wars in the past.
The news media have generally bought into and promoted the notion that it’s up to the President to make foreign policy decisions. This smart guy in the oval office has access to all the information, he knows more than we do, he’s the commander in chief. And the American people have no major role to play, and nor should they, because after all they don’t have the knowledge or capability to be responsive to the real situation. That was certainly true during the Vietnam War as it was to be later, time after time.
There were people in Congress that raised these issues and they simply were marginalized by the news media – even though in retrospect, maybe especially because in retrospect, they had it right and the conventional wisdom and the President were wrong.
REP: BARBARA LEE: However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint.
Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, Let’s step back for a moment, let’s just pause just for a minute, and think through the implications of our actions today so that this does not spiral out of control.
As we act let us not become the evil that we deplore. Thank you and I yield the balance of my time. UNIDENTIFIED CONGRESSMAN: The gentlewoman’s time has expired.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And this is a very common motif of history in the last several decades, where people who at the time were portrayed as loners, as mavericks, as outside of the mainstream of wisdom turned out to understand the historical moment.
SENATOR WAYNE MORSE: We’ve got to back our President? Since when do we have to back our President, or should we, when the President is proposing an unconstitutional act?
NORMAN SOLOMON: The best example is Wayne Morse, the senior Senator from Oregon who, beginning in 1964, was a voice in the Congressional wilderness. Senator Morse was unusual in that he challenged the very prerogative of the US government to go to war against Vietnam. He said it’s up to the American people to formulate foreign policy.
PETER LISAGOR, FACE THE NATION: Senator, the Constitution gives to the President of the United States the sole responsibility for the conduct of foreign policy.
SENATOR WAYNE MORSE: Couldn’t be more wrong, you couldn’t make a more unsound legal statement than the one you have just made. This is the promulgation of an old fallacy that foreign policy belongs to the President of the United States. That’s nonsense.
PETER LISAGOR: To whom does it belong, then, Senator?
SENATOR WAYNE MORSE: It belongs to the American people, and the Constitutional fathers made it very, very clear —
PETER LISAGOR: Where does the President fit into this in the responsibility scale?
SENATOR WAYNE MORSE: What I’m saying is—under our constitution all the President is, is the administrator of the people’s foreign policy, those are his prerogatives, and I’m pleading that the American people be given the facts about foreign policy —
PETER LISAGOR: You know, Senator, that the American people cannot formulate and execute foreign policy —
SENATOR WAYNE MORSE: Why you’re a man of little faith in democracy if you make that kind of comment. I have complete faith in the ability of the American people to follow the facts if you give them, and my charge against my government is that we’re not giving the American people the facts.
NORMAN SOLOMON: And that’s the kind of faith in democracy that’s not in fashion among the Washington press corps or the power elite in the nation’s capital. But it’s a good reading of the Constitution, and it’s a good definition of democracy.
The independent journalist I.F. Stone says that all governments lie and nothing they say should be believed. Now Stone wasn’t conflating all governments, and he wasn’t saying that governments lie all the time, but he was saying that we should never trust that something said by a government is automatically true, especially our own, because we have a responsibility to go beneath the surface. Because the human costs of war, the consequences of militaristic policies, what Dr. King called “the madness of militarism,” they can’t stand the light of day if most people understand the deceptions that lead to the slaughter, and the human consequences of the carnage. If we get that into clear focus, we can change the course of events in this country. But it’s not going to be easy and it will require dedication to searching for truth.
MARTIN LUTHER KING: A time comes when silence is betrayal, and that time has come for us. …
Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. …
And I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government …
What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? …
Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness …
We are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their mistrust of American intentions now …
The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. … This way of settling differences is not just. …
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. …
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. …
I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.
How did we get here? 20 years after the U.S.-led invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq, we still refuse to reckon with the last decades of war as yet another decade of violence unfolds. Since the invasion, tens of thousands if not over a million lives have been lost. Millions of Iraqis are still displaced, while tens of millions have endured relentless violence ever since the destabilization of their country beginning in the 1990s through bombing, sanctions, multiple military invasions, and the occupation that began in 2003.
We share these reflections as two antimilitarist organizers in the U.S. who met years after the invasion through our shared work with About Face Veterans Against War (formerly known as Iraq Veterans Against the War). Twenty years ago this weekend, one of us was deployed as a communications technician and heard nothing about the massive protests the other participated in. One of us was organizing with Direct Action to Stop the War, coordinating twenty thousand people to shut down San Francisco’s financial district, in an attempt to raise the financial and social cost of invasion that was being steamrolled through despite the largest global street protests in the history of the world.
We know the war on Iraq—like the war on Afghanistan—was a calculated grift for money and power. We can’t allow the truth to be manipulated or forgotten. George W. Bush is being reanimated as a folksy painter instead of brought to account for his administration’s war crimes. His creation of the so-called “Endless Wars” after 9/11 has so far cost incalculable damage to peoples’ lives and over $14 trillion in Pentagon spending. Up to half of that massive amount has piped directly into the pockets of private military contractors.
Those who seek profit from wars rely on our consent, our confusion about what’s really happening, and our willingness to submit to historical amnesia. The only voices allowed to speak on large platforms about this 20-year milestone are the ones attempting to rewrite history in favor of the architects and beneficiaries of war. A former speechwriter for Bush wants you to buy that the U.S. “went to war to build a democracy in Iraq,” but listen instead to Iraqis like Riverbend (the pen name of a young Baghdadi woman writing during the early years of the occupation) who told us the truth at the time:
“You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.”
Even now in Iraq, everyday people still struggle daily for the bare minimum. As the nonpartisan Iraqi diaspora group Collective Action for Iraq recently described, “People have continued taking to the streets across Iraq to protest corruption, for basic services and to live their lives in dignity—from Kurdistan, to Najaf, and Dhi Qar. State and local security forces continue to respond with violence and the suppression of dissident voices.” These are only a few effects of the cascade of violence triggered by the U.S. occupation.
The silence here about the devastation caused by U.S. wars abroad is by design. Obama came to office on a platform of “change” nodding strongly towards the populist antiwar sentiment of the late 2000s, and yet here we are, still prioritizing war. Under this ongoing “Global War on Terror” framework—under Bush and Obama and Trump and now Biden—the lead-up to each consecutive war utilizes tailored rhetoric but the patterns remain the same, even while weapons evolve. Now the contractors are the same corporations providing the software we use every day. Google and Microsoft work alongside Raytheon and Northrop Grumman to produce and operate weapons of mass destruction. The war machine is becoming more secretive, more connected, and more ubiquitous. None of us can afford to remain silent or apathetic about the devastation we continue to cause to innocent civilians. The money being spent on war must be redirected to those most impacted by U.S. aggression.
Instead of reparations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. has stolen billions from the Afghan Central Bank; drained Iraq of people, its resources, and undermined civil society creating regional instability. If we allow ourselves to be lied to yet again about these wars, we are more easily manipulated to go along with the next iteration of the U.S. war. Obama’s so-called “Pacific Pivot” initiated a shift back to China, yet again, as the leading rationale for continued military buildup. The fear-mongering is the same, yet the tactics of war-making are being implemented with evermore secrecy by intelligence officials and contractors preventing public discourse and effective oversight.
Our misleadingly named “defense” spending, the money earmarked for expanding U.S. control overseas, has doubled since the invasion of Iraq. Nothing stops the growth of war profiteering: not exposures of war crimes, not the inarguable destabilization of multiple countries with increased violence and displacement, not the epidemics of veteran suicide and war trauma coming home, not the avoidance of auditing or accountability for the use of such funds. Last Monday, Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord told reporters that a $1 trillion defense budget is coming soon.
What will the world look like 20 years from today? If this country cannot relinquish its death grip on empire-building, we will have only continued to impoverish and incarcerate our own population while spreading unimaginable destruction abroad. The U.S. military is also the biggest polluter on the planet; in order to address the dangers of climate change, we must shrink this footprint immediately.
If we want a brighter future, we can and must divest from wars abroad and the increased domestic militarization that both pose serious threats to democracy. We can move that money from the Pentagon, police, and prisons to invest instead in community needs and real safety. We can pursue diplomacy, nonviolent interventions, and repair. This country is rich in leadership—especially in Black, Brown, and Indigenous-led grassroots community organizing. There are those working toward taking better care of each other amid conditions created by an overextended empire that deprioritizes human needs. Let’s move towards collective healing instead of continually funneling money into the bloody pockets of CEOs of weapons makers and major corporations that profit off death and destruction. Let’s return resources, including money and sovereignty, to the people most impacted by these wars.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of arbitrarily detaining at least 2,400 Afghan refugees in “miserable” accommodation for more than a year, pending resettlement elsewhere.
The human rights group said that between 2,400 and 2,700 Afghans are “arbitrarily detained” in makeshift refugee housing. There, they have limited freedom of movement and scarce access to legal counsel. The refugees were first evacuated to the UAE following the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August 2021.
HRW’s UAE researcher, Joey Shea, called for their immediate release, stating:
Emirati authorities have kept thousands of Afghan asylum seekers locked up for over 15 months in cramped, miserable conditions with no hope of progress on their cases
HRW reported that authorities have stationed guards throughout the complexes. Furthermore, the refugees are only permitted to leave the camp for essential hospital visits, during which time security will accompany them. Authorities also tightly control visits to the camp from outside.
‘Prison-like conditions’ for Afghan refugees
The UAE, for its part, said it was working with US counterparts to complete the resettlement process. However, it denied reports of dire living conditions. An Emirati official told AFP:
The UAE continues to work with the US embassy to process travellers and liaise with US counterparts in efforts to resettle the remaining evacuees in a timely manner
We understand that there are frustrations and this has taken longer than intended to complete.
The official also said that the country had agreed to temporarily host Afghan refugees at the request of the US.
However, according to HRW, detained Afghans suffer “prison-like conditions”. It said they have no freedom of movement, and suffer around-the-clock surveillance. The organisation also described a “mental health crisis” in the camp, adding it has learnt of at least one suicide attempt.
Shea said:
Governments should not ignore the shocking plight of these Afghans stranded in limbo in the UAE
The US government in particular, which coordinated the 2021 evacuations and with whom many evacuees worked before the Taliban takeover, should immediately step up and intervene.
Prominent Afghans and Iranians say current laws do not capture the systematic suppression of women
A prominent group of Afghan and Iranian women are backing a campaign calling for gender apartheid to be recognised as a crime under international law.
The campaign, launched on International Women’s Day, reflects a belief that the current laws covering discrimination against women do not capture the systematic nature of the policies imposed in Afghanistan and Iran to downgrade the status of women in society.
I have made 5 huge successive Submissions to the newly formed Australian National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC). However my 2 most serious Submissions – on horrendous Australian war crimes (Submission #2: 6 million Afghan avoidable deaths from deprivation under Australian and US Alliance occupation in gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention) and on horrendous, planet-threatening Carbon Debt (Submission #3: an enormous $5 trillion fraud perpetrated on Australian children, grandchildren and future generations) – were rejected by the NACC on the basis that the NACC had “not been able to identify a clear allegation of corrupt conduct as defined by the National Anti-Corruption Commission Act (2022). As a result, the Commission is unable to take any further action in this matter”. My 5 Submissions are summarized below with the rejected Submissions asterisked. 
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