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The coroner couldn’t say whether it was Roy McGrath or the FBI who fired the fatal shot, but after two to the head McGrath was dead at 53. Publicly, Larry Hogan said all the right things in the wake of the death of his former chief of staff; thoughts and prayers for the family, etc. But privately Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland now running for Senate, must have breathed a sigh of relief. He no longer had to worry about his longtime friend running his mouth, or releasing secret recordings.
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If you want an idea of just how miserably the media has failed in its coverage of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, in a recent Pew survey only about half of American adults could correctly identify whether more Israelis (1,550) or Palestinians (33,000+) had been killed in the war.
The post The Famine-Makers appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
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Photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Brittany A. Chase – Public Domain
In an age when American presidents routinely boast of having the world’s finest military, where nearly trillion-dollar war budgets are now a new version of routine, let me bring up one vitally important but seldom mentioned fact: making major cuts to military spending would increase U.S. national security.
Why? Because real national security can neither be measured nor safeguarded solely by military power (especially the might of a military that hasn’t won a major war since 1945). Economic vitality matters so much more, as does the availability and affordability of health care, education, housing, and other crucial aspects of life unrelated to weaponry and war. Add to that the importance of a Congress responsive to the needs of the working poor, the hungry and the homeless among us. And don’t forget that the moral fabric of our nation should be based not on a military eternally ready to make war but on a determination to uphold international law and defend human rights. It’s high time for America to put aside its conveniently generic “rules-based order” anchored in imperial imperatives and face its real problems. A frank look in the mirror is what’s most needed here.
It should be simple really: national security is best advanced not by endlessly preparing for war, but by fostering peace. Yet, despite their all-too-loud disagreements, Washington’s politicians share a remarkably bipartisan consensus when it comes to genuflecting before and wildly overfunding the military-industrial complex. In truth, ever-rising military spending and yet more wars are a measure of how profoundly unhealthy our country actually is.
“The Scholarly Junior Senator from South Dakota”
Such insights are anything but new and, once upon a time, could even be heard in the halls of Congress. They were, in fact, being aired there within a month of my birth as, on August 2, 1963, Democratic Senator George McGovern of South Dakota — later a hero of mine — rose to address his fellow senators about “New Perspectives on American Security.”
Nine years later, he (and his vision of the military) would, of course, lose badly to Republican Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election. No matter that he had been the one who served in combat with distinction in World War II, piloting a B-24 bomber on 35 missions over enemy territory, even as Nixon, then a Navy officer, amassed a tidy sum playing poker. Somehow, McGovern, a decorated hero, became associated with “weakness” because he opposed this country’s disastrous Vietnam War, while Nixon manufactured a self-image as the staunchest Cold Warrior around, never missing a chance to pose as tough on communism (until, as president, he memorably visited Communist China, opening relations with that country).
But back to 1963, when McGovern gave that speech (which you can read in the online Senate Congressional Record, volume 109, pages 13,986-94). At that time, the government was already dedicating more than half of all federal discretionary spending to the Pentagon, roughly the same percentage as today. Yet was it spending all that money wisely? McGovern’s answer was a resounding no. Congress, he argued, could instantly cut 10% of the Pentagon budget without compromising national security one bit. Indeed, security would be enhanced by investing in this country instead of buying yet more overpriced weaponry. The senator and former bomber pilot was especially critical of the massive amounts then being spent on the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the absurd planetary “overkill” it represented vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, America’s main competitor in the nuclear arms race. As he put it then:
“What possible advantage [can be had] in appropriating additional billions of dollars to build more [nuclear] missiles and bombs when we already have excess capacity to destroy the potential enemy? How many times is it necessary to kill a man or kill a nation?”
How many, indeed? Think about that question as today’s Congress continues to ramp up spending, now estimated at nearly $2 trillion over the next 30 years, on — and yes, this really is the phrase — “modernizing” the country’s nuclear triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), as well as its ultra-expensive nuclear-missile-firing submarines and stealth bombers. And keep in mind that the U.S. already has an arsenal quite capable of wiping out life on several Earth-sized planets.
What, according to McGovern, was this country sacrificing in its boundless pursuit of mass death? In arguments that should resonate strongly today, he noted that America’s manufacturing base was losing vigor and vitality compared to those of countries like Germany and Japan, while the economy was weakening, thanks to trade imbalances and the exploding costs of that nuclear arms race. Mind you, back then, this country was still on the gold standard and unburdened by an almost inconceivable national debt, 60 years later, of more than $34 trillion, significant parts of it thanks to this country’s failed “war on terror” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere across all too much of the planet.
McGovern did recognize that, given how the economy was (and still is) organized, meaningful cuts to military spending could hurt in the short term. So, he suggested that Congress create an Economic Conversion Commission to ensure a smoother transition from guns to butter. His goal was simple: to make the economy “less dependent upon arms spending.” Excess military spending, he noted, was “wasting” this country’s human resources, while “restricting” its political leadership in the world.
In short, that distinguished veteran of World War II, then serving as “the scholarly junior Senator from South Dakota” (in the words of Senator Jennings Randolph of West Virginia), was anything but proud of America’s “arsenal of democracy.” He wasn’t, in fact, a fan of arsenals at all. Rather, he wanted to foster a democracy worthy of the American people, while freeing us as much as possible from the presence of just such an arsenal.
To that end, he explained what he meant by defending democracy:
“When a major percentage of the public resources of our society is devoted to the accumulation of devastating weapons of war, the spirit of democracy suffers. When our laboratories and our universities and our scientists and our youth are caught up in war preparations, the spirit of [freedom] is hampered.
“America must, of course, maintain a fully adequate military defense. But we have a rich heritage and a glorious future that are too precious to risk in an arms race that goes beyond any reasonable criteria of need.
“We need to remind ourselves that we have sources of strength, of prestige, and international leadership based on other than nuclear bombs.”
Imagine if his call had been heeded. This country might today be a far less militaristicplace.
Something was, in fact, afoot in the early 1960s in America. In 1962, despite the wishes of the Pentagon, President John F. Kennedy used diplomacy to get us out of the Cuban Missile Crisis with the Soviet Union and then, in June 1963, made a classic commencement address about peace at American University. Similarly, in support of his call for substantial reductions in military spending, McGovern cited the farewell address of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961 during which he introduced the now-classic phrase “military-industrial complex,” warning that “we must never let the weight of this combination [of the military with industry, abetted by Congress] endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”
Echoing Ike’s warning in what truly seems like another age, McGovern earned the approbation of his Senate peers. His vision of a better, more just, more humane America seemed, however briefly, to resonate. He wanted to spend money not on more nuclear bombs and missiles but on “more classrooms, laboratories, libraries, and capable teachers.” On better hospitals and expanded nursing-home care. On a cleaner environment, with rivers and streams saved from pollution related to excessive military production. And he hoped as well that, as military bases were closed, they would be converted to vocational schools or healthcare centers.
McGovern’s vision, in other words, was aspirational and inspirational. He saw a future America increasingly at peace with the world, eschewing arms races for investments in our own country and each other. It was a vision of the future that went down fast in the Vietnam War era to come, yet one that’s even more needed today.
Praise from Senate Peers
Here’s another way in which times have changed: McGovern’s vision won high praise from his Senate peers in the Democratic Party. Jennings Randolph of West Virginia agreed that “unsurpassed military power in combination with areas of grave economic weakness is not a manifestation of sound security policy.” Like McGovern, he called for a reinvestment in America, especially in underdeveloped rural areas like those in his home state. Joseph Clark, Jr., of Pennsylvania, also a World War II veteran, “thoroughly” agreed that the Pentagon budget “needs most careful scrutiny on the floor of the Senate, and that in former years it has not received that scrutiny.” Stephen Young of Ohio, who served in both World War I and World War II, looked ahead toward an age of peace, expressing hope that “perhaps the necessity for these stupendous appropriations [for weaponry] will not be as real in the future.”
Possibly the strongest response came from Frank Church of Idaho, who reminded his fellow senators of their duty to the Constitution. That sacred document, he noted, “vests in Congress the power to determine the size of our military budget, and I feel we have tended too much to rubberstamp the recommendations that come to us from the Pentagon, without making the kind of critical analysis that the Senator from South Dakota has attempted… We cannot any longer shirk this responsibility.” Church saluted McGovern as someone who “dared to look a sacred cow [the Pentagon budget] in the teeth.”
A final word came from Wayne Morse of Oregon. Very much a gadfly, Morse shifted the topic to U.S. foreign aid, noting that too much of that aid was military-related, constituting a “shocking waste” to the taxpayer even as it proved detrimental to the development of democracy abroad, most notably in Latin America. “We should be spending the money for bread, rather than for military aid,” he concluded.
Imagine that! Bread instead of bullets and bombs for the world. Of course, even then, it didn’t happen, but in the 60 years since then, the rhetoric of the Senate has certainly changed. A McGovern-style speech today would undoubtedly be booed down on both sides of the aisle. Consider, for example, consistent presidential and Congressional clamoring now for more military aid to Israel during a genocide in Gaza. So far, U.S. government actions are more consistent with letting starving children in Gaza eat lead instead of bread.
Peace Must Be Our Profession
What was true then remains true today. Real national defense should not be synonymous with massive spending on wars and weaponry. Quite the reverse: whenever possible, wars should be avoided; whenever possible, weapons should be beaten into plowshares, and those plowshares used to improve the health and well-being of people everywhere.
Oh, and that Biblical reference of mine (swords into plowshares) is intentional. It’s meant to highlight the ancient roots of the wisdom of avoiding war, of converting weapons into useful tools to sustain and provide for the rest of us.
Yet America’s leaders on both sides of the aisle have long lost the vision of George McGovern, of John F. Kennedy, of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Today’s president and today’s Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, boast of spending vast sums on weapons, not only to strengthen America’s imperial power but to defeat Russia and deter China, while bragging all the while of the “good” jobs they’re allegedly creatinghere in America in the process. (This country’s major weapons makers would agreewith them, of course!)
McGovern had a telling rejoinder to such thinking. “Building weapons,” he noted in 1963, “is a seriously limited device for building the economy,” while an “excessive reliance on arms,” as well as overly “rigid diplomacy,” serve only to torpedo promising opportunities for peace.
Back then, it seemed to politicians like McGovern, as well as President Kennedy, that clearing a path toward peace was not only possible but imperative, especially considering the previous year’s near-cataclysmic Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet just a few months after McGovern’s inspiring address in the Senate, Kennedy had been assassinated and his calls for peace put on ice as a new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, succumbed to pressure by escalating U.S. military involvement in what mushroomed into the catastrophic Vietnam War.
In today’s climate of perpetual war, the dream of peace continues to wither. Still, despite worsening odds, it’s important that it must not be allowed to die. The high ground must be wrested away from our self-styled “warriors,” who aim to keep the factories of death churning, no matter the cost to humanity and the planet.
My fellow Americans, we need to wake up from the nightmare of forever war. This country’s wars aren’t simply being fought “over there” in faraway and, at least to us, seemingly forgettable places like Syria and Somalia. In some grim fashion, our wars are already very much being fought right here in this deeply over-armed country of ours.
George McGovern, a bomber pilot from World War II, knew the harsh face of war and fought in the Senate for a more peaceful future, one no longer haunted by debilitating arms races and the prospect of a doomsday version of overkill. Joining him in that fight was John F. Kennedy, who, in 1963, suggested that “this generation of Americans has already had enough, more than enough, of war, and hate, and oppression.”
If only.
Today’s generation of “leaders” seems not yet to have had their fill of war, hate, and oppression. That tragic fact — not China, not Russia, not any foreign power — is now the greatest threat to this country’s “national security.” And it’s a threat only aggravated by ever more colossal Pentagon budgets still being rubberstamped by a spinelessly complicit Congress.
The post Pentagon Spending and National (In)Security appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by William J. Astore.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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15th March 2024.
Dear President von der Leyen,
Dear President Michel,
Dear High Representative Borrell,The Geneva International Peace Research Institute respectfully comes back to you on this question of a ceasefire in Gaza, on which we have yet to receive a satisfactory response.
Since our previous email of 23rd February, GIPRI has launched an academic and media campaign of awareness-raising and public debate. Our director Dr. Gabriel Galice and the board are appalled at the inaction by European leaders in the face of the on-going genocide and the multiple violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law by the government of Israel. It is most urgent to enforce a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, followed by a lifting of the illegal blockade against the hapless population of Gaza, the full implementation of the order of the International Court of Justice of 26 January 2024, and the prompt and effective delivery of humanitarian assistance to the starving population.
You received the proposal from Dr. Galice on the 27th of February last, calling for a multi-national force to break the illegal Israeli blockade on Gaza. We attach the document here again for your reference.
The document was shared in good faith, as a rallying call to the international community to support the besieged population of Gaza, through the formation of unilateral state partnerships with international humanitarian organizations to break the illegal blockade. What it was not meant for was to be co-opted by the EU and the US government.
The GIPRI proposal was published in the Belgian paper Le Soir on 29th February, and we have it on good authority that the next morning it was sitting on the desks of prime ministers in certain European capitals.
It was also published in the Tribune de Geneve on 5th March.
By some marvelous set of coincidences, the US government announced a week after the Le Soir article, after five months of relentless Israeli bombing, that it would build a pier in Gaza and send aid to Gaza via a maritime corridor out of Cyprus. It would do all of this while at the same time maintaining its provision of weapons and political cover for Israel to continue its murderous campaign against the civilians of Gaza unabated. The cognitive dissonance of such a situation is monstrous, as we see pictures of a tugboat pulling a barge with a couple of hundred tons of aid on it, bound for Gaza, while the images of the bloody aftermath of Israeli air strikes continue to be livestreamed. It is unethical and cynical to be complicit in a genocide and then to pretend to be a Good Samaritan with all the media hype associated with it. Last weekend, the EU announced that it would be implementing a similar initiative, although the European governments continue giving aid and comfort to the government of Israel in the midst of its ethnic cleansing campaign, engaging in apology of genocide and crimes against humanity.
There appears to be such an enormous moral vacuum and absence of ideas at the levels of Brussels and Washington, not to mention shocking apathy, that it is quite clear that the GIPRI proposal has been co-opted by bureaucrats in both locations to make it seem as though they are doing something to help the people of Gaza, when in reality they do not care.
Not only is the mechanism that the EU has adopted useless, in the absence of a port in Gaza or any means of inland delivery of aid planned for in advance, but the EU is also continuing to provide its tacit support for the Israeli blockade, the bombing and starvation of the population, as well as the continuation of the slow and torturous Israeli aid inspection process.
By opening a maritime corridor via Cyprus, the EU is effectively surrendering any remaining moral authority it may have had to the Israelis, by presenting the scenario as though no other possible alternative exists, when in fact many alternatives do exist.
Through adopting this approach, the EU continues to support the Israeli blockade by steadfastly refusing to call for a ceasefire, and by not calling for Israel to open the land borders to allow the hundreds of aid trucks already positioned to enter Gaza. This is the only effective means through which aid can be distributed to the population by the United Nations agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other international partners and organizations. These agencies have been calling for months for rapid and unhindered access to deliver aid, calls that continue to fall on deaf ears.
This assault on Gaza was never about 7th October, or about Hamas, or about Israel’s notional right to defend itself. It is clear now that it is nothing less than a pre-planned genocide, a land-grab for the creation of a greater Israel, a more secure Apartheid ethno-state. The EU has supported it and you are all guilty of enabling this genocide to take place in plain sight. Words have lost their meaning at this point to express the horror of what we have witnessed for the past five months. Again, just last night, we witnessed another ‘Flour Massacre’, with over 60 people murdered by Israeli tanks and machine guns while waiting for food aid.
This is a shocking disgrace and once again there has been no condemnation from the EU of these cold-blooded massacres we have witnessed in the past two weeks.
As a group of European and American citizens, we have had enough, and we are holding you accountable for your actions in supporting Israel’s destruction of Gaza and its murder of the population. We are appalled that the EU has acted in this undemocratic way for the past five months, throwing its support behind Israel, while the citizens of the EU have been overwhelmingly demanding, for months now, an end to the senseless slaughter and destruction.
We demand that the EU calls for an immediate and unconditional end to the Israeli bombing of Gaza right now, and we demand that the EU also calls for an opening of the borders, allowing rapid and unhindered delivery of food, shelter and medical supplies to the population.
Anything less than this is unacceptable and in breach of international law, which you all claim to uphold, but which it is evident that you are in breach of.
Short of this, we will be amplifying calls at the public level for your immediate resignations, as you no longer represent the population of the EU, with your continued support for a racist, murderous, apartheid regime.
Professor Alfred de Zayas, former senior lawyer with OHCHR, former UN Independent Expert on International Order, and member of the GIPRI board is prepared to substantiate the violations by Israel of the Hague Convention of 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the 1977 Additional Protocols, of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and of articles 6, 7, and 8 of the Statute of Rome.
If there ever was a case for the application of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (GA Resolution 60/1 paras 138-39), this is it.
The post Open letter to the EU Leadership Demanding an Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Geneva International Peace Research Institute.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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15th March 2024.
Dear President von der Leyen,
Dear President Michel,
Dear High Representative Borrell,The Geneva International Peace Research Institute respectfully comes back to you on this question of a ceasefire in Gaza, on which we have yet to receive a satisfactory response.
Since our previous email of 23rd February, GIPRI has launched an academic and media campaign of awareness-raising and public debate. Our director Dr. Gabriel Galice and the board are appalled at the inaction by European leaders in the face of the on-going genocide and the multiple violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law by the government of Israel. It is most urgent to enforce a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, followed by a lifting of the illegal blockade against the hapless population of Gaza, the full implementation of the order of the International Court of Justice of 26 January 2024, and the prompt and effective delivery of humanitarian assistance to the starving population.
You received the proposal from Dr. Galice on the 27th of February last, calling for a multi-national force to break the illegal Israeli blockade on Gaza. We attach the document here again for your reference.
The document was shared in good faith, as a rallying call to the international community to support the besieged population of Gaza, through the formation of unilateral state partnerships with international humanitarian organizations to break the illegal blockade. What it was not meant for was to be co-opted by the EU and the US government.
The GIPRI proposal was published in the Belgian paper Le Soir on 29th February, and we have it on good authority that the next morning it was sitting on the desks of prime ministers in certain European capitals.
It was also published in the Tribune de Geneve on 5th March.
By some marvelous set of coincidences, the US government announced a week after the Le Soir article, after five months of relentless Israeli bombing, that it would build a pier in Gaza and send aid to Gaza via a maritime corridor out of Cyprus. It would do all of this while at the same time maintaining its provision of weapons and political cover for Israel to continue its murderous campaign against the civilians of Gaza unabated. The cognitive dissonance of such a situation is monstrous, as we see pictures of a tugboat pulling a barge with a couple of hundred tons of aid on it, bound for Gaza, while the images of the bloody aftermath of Israeli air strikes continue to be livestreamed. It is unethical and cynical to be complicit in a genocide and then to pretend to be a Good Samaritan with all the media hype associated with it. Last weekend, the EU announced that it would be implementing a similar initiative, although the European governments continue giving aid and comfort to the government of Israel in the midst of its ethnic cleansing campaign, engaging in apology of genocide and crimes against humanity.
There appears to be such an enormous moral vacuum and absence of ideas at the levels of Brussels and Washington, not to mention shocking apathy, that it is quite clear that the GIPRI proposal has been co-opted by bureaucrats in both locations to make it seem as though they are doing something to help the people of Gaza, when in reality they do not care.
Not only is the mechanism that the EU has adopted useless, in the absence of a port in Gaza or any means of inland delivery of aid planned for in advance, but the EU is also continuing to provide its tacit support for the Israeli blockade, the bombing and starvation of the population, as well as the continuation of the slow and torturous Israeli aid inspection process.
By opening a maritime corridor via Cyprus, the EU is effectively surrendering any remaining moral authority it may have had to the Israelis, by presenting the scenario as though no other possible alternative exists, when in fact many alternatives do exist.
Through adopting this approach, the EU continues to support the Israeli blockade by steadfastly refusing to call for a ceasefire, and by not calling for Israel to open the land borders to allow the hundreds of aid trucks already positioned to enter Gaza. This is the only effective means through which aid can be distributed to the population by the United Nations agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other international partners and organizations. These agencies have been calling for months for rapid and unhindered access to deliver aid, calls that continue to fall on deaf ears.
This assault on Gaza was never about 7th October, or about Hamas, or about Israel’s notional right to defend itself. It is clear now that it is nothing less than a pre-planned genocide, a land-grab for the creation of a greater Israel, a more secure Apartheid ethno-state. The EU has supported it and you are all guilty of enabling this genocide to take place in plain sight. Words have lost their meaning at this point to express the horror of what we have witnessed for the past five months. Again, just last night, we witnessed another ‘Flour Massacre’, with over 60 people murdered by Israeli tanks and machine guns while waiting for food aid.
This is a shocking disgrace and once again there has been no condemnation from the EU of these cold-blooded massacres we have witnessed in the past two weeks.
As a group of European and American citizens, we have had enough, and we are holding you accountable for your actions in supporting Israel’s destruction of Gaza and its murder of the population. We are appalled that the EU has acted in this undemocratic way for the past five months, throwing its support behind Israel, while the citizens of the EU have been overwhelmingly demanding, for months now, an end to the senseless slaughter and destruction.
We demand that the EU calls for an immediate and unconditional end to the Israeli bombing of Gaza right now, and we demand that the EU also calls for an opening of the borders, allowing rapid and unhindered delivery of food, shelter and medical supplies to the population.
Anything less than this is unacceptable and in breach of international law, which you all claim to uphold, but which it is evident that you are in breach of.
Short of this, we will be amplifying calls at the public level for your immediate resignations, as you no longer represent the population of the EU, with your continued support for a racist, murderous, apartheid regime.
Professor Alfred de Zayas, former senior lawyer with OHCHR, former UN Independent Expert on International Order, and member of the GIPRI board is prepared to substantiate the violations by Israel of the Hague Convention of 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the 1977 Additional Protocols, of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and of articles 6, 7, and 8 of the Statute of Rome.
If there ever was a case for the application of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (GA Resolution 60/1 paras 138-39), this is it.
The post Open letter to the EU Leadership Demanding an Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Geneva International Peace Research Institute.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Image by Ray Acheson.
Last month, organizers and activists from around the United States gathered in Tucson, Arizona for a nationwide summit to Stop Cop City—or, more accurately, Cop Cities. As new research has revealed, there are at least 69 militarized police training facilities in the works across the country. Each was put in motion in or after 2020, clearly a direct response to the Black Lives Matter uprisings that dominated city streets for months to condemn racialised police violence and demand the defunding of police.
The post Cop Cities, Borders, and Bombs appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
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Image by Jon Tyson.
Who decided we should give all our money to landlords? Did you vote for that? I didn’t. You didn’t, either. And if you have thoughts of leaving renting behind to buy, the costs of mortgages are, not surprisingly, rising dramatically as well.
As far as I know, no landlord has been recorded as holding a literal gun to the head of tenants to sign a lease. But then there is no need for them to do so, as “market forces” do the work for them. At bottom, the problem is that housing is a capitalist market commodity. As long as housing remains a commodity, housing costs will continue to become ever more unaffordable. To put this in other words: As long as housing is not a human right, but instead something that has to be competed for and owned by a small number of people, the holders of the good (housing) will take advantage and jack up prices as high as possible.
The post Why Should We Give All Our Money to Landlords? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
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The greatest tribute the Academy Awards made to Zone of Interest was to reenact its basic premise for nearly four hours, wrapping itself in a cocoon of distraction and self-infatuation, amid the horrors taking place outside, a swirl of superficiality only briefly interrupted by the unsettling sound of Jonathan Glazer’s trembling voice bringing an urgent message from the dead and dying to those who have retreated into a simulation of innocence.
The post It Can Happen to You appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
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Persuading Southern autoworkers to join a union remains one of the U.S. labor movement’s most enduring challenges, despite persistent efforts by the United Auto Workers union to organize this workforce.
To be sure, the UAW does have members employed by Ford and General Motors at facilities in Kentucky, Texas, Missouri and Mississippi.
However, the UAW has tried and largely failed to organize workers at foreign-owned companies, including Volkswagen and Nissan in Southern states, where about 30% of all U.S. automotive jobs are located.
But after the UAW pulled off its most successful strike in a generation against Detroit’s Big Three automakers, through which it won higher pay and better benefits for its members in 2023, the union is trying again to win over Southern autoworkers.
The UAW has pledged to spend US$40 million through 2026 to expand its ranks to include more auto and electric battery workers, including many employed in the South, where the industry is quickly gaining ground.
Based on my five decades of experience as a union organizer and labor historian, I anticipate that, recent momentum aside, the UAW will face stiff resistance from Toyota, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and the other big foreign automakers that operate in the South. The pushback is also coming from Southern politicians, many of whom have expressed concern that UAW success would undermine the region’s carefully crafted approach to economic development.
Lauding the ‘perfect three-legged stool’
After the region’s formerly robust textile industry imploded in the 1980s and 1990s because of an influx of cheap imports, Southern business and political leaders revived the region’s manufacturing base by successfully recruiting foreign automakers.
The strategy of those leaders reflects what the Business Council of Alabama has described as the “perfect three-legged stool for economic development.” It consists of “an eager and trainable workforce with a work ethic unparalleled anywhere in the nation,” accompanied by a “low-cost and business-friendly economic climate, and the lack of labor union activity and participation.”
The prospect of a low-wage and reliable workforce has lured the likes of Nissan, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Kia, Honda, Volkswagen and Hyundai to the South in recent decades.
Although many of those companies negotiate constructively with unions on their home turf, the lack of union membership and the protections that go with it have proved a draw for them in the United States.
As journalist Harold Meyerson has noted, these foreign automakers embraced the opportunity to “slum” in America and “do things they would never think of doing at home.”
The absence of union representation is a major reason why.
Less than 5% of workers in six Southern states are union members, and only Alabama and Mississippi approach union membership levels above 7%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That’s below the national average, which slid to 10% in 2023.
Blaming unions for bad job prospects
One way automotive employers in the South have blocked unions is by portraying them as outdated institutions whose bloated contracts and rigid work rules destroy jobs by making domestic auto companies uncompetitive.
Automotive leaders in the South argue the region has developed an alternative labor relations model that provides management with flexibility, offers wages and benefits superior to what local workers have earned previously and frees employees from any subordination to union directives.
Southern automakers also draw on another powerful resource in resisting the UAW: public intervention by top elected officials.
In 2014, when the UAW attempted to organize a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga. Bob Corker, Tennessee’s junior U.S. senator and a former mayor of Chattanooga, weighed in as voting commenced.
Corker claimed he had received a pledge from Volkswagen’s management to expand production in Chattanooga if workers voted against the union.
Three years later, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant similarly urged Nissan workers to reject the UAW.
“If you want to take away your job, if you want to end manufacturing as we know it in Mississippi, just start expanding unions,” Bryant said in 2017.
A majority of the autoworkers heeded their conservative leaders’ advice in both cases and voted against joining the UAW.
Making dire warnings
With the UAW ramping up its organizing efforts again, Southern governors are sounding alarms once more.
“The Alabama model for economic success is under attack,” warned Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.
She then asked workers: “Do you want continued opportunity and success the Alabama way? Or do you want out-of-state special interests telling Alabama how to do business?”
Unions “have crippled and distorted the progress and prosperity of industries and cities in other states,” South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster declared in his Jan. 24, 2024, State of the State address. He then issued an ominous call: “We will fight” the UAW’s labor organizers “all the way to the gates of hell. And we will win.”
The UAW counters that union membership means workers will get predictable raises, better benefits and improved workplace policies.
Changing context
Although these arguments from anti-union politicians haven’t changed much over the years, the context certainly has.
The UAW’s big wins on pay and benefits resulting from its 2023 strike against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis have increased its clout and credibility.
Many automakers with a U.S. workforce not covered by the UAW – including Volkswagen, Honda, Hyundai and other foreign transplants – responded by raising pay at their Southern plants. The union justifiably describes those raises as a “UAW bump.”
The UAW will presumably cite these pay hikes in its outreach to workers at Tesla and other nonunion companies involved in electric vehicle and battery production in which the industry is investing heavily.
“Nonunion autoworkers are being left behind,” the UAW’s recruiting website warns. “Are you ready to stand up and win your fair share?”
The pitch continues: “It’s time for nonunion autoworkers to join the UAW and win economic justice at Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Tesla, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru, Volkswagen, Mazda, Rivian, Lucid, Volvo and beyond.”
Some Southern autoworkers, meanwhile, have been expressing concerns over scheduling, safety, two-tier wage systems and workloads that they believe a union could help resolve.
It’s also clear they’ve been emboldened by the gains they have seen UAW members make.
Southern autoworkers applaud the union-organizing drive underway at a VW factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Revving up
The UAW’s campaign is just starting to rev up.
In accordance with its “30-50-70” strategy, the union is announcing the share of workers who have signed union cards in stages. Once it hits 30% at a factory, the UAW will announce publicly that an organizing campaign is underway. At the 50% mark, it will hold a public rally for workers that includes their neighbors and families, as well as UAW President Shawn Fain.
Once it gains support from 70% of a plant’s workers, the UAW says it will seek voluntary recognition by management.
A recent National Labor Relations Board ruling provides unions with additional leverage in this process. If management refuses to recognize the union’s request, the employer would then be required to seek an NLRB representation election.
To win, unions need a majority of those voting. Under the new rule, if management is found to have interfered with workers’ rights during the election process, it could then be required to bargain with the union.
So far, the UAW has announced that it has obtained the support of more than half the workers at factories belonging to two of the 13 nonunion automakers it’s targeting: a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and a
Mercedes-Benz factory near Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It has also obtained 30% support at a Hyundai plant in Alabama and a Toyota engine factory in Missouri.I believe that the stakes are high for all workers, not just those in the auto industry.
As D. Taylor, the president of Unite Here, a union that represents workers in a wide range of occupations, recently observed: “If you change the South, you change America.”
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Bret Stephens speaking at the 92nd Street Y, Youtube screenshot.
On October 15, 2023, a week after Hamas’s attack on Israel and in the early days of an indiscriminate Israeli response, New York Times editorialist Bret Stephens wrote a column titled “Hamas Bears the Blame for Every Death in This War.”
After allowing that “[r]easonable people can criticize Israel for not allowing enough time for civilians to get out of harm’s way,” Stephens, having rhetorically covered himself, endorses the impending ground invasion and arrives at the conclusion inscribed in the column’s title. “The central cause of Gaza’s misery is Hamas,” he writes. “It alone bears the blame for the suffering it has inflicted on Israel and knowingly invited against Palestinians.”
After five months of war, at least 30,000 Palestinians dead (12,000 children, certainly an undercount), innumerable documented atrocities, a partial indictment for genocide, and the prospect of a spiraling Middle East conflagration, you might think his tune would have shifted, even a little. After all, even Tom Friedman has managed to squeeze out some criticism of Israel.
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When it comes to the genocide that the United States is helping Israel inflict on Gaza, Joe Biden is never more repugnant than when he pretends to care. I actually prefer his one-sided regional empathy: tedious reminiscences of chats with Golda Meir and odious references to Israel’s psychopathic Prime Minister as “Bibi”. { A term […]
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With more than a half-million Gazans already facing starvation and more and more children dying of hunger, Biden’s solution, a floating port, will take 30-60 days to build and even then Israeli forces will still be in charge of inspecting the trucks of supplies, the main reason trucks are backed up for miles at the entry points into Gaza. Even the trickle of humanitarian supplies and food Biden has pledged to provide to Palestinians in Gaza won’t do much, if any, good, if there’s no one there to distribute it and Israel just moved to deny visas to the aid workers who have the experience and means to get the aid where it needs to go, a clear strategy to double down on its warfare by starvation.
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As some members of our species are at it, hell for leather, killing other members of it wholesale and openly, aided and abetted by “democratic” national and international institutions in the “crime of all crimes”—genocide—humanity’s current situation is one in which the end of our species, and all the rest, is looming in the even […]
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Four days before the January 6 insurrection, then-president Donald Trump infamously told a state official to “find” the votes needed to overturn his 2020 loss to Joe Biden in the key state of Georgia. News of Trump’s put-me-in-jail-please phone call broke just as Fani Willis took the reins as the newly elected district attorney for […]
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The desperate attempts to smear Aaron Bushnell as “insane” are absurd. They are the kind of absurdity that Camus dissects in The Myth of Sisyphus, which begins by saying “There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide.” If Camus ultimately comes down on the side of living, it’s a close call that takes many pages to reason out in a world where one civilized culture gave us Auschwitz and another Hiroshima. Our own cultural guardians want us to believe Bushnell was mad and not the war that drove him to take his own life.
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Assange’s attorneys had informed the court that he simply could not attend in person, though it would hardly have mattered. His absence from the courtroom was decorous in its own way; he could avoid being displayed like a caged specimen reviled for his publishing feats. The proceedings would be conducted in the manner of appropriate panto, with dress and procedure to boot.
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I don’t know about you, but my heart is broken. And I am nothing special – I’m guessing there are at least two to twenty million people in this country – a whole other mainstream – who feel something similar. But I am profoundly privileged, demographically secure with the genome of a Mary Poppins – what right have I to mention my self-indulgent feelings? Because I wasn’t aware I had a heart condition until I talked about Gaza to Ericka Huggins. “Your heart is broken,” she told me.
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Where we stand after 140 days of war: At least 29,514 Palestinians have been killed and 69,616 wounded since the war began. Another 7,000 are presumed dead, buried under the rubble. More than 500,000 Palestinians in Gaza are suffering from severe hunger, another 350,000 suffer from chronic hunger conditions, while 60,000 pregnant women and more than 700,000 children suffer from malnutrition and dehydration.
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Energy Fuels, Inc. opened a uranium mine called Pinyon Plain Mine, 7 miles from the rim of the Grand Canyon on December 21, 2023, according to the company’s press release. They plan to mill the ore into high assay low energy-enriched uranium (HALEU) suitable for power-plant use at their uranium mill in White Mesa, Utah. […]
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Last month, The Wall Street Journal published an article on the disparities between estimates by the Israeli military of the number of Palestinian militants killed in Gaza and estimates by US intelligence agencies of the same. Although the article focuses on the Israeli military’s over-estimations, it also shares two revealing figures: 1. According to the Health Ministry of Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants, at least 8,000 Palestinian men were killed by the Israeli military in Gaza; 2. According to the Israeli military, its forces killed 9,000 militants in Gaza. The only possible way to square those two numbers is for the Israeli military to count every single Palestinian man it has killed in Gaza as a militant, and then add some. As absurd as that sounds, that appears to be precisely what the Israeli military has been doing for months — and the United States and United Kingdom have done the same in their wars in the Middle East too.
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“America accepts a ceasefire whereby Hamas ceases and Israel fires.” – Marwan Bishara + Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza that are so brazen and outrageous that no one even considered legislating against them…until now. + Consider this: On Tuesday afternoon, the IDF sent a handcuffed Palestinian man named Jamal Abu Al-Ola into Nasser […]
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The following are my ‘takeaways’ from listening closely to the Tucker Carlson-Putin Interview of this past week. A number of revelations came out of the interview (e.g. repeated role of France, Germany, UK and CIA scuttling a resolution to the conflict) as well as Putin’s deep commitment to continue until Ukraine is no longer a threat to Russia. One comes away from listening to the interview that Putin feels he has been ‘had’ by the US/EU so often he no longer trusts its politicians and doesn’t believe US presidents have the power to decide; he, and Russians in general, have a deep belief that Russia and Ukraine (and Belarus) are ‘one people’ who have been divided by invaders in the past but always re-united again; and that he’s ready to negotiate but Zelensky and US/NATO have ruled it out and would have to initiate it. Finally, US sanctions have failed, the world is changing fast, and many countries have developed to the point they no longer do whatever the US wants and are demanding more independence.
1) Putin says he’s ready to negotiate but Zelensky has outlawed discussions and US/NATO doesn’t want to. Zelensky is “head of Ukraine state. He could cancel his decree” and negotiate. Russia’s ready but will not ask for negotiations. Russia’s minimal demands: No NATO. Neutral Ukraine. Nazis out of Ukraine government & military
2) Russia & Ukraine had a signed deal in Istanbul in April ’22 to end war. As part of the deal, Donbass remained in Ukraine but with some autonomy. Russia asked to withdraw troops from Kiev as a sign of good faith during negotiations in Istanbul and did. Zelensky reneged on the deal after Boris Johnson flew in and told him to, promising him all the money and weapons he needed.
3) Putin gave a long historical introduction on history of Russia & Ukraine since 862. He explained attempts (in 1200s, 1650s, 1918-21, 1941-44) by invaders to split Ukraine from Russia that all eventually failed. (Suggesting current NATO effort would too). A major repeated Putin theme as Ukraine & Russia have always been one people
4) Western Ukraine (Lvov region) before WW2 was Poland-Hungarian-Romanian, but given to Ukraine by Stalin after WW2 after Poland was given eastern Germany. Putin implied the West could have western Ukraine back (as Putin suggested in prior speeches). West Ukraine is not part of historic Russian homeland which is Russia-Ukraine-Belarus.
5) Russia wanted to join Europe after 1991 but was repeatedly rejected by West. Putin described face-to-face meetings with Clinton & Bush Jr. where they agreed re. Russia joining NATO (Clinton) and stopping US intervention in Chechnya (Bush) but both Clinton and Bush then reversed after conferring with advisors. Putin’s impression US presidents can’t make a deal and are often overturned by other powers in Washington. China’s Xi has the same impression, per Putin.
6) After meeting with Bush, Putin gave him proof CIA was involved in Chechnya war. Bush replied “Well, I’m going to kick their ass”. Bush never got back to Putin after. In 2008 US/NATO in Bucharest NATO meeting declared Ukraine & Georgia would soon join NATO. Russia’s 2008 War with Georgia followed
7) Re. 2014 coup, Putin said “CIA did its job” but it was unnecessary. It “could have been done all legally”. Ukraine president at the time (Yanukovich) was warned by US/EU at the time of the coup not to use police or army against demonstrators in Maidan. He didn’t. Yanukovich agreed to a 3rdre-election not provided by Ukraine’s constitution but they went ahead with coup anyway. US representatives bragged they spent $5B on the coup. Putin would not mention names (Victoria Nuland). Regarding 2015 Minsk agreement: Putin said Ukraine refused to implement it. EU leaders (Germany’s Merkel & France’s Holland) admitted in 2022 Minsk agreement in 2015 was ‘just to buy time’ to rearm Ukraine. In Putin’s words: “They simply led us by the nose”
8) When asked by Carlson if current talk in the West that if Russia wins in Ukraine it means it will invade Europe, Putin replied ‘only if they attack Russia first’. US mercenaries are already fighting in Ukraine. And when Carlson mentioned US Sen. Schumer’s statement that the US might have to fight in Ukraine, Putin sarcastically said: “Does the US have nothing better to do than fight in Ukraine”. If US did commit troops to Ukraine, it would push world to “brink of humanity”.
9) When asked by Carlson who blew up the Nordstream pipeline, Putin: “CIA has no alibi” and “look at those interested and have capability of doing it” and “beneficiaries are American institutions”. When Carlson asked for more evidence US did it, Putin replied Russia has the evidence but no purpose to reveal it now. Germany has shut down 2 other pipelines that can still be opened & Russia will gladly resume sending gas(naming names might obviously jeopardize what he implied). Germany goes along with US because “German leaders are driven by interests of collaborative west rather than German interests”.
10) Putin: Biden’s Russian sanctions are “a grave mistake”. By weaponizing the US $, the US is undermining its global economic influence. Putin: The dollar is the cornerstone of US power. “Do you even realize what’s going on or not? You are cutting yourself off”. He added, before 2022, “80% Russia’s trade was in $ and only 3% in Yuan. Now 30% is in Yuan, 30% in Rubles and only 13% in $US.
11) Sanctions failed. Russia is now 5th largest economy in ‘purchasing power parity’ measure. China 1st. Russia-China trade now >$240B. BRICS economies are now as large in GDP as US/G7. Sanction “tools US uses don’t work”
12) World is changing very fast. US can’t stop it but is reacting aggressively & militarily to the change. Threats from genetics, AI technologies, ‘brain chip’, etc. Much like gunpowder in the prior era. There’s “no stopping Elon Musk” (i.e. technological change)
13) Carlson asked if Russia would negotiate. Putin: “They’re options if there’s a will”. Those in power must realize Russia can’t be defeated. West “stopped negotiations”.. “Let them correct their mistake”..”I know they want it; let them think how to do it.”Ukraine is now a satellite of the USA, which spends $72B a year on it
14) Putin: what’s happening “to an extent is a civil war”. Ukraine and Russia will be reunited again. “No one can separate the Russian soul” (once again returning to the theme at the start of the interview that historically) Russia, Ukraine, Belarus are one people
15) Among the various reporting ‘bombshells’ revealed by Carlson’s interview was Putin’s clarification it wasn’t Ukraine negotiators at Istanbul that requested Russia pull back from Kiev in ’22 as a show of good faith..it was Macron (France) and Sholtz (Germany) request. And so much for the Western media myth of Ukraine’s great military ‘victory’ driving the Russians out of Kiev in April ’22
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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jack Rasmus.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Still from Israelism.
Without presenting a single shred of evidence, Rep. Nancy Pelosi recently contended on CNN that protesters challenging U.S. and Israeli policies in Gaza are doing the Kremlin’s bidding. “For them to call for a cease-fire is Mr. Putin’s message. Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see… I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some, I think, are connected to Russia. And I say that having looked at this for a long time now… I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the FBI to investigate that,” Pelosi squealed.(Paging Joe McCarthy!)
Nevertheless, undaunted, two thirty-something American Jewish filmmakers have made Israelism, a documentary that is the worst ideological nightmare for the mindless pro-Israel camp. Erin Axelrod and Sam Eilertsen expertly give the lie to the one-sided propaganda about Palestinians that American Jews and others have been indoctrinated with regarding the Israeli occupation, apartheid and other dehumanizing policies, in a skillfully rendered, award-winning 80-minute nonfiction film. Challenging the dominant pro-Israel mythos, American Jewish and Palestinian activists, along with independent presidential candidate/academic Cornel West and intellectual Noam Chomsky, expose the lies that have been perpetrated and perpetuated by the ultra-Zionist militaristic regime and its supporters, threatening their stranglehold over the hearts and minds of Jewish and other Americans.
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Almost three months after the Hamas attacks of October 7, and well into the international condemnation of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, on December 29, 2023, the New York Times revisited the topic of Hamas sexual violence. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Gettleman joined two other writers, Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella, in a piece billed […]
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For every Israeli killed on October 7 (some of them, perhaps many) by the IDF, at least 10 Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed in revenge…with no sign the killing is slowing down never mind stopping.
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Israeli ground operations in Gaza, November 1, 2023. Photo: IDF. CC BY-SA 3.0
There is nothing new under the sun in terms of incitement to war methods or the dehumanization techniques necessary to create compliant and bloodthirsty populations. The only thing that is new are the shifting and doomed populations who find themselves in the way of empire. Students of history, generally without a shred of self-examination, congratulate themselves for being born to a more enlightened time knowing that even if they were transported to those historical events, they would never have participated. They would have been the principled objector. It’s a comforting thought with absolutely no skin in the game. But when given present-day examples of such horror, and an opportunity to, if nothing else, be on the right side of history, they fall prey to the techniques that always worked in the past. They believe the current troubles are simply too complicated to unravel; that it’s all completely different from historical precedents. Unless a chink in the armor of this thinking takes place, we are doomed to move from genocide to genocide, whenever a population or group is deemed unfavorable or simply in the way. The words may not be exactly the same, but they always bear a striking similarity. That is, they dehumanize the other and make any and all attempts to rid themselves of the so-called savages part of a greater good. You still have to behave in a certain non-murderous ways within your in-group, but all bets are off when combating “the other”. It’s like quantum mechanics don’t seem to apply to everyday macro interactions. You get to murder and annihilate others, but still tuck your kids in at night like you aren’t a monster.
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The Israeli leadership is currently engaged in an undoubted genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza. A complementary mopping-up operation continues (if in slow motion) in the West Bank. During World War II, a certain genocide took place. More than one if one counts the attempted genocide by the Nazis, consciously on racist grounds, of […]
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The Biden Administration’s decision to cut off critical funding to UNRWA is the default form of collective punishment for Clintonian liberals, where the denial of humanitarian aid is used as a weapon to punish (ie., starve) people who have no responsibility for the alleged transgression.
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War profiteers are on notice. On 26 January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that South Africa’s case against Israel for its genocide of Palestinians has merit. While the Court has not yet ruled on whether Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinians since 7 October 2023 is genocide—a ruling at which it may take years to arrive—it did order Israel to prevent and not commit genocidal acts against Palestinians, prevent and punish public incitement to commit genocide, ensure the provision of humanitarian aid, preserve evidence related to allegations of genocide, and submit a compliance report within one month. These orders have a significant impact on the provision of weapons to Israel: governments arming genocide can be held accountable for genocide themselves.
Image by mohammed al bardawil.
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The theory of settler colonialism has – no surprise – never been popular among Western higher-ups. But since October 7, 2023, with chants of “From the River to the Sea / Palestine Will Be Free” ringing out on streets around the world, mainstream pundits and academics have taken aim at the theory, calling it dangerous, simplistic, morally deranged, antisemitic. Considering the sources – The New York Times; The Wall Street Journal; The Atlantic; CNN, etc. – it makes sense that they would want to curate the story of just how Western civilization became “civilized.”]
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