Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Civil discourse is preferable to the alternatives of coerced silence and violence. Coerced silence means that one side has exercised power to end conversation—to say, in effect, there is no point in further discussion; be quiet and accept that our desires will prevail. Violence means that reason has failed and we are reduced to the condition of resolving disputes by means of fang and claw, rock and club, bullet and bomb.

Despite the dismal historical record of our species, as a professor I have held out hope that humans are capable of doing better. Ordinarily this would imply support for any effort, in universities or elsewhere, to promote civil discourse. But the efforts we see now—the selling of civil discourse as the solution to problems of polarization and rancor on our campuses and in society more generally—are a problem, because their main effect is to block change.

In recent years we’ve seen a proliferation of university-based programs ostensibly intended to promote civil discourse. There is the Civil Discourse Project at Duke; the Dialogue Project at Dartmouth; the Dialogues Initiative at Georgetown; the Civil Discourse Lab at Vanderbilt; ePluribus at Stanford; the Project on Civic Dialogue at American University; and School of Civic Life and Leadership at UNC-Chapel Hill. This is to name but a few.

The claim most often made to justify these programs is that students today don’t know how to carry on mutually respectful dialogue or debate, and thus end up yelling at each other or, worse, yelling at administrators and members of university governing boards. An adjacent claim is that faculty—usually meaning leftist or liberal professors—have failed to impart these skills. And so it has been necessary, the argument goes, to create new programs and curricula devoted to teaching the arts of listening and of rationally exchanging views, especially about emotionally fraught topics.

Advocates of these programs have pointed to the campus anti-genocide protests last spring as evidence that special tutelage in civil discourse is needed now more than ever. The problem with those protests, civil discoursers allege, is that they were sometimes loud, got in the way of people moving about campus, made Zionist supporters of Israel feel unsafe, and were thus by definition uncivil. If students had only mastered the skills of polite civic engagement, no disruptions would have occurred, fewer feathers would have been ruffled, and more views would have been productively shared.

These appeals to make dialogue civil again are seductive. Of course we should strive to listen to each other carefully and speak to each other calmly and rationally. Of course we should try to hone our abilities to do these things, because these abilities in turn enable us to find the common good, identify what is just and unjust, and pursue change peacefully. Of course higher education should nurture these abilities. And yet, in the context of entrenched inequality, calls for civil discourse—and the university programs that sacralize it—are often conservative ploys to impede the pursuit of justice.

This is evident if we consider who is in a position to demand civility of whom, and who has the power to define what is civil. Historically, it has been those in power who demand civility from those who seek redress of grievances. “Speak politely, in soothing tones,” the subtext goes, “or we won’t listen to you at all.” The further message is that an inability to remain calm when trying to be heard, when trying to end an abusive state of affairs, will be taken as a sign of the irrationality of the demand. Today, we would call this gaslighting.

Consider, for example, a request made by student protesters to discuss a university’s complicity in genocide. This would seem like an eminently civil first step. What is uncivil is the refusal on the part of administrators and governing bodies to engage in good-faith discussion of such matters. Which is exactly what we saw in last spring’s protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza. Protesters’ requests for dialogue were typically ignored, leading to escalation: louder voices, encampments, rallies, unauthorized postering, spray painting. Administrators defined these actions as disruptive, calling in police to make arrests. That isn’t civility; it’s a reassertion of domination.

But what we are supposed to believe now, according to those who celebrate civil discourse, is that anti-genocide protesters—those who sought dialogue and a peaceful path to change—are at fault and in need of remedial instruction. Administrators who violently quash the expressive activity of protesters are lauded as voices of reason. Protesters who raise their voices in an attempt to be heard are dismissed as troublemakers undeserving of an audience. This smear tactic works because of differences in power between the groups confronting each other—ordinary people of conscience on one side, agents of the U.S. imperialist state on the other.

Another problem with most current calls for civil discourse is that the goal of discerning the truth is shunted aside. Instead, the goals are said to be a sharing of views, an exchange of stories, a chance to see things from the perspective of the other. Discourse itself, it seems, is sometimes the only goal. All this might be fine if the issues at hand concerned aesthetic judgments or quirks of personal experience. But what if we need to determine and agree upon the facts of the matter in a case of genocide? For this, sharing views is not enough.

I suspect that it is well understood, if seldom admitted by advocates of civil discourse, that sharing stories and views is not enough—that is, not enough to alter the behavior of political elites, the capitalist class, or the U.S. government. A feckless expenditure of energy is perhaps the real goal of the tactic: transform protest into well-contained talk so that business as usual can go on, leaving nothing changed at a larger level. Vent among yourselves if you like, share your views, but don’t get disruptive, or else the velvet gloves will come off.

In the case of Israel’s assault on Palestinians, the call for civil discourse is cynical and galling, as if mere misunderstanding is what’s wrong. Do the many anti-Zionist Jews who belong to Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, and B’Tselem not understand the Zionist view? By now, does any adult who has read the news in the past year not understand the Zionist narrative about Israel? It offends reason to claim that the problems of land dispossession, apartheid, daily humiliation, and genocide will be solved by politely sharing views in university seminar rooms. These problems can be solved only by changing the behavior of the U.S. government and the behavior of the Israeli state in Palestine.

What’s required—what Frederick Douglass reminded us is always required when confronting power—are demands that will inevitably be defined as uncivil. That’s why protest movements tend to escalate from petitions to marches, from marches to boycotts, and from boycotts to strikes and other forms of civil disobedience. Only when the costs of carrying on business as usual become greater than the costs of making concessions will concessions be made. In the face of vast inequality, that’s how change occurs. Only among equals who cannot coerce each other is civil discourse alone likely to be enough.

None of this is to say that civil discourse is not to be strived for. I still hold out hope that we can do better than beat each over the head as we try to end oppressive social arrangements—in Palestine, in the U.S., and around the planet. But the reality is that those who benefit from inequality will not be rationally argued into relinquishing power and privilege. History leads us to expect no such thing. In the world today, the powerful will first respond rhetorically—calling insistent demands for change uncivil; demanding in turn endless debate about complexities and nuances and impossibilities—as a prelude to responding violently.

If there is to be a peaceful transition to a more just and equal world, it will not come through a polite exchange of views between the powerful and powerless. Nor will it come from sharing views in forums of the powerless, unless those forums are also aimed at discerning the truth, making plans for change, and putting those plans into action. Our best hope then is for collective action that disrupts the status quo not by violently confronting the powerful, but by withholding co-operation until the once powerful are left with no one to wield their guns, drop their bombs, or tell their lies. That is the kind of civility worth fighting for.

The post Civil Discourse in a Time of Genocide appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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Industrial plant, Longview, Washington. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

One can be excused for worrying over what tomorrow might bring as expanded battle lines are redrawn across the globe, the world’s wealthiest nation ever consumes itself in a cataclysm of partisan hate amid a growing digital reformation, and unchecked carbon emissions continue to cause more environmental disaster by the day. Will nuclear conflict, machine control, or climate breakdown ultimately destroy our pale blue dot of a planet or is it all just more apocalyptic blather that never comes to pass?

Not everyone agrees, aided and abetted by well-connected nay-sayers who stifle dissent and push disinformation to keep the status quo – business as usual, damn the consequences. Indeed, one has only to realize that the harbingers of doom all have the same goal – money. War keeps the arms dealers in business, tech-driven division stops us asking about corporate control, and fossil fuels reap untold riches in a protected petroleum economy as the earth grows warmer every year.

Veracity is irrelevant if enough people believe. A 2021 University of New Hampshire survey, found that only 83% of Americans believe the earth revolves around the sun, 64% in anthropomorphic climate change, and 58% in human evolution, while a 2022 Pew survey showed that 39% (45% Republicans) believe we are actually living in the end times. Some even want to witness Armageddon in their own lifetime, hoping conflict in the biblical lands of Abraham, David, and Jesus will achieve their triumphant end. Comforted by the promise of more in another life, such fantasy grows with the body count across the Middle East. The UN secretary-general António Guterres has even called the situation in Gaza “apocalyptic.”

The United States and Russia also control 12,000 nuclear warheads as they move closer to each other’s red lines in war-ravaged Ukraine, a more likely path to world destruction. Citing Russia’s 7 to 8% of GDP on defence spending, former Dutch prime minister and new NATO head, Mark Rutte, called on member countries to spend over 2% of GDP on defence, stating that NATO should “shift to a wartime mindset” and redirect money from “pensions, health, and social security.” Increased confrontation with China also threatens future warfare. Pushing the world closer to the edge, the atomic doomsday clock reads 23:58:30.

As noted by statesmen and scientist Benjamin Franklin, “There never was a good war or a bad peace,” but rather than strengthening security via renewed diplomacy, militarism invites more danger as a thoroughly modern nuclear Armageddon ticks closer, started by nervous battlefield belligerents, a software glitch, or a Slim Pickens crazy. Some have even called for the nuclear briefcase to be restricted in case anyone wants to tempt the fates. Truth is what you make it, whether a long-sought requirement for entrance into the next world for the faithful or a symbolic end via the unthinkable for others.

Thought to be written by St John the Divine circa 95 AD in a fit of anarchic allegory on the Aegean island of Patmos,the Book of Revelation oddly holds sway two millennia on, despite its long-expired prediction of “things which must shortly come to pass,” a mish-mash of convoluted messaging, and scattershot renderings of apocalyptic prophecy, including the end in a final battle between good and evil at a place called Armageddon. How we arrive at that fateful end is unknown, while none of us – the religious or the scientific – know the hour. Clearly, St John did not know of nuclear war when he wrote Revelation, but metaphor and myth can be just as dangerous. There will be no blaring of trumpets or angel calls.

A biblical Armageddon seems crazy enough, yet the UNH survey found that many Americans either believe in or are unsure of demonstrable fictions: 19% flat earth, 25% the earth is not billions of years old, 28% microchip implant vaccinations, and 29% no NASA moon landing (more for Millennials and Trump supporters). The earth age is a bit misleading, because one may know the world wasn’t made in seven days as written in the Bible, although not the measured value of 4.5 billion years via uranium radiometric dating.

Nonetheless, a significant percentage still believe the world is only 6,000 years old, thanks to the oddest biblical accounting in the 16th century by Bishop Ussher, who worked backwards from the begats in Matthew to calculate that creation began at “night fall preceding October 23, 4004 BC,” a very precise yet completely erroneous date. Seven of ten Americans also believe in astrology (83% Millennials, Harris, 2024), suggesting many seek to connect to a force beyond themselves, yet don’t know how. We may not survive a seventh millennium.

Nor can we easily disregard the interpretation of those who believe these are the end days. As in the past, meaning is ripe for the picking. In John’s eschatological vision, seven is especially important (7 spirits, 7 angels, a lamb with the book of 7 seals, a 7-headed dragon) as are other ominous numerical baddies (4 horsemen, 4 beasts with 6 wings), including the second beast adorned with the infamous “666” mark. Some believe seven is perfection and thus six is one less. A presumed candidate in the first century was Nero, who fiddled as Rome burned. Emperors are often the fall guy when things go wrong and empires crumble.

Although the end didn’t come then, conjecture remains. The Great Fire of London in 1666 brimmed with deadly potential as did the millennium bug of 2000, although the text clearly states 666 is “the number of a man.” With six letters in their names, Martin Luther, Adolph Hitler, and Joseph Stalin were all labelled as possible world-ending baddies. Ditto Albert Einstein (father of the bomb), Saddam Hussein (from “fallen Babylon”), and Ronald Wilson Reagan (“Star Wars” defence system).

The hunt continues as Donald Trump returns to power, seated atop the US government, a second-coming if one wants to sound the alarm. If you do the math, via a simple substitution cipher (A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, …), it turns out “Antichrist is Donald John Trump” equals 333, which multiplied by 2 for his second administration equals 666. Scary stuff, but anyone can make up a cypher or quote scripture to see what they want in a Rorschach rendering of the future. Nor has cryptocurrency stopped us from buying or selling without the mark of the beast carved into our arms or foreheads – yet. Barcodes and microchip implants via forced vaccines have also been hailed as signs amid worry over world government and no borders.

One can scare thyself silly about the possible meanings: Joseph and Benjamin led the last of the twelve tribes of Israel (Biden and Netanyahu?), warriors patrol territory by the Euphrates River that flows through the battlefields of Syria and Iraq, while the United States is home to thousands of flying eagles (albeit now an endangered species). A crown of 12 stars, virgin-male followers, dragon-female fights all feature – will Wales battle the European Union?

Who cares if the text is gibberish as noted by Thomas Jefferson: “The ravings of a maniac, no more worthy, nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.” In Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola reimagined Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness into a metaphor for human suffering and horror amid endless war, run by soulless administrators with barbaric goals, his cinematic take on the end days.

In The Antichrist, Friedrich Nietzsche sees the end days as part of his vast criticism on Christianity, naming the Antichrist as the priesthood who use sin and redemption to control a watered-down religious life. To the would-be minister, son of a Protestant pastor, and unapologetic cultural critic, Nietzsche’s Antichrist is not a future mythical figure, but those who proclaim the goal of Christianity is to forgive presumed sins in a last judgement at the prescribed end, essentially a Pavlovian reward to escape today’s made-up misery.

To Nietzsche, the priesthood – whether the synagogue, church, or upper echelons of government – is fundamentally anti-intellectual and must make science an enemy to oppose “the sound comprehension of cause and effect.” Faith is subjective and unprovable, whereas science is objective and provable, and thus must be disavowed at all costs lest the hierarchy of lies be exposed. Instead of liberating humankind, a weaponized Christianity designed by the main New Testament author Paul restrains our better instincts, creating an afterlife as a tool to control childlike masses and rule over an uninformed rabble.

In today’s vernacular, disinformation is rampant, especially via social media that keeps us occupied with the trivial instead of sharing and celebrating verifiable truths. Citizenship becomes dumbed down to simple workmanship, while the mob is distracted by idiot entertainment, self-help nonsense, and non-stop selling. The Christian theological grip on truth remains anti-intellectual, anti-evolutionary, and anti-scientific, such as a preposterous belief in a 6,000-year-old earth made in seven days, while denial of obvious facts such as inequality, evolution, and global warming go hand in hand with control from above.

To be sure, myth and mysticism can help explain the unexplainable. We are all alone in some way with our own worry about existence and the future. Belief in God or the moon in Jupiter offers hope, but using war as an apocalyptic flashpoint to witness the end is a myth too far, whether fought on Har Megiddo in northern Israel or delivered by a flurry of WWIII megaton nuclear warheads. Preventing war is the best option to achieve future happiness, including for the 14,400 select faithful jostling at the gates to enter the next world. Whatever happened to the blessed peacemakers in a religion of love?

If the bombs don’t get us – divinely ordained or not – a widening political divide continues to fuel the fire of an America in disarray as the middle leaches to the extremes. Life is full of everyday conjecture, ominously so in an era of rigid opinion, hot-take judgements, and billionaire-controlled asocial media, but nowhere is the rhetoric more toxic than in the United States, where intransigence has become a negotiating tool in an increasingly bitter left-right rage. Anger over lost manufacturing jobs (especially to China), uncertain finances (as ever), and a nostalgic Archie Bunker binary “manosphere” (when “girls were girls and men were men”) add to the heat, stoked by a new breed of Internet alchemists.

The coming revenge-filled second administration of Donald Trump – chief divider in a presumed less-than-great America – is increasing the heat even more as addictive social media brings out the worst in a carnival of hate, egged on by an unaccountable media more into mudslinging than mudraking. Trump may have other motives – White American growth, closed borders, and plutocratic rule – but the main goal is money. Witness the endless selling of Bibles, steaks, running shoes, pickleball paddles, hats, NFTs, suit fragments, …, even victory cologne as if an evangelical deodorant salesman selling to those who sweat for God and country. Everything is for sale, including government assets as the new libertarians prepare to strip anything that isn’t nailed down. Is government even needed in that America?

Trump is the figurehead of a reformed muscular capitalism where “more is more,” falsely claiming greed as the way to higher living in a 24/7 infomercial. He is the standard bearer of redemption by consumption, opposing weak “love thy neighbor” liberal thinking after more than four decades of failed trickle-down neoliberal economics and globalism. Fear is the main tool, whether an afterlife withheld to the unrepentant or in the here and now as in obvious populist headlines or tweets, such as “Evil immigrant kills honest citizen while inept government looks on” or some other phony tabloid atrocity. Make America Great Again is another fake, quasi-religious claim about future salvation, financial or otherwise.

In fact, true Christians act to reduce their enemies in this life rather than wait for salvation in the next. Good deeds and sharing matter more than perpetuating a priestly order over our souls. But that is of little concern to today’s fishermen doom-sayers, hell-bent on control, who purposely confuse New Testament love with Old Testament horror as they toddle off with our savings. Is it any wonder tax cuts accrue to the richest when they make the decisions, while corporations benefit from accompanying cutbacks in health, education, and environmental protection? As long as one can purchase the latest relics at Trump.com.

The economic caste system keeps the poor stuck in mud, although few dare to point out excessive wealth as the reason, fingering sharing as a curse on individualism straight from the pages of Ayn Rand. The sugary platitudes include “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” standard libertarian sentiment for the able, yet no use to those unable to compete (and not in the real Bible). In fact, such bootstrap creation doesn’t exist, only extensions as British economist E. F. Schumacher noted in his 1973 Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, where “the poor are more dependent on the rich than ever before, … gap-fillers for the rich.” Today, the old economics is even more rigged, further widening an already obscene inequality by insider deals and restricted-access technology.

As noted by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, “As voters we have lost sight of any collective belief that society could be different. Instead of a better society, the only thing almost everyone strives for is to better their own position – as individuals – within the existing society.” Alas, it is difficult to unite against the greedy when Silicon Valley spends $394 million to sway the vote ($243 million by recent Trump convert Elon Musk). It is hard to include civic duty at the ballot box when votes are so easily bought and rarely make a difference.

The free-market pendulum has been swinging to the right for decades, the New Deal sell-off starting with Ronald Reagan and his derisive “I’m from the government and here to help,” followed by Bill Clinton who repealed the 1933 post-crash Glass-Steagall Act that regulated bank investments, and Barack Obama’s 2009 bank bailout. Why not dismantle the rest and remove all government regulation? What will remain of the commons if everything is sold?

As the digital behemoths gobble up local businesses in the name of presumed market efficiency, the growing tech takeover aims to make the wealthy even wealthier. Efficiency to the tech elites means no regulations, fairness forgotten in a “me-first” future MAGA world, where quantity matters over quality. In fact, regulation is needed more than ever to counter the proliferation of online lies, Internet scams, and fake AI-generated content. Without moderation, the Internet is another Wild West, a playground for the strongest according to classical economics and predatory capitalism. No country for weaklings in an evermore aggressive, push-button Wi-Fi and AI world.

We are embarking on a French Revolution in reverse, restoring an aristocracy of wealth, with the king’s head glued on, well-connected as usual and proclaiming a religion of reborn greatness – Make Jesus Great Again. Trump and his billionaire cronies are readying democracy for the guillotine to restore an unabashed American priesthood, tithing included in every citizenship – a paywall Pravda – updates regularly installed at $9.99 per month.

The goal is to replace bureaucratic and regulatory oversight with Silicon Valley savants, a lean, supposedly streamlined intermediary acting as gatekeeper to control the flow of information and money. The behavioural idealogues want to run the show like twinkling Mad Men singing from their consumerist hymn sheets. Paypal, Amazon, Facebook, and X are just four of the horsemen (X-men Musk might joke). Black Friday will be year round, run by the new cyber bullies raised to department heads. As in any gamed economy, the rich take the cash and the consumer is left holding the bill.

Who better to lead an anti-intellectual battle against a message of equality, inclusivity, and diversity than a cabal of techno priests atop the triangle of the proposed new world “system” (one can’t call chaos and incompetence “order”). At least 12 billionaires have already been appointed to run Trump 2.0, the trimmer barons and robber mandarins of our times. Rana Foroohar of The Financial Times calls them “techno libertarians” in “a marriage of techno-determinism and libertarianism,” where “the line between Milton Friedman and tech billionaires such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Mark Zuckerberg blurs into a philosophy that aims to end all constraints on markets.”

One can add Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who stated he was “very optimistic” about Trump’s plans to cut back more regulation. Indeed, Trump has been created precisely to marshal a newly invigorated corporate takeover, free from government oversight. “Modernization” means selling to the private sector. The world must not end as Frank Zappa joked in paperwork.

“Efficiency” is the buzzword to hide the real motivation. Tech control is about the bottom line, demanding uniformity not freedom of speech and diversity (such as they are). Tech control is about cyber bullies punishing more doom-scrolling minions at the till. They never stop stealing like rust. Payday lenders rake in record profits via easy online access with obscene annual rates up to 350%, while predatory gambling and credit card debt scale to new highs.

The big lie is that government doesn’t work and must be overthrown by an elite billionaire class, the übertech-men prescribing Trumpism for the lesser “brute-men” wearing MAGA hats like rosaries, for whom all the commandments are to be broken in the name of efficiency. Perfection is a downloadable app, without an undo or unsubscribe button when the auto-bills overflow. You too can be a winner on the backs of even lesser brute-men in a new Amway America as FOMO is raised to religion by the cyber priests whose collection plate is wired directly into the sermon through rage-to-engage social media algorithms.

Everything is for the chop, including the Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Board, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Will Bill Gates get to install his standardized testing hobby horse via Microsoft licence or receive more government funding for his so-called small modular reactors, a still unproven and costly nuclear technology? The rewiring of the brains of tomorrow has begun. But why can’t Gates use his own billions as in The Giving Pledge? – tomorrow will be too late. Even Daylight Saving Times may be cut, initially designed to conserve electricity and preserve fuel during World War One.

Cementing his status as chief Trump-whisperer and wealth influencer, Musk exclaimed after the November 6 election, “It is morning in America again.” The world’s richest man stands to become a major benefactor after donating $240 million to Trump’s campaign, assuring his place at the libertarian high table. Access isn’t cheap, although millions mean little to a multi-billionaire. Since the sun rose on November 6, the richest ever person’s wealth has grown by 77% to over $400 billion. Will Musk become the first trillionaire thanks to Trump’s proposed tariffs against the new Department of Government Efficiency boss’s competitors?

Perhaps Musk is protecting his own investments to ensure that the $7.5 billion, 500,000-strong, EV charging network in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is rolled out across the country as planned by 2030 or that he need not unionize his growing workforce via Trump-stamped edict. Musk also called for an end to the $7,500 federal EV credit that no longer applies to his own company, Tesla having reached the 200,000 sales limit in 2018. If you can’t get your own free government credit, stopping the competition is the next best thing.

A one-time darling of the left for engineering the electric-vehicle revolution – now at over 10% of global sales (50% in Europe) and still growing despite a Big Oil hybrid pushback – Musk is a dark horse. No doubt, he wants to pay less tax and promote union bans at the expense of workers in the name of efficiency – standard libertarian thinking that doesn’t apply to all. Reducing excessive regulations and bureaucratic management is to be welcomed, but not everyone can benefit from a presidential friendship as in a real democracy. Perhaps Musk wants to redirect NASA funds to realize his goal of dying on Mars. Or is the real goal to stop government taming the tech titans? No one is against trimming the fat as long as one doesn’t hit bone. The first Trump administration increased the US national debt by $8 trillion.

Fast-evolving artificial intelligence, automation, and robotics don’t yet control our lives, but the tech takeover may be the scariest future world, where the transactional is codified by a zero-sum über-inequality. In that future, the rich don’t get richer, they get super richer, while the rest pay more as online sales approach parity with bricks and mortar, destroying local economies, turning warehouse workers into assembly line shop rats, and delivery drivers into slaves (check out Ben Hamper’s Rivethead and Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You for a glimpse into that horror). Have your credit card ready.

Next up is planetary warming that may finish us off before any world war or tech takeover as the earth’s climate finally spirals out of control. That end has already begun as each year brings more damage. 2024 was the hottest year ever, besting 2023’s hottest. First convened in 2000 in Rio de Janeiro on the anniversary of Earth Day, the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCCC) assesses the effects of anthropomorphic global warming and reports its findings every five years. The last report in 2023 (AR6) warned that changes from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are now unavoidable and irreversible with “a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”

In his 2015 Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ “On care for our common home,” Pope Francisco cited pollution, climate change, throwaway culture, biodiversity loss, global inequality, the globalization of technology, human fulfilment, and ecological education among a long list of worries. He urgently appealed “for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet.” That was ten years ago. UN secretary-general António Guterres was more direct, noting that 2024 was a “masterclass in climate destruction.” Without any serious changes, 2025 will bring even more bad news. 2026 will be worse.

It’s not as if we didn’t know. The petroleum industry has known for decades that carbon dioxide warms the atmosphere via the greenhouse effect, yet did nothing to counter emissions and even blocked further research. According to a 2023 Science study, the American Petroleum Institute “has been aware of potential human-caused global warming since at least the 1950s,” while Exxon “has known since the late 1970s that its fossil fuel products could lead to global warming with ‘dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.’” As noted in a 1982 internal Exxon report on the effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide, “Our best estimate is that doubling of the current concentration could increase average global temperature by about 1.3º to 3.1º C.”

In 1988, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James Hansen testified to the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources about his research on the greenhouse effect. He concluded that global temperatures are the highest since instrumental measurements, a causal relationship between greenhouse gases and global warming, and the beginning of extreme events. The subject was so worrisome to stumping Republican candidates that political advisor Frank Luntz proposed a less-frightening name in a 2002 memo: “It’s time for us to start talking about ‘climate change’ instead of global warming and ‘conservation’ instead of preservation.” Catastrophe was turned into crisis followed by business as usual.

Despite the obvious scientific conclusions on anthropomorphic global warming, 36% of Americans don’t believe humans are responsible for climate change let alone planetary warming via greenhouse gas absorption from burnt fossil fuel emissions and leaked methane, not surprising when the news and government policy is set to maintain a global economy run on oil. Some even call global warming a hoax, designed to counter American economic dominance.

Today, the incoming administration in Washington is sharpening its claws against green reforms. Expect more drilling, more fracking, and more exported liquid natural gas (LNG) as the world’s number-1 historic polluter rolls back billions of dollars in planned clean-energy funding. The United States can afford to go it alone, damn the rest, but none of the rhetoric is good for the environment as the lies are repeated to maintain the status quo and oversized investment in fossil fuels ($7 trillion in annual subsidies according to the IMF).

How gullible must one be to believe that wind mills cause cancer, global warming is a hoax to harm rich nations, and $369 billion in green spending is a scam? Even those on the right know the truth, such as 18 Republican house members who called on speaker Mike Johnson not to axe the IRA’s clean-energy tax credits after Trump threatened to repeal some or all of the law (80% of investment and jobs are in red states). Environmental Entrepreneur’s Bob Keefe stated the new administration should support the IRA if it was “truly interested in creating jobs, driving economic growth, bringing down energy prices, because we know that solar and wind is the cheapest power that there is available in America.”

Destroying green investment will also worsen American competitiveness with China. As the outgoing US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm noted, the IRA is already bringing supply chains and critical mineral processing back home with 900 new factories: “It is a bad strategy to turn your back on all this investment reshoring of manufacturing jobs.” The post-carbon revolution is under threat, however, as her appointed successor is a fracking CEO, who has stated there is no climate crisis and is unlikely to share market and political sensitivities toward clean-energy technology.

Of course, Donald Trump and Joe Biden are little different when it comes to selling oil, including LNG to Europe as industry continues to suffer the loss of Russian gas, although Biden did pause pending export projects. War is good for business. The flow of oil also requires the United States to remain as the world’s policeman. Trump may find that “drill, baby drill” is more military than economic, where Pax Americana exists to keep the oil flowing. Trump calls it energy dominance. Democracy, dictator, it doesn’t matter.

As hard as it is to stop what has been put in motion, developing nations cannot grow as developed nations did on the backs of coal, oil, and natural gas. The COP29 NCQG plan is a start and must be backed with action over words, calling for between $300 billion and $1.3 trillion per year in financing to developing countries by 2035. The alternative is to roll on as usual, doing more of nothing. Netflix is full of superhero movies to pass the time.

So what to do? Electrification is one future that could halt the consequences of two centuries of burning fossil fuels. The current global electric grid is about 8 terawatts (1 TW in the US). Double that will be needed to electrify all coal, oil, and natural gas plants. Add another current grid’s worth to electrify all cars, trucks, and buses, requiring about 24 TW in total to replace petroleum. Crazy? Sure, and even crazier if we want to do it by 2050. The current percentage of green grid energy is about 1 TW or roughly 10% of electric supply and 2.4% of what we need. Turning the Titanic around might be easier. But what if we have no choice?

Continuing to burn fossil fuels threatens our climatic future with more hurricanes, flooding, sea-level rise, acidic oceans, melting permafrost, albedo loss, and drought, today’s seven environmental plagues as scary as any apocalyptic horsemen. If one counts Exxon and Mobil as a single human entity (see 2010 Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court ruling), the Seven Sisters also fit the dreaded six moniker. Burnt carbon is the new end, because of a continuing daily offering of 100 million barrels of petroleum (5 million in wind-rich Texas), 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas, and 23 million tons of coal – while fossil fuels still produce 88.4% of carbon dioxide emissions (coal 38%, oil 30%, natural gas 19%).

Last year, Elon Musk downplayed the concern in a tweet, “… climate change definitely will not end the world as we know it!” And yet he funds the $100 million Carbon X Prize, a bold initiative designed to remove atmospheric carbon, albeit not affordable on a viable scale. More carbon is not the answer as in continuing to burn fossil fuels with carbon-sucking add-ons. More carbon perpetuates dangerous political regimes, pollution, and global warming. More carbon speeds us to the end.

With time running out to tame our environmental mark on nature, one can see that oil is the master of our fate. Why not rooftop solar on every church and public school, electric engines for every government runabout and public bus (easily recharged overnight in existing warehouses), and no more trillion-dollar subsidies to the oil industry? Community solar can be the new church in a shared commons that takes pressure off piping in more supplies to even bigger cities. The new Trump administration can’t tear it all down and stay the course.

Individual states are also strengthening their green plans to counter a potential loss of federal aid with California leading the way. The bans are coming in Europe and California. As is the competition from hybrid technology and liquid fuels that keep the petrol barons in business. China is leading the way, lapping the United States and Europe on renewable energy investment, development, and sales. Consumers want greener and cleaner energy, not just for the atmosphere, but for economic savings. Why not embrace the change? Isn’t it time to end the business of oil?

Global warming is the most serious threat to our future. We have about 25 years to reduce 50 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually pumped into the atmosphere to essentially zero and then start sucking out the burnt carbon added since the beginning of the industrial age. With China and India ramping up their Western ways of consumption that seems unlikely. Adaptation may be all we have left.

Applause to those trying to counter the continued pollution and warming by Big Oil, from big to medium to small (e.g., Greenpeace, Extinction Rebellion, The Great Bubble Barrier). One can benefit from removing waste and concentrating on simpler goals: walk or take public transport instead of driving if you can, buy second-hand, take the stairs. Symbolic, but also important for change. We can’t wait any longer to be useful. Boos to all those who don’t care enough to stop what’s going on (primarily the fossil fuel industry and government backers).

Ending the burning of petroleum for power and liquid fuel in a doubling or tripling of the electric grid is scary, just as the expansion of electrification was at the turn of the twentieth century that brought modernity to the world. Of course, rooftop solar is unmetered, representing a fundamental shift in the world economy. No one needs to know what I do with my own home-grown power. It’s not world government the nay-sayers fear, but no government.

Heaven is not a future reward, but the act of doing good today. We are on our last warnings. The earth will survive our bad stewardship; humans may not. Increased electrification offers the best chance to stop more pollution and warming. Armageddon versus electrification? It’s our choice.

Enola Gay
Is mother proud of little boy today?
Ah-ha, the kiss you give
It’s never going to fade away.

– Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (Enola Gay)

The world spins on its axis
One man struggles and another relaxes.

– Massive Attack (Hymn of the Big Wheel)

I know we’ve come a long way
We’re changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?

– Cat Stevens (Where do the Children Play)

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Image by Tahir osman.

Following a ten-day siege, the Palestinian Authority began, on December 14, a violent raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.

The PA security forces used similar tactics as used by the Israeli occupation forces in their routine attacks on the area.

The camp, which is a mere half a square kilometer in size, hosts an ever-growing population of 24 thousand refugees, mostly the descendants of Palestinians ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias during the great catastrophe, or Nakba, of 1948.

The raid began with a tight siege, followed by an attack from multiple directions that resulted in the killing of an unarmed youth, Rebhi al-Shalabi, 19, then a 13-year-old child, Muhammad al-Amer.

The PA forces also killed Yazid Ja’ayseh, the commander of the Jenin Brigades, who had evaded Israeli assassination attempts for his leadership role in unifying all Palestinian Resistance fighters under the umbrella of a single group.

Expectedly, Israel is largely pleased with the PA’s action against the Palestinian Resistance, though it expects more. “The Palestinian Authority has been acting resolutely against the Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters over the past several weeks, army and Shin Bet sources said, but the Israeli officials expressed the hope that their effectiveness could be enhanced,” Haaretz reported.

Indeed, Israel had attempted to subdue Jenin 80 times in the last year alone, killing more than 220 people, Al Jazeera reported, citing Palestinian Ministry of Health sources.

By attacking Jenin, the PA is helping the Israeli army in more than one way: it is killing and detaining anti-Israeli occupation Resistance fighters, consuming the energy and resources of the Resistance, allowing Israel to spare thousands of soldiers so that they may carry on with the genocide in Gaza, and more.

For many, especially supporters of Palestine around the world, the PA’s action is confusing, to say the least. Those surprised by the anti-Resistance policies of Mahmoud Abbas and his Authority, however, are driven by the erroneous assumption that the PA is a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and that it behaves in ways consistent with the collective aspirations of all Palestinians.

Nothing could be further from the truth. For many years, the PA has ceased playing any role that deviates from the interests of a small clique of pro-US and pro-Israeli wealthy elite who have enriched themselves, while millions of Palestinians continue to suffer an Israeli genocide in Gaza, and a violent system of apartheid and military occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The most telling and recent example is that, a short distance away from Jenin, illegal and violent Israeli Jewish settlers have burned the Bir Al-Walidin Mosque in the town of Murda, near Salfit – less than 70 kilometers from Jenin. Neither in this case, nor in any of the hundreds of settlers’ pogroms carried out against Palestinians in the West Bank in the last year – or before – did the PA security carry out any action to confront the armed Jewish militias, nor, of course, the occupation army.

But how did the PA turn from a supposed national project – at least in theory – to another branch of the Israeli occupation?

It could be argued that the PA was structured since its establishment in 1994 as a body whose existence catered to benefit the Israeli occupation. There is much evidence that substantiates this claim, including the arrests, torture and killing of dissenting Palestinians soon after the creation of the PA.

The CIA became directly involved in supporting the PA from the very start, expanding its role as early as 1996 following a series of Palestinian retaliatory attacks on Israeli targets in major cities. It was then that CIA director George Tenet became an important player in shaping the policies of the PA security forces, preparing it for massive crackdowns on Palestinian Resistance groups.

This involvement was a direct condition for US financial support under the Bill Clinton Administration – the kind of support that sowed the seeds of the Fatah-Hamas conflict, which reached its zenith in the summer of 2007.

The involvement of the US – and other armed forces of US client regimes in the region – became even more apparent under the leadership of US Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, who helped train, prepare and equip the Palestinian Authority Security Forces (NSF), producing several battalions of young recruits (between 20 and 22 years old) to fight fellow Palestinians in the name of restoring law and order.

That supposed restoration of the law began in earnest as early as 2005 and continues until this day. Interestingly, this is the same language that the PA is currently using to justify its war on the Jenin refugee camp.

A spokesman for the PA security forces, Anwar Rajab recently told Al Jazeera that the objective of the raid on Jenin is to “pursue criminals” and lawbreakers, and to “prevent the camp from becoming a battleground like Gaza.”

Equating Resistance fighters with criminals and linking that supposed criminality to the Gaza Resistance is the typical PA discourse on resistance, a discourse that took the US and Israel years to craft and perfect – making the PA arguably the greatest achievement of Israel and the US in recent decades.

This behavior and language can be traced to a famous statement by General Dayton himself, who in a 2009 speech celebrated the US’s greatest creation in Palestine:

“And what we have created – and I say this in humility – what we have created are new men … upon the return of these new men of Palestine, they have shown motivation, discipline and professionalism, and they have made such a difference.”

Indeed, the ‘new men of Palestine’ are making all the difference required by the US and Israel: they are fighting the very Palestinian Resistance that is defending Jenin against the Israeli onslaught, Nablus against the pogroms of armed settlers and Gaza against genocide.

None of these ‘new men’ – whose numbers are counted in the tens of thousands – have lifted a finger to help their brethren as they continue to starve to death in the Gaza Strip, tortured and raped en masse, burned alive in Jabaliya and Khan Yunis, and yet continue to fight and die in their thousands – alone.

To say that the PA has betrayed Palestinians, however, is an inaccurate statement. The PA was never set up, financed and armed by the US and Israel as a force of liberation, but as an obstacle to Palestinian freedom. We are witnessing the final proof of this claim. It is taking place in Jenin now; in fact, throughout the West Bank.

Of course, the PA will not be able to crush the Palestinian Resistance, which the supposedly mighty Israeli army has failed to subdue over the course of years. But the question remains: how long will the PA be allowed to serve the role of the enforcers of the Israeli occupation and the protector of settlers, while still promoting itself as the guardian of Palestinian rights, freedom and statehood?

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Self-portrait by William Hazlitt, 1802. Public Domain.

This is an editoed version of Alexander Cockburn’s 2010 Xmas essay for CounterPunch.

Hazlitt got gloomily drunk for a fortnight after the battle of Waterloo, accurately anticipating that decades of reaction lay ahead, now that Boney had been definitely put away, with the Holy Alliance in the saddle and the French contagion safely bottled up. Smart fellow, that Hazlitt. He should have stayed drunk for a month.

Sometimes, on the edge of a new decade, things look dismal but one has the feeling that something good just might be around the corner. The 70s for example: at their onset, Nixon was in the high noon of his first term, drenching Vietnam in blood, while his attorney general John Mitchell pored over plans to lock up the left at home. It looked as though darkest night was falling.

And yet there was a certain edgy, desperate hope in the air – and four short years into the 70s the hopers, no longer desperate but exultant,  saw Nixon clamber into a helicopter and take off from the White House lawn towards his version of St Helena, in San Clemente; and nine months later on April 30, 1975, Gunnery Sgt. Bob Schlager and 10 other Marines finally caught the last helicopter off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

Ah, those raucous, wonderful 70s! Those who missed them will never know the sweetness of life, as Talleyrand said of the Ancien Regime. Sweet and sharp.  I spent them in New York and there was no better place to be.

With the Eighties you could feel the air beginning to seep out of the tires. For one thing, Death kept missing his appointments in Samarra, after years of rigorous punctuality with Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Kennedy brothers. He’d already fumbled two dates with Gerald Ford, when his chosen messengers, Sara Jane Moore and Squeaky Fromme, messed up. On March 30, 1981, another of death’s chosen messengers, John Hinckley, tried to shoot Reagan and failed to get his man.

That would have been a game changer!  We’d have had three months of Ron instead of eight weird years when America plunged into fantasy, where it still resides. We wouldn’t have heard Ron give the Star Wars speech, or Nancy just saying No. Or Ron saying he expected Armageddon to come in his lifetime. Or Nancy running the country with the help of Mrs Quigley, her astrologer. We’d have had George Bush Sr…  surely a one-termer. It would have all been different…

But would it really? Clinton and the Nineties suited each other fine, and Bill gave us our last known dose of politics as fun, with the Lewinsky affair, but the decade would have had the same general contour – though a Republican president would have had much bigger problems getting the poor tossed off welfare.

And then in 2000 we had Bush and Gore, and the American people very reasonably couldn’t figure out which one to go for. The folks who knew Al best – the voters of Tennessee, went for George. And then in September of Bush’s first term we had a game changer here in America. Death finally rounded up a gang of messengers with a real commitment to getting the job done.

But game changer isn’t quite the word for the event that launched the Noughts. 9/11 just speeded up basic tendencies which were already in train. Invasion of Iraq? The onslaught had been in full spate through most of Clinton-time via a lethal embargo and almost daily bombings – and the course of Iraqi politics had been set back in 1963 with the Kennedy administration okayed CIA complicity in the overthrow and murder of the Iraqi nationalist, General Kassim, setting the stage for the CIA’s man, Saddam Hussein.

The Afghan mess, now about to get messier, was set up in the late 1970s, when the Carter administration supervised the overthrow of Afghanistan’s one shining moment of hope, the left reformist governments that took power in 1978. That’s when Osama was ushered onto the stage of history, as one of the CIA’s men. Israel, the Palestinians? Rewind the decades back to Truman and beyond.

What made the American 70s exciting was that the left – in its broadest antinomian contours – had life in it, still pumped up by radical successive radical generations all the way back to the beginning of the twentieth century. The last time we saw that left in action was in the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988 and the solidarity movement during Reagan’s wars in Central America.

In 1992 the left went hook, line and sinker for Bill Clinton and lost all independent traction. By 1996 fealty to the Democratic Party had become a habit. There was the brief flare up in Seattle during the WTO confab, but that turned out to be more of a final flicker than a new ignition point. Same story in 2000. Same again in 2004 (all in behind the Democrat Kerry, in case you forget) and finally, most deliriously, there was the left’s love affair with the salesman of hope in 2008, Barack Obama.

Yes, there are many candles in the darkness. Brave souls soldier on, whether battling the military recruiters, defending Palestine, or advancing labor’s cause. Gaze out across the political landscape and there are many vigorous, dogged people at work. But, as a vital, compelling, creative force in American political life, the left is dead and gone, many of its erstwhile or potential members  lost in the new Age of Superstition, fretful captives in the thickets of kookdom, whether in the form of 9/11 conspiracism – au revoir Cindy Sheehan! – or gazing aghast at Michael Mann’s bogus hockey-stick graph instead of improving their minds and political potential by reading the Eighteenth Brumaire. What a grim and revealing irony that it was the Medieval Warm Period – which Al Gore and the IPCC have sought to purge from natural history – that gave birth to some of the most glorious chapters in human intellectual and artistic achievement!

The corporations run the show and the only vivid opposition comes from Christian populists, who’ve bought several million copies of Sara Palin’s memoir.

The teens? Raise your glass along with Mr William Hazlitt.

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Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens. (1612)

The biblical narrative of Herod’s decision to butcher some 3,000 innocent children inspired Rennaissance and Baroque artists to produce hundreds of dramatic and powerful harrowing canvases of all sizes. Under the title The Massacre of the Innocents, this genocide, ordered and overseen by Herod, has been memorialized in art by Peter Paul Rubens, Guido Reni, Giotto, Breughel the Elder, and Nicolas Poussin, to name but a few.

Because it captures the dastardly event in all its lurid and gut-wrenching orgiastic carnage, Peter Paul Rubens’ 1611 The Massacre of the Innocents stands far above similar paintings of this genre.

In the Christian holy text Matthew tells his readers about the unique events surrounding the birth of Jesus Christ, a Palestinian Jewish child, conceived miraculously to a young Nazarene maiden, and born in a manger to Joseph of Nazareth and Mary, his betrothed. And because there was no room at any of the Beit Lahem (Bethlehem) inns, Mary delivered the infant child in a manger in the Holy City of Beit Lahem, Palestine.

In some ways circumstances in Palestine some two-thousand years ago were no different from what they are today. Palestine was a Roman colony, and as such, the colonizers ruled with a brutal iron fist and exacted hefty taxes. After the Roman Senate declared Herod King of Judea (a vassal king to impose Pax Romana), his paranoiac affliction and ruthlessness inflicted misery on the people of Palestine, Jews and others alike. Fearing that the birth of Jesus, the promised Messiah,  would eventually depose him, he ordered the murder of some three thousand innocent children in Bethlehem and environs. In first century Palestine violence and executions, taxation without representation, human rights violations, segregation, slavery, exploitation, xenophobia, expulsion, and the confiscation of personal and communal properties were the norm in a society that demeaned and deprecated its indigenous non-Jewish populations.

As an example, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Levites of Jesus’ time considered the Samaritans and others inferior races, claiming that the Samaritans were mongrel Jews, and that God excluded all others from his Covenant. This legalistic and intolerant ethnocentrism paved the way for the ethnocentric hypocrites of the time to transfer the mixed group Samaritans to Samaria; the latter were reviled, persecuted, ostracized, and restricted to the West Bank’s Mt. Gerizim. Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan was no doubt based on and directed at the bigotry and xenophobia that prevailed during that epoch. And this, my favorite parable, has held true in every clime and geographical locale.

If one were to compare conditions in Pax Romana  Palestine at the time of Jesus’ birth to Pax Americana/Israelica  in modern day occupied Palestine, one would be shocked to discover that Roman occupation was infinitely more benign.  Further, the biblical narrative informs us that at the time of Christ’s birth Palestine was an extension of Augustus’ massive empire. Palestina/Falasteen was sandwiched between Egypt and Syria; the first served as Rome’s breadbasket, and the second as Rome’s eastern line of defense and the last stop of the ancient Silk Road – and one of the conduits that fed the insatiable Roman treasury to maintain its stranglehold on its expansive Pax Romana Empire. Ironic it is that American, British, and European hegemony in that same region (including the bloody Crusades) are no different from Rome’s. And since 1917, the Brits, French, and later the Americans have been drawing and redrawing the boundaries of the oil-rich Near-East; and “What we say, goes” is the new Anglo-Franco-Americana Pax Oleum Petra.

Utilizing the Jewish King Herod as a friendly client and puppet, the Romans gave him a free hand. And, as long as he collected taxes to help enrich Rome’s coffers, Herod’s heavy-handed rule was viewed benignly by Rome. Perceiving the birth of the promised Messiah/King as a threat to his rule, Herod ordered the genocidal killing of all male infants in Bethlehem and environs.

What Rome was to Herod, America (and subservient US presidents and Congresses) and its acquiescent European US vassals are to Netanyahu and Israel.

It is more than fair to say that if one compared living conditions in Palestine and the occupied West Bank and Gaza during the time of Jesus’ birth to current living conditions of Palestinians all across the Holy Land, one would be shocked at the shrieking (think Edvard Munch’s The Scream) and howling of anguished cries of a nation robbed of its birthright.

On the 8th of December 2024 I sent the following email to a handful of friends, acquaintances, editors of moderate Baptist online publications, including a genocide expert: “That Palestinians are brown, and that most are Muslims, does that mean they are fair game because in the Evangelical and West’s taxonomy of human beings they are children of a lesser God?

Before, during, and well after the Thanksgiving meal my stomach churned. How could I enjoy a family meal when 2.3 million Gaza Palestinians are deliberately starved by Biden’s cowardice and full throttle support of the Gaza carnage and Netanyahu’s belligerent defiance, his hangman? The silence of America and Europe’s Christians is very telling.”

The Institute of Middle Eastern Understanding’s October 7, 2024 report under the title “Fact Sheet: One Year of Israeli Genocide in Gaza, By the Numbers,” is a comprehensive and chilling report on Israel’s deliberate and systematic malevolent destruction and erasure of man, beast, physical structures, and an ancient and rich culture. The report stated that since October 7, 2023, 45,841 Gazans have been killed, 70% of whom are women and children, with 106,962 thousand wounded.  19,812 of the dead are children – male/female, with approximately 1,300 infants and toddlers under two. The Lancet Medical Journal puts the dead at 225,140 thousand. In the Occupied West Bank 813 children have been killed.  The aforementioned does not include the thousands of victims missing and buried under the rubble, over 4,000 of whom are children. Oxfam reported that “More women and children have been killed in Gaza over the past year than any other conflict over the past two decades.” Over 26,500 children have been diagnosed with life-threatening acute malnutrition and starvation. Over 1,200 children have had one or both legs amputated. This prompted U.N.C.E.F. to state that “The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child.”

Unfortunately, on today’s world stage and with Pope Francis as an exception, there’s not even a single Wise Man from either the East or the West. And not one, but many Near Eastern and Western Grinches have stolen Christmas from millions of kids around the world, Innocents who yearn not for the expensive toys, but for a warm bed, warm clothes,  safe shelter, three decent meals a day, safe schools and communities, playgrounds, dignity, freedom, and hope for a future free from the threat of evil by the likes of our modern-day Assads, Netan-Herods and Bidens Et. Al.

The expression of agony on Poussin’s mother in his masterpiece The Massacre of the Innocents is the same expression one witnesses  on the faces of Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi, Yemeni, Afghani, Sudanese, and Somali mothers and children, including all the suffering mothers around the world victimized by apartheid, bigotry, intolerance, oppression, and wars.

My email ended thusly: “And Jesus wept for Palestine and her orphaned children. He also wept for an apathetic America and a Western civilization that is fueling and financing the carnage. In deep pain and deeper sorrow.”

As my dear friend, the Honorable Judge/Preacher Wendell Griffen says, “Jesus was an occupied Palestinian, not an Israeli occupier. Get your story straight.”

Buon Natale, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

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A depiction of Mangione as a Christ figure with the Sacred Heart, as seen hanging in a pizzeria near his hometown of Towson, Maryland – Public Domain

It really shouldn’t come as a surprise that the ruling class failed in their attempt to make CEO Shooter Luigi Mangione look terrifying in that failed Perp Walk. I’m sure you all saw it: the man was thronged with everything and everyone that could be utilized to make him look wildly dangerous, at least in the eyes of those who genuinely do not understand the pulsing discontent everyday Americans have. I don’t think a moment like this could have happened even 10 years ago. The fact that everyday individuals feel so powerless that a murder is being celebrated by many in this nation shows that it is ultimately a time for national self-reflection by those in power. These things don’t happen in a vacuum. Instead, the decision seems to be to double down rather than take some hard looks in the mirror to realize that the no-safety net viciousness of our system will most certainly breed violent acts. It’s as if our ruling class is a bunch of raging alcoholics at the proverbial rock bottom and they have decided to bring alcohol into their system with a continuous IV drip rather than think about maybe stopping the booze. It’s being in a hole and continuing to dig, all of those sayings that exist for a reason—cautionary tales of what not to do if you want to avoid catastrophe.

The outrageous overreach continues as they seem hell-bent on going for federal and state charges against the guy, probably looking to execute him and actively looking for jurors who have never protested anything and do not have physical disabilities (they wouldn’t want someone who has been ravaged by the healthcare system to have a say in this one). I am sure the only jurors they will find acceptable will be the peers of…..the CEO.

If they indeed had any sanity guiding their behavior, they would have treated this as a plain old murder. No drama, no moving the guy like he’s a Pablo Escobar or a bin Laden. Standard murder charges, not charging the guy with everything, including the Lindbergh baby death and the axe murder of pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna. Their flop sweat is showing.

They couldn’t have made the man look more serene in the midst of overkill if they tried. The overreach is truly comical. It did not go unnoticed that school shooters, serial killers—they don’t have this kind of police presence when they are transported. They couldn’t make it any more clear that they consider the wealthy to be more valuable than even our children in schools. Then the media reports on how scared the CEOs are to go to work– without any self-awareness of what kids have to contend with in this gun-soaked nation when they hear about school shootings with a much greater frequency. The kids are subjected to terrifying active shooter drills, told that maybe they need to bring bulletproof backpacks to school, yet we hear they might need a hotline for CEOs to call due to their nervousness. It’s an incredible fuck you in the face to everyone deemed less than worthy by this system, and by that, I mean anyone with a net worth less than 50 million.

It’s time for universal healthcare, for decency across the board. Even the most brainwashed Americans know they have an inherent value; they aren’t just commodities and a link in the chain to provide profits for the already obscenely rich. The leaders can’t understand that even though the masses may not have studied the term in college, they damn well understand the concept of “social murder.” They understand that the actions of those in certain lines of unsavory work (CEOs) cause the death of untold numbers of Americans because their only responsibility is to the shareholder, not to basic decency. You can’t be shocked by the blowback of such callousness.

And back to optics—hell, the guy even came out of prison looking hotter than he did when he went in! Some say that fellow prisoners may have assisted him with a better haircut and eyebrow management so they could send a message that he is cared for by the general population. They were yelling out the windows about his poor treatment in previous days. It seems he has allies with those fellow incarcerated men. Men, who, by the way, are often used as basically slave labor for corporations wanting discount bodies to do their work. Stereotypes are falling by the wayside. Like minds are found in unusual places.

Yet they continue to try so hard to manage the messaging—if they were in the right, it wouldn’t be so damn difficult. Truth and decency come much more easily. Trying to bottle the aspirations of so many citizens who are feeling hopeless is a big task and takes a pretty substantial dam. We all know what happens when the dam gives way. This is the time that measures could be taken to improve the lives of everyday Americans and this would prevent this sort of thing from happening, but I think the oligarchs would rather get caught up in the flood rather than give an inch. It’s instructive because it shows that just because they have power and wealth, they truly don’t seem to be all that bright.

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Three recent reports by respected international humanitarian organizations have generated global approbation; and negative reactions by both the Israeli and U.S. governments.

– Amnesty International

Amnesty International (AI) issued its 296-page report (‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza”) on December 4th. Israel immediately called it “a fabricated report that is entirely false and based on lies.” The US. State Department echoed the Israeli government in disagreeing with  the report.  Spokesperson Vedant Patel declared: “We have said previously and continue to find that the allegations of genocide are unfounded.” He gave no reasons for that opinion.

Reviewing the nine-month period from October 7, 2023,  AI concluded that Israel committed prohibited acts under Articles II (a), (b), and (c) of the Genocide Convention of 1948, specifically the killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.

After describing the Genocide Convention’s definition of genocide, AI examined both the specified prohibited actions and the requirement of intent. The Report concluded that both benchmarks were met. In his December 7 Counterpunch article (“The Worst of International Crimes,”) Jeffrey St. Clair quoted  portions of the report that detailed the destruction of life and infrastructure, successive evacuations of residents and the denial of food and humanitarian assistance. The ICC arrest warrants of Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Gallant expressed international condemnation of the same war crimes cited in the AI Report.

Human Rights Watch

Not to be outdone, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued its 179-page report (“Extermination and Acts of Genocide: Israel Deliberately Deprives Palestinians in Gaza of Water”) on December 19. It focused not on bombs and bullets, but rather on the deprivation of water for the inhabitants of Gaza.

The HRW report cited Israel’s: “Extensive damage and destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure, including the apparently deliberate, systematic razing of the solar panels powering four of Gaza’s six wastewater treatment plants by Israeli ground forces, as well as Israel soldiers filming themselves demolishing a key water reservoir” Based on such findings, Human Rights Watch blamed Israel for causing the deaths of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza by systematically restricting and targeting Gaza’s water supply.  According to HRW, such actions amounted to “acts of genocide.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry denounced the report, accusing Human Rights Watch of “once more spreading its blood libels in order to promote its anti-Israel propaganda,” It claimed that Israel has worked to facilitate the flow of water and humanitarian aid into Gaza throughout the war. throughout the war. The State Department spokesman  said that the U.S. “disagreed with” HRW’s accusation that Israel was carrying out “acts of genocide” by damaging water infrastructure.

Doctors Without Borders

A third report (33pages) published by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on December 19 is entitled “Gaza: Life in a Death Trap.”  It centers on the systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system and the repeated forced evacuations of residents. In the  words of the report, “MSF has witnessed 14 months of repeated attacks on civilians, the dismantling of essential civilian infrastructure including healthcare facilities and a systematic denial of humanitarian assistance, seemingly underpinning Israel’s campaign to unravel the very fabric of society.”

The report continued, “MSF has witnessed 14 months of repeated attacks on civilians, the dismantling of essential civilian infrastructure including healthcare facilities, and a systematic denial of humanitarian assistance, seemingly underpinning Israel’s campaign to unravel the very fabric of society in Gaza….The consequences of these impediments are made even more harmful due to the uniqueness of a war being waged on a besieged area from which nobody can escape.”

According to MSF Secretary General Christopher Lockyear, “What our medical teams have witnessed on the ground throughout this conflict is consistent with the descriptions provided by an increasing number of legal experts and organizations concluding that genocide is taking place in Gaza.”

In response, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman  accused MSF of “lying and misleading the public.” The U.S. response likewise denounced the report.  State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said with respect to MSF: “Even within their report, they make pretty clear that they don’t have the legal authority to determine intentionality.”

Why has the U.S. government repeatedly denied allegations of Israeli genocide in Gaza?  In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack, when he pledged to “stand with” its U.S. ally. Biden may have been driven by his decades-long admiration of Israel. The IDF’s scorched earth bomb and missile attacks on Gaza have continued unabated throughout the Gaza Strip; and Israel has severely limited the provision of water, food, medicines and other humanitarian aid.  Now the death toll (not counting those buried under the rubble) has risen to more than 45,000. Yet Biden has repeatedly refused to stop arming the IDF.  His massive transfers of U.S.-made lethal weapons have enabled Netanyahu, now an indicted war criminal facing ICC arrest warrants, to intensify his relentless bombardments on Gazan civilians.

If and when the war in Gaza is deemed a genocide by the International Court of Justice, Biden and his Secretaries of State and Defense could be (and, in my view should be) liable for complicity under the Genocide Convention of 1948.

Americans should understand that Biden’s legacy is not all domestic triumph.  It is even more a shameful foreign policy legacy of destruction and death.

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November 15, 2023. Jewish Voice for Peace shuts down Hollywood Blvd. to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Launched in 1913 to counter antisemitism and discrimination, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) now resembles a mythological shapeshifter that presents alternately as a civil rights organization and a pro-Israel propagandist.

In its “No Place for Hate” program that caters to both elementary and secondary schools, the ADL’s stated mission is to empower students, teachers and parents to “stand against bias and bullying …” with school-wide pledges, projects and games aimed at celebrating diversity and stamping out hate in the halls, in the cafeteria, in the reading circle, anywhere that hate may manifest.

In Norse mythology, the jealous god Loki is a shapeshifter who appears alternately as a salmon or an old woman. Disguised as the old woman, Loki–the god of darkness– carves an arrow out of mistletoe to trick the blind god Hodr into hurling an arrow at his exalted twin brother, Baldr–the god of light.

The ADL is not a salmon or a singular old woman, but a cunning policy advocate that despite allegations of spying on social justice movements and targeting Arab-led organizations has popularized its “No Place for Hate” lessons in 2,000 schools, reaching 190,000 educators and 1.8 million students–according to the ADL website.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) of over 500,000 students, No Place for Hate schools either currently or previously included Roosevelt High School, Amelia Earhart Middle School, Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, Mark Twain Elementary School and others. The LAUSD Office of Student Civil Rights links to the ADL under “Tools for Educators,” which in turn links to an article attacking American Muslims for Palestine for “being at the core of the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist movement in the United States.” In 2022, LAUSD board member Scott Schmerelson, now board president and often a champion of public education, authored a resolution instructing the superintendent to invite the ADL to update and revise curriculum.

While selling schools on activities to bolster respect and community, the ADL–analogous to the shapeshifter in mythology – engineers the death of debate over Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish nationalist state in historic Palestine.

In a No Place for Hate lesson on scapegoating, the ADL writes, “Debates about the legitimacy of Israel’s existence or demonization of Israelis create an unsafe climate for Jewish students and interrupt opportunities for critical thinking for all students.” Notice how the ADL wrongly mixes debate over a nation state’s political ideology with demonization of individuals in that state–all in the same sentence to discourage critical analysis and evaluation .

Schools that subscribe to this sort of speech suppression, ruling out debate over an ethnostate colonizing, annihilating and terrorizing Palestinians, are like the blind brother who hurls a lethal dart –only this time the weapon of propaganda pierces the institution of education to silence inquiring minds wrestling with the devastation live-streamed on their cell phones.

In Japanese mythology, the nine-tailed kitsune-yako fox can take human form to infiltrate high society, where the yako appears as a seductive woman to level a lethal curse–a scar, a burn–on an unsuspecting yet powerful man.

If only the man had been more observant, he might have noticed a few furry fox tails sticking out of the back of the yako’s dress. Yes, the shapeshifter can be unmasked provided those it targets are willing to look behind the facade.

The lure of a packaged curriculum

The ADL lures schools with its anti-bias No Place for Hate program by claiming to help administrators, teachers and parents build “inclusive and safe communities in which respect and equity are the goals and where all students can thrive.” It’s hard to resist such a pitch, particularly when it comes with banners, buttons, balloons and bracelets as part of a polished package that outlines a step-by-step approach to creating community through “I Am” poems, peer-to-peer interviews, school surveys and collages of diverse smiling students.

The program, however, warrants deeper analysis, so best to begin with the basics.

How a School Qualifies–Registration

Schools that want to become a “No Place for Hate” school first must register with the ADL, which could be a problem for anyone concerned about allegations of ADL surveillance. The Guardian reports an internal 2020 ADL memo reveals the ADL

tracked a Black Indianapolis activist who worked on the Deadly Exchange campaign to expose US police training with the Israeli military. “It scared the shit out of me,” the activist told the press, adding “It stopped me from moving forward because I don’t want to put people in my life at risk – I work with youth, so it stopped me in my tracks.” Decades earlier, the Washington Post reported that police in the 1990s investigated the ADL for allegedly “monitoring the activities of thousands of activists”–allegations the ADL denied. According to the newspaper, San Francisco police confiscated from ADL offices “leaked copies of confidential law enforcement reports, fingerprint cards, driver’s license photographs and individual criminal histories drawn from police records.”

Next, committee & pledge

After registering with the ADL, schools then form a steering committee of faculty and students to guide the work of building community and challenging bias at every turn. No mention is made of centering students victimized by bullying and racism to spearhead the committee, which is charged with encouraging students, staff and guardians to sign a schoolwide pledge. For elementary schools, the pledge reads, “I promise my best to be kind to everyone–even if they are not like me.” For secondary, the pledge is more proactive, “I will reach out to support those who are targets of hate.”

The entire school is expected to sign the pledge which features a logo with the words, ‘No Place for Hate”– An ADL Education Program.” While the words are innocuous enough, the platforming of the ADL raises concerns about elevating an organization with a history of surveillance, complaints against public schools and unconditional support for Israel. This patronage continues in the wake of the International Court of Justice’s preliminary ruling (1/26/24) that Israel has committed a plausible case of genocide, and Amnesty International’s (12/5/24) scathing report, You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza,

There’s another issue, too. While there’s nothing in the wording of the pledge that’s problematic, the fact that virtually everyone is expected to sign it in order for the school to participate can create a coercive environment.

Only ADL approved activities

After students and staff sign the ADL pledge, they then move on to the next criteria required for ADL designation as an official “No Place for Hate” school. Each school must implement three of the ADL’s approved activities, such as discussions around identity, listening journals and walks against hate.

For middle and high school, one of the recommended activities to lead to schoolwide action involves a lesson plan entitled, “Antisemitic Incidents: Being an Ally, Advocate and Activist,” in which students are to understand and recognize antisemitism based on a troubling definition that includes the marginalization of Jewish people based on myths about Israel.

Among the “materials needed” for the lesson is a link to the ADL’s “Audit of Antisemtic Incidents 2022,” which says, “References to Israel or Zionism were part of 19% of the 219 campus incidents.” The audit includes a section “Anti-Zionism/Israel-Related” in which the ADL smears the organizations Witness for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, charging antisemitic incidents were perpetrated by individuals associated with these groups. The ADL writes, “ Public statements of opposition to Zionism, which are often antisemitic, are included in the Audit when it can be determined that they had a negative impact on one or more Jewish individuals or identifiable, localized groups of Jews.”

Does this mean the ADL considers antisemitic any criticism of Israel that offends a Jewish person? What about the thousands of Jews marching in cities, conducting sit-ins in the Capitol and occupying subway stations with t-shirts that scream, “Ceasefire” or “Stop Arming Israel” or “Not in Our Name”–These Jews are more than offended by Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine; they are outraged.

Jewish Voice for Peace, a fast-growing anti-Zionist national organization, charges the ADL “is not a credible source on antisemitism and racism” because it conflates antisemitism with criticism of a state, adding, “The ADL has consistently targeted advocates for Palestinian human rights in a concerted and coordinated campaign to repress any speech that criticizes Israel’s current war on Gaza or its policy of oppression of Palestinians.”

The ADL has filed civil rights complaints with the Department of Education against Occidental and Pomona colleges, as well school districts in Philadelphia, Santa Ana and Berkeley. In the complaint against Berkeley, the ADL objects to student protesters of US-Israel genocide walking out of class to shout, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The chant does not call for the elimination of Jews from Palestine but the right of Palestinians expelled from their homeland to return.

Additionally, the ADL, which tells students to be kind and compassionate–never bullying, writes a threatening letter to nearly 200 college presidents, demanding investigations of the non-violent Students for Justice in Palestine, the campus organization leading protests against Israel’s slaughter in Gaza.

The kicker

If a school wants to implement its own activity for challenging bias and bullying, it must first appeal to the ADL for approval. Absent ADL approval, the activity cannot count toward achieving official “No Place for Hate” status. One need not be a champion of public education to cringe at the outsourcing of anti-bias education to a private political advocacy organization, particularly one that, according to the website Open Secrets, spent over a million dollars in 2024 to lobby lawmakers to vote for a pro-Israel agenda.

The ADL is, after all, an enthusiastic proponent of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism with examples that conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism to open the door for more legal complaints against schools and colleges, even when the speech in question is constitutionally-protected free political speech, not hatred of Jews.

School to prison pipeline via the ADL

The ADL’s No Place for Hate program includes a section on social justice, as opposed to simple acts of kindness, such as offering to help a teacher distribute papers or hold down a fountain faucet for another student. The ADL aptly defines a social justice action as one that involves a group of people who organize to bring about “institutional change” that might solve the problems of gun violence, homelessness or school-to-prison pipeline.

How contradictory then that the ADL encourages students and teachers to both report incidents of bias and hate to the ADL by completing an incident report form, as well as–-in cases of extreme injustice– calling the police–rather than referring those involved to a student-faculty council on restorative justice that emphasizes making amends, performing school service or developing empathy through role-plays. Under the subheading, “Best Practices for School Administrators–Act Quickly and Respond, the curriculum advises principals to “clarify what the role and duties of school resource officers (SRO’s) and (whether) police should and should not be in the process. Contact law enforcement as necessary.”

Given the ADL’s close working relationship with police, it is worth considering whether involving the ADL increases the likelihood of police involvement and a punitive rather than educational approach, potentially creating something akin to the school-to-prison pipeline that the ADL critiques.

Never mind the police for a minute. Reporting incidents–some of which may relate to criticism of Israel–to the ADL could spell legal trouble down the road, should the school’s administration not follow the ADL’s prescription for addressing the situation.

Moreover, despite the No Place for Hate social justice verbiage, it’s hard to imagine the ADL ever approving a schoolwide letter-writing campaign to Congress to block weapons to Israel during its genocide in Gaza or testimony before school boards to divest from companies building segregated roads in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Note, the No Place for Hate glossary defines antisemitism as “The marginalization and/or oppression of people who are Jewish, based on the belief in stereotypes and myths about Jewish people, Judaism and Israel.”

Antisemitism is real–white supremacy at Charlottesville, murders at the Tree of Life Synagogue, Nazi symbols at Jan.6th–but to redefine antisemitism to include criticism of Israel only confuses people while allowing a nation state to act with impunity.

Pyramid of Hate

The ADL’s No Place for Hate program introduces students to the Pyramid of Hate to encourage discussion and analysis of escalating acts of bias and bigotry. At the pyramid’s base is Biased Attitudes of stereotyping; one level higher is Acts of Bias, such as bullying; even higher on the pyramid is Discrimination, and at the top of the pyramid is Genocide, the act or intention to systematically annihilate a people.

Even though the curriculum has been updated since October 7, 2023 there is no mention of Israel’s bombardment and starvation of over two million imprisoned Gazans, nor the multitude of experts around the world who have named Israel’s actions genocide.

In No Place for Hate, students are rightfully encouraged to object to racist jokes, yet no one is encouraged to protest Israel’s killing and wounding of hundreds of thousands of Gazans, tens of thousands of whom are children. A 2024 study by the Community Training Centre for Crisis Management in Gaza found “96% of children surveyed feel their death is imminent, while 49% have expressed a desire to die.”

In the Greek myth, “The Story of Eurydice,” mortal Orpheus, musician, prophet and poet, commits the sin of omission when leading Eurydice, nymph and daughter of Apollo, out from the underworld. Orpheus’ failure to look back at Eurydice–to make sure she is behind him–causes Eurydice to be pulled back into the world of the dead. This is Orpheus’ sin of omission–his failure to look back. One could argue the ADL’s sin of omission when introducing its Pyramid of Hate is its failure to look at the reality of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, opting instead to conflate antisemitism with anti-Zionism to potentially chill speech when speech must be louder, not softer or silent in the face of massive human rights violations following Hamas’ October 7th attack.

In its open letter to educators, the Drop The ADL From Schools campaign–endorsed by 89 organization–writes the ADL “attacks schools, educators, and students with bad-faith accusations of antisemitism in order to silence and punish constitutionally-protected criticism of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism.” The organization asks educators to cut ties with the ADL, including use of its No Place for Hate curriculum. Meanwhile, CODEPINK activists are testifying in front of school boards on California’s Central Coast, urging board members to expel the ADL.

Bottom line

For all its political correctness–the curriculum’s emphasis on pronouns and respect for non-binary identities–at the end of the school day No Place for Hate personifies the mythical character of the shapeshifter as it lures school districts into checking off the anti-bias box while surrendering authority to the controversial Anti-Defamation League. Sure, the program offers banners draped across hallways, pledges and to-do lists, even sage advice now and then, but the pretty package turns ugly once fully opened and scrutinized for its pro-Israel indoctrination.

The alternative–the power within

While it’s tempting for administrators to subscribe to a free, pre-packaged curriculum, there is no one-size-fits all answer to addressing racism or bullying and bias that seeps into our schools as a result of society’s structural racism: segregation, caste, economic inequality, voter suppression. But this work must be done bottom up, by creating a school community of critical thinkers, principled actors, and life-long learners.

From the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) in Creating a School Community:

Students in schools with a strong sense of community are more likely to be academically motivated (Solomon, Battistich, Watson, Schaps, & Lewis, 2000); to act ethically and altruistically (Schaps, Battistich, & Solomon, 1997); to develop social and emotional competencies (Solomon et al., 2000); and to avoid a number of problem behaviors, including drug use and violence (Resnick et al., 1997).

Rather than ceding control to the Anti-Defamation League for a top-down prescription, schools can exercise their own agency to build community through schoolwide public service projects, murals that reflect students’ ethnic diversity and cultural events that celebrate acts of resistance to oppression and colonization. Inside the classroom, teachers can address issues of race, bias and bullying with books and short stories that lend themselves to rich discussion.

In the final analysis …

Educators must consider the actual cost of a free program like “No Place for Hate,” whose sponsor conflates antisemitism with anti-Zionism, files civil rights complaints against schools and promotes Israel propaganda in the classroom. The answer to creating a positive school climate is not “out there”–in the hands of an organization with a distinct political agenda–but in here, in the school and in the school-to-community relationship.

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The behavioral healthcare workers in Kaiser Permanente’s vast empire of hospitals, clinics medical offices, and homecare settings are on strike today in the third month of walking picket lines in Southern California from San Diego to Bakersfield. These workers, members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), include psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, addiction medicine counselors, licensed clinical counselors, and marriage and family therapists.  They provide behavioral health care for Kaiser’s 4.8 million members. Kaiser is the biggest Health Maintenance Organization in the country. The strike began on October 21, three weeks after the workers’ contract had expired.

The extraordinary thing about this strike is that it really is a strike for patients and for the public’s health, a strike for mental health care parity, a strike in a time of acute mental healthcare crisis in this country. Perhaps never before has depression and anxiety and increasingly suicide reached into the lives of so many people and their families. This strike is about equity in behavioral health care. The strikers have told me this time and again. They insist they would rather be with their patients, not on a picket line, but they can’t keep working in a system that treats mental health workers like automatons and denies them the time and resources to provide the care they know their patients need.

Of course, there are a myriad of issues in this strike including pensions (1700 providers work without pensions) and wages and working conditions. “We want enough time to do our jobs, which means seven hours per week to prepare for appointments, devise treatment plans, provide resources, file mandated reports, go to the bathroom, and so on. We want wage increases that are equitable with our colleagues,” writes Adriana Webb, a medical social worker at Kaiser in Panorama City in Los Angeles, in the online magazine Labor Notes.

The strikers also want their patients to have timely visits: today, they complain, members (Kaiser has fee paying members it provides services for) can book in for treatment, but frequently endure waits of four weeks or longer for return appointments even though California mandates a maximum wait time of 10 business days for both initial and return visits.

Webb again: “I see first-hand how Kaiser’s mental health system is failing patients. It’s nearly impossible for them to get access to timely mental health care, and because Kaiser treats its therapists like assembly line factory workers, so many therapists get burned out and leave.” This gap today between good care and assembly line care at Kaiser is so conspicuous that the state of California recently fined Kaiser $50 million.

In Northern California NUHW professionals won a brutal open-ended strike on these issues in 2022. Workers won provisions to recruit and retrain staff, reduce wait times for patients, as well as an agreement to collaborate in transforming Kaiser’s approach to mental health care. It was a big step forward, progress “but only due to our 14-year struggle,” says Sal Rosselli, who stepped aside as president of NUHW earlier this year. Now it’s Southern California’s turn.

A win will be a giant step forward, but NUHW healthcare workers will get at best a breather; Kaiser is relentless in its determination to break this union. This is not the first strike in Southern California, it won’t be the last. Kaiser does whatever it can to undermine the agreements and is quite willing to violate contracts and pay fines. It remains committed to visits delayed and treatment denied, their bottom line coming first. Still, things are moving in the right direction and bigger giants have fallen.

The words, “delayed” and “denied,” of course, have taken on new meaning for Americans in the last weeks; they have come to express the depth of frustration, the bipartisan anger of the public with the health care system, especially with the insurance giants. The mental health strikers understand this anger only too well; every day they are in the trenches and their demands starkly reflect the public’s anger. In 2022, they produced the pathbreaking study. “Care delayed is Care denied.” The study revealed in great detail “that when treatment is significantly postponed or delayed, it essentially equates to being denied that care altogether, as the delay can potentially worsen a patient’s condition or prevent timely intervention, leading to negative health consequences.”

“Care delayed is Care denied.” gives us a taste of just how broken our medical system is today and just how wedded it is to the pursuit of profit. But never mind, it works for our 1%, and their representatives who are now taking places in the new president’s cabinet. Kaiser’s profits were $4.1 billion in 2023; it has $64 billion in the bank. Kaiser’s CEO, Greg Adams’ “compensation” was $17,268,060 in 2023.  The corporation also underwrites his ten pension plans. More than a dozen of his minions received a million or more annually. No wonder they fight so hard to keep this system. And Kaiser is only one among many healthcare behemoths reaping unimaginable financial rewards in today’s bonanza of the billionaires.

The strikers rotate pickets from hospital to hospital. They hold rallies that converge in front of Kaiser’s Pasadena Southern California’s headquarters.  They have widespread labor support. 200 RNs representing the United Nurses Associations of California/UNAC joined picket lines on the first day. The UFCW, Unite/Here and CWA have given picket line and financial support. The San Diego Federtaion of Labor sent $10,000 to the NUHW hardship fund. Nearly 400 strikers participated in a major action outside Kaiser headquarters. The event began with a food and toy distribution at the International Brother of Electrical Workers (IBEW) hall before a throng of strikers, more than a block deep, marched to Kaiser headquarters with a giant cardboard heart in tow.

The Los Angeles Federation of Labor has gone all out, including sharing their flatbed truck and their huge parade balloons, the “Scabby Rat” and the “Fat Cat.” They organized a toy drive; it is the holiday season after all. They sentthe truck, loaded with toys to the rally in Pasadena. “The second I saw the toys, I started crying,” said Jade Rosado, a Kaiser therapist with three children. “Just to be able to choose something I knew my kids would enjoy. It brought me a lot of relief.” Rosado, who was named a Kaiser “Everyday Hero” in August for helping save a patient’s life, seeing the banners for her fellow “Everyday Hero” recipients hanging inside the corporate office, noted the hypocrisy; “It just made me think that all of us are heroes, so why don’t we get the same benefits, wage increases, and patient care time as other Kaiser workers,” Rosado said. “Kaiser is profiting off our labor, but they’re not incentivizing us to stay.”

Ligia Pacheco, a Kaiser therapist, also responding to the distribution, thanked supporters, saying, “After receiving the food and toy donations, our gratitude turned into powerful chanting that reflects the solidarity we continue to have.”

The LA Federation, in addition to toys, has donated boxes of groceries to the strikers. This led, on November 15, to a confrontation outside the Los Angeles Medical Center. As the federation workers were unloading the food boxes, two “bullying” HR executives, with the LAPD in tow, insisted they couldn’t distribute the food on its property (they were on the sidewalk) and demanded they shut down the event. Most of the boxes, which included perishable items, had to be rerouted to NUHW offices in Glendale.

“It was shocking to see that, frankly, Kaiser HR is so dirty that it would deny us food after four weeks without pay,” said Kassaundra Gutierrez-Thompson, who was present at the picket line. “It’s really alarming because at the end of the day, I still work for Kaiser, and it doesn’t feel like the HR Department has my back as a Kaiser employee.”

The California chapter of the National Association of Social Workers has written to Kaiser Permanente CEO Greg Adams calling on Kaiser to “resume good faith negotiations with NUHW’s Southern California members as soon as possible, and accept the union’s reasonable contract proposals.” Mental Health America of California is also supporting the strike, as is an array of mental health advocates.

In addition to all this, a majority of California legislators has signed onto nearly identical letters calling on Kaiser Permanente CEO Greg Adams to end the strike by returning to the bargaining table and agreeing to their proposals for settlement.

The letter from Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas is signed by 40 of his fellow Assembly members, and the letter from Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire is signed by 20 of his fellow senators. The letters cite reports that Kaiser is cancelling therapy sessions at “an alarming rate” during the strike They urge Adams to “resume good faith negotiations with NUHW as soon as possible, and to agree to the union’s reasonable contract proposals in order to ensure the delivery of timely and appropriate behavioral health services to your patients.”

The solidarity, it’s been magnificent. Why, then, is Kaiser, which spends a small fortune present itself as a progressive vanguard in progressive healthcare, playing hardball with its psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, counselors, family therapists?

Jim Clifford, an elected NUHW executive Board member, a bilingual therapist in Kaiser’s southern- most clinic (“I can see Tijuana from my office”) says it’s not that complicated. Money? “They’ve spent far more money trying to break us than settling with us would cost. They pay scab therapists $13, 000 a week and there’s still a high turnover.

 “No, we’ve been a thorn in Kaiser’s side since we were first organized more than a decade ago. We’ve been the whistle blowers, the strongest advocates of providing decent mental health care and a voice for patients.

“Kaiser has fought us EVERY STEP of the way. It took us five years of fighting with them to get our first contract. That didn’t stop them, they tried to decertify us. They unilaterally took away our defined pension. They held us below the wages and benefits of the rest of the corporation. How are we supposed to get new therapists – and keep them?”

Sophia Mendoza, a veteran of southern California’s labor wars, was elected President of NUHW this last spring, replacing Rosselli, who, stepping aside, is still an active member of the union. She is confident that the union will win. “Our demands are reasonable. People want good mental health care and that’s what this is about.  Our members, their patients, the electeds, and other unions are all coming together. Our fight to restore the defined benefit pension is a fight for all of labor. This is a fight to treat those who need and to provide mental health care equitably.”

The National Union of Healthcare Workers is a member-led movement that represents 19,000 healthcare workers in California and Hawaii, including more than 4,700 Kaiser mental health professionals.

This report is based on discussions with many NUHW members and staff as well as NUHW press releases.

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Lake Toronto in central south Chihuahua. If you look closely you can see the water line on the embankment and just how far it’s gone down. Photo: Todd Miller.

When I first meet the fisherman Gerardo Delgado, he is sitting in his boat, surrounded by pelicans, off the shore of Lake Toronto, in central south Chihuahua, Mexico. Perhaps the pelicans are waiting for Delgado to toss a fillet, but his catch is, yet again, meager. In the last couple of years, it’s been hard to make a living from fishing on the lake. I am with another fisherman, Alonso Montañes, and we approach Delgado on a motorboat.

Across the lake I can see Delgado’s town, El Toro, on top of a large embankment, about two stories high. Montañes tells me the embankment used to be the floor of the lake, which once reached the houses of El Toro. The lake—which is a reservoir created when the Boquilla Dam was constructed in 1916—is quickly receding. It is at 15 percent of its capacity, Montañes tells me. Never has it been so low.

Fisherman Gerardo Delgado shows me his catch on Lake Toronto. Photo: Todd Miller).

Delgado is in a blue motorboat. I ask how many fish he has caught, and he shows me his plastic orange container with about five fillets scrunched in a corner. “This will probably earn me 60 pesos,” he tells me, adding that so far today, after about six hours, he has spent 350 pesos on gas. “So you are going to lose money?” I ask. “Every day,” he says.

Two years ago, Delgado tells me, El Toro’s community well went dry. Now to get water, they have to buy it from expensive “pipa” trucks that come from out of town. There used to be 40 families in El Toro. Now there are 17. Two of Delgado’s sisters are already in the United States.

It takes a bit for it to set in, but I finally realize that I am in a climate-change hot spot. I’m reminded of Marinduque, Philippines, which I visited in 2015. There, I saw water lapping into a destroyed house like it was a carcass. For me, in that moment, climate change went from abstract to raw and real. On Lake Toronto there is also this palpable sense of violence with the drought. Throughout the day, as we cruise the lake, Montañes tells me an “ecocide” is happening before our very eyes.

Fisherman Alonso Montañes driving his boat on Lake Toronto. Photo: Todd Miller.

I am there because I am working on a book about climate change, water, and the border. And being there on the cusp of 2025 is significant for two reasons. One, of course, is the change in presidential power in the United States and the uncertainty that brings. But also 2025 is the year that Mexico, as stipulated by a 1944 treaty, is obligated to pay a water debt to the United States. Every five years Mexico has to pay the United States 1.75 million acre-feet of water, and in March it had supplied only 382,000. Farmers in Texas’s faraway Rio Grande Valley also depend on this reservoir’s water, which will flow north in the Rio Conchos and become the Rio Grande after Presidio, Texas. In other words, on Lake Toronto we are floating on the water that will become the U.S.-Mexico border. In May, Texas congresswoman Monica de la Cruz stood before the U.S. House and said, “We need to use every tool that we have available to force Mexico to abide by the treaty. We want our water. We demand our water!”

“Está cabrón,” another fisherman named Jesús Chávez tells me on the shores of Lake Toronto, a few miles from where Delgado was. He is not referring to de la Cruz’s words, nor to the United States’ demands. He is referring to having caught “nothing” after putting out his nets and traps the night before. At his feet are discarded watermelon rinds. He tried to grow the crop to supplement his income but couldn’t sell it for a good price. “Do you want a slice?” he asks me.

“Está cabrón,” he tells me as I eat the watermelon, meaning “it’s fucked up.” “Should be the title of your book.”

Fisherman Jesús Chávez on the shores of Lake Toronto. Photo: Todd Miller.

Later at dusk in the small town of Camargo, where I am staying, I get a coffee at a small stand in the town’s central plaza and sit on a wrought-iron bench. All around are holiday lights. All around are people out and about, kids on scooters and tricycles. I see Christmas trees decorated with large ornaments in the storefronts. December into the holidays is my favorite time of the year. Even with a dire forecast for next year, life always slows down, becomes more reflective, more present. There are indeed many things to worry about. But there is something about this plaza here in Mexico, where I can find a calm joy, at least for now.

As I sit, I read the late Irish poet John O’Donohue’s book Beauty: The Invisible Embrace. I think about my day on the water as the poet contends that the violation of beauty is a fundamental element of today’s global crisis. “When we awaken to the call of beauty,” O’Donohue writes, “we become aware of new ways of being in the world.” Soon it is dusk, and the sky has clouds blazing across it, and there are even a few surprising raindrops. Across from me a group of women have gathered, two sitting on another wrought-iron bench, but several others have brought chairs from their homes as if the plaza were their living room. I come to understand, over the next few days, that this is a nightly ritual. Each time I see it, I think how much I love Mexico. And how imperative it is to think about things globally, not territorially, especially when it comes to environmental chaos.

Maybe 2025 could be the year to discard artificial borders—not necessarily the physical, militarized ones, which won’t be budging for a while, but the more easily movable ones, the psychological ones. Maybe 2025 could be a year that focuses on interconnectedness between people and peoples—like underground mycelia networks—rather than the brute territorial divisiveness that will surely emanate from Washington. I am, indeed, searching for new ways of being.

The Rio Conchos in central south Chihuahua. It is feared that the river will dry up considerably in 2025 threatening the water supply of the town of Camargo. Photo: Todd Miller.

The next day I visit a rancho. It consists mainly of a pecan grove, but also has a drying alfalfa field. There, I meet with a farmer named Miguel. “What do you think about the incoming president?” he asks, referring, of course, to Donald Trump. At this point we have been talking for about 15 minutes. We are walking under the pecan trees on dry cracked soil near Camargo. The soil tells the story of 2024: it hasn’t rained. There isn’t enough water in the reservoir to irrigate this year, and Miguel knows this.

We are just a few miles away from the Boquilla Dam, which was commandeeredby the Mexican military in 2020. The military tried to open the valves to pay the United States with what was going to be irrigation water. What resulted was a serious water battle. Thousands of farmers converged around the dam and, after many clashes, forced the military out. The farmers shut down the valves. This time, when I ask if people thought the military would come for the water again, the response has been “what water?”

Miguel walks through the pecan trees. Photo: Todd Miller.

Miguel tells me he asked about Trump because before he came to this farm 15 years ago (he is an employee), he had lived in the United States for decades. He worked the corn harvests near Albuquerque, New Mexico. He picked grapes and chiles. If there is no water to irrigate here, Miguel tells me, there could be a lot of migration north. And if there is a mass deportation, he tells me, “there’s going to be a lot of problems.” He goes on, “I know because I worked the fields there. What are they going to do with the fields? The agriculture? Undocumented people are the ones who work there. Are they going to deport them here?”

And here, he says, “va a correr sangre antes de correr agua”: blood will flow before water does.

He asks what I think they should do, since I come here commissioned by the United States. I tell him I am not commissioned by the United States; I’m an independent journalist. I tell him I came here because the world seems to be at a crossroads, a crucial moment, and things like borders and water are at the center of that. I think about Alonso Montañes, on Lake Toronto, Gerardo Delgado showing me his meager catch, and Jesús Chávez saying “está cabrón.” I think about the women in the central plaza meeting up every night, even as the threat of water running out in Camargo looms for 2025. Would these people be the guides to a new way of being? I think that’s likely. That’s why I’m here, I tell Miguel. That’s why I’m talking to you, because you are the person who knows.

This originally appeared in The Border Chronicle.

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Putin meeting with Bashar al-Assad. Photo: Valery Sharifulin, TASS.

The lightning collapse of the Assad government in Syria in recent weeks made it clear that pretty much no one, inside Syria or out, considered this to be a state worth fighting for. It also seemed pretty clear that Turkey (with the probable backing of Israel and the US) had taken the opportunity to use the forces it had been training in Idlib for some years to make a serious power play. The west have long sought to turn Syria into a ‘failed state’ on the Iraq-Libya model, and the new situation has allowed Israel to destroy, almost overnight, the vast bulk of the country’s military installations, and expand its occupation in the South. This is what they have all been working for for thirteen years. What is less clear is the extent to which Russia was in on this move.

The mainstream interpretation is essentially that the latest turn of events is a major blow to Russia. Syria was Russia’s only solid Arab ally, home to its only warm-water naval base (Tartus) as well as a huge airbase (Hmeimim) crucial for its operations in Africa in particular. The ‘loss’ of Syria was therefore a crippling blow to Moscow; a consequence, supposedly, of the Russian army being bogged down in Ukraine and thus unable to commit the necessary military resources to put down the insurrection in Syria.

Combined with the fact that Iran and Hezbollah were also both recovering from Israeli attacks, this created a window of opportunity for the insurgents and their backers to make their move. And it was a window that might have been very brief: Hezbollah could regroup quickly and, if Trump were to honour his promise to immediately impose a peace deal on Ukraine on coming to office, large numbers of Russian forces could be again free to operate in Syria, perhaps within a couple of months.

This is obviously part of the picture. Russia’s options were clearly limited. Any deal it cut would have been made from a position of weakness, at least relative to its position in, say, 2018. But that doesn’t mean no deal was made at all. It is incredibly unlikely, in my view, that Putin would not have been consulted in advance.

Firstly, the risk of large swathes of Turkey’s carefully groomed insurgents being simply wiped out by Russian airstrikes was serious, and both Erdogan and HTS would have sought to avoid this eventuality if at all possible. Even if Putin lacked the capacity to ultimately defeat the uprising, they would certainly have attempted to convince him not to try rather than simply cross their fingers and hope that he didn’t.

Secondly, although it is easy to say in hindsight, this takeover was clearly in the cards for some time. All the fighters from former opposition-held territories retaken by government forces during the war had been pushed into Idlib. There they were joined, in March 2020, by over 20,000 Turkish troops, including special forces, armoured units and light infantry including the 5th Commando Brigade which specialises in paramilitary operations and mountain warfare. They were not there for a picnic; for four years they have been, in plain sight, training and consolidating the insurgent forces to relaunch their insurrection. Russia was obviously aware of this and would have planned for it.

Furthermore, although Russia might have found it difficult to commit large numbers of its own troops to Syria, it could certainly have subsidised the salaries of Syrian army soldiers, which could well have gone some way to mitigating the mundane bread-and-butter defections and passivity within the Syrian army. It chose not to do so, presumably for a reason.

This does not mean, of course, that the whole thing was a Kremlin plot all along, as some are now trying to suggest. One theory claims that Putin, by allowing the Syrian government to fall, has cunningly set a trap for the west, who will now be bogged down trying to stabilise Syria for years to come, just as the Soviets were bogged down in 1980s Afghanistan. But this suggestion makes no sense – the transformation of Syria into a ‘failed state’ has always been the west’s aim, which is why they have backed the most sectarian forces to accomplish it. They achieved this in Libya without getting ‘bogged down;’ they hoped to repeat their success in Syria, and they have now done so. This theory seems to be a desperate clutching of straws by people who simply cannot interpret any event as anything other than a genius plan by the Grand Master.

The truth, I suspect, is rather more nuanced. Here is a  working hypothesis: the basic parameters of the HTS takeover of Syria were worked out and agreed in advance by Erdogan, Netanyahu, Putin and Trump. I suspect Trump offered Putin a straight swap – Syria for eastern Ukraine; with the caveat that Russia could keep its Syrian bases. This was acceptable to Putin for several reasons.

Firstly, obviously, eastern Ukraine is his priority. Secondly, his only real concern in Syria was those bases, anyway. He may well have come round to the west’s ‘Divide and Ruin’ strategy – essentially, that it is easier and cheaper to secure your specific assets (bases, mines, oil wells etc) in a failed state using local militias, private security and/or your own armed forces than it is to secure an entire state to do so for you. Thirdly, Assad had, by all accounts, not been fully playing ball with Russia, and had been unwilling to turn Syria into the pure vassal state that Putin was demanding, making himself less valuable and more expendable in so doing. Fourth, Russia’s ultimate goal to take over patronage from the US of its Middle East client states can only be done by demonstrating Russia’s usefulness to Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia. In facilitating the fruition of those states’ thirteen-year regime-change operation in Syria, he has certainly done that, paving the way for (and perhaps already part of) future collaborations and deepening alliances. Fifth, just because Iran is an ‘ally’ of Russia, does not mean Russia wants it to be strong and autonomous. Quite the opposite. Like any imperial power, what Russia seeks are not allies, but dependencies. This latest move has gone a long way to transforming Iran from a Russian ally to a Russian dependency.

Cutting off Iran from the resistance in Lebanon and Gaza is no bad thing from Russia’s point of view: partly because Iran’s patronage of those groups acts as a source of power and autonomy for Iran, giving it some kind of ‘deterrence’ independent of the Russian defensive umbrella. If the resistance is cut off and neutered, Iran’s only source of deterrence (other than its own, admittedly formidable but nonetheless heavily Russian-reliant, defences) is Russia. And popular, autonomous, working-class resistance militias (such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis) are a nuisance for any imperial power anyway, a constant potential spanner-in-the-works to any colonial carve-up agreed by the Big Men.

And finally, of course, as discussed above, Putin’s options were limited; he could certainly have slowed the rebel advance but it is unclear whether he could have defeated it, and even the attempt to do so would have entailed some, potentially quite significant, diversion of manpower from the war on Ukraine. With limited options available, a deal that allowed him to keep eastern Ukraine and his Syrian bases would have likely seemed like the best available.

Claims that the latest events are a huge blow to Russia are therefore overstated. In strategic terms, if the bases are maintained, nothing has really been lost, other than a tedious responsibility to maintain an unpopular and disobedient client. And, in the longer-term, regional picture, much may have been gained, as suggested above.

The other argument often made is that this is a blow to Russian ‘prestige,’ that its ‘stock’ as a power willing and able to defend its allies will have been reduced significantly. A report from the Institute for the Study of War published shortly before the fall of Damascus, for example, claims that “Assad’s collapse would damage the global perception of Russia as an effective partner and protector, potentially threatening Russia’s partnerships with African autocrats and its resulting economic, military, and political influence in Africa.”

That’s possible, of course. But Putin’s ditching of Assad might in fact send a different message to Putin’s new African friends: “Don’t think you can just do whatever you want and still expect to be protected. Remember you are expendable. We can throw you to the dogs at any moment. And without our support, you won’t last five minutes. Never forget you are not an ally, but a client.” African leaders contemplating any resistance to the full integration of their armies under Russian tutelage may well be chastened by this message, and in a way entirely beneficial to Russian interests.

And whilst it is true that EU leaders are now demanding that HTS kick out the Russians, the truth is that it is not really the EU’s opinion that matters, but Trump’s. Let’s see what he says on the matter; and more importantly, what he does.

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

It’s been a bad few months for democracy. Election results offensive to the European Union were annulled in Romania; an attempted coup occurred in Georgia over elections that didn’t go the way the west wanted; the French government, widely hated, teetered over the abyss as president Emmanual Macron tried to ignore the last election; on December 16, Washington’s pet German government fell; lots of funny-business happened in the Moldovan referendum and election, amid widespread disenfranchisement of Moldovan voters living in Russia; elections were long ago cancelled in dictatorial Ukraine; and South Korea hosted an attempted coup. In short, western democracies’ storied enchantment with elections is over. As western populations grow sick and tired of their political class and vote against it, what are elites to do? Annul, cancel, overturn and ignore the elections, that’s what. The problem, for the west, is the voters.

What will happen if far-right Alternative for Deutschland sweeps the early German elections in February, or if far-left France Insoumise does the same in France? Will the U.S. through its NATO and EU tentacles annul those votes? Don’t think it won’t try. And Washington doesn’t even have to give the order, because its European puppets know exactly what’s expected of them. Granted, the Romanian front-runner, so feared by NATO, Calin Georgescu, was far right. But so what? Besides, I doubt that’s what led to the constitutional court vacating the vote. More likely it was his opposition to the Ukraine War – hence the court citing “foreign influence” (translation: Russian) via TikTok as its flimsy basis for negating the election. Incidentally, reports are coming in that the heat and internet to Georgescu’s house have been cut off, and, surprise! he can’t get anyone on the phone to help with this.

But you can’t blame European honchos for ditching elections. They’re just following Washington’s lead. After all, the post-2016 phony Russiagate hysteria may not have succeeded in ousting Trump, as was intended, but it did provide the template for American vassals. The four years of lawfare against Trump (and then another four after he left office) blazed the trail for Europe, so that now, if a candidate not favored by political bigwigs wins, all they have to do is scream “Russian influence!” to dump the election. In other words, democracy is dying in the west. It’s kicking the bucket in Europe – and if Trump ends the Ukraine War (provided Biden doesn’t utterly sabotage his peace efforts before he takes office) or gets us out of the NATO sinkhole, you can bet your paycheck the 2028 establishment campaign will dust off the 2016 playbook and get right to work.

In western media, Georgescu has been portrayed as an unknown. This is false. He is well-known in Romania and had a diplomatic career. But he is also a religious nationalist, and that’s verboten in the EU; worse yet, the U.S., aka NATO, built its biggest military airbase in Europe – where? You got it, Romania. So Washington can’t have just anybody running that country. It must be someone who will keep everything copacetic with the U.S. A nationalist opposed to Washington’s pet proxy war in Ukraine is not that someone.

 As for Georgia, there the electorate proved itself most unreliable to the Exceptional Empire. It voted in a government that actually dares to require foreign NGOs to register as such – you know, the way we do, here in the United States. But here, those NGOs don’t aim to overthrow the government, like they do in Georgia, in order for Tbilisi to open a second front against Moscow. Indeed, the vast majority of rioters against the Georgian government, who were arrested, were – I’m shocked! Shocked! – foreign, i.e. European. The icing on the cake is that the French president of Georgia refused to leave office when her term expired – a president with French and Georgian passports, who boasts Nazis in her family tree.

The EU finagled things more successfully in Moldova. That nation’s October 20 referendum on joining the EU won – kinda. In country, the Moldovan government only snagged 50 percent of the vote, but Moldovan expats in Europe gave it a boost, while the 400,000 Moldovans living in Russia found, to their dismay, only two polling stations open for them, by their government, in Moscow. That meant as few as 10,000 of them got to vote. And as East European expert and political scientist Ivan Katchanovski tweeted October 21, many pro-Russian citizens in Transdniestria could not vote. So all in all, the Moldovan referendum was a sorry excuse for a democratic exercise. Then there was also Moldova’s presidential election, equally compromised. But hey, Washington’s EU vassal got to lure a country out of Russia’s orbit, and that’s all that counts, not mere democracy, right? After all, Washington doesn’t stand for democracy. It stands for and has long stood for something quite different – power. Just look at it backing a terrorist takeover of Syria, among them a ruler on whose head Washington has a $10,000,000 bounty. Let that sink in. One American hand posts a huge reward for a terrorist, while the other hand paves his way to power. The obvious conclusion (also obvious to any student of American-backed coups and regime changes abroad going back at least 70 years) is that U.S. doesn’t stand for anything besides power (certainly not anything as antiquated and nettlesome as international law). That’s the definition of a gangster state.

If you doubt that, just peek at South Korea, where the CIA’s man, president Yoon Suk Yeol, faced a grim electoral future. The voters were unlikely to support him in the next election, given that they mostly back the opposition. And that opposition, per Col. Douglas Macgregor, wants a Korean four-star general, not an American one, to head the roughly 500,000 Korean armed forces and also wants to boot the 30,000 U.S. troops off the peninsula. This, of course, goes over in Washington with all the joy of a root canal.

So what to do? Yoon took the bull by the horns December 3 with martial law. During the few hours when it looked like our man in Seoul had pulled off a coup, the Biden gang was coyly silent. But there is nothing enduring in this world, as Gogol noted, and even the most brazen attempts at subverting democracy occasionally fail. The opposition gathered and voted against Yoon. His defense minister was deposed, jailed and attempted suicide, and Yoon’s own tenure came now, ahem, under a cloud, to say the least, as insurrection charges loomed, and he was impeached and suspended from office.

And don’t forget France, where Macron, affronted by an EU parliament vote last summer that installed many anti-Ukraine War representatives, totally lost it and, quite idiotically and hubristically, called snap elections. He promptly lost those to the left, but then snubbed the voters by breaking with tradition and refusing to appoint a left-wing prime minister. Surprising no one, the center-rightist he chose received a vote of no confidence, and Macron’s government looked likely to fall. That was temporarily forestalled by the appointment, December 13, of a centrist prime minister. But if his government does ultimately crash, expect Macron to do something really stupid, like suspend the legislature, call a national emergency or, a la Yoon, declare martial law.

Lastly of course we have Ukraine, that shining example of democracy, where its president rules illegally, having cancelled elections, banned the opposition, throttled the press, exiled the church, jailed anyone he doesn’t like and press-ganged thousands of vehemently objecting Ukrainian men into the military. All this while ferociously lining his pockets with western, mainly American, funds. This is the tyranny upon which Biden bestows hundreds of billions of our hard-earned tax dollars. It’s not even supported by Ukrainians, most of whom, according to recent polls, want the war over. But Joe “War Is My Legacy” Biden, in his crazed enthusiasm for Ukrainian combat, just won’t stop. On December 11, Ukraine fired six ATACAMS into Russia. We can all thank God they did little damage, since the Russians shot two down and diverted four with electronic warfare. Had they inflicted real harm, we in the west might very well have had worse troubles than the death of democracy, namely death itself. Biden appears oblivious to this reality. For us, what’s at stake is life itself, and the whole, wondrous human and natural world. For him, it appears to be just another step on the path of endless war, another day, another dollar.

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This fall, shortly after the election, the House passed a dangerous piece of legislation that many are calling the “nonprofit killer” bill.

The bill has an incongruous title: the “Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.”

Among other things, it would give the Treasury Department the authority to unilaterally accuse nonprofit organizations of supporting “terrorism” — and revoke their nonprofit status. Critics like the ACLU say it’s a blank check for presidents to shut down organizations that criticize them.

When the bill was introduced in the spring, it was largely viewed as an effort to silence pro-Palestinian activism. At the time, dozens of House Democrats supported it alongside most Republicans. But after Donald Trump’s White House win, amid fears that the incoming president would use it as a tool to bludgeon his perceived enemies, it passed with significantly less Democratic support.

But really, it should never have been introduced or passed to begin with, no matter the political winds. The bill is considered unlikely to pass the Senate this year, but could be reintroduced next year and signed by President Trump.

This would have a dangerous chilling effect on speech.

Consider the Florida woman Briana Boston, who recently said “Delay, deny, depose. You people are next,” during a phone call with a health insurance representative after her coverage was denied. It was a reference to what the killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson wrote on bullet casings in a now-infamous targeted assassination.

Boston has no history of violence, nor does she own firearms. But she wasn’t only arrested — she was charged with threatening to commit an act of terrorism.

What she was really guilty of was expressing vitriol against corporate CEOs for an inhumane business model. It’s not hard to imagine such a scenario applied to nonprofits in the coming years either.

Nonprofits are effectively the voice of civil society in the United States. And even without HR 9495, they already have severe limits on their speech. In order to keep their nonprofit status, groups have to follow strict guidelines published by the Internal Revenue Service when speaking about elections.

As a journalist who works in the nonprofit world, I’ve seen the resulting self-censorship first hand. Many journalists and nonprofit leaders feared compromising their institutions if they warned about Donald Trump’s fascism, or even criticized Joe Biden over Gaza, ahead of the 2024 election.

Meanwhile, for-profit industries have enjoyed continuous and ever-growing impunity to advocate for whatever they want, no matter how destructive.

For example, the health insurance and fossil fuel industries play with people’s lives by denying coverage and spewing carbon, respectively, but have been given the right to spend enormous amounts of their ill-gotten gains in campaign contributions, putting an outsize thumb on the democratic scale.

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, they have greater means to make anonymous donations to Political Action Committees to lobby government and help elect politicians.

The Supreme Court has long considered corporations to be, in a legal sense, people. In contrast to such abstract entities, we humans can be jailed, silenced, or even killed by corporate-controlled systems — and the nonprofits representing our interests can be officially sanctioned for “political speech.”

Today, not only do corporations have greater means to speak more freely than the rest of us do, they are increasingly grabbing political power to cement their stranglehold.

Trump’s incoming cabinet will likely be filled with billionaires. And his proposed Treasury Secretary pick — who would ostensibly oversee the department making determinations under HR 9495 — is a longtime hedge fund  investment manager named Scott Bessent. Trump has also openly promised to bend regulations for billionaire investors.

Seen within this context, HR 9495 is not only a danger to civil society’s right to speech — it is a serious escalation in favor of corporations.

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On December 1, President Joe Biden announced that he was pardoning his son Hunter for all the crimes he committed from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024. Biden’s sweeping pardon of all of his son’s abuses epitomizes how presidents and their families are now above the law. It also illustrates how the “King James Test for American Democracy” could become the death of the Constitution.

The American Revolution was heavily influenced by a political backlash that began across the ocean in the early 1600s. King James I claimed a “divine right” to unlimited power in England, sparking fierce clashes with Parliament. Since the 9/11 attacks, some of the same moral and legal principles have been advanced in this nation, but few people recognize the historical roots.

Before he became king of England in 1604, James was king of Scotland. He cemented his claims to absolute power there by launching witch panics and burning hundreds of Scottish women alive to sanctify his power. Harsh methods were not a problem because James insisted that God would never allow an innocent person to be accused of witchcraft. “While James’s assertion of his [Scottish] royal authority is evident in his highly unorthodox act of taking control of the pre-trial examinations, it is his absolutism which is most apparent in his advocating the use of torture to force confessions during the investigations,” according to the University of Texas’s Allegra Geller, author of “Daemonologie and Divine Right: The Politics of Witchcraft in Late Sixteenth-Century Scotland.” Torture produced “confessions” that spurred further panic and the destruction of far more victims. England did not have similar witch panics because officials were almost entirely prevented from using torture to generate false confessions. James justified the illicit torture, “asserting his belief that as an anointed king, he was above the law,” and similar rationales emitted from the Bush administration from 2002 onward in the name of the 9/11 attacks.

After Queen Elizabeth died and James became king, he vowed that he had no obligation to respect the rights of the English people: “A good king will frame his actions according to the law, yet he is not bound thereto but of his own goodwill.” And “law” was whatever James decreed. Nor did he flatter the men elected to the House of Commons: “In the Parliament (which is nothing else but the head court of the king and his vassals) the laws are but craved by his subjects and only made by him at their rogation.” James proclaimed that God intended for the English to live at his mercy: “It is certain that patience, earnest prayers to God, and amendment of their lives are the only lawful means to move God to relieve them of their heavy curse” of oppression. And there was no way for Parliament to subpoena God to confirm his blanket endorsement of King James.

James reminded his subjects that “even by God himself [kings] are called Gods.” Seventeenth-century Englishmen recognized the grave peril in the king’s words. A 1621 Parliament report eloquently warned: “If [the king] founds his authority on arbitrary and dangerous principles, it is requisite to watch him with the same care, and to oppose him with the same vigor, as if he indulged himself in all the excesses of cruelty and tyranny.” Historian Thomas Macaulay observed in 1831, “The policy of wise tyrants has always been to cover their violent acts with popular forms. James was always obtruding his despotic theories on his subjects without the slightest necessity. His foolish talk exasperated them infinitely more than forced loans would have done.” Macaulay scoffed that James was “in his own opinion, the greatest master of king-craft that ever lived, but who was, in truth, one of those kings whom God seems to send for the express purpose of hastening revolutions.” After James’s son, Charles I, relied on the same dogmas and ravaged much of the nation, he was beheaded. Charles I’s son ascended to the English throne in 1660, but his abuses spurred the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and sweeping reforms that sought to forever curb the power of monarchs.

A century and a half after King James denigrated Parliament, a similar declaration of absolute power spurred the American Revolution. The Stamp Act of 1765 compelled Americans to purchase British stamps for all legal papers, newspapers, cards, advertisements, and even dice. After violent protests erupted, Parliament rescinded the Stamp Act but passed the Declaratory Act, which decreed that Parliament “had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.” The Declaratory Act canonized Parliament’s right to use and abuse Americans as it pleased.

The Declaratory Act ignited an intellectual powder keg among colonists determined not to live under the heel of either monarchs or parliaments. Thomas Paine wrote in 1776 that “in America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.” The Founding Fathers, having endured oppression, sought to build a “government of laws, not of men.” That meant that “government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand — rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers,” as Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek noted in 1944.

For generations, American politicians spoke reverently of the Constitution as America’s highest law. But in recent years, the Constitution has fallen into disrepute. The rule of law now means little more than the enforcement of the secret memos of the commander-in-chief.

We now have the “King James Test for American Democracy.” As long as the president does not formally proclaim himself a tyrant, we are obliged to pretend he is obeying the Constitution. Government is not lawless regardless of how many laws it violates — unless and until the president formally announces he is above the law.

While King James bluntly declared his right to absolute power 400 years ago, recent presidents only make such claims via their lawyers, often in secret documents that citizens are supposed to never see.

The most important recent change in American political thinking is nonchalance regarding government criminality. The notion that “it is not a crime if government does it” is the new conventional wisdom in Washington. It doesn’t matter which agency or official broke the law. Instead, the only prudent response is to pretend nothing is amiss.

Nowadays, every act of government is judged in a vacuum, as if every constitutional violation is a fluke. This is the mirror image of how the Founding Fathers viewed government power. In 1768, John Dickinson wrote that colonists fixated on “not what evil has actually attended particular measures but, what evil, in the nature of things, is likely to attend them.” Dickinson pointed out that because “nations in general, are not apt to think until they feel … nations have lost their liberty.” The Founding Fathers looked at the liberties they were losing, while modern Americans focus myopically on the rights they supposedly still retain. Law professor John Phillip Reid, in his seminal work The Concept of Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution, observed that liberty in the 18th century was “largely thought of as freedom from arbitrary government…. The less a law restrained the citizen, and the more it restrained government, the better the law.”

But government officials now claim unlimited discretion to define the law and their own prerogatives. Jack Goldsmith, who headed the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2003–04, later explained how top Bush officials dealt with “laws they didn’t like: they blew through them in secret based on flimsy legal opinions that they guarded closely so no one could question the legal basis for the operations.” It is no longer a question of having good laws, including laws that permit officials limited flexibility for contingencies. The rule of law has come to mean nothing more than finding a single lawyer who will say “Yes, Master!” to his political overlords. But it is folly to make the survival of liberty hinge on lawyer’s sense of shame.

If the Iraq war had not turned into a debacle, most of the media and the political ruling class would have continued deferring to President George W. Bush almost across-the-board. As long as his popularity ratings were high, he could do little or no wrong. America’s “best and brightest” were as naive or craven as the courtiers who defended the mass burning of Scottish women 400+ years earlier.

The Constitution’s checks and balances failed to deter recent administrations from erecting the legal scaffolding of dictatorship. Instead, implausible denials of seizing excessive power have been followed by “dictatorial apathy.” Lawless power grabs have become another background noise in Washington. Presidents and their legal teams can claim absolute power — and almost no one inside the government or the Justice Department blows the whistle. President Bush could boast that he was obeying the law because his appointees assured him that he was the law. Legions of government employees safeguarded their careers by going along and enforcing Bush-era absolutist legal doctrines. That settled any doubts about whether Justice Department officials would be willing tools for future presidents who trample the Constitution.

Inside the Beltway, a mystical adoration of power is taken as proof of wisdom. In 2007, Bush nominated former federal judge Michael Mukasey as attorney general. Three years earlier, Mukasey had proclaimed that “the hidden message in the structure of the Constitution” is that the government is entitled to “the benefit of the doubt.” Mukasey did not reveal where the message was hidden. Mukasey’s “benefit of the doubt” assertion may have helped him snare the top law-enforcement job in the nation, where he provided all the benefits Bush needed.

The more power politicians capture, the more flattery they hear, and the more deluded they usually become. A phalanx of academics is always ready to cheer power-hungry presidents. In 2007, Harvard University government professor Harvey Mansfield exalted “one-man rule” in a Wall Street Journal oped, scoffed at the rule of law, and declared that “free government should show its respect for freedom even when it has to take it away.” And since the president is entitled to vast power, how would we know it is still a “free government?” Presumably because it would be a crime to assert otherwise. Mansfield scorned contemporaries who “forget to consider emergencies when liberties are dangerous and law does not apply.” The previous year, Mansfield wrote in a Weekly Standard article that the “Office of President” is “larger than the law” and that “ordinary power needs to be supplemented or corrected by the extraordinary power of a prince, using wise discretion.” Mansfield also asserted that in emergencies, “liberties are dangerous and law does not apply.” Such assertions may have swayed the National Endowment for the Humanities to select Mansfield in 2007 to deliver its Jefferson lecture — “the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual and public achievement in the humanities.”

Mansfield’s cheerleading fits a pattern that goes back millenniums. Throughout history, intellectuals downplayed the perils of political power. As long as court intellectuals were treated royally, rulers were indemnified for any and all abuses of the peasantry.

As French philosopher Bertrand Jouvenal noted in 1945, “Authority can never be too despotic for the speculative man, so long as he deludes himself that its arbitrary force will further his plans.” John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the 20th century, exemplified this attitude. Keynes declared in 1944 that “dangerous acts can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly, which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel wrongly.” And who is to judge whether the community “thinks and feels rightly?” The same politicians seizing boundless power.

The same passion for absolving high-level wrongdoers is often expressed in muffled terms by the editorial pages of the Washington Post and other leading papers. From 2008 onwards, the Post inveighed against permitting lawsuits that sought to hold former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and other top officials liable for the torture and other abuses that occurred on their watch. One Post editorial fretted: “Officials should not have to fear personal lawsuits for performing their duties in good faith and in violation of no established legal precedent.” This practically assumed the existence of “good faith torture” — as if maiming and beating people to death was the moral equivalent of a clerical error.

Unfortunately, the same “absolve everything” mindset often prevails in the federal judiciary. Government officials have become practically untouchable at the same time that they have become far more dangerous. The Supreme Court has expanded sovereign immunity like a toxic legal cloud. As Senator John Taylor warned in 1821, “There are no rights where there are no remedies, or where the remedies depend upon the will of the aggressor.”

Nowadays, lawless government is simply benevolence on amphetamines. Rather than the rule of law, we now have the “friend of humanity rhetorical test.” As long as politicians profess to be doing good, it is bad taste to quibble about legal technicalities or archaic constitutional clauses. The question is not what the president actually did but whether he “meant well.” The word “dictator” applies only to government officials who publicly announce plans to do bad things to good people.

How many dictates must a politician issue before we can label him a dictator? Sen. Daniel Webster warned in 1837 that “the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.” Americans must decide whether they want good leashes or a good master. We can either stop politicians from continuing to abuse their power, or we can spend our time looking for a wise and merciful despot. Either way, democracy cannot survive power worship.

*** An earlier version of this piece was published by the Future of Freedom Foundation

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Photograph Source: Shark1989z – CC BY-SA 4.0

For the past several decades, the United States and Israel have tried to isolate Syria in the Middle East.  Only U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, after the October War in 1973, tried and succeeded in bringing Syria into the step-by-step peace process negotiations with Israel.  Since then, however, U.S. efforts to negotiate a peace such as the Reagan plan in 1982 or the unsuccessful efforts to arrange an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon have ignored any role for Syria.  Currently, U.S. tolerance of Israeli military power against Syria complicates the task of reducing the violence and allowing the Syrian rebels to have the time and space to establish a stable government in Damascus.

For most of its history, Syrian authority has been marked by instability due to authoritarian leadership and a diverse population.  The fragmented nature of Syrian society; the absence of a strong national identity; and the debilitating conflict with Israel have contributed to weak governance.  Any Syrian government, particularly the current one that tries to take hold after 14 years of confrontation, will face a difficult geopolitical environment that limits policy options; inhibits risk-taking; and compromises central authority.  The various ethnic divisions, even among the majority Sunni Moslems, will make it difficult to achieve political and economic cohesion.

One hundred years ago, the wife of the British consul described inter-communal relations in a way that still fits: “They hate one another.  The Sunnis excommunicate the Shias, and both hate the Druze; all detest the Alawites; the Maronites do not love anybody but themselves are duly abhorred by all; the Greek Orthodox abominate the Greek Catholics and the Latins; and all despise the Jews.”  The Alawites. who have politically dominated the country in recent times, were singled out for persecution in the past by the Sunni majority,  Most of the population in Syria is Moslem, but 20 percent of the Moslems belong to various schismatic sects.

Today, Syria is in predictable chaos, and the presence of numerous foreign powers adds to the conflict.  Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have made it particularly difficult for the new regime by launching hundreds of air strikes against Syria, and seizing territory beyond the Golan Heights that provided a sightline to Damascus.  Former Israeli Air Force officers commented on social media that these attacks were carried out as part of an operation based on plans that were drawn up years ago.

Turkey has backed various Syrian rebel groups along the Syrian-Turkish border, and plans to continue the fight against Syrian Kurds based in northeastern Syria, where the Kurds have support from nearly 1,000 U.S. military personnel.  Among the foreign powers in Syria, Turkey has the greatest access and influence with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which led the fight against former president Bahshar al-Assad.

There are several favorable signs that point to opportunities for HTS.  The Russians appear to be preparing to withdraw forces from some of its bases in Syria.  Unfortunately, it is likely that Ukraine will pay the price for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s humiliation in Syria. Moscow’s setback in Syria may make it harder to get Russia to enter negotiations with Ukraine to end a war that is reaching the three-year mark.

Iran’s initial reluctance to get engaged in any effort to save the Assad regime or to threaten the new Syrian transition government also points to a possible opportunity for HTS.  Iran has withdrawn its Quds forces that consisted mainly of refugees from Pakistan and Afghanistan who had fled to Iran.  Syria had been the only state in Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” to weaken Israel.  Iran’s ability to arm Hezbollah forces in Lebanon will become far more difficult.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; the U.S. mainstream media; and Biden’s national security team are jointly assigning credit to the United States and Israel for allowing the Syrian rebels to swiftly take over the government.  In actual fact, if there is one foreign power that deserves the credit for the rebel takeover, it would be the courageous fighters from Ukraine who have fought the Russian army to a standstill and made it impossible for Russia to provide necessary support to former Syrian President al-Assad.  Iran’s preoccupation with Israeli military power and the defeat suffered by Hezbollah prevented any support role for Assad.

Israel can be counted on to make every effort to destabilize the transition government in Syria, and only the United States could threaten to cut off military aid to Israel that could bring a stop to Israeli air strikes. It seems unlikely that either the Biden administration or the incoming Trump mob will consider doing so.  Even worse, the Netanyahu government, which seems to favor protracted fighting everywhere, could decide to use its air power in the wake of two successful raids against Iran in April and October 2024, to try to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.

There are conflicting signals coming from the Biden administration.  On the one hand, the United States has entered discussions with officials from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in the wake of its overthrow of the Assad government.  The United States considers HTS a terrorist organization, so the Biden administration’s willingness to engage in discussions is a healthy sign.  But the Biden administration is still deploying air power in Syria against Islamic State militants. Nor has Biden ever indicated a willingness to put a stop to the obscene militancy of Israel against its Arab neighbors, particularly the Palestinians.  The United States would benefit from the emergence of a stable government in Damascus that will not resort to terrorism at home or abroad. Over the long run, this could lead to a U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East.

It is difficult to imagine that a Trump administration will apply any pressure against the Netanyahu government, and it is particularly threatening that both the Netanyahu national security team and the incoming Trump team support the notion of military force against Iran.
Indeed, Trump and his national security appointees have threatened to walk away from the Syrian situation, which Trump wanted to do in his first term.

The military engagement of U.S., Israeli, and Turkish forces will make it difficult  for the application of international diplomacy that could ameliorate the current situation in Syria  But if the United States were willing to lead an international coalition made up of European states, Japan, and Australia, it is possible that a stable interim government could be created in Syria.  But if Trump decides to enforce a rigid “American First” policy and refuses to engage in an international effort to end the violence, then the Syrian situation will worsen.  If so, as Garrison Keillor used to say, “things will get worse before they get worse.”

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Image by Ian Hutchinson.

A new kind of unity around Palestine is finally finding its way to the Palestine solidarity movement worldwide.

The reason behind this unity is obvious: Gaza.

The world’s first live-streamed genocide in the Gaza Strip, and the growing spontaneous compassion, thus solidarity, with the Palestinian victims, helped recenter priorities from the typical political and ideological conflicts back to where they should have always remained: the plight of the Palestinian people.

In other words, it is the sheer criminality of Israel, the steadfastness, resilience and dignity of the Palestinians, and the genuine love for Palestine by ordinary people that have imposed themselves on the rest of the world.

While many solidarity groups, despite their differences, have always found margins for unity around Palestine, many did not.

Instead of rallying in support of a Palestinian justice-based discourse, mainly focused on ending the Israeli occupation, dismantling apartheid, and obtaining full Palestinian rights, many groups have rallied around their own ideological, political, and often personal priorities.

This led to deep divisions and, ultimately, the unfortunate splintering of what was meant to be a single global movement.

Though many rightly claim that the movement has suffered the dire consequences of the Syrian war and other conflicts linked to the so-called Arab Spring, in truth, the movement has historically been prone to divisions, long before the recent Middle East upheavals.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, starting in 1990, has left permanent scars on all progressive movements across the world, where, in the words of Domenico Losurdo, ‘western Marxists’ retreated to their academic hubs, and ‘eastern Marxists’ were left alone fighting the scourges of the US-led ‘new world order’.

The balkanization of the socialist movement globally, but mainly in western countries, can still be seen in the view of many socialist groups regarding the events underway in Palestine, and of their proscribed ‘solutions’ to the Israeli occupation.

Whether these ‘solutions’ are pertinent or not, it is of very little value to the struggle of the Palestinians on the ground; after all, these magic formulas are often developed in western academic laboratories, with little or no connection, whatsoever, to the events underway in Jenin, Khan Yunis or Jabaliya.

Additionally, there is the problem of transnational solidarity. This type of solidarity is simply conditioned on the expected return of an equal amount of solidarity in the form of political reciprocity.

This notion is a misinformed application of the concept of intersectionality, as in various disaffected groups offering mutual solidarity to amplify their collective voice and advance their interests.

While intersectionality at a global level is hardly functional, let alone tested – interstate relations are usually governed by political strategy, national interests, and geopolitical formations – intersectionality within a national and local framework is very much possible.

For the latter to carry meaning, however, it requires an organic understanding of the struggles of each group, a degree of social immersion, and genuine love and compassion for one another.

In the case of Palestine, however, this noble idea is often conflated with negotiable and transactional solidarity, which might work at the political stage, especially during times of elections, but rarely helps cement long-term bonds between oppressed communities over time.

The ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza has certainly helped many groups expand the margins of unity so that they may work together to bring the extermination of Gaza to an end, and to hold Israeli war criminals accountable in any way possible.

This positive sentiment, however, must continue long after the end of the genocide, until the Palestinian people are finally free from the yoke of Israeli settler colonialism.

The point here is that we already have numerous reasons to find and maintain unity around Palestine, without laboring to find ideological, political, or any other kind of common ground.

The settler-colonial Israeli project is but a manifestation of western colonialism and imperialism in their classical definitions. The genocide in Gaza is no different than the genocide of the Herero and Nama people of Namibia at the turn of the 20th century, and US-western interventionism in Palestine is no different than the destructive role played by Western countries in Vietnam and numerous other contested spaces all over the world.

Placing the Israeli occupation of Palestine in a colonial framework has helped many liberate themselves from confused notions about Israel’s ‘inherent’ rights over the Palestinians.

Indeed, there can be no justification for the existence of Israel as an exclusively ‘Jewish State’ in a land that belonged to the native Palestinian people.

By the same token, the much-touted Israeli ‘right to self-defense’, a notion that some ‘progressives’ continue to parrot, does not apply to military occupiers in an active state of aggression or those carrying out genocide.

Keeping the focus on Palestinian priorities also has other benefits, including that of moral clarity. Those who do not find the rights of the Palestinian people compelling enough to develop a united front were never intended to be part of the movement in the first place, thus their ‘solidarity’ is superficial, if at all genuine.

The road for Palestine liberation can only go through Palestine itself and, more specifically, the clarity of purpose of the Palestinian people who, more than any other nation in modern times, have paid and continue to pay the highest price for their freedom.

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Photograph Source: Suzie Tremmel – CC BY 2.0

International law is by nature multilateral.  Its ontology is universal and cannot be interpreted or applied selectively, today this way, tomorrow somewhat differently — or not at all.  In some cases violations of international law are loudly denounced by the international community; in other circumstances, comparable violations are followed by a deafening silence.  Indeed, the “crime of silence” implies tacit consent.  Qui tacet consentire videtur.  Individuals and States can thereby become complicit in the crime.  If not legally, certainly morally.

Experience in the United Nations and other international institutions illustrates how the vast body of international law with all of its treaties and protocols suffers from an acute bout of double standards, both in the interpretation and application of norms.  As politicians and journalists invoke international law à la carte, widespread cynicism sets in, resulting in a significant loss of the authority and credibility of the institutions

The UN Charter binds all States and peoples.  International treaties, whether bilateral or multilateral, bind the States parties and should be applied in good faith according to the principle pacta sunt servanda (Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, article 26[1]).  Whereas human rights are juridical, justiciable and, in principle, enforceable, the United Nations General Assembly and the Human Rights Council have a track record of applying international law selectively. Debates in the GA and HR Council are characterized by political instrumentalization of the facts and by what I would call “fake law”, since many diplomats simply invent “the law” as they go along. Enforcement becomes a farce, when it is done in the service of hegemons and not of humanity at large. When judgments and advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice are not enforced, the “rule of law” itself suffers.

We can and should demand professionalism and objectivity from the institutions established to protect our rights. These institutions should ensure accountability for violations of international law by governments and non-State actors, including transnational corporations.  The General Assembly and Human Rights Council should take appropriate measures to ensure that recourse and appropriate remedies for violations are made available to the victims.

Priorities are crucial in all human endeavors. What is on the agenda of the GA and HR Council? What is being discussed, what is being deliberately ignored? It is up to us to ensure that the institutions function according to their terms of reference, that there are checks and balances, that political action is ethical, not amoral, short-sighted and utilitarian. At least in democracies the electorate can demand transparency, ethics and justice.

Responsibility to Protect

If the “doctrine” of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) means anything (GA Resolution 60/1 of 24 October 2005, paragraphs 138-9), then it should have been invoked decades ago in the context of the Israeli denial of the right of self-determination of the Palestinian People, in the context of mass evictions, arrests, expulsions and ethnic cleansing, the Nakba.  R2P should have prevented the tragedy unfolding since 2020 in the Armenian Republic of Artsakh, better known as Nagorno Karabakh.  It should have been applied on behalf of the Sahraouis of Western Sahara, the Igbos and Ogonis of Biafra, the Tamils of Sri Lanka, the Kurds of Turkey, Iraq and Syria.

Without a doubt, many politicians today deserve being indicted and prosecuted by the International Criminal Court, surely those guilty of the crimes of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001.  Notwithstanding legal briefs filed with the ICC Prosecutor since 2004, no one was ever indicted. An investigation started by Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda[2] was terminated by her successor Karim Khan[3].  Over a period of 23 years since its establishment in 2002, the ICC has displayed a certain bias, indicted Africans, and enemies of the US and EU, including Vladimir Putin[4]. That is why it was comparable to an earthquake when Prosecutor Khan asked for arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu[5] and Hamas leaders.  This may eventually save the ICC from total collapse of its tenuous credibility.

Self-determination of peoples

A Special Session of the Human Rights Council on the issue of the self-determination of peoples would be appropriate, since the right of self-determination of peoples constitutes a jus cogens norm of international law, and thousands of human beings in all continents are being denied this right and many are killed in the attempt to claim it.  It must be well understood that the right of self-determination laid down in Articles 1 and 55 of the UN Charter, in Chapters XI and XII of the Charter, in common article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is not limited to decolonization, but extends the right to autonomy and/or independence to all peoples.  States are not only obliged to refrain from hindering this right; they have a duty to  pro-actively implement it.  Who are the rights holders?  As I proposed in my 2013 report to the General Assembly[6], the United Nations should accept petitions from all peoples deprived of self-determination, those living under foreign occupation, those enduring Apartheid, etc.  Among the many aspirants to self-determination we recognize the French of Quebec, the Scots, the Catalans, the Corsicans, the South Tiroleans, the Kurds, the West Papuans, the Rapa Nui, the native population of Hawaii, the indigenous peoples of Alaska and those living in “reservations” in the United States, the Mapuche of Chile and Argentina, the Igbos of Biafra, the Bubis of Equatorial Guinea, the Luchu of Okinawa (Ryukyu islands illegally annexed by Japan in 1880).

Progress and Retrogression

Progress and retrogression characterize the history of international law and human rights. Today the world is in chaos, but not more so than in the 18th. 19th and 20th centuries. At least we are not burning witches or massacring indigenous Hopi, Iroquois, Mohawks, Sioux, Taínos, Arawaks, Quechua — the slave trade is abolished, colonialism is drastically reduced. We have seen a phenomenal codification of legal norms, the UN Charter, the UDHR, the establishment of regional human rights courts. We hail the growing recognition of the rights of half the population of the planet – women, the measures taken on behalf of persons with disabilities. We welcome the gradual abolition of the cruelty of “capital punishment”. Yet, there is also significant retrogression in many fields, including the erosion of the concept of Peace as a Human Right, the backsliding from General Assembly Resolution 39/11 of 1984. Today there is scarce protection of the right to know, the right to access truthful information, the right to freedom of opinion and expression. We see censorship by governments and the private sector, the blocking of RT and Sputnik by the EU, the Orwellian new Digital Services Act, the brazen indoctrination practiced by the media, the excesses of “cancel culture”, the epidemic of self-censorship, the social acceptance of Islamophobia, Russophobia and Sinophobia. the crimes committed against 25 million victims of human trafficking, including 3.4 million children. Serious retrogression is evident in the weakened protection of family life and family values, the attacks on the concept of the family and parental authority, the denigration and ridicule of religious beliefs.

Retrogression is also apparent in the practices of institutions established to protect our rights. Many institutions have been hijacked for geopolitical and ideological purposes. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Iuvenalis, 6^th Satire, verses 347-48) Who guards over the guardians?[7] Institutions such as the UN Human Rights Council, ECHR, IACHR, OPCW often let themselves be hijacked by major powers and thus betray their mandates, weaponizing human rights instead of devising preventive strategies and mechanisms to promote and protect human dignity, to ensure that there are recourse and adequate remedies for the victims. Only we can be the guardians. While we realize that governments and the media lie to us, that they suppress crucial information, we — as citizens of democratic countries — must push back and reclaim democracy. We do not need any Ministry of Truth as in 1984.  But are we not already living in the dystopia of Huxley’s Brave New World ?

Prevention or Punishment?

Among the gravest instances of retrogression is the Western obsession with punishment, the primitive lex talionis, that self-righteousness that invites us to lapidate the adulteress[8], the arrogance of “lawfare” against dissidents, the persecution of whistleblowers.

If Christianity taught us anything, it is that we must forgive to be forgiven: et dimite nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimitimus debitoribus nostris[9]. Yet, the politicians and some mainstream ngo’s have transformed the notion of “amnesty”[10] into a curse word, as they have transformed “appeasement”[11] into an insult, although in the nuclear age the only rational approach in international affairs is conflict-prevention through diplomacy, give and take, quid-pro-quo, compromise.

Punishment is always after the fact, ex post facto.  Punishment does not make the victims whole.  Very often violations of international law and human rights are irreparable.  What is crucial is to prevent violations of international law and human rights, to set up mechanisms of “early warning” so as to address grievances before they degenerate into violence and grow into a threat to the peace and security of mankind.  Essential to conflict-prevention is confidence-building, engaging in dialogue, building bridges, creating the conditions for peace.  Si vis pacem, para pacem (if we want peace, we must proactively appease). Amnesties are not bad per se. Sometimes amnesties can pave the way to reconciliation. Revenge is incompatible with the acquis of civilization. Punishment is not a wise or civilized answer to problems.

Hope for the Future

Is there hope for humanity?  Of course there is!  It is in our hands to demand pro-active peace making from our governments, to demand more professionalism and objectivity from the United Nations and other international bodies.

Knowledge of the root causes of conflict facilitates the prevention or war. We need to reject provocations and escalations.  We need to develop the faculty of self-criticism so as to correct our own mistakes before we go around pointing fingers at others.  We must practice international solidarity, applying international law in good faith and not à la carte.

Our resolution for 2025 should be to continue waging peace, speaking truth to power, strengthening the United Nations Charter as a world constitution, rediscovering the spirituality of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Notes.

[1] https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/1_1_1969.pdf

[2] https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-fatou-bensouda-following-appeals-chambers-decision-authorising

[3] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/6/icc-prosecutor-defends-dropping-us-from-afghan-investigation

[4] https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-issue-arrest-warrants-against-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin-and

[5] https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/11/1157286

[6] https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n13/421/23/pdf/n1342123.pdf

[7] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.12542

[8] John 8, 1-11.  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%208:1-11&version=NLT

[9] Mathew 6, 9-13  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206%3A5-15&version=ESV;NIV

[10] Alfred de Zayas, “Amnesty Clause” and “Westphalia, Peace of” in R. Bernhardt (ed.) Encyclopedia of Public International Law, North Holland, Amsterdam 2000.

[11] https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/09/appeasement-reconsidered/

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Liberals hate Trump, no question about it. He’s the definition of illiberal: authoritarian, racist, sexist, and downright nasty. Not only that, he’s a living repudiation of the liberal delusion that America runs on meritocracy.

But you want to know a dirty, little secret? In back alleys, encrypted group chats, and off-the-record conversations, liberals will still support Trump on a case-by-case basis. Of course, they’d never vote for the guy, but they’ll give two cheers for some of his policies.

I discovered this ugly truth during Trump’s last term while writing an article on the shift in U.S. policy toward China from lukewarm engagement to hostile decoupling. The general consensus among the foreign policy elite was that, at least in terms of relations with Beijing, Trump was a useful idiot for slowing China’s roll with harsh rhetoric and tariffs.

“Trump is a madman, but I want to give him and his administration their due,” one prominent liberal intellectual told me. “We can’t keep playing on an unlevel playing field and take promises that are never delivered on. It’s really China’s turn to respond, and it’s long overdue.”

It wasn’t just China. For years, liberals and conservatives alike were, for instance, pushing the concept of burden-sharing: getting U.S. allies to cover more of the bill for their security needs. But it was only Trump who really made it happen by blackmailing NATO members and other U.S. partners into doing so.

Sure, few warmed to the idea of the United States actually pulling out of NATO, but even many of our European allies, though they publicly grumbled, were secretly happy about The Donald’s gaiatsu. That’s the Japanese word for outside pressure that enables a leader to force through unpopular changes by blaming it all on foreigners. The self-described liberal leader of NATO, Dutch politician Mark Rutte, even came out in the open after Trump’s reelection to praise the American president for making European countries more militarily self-sufficient.

It wasn’t just liberals who thrilled to Trump’s unorthodox foreign policy during his first term either. Some of those further to the left also embraced Trump the engager (with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un), Trump the isolationist (and his threats to close U.S. military bases globally), and Trump the putative peacemaker (for concluding a deal with the Taliban to end the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan).

Trump, in other words, was not just an unanticipated crisis; he was also an opportunity. Deep in their hearts, anyone unhappy with the status quo will support a disrupter. Quite a few Democrats disgusted with this country’s border policies, inflation, and its coastal elites even crossed over to vote for Trump in November because they wanted change, regardless of the consequences.

Trump 2.0 is going to be the same but worse, like a strong cheese voted out of the refrigerator only to grow ever more pungent as it moldered in a dark corner of Florida. The latest version of Trump has promised more violence and destruction the second time around, from mass deportations to mass tariffs. And he’s planning to avoid appointing anyone to his administration who might have a contrary thought, a backbone to resist him, or the least qualification to enact sensible policy.

In the face of such a vengeful and truculent force returning to the White House, surely, you might think, it will be impossible to find any liberals embracing such anarchy the second time around.

Think again. This is how American politics works, if only for liberals. The modern Republican Party routinely boycotts Democratic administrations: blocking Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination, working overtime to shut down the federal government, voting en masse against legislation it would have supported if introduced by a Republican administration. The MAGA crowd has, in fact, turned noncooperation into something of an art form.

Liberals, on the other hand, pride themselves on bipartisanship, on getting things done no matter who’s in power. So, inevitably, there will be cooperation with the Trump team as it sets about the “deconstruction of the administrative state” (as Trump cheerleader Steve Bannon once put it). Worse, there will even be some silver-lining liberals (and a few leftists) who pull up a seat to applaud the wrecking ball — not perhaps for its wholesale destruction of neighborhoods but at least for its demolition of a select number of buildings that they deem irreparable.

Each time such destruction takes place, the self-exculpatory comment from such silver-liners will be: “Well, somebody had to come along and do something!” If Trump is the only tool in the governing toolbox, some liberals will indeed try to use him to pound in a few nails they think need hammering.

Burning Bridges with China

In his 2024 State of the Union address, Joe Biden argued that he did a better job than Donald Trump of standing up to China. He certainly devoted more Pentagon dollars to containing China. And not only did he not roll back Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products, but he added some of his own, including a 100% tax on Chinese electric vehicles. Biden also made concrete moves to decouple the U.S. economy from China’s, especially when it came to the supply chains for critical raw materials that Beijing has sought to control. “I’ve made sure that the most advanced American technologies can’t be used in China,” he insisted, adding, “Frankly for all his tough talk on China, it never occurred to my predecessor to do any of that.”

Biden’s moves on China, from export controls and subsidies for chip manufacturers to closer military relationships with Pacific partners like Australia and India, received the enthusiastic support of his party. No surprise there: It’s hard to find anyone in Washington these days who has a good word to say about engaging more with China.

So, when Trump takes office in January, he won’t actually be reversing course. He’ll simply be taking the baton-like stick from Biden while leaving all the carrots in the ground.

That said, Trump’s proposed further spike in tariffs against China (and Canada and Mexico and potentially the rest of the world) does give many liberals pause, since it threatens to unleash an economically devastating global trade war while boosting prices radically at home. But trade unions backed by such liberals support such measures as a way to protect jobs, while the European Union only recently imposed stiff tariffs of their own on Chinese electrical vehicles.

So, yes, neoliberals who embrace free trade are going to push back against Trump’s economic policies, but more traditional liberals who backed protectionist measures in the past will secretly (or not so secretly) applaud Trump’s moves.

Back to the Wall

On taking office, Joe Biden rolled back his predecessor’s harsh immigration policies. The rate of border-crossings then spiked for a variety of reasons (not just the repeal of those Trump-era laws) from an average of half a million to about two million annually. However, in 2024, those numbers plummeted, despite Trump’s campaign claims — but no matter. By then, many Democrats had already been reborn as border hawks.

That new, tougher attitude was on display in executive actions President Biden took in 2024 as well as the border security bill that Democrats tried to push through Congress earlier this year. Forget about finding a path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants who keep the American economy humming, Biden’s immigration policy focused on limiting asylum petitions, increasing detention facilities, and even allocating more money to build Trump’s infamous wall.

As Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, pointed out on the eve of the November election, “What we are seeing is that the center of the Democratic Party is now adopting the same policies, the same postures, that MAGA Republicans were fighting for about six years ago.”

And yet such punitive policies still weren’t harsh enough for MAGA Republicans and their America First followers. The bottom line was that immigration-averse voters didn’t want to support Democrats pretending to be MAGA Republicans. When it came to the White House, they wanted the real thing.

As politics change hands in Washington next January, it’s going to be difficult to find any Democrats who will support the mass detentions and deportations Trump is promising. Yet many liberals, like the unprecedented number of Latinos who pulled the lever for Trump in 2024, do want major changes at the border with Mexico. In Arizona, Democrat Ruben Gallego won a squeaker of a Senate election by emphasizing border security and even backing a border wall (in certain areas). Such liberal border hawks will be happy when the Republican president does the dirty work so that Democrats don’t suffer the political fallout that is sure to follow.

Remapping the Middle East

On the face of it, the Abrahamic Accords were a liberal nightmare. The brainchild of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, they promised to repair relations between Israel and the major authoritarian regimes in the region: Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Morocco, and Sudan. The deal was a reward for illiberal leaders, particularly Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. The primary losers would, of course, be the Palestinians, who would have to give up their hopes for a separate state in exchange for some Saudi handouts, and the Sahrawi people who lost their claim to the Western Sahara when the United States and Israel recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the entire region.

Instead of shelving the Accords, however, the Biden administration pushed ahead with them. After roundly criticizing Saudi autocrat Mohammed bin Salman for, among other things, ordering the murder of a U.S.-based Saudi journalist, Biden mended ties, fist-bumping that rogue leader, and continuing to discuss how and when the Kingdom would normalize relations with Israel. Nor did his administration restrict Washington’s staggering weapons deliveries to Israel after its invasion and utter devastation of Gaza. Yes, Biden and crew made some statements about Palestinian suffering and tried to push more humanitarian aid into the conflict zone, but they did next to nothing to pressure Israel to stop its killing machine (nor would they reverse the Trump administration’s decision on the Western Sahara).

The liberals who support Israel (come what may) like Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, New York Congressman Ritchie Torres, and the New Democrat Coalition in the House of Representatives are, of course, going to be enthusiastic about Trump’s ever tighter embrace of Netanyahu next year. But there are also likely to be quiet cheers from other corners of the liberal-left about the harder line Trump is likely to take against Tehran. (Remember Kamala Harris’s assertion during her presidential run that Iran was the main adversary of the United States?) The Arab Spring is long gone and a strong man in the White House needs to both schmooze with and go toe to toe with the strong men of the Middle East — or so many liberals will believe, even as they rationalize away their relief over Trump’s handling of a thoroughly illiberal region.

Looking Ahead (Or Do I Mean Behind?)

Anyone to the left of Tucker Carlson will certainly think twice about showing public enthusiasm for whatever Trump does. Indeed, most liberals will be appalled by the new administration’s likely suspension of aid to Ukraine and withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, not to mention other possible hare-brained maneuvers like sending U.S. troops to battle narcotraffickers in Mexico.

Trump will attract liberal support, however quietly or even secretively, not because of his bridge-building genius — in reality, he couldn’t even get a bridge-building infrastructure bill through Congress in his first term — but because all too many liberals have already moved inexorably rightward on issues ranging from China and the Middle East to immigration. The MAGA minority has seized the machinery of power by weaponizing mendacity and ruthlessly breaking rules, in the process transforming politics much the way the Bolshevik minority did in Russia more than a century ago. In the pot that those Republicans put on the stove, the water has been boiling for more than a decade and yet the left-of-center frogs barely seem to recognize just how altered our circumstances have become.

In normal times, finding overlapping interests with your political adversaries makes sense. Such bedrock bipartisanship stabilizes fractious countries that swing politically from center left to center right every few years.

These are, however, anything but normal times and the second-term Trump team anything but center-rightists. They are extremists bent on dismantling the federal government, unstitching the fabric of international law, and turning up the heat drastically on an already dangerously overcooking planet.

In 2020, I raised the possibility of a boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS) movement against the United States if Trump won the elections that year. “People of the world, you’d better build your BDS box, paint ‘Break Glass in Case of Emergency’ on the front, and stand next to it on November 3,” I wrote then. “If Trump wins on Election Day, it will be mourning in America. But let’s hope that the world doesn’t mourn: it organizes.”

Four years later, Trump has won again. Do I hear the sound of breaking glass?

Here, in the United States, a stance of strict non-engagement with Trump 2.0, even where interests overlap, would not only be a good moral policy but even make political sense. When things go disastrously south, laws are broken, and the government begins to truly come apart at the seams, it’s vitally important that no left-of-center fingerprints be found at the scene of the crime.

Let’s be clear: the Trump administration will not be playing by the rules of normal politics. So, forget about bipartisanship. Forget about preserving access to power by visiting Mar-a-Lago, hat in hand, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg or the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “Fascism can be defeated,” historian Timothy Snyder wrote immediately after the November elections, “but not when we are on its side.”

So, my dear liberal-left, which side are you on?

This piece first appeared on TomDispatch.

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Map of Northwestern Syria offensive (2024)

Syria, known throughout history as the “crossroads of civilization,” now finds itself at a crossroads of its own. After 54 years, the Assad family’s brutal dictatorship in Syria has finally ended.

“I never thought I’d live to see this day,” said my dad, who left Aleppo as a teenager. My parents grew up there.

After Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia, elated Syrians rejoiced in the streets. Moving videos emerged of political prisoners being freed after enduring decades of torture in the regime’s notorious prisons. The whereabouts of many still remain unknown.

Assad’s fall is undeniably worth celebrating — it’s a rare unifying force for a deeply fractured country. But after decades of oppression and 14 years of war, it will take much more to heal these wounds and guarantee a new era of freedom, justice, prosperity, and reconciliation.

The popular uprising for Syrian dignity that ignited in March 2011 was violently crushed by Assad and morphed into several proxy wars involving Russia, Iran, Israel, the U.S., Turkey, and numerous armed groups, including Al Qaeda linked-terrorists.

Heinous war crimes and other human rights violations were committed by all parties throughout the war, which has killed over 350,000 people. In the world’s largest forced displacement crisis, over 13 million Syrians have either fled their country or have been displaced within its borders.

The war has damaged Syria’s infrastructure while Western sanctions have further shattered Syria’s economy. Poverty is widespread and more than half of the population currently grapples with food insecurity.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), once allied with Al Qaeda in Syria, was largely responsible for Assad’s overthrow on December 8. Designated by the U.S as a terrorist organization, HTS has its own track record of brutality in Syria. The rebel group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, founded the Al Nusra Front, once had ties to ISIS, and still has a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head.

Jolani has since renounced his ties with Al Qaeda and recently said he supports religious pluralism in Syria. But it’s reasonable to be skeptical that HTS and its allies are now truly committed to freedom, justice, and human rights for all long-suffering Syrians.

Still, foreign occupation and intervention are antithetical to a sovereign and “free” Syria.

Following Assad’s fall, Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes and unlawfully seized more territory beyond its illegal, 57-year occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights. Whether Turkey gives up occupied land in northern Syria also remains to be seen, especially if Syrian Kurds end up forming an autonomous region within the country.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military still occupies part of Syria, including the oil fields in the northeast, and it’s unclear when the U.S. will withdraw its remaining 900 soldiers. In addition to respecting Syria’s territorial integrity and the aspirations of its people in a future government, the U.S. should immediately lift all sanctions on Syria to help with reconstruction and economic recovery.

As a Syrian American, I try to remain hopeful as I think about my relatives in Aleppo, friends in Damascus, and the generous strangers who’ve taken care of me as their own when I’ve visited. I look forward to returning to a Syria where people can finally breathe, rebuild, and live in dignity. But I also fear for the future.

Syrians have always taken pride in their rich ethnic and religious diversity. An inclusive and democratic government that guarantees the equal rights of all Syrians is essential to ensuring that the country stays unified and doesn’t plunge into sectarian chaos. It would be tragic if one authoritarian ruler is replaced by another or the country becomes balkanized into armed factions.

While much remains uncertain and immense challenges are ahead, prioritizing the immediate needs of Syrians is a logical first step. And, more than anything else, we must ensure that the Syrian people are the ones who steer the destiny of a peaceful, post-war Syria that reflects their remarkable resilience, courage, hopes, and dreams.

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Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, military leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Screengrab from CNN interview.

As the rebel forces led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Syria Liberation Committee) seized Damascus, Syria’s capital, on December 7, 2024, the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad boarded a flight to Moscow, Russia. It was the end of the rule of the Assad family that began when Hafez al-Assad (1930-2000) became president in 1971, and continued through his son Bashar from 2000—a 53-year period of rule. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which seized Damascus, was formed out of the remnants of the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra (Front for the Conquest of Syria) in 2017, and led by its emir Abu Jaber Shaykh and its military commander Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.

For the past seven years, HTS has been restrained in the city of Idlib, in Syria’s north. In 2014, a group of al-Qaeda veterans created the Khorasan network (led by Sami al-Uraydi, the religious leader), whose intent was to control the city and the Islamist movements. Over the next year, al-Nusra tried to form alliances with other Islamist forces, such as Ahrar al-Sham, particularly for the governance of the city. The Russian military intervention in 2015 damaged the ability of these groups to advance out of Idlib, which led to the formal break of many of the Islamists from al-Qaeda in 2016 and the creation of HTS in January 2017. Those who remained linked to al-Qaeda formed Hurras al-Din (or Guardians of the Religious Organization). By the end of the year, HTS had seized the initiative and become the major force inside Idlib, took over the local councils across the city and declared that it was the home of the Syrian Salvation Government. When the Syrian Arab Army, the government’s military force, moved toward Idlib in early 2020, Turkey invaded Syria’s north to defend the Islamists. This invasion resulted in the Russian-Turkish ceasefire in March 2020 that allowed the HTS and others to remain in Idlib unscathed. HTS rebuilt its ranks through alliances with Turkish-backed armed forces and with fighters from across Central Asia (including many Uyghur fighters from the Turkistan Islamic Party).

Operation Deterrence of Aggression, launched by HTS in November 2024 with Turkish and Israeli support, whipped down highway M5 from Aleppo to Damascus in about fourteen days. The Syrian Arab Army dissolved before them and the gates of Damascus opened without enormous bloodshed.

The Jihadi Blitzkrieg

The surprise victory of HTS had been predicted in November by Iranian officials, who informed Assad about the weakness of the state’s defenses because of the sustained Israeli attacks on Syrian army positions, of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and of the war in Ukraine. When Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi met with Assad in Damascus after Aleppo fell to the rebels, Assad told Araghchi that this was not a defeat but a “tactical retreat.” That was clearly illusionary. Araghchi, knowing this, told Assad that Iran simply did not have the capacity to send new troops to defend Damascus. It had also been made clear to the Assad government that the Russians did not have the surplus capacity to defend the government, not even the Russian naval base in Tartus. During the HTS drive against the Syrian army, the Russian presidential envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentyev said that he had been in touch with the incoming Trump administration to discuss a deal between “all parties” over the Syrian conflict. Neither Russia nor Iran believed that the Assad government would be able to unilaterally defeat the various rebels and remove the United States from its occupation of the eastern oil fields. A deal was the only way out, which meant that neither Iran nor Russia was willing to commit more troops to defend the Assad government.

Since 2011, Israel’s air force has struck several Syrian military bases, including bases that hosted Iranian troops. These strikes degraded Syrian military capacity by destroying ordinance and materiel. Since October 2023, Israel has increased its strikes within Syria, including hitting Iranian forces, Syrian air defenses, and Syrian arms production facilities. On December 4, the heads of the militaries of Iran (Chief of Staff Major General Mohammad Bagheri), Iraq (Major General Yahya Rasool), Russia (Defense Minister Andrey Belousov), and Syria (General Abdul Karim Mahmoud Ibrahim) met to assess the situation in Syria. They discussed the movement of HTS down from Aleppo and agreed that with the fragile ceasefire in Lebanon and the Syrian government’s weakened forces, this was a “dangerous scenario.” While they said that they would support the government in Damascus, there were no concrete steps taken by them. The Israeli attacks inside Syria meanwhile increased the demoralization within the Syrian army, which has not been properly reorganized after the stalemate began with the rebels in Idlib in 2017.

When Russia entered the conflict in Syria in 2015, the Russian military command insisted that the Syrian government no longer permit pro-government militia groups (such as the Kataeb al-Ba’ath and the Shabbiha) to operate independently. Instead, these groups were integrated into the Fourth and Fifth Corps under Russian command. Meanwhile, the Iranian officers organized their own battalions of Syrian soldiers. The soldiers’ declining economic standards combined with the foreign command accelerated the demoralization. Even the Republican Guard, tasked with defending Damascus and in particular the presidential palace, had lost much of its historical power.

At no point after 2011 was the Syrian government in control of the territory of the country. Already, since 1973, Israel had seized the Golan Heights. Then, during 2011, Turkey had eaten into the borderlands of northern Syria, while the Kurdish resistance forces (YPG and PKK) had formed a zone alongside the Syria-Turkey border. Northwestern Syria had been taken by the rebels, who included not only HTS but also a range of Turkish-backed militia groups. Northeastern Syria was occupied by the United States, which had taken charge of the oil fields. In this region, the US forces contested the Islamic State, which had been pushed out of both northern Iraq and northeastern Syria, but which continued to appear in spurts. Meanwhile, in southern Syria, the government had made a series of hasty agreements with the rebels to provide an appearance of peace. In cities such as Busra al-Sham, Daraa, Houran, and Tafas, the government could not send any of its officials; these, like Idlib, had come under rebel control. When HTS moved on Damascus, the rebels in the south rose up as did the rebels in the country’s eastern edge along the border with Iraq. The reality of Assad’s weakness became apparent.

Israel’s Advantage

As if in a coordinated fashion, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to the occupied Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in 1973, and announced, “This is a historic day in the history of the Middle East.” He then said that his government had ordered the Israeli army to invade the UN buffer zone between the Israeli occupation of Golan and the Syrian army posts that had been established during the armistice of 1974. Israeli tanks moved into the countryside of Quneitra Governorate and took over the main town. The border between Israel and Syria has now been shaped by this invasion, since Israel has now moved several kilometers into Syria to seize almost the entire length of the border.

During the final days of the HTS advance to Damascus, the Israeli air force provided the rebels with air support. They bombed military bases and the headquarters of Syrian intelligence in the center of Damascus. With the excuse that they wanted to destroy weapons depots before the rebels seized them, the Israelis struck bases that housed Syrian troops and stockpiles of weapons that the Syrian army might have used to defend Damascus (this included the Mezzah Air Base). Israeli officials have said that they will continue these air strikes, but have not indicated whom they plan to target.

The Israeli assault on Syria deepened during the protest movement in 2011. As fighting between the rebels and the Syrian government spread across southern Syria, near the Israeli border, Israel began to fire across the border at Syrian forces. In March 2013, for instance, the Israelis fired missiles at Syrian military posts, weakening them and strengthening the rebels. At the end of 2013, Israel created Division 210, a special military command, to begin engagements along the Israel-Syrian armistice line. Importantly, when the HTS predecessor and al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra began to make gains along the Israeli line of control, Israel did not strike them. Instead, Israel hit the Syrian government through shooting down Syrian air force jets and assassinating senior Syrian allies (such as General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, an Iranian general, in January 2015, and Samir Kuntar, a Fatah leader, in late 2015). A former press officer in Damascus told me that the Israelis effectively provided air support for the HTS assault on the capital.

Syria’s Future

Assad left Syria without making any announcement. It is said by former government officials in Damascus that some senior leaders left with him or left for the Iraqi border before the fall of Damascus. The silence from Assad has bewildered many Syrians who had believed fundamentally that the state would protect them from the onslaught of groups such as HTS. It is a sign of the collapse of the Assad government that his Republican Guard did not try to defend the city and that he left without any words of encouragement to his people.

The country is polarized regarding the new government. Sections of the population that had seen their way of life degraded by the war and sanctions welcome the opening, and they have been on the streets celebrating the new situation. The larger context for the Middle East is not their immediate concern, although depending on Israel’s actions, this might change. A considerable section is concerned about the behavior of the Islamists, who use terms of disparagement against non-Sunni Muslims such as nusayriyya (for Alawites, the community of the al-Assad family) and rawafid (such as the large Shia population in Syria). Calling non-Sunni Muslims ahl al-batil or the “lost ones” and using strong Salafi language about apostasy and its punishment sets in motion fear amongst those who might be targets of attacks. Whether the new government will be able to control its forces motivated by this sectarian ideology remains to be seen.

Such sectarianism is only the opening of the contradictions that will emerge almost immediately. How will the new government deal with the Israeli, Turkish, and US incursions into Syrian territory? Will it seek to win back that land? What will be the relationship between the Syrian government and its neighbors, particularly Lebanon? Will the millions of Syrian refugees return to their home now that the basis for their migration has been removed, and if they return, what will be awaiting them inside Syria? And centrally, what will all this mean for the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians by the Israelis?

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

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Getty Images and Unsplash+.

The stakes are extremely high as the impact of fossil fuels on climate change goes to The Hague for hearings December 2-13, 2024 to determine whether nations are obligated to phase out fossil fuels. Will the esteemed court issue an opinion that truly impacts climate change?

The court’s opinion is expected in 2025.

{Special Notification: Antarctica is experiencing a frightening collapse that has polar scientists fearful and speaking out like never before. A link to an interview with James Woodford, a New Scientists’ reporter, who attended a recent emergency session with 450 polar scientists is found at the end of this article. Woodford: “Nobody could have foreseen Antarctic sea ice dropping off a cliff in the way that it has.”}

James Hansen (Earth Institute, Columbia University) and three climate scientists from the Netherlands, conducted a panel discussion December 9^th, 2024 regarding the International Court of Justice at the Hague, as part of hearings from scores of nations before it issues its advisory opinion on the Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change: “The key issue is whether international law requires nations to phase out production, distribution and use of fossil fuels and otherwise pay damages to the most vulnerable and hardest hit of nations.” (Source: James Hansen, International Court of Justice Proceedings in The Hague, December 9, 2024)

What if it is determined that “international law requires nations to phase out production, distribution and use of fossil fuels”? What happens next?

For starters, the setting for this all-important trial has been extensive on a worldly basis: “As of publication, 98 states and 12 international organizations have registered to participate in oral hearings at the court Dec. 2–13. The engagement conveys the urgency and gravity of the climate crisis, and the importance states place on setting straight what international law requires.” (Source: Courts May Be More Effective on Climate Action Than UN, Bloomberg Law, Nov. 22, 2024)

Potential benefits of the hearing before The Hague

The court’s opinion should prove to be an antidote to the political inertia overhanging UN Conference of the Parties (COP) affairs. This strikes at the heart of 30 years of do-nothing conferences because of politically oriented negotiated outcomes that dilute, obstruct, and/or reduce to the lowest common denominator, making UN COPs a laughingstock.

Also, the court can look beyond the UN climate convention or the Paris Agreement to identify responsibilities and duties, e.g., by relying upon longstanding customary international law.

And the court’s advisory opinion can have concrete effects by carrying weight as “authoritative interpretations of binding law.”

“The forthcoming legal opinions on climate change from the ICJ and Inter-American Court of Human Rights, should further clarify states’ obligations to curb drivers of the crisis—including through regulation of companies—and remedy mounting climate harms. They will also affirm the critical role of courts in enforcing ambitious climate action and accountability,” Ibid.

Significantly, ICJ advisory opinions can become part of “customary international law,” which is then legally binding.

Meanwhile, the world climate system has never been more vulnerable, to wit: Perilous Times on Planet Earth: 2024 The State of the Climate Report, 25 of 35 planetary vital signs are at record extremes. Two-thirds with record-extremes is viewed by climate scientists as a clear mandate for a planet “on the edge.”

Climate Science – One of History’s Great Analytical Triumphs

Superimposed on this extraordinary hearing at The Hague: “There has, of course, been a decades-long campaign aiming to discredit climate research and, in some instances, defame individual climate scientists. But if you step back from the smears, you realize that climatology has been one of history’s great analytical triumphs. Climate scientists correctly predicted, decades in advance, an unprecedented rise in global temperatures. They even appear to have gotten the magnitude more or less right.” (Source: Paul Krugman, The Stench of Climate Change Denial, The New York Times, May 27, 2024)

Climate deniers should take a moment to correlate their denialism with a remarkable stretch of scientists’ warnings hitting the mark, bullseye, on target. Yet, twenty-five percent (25%) of America’s congressional members are climate deniers. In sharp contrast to this demonstration of ignorant denialism, climate scientists have been spot-on.

Nevertheless, according to James Hansen: “Nations of the world meet at annual COP meetings (Conferences of the Parties), where they promise to reduce emissions to ‘net zero’ at some distant date, an almost meaningless pledge. There is no plan to actually stabilize climate…Global temperature took an unprecedented leap of half a degree Celsius in the past two years, which confounded the climate research community… We are headed to global warming greater than 2°C.”

What happens at 2°C (above pre-industrial)

“Mortality from extreme heat could surpass that of all infectious diseases combined, and rival that of cancer and heart disease.” (Source: Why Heat Waves of the Future May Be Even Deadlier Than Feared, The New York Times, October 25, 2024)

Heatwaves that have already been documented taking tens of thousands of lives will morph into “Super Heatwaves” with temperatures exceeding 50C (122F). Already, serious deathly heat waves have become prominent in hotspots of the globe, see: Mysterious Global Hotspots.

Regions of the planet will become uninhabitable. In some parts of the world the combination of heat and humidity will reach lethal levels for hours, days, and weeks.

Parts of the globe subject to severe drought will increase by 50%. The Mediterranean, southern Africa and parts of Australia and South America will be particularly affected. The Amazon rainforest already suffers from repeating bouts of scorching drought. Intense and prolonged droughts will decimate food crops and cause high rates of livestock deaths, leading to severe food shortages.

One of the most worrying changes will be the weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) which includes the Gulf Stream, dramatically altering weather patterns throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Europe is especially vulnerable.

With 2C of warming, according to Earth.org, global mean sea level is projected to rise by 1.51-3.25 feet this century, although more recent research indicates that is a low, low number.

Antarctic Emergency Session of 450 Polar Scientists – The Link

Regarding the threat of sea level rise well above expectations, of significant interest for the world at large, the following link is a YouTube video interview about the emergency proceedings of 450 polar scientists: Antarctica Emergency: Scientists Shocked as Sea Ice Melts / New Scientists Weekly 279.

What 2C of Warming Will Look Like: A Comprehensive Assessment, Earth.org. d/d September 2, 2024.

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