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Category: Militarism

  • Reviewing AUKUS

    It was a deal for the cretinous, hammered out by the less than bright for less than honourable goals. But AUKUS, the trilateral security alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, is now finally receiving the broader opprobrium it should have had from the outset. Importantly, criticism is coming from those who have, at points, swooned at the prospect of acquiring a nuclear-powered submarine capability assuming, erroneously, that Australia somehow needs it.

    A report by the Strategic Analysis Australia think tank has found that AUKUS, despite the increasingly vain promise of supplying the Royal Australian Navy with nuclear powered submarines in 2032, has already become its own, insatiable beast. As beast it is, with the cost over the next four years for the submarine program coming in at A$17.3 billion, exceeding by some margin the capital budget of the Royal Australian Airforce (RAAF) at A$12.7 billion. One of the authors of the report, Marcus Hellyer, notes that “in terms of acquisition spending, the SSN [nuclear-powered attack submarine] enterprise has already become the ADF’s [Australian Defence Force’s] ‘fourth service’.”

    The report notes some remarkable figures. Expenditure on SSNs is estimated to be somewhere between A$53 billion and A$63 billion between 2024-2034, with the next five years of the decade costing approximately A$20 billion. The amount left over for the following years comes in at $33 to $44 billion, necessitating a target of $10 billion annually by the end of the financial decade in the early 2030s. What is astounding is the amount being swallowed up by the ADF’s investment program in maritime capabilities, which will, over the coming decade, come to 38% of the total investment.

    The SSN program has made its fair share in distorting the budget. The decade to 2033-4 features a total budget of A$330 billion. But the SSN budget of $53-63 billion puts nuclear powered submarines at 16.1% to 19.1% more than either the domains of land and air relevant to Australia’s defence. “It’s hard to grasp how unusual this situation is,” the report notes with gravity. “Moreover, it’s one that will endure for decades, since the key elements of the maritime domain (SSNs and the two frigate programs) will still be in acquisition well into the 2040s. It’s quite possible that Defence itself doesn’t grasp the situation that it’s gotten into.”

    To add to the more specialist literature calling large parts of AUKUS expenditure into question comes the emergence of disquiet in political ranks. Despite the craven and cowardly bipartisan approval of Australia’s dottiest military venture to date, former Labor senator Doug Cameron, who fronts the Labor Against War group, is a symptom of growing dissent. “There are other more realistic and cost-effective strategies to protect our territorial integrity without subjugating ourselves to a dangerous, unpredictable and unworthy Trump administration.”

    On the other side of the political aisle, former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is pessimistically inclined to the view that Australia will never get those much heralded submarines. “There will be Australian sailors serving on US submarines, and we’ll provide them with a base in Western Australia.” Furthermore, Australia would have “lost both sovereignty and security and a lot of money as well.”

    The spineless disposition of Australia’s political cadres may prove irrelevant to the forced obsolescence of the agreement, given the scrutiny of AUKUS in both the United States and the United Kingdom. The pugilistic nature of the tariff system imposed by the Trump administration on all countries, friendly or adversarial, has brought particular focus on the demands on naval and submarine construction. Senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, told an AUKUS dinner in Washington this month that “We are already having trouble getting these ships and subs on time [and] on budget. Increase those prices – it’s going to be a problem.”

    Taine’s point is logical enough, given that steel and aluminium have been targeted by particularly hefty rates. Given the array of products requiring exchange in the AUKUS arrangement, tariffs would, the senator reasons, “slow us down and make things harder”.

    Another blow also looms. On April 9, the White House ordered the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to comb through the procurement of US Navy vessels in order “to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of these processes” and contribute to the Trump administration’s Maritime Action Plan. Consistent with Trump’s near obsession of reviving national industry, the order seeks “to revitalize and rebuild domestic maritime industries and workforce to promote national security and economic prosperity.”

    Australian taxpayers have every reason to be further worried about this, given the order’s emphasis that US departments and agencies pursue “all available incentives to help shipbuilders domiciled in allied nations partner to undertake capital investment in the US to help strengthen the shipbuilding capacity of the US”. Given that that US submarine industrial base is already promised $US3 billion from Australia’s pockets, with $500 million already transferred in February, the delicious exploitation of Canberra’s stupidity continues apace.

    In the UK, the House of Commons Defence Committee this month announced a parliamentary inquiry into the defence pact, which will evaluate the agreement in light of changes that have taken place since 2021. “AUKUS has been underway for three years now,” remarked Defence Committee chairman and Labour MP, Tan Dhesi. “The inquiry will examine the progress made against each of the two pillars, and ask how any challenges could be addressed.”

    The first pillar, perennially spectral, stresses the submarine component, both in terms of transferring Virginia class SSNs to Australia and the construction of a bespoke nuclear-powered AUKUS submarine; the second focuses on the technological spread of artificial intelligence, quantum capabilities, hypersonic advances and cyber warfare. While Dhesi hopes that the inquiry may throw up the possibility of expanding the second pillar, beady eyes will be keen to see the near non-existent state regarding the first. But even the second pillar lacks definition, prompting Kaine to suggest the need for “some definition and some choices”. Nebulous, amorphous and foolish, this absurd pact continues to sunder.

    The post Reviewing AUKUS first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Reviewing AUKUS

    It was a deal for the cretinous, hammered out by the less than bright for less than honourable goals. But AUKUS, the trilateral security alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, is now finally receiving the broader opprobrium it should have had from the outset. Importantly, criticism is coming from those who have, at points, swooned at the prospect of acquiring a nuclear-powered submarine capability assuming, erroneously, that Australia somehow needs it.

    A report by the Strategic Analysis Australia think tank has found that AUKUS, despite the increasingly vain promise of supplying the Royal Australian Navy with nuclear powered submarines in 2032, has already become its own, insatiable beast. As beast it is, with the cost over the next four years for the submarine program coming in at A$17.3 billion, exceeding by some margin the capital budget of the Royal Australian Airforce (RAAF) at A$12.7 billion. One of the authors of the report, Marcus Hellyer, notes that “in terms of acquisition spending, the SSN [nuclear-powered attack submarine] enterprise has already become the ADF’s [Australian Defence Force’s] ‘fourth service’.”

    The report notes some remarkable figures. Expenditure on SSNs is estimated to be somewhere between A$53 billion and A$63 billion between 2024-2034, with the next five years of the decade costing approximately A$20 billion. The amount left over for the following years comes in at $33 to $44 billion, necessitating a target of $10 billion annually by the end of the financial decade in the early 2030s. What is astounding is the amount being swallowed up by the ADF’s investment program in maritime capabilities, which will, over the coming decade, come to 38% of the total investment.

    The SSN program has made its fair share in distorting the budget. The decade to 2033-4 features a total budget of A$330 billion. But the SSN budget of $53-63 billion puts nuclear powered submarines at 16.1% to 19.1% more than either the domains of land and air relevant to Australia’s defence. “It’s hard to grasp how unusual this situation is,” the report notes with gravity. “Moreover, it’s one that will endure for decades, since the key elements of the maritime domain (SSNs and the two frigate programs) will still be in acquisition well into the 2040s. It’s quite possible that Defence itself doesn’t grasp the situation that it’s gotten into.”

    To add to the more specialist literature calling large parts of AUKUS expenditure into question comes the emergence of disquiet in political ranks. Despite the craven and cowardly bipartisan approval of Australia’s dottiest military venture to date, former Labor senator Doug Cameron, who fronts the Labor Against War group, is a symptom of growing dissent. “There are other more realistic and cost-effective strategies to protect our territorial integrity without subjugating ourselves to a dangerous, unpredictable and unworthy Trump administration.”

    On the other side of the political aisle, former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is pessimistically inclined to the view that Australia will never get those much heralded submarines. “There will be Australian sailors serving on US submarines, and we’ll provide them with a base in Western Australia.” Furthermore, Australia would have “lost both sovereignty and security and a lot of money as well.”

    The spineless disposition of Australia’s political cadres may prove irrelevant to the forced obsolescence of the agreement, given the scrutiny of AUKUS in both the United States and the United Kingdom. The pugilistic nature of the tariff system imposed by the Trump administration on all countries, friendly or adversarial, has brought particular focus on the demands on naval and submarine construction. Senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, told an AUKUS dinner in Washington this month that “We are already having trouble getting these ships and subs on time [and] on budget. Increase those prices – it’s going to be a problem.”

    Taine’s point is logical enough, given that steel and aluminium have been targeted by particularly hefty rates. Given the array of products requiring exchange in the AUKUS arrangement, tariffs would, the senator reasons, “slow us down and make things harder”.

    Another blow also looms. On April 9, the White House ordered the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to comb through the procurement of US Navy vessels in order “to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of these processes” and contribute to the Trump administration’s Maritime Action Plan. Consistent with Trump’s near obsession of reviving national industry, the order seeks “to revitalize and rebuild domestic maritime industries and workforce to promote national security and economic prosperity.”

    Australian taxpayers have every reason to be further worried about this, given the order’s emphasis that US departments and agencies pursue “all available incentives to help shipbuilders domiciled in allied nations partner to undertake capital investment in the US to help strengthen the shipbuilding capacity of the US”. Given that that US submarine industrial base is already promised $US3 billion from Australia’s pockets, with $500 million already transferred in February, the delicious exploitation of Canberra’s stupidity continues apace.

    In the UK, the House of Commons Defence Committee this month announced a parliamentary inquiry into the defence pact, which will evaluate the agreement in light of changes that have taken place since 2021. “AUKUS has been underway for three years now,” remarked Defence Committee chairman and Labour MP, Tan Dhesi. “The inquiry will examine the progress made against each of the two pillars, and ask how any challenges could be addressed.”

    The first pillar, perennially spectral, stresses the submarine component, both in terms of transferring Virginia class SSNs to Australia and the construction of a bespoke nuclear-powered AUKUS submarine; the second focuses on the technological spread of artificial intelligence, quantum capabilities, hypersonic advances and cyber warfare. While Dhesi hopes that the inquiry may throw up the possibility of expanding the second pillar, beady eyes will be keen to see the near non-existent state regarding the first. But even the second pillar lacks definition, prompting Kaine to suggest the need for “some definition and some choices”. Nebulous, amorphous and foolish, this absurd pact continues to sunder.

    The post Reviewing AUKUS first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Have We Reached a Milestone in Ukraine?

    Secretary of Marco Rubio said today (Friday) that “If it’s not possible to end the war in Ukraine , we need to move on.” Rubio told reporters that the Trump could decide this “in a matter of days…” (NYTimes, 4/18/2025)

    The context: Russia has made its conditions very clear. (1) Ukraine must not join NATO. (2) Ukraine must give up the four oblasts and Crimea. 3) Ukraine must be demilitarized and not pose a military threat to Russia.

    Although to this point Trump been unwilling or unable to do so, he must accept these nonnegotiable conditions and do it against the opposition of European leaders. Or conceivably, he could simply walk away.

    British political analyst Alexander Mercouris reports that European leaders are meeting in Paris to, in their words, achieve a “fair and lasting peace in Ukraine” and for them, this means a “Ukrainian victory.” Even as they voice this objective, reliable reports indicate that Russian recruitment is running at 1,000 per day, which is more than enough to replace lost soldiers. Ukrainian forces are steadily getting smaller and for the first time, external military analysts can foresee the fall of Kiev as a real possibility. Russian forces are making significant gains and Ukrainians are retreating in several areas. Finally, there is no question that Europe lacks the resources to achieve anything in Ukraine.

    Presumably, the US will explain to the Europeans that they’re engaged in a dangerous fantasy and that peace will occur only by accepting the Russian demands (see above). However, the British, French and Danish are considering sending troops to Ukraine via Romania. This will be absolutely unacceptable to Russians but will come as no surprise to them. The few thousand (probably French) soldiers entering Odessa will be annihilated. Here one wonders how long French citizens would tolerate the war if coffins began returning home. (Note: Some of you may recall my earlier post about European and US intervention in the Russian Civil War and how they were expelled. Russian citizens will be reminded once again of Western intentions).

    Given the above, one is forced to wonder why European leaders are doing everything possible to undermine and sabotage any meaningful peace talks? Why are they pursing a doomed policy that’s bankrupting their economies? Why alienate the US and Trump? I don’t have a definitive answer but I suspect that Mercouris is close to one when he speculates that European leaders hate Russia and have come to loathe Donald Trump. They cannot accept that they’ve lost the war and Trump was actually correct. I’ll leave for another day to speculate about what this means for the Democrats and unprincipled “progressives” (think AOC and Bernie Sanders) who gave left cover to US imperialism in its proxy was in Ukraine. In my opinion, they have much to answer for.

    The post Have We Reached a Milestone in Ukraine? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • SIPRI’s Ongoing Decay from Peace to Mainstream Military Security

    SIPRI is the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, established in 1966. Read about it here and see how it has twisted its aims to not include the words ‘peace research.’ Because here is what it should do according to § 2 of its statutes: “…to conduct scientific research on questions of conflict and cooperation of importance for international peace and security, with the aim of contributing to an understanding of the conditions for peaceful solutions of interstate conflicts and for stable peace. (My italics).

    The low intellectual level is indicated by the statement that “SIPRI’s vision is a world in which sources of insecurity are identified and understood, conflicts are prevented or resolved, and peace is sustained.” Sources of insecurity shall not be removed, they shall just be identified and understood. Conflicts shall be prevented – what an absurd idea since any dynamic organisation will always have conflicts; what we shall prevent or reduce is, of course, not conflicts but violence in all its forms and shapes. And peace is ‘sustained’ – such nonsense sounds like a marketing firm formulation. Excuse us all: How shall that peace come about before it is sustained?

    I’ve written about SIPRI as a totally lost institution for peace and disarmament, conflict-resolution, mediation and the outlining of peaceful proposals since 2016. It’s a parody of peace for more than a decade. Read here, here and here.

    Editorial offices and journalists in Sweden and elsewhere never took up this criticism. It’s so natural in these militarist times that the world’s perhaps most well-known “peace” research institute – originally a pride of the Swedish government and ‘ranked among the most respected think tanks worldwide’ – simply drops its mandate and becomes yet one more former peace research institute devoted to military-based security issues in total contrast to what it was supposed to do.

    The reason is simple: for years, it has had no creative or moral leadership with any understanding of peace, and it is mainly financed by NATO member governments. Its kind of “peace” is NATO “peace.” In addition, the concept/word – and discourse – of ‘peace’ has been deliberately cancelled in Western societies.

    I’ve therefore suggested a change of name to SIMSI, Stockholm International Military Security Institute. A bit of honesty instead of continued faking would be appropriate.

    You may ask what peace research is, and there are many definitions and approaches. But one overarching element can be formulated this way: an intellectual effort to understand all kinds of violence with the aim of devising strategies to reduce every kind and outline strategies for intelligent conflict-resolution with the least possible use of violence – on the road to more peaceful, nonviolent futures for the whole human being and all human beings.

    Now, keep that in mind and then click here to see today’s front page of SIPRI – “the independent source on international security” accompanied with images, headlines, titles and texts filled with arms…

    And it’s extremely deceptive that this institute calls itself independent. Just look at its funding here.

    To continue the decay and get even further away from anything called peace, SIPRI has just appointed a new director. His name is Karim Haggag, and you can read about this Egyptian career diplomat and his role at the The American University in Cairo here – a servant, one can safely assume, of US military interests with close relations to hawkish people like Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger of the Albright Stonebridge Group – that, by the way, goes unmentioned in SIPRI’s official announcement about him here.

    In case you want to know more about Madeleine Albright, she served as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, masterminded the fake negotiation at Rambouillet about Kosovo with the NATO bombings that followed and thought, as she stated it, it was acceptable to kill half a million Iraqi women and children by the US economic sanctions.

    Haggag holds only a master’s degree in War Studies from King’s College, London, and has served as a career diplomat most of his life, in Washington. Here is his official CV at the American University Cairo – which indicates two selected publications ten years ago and his academic interests in “security.” Nothing indicates any knowledge, experience or interest in the academic discipline of peace and conflict research.

    In short, surely the right mainstream man for the former peace research institute SIPRI, in the year 2025.

    The post SIPRI’s Ongoing Decay from Peace to Mainstream Military Security first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • War criminal Israel is being allowed to attend a government-backed arms fair in London

    Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) is launching a new campaign to kick Israel out of DSEI – one of the world’s largest arms fair – which is due to take place at London’s ExCeL centre between 9-12 September 2025.

    CAAT is calling on the government, event organisers – Clarion Events – the ExCeL centre, and the London Mayor to take urgent action to ensure that those responsible and complicit for Israel’s genocide are not allowed to attend DSEI.

    Israel at DSEI? Hardly surprising.

    A petition is calling for the banning of Israel arms companies and the official government invited Israeli delegation, as well as banning Israeli speakers and the Israel country pavilion.

    Israel always plays a prominent role at DSEI. with the UK government inviting an official Israeli government delegation. If this happens in 2025, it will be our government rolling out the red carpet to legitimise and enable war criminals coming to shop for even deadlier weapons to wage their genocide against Palestinian people

    In 2023, in addition to Brigadier General Dr Danny Gold, head of directorate of defense research and development for the Israeli Ministry of Defence giving a keynote speech, Israel had its own country pavilion with 48 domestic Israeli arms companies exhibiting at the event.

    These are companies that are directly responsible for, and directly profiting from, Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the war crimes it is committing in the West Bank and Lebanon. For example, Elbit Systems provides 80% of the drones that the Israeli military use in Palestine.

    CAAT argues that there is a clear legal and moral case for banning Israel from DSEI given Israel’s horrific war crimes, the ICJ finding that it is plausible that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the ICC issuing arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and this government imposing a partial arms suspension finding that Israel is not committed to complying with international law.

    CAAT: protests to DSEI are crucial

    However, CAAT is also clear that even if it achieves this aim, its “protests and opposition to DSEI” will continue. Even if Israeli delegations and companies are banned, there are plenty of domestic arms companies, such as BAE Systems – the main UK producer of the 15% of F-35 combat aircraft that is made in the UK, and that Israel is using to drop 2000lb bombs on Gaza – will still have a massive presence.

    They will be joined by top arms companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon who supply many of the arms Israel is using in Gaza.

    CAAT’s Media Coordinator Emily Apple said:

    DSEI will be a huge opportunity for Israeli companies to market military equipment that is no longer just “battle-tested” but now genocide tested, on a global level. Every company and government body responsible for Israel’s inclusion at DSEI is complicit in aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide and the commission of war crimes

    It is unconscionable that Israeli delegations and arms companies will be allowed to conduct business as usual at DSEI, and it is down to campaigners to do everything they can to kick Israel out of DSEI and stop this from happening.

    However, while we believe that banning Israel from the event is a clear moral and legal objective, and one that we hope is achievable, we want to see this disgusting arms fair shut down entirely. DSEI is a massive marketplace in death and destruction. It is a one-stop-shop for human rights abusing regimes to stock up on military equipment to wage wars abroad and repress their populations at home. From Saudi Arabia, to Qatar, to Turkey, DSEI will roll out the red carpet for delegations from human rights abusing regimes across the world.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Flexible and Sly: Indonesian Defence Policy, Russia, and Australian Anxiety

    Island states tend to be anxious political entities. Encircled by water, seemingly defended by natural obstacles, the fear of corrupting penetration is never far. Threats of such unwanted intrusion are embellished and magnified. In the case of Australia, these have varied from straying Indonesian fishermen who are seen as terrors of border security, to the threatened establishment of military bases in the Indo-Pacific by China. With Australia facing a federal election, the opportunity to exaggerate the next threat is never far away.

    On April 14, the specialist military publication Janes reported that Indonesia had “received an official request from Moscow, seeking permission for Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) aircraft to be based at a facility in [the country’s] easternmost province.” The area in question is Papua, and the relevant airbase, Biak Numfor, home to the Indonesian Air Force’s Aviation Squadron 27 responsible for operating surveillance aircraft of the CN235 variety.

    Indonesian government sources had informed the magazine of a request received by the office of the defence minister, Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, following a February meeting with the Security Council of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu. This was not the first time, with Moscow making previous requests to Jakarta for using a base for its long-range aircraft.

    The frazzled response in Australia to the possibility of a Russian presence on Indonesian soil betrays its presumption. Just as Australia would rather not see Pacific Island states form security friendly ties with China, an anxiety directed and dictated by Washington, it would also wish those in Southeast Asia to avoid the feelers of other countries supposedly unfriendly to Canberra’s interests.

    Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, who has an addict’s fascination with security menaces of the phantom variety, sprung at the claims made in Janes. “This would be a catastrophic failure of diplomatic relations if [Australian Foreign Minister] Penny Wong and [Prime Minister] Anthony Albanese didn’t have forewarning about this before it was made public,” he trumpeted. “This is a very, very troubling development and suggestion that somehow Russia would have some of their assets based in Indonesia only a short distance from, obviously, the north of our country.”

    The Albanese government has tried to cool the confected heat with assurances, with the PM reaffirming Canberra’s support for Ukraine while stating that “we obviously do not want to see Russian influence in our region”. It has also accused Dutton for a streaky fabrication: that Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto had “publicly announced” the details.

    Australia’s Defence Minister, Richard Marles, also informed the press that he had spoken to his counterpart Sjamsoeddin, who duly replied “in the clearest possible terms [that] reports of the prospect of Russian aircraft operating from Indonesia are simply not true.”

    Besides, a country such as Indonesia, according to Marles, is of the friendly sort. “We have a growing defence relationship with Indonesia. We will keep engaging with Indonesia in a way that befits a very close friend and a very close friendship between our two countries.” This sweetly coated nonsense should have gone out with the façade-tearing acts of Donald Trump’s global imposition of tariffs, unsparing to adversaries and allies alike.

    Marles continues to operate in a certain twilight of international relations, under the belief that the defence cooperation agreement with Jakarta “is the deepest level defence agreement we’ve ever had with Indonesia, and we are seeking increasing cooperation between Australia and Indonesia at the defence level.” Whether this is the case hardly precludes Indonesia, as an important regional power, from conducting defence and foreign policy on its own terms with countries of its own choosing.

    In January, Jakarta officially added its name to the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group, an alternative power alignment that has been foolishly disregarded in terms of significance by the United States and its satellites. Subianto’s coming to power last October has also heralded a warmer turn to Moscow in military terms, with both countries conducting their first joint naval drills last November in the Java Sea near Surabaya. (Indonesia is already a market for Russian fighter jets, despite the cloud of potential sanctions from the US Treasury Department.) For doing so, self-appointed disciplinarians, notably such pro-US outlets as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, have questioned the country’s fabled non-aligned foreign policy. Engaging Russia in cooperative military terms supposedly undermined, according to the think tank’s publication The Strategist, Jakarta’s “own stated commitment to upholding international law.”

    Such commentary is neither here nor there. The Indonesian military remains jealous and proprietary, taking a dim view of any notion of a foreign military base. Retired Major General TB Hasanuddin, who is also a Member of Commission I of the Indonesian House of Representatives, points to constitutional and other legal impediments in permitting such a policy. “Our constitution and various laws and regulations expressly prohibit the existence of foreign military bases.”

    Any criticism of Jakarta’s recent gravitation to Moscow also refuses to acknowledge the flexible, even sly approach Indonesia has taken to various powers. It has done so while maintaining a firm independence of mind. In the afterglow of the naval exercises with the Russian Navy, Indonesia’s armed forces merrily went about the business of conducting military exercises with Australia, named Keris Woomera. Between November 13 and 16 last year, the exercise comprised 2,000 personnel from the navy, army and air force from both countries. As Australia frets and fantasises about the stratagems of distant authoritarian leaders, Indonesia having the last laugh.

    The post Flexible and Sly: Indonesian Defence Policy, Russia, and Australian Anxiety first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Should Iran Bend Knee to Donald Trump?

    Former UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott Ritter usually provides excellent analysis of geopolitical events and places them in a morally centered framework. However, in a recent X post, Ritter defends a controversial stance blaming Iran for US and Israeli machinations against Iran.

    Ritter opened, “I have assiduously detailed the nature of the threat perceived by the US that, if unresolved, would necessitate military action, as exclusively revolving around Iran’s nuclear program and, more specifically, that capacity that is excess to its declared peaceful program and, as such, conducive to a nuclear weapons program Iran has admitted is on the threshold of being actualized.”

    Threats perceived by the US. These threats range from North Korea, Viet Nam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iran, China, and Russia. Question: Which of the aforementioned countries is about to — or ever was about to — attack the US? None. (Al Qaeda is not a country) So why does Ritter imply that military action would be necessitated? Is it a vestige of military indoctrination left over from his time as a marine? In this case, why is Ritter not focused on his own backyard and telling the US to butt out of the Middle East? The US, since it is situated on a continent far removed from Iran, should no more dictate to Iran what its defense posture should be in the region than Iran should dictate what the US’s defense posture should be in the northwestern hemisphere.

    Ritter: “In short, I have argued, the most realistic path forward regarding conflict avoidance would be for Iran to negotiate in good faith regarding the verifiable disposition of its excess nuclear enrichment capability.”

    Ritter places the onus for conflict avoidance on Iran. Why? Is Iran seeking conflict with the US? Is Iran making demands of the US? Is Iran sanctioning the US? Moreover, who gets to decide what is realistic or not? Is what is realistic for the US also realistic for Iran? When determining the path forward, one should be aware of who and what is stirring up conflict. Ritter addresses this when he writes, “Even when Trump alienated Iran with his ‘maximum pressure’ tactics, including an insulting letter to the Supreme Leader that all but eliminated the possibility of direct negotiations between the US and Iran…” But this did not alter Ritter’s stance. Iran must negotiate — again. According to Ritter negotiations are how to solve the crisis, a crisis of the US’s (and Israel’s) making.

    Iran had agreed to a deal — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and Germany — collectively known as the P5+1 — with the participation of the European Union. The JCPOA came into effect in 2016. During the course of the JCPOA, Iran was in compliance with the deal. Nonetheless, Trump pulled the US out of the deal in 2018.

    Backing out of agreements/deals is nothing new for Trump (or for that matter, the US). For example, Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement on climate, the Trans-Pacific Partnership on trade, the United Nations cultural organization UNESCO, and the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was subsequently renegotiated under Trump to morph into the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, which is now imperilled by the Trump administration’s tariff threats, as is the World Trade Organization that regulates international trade.

    Should Iran, therefore, expect adherence to any future agreement signed with the US?

    Ritter insists that he is promoting a reality-based process providing the only viable path toward peace. Many of those who disagree with Ritter’s assertion are lampooned by him as “the digital mob, comprised of new age philosophers, self-styled ‘peace activists’, and a troll class that opposes anything and everything it doesn’t understand (which is most factually-grounded argument), as well as people I had viewed as fellow travelers on a larger journey of conflict avoidance—podcasters, experts and pundits who did more than simply disagree with me (which is, of course, their right and duty as independent thinkers), traversing into the realm of insults and attacks against my intelligence, integrity and character.”

    Ritter continued, “The US-Iran crisis is grounded in the complexities, niceties and formalities of international law as set forth in the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT), which Iran signed in 1970 as a non-nuclear weapons state. The NPT will be at the center of any negotiated settlement.”

    Is it accurate to characterize the crisis as a “US-Iran crisis”? It elides the fact that it is the US imposing a crisis on Iran. More accurately it should be stated as a “US crisis foisted on Iran.”

    Ritter argues, “… the fact remains that this crisis has been triggered by the very capabilities Iran admits to having—stocks of 60% enriched uranium with no link to Iran’s declared peaceful program, and excessive advanced centrifuge-based enrichment capability which leaves Iran days away from possessing sufficient weapons grade high enriched uranium to produce 3-5 nuclear weapons.”

    So, Ritter blames Iran for the crisis. This plays off Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has long accused Iran of seeking nukes. But it ignores the situation in India and Pakistan. Although the relations between the two countries are tense, logic dictates that open warring must be avoided lest it lead to mutual nuclear conflagration. And if Iran dismantles its nuclear program? What happened when Libya dismantled its nuclear program? Destruction by the US-led NATO. As A.B. Abrams wrote, Libya paid the price for

    … having ignored direct warnings from both Tehran and Pyongyang not to pursue such a course [of unilaterally disarming], Libya’s leadership would later admit that disarmament, neglected military modernisation, and trust in Western good will proved to be their greatest mistake–leaving their country near defenceless when Western powers launched their offensive in 2011. (Immovable Object: North Korea’s 70 Years at War with American Power, Clarity Press, 2020: p 296)

    And North Korea has existed with a credible deterrence against any attack on it since it acquired nuclear weapons.

    Relevant background to the current crisis imposed on Iran

    1. The year 1953 is a suitable starting point. It was in this year that the US-UK (CIA and MI6) combined to engineer a coup against the democratically elected Iranian government under prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Mossadegh had committed the unpardonable sin of nationalizing the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
    1. What to replace the Iranian democracy with? A monarchy. In other words, a dictatorship because monarchs are not elected, they are usually born into power. Thus, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi would rule as the shah of Iran for 26 years protected by his secret police, the SAVAK. Eventually, the shah would be overthrown in the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
    1. In an attempt to force Iran to bend knee to US dictate, the US has imposed sanctions, issued threats, and fomented violence.
    1. Starting sometime after 2010, it is generally agreed among cybersecurity experts and intelligence leaks that the Iranian nuclear program was a target of cyberwarfare by the US and Israel — this in contravention of the United Nations Charter Article 2 (1-4):

    1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.

    2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.

    3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.

    4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

    1. The Stuxnet virus caused significant damage to Iran’s nuclear program, particularly at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
    1. Israel and the United States are also accused of being behind the assassinations of several Iranian nuclear scientists over the past decade.
    1. On 3 January 2020, Trump ordered a US drone strike at Baghdad International Airport in Iraq that assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani as well as Soleimani ally Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a top Iraqi militia leader.
    1. On 7 October 7 2023, Hamas launched a resistance attack against Israel’s occupation. Since then, Israel has reportedly conducted several covert and overt strikes targeting Iran and its proxies across the region.
    1. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Iran of seeking nukes for nearly 30 years, long before Iran reached 60% enrichment in 2021. In Netanyahu’s book Fighting Terrorism (1995) he described Iran as a “rogue state” pursuing nukes to destroy Israel. Given that a fanatical, expansionist Zionist map for Israel, the Oded-Yinon plan, draws a Jewish territory that touches on the Iranian frontier, a debilitated Iran is sought by Israel.

     

    Oded Yinon Plan

    Says Ritter, “This crisis isn’t about Israel or Israel’s own undeclared nuclear weapons capability. It is about Iran’s self-declared status as a threshold nuclear weapons state, something prohibited by the NPT. This is what the negotiations will focus on. And hopefully these negotiations will permit the verifiable dismantling of those aspects of its nuclear program the US (and Israel) find to present an existential threat.”

    Why isn’t it about Israel’s nuclear weapons capability? Why does the US and Ritter get to decide which crisis is preeminent?

    It is important to note that US intelligence has long said that no active Iranian nuclear weapon project exists.

    It is also important to note that Arab states have long supported a Middle East Zone Free of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDFZ), particularly nuclear weapons, but Israel and the US oppose it.

    It is also important to note that, in 2021, the U.S. opposed a resolution demanding Israel join the NPT and that the US, in 2018, blocked an Arab-backed IAEA resolution on Israeli nukes. (UN Digital Library. Search: “Middle East WMDFZ”)

    As far as the NPT goes, it must be applied equally to all signatory states. The US as a nuclear-armed nation is bound by Article VI which demands:

    Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

    Thus, hopefully negotiations will permit the verifiable dismantling of those aspects of the Iranian, US, and Israeli nuclear programs (as well as the nuclear programs of other nuclear-armed nations) that are found to present an existential threat.

    Ritter warns, “Peace is not guaranteed. But war is unless common sense and fact-based logic wins out over the self-important ignorance of the digital mob and their facilitators.”

    A peaceful solution is not achieved by assertions (i.e., not fact-based logic) or by ad hominem. That critics of Ritter’s stance resort to name-calling demeans them, but to respond likewise to one’s critics also taints the respondent.

    Logic dictates that peace is more-or-less guaranteed if UN member states adhere to the United Nations Charter. The US, Iran, and Israel are UN member states. A balanced and peaceful solution is found in the Purposes and Principles as stipulated in Article 1 (1-4) of the UN Charter:

    The Purposes of the United Nations are:

    1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;

    2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

    3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and

    4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

    It seems that only by refusing to abide by one’s obligations laid out the UN Charter and NPT that war looms larger.

    In Ritter’s reality, the US rules the roost against smaller countries. Is such a reality acceptable?

    It stirs up patriotism, but acquiescence is an affront to national dignity. Ritter will likely respond by asking what god is dignity when you are dead. Fair enough. But in the present crisis, if the US were to attack Iran, then whatever last shred of dignity (is there any last shred of dignity left when a country is supporting the genocide of human beings in Palestine?) that American patriots can cling to will have vanished.

    By placing the blame on Iran for a crisis triggered by destabilizing actions of the US and Israel, Ritter asks for Iran to pay for the violent events set in motion by US Israel. If Iran were to cave to Trump’s threats, they would be sacrificing sovereignty, dignity, and self-defense.

    North Korea continues on. Libya is still reeling from the NATO offensive against it. Iran is faced with a choice.

    The Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata knew his choice well: “I’d rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.”

    The post Should Iran Bend Knee to Donald Trump? first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kim Petersen.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Why Does “National Security” Always Mean More War, Not More Health Care?

    On March 17, 2025, DefenseScoop reported that Congress approved $141 billion for Pentagon research and development — an amount larger than the budgets of most federal agencies, and close to the size of the seven next largest military budgets around the world. Yet, as usual, there was little debate. Instead, military leaders and lawmakers lamented that the figure was $7 billion less than last year…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Have Militaristic “Culture,” Enemy Images, and Threats of War Become the Unifying Force in our Society?

    Have militaristic ‘culture,’ enemy images, and threats of war become the unifying force in our society?

    9 April marked the 80th Anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of Denmark.

    Denmark’s Radio reports today on how the country’s war museums have become ‘attractions’ where people queue to get in and go on guided tours, and ticket sales are booming.

    Of course, it never occurs to anyone to ask why Denmark and so many other countries are so preoccupied with war – monuments, anniversaries, museums, have so many bookshops with lots of books about war, war history, weapons, uniforms – use military-inspired fashion or drive city jeeps and other modern cars that look like armoured vehicles. Not to mention why there aren’t the same peace-inspired things – peace monuments, peace museums, bookshops with peace books…

    The answer is simple enough. The West as a culture, as a social cosmology and a collective way of thinking and behaving, is a terrible violence-based apparatus of world wars, armament, colonialism, imperialism, occupations, genocide, nuclear weapons, global bases and intercontinental missiles – you name it.

    It is a ‘civilisation’ so steeped in violence – political, economic, structural, gender, cultural, entertainment, psychological, racial – that most people take it for granted and don’t even realise the extent to which we are a culture of violence and not peace.

    If the Danish government and parliament had been in favour of peace, in such a culture, they would have caused an outcry and heated public debate. But in a culture of war, they are completely politically correct – and Danes don’t see alternatives because politics, the media and research/experts are on the same war line. The same deadly groupthink – a concept that involves not thinking but following the herd in the delusional mood that you are right – simply cannot be wrong – and that everyone else is wrong.

    Denmark does not have a MIMAK – a Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex. Denmark is a MIMAK, and it must be sold to taxpayers in every possible – and ethically impossible – way. Danish businesses are now tasked with streamlining and designing the militarism of the future, just look at how the world-renowned A. P. Møller Maersk is leading the way. Moller Maersk is heading a ministerial committee to make the Danish military – I refuse to call it ‘defence’ – ‘well-run.’

    Interestingly, only one member of that committee has any relevant expertise; the rest – one must assume – know nothing special about international politics, defence theories, doctrines, security theories, threat analysis, etc., and I am quite sure that none of them can spell the word ‘peace.’

    Nor do they need to. Today’s “peace” equals the ability to deter, to hate, to see threats around every corner, to arm without a target or purpose but as a percentage of GDP, to wage war – verbally (diplomacy no longer exists) and physically. We have Danish PM Mette Frederiksen’s word that peace can be more dangerous than war.

    *****

    8 April – Swedish Television, SVT, reports that Prime Minister Kristersson will call all the Swedish parliamentary parties for talks next week. The reason is this – ‘The government is now calling for new party leader talks on the continued rearmament of the Swedish defence. The background is the proposal for a loan-financed rearmament of SEK 300 billion, which the government and the Sweden Democrats have announced.’

    They want to borrow SEK 300 billion – US$ 30 bn – to finance Sweden’s future rearmament, which comes on top of a rearmament that saw Sweden spend SEK 45 billion on its ‘defence’ ten years ago and today spending SEK 143 billion, an increase of 318%. More details on the Government Chancellery page – showing this development:

    Sweden must rearm to satisfy the absurd, anti-intellectual and irrelevant yardstick: military spending as a percentage of GDP, which I have criticised to no end here. The planned rearmament has no – no – relation to any serious, qualified analysis of likely civil and military threats to Sweden in the coming decades. It suffices these days to state that Putin is the cause of all problems, that he is evil or that he is this or that personality and, therefore, to maintain out of the blue that he aims to take most of Europe. No one asks a question, because critical journalism has also disappeared, at least in this field.

    This is how you lie and how you install and increase fear in the population. Fear – fearology – is known to be extremely effective in getting people to believe or do anything. Because ‘we’ are threatened!

    But apart from this kakistocratic mindset, one should note that Swedish Prime Minister Kristersson is quoted as saying this:

    ‘In serious times, it’s important that we stick together as a country, says Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.’

    Is he afraid that Sweden will not stay together as a country? Is he afraid that the propaganda that ‘the Russians are coming’ will be seen through? Is he afraid that Sweden will not hold together when Swedes realise how destructive this insane militarisation – and borrowing for it – is for Swedes in the future? Is he afraid that at some point he’ll be seen as a peacetime traitor because his government is apparently more loyal to NATO and the US (even under the Trump regime!) than to the people who elected him?

    I wonder if there’s something – deeper – in the thought I express in the headline of this article?

    I fear that there is – and that this is a convincing sign of the West’s decay from within – while legitimising the chaos of inner emptiness by looking mad at external non-existent threats. Psychologists call this kind of psychology ‘projection’ – ‘projecting your own dark sides onto your opponent.’ I would call it psycho-political projection.

    We – Western societies – simply have no vision of the future to rally around, so the illusory and self-created war must become the thing that makes us stand together and gives us meaning.

    PS Much more can indeed be said about this hypothesis – militarism as filling the void of modern Western society, offering a meaning and cohesion, albeit absurd and dangerous. I intend to think more and write more about this, so any views you, dear reader, may have on this relationship, please drop them below. Thanks!

    The post Have Militaristic “Culture,” Enemy Images, and Threats of War Become the Unifying Force in our Society? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Explosive cover up around US nukes coming to UK Lakenheath base revealed

    Lakenheath Alliance for Peace are returning to the US-controlled RAF Lakenheath to stop the threat of US nuclear weapons coming to Britain. Activists will set up a peace camp and vigil from Monday 14 to Saturday 26 April. Their actions will then culminate in a blockade of the base on the final day to call on the government to refuse the siting of these nuclear weapons in Britain.

    Lakenheath documents revealed

    This protest comes after the Mirror ran an exclusive investigation revealing a shocking government cover up about the new US nuclear weapons deployment. Legal letters from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) to the Ministry of Defence resulted in the declassifying of a document exempting US Visiting Forces in Britain from meeting nuclear safety regulations. This blanket exemption not only applies to troops stationed at RAF Lakenheath, but across all US bases in Britain.

    This means that Suffolk County Council will never be informed of the US nuclear bombs arriving at RAF Lakenheath. The council would therefore be under no obligation to have emergency plans in place in the event of a nuclear accident at the base.

    CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt said:

    Nuclear weapons are the most destructive in the world. They put us all at risk every day. Whether they are from the dangers of accidents involving Britain’s own nuclear weapons or US ones deployed at RAF Lakenheath. Far from keeping people safe, all these nuclear weapons make Britain a target. Yet the government is more concerned about its special relationship with the US than people’s safety.

    Planned activities

    The new camp will see a ramping up of activities since the last peace camp in July 2024. Alongside the 24/7 vigil, there will be a programme of events and actions taking place at the base and in nearby towns and villages including:

    • 17 April, Greenham Women’s Day: Women who protested US nuclear weapons at RAF Greenham Common in the 1980s will lead the demonstration at the main gate.
    • 21 April, War Crimes & Genocide Day: Solidarity groups and activists, including a doctor who has volunteered in Gaza, will gather to protest at RAF Lakenheath’s involvement in war crimes being committed by US/UK/NATO forces and its military support which enables Israel to commit genocide in Gaza. 
    • 24 April, International Peace Conference: Members of peace campaigns from across the world will join local and national speakers for a one-day conference in Bury St Edmunds. Participants will challenge US militarism and the drive to never- ending wars, the build-up of US controlled NATO bases in Europe and how these impact the environment and people.
    • 26 April, Base Blockade: The final day of the camp will see activists engage in a blockade of the main gate of the base. CND will organising a stunt in reference to the British government’s nuclear secrecy.

    You can find a full programme and timetable on LAP’s website here.

    Lakenheath: risk and destruction

    Bolt also said:

    The peace camp comes just as we learn that Britain’s cover-up of a US nuclear weapons deployment has been in the works for at least four years, alongside proof that people living close to any US base in this country, not just in East Anglia, are at great risk.

    We encourage everyone to get involved with this camp, whether its attending one of the vigils, joining the blockade on the final day, or taking part in the international peace conference.

    Meanwhile, Lakenheath Alliance for Peace co-founder Angie Zelter said:

    It is horrifying and shameful that USAF Lakenheath, on British soil and with the connivance of the UK government is involved in war crimes and genocide. Pilots from Israel and Saudi Arabia are trained at Lakenheath and US planes and bombs go out to take part in the bombings in Gaza and Yemen.

    We are here to say this is not in our name and to warn service personnel in the base that they should never obey illegal orders and refuse to take part in the never ending wars that are destroying people and planet.

    Zelter explained:

    To mark the Genocide and War Crimes Day, we will hold a symbolic death march with baby shrouds, Red Rebels, and hanging baby clothes on the fence of the base. This is to remind everyone of the impact of these planes on babies and children. It is blood on their hands and from their planes.

    Greenham Common Woman Ginnie Herbet said:

    Women who protested at Greenham in the 1980s are now protesting at the return of US nukes to Lakenheath. The cruise missiles left Greenham Common, international law changed and the Common was handed back to the people. Forty years later and here we are protesting again as secret decisions are made and US nuclear weapons return to Lakenheath. Not in our Name!”

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • America Has Become Anti-American

    Because I live in Japan and post articles which are critical of America, I am often accused of being anti-American. The truth is both counter-intuitive and disturbing.

    I haven’t changed, but America certainly has.

    America has become anti-American!

    The Constitution guarantees freedom of the press. Yet reporters are now being intimidated and threatened with arrest and incarceration. Whistleblowers who try to expose fraud, corruption, and waste in government by making available in public news media forums information of value to American citizens, are likewise harassed and prosecuted.

    The Constitution requires the government to promote the general welfare. Yet the benefits of our economic wealth are accruing to a tiny elite while poverty is still pervasive and the majority of the population scrambles to make ends meet. Among the 34 highly developed nations in the world, America ranks 17th in terms of life satisfaction — happiness — the key factors for its low ranking being massive income inequality and excessively long hours spent on average in the work place. In terms of health care and life expectancy, for the richest country in the world, America ranks abysmally low, with longevity actually declining.

    The Constitution guarantees equal representation of its citizens. Yet, the electoral system has become corrupted by unverifiable e-voting, grotesque gerrymandering of districts, and torrents of money in politics, which only guarantees the voices of average voters will be drowned out and their participation in our democracy marginalized.

    The Constitution guarantees the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure, and right of trial by jury before peers, yet starting in 2001 by using the endless War on Terror as an excuse, patently unconstitutional legislation has been effected — Patriot Acts I and II, FISA, and the NDAA which Obama signed into law on New Years Eve 2011 while America was preoccupied with celebrating the holidays, which have regularly been renewed ever since — now placing every citizen at risk for arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention with no access to legal counsel.

    The Constitution guarantees equality before the law. Yet rich elite white collar criminals wreak havoc on our economy breaking countless laws and go free, while petty crimes by regular citizens — especially people of color — result in harsh and disproportionate prosecution and punishment.

    The Constitution guarantees the right of free speech, including dissent against questionable policies. Yet, we see individuals protesting the cruel, malevolent and systematic killing of Palestinians by Israel, harassed, persecuted, and prosecuted by establishment authorities, who apparently consider the slaughter of between 50,000 and 200,000 mostly innocent Palestinians, including women and children — horrific war crimes which those in power indisputably support — necessary and laudable. U.S. support for this genocide mocks the principles we hold dear and have at least until now defined us as a people.

    The Constitution specifies that the power to wage war is exclusively the responsibility of Congress. Yet the president as Commander-in-Chief as often as not ignores the constitutional limits as well as those contained in the War Powers Act, using the military purely at his own discretion. This wanton abuse of military power results in the unnecessary deaths of our citizens in uniform, while at the same time counter-productively foments enormous animosity and mistrust across much of the planet.

    Our legal framework via the Posse Comitatus Act has long barred the use of the military for law enforcement but vast and sophisticated surveillance by federal security agencies, the militarization of local police forces, and their handshake agreements with federal agencies, puts us all under the iron fist of enforcement agencies like the NSA and operatives of the Pentagon itself.

    I could go on. But that might offend some people.

    Sometimes the truth can be so anti-American.

    The post America Has Become Anti-American first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The right-wing media’s strange obsession with war is doing serious damage to young people

    Some in our nation have our history wrong. In light of discussions regarding Ukraine and wider conflicts, the British political class have attempted to galvanise young people with ideas of service to the British state. To specify – the establishment newspaper outlets, elements of Keir Starmer’s cabinet, and the growing far-right Reform UK, have shown their willingness to compel young people to serve king and country.

    They’ve attempted to leverage notions of Britain’s Second World War triumph and National Service (discontinued in 1963) to admonish the young, 14% of whom, as we keep hearing, are not in work, education, or training. Their attempts at historical citation are often misused, sometimes just factually incorrect, and this narrative will continue to hurt a generation which has already been mistreated.

    War in British memory: fetishised to send the working class to the frontline

    “If it weren’t for them, you’d be speaking German … we’d all be speaking German” goes the line from schoolteachers to politicians. The generation whose responsibility it was to defend the British shores from Nazi encroachment hold a rightly venerated place in British political and social memory. Young men and women who held firm against Nazi tyranny which swept through France in little but six weeks, have mostly passed away. Anyone who came into contact with veterans of that generation will know their lives were immeasurably different to the ones that their children faced. But the legacy of other war-torn generations remains oversimplified in Britain’s memory.

    The most poignant example of this phenomenon which is not too much discussed, is the First World War, which litters the iconography of British military remembrance. The poppy is nominally a symbol of British appreciation to those who volunteered to give their lives. However, it’s utilised by British nationalists who fetishise historical crimes, and use it as an excuse to suggest sending the working class to the front line. One can observe that this symbol does not do justice to the true history of the First World War and other conflicts, as a series of futile tragedies which needlessly took the lives of generations.

    Not telling the whole truth on remembrance

    Ad infinitum, the poppy and the whole idea of remembrance leaves behind the rage that many (including veterans) feel about the truth of war and international conflict. One should feel grateful and appreciative at the lives given by men in the 6 years between 1939 and 1945, which halted fascist imperialism and its overtake of all Europe. But the purposeful waste and ruin of lives by decision-makers in the 318 year history of the British military is a nauseating disgrace. This is without even really discussing the genuinely countless millions who were murdered by British imperialist projects following the 1707 Act of Union and 1914, where the vast majority of Britain’s wars were offensive and not defensive.

    In recent decades, when young people join the military, they usually come from poor backgrounds, in neglected towns, and do so as a way of getting out, or having experiences they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. These working-class kids are brought into the system, which is more-often-than-not just a job for them, and are then taught to serve a set of institutions whose material intentions involve the killing of innocent people.

    ‘Unpatriotic’ young people

    If they survive, they are promptly spat out and frequently end up jobless and homeless, severed from state welfare. What’s more is that if we ignore this, they will continue to be ensnared by this country’s political right.

    In contemplating where our global situation is, and how this particular idea of remembrance disregards the politics of class in our society, where does it leave the young? In pure and simple terms, according to the top military spokespersons, if the country were to be invaded by a reasonably well equipped foreign state, it would be hopeless. We know this fact from the February 18th speech given by defence secretary John Healy, who seems increasingly anxious at the current capacity of the British state to field manpower and armaments. An intelligent follow-up question should be, then, why do the young feel so unwilling to join the military and serve the state?

    Ask any follower of the British right-wing this question and you get the answer that the generation currently undergoing late adolescence or early adulthood is simply too idle or “unpatriotic” to undertake the defence of their communities. What a flagrant load of bullshit.

    When your government breaks their promises

    The founding idea in modern liberal political theory is the idea of the social contract – in that if all members of a society give over some of their autonomy to the state and the government, they will be able to live in stability, and perhaps prosperity. This notion, widely understood in the pre and post-WW2 era, has completely vanished. If you listen to popular political commentators and economic analysts on the left, then you would know that this is because of neoliberalism.

    The way that movement for ultra-capitalism stripped working people of job security, and any hope of social welfare, has led many young working-class people to completely forgo the idea of a permanent home, a stable career, and a steady community. Socialists and anarchists know that the economy puts assets in the hands of a small number of people, and that the state will protect itself before its citizens. But not being surprised doesn’t help anyone when your society continues to crack.

    Autonomy for our communities who won’t stand for exploitation any longer

    What we should be demanding is autonomy for our communities, so they can make their own decisions on matters of welfare, community support, and self-reliance. Taking the current system as it is however, if you’re going to ask working people to potentially sign over their lives, you need to make and keep your promises. You need to give them something to fight for, rather than only something to fight against, however dangerous the adversary.

    The British Welfare State was not a generous offer of charity from the establishment to ‘the poor’ of 1950s Britain; it was a concession given to those who lived under systems of exploitation and likely wouldn’t stand for it any longer. With the probability of global conflict in our lifetimes, working people are yet to see anything of the sort.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By James Horton

  • Insurance companies’ investment in arms industry soars with Gaza genocide and Trump election

    Major insurance companies have piled investments into the arms industry over recent months, new research reveals.

    Boycott Bloody Insurance – and quickly

    The research, looking at how insurance companies active in the UK are investing their money, shows that they pumped millions more into firms involved in nuclear weapons, depleted uranium and white phosphorus immediately after Donald Trump was elected.

    Earlier this month, the same researchers showed that companies active in the British insurance market actively increased their investments in firms involved in supplying Israel with military equipment over the last year.

    Insurance firms are major investors across the economy. The new report from the campaign group Boycott Bloody Insurance, entitled Ensuring Destruction – the Insurance Industry and Controversial Weapons – looks at how much of that money is invested in firms which are involved in or associated with various ‘controversial weapons’ – a category which includes white phosphorous, depleted uranium and nuclear weapons.

    They found that major insurance companies channelled $260m more towards companies involved in the production of these weapons in December 2024 than they did in September 2024. Among the group of companies assessed by the researchers – all major providers active in the UK market – investment in manufacturers of controversial weapons grew by 13% over the three month period.

    Not just a UK problem

    The British company, Aviva, increased their investment into companies which are involved in or associated with controversial weapons to £1.36bn, making it by far the biggest investor in these sorts of firms among the assessed insurers.

    However, it’s not just Aviva which bet on growing global violence. Allianz, AXA, and Zurich, also grew their investments in these firms. In many cases, the insurers are investing in these companies in direct contradiction to their own responsible investment policies.

    The researchers also looked at which companies were providing Employers’ Liability insurance for firms involved in or associated with controversial weapons, finding that all of the major insurers were doing so.

    Andrew Taylor from the campaign said:

    Insurance companies are a vital part of the global financial system. Their investments help drive the economy. Without the insurance they provide, other companies can’t operate. And yet these major household brands are providing money and underwriting services to companies whose core business is mass slaughter, mutilation of children, and machines of devastation. Often, these companies claim to have socially responsible investment policies, and yet they are using their customers’ money to prop up some of the least responsible firms on the planet, directly contradicting their own policies.

    As global conflict and uncertainty escalate, these titans of the financial services sector are rushing money behind firms who will benefit from more conflict, more war and more chaos. We urgently need de-escalation of global violence, and are calling on businesses and organisations to boycott all insurance companies which invest in, and underwrite, firms involved in or associated with these controversial weapons.

    The insurance industry is destroying the planet

    This research comes on the back of another report, released earlier this year, which looked at the insurance industry’s involvement in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

    Entitled Ensuring Genocide – the Insurance Industry and Israel’s War Machine, the report found that major insurance companies active in the UK market have increased their investment in companies involved in Israel’s genocide of Gaza over the last year. Insurers including Allianz, Aviva, AXA, Zurich, and RSA collectively invested over $1.7 billion in companies supplying military equipment used by Israel since 7 October 2023.

    The report also showed how these major insurance brands are profiting from the genocide themselves by underwriting the arms manufacturers who are supplying weapons to Israel.

    Monika Nielsen the researcher for the campaign added:

    Millions of people in the UK have been profoundly shocked by Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And they will be horrified to discover that the firms insuring their local councils, workplaces, places of worship or universities are the same companies funding and underwriting the production of the weapons Israel is using to blow up Palestinians’ homes, hospitals, schools and families. These firms don’t need to insure arms companies. We are calling on people to boycott them until they stop.

    Featured image via Boycott Bloody Insurance/Comrade D

    By The Canary

  • The UK government is repeating its colonial crimes in Yemen – as ongoing evidence shows

    Britain’s crony government may only be a junior partner to US imperialism nowadays, but its participation in mass murder and destruction in Gaza and Yemen show once and for all that British imperial crimes didn’t stop in the 20th century. And it’s not about ‘keeping people safe’ in the UK. In fact, there are many reasons to believe Britain’s out-of-control military-government love-in actually makes us less safe.

    Much of our focus is rightly on the UK government’s complicity in Israel’s genocidal assault on occupied Gaza since 2023, but there is also a long history of British tyranny in Yemen. And this has come into focus yet again with Britain’s involvement in the escalating bombing of anti-genocide forces there in recent weeks.

    There are a number of important groups and individuals that are fighting to expose the immense, corrupting power that the arms trade has over Britain’s political system, and how people around the world – including in the UK – suffer as a result. Below is some vital context – both new and old – to inform us as we fight back.

    UK was key in Yemen’s humanitarian catastrophe

    Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has just released its “Trends in UK arms exports in 2023” report. And it reminded us that, “despite overwhelming evidence of war crimes”, the British government allowed the UK arms industry to remain “central to the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen” that devastated the country from 2015 to 2022 (when a truce took hold). Britain ignored “the clear risks to civilian life and international law” in Yemen, paving the way for it to do the same with Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza from 2023 onwards. But perhaps even more than with the Gaza genocide, “the UK bears significant responsibility for the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen”.

    The Saudi war on Yemen had killed around 377,000 people directly or indirectly by late 2021. And following the 2022 truce, 21.6 million people (about half of them children) still needed aid. (The cessation of hostilities, meanwhile, helped to significantly reduce tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023, which was not a pleasing development for Israeli-US-UK interests in the Middle East.)

    The revolving door between arms companies and government enabled Yemen’s decimation

    BAE Systems – the “biggest UK arms company” – has no interest in human rights, as we can see from its heavy involvement with authoritarian regimes. It’s been very close to Saudi Arabia since the 1980s, for example, and it enabled the Saudi decimation of Yemen from 2015 onwards. Its “close ties with the UK government” helped to ensure there was no accountability, though. As CAAT pointed out, many BAE exports “take place under open licences, making them nearly impossible to scrutinise”. This is the case with “as much as half of the UK’s arms exports” (including those of key parts for Israel’s F-35 jets of destruction).

    BAE, in short, “profits from war and repression, often with the tacit or explicit support of UK government policy”. And that’s no wonder, considering:

    BAE personnel have been seconded into government departments, while former officials move easily into BAE and other defence firms — blurring the lines between public interest and corporate profit.

    CAAT insisted that:

    The revolving door between government and arms companies undermines efforts to apply ethical standards in arms exports.

    It’s perhaps no surprise to hear, then, that:

    The UK signed £14.5 billion of arms export contracts in 2023 alone — the second-highest annual total on record.

    The increasing militarisation of Europe amid the artificial extension of the Ukraine proxy war, meanwhile, also served the arms profiteers well – but “with long-term implications for peace and security”.

    Documenting Britain’s role in Yemen’s bloodshed

    Unredacted has added to the focus on Yemen recently with the release of a project that:

    brings together a large collection of documents relating to US-UK military and political involvement in the Yemen war, primarily through its support for the Saudi-led coalition.

    It explains that:

    Many of these documents shed light on the impact of the war on Yemeni civilians, UK military training of the Royal Saudi Air Force, the history of UK military relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, the legal challenge by Campaign Against Arms Trade in relation to UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia, and decision-making within government about the implementation of UK arms export rules.

    To accompany this, Middle East Eye published an article highlighting Britain’s response to the ‘Great Hall Massacre’ in Yemen, which caused the US to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia. UK officials ignored the warnings and kept arms flowing – as a foreign office whistleblower had previously exposed. The UK government then tried to prevent journalists and academics from getting their hands on information about what happened. The understaffing and ineffectiveness of the parliamentary committee responsible for arms export oversight (CAEC), meanwhile, didn’t help matters.

    Politicians’ behaviour regarding the Saudi destruction of Yemen, and their ability to get away with it, then paved the way for the same to happen with Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Again, the government officials ignored warnings and kept arms flowing, with the help of political pressure, bureaucratic evasion, and legal manipulation. They did this in full disrespect of arms export laws and human rights, and in full submission to corporate and imperial interests.

    The current bombing of Yemen on behalf of Israel’s genocide

    These efforts to highlight the destructive impact of the toxic alliance of arms companies and corrupt politicians are all the more important considering Britain’s ongoing support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and for US attacks on Yemen to try and stop its solidarity with Gaza. They also remind us of the long history of British crimes in Yemen.

    Britain occupied part of Yemen in 1839, using it as a colonial stopover on the way to and from India. The port city of Aden even “became the main British base for her Far and Middle East interests… after the loss of the Suez Canal” In 1956. But as the struggle for freedom advanced in the 1960s, Britain used “increasingly ruthless repressive measures” to try and suppress local resistance. The “harsh and often indiscriminate” repression failed, though, and British forces left in 1967.

    In the 60s, Britain backed “shifty, unreliable and treacherous” forces in Yemen and used violent, covert tactics to impede development and protect its colonial occupation. “As many as 200,000” people may have died during this period.

    Then, a turbulent post-colonial period of dictatorships kept many Yemeni people in poverty. A useless, corrupt dictator who opportunistically served US interests faced a revolution in 2011, and then Saudi Arabia’s brutal and pointless bombing campaign only worsened the situation for ordinary people.

    Britain is “well aware of the complexities of Yemeni resistance”, as Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) has pointed out. Yet it “now risks repeating the mistakes of the past”.

    IT’S. ALL. ABOUT. THE. MONEY.

    Why would Britain increase its involvement in what the mainstream media once called “the next Afghanistan”? Why would it enter a quagmire that does not serve the interests of ordinary people in the UK? As AOAV said:

    Britain’s deep entanglement in the security industry… reflects a dangerous fusion of state interests with private defence profits.

    The country’s “deep economic and strategic ties with the Gulf“ dictatorships, meanwhile, also play a key role. British corporations want profit – and oil and arms are great ways to make money for unscrupulous, unethical actors.

    However, AOAV insisted:

    by launching airstrikes and closely aligning itself with the US and Israel, the UK risks reinforcing the very instability it claims to oppose.

    Why? Because involvement in Yemen:

    entrenches [Britain] deeper in a widening regional conflict—one that strengthens narratives of Western aggression and increases the likelihood of further retaliation.

    If the money keeps flowing, though, the corporate-government alliance is happy.

    The fightback against politicians’ destructive lies

    Death and destruction are not necessary. And one voice consistently challenging the war machine is Andrew Feinstein. Standing in solidarity with other independent left-wingers in the 2024 election, the anti-racist and anti-militarist campaigner challenged Labour Party leader Keir Starmer in his constituency, reducing Starmer’s majority significantly.

    Feinstein and his colleagues have been raising funds to publish a book that opposes the:

    unholy alliance of money, power, and violence [that] has been trying to convince the world that every war is the last war for peace, every civilian death is necessary collateral in the pursuit of human rights, and every weapon sold is bought to make us safe.

    They seek to show how:

    the ongoing slaughter in Gaza and Yemen have exposed this rhetoric as lies.

    Feinstein has previously called the arms racket “the world’s most corrupt trade”, saying “it accounts for around 40% of all corruption in all global trade”. And this is because of “a veil of national-security-imposed secrecy” which allows:

    politicians, corporate executives, military leaders, intelligence leaders [to] do things on arms deals that they wouldn’t do in any other sector because they just wouldn’t get away with it.

    As a result of bribery and impunity, the war machine keeps on raking in money at the expense of humanity, systemically undermining so-called democracies like the UK in the process.

    Fortunately, groups and individuals like CAAT, Unredacted, AOAV, and Feinstein are helping to expose the war machine’s powerful grip on British politics, and the way people in Yemen, Gaza, Britain, and elsewhere suffer as a result. Because by truly understanding this situation, we can unite to fight back.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • United States Escalates Tension With Panama

    “We are paying a monthly fee to Republican party lobbyists. In December, they were saying on CNN that they had already invaded Panama and could do it again. The Panamanian state is funding its own invasion.” Panamanian student organizer Ahmed X with student group Juventudes Revolucionarias, said in an interview after protests escalated on February 1st. 

    Ahmed, like many Panamanians, are increasingly concerned about Panama’s president José Raúl Mulino’s ability to defend the country’s sovereignty against U.S. interests.

    Since the beginning of Trump’s presidency U.S. colonial ambitions in Panama have escalated dramatically, the republican party lobby in question is the BGR Group , a lobbying and communications firm that president Mulino hired to assist Panama with navigating current U.S. relations.

    The post United States Escalates Tension With Panama appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • NATO is Breaking apart

    On April 2, Reuters headlined “US officials object to European push to buy weapons locally,” which means that Trump’s demand for Europe to increase greatly its ‘defense’ spending is, indeed, part of his plan to keep the boom in the U.S. stock markets going. This needs to be understood in the relevant context:

    Though none of the mainstream press reported the fact in 2017, Trump started his Presidency in 2017 by making the biggest armaments-sale in history: $400 billion in U.S.-made weapons to Saudi Arabia over the next ten years, which would keep the by-far-most profitable segment of the U.S. stock markets — the ‘defense’ sector — booming, and therefore keep American billionaires (whom those corporations benefit enormously in every possible way) continuing to grow their personal fortunes at a much faster clip than the U.S. economy itself grows (which has been quite sluggish — below the global average for all countries); and, this way, the fortunes of billionaires will continue to thrive even if the U.S. economy doesn’t (as has been the case now for at least the past 25 years).

    Right now, Trump is promising to stop America’s apparently ceaseless creation of, and participation (such as in Ukraine) in, foreign wars, but he isn’t reducing — and is instead actually increasing — America’s ‘defense’ (aggression) expenditures while cutting virtually everything else (the federal expenditures that don’t help billionaires); and, in order to do this beyond the 2027 end-date of his $400 billion weapons-sale to the Sauds, he is trying to get America’s colonies (‘allies’), such as Europe, Japan, South Korea, etc., to increase their armaments-purchases from American firms such as Lockheed Martin — the firms whose sales-volumes are especially important to America’s billionaires, the people who control the U.S. Government. This is why he doesn’t want Europeans to grow their own ‘defense’ industries.

    If a European nation will allow foreign (especially American) billionaires to benefit from its sharp increase in armaments-purchases, this won’t hurt ONLY their own domestic billionaires, but it will ALSO be sending those manufacturing jobs to America and thereby boost America’s economy at the expense of the local economy. For Trump to be requesting them to do that is to insult not only that country’s billionaires but also its residents.

    This is not the only reason why NATO might soon break apart. For example: Trump is determined to take Greenland for the U.S. Government — to expand the U.S. to include Greenland. However, polls show that around 85% of Greenlanders are opposed to that, and Trump is also saying that if they won’t willingly comply, then he will do it militarily. Greenland is a Danish colony, and Denmark is a part of NATO. If the U.S. invades Greenland, then how will other countries in NATO feel about that? It would present the U.S. blatantly as aggressor against a NATO member-nation — the very nation that had previously been supposedly their chief protector. What would this do to NATO?

    The U.S. Congress is, according to the U.S. Constitution, supposed to be the ultimate determinant of whether or not U.S. military forces invade another country; but, so far, there has been prevailing silence from Congress about Trump’s threat against Greenlanders and even Danes — not the outrage that would prevail if America were still governed under its Constitution.

    We are entering the twilight zone. Will it turn out to be the end of the U.S. empire — the end of the largest empire in all of world history? It could — especially if Congress remains silent about what has been happening. The longer this silence continues, the deeper into it we are getting.

    This is certainly a weird moment in world history. Of course, ultimately, NATO will end, but the question is when and how. NATO had started on 25 July 1945 as a sentiment and resulting decision by Truman, and was then born in 1949, but is probably near its end now, and the public don’t know it because lots of ‘history’ that has been told in The West is false.

    The post NATO is Breaking apart first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Secrecy and Virtue Signalling: Another View of Signalgate

    There has been a fascinating, near unanimous condemnation among the cognoscenti about the seemingly careless addition of Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic to the chat chain of Signal by US National Security Advisor Michael Waltz. Condemnation of the error spans the spectrum from clownish to dangerous. There has been virtually nothing on the importance of such leaks of national security information and the importance they serve in informing the public about what those in power are really up to.

    Rather than appreciate the fact that there was a journalist there to receive information on military operations that might raise a host of concerns (legitimate targeting and the laws of war come to mind), there was a chill of terror coursing through the commentariat and Congress that military secrets and strategy had been compromised. Goldberg himself initially disbelieved it. “I didn’t think it could be real.” He also professed that some messages would not be made public given the risks they posed, conceding that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s communications to the group “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”

    This seemingly principled stance ignores the bread-and-butter importance of investigative reporting and activist publishing, which so often relies on classified material received via accident or design. Normally, the one receiving the message is condemned. In this case, Golberg objected to being the recipient, claiming moral high ground in reporting the security lapse. Certain messages of the “Houthi PC small group channel” were only published by The Atlantic to throw cold water on stubborn claims by the White House that classified details had not been shared.

    The supposed diligence on Goldberg’s part to fuss about the cavalier attitude to national security shown by the Trump administration reveals the feeble compromise the Fourth Estate has reached with the national security state. Could it be that WikiLeaks was, like the ghost of Banquo, at this Signal’s feast? Last year’s conviction of the organisation’s founding publisher, Julian Assange, on one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information under the Espionage Act of 1917, or section 793(g) (Title 18, USC), might have exerted some force over Goldberg’s considerations. Having been added to the communication chain in error, the defence material could well have imperilled him, with First Amendment considerations on that subject untested.

    As for what the messages revealed, along with the importance of their disclosure, things become clear. Waltz reveals that the killing of a Houthi official necessitated the destruction of a civilian building. “The first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.” Vance replies: “Excellent.”

    As Turse reminds us in The Intercept, this conforms to the practices all too frequently used when bombing the Houthis in Yemen. The United States offered extensive support to the Saudi-led bombing campaign against the Shia group, one that precipitated one of the world’s gravest humanitarian crises. That particular aerial campaign rarely heeded specific targeting, laying waste to vital infrastructure and health facilities. Anthropologist Stephanie Savell, director of the Costs of War project at Brown University, also noted in remarks to The Intercept that fifty-three people have perished in the latest US airstrikes, among them five children. “These are just the latest deaths in a long track record of US killing in Yemen, and the research shows that US airstrikes in many countries have a history of killing and traumatizing innocent civilians and wreaking havoc on people’s lives and livelihoods.”

    The appearance of Hillary Clinton in the debate on Signalgate confirmed the importance of such leaks, and why they are treated with pathological loathing. “We’re all shocked – shocked!” she screeched in The New York Times. “What’s worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.” As a person with a hatred of open publishing outlets such as WikiLeaks (her own careless side to security was exposed by the organisation’s publication of emails sent from a private server while she was Secretary of State), the mania is almost understandable.

    Other countries, notably members of the Five Eyes alliance system, are also voicing concern that their valuable secrets are at risk if shared with the Trump administration. Again, the focus there is less on the accountability of officials than the cast iron virtues of secrecy. “When mistakes happen, and sensitive intelligence leaks, lessons must be learned to prevent that from recurring,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stated gravely in Halifax, Nova Scotia. “It’s a serious, serious issue, and all lessons must be taken.”

    Former chief of Canada’s intelligence agency, Richard Fadden, was even more explicit: “Canada needs to think about what this means in practical terms: is the United States prepared to protect our secrets, as we are bound to protect theirs?”

    Signalgate jolted the national security state. Rather than being treated as a valuable revelation about the latest US bombing strategy in Yemen, the obsession has been on keeping a lid on such matters. For the sake of accountability and the public interest, let us hope that the lid on this administration’s activities remains insecure.

    The post Secrecy and Virtue Signalling: Another View of Signalgate first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • The shocking scale of UK arms exports has just been revealed

    Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has published its annual report for UK arms exports in 2023. It summaries key quantitative and qualitative trends in UK arms exports in 2023, and in the five–10 year periods up to 2023, using a variety of sources of information. It is the only place where all this information is collated and discussed as a whole.

    UK arms exports: making a killing

    The report reveals that the US was the largest recipient of single licenses, totalling £984m (19.8% of the total). While these exports took place during Biden’s presidency, given the current actions and trajectory of the Donald Trump-led administration, there are serious human rights concerns regarding continuing this level of exports. The US, meanwhile, is not only deeply complicit, but outright encouraging the escalation of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

    Meanwhile, in 2023, there was a massive jump in arms exports to Europe. Overall, the value of UK companies’ arms export contracts to Europe more than quadrupled between 2013–17 and 2019–23, reaching £16.15 billion in the latter period. This reflects a trend towards European rearmament that has been going on for many years, but which greatly accelerated with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Then, despite not being as high as in previous years, sales to human rights abusing regimes in Saudi Arabia and Qatar remain high. In 2023, the UK issued single licenses worth £515m (10.4% of the total) to Saudi Arabia, and £351m (7.1% of the total) to Qatar.

    While the trend towards European militarisation is likely to continue, the lull in sales to the Middle East may be temporary with new deals for Eurofighters to Qatar and Turkey looking increasingly likely.

    Open licences are deadly

    Overall, the lack of transparency in the arms trade makes it difficult to calculate the true value of UK arms exports. This is due to the lack of reporting required on open licenses. Under an open license, a company can export unlimited amounts of specified military equipment without further reporting requirements. CAAT estimates that, on average, roughly half of UK arms exports are conducted using open licenses.

    Report author Dr. Sam Perlo-Freeman said:

    The increasing militarisation of Europe reflected in this report is deeply concerning, and likely to continue. There is an urgent need to reevaluate how we think about security, so that instead of pumping money into arms companies, we start tackling the biggest security threat to humanity – the climate crisis.

    Meanwhile, the Labour government is increasing military spending while announcing yet more benefit cuts and taking money from sick and disabled people. Moreover, while increasing domestic arms spending, governments are also promoting arms exports more strongly than ever, with devastating impacts around the world. We should be promoting welfare, not warfare, instead of creating a spiralling arms race that entrenches hostility and increases the chances of war.

    This report shows the UK’s arms system is unethical and unaccountable and in desperate need of radical reform. Arms sales to human rights abusing regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar must stop, and it’s more than time that we started putting civilian lives and peaceful solutions before arms trade profits.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Opposition to the ‘DARC side’ has now hit Westminster thanks to Plaid Cymru

    As support for the campaign against the 27-dish US DARC radar array at Pembrokeshire continues to grow in momentum, PARC Against DARC says “all eyes are on Henry Tufnell MP” to declare a position on DARC once and for all. This comes as Liz Saville Roberts MP, Plaid Cymru’s defence spokesperson, tables an Early Day Motion (EDM) in UK Parliament calling for DARC radar plans to be scrapped entirely.

    The EDM, titled 975 DARC in Wales, was tabled on 19/03/25, and reads:

    That this House notes with deep concern the proposed US-UK-Australian military radar project, DARC (Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability), which would install 27 21m-high, 15m-wide parabolic radar dishes within sight of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park; believes this would severely harm the visual landscape, local tourism, and the internationally recognised natural ecology of the area; further notes the concerns regarding potential health risks posed by radiofrequency signals, as indicated by scientific studies, on residential populations located less than a kilometre from the site; highlights that DARC, as part of the AUKUS Treaty, is in violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty’s prohibition on the national appropriation of space and undermines international law; warns that the deployment of anti-satellite weaponry, for which DARC is a crucial targeting device, threatens to destabilise the civilian satellite network by generating hazardous space debris of a volatile and unpredictable nature which increases the probability of damage to essential infrastructure; urges the Government to recognise that DARC lacks strategic military necessity compared to other priorities; and calls on the government to permanently withdraw its planning application for the Pembrokeshire site and any alternative UK location.

    Cross-party support against the DARC radar system

    Within its first day the EDM had achieved cross-party support including signatures from the Lib Dems defence spokesperson Helen Maguire MP, Green Party MP Siân Berry, as well as the now Independent Alliance MP and former Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

    Liz Saville Roberts MP worked closely along with her Parliamentary team as well as PARC campaigners in Pembrokeshire to draft the EDM. She said:

    At a time when the United States is becoming a less reliable defence partner, we must question whether we truly want to further entangle Wales in US foreign policy through DARC and the AUKUS Treaty. The Ministry of Defence must also address local residents’ concerns regarding high levels of radiofrequency signals. That is why I have tabled this motion in Parliament.

    The EDM comes following a similar ‘Statement of Opinion’ which was tabled by Cefin Campbell MS in the Senedd, also opposing DARC. It has gained cross-party support, having been signed by close to a third of MSs including several Welsh Labour, Plaid Cymru and Welsh Lib Dem Senedd Members.

    Silence amid security concerns

    Campaigners assert that the proposed DARC radar would give Donald Trump and the US military the ability to dominate the space domain from Pembrokeshire as well as ruin the peninsula’s landscape and environment. PARC Against DARC said:

    As DARC radar becomes an increasingly contentious issue within public mindset and yet currently has the backing of Starmer’s administration, surely our elected Labour and Conservative representatives locally cannot stay silent any longer.

    With Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Greens fully in support of the campaign, Welsh Labour beginning to show some promising support and the Senedd election period looming, how can it be right that our local elected representatives in both Westminster and the Senedd remain utterly silent on this hugely important issue which is now of grave concern to thousands of people, locally, nationally and internationally?

    Lack of accountability and an emerging ‘political vacuum’

    The campaign, along with members of the public, have contacted Henry Tofnell MP on numerous occasions, and our experience echoes that of many others as we have received reports that he has completely ignored hundreds of emails requesting answers on DARC. The group said:

    As the MP for Mid and South Pembrokeshire and therefore the MP responsible for the proposed site at Brawdy, he has a public duty to take a personal, thorough and detailed interest in this issue. Accordingly we invited Henry to table this EDM on our behalf, yet he did not even have the courtesy to respond to our email requesting this.

    There appears to have developed some kind of ‘political vacuum’ in west Wales, where much needed answers should be forthcoming, yet both local politicians in Labour and UK cabinet politicians will for ‘whatever reason’ not break cover or speak out on extremely important issues such as this and other issues.

    PARC campaigners say they intend to hand-deliver 650 20-page information booklets and personalised letters to all 650 MPs in a trip to Westminster in London, before continuing to call on politicians in both the Senedd and UK Parliament to sign the respective statements of opposition to DARC.

    Public opposition to DARC will turn the tide on politicians

    PARC Against DARC said:

    As a campaign we have said all along that just as in the ‘90s when we in the PARC campaign fought off the very similar over-the-horizon radar project in the St Davids peninsula, our campaign is growing rapidly, and can and will continue to grow in strength until there is such strong opposition to the development that it will be impossible to build.

    We firmly believe that it’s only a matter of time until that situation is reached once again, and therefore as we have said before, it would be in the best interests of our local representatives to get on the right side of public opinion before their hand is forced. There is a stark historical reminder at play here that in the 1990s the local Conservative MP actually lost his seat over the issue, and the then Conservative government in Westminster was forced to very publicly cancel the project in the face of overwhelming public opposition

    It noted that:

    Our campaign simply grows from strength to strength. We’ve held packed public meetings, we have had over 100 positive media articles, our petition has been signed by over 17,000 people  and the statement of opinion in the Senedd is signed by nearly a third of MSs.

    Now, also, with the Early Day Motion in Westminster, cross-party opposition to the proposal and volunteers around the county having hand-delivered leaflets reaching 40,000 people, the pressure’s clearly intensifying on politicians who feel it is okay to ignore the thousands of emails they are collectively receiving, and ignore residents’ requests for answers and accountability.

    They need to start thinking about the fact this is a defining issue both for their parties, their future and their legacy, but most importantly of all for the landscape, economy and safety of Pembrokeshire, Wales and the UK that it’s in all our interests to protect.

    In conclusion, PARC Against DARC said:

    We strongly urge anyone who has concerns about DARC to visit our lobbying page on our campaign website, where they can email their MSs and MPs, and ask them to support the statements of opposition in both our UK and Wales Parliaments.

    Featured image supplied

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • #SwindonsSundaySermon: a deep, burning hatred of Starmer is stirring across the UK

    If Nye Bevan was turning in his grave during the Blair years, it won’t be very long before he goes full Lazarus and rises up from it to chase Keir Starmer through the streets of Whitehall. “No attempt at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for that red Tory, refugee-hating, DWP-cutting bastard, Starmer. So far as I am concerned, he is lower than a snail’s gonads”

    Or something like that.

    Starmer: another indefensible week

    This past week has been another brutal, self-inflicted car crash for Keir Starmer’s pretend Labour Party government.

    A £2.2 billion increase in defence spending — partially funded by cuts to international aid — is an abhorrent move by an abhorrent chancellor.

    Pretending to be an economist is one thing, but pretending an entire nation will benefit from an arms proliferation is just plain dishonest.

    “As defence spending rises, I want the whole country to feel its benefits”, said Rachel Reeves.

    What does she *really* mean by “benefit”? Perhaps we will see armed quadcopters and drones chasing disabled people around the streets to see if they’re fit for work? (More on the DWP later).

    They could live-stream it on the government’s social media feeds, and GBeebies News.

    ‘Can’t Work, Won’t Work, Get Shot’, presented by Jeremy Clarkson and Priti Patel, sponsored by Elbit Systems.

    Let’s spell this out in simple terms, free of media hyperbole, client journalism, and long fluffy words that mean less than fuck all to most of us.

    International aid is, in part, used to provide humanitarian relief for the victims of war and genocide. The vile monstrosity, Reeves, is slashing this money to create further victims of war and genocide.

    Will somebody please make this make some sort of fucking sense? Reeves is supposed to be a Labour chancellor, not Gideon Osborne in a fucking expensive frock.

    I cannot contain my disgust with this corrupted, bought-and-paid-for, arms lobbyists wet dream of a government

    How can any sensible individual take a glance at the scenes of utter devastation in Gaza and not be angered and horrified? Not Reeves. She wants in on the action

    Why do they call it the “defence” budget anyway? The only dangerous, malignant force attacking Britain is the Labour Party. We need defending from these murderous maniacs, first and foremost.

    Reeves: out of her depth, and out of her mind

    Chancellor Reeves would be out of her depth in a birdbath containing a drop of pigeon phlegm, and if you need solid proof of that you need look no further than her claim that Labour’s proposed cuts would slash £5 billion from the welfare budget.

    All it needed was someone that was able to use a calculator and this £5 billion suddenly became £3.4 billion, cementing Rachel Reeves’ place in history as the first Labour chancellor that couldn’t even kill off disabled people without screwing it up.

    This was the perfect opportunity for Reeves to step forward and say…

    “Comrades, I apologise, I have got this so very wrong. Disabled people do not deserve to bear the brunt of my growth-halving plans. Instead, we will be the Labour government that introduces the Musk and Zuckerberg Tax, ensuring those with the broadest shoulders carry the heaviest burden. Yes, I am the red Liz Truss, I am a nuclear-grade numpty, and I resign”.

    Back in the real world, the most evil government of my lifetime soon found another way of stamping on the faces of chronically ill and disabled people.

    One anonymous Labour MP said, “this assault on disabled people and those in need of support is nothing short of sadistically cruel”.

    Another, Kim Johnson, described the benefits barbarity as “Austerity 2.0”.

    This is their own fucking government they’re talking about.

    The stench still isn’t enough for the Labour Party brownnosers

    Kim Johnson might score a few brownie points with her constituents in Liverpool, but if she wants to be taken seriously she should resign from the Labour Party in horror and disgust.

    Is the lure of the money and the access to power really worth anything more than a permanently stained conscience and the blood of the disabled people of Britain, dripping from your grasping hands, Ms Johnson?

    Perhaps she can provoke the ridiculously named “Socialist Campaign Group” into listing a few names on a sheet of crisp A4 sheet of paper? That’s bound to bring Starmer’s pathetic excuse of a Labour government to its crooked knees, right?

    There are no socialists in the Labour Party. No true socialist could possibly sit in a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting, nodding along to discussions of state-administered death and denying pensioners of warmth.

    No true socialist can be a part of a government that attempts to profit from the currency of fear and hate so freely as this hideous bunch of ghouls.

    Whatever happened to political integrity? Did compassion and decency pack its own bags, back in 2019?

    Reeves claimed she is “proud” of what Labour has achieved in nine months. She should be ashamed, embarrassed and forced out of office. There is no pride to be found in wilfully killing off sick and disabled people, unless you really are an emotionless psychopath.

    The Joseph Rowntree Foundation had a look at Reeves’ master class in democide and concluded that the average family will now be £750 a year worse off by 2029.

    Starmer: business as usual

    Proud, you say?

    Labour doesn’t have to follow this reckless and cruel policy, austerity isn’t a necessity. A simple 2% levy on assets over £10 million — which would be paid by some 20,000 multi-millionaires — would raise up to £24 billion, every single year.

    If this 2% tax was in place now, UK billionaires would still have seen their personal wealth soar by an average of £141 million each — a total of nearly £7.5 billion combined — since this time last year.

    Isn’t this enough for anyone to ‘scrape by’?

    Tell me, Labour voters, how many of you actually voted to plunge 250,000 extremely impoverished and vulnerable people — including 50,000 children — into relative poverty? Or rather, official figures suggest the number is closer to 400,000.

    How many of you voted for the two-child benefit cap? What about the winter fuel allowance? That also hit disabled people the hardest, as it goes.

    Remember, Keir Starmer’s Labour came in under the mantra of ‘change for the better’, not ‘business as usual’.

    Featured image via Rachael Swindon

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • As Elections Near, Ecuador’s Working Poor And Colonized Under Siege

    As Ecuador heads into a very important run-off election on April 13, the issues of security, state violence and the economy remain at the forefront for many Ecuadorians. Dollarization, submission to U.S. dictates, the proliferation of arms shipments through privately owned ports, and the expansion of international drug cartels to justify military presence have all combined to make the living conditions of the poorest unbearable, especially for African and indigenous communities with a constant war directed at them from the militarized structures of the state, like the case of the Guayaquil Four.

    The post As Elections Near, Ecuador’s Working Poor And Colonized Under Siege appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Rachel Reeves pledges to gift billions to arms industry profiteers – while killing disabled people

    In her Spring Statement, chancellor Rachel Reeves offered billions to help arms industry profiteers with one hand, while taking billions away from chronically ill and disabled people with the other. And she promised to put the business of death and destruction “at the heart of our modern industrial strategy”.

    Rachel Reeves: we will feel the ‘benefits of defence spending’, apparently

    Labour Party chancellor Reeves argued that, “as defence spending rises, I want the whole country to feel its benefits”. But there are strong reasons to believe that’s just smoke and mirrors.

    Arms companies are already raking it in thanks largely to the proxy war in Ukraine and Israel’s genocide in Gaza, profiting from people’s pain as politicians play games with their lives. And Reeves has now confirmed prime minister Keir Starmer’s previous dystopian promise to “increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP” by “reducing overseas aid to 0.3% of gross national income” and thus oversee the:

    biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War

    This is perhaps an attempt to please the US as the superpower seeks to push other members of its NATO alliance to significantly increase their defence pledges. Or it could be Labour’s payment for receiving “£4m from [a] tax haven-based hedge fund with shares in oil and arms” that “stood to profit” from the Gaza genocide.

    War gives arms companies the opportunity to increase profits, with the help of a crony government

    Reeves kept talking about instability in the world, probably referring to the US-backed bloodshed of Ukraine and Gaza, and claimed:

    A changing world presents challenges, but it also presents new opportunities, for new jobs and new contracts in our world-class defence industrial centres.

    She added that this would mean “putting an extra £6.4bn into defence spending by 2027” and giving “an additional £2.2bn for the Ministry of Defence in the next financial year”. Then she outlined steps she would take to:

    boost Britain’s defence industry and to make the UK a defence industrial superpower

    You may want to contrast Reeves centring an arms trade industrial strategy with Labour’s previous promise under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership to make a Green Industrial Revolution a “top priority“.

    Part of becoming “a defence industrial superpower”, Reeves said, will entail spending on “drones and AI-enabled technology” (like the ones that have terrorised Palestinians in Gaza).

    And she topped her grim promises off by revealing that the government:

    will provide £2bn of increased capacity for UK export finance, to provide loans for overseas buyers of UK defence goods and services.

    Profiteers of death smile

    UK governments have long engaged in corporate welfare, with billions of pounds of taxpayer money transforming into profits for arms shareholders. Britain’s biggest arms dealer BAE Systems, for example, gave shareholders £7.4bn in around nine years under the Tories while getting 21% of its international revenue from contracts with the Ministry of Defence.

    BAE stocks, as with other big arms firms, have been soaring ever since the proxy war in Ukraine began in 2022 and Israel’s genocide in Gaza began in 2023. But Starmer’s government helped to push these stocks to a new high at the end of February 2025 with his promises to boost ‘defence’ spending. That was the case for BAE and fellow UK operators Leonardo and Raytheon.

    Arms lobbyists have long been discussing the potential of Britain’s arms industry, but US president Donald Trump’s recent approach to Europe has helped to create a rush to enhance military spending.

    Rachel Reeves: neither the only way, nor the best

    A few places in Britain do indeed depend on the arms industry. But as Common Wealth researcher Khem Rogaly has insisted:

    Policy choices have left communities dependent on military contracts because of divestment from public services and civilian industry.

    Nonetheless:

    the connection between military spending and job creation has weakened over time. Despite falling as a share of GDP, Britain’s military budget has grown in real terms since the early 1980s – the height of the cold war – yet at the same time more than half of jobs in the military industry have been lost. The military sector is increasingly a hi-tech employer that relies less on manufacturing and more on IT and engineering jobs in the south of England.

    There is another way, though, because:

    Modelling in the US and continental Europe suggests that investment in public services, environmental protections or renewable energy creates more jobs and more economic output than military contracts.

    Instead of going down the path of increasing military spending, then, mass investment in public services and the planet would be a much better focus to have. But the corporate cronies in this government seem much more interested in pleasing their wealthy donors than actually investing in a positive, hopeful future.

    Featured image via the House of Commons

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Affairs

    The Left and Right take the same reality-based view of the world but respond to it in different moral terms. Liberals, on the other hand, live in an alternate universe – of pure make-believe.

    Sometimes it helps to pare things back to their essentials, especially when complexity is being exploited not to illuminate but to confuse. So here is my short, complete idiot’s guide to world affairs:

    There are two reality-based understandings of what we call “world affairs”, or sometimes “foreign news”.

    1. The first sees the United States as the beating heart of a highly militarised, global empire – the strongest ever known, with more than 800 military bases around the world. The US has divided the world into, on the one hand, “democracies” and “moderate states” that do its bidding and, on the other, “dictatorships” and “terror regimes” that won’t or can’t submit to its dictates.

    The former are allies that reap some of the benefits of belonging to the empire, while the latter are presented as a threat to world peace. They must be constantly intimidated, contained, sanctioned and occasionally attacked.

    The goal of organising the world this way is the control of global resources, chiefly oil. Western publics thereby enjoy limited privileges that come at the cost of deprivation for those outside the empire. These privileges are intended to keep the US empire’s publics docile and loyal. At the same time, the empire allows members of its elite to amass vast wealth from the exploitation of the world’s resources – wealth so vast that most people are incapable of grasping the extent of it.

    This worldview is generally consistent with what is termed a left-wing disposition. It sees the existing system as a bad thing that needs to be ended.

    2. The second worldview agrees with all of the above, except it thinks this is a the best system possible in the circumstances and must be preserved at all costs. This outlook is generally consistent with what is termed a right-wing, or conservative, disposition.

    In other words, these two groups see things in largely the same way but respond to the same reality differently.

    The second group, the conservatives, want to keep the world divided, justifying this to themselves on various grounds they usually refer to as “pragmatism”. In essence, they believe it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and it’s important that we remain the top dog. At some level this outlook rests on a barely concealed racist conceit, often that white or Christian peoples are civilisationally better than other peoples and that, were the world to be organised differently, chaos and barbarism would ensue.

    The first group, the Left, want to end the division of the world into two camps, “them” and “us”, arguing that this is dangerous. This empire’s logic justifies pumping money that could be spent improving the quality of ordinary people’s lives, and securing the future of the planet, into the arms industries. It reinforces the logic of the West’s war machine that relies on fomenting a permanent climate of fear. In such a febrile political climate, people are easily manipulated into backing wars or the oppression of other, usually brown peoples. The empire’s division of the world rationalises racism, selfishness and violence, and prevents cooperation. It is inherently unsustainable. And in an age of nuclear weapons, it risks driving us into a confrontation that will quickly end life on the planet.

    Of course, not everyone’s outlook fits into these two categories that see the world as it is. There are also liberals who don’t understand much of this. They live in a world of make-believe, an unreality manufactured for them, both by western politicians dependent on a billionaire donor class and a western media owned by billionaires deeply invested in maintaining a divided world that keeps them fabulously rich.

    What we call “politics” is chiefly a pantomime in which the West’s wealth elite work hard to maintain the illusion for liberals that the empire is a force for good, that the suffering of brown people is a necessary short-term sacrifice if history is to continue on its progression towards a perfect capitalist liberal democracy that will benefit everyone, and that in this regard the West’s wars producing even more suffering for brown people are actually “humanitarian”.

    In simple terms, conservatives support the permanent oppression of brown people because they fear them, rightly understanding they will never agree to their oppression. Liberals, on the other hand, support what they assume is the temporary oppression of brown people because they think that oppression is beneficial: it eventually purges brown people of their defective ideological and cultural habits, leading them to see things our way.

    If it feels like too many of your friends and neighbours are indifferent to a genocide that has been live-streamed for a year a half, that is probably because, at heart, they are – whether they identify as conservatives or liberals.

    The post The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Affairs first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Chaos under Heaven: South Korea’s Deepening Political Debacle

    US Elites want South Korea to be a “dictatorship for democracy”

    Morse Tan, a high ranking former US State Dept. official, recently let the cat out of the bag on the US ruling elite position on South Korea’s Martial Law.  He declared that “Yoon declared Martial Law to preserve South Korea’s Democracy.”  Having previously labeled South Korea a model democracy, this is a No-Scotsman-move taken to absurdity.

    Now, Tan is not a current US government official, but he is an indicator of what the US national security state is thinking, in particular, what its neocon wing is thinking.  Tan also recently claimed that “the impeachment against Yoon is an insurrection” led by opposition party leader Lee Jae Myung “who wants to turn the country over to the Chinese communists”.

    As absurd and conspiratorial as these allegations sound, these are actually finely-tuned and well-honed Washington-CPAC talking points about Chinese threats and interference in Korea, and they are echoed endlessly, if histrionically by US flag-waving foot soldiers at South Korean protests and on Youtube.  These anti-China messages were also repeated in German State TV ARD’s documentary “Staatskrise im Schatten von China und Nordkorea” (State Crisis in the Shadow of China and North Korea), released to its German public television website on Feb 25th. The documentary claimed that China had hacked South Korea’s legislative election to put the opposition DP party into power, who are now taking their orders from North Korea and China to impeach YoonThere is clearly a highly convergent and disciplined campaign of anti-China propaganda around the impeachment. ARD has removed its documentary, but the damage has clearly been done.

    It’s impossible not to highlight the absurdity of Tan’s statement–“Yoon declared martial law (i.e. military dictatorship) to preserve democracy”.  And as a foreign national, Tan is breaking South Korean law by directly participating in domestic Korean politics.  But the free reign he is given, and the lack of disavowal or reprimand from the State Department–if only for his own safety–is very revealing.

    Tan’s position in the state department was Ambassador at Large.  These are powerful, Viceroy-type postings: they represent US policy and US interests on a (grand) strategic level. Consider other Ambassadors-at-Large: Averell Harriman, Henry Cabot Lodge,  Paul Nitze, Paul Bremer III, StrobeTalbott, Robert Gallucci. These are not individuals given to improvising and airing idiosyncratic personal opinions. As a former state Viceroy, with the enduring prestige and power of state connections, the platforms that Tan has been given to expound his views signal that he is expressing the direction of official doctrine, reflected both in Tan’s public statements, state media talking points, and the coordinated erasure of counterviewpoints.

    Strategic Unambiguity: What the US wants

    US policy on South Korea’s dictatorship/martial law is analogous to its policy on Taiwan: Strategic “ambiguity” in language, concrete support and escalation in actions. The “ambiguity” serves to pretextually mask war preparations against China. Of course, there is nothing ambiguous about the strategy, other than the desire for a fig leaf of plausible deniability.

    What the US wants from Korea is that which is strategically most advantageous for the US: a right wing Korean client regime to do the bidding of the US: escalate and prepare for war with China. This is a war that it has been envisioning since the early 2000’s and which was institutionalized by Obama’s “Pivot to Asia”. In fact, the reason Yoon was selected, elected, and lionized as South Korea’s president is because he was a walking neocon fulfillment list for this war.

    As these war preparations accelerate and intensify, a South Korean military dictatorship with the US in control of the South Korean military is the easiest and most advantageous configuration to enact these plans. The US will settle for a client-plutocratic democratic state, but dictatorship has actually been the historical norm since South Korea was created by the US.  Given the tight timelines involved, it is also possible for this configuration to be instituted again:  this project of war is urgent and time-bound–US natsec heavyweights have calendared 2025 and 2027 (“the Minihan” & “Davidson windows”) as the propitious date range to trigger war with China.

    Easy-peasy political proxy

    South Korea offers two key strategic advantages. First, geographically and historically, Korea has always been the on ramp and bridgehead for invasion into China. War with China has always started from the Korean peninsula or Taiwan island, usually as interlinked pairs. Second, South Korea has the world’s 3rd largest standing army–including reservists, 3.6 Million troops–,larger than the militaries of China and Russia combined. The US gets operational control over these troops immediately if there is war. War with China is thus most compatible and convenient with a South Korean dictatorship.

    There is very strong circumstantial evidence that the US knew beforehand about Yoon’s Martial Law declaration, due to the length and intricacy of the preparation and the aggressive military nature of the operation-which would have required coordination and communication with US forces in Korea. At the very least, they would have been aware. And regardless, they would have benefitted, geostrategically.

    Sworn testimony shows that Yoon’s gambit was to trigger war with North Korea (through drone attacks, missile attacks, shelling, false flag assassinations of opposition) to justify declaring Martial Law.  Only poor execution, North Korean forbearance, and rapid citizen mobilization prevented the seamless rollout of this military coup. Evidence has come out that Yoon was preparing repeated coups. Historically, all military coups on the southern peninsula have been greenlighted by the US.

    On that point, Morse Tan is the Nancy Pelosi of Korea: he functions like a Track II US envoy–cheerleading for a right-wing South Korean military coup, with just the slightest hint of plausible deniability.

    Note the dead radio silence out of Washington throughout this whole process: silence during the Martial Law declaration, silence after the rejection of Martial Law, silence after the impeachment, and silence throughout.  Not a word of critique or condemnation. Note also the deafening hush of the mainstream corporate media.

    Meanwhile, the fissures in SK society are approaching civil war.

    Institutional Civil War, Governmental chaos

    There is already intergovernmental war: on March 22 the CIO (Corruption Investigation Office, similar to the US Inspector General) raided the Prosecutor’s Office (similar to the Attorney General) for corruption, just days after the Prosecutor’s Office raided the CIO for evidence of warrant shopping on Yoon’s impeachment. This would be like the Inspector General raiding the Attorney General after the Attorney General raided the Inspector General.

    Yoon has been released from custody on a technicality (“counting hours, not days”) despite being indicted for insurrection. His co-conspirators are still incarcerated, but the ringleader is free, highlighting the absurdity of the ruling. The prosecutor’s office, ostensibly committed to prosecuting Yoon, did not even bother to file an appeal. The prosecutor’s office is considered to be Yoon’s private army–Yoon was the former prosecutor general of Korea, and he promised to create a “Republic of Prosecutors”.  That much he has been successful on.

    The Return of the Zombie

    Han Duck Soo, the impeached South Korean Prime minister (and former acting president) has just had his impeachment reversed yesterday, and is now acting president again.

    The constitutional court found that Han had violated the constitution (by refusing to appoint already approved justices to the Constitutional Court to rule on the impeachment issue) but they reinstated him anyway.  Never mind the irony that the court could have lacked standing to try his case if he had been successful in disabling the court. Han had also been tasked with appointing an independent counsel to investigate Yoon (to avoid the conflicts of interest that have appeared with the prosecutor’s office), but he had declined, leading to the current debacle of suspect loyalties and suspicious/delayed/tampered/sabotaged legal processes. One Constitutional Court justice claimed that the current political chaos was directly related to Han’s malfeasance and non-cooperation in these matters and found for impeachment–but she was a tiny minority of one in the ruling.

    The Constitutional Court’s ruling on Han Duck Soo was already problematic in that it was out of sequence. The fact that they ruled first before Yoon’s case, and ruled against impeachment is an ominous signal. Two other high officials, Kim Seong-hun, and Lee Kwang-woo (of the presidential security service), indicted for impeding Yoon’s arrest, have recently also had their arrest warrants rejected.  These are powerful figures who are now at large, with huge axes to grind. The trends are not in favor of impartial justice or peaceful resolution.

    Washington’s Dirty Hand

    The delayed impeachment ruling of Yoon itself is widely thought to be due to Washington’s pressure: it has been one month since the testimony was completed, but still there has been no ruling. This is abnormally long for what is an open-and-shut case: there is no doubt that Yoon declared Martial Law (he is on television declaring it!), and there is no doubt that he used extra-constitutional means–military force–to implement it and to try to prevent its rescission. But it’s widely considered that the ruling is delayed so that Lee Jae Myung’s appeal ruling (due on 3/26) will be decided before the Constitutional court’s ruling on Yoon is made public.

    This is because Lee Jae Myung, the opposition DP party chair, would be the leading candidate for president if the impeachment of Yoon triggers a snap election (in 60 days). He is currently 20+ points ahead of any other potential candidate by polling. The presidency would be his to take under normal circumstances.

    However, if Lee’s guilt is sustained by the appellate court, he would be stripped of all political rights for a decade, and the opposition DP would lose its strongest candidate.  Washington does not want Lee Jae Myung as president, because it’s understood that he would balance with China against the US, and de-escalate the coming war on China. Hence the delay. Opposition party representative Park Sun-won has verified that the US is exerting pressure through diplomatic channels to align the impeachment date as close to Lee Jae Myung’s sentencing as possible.

    On the Brink of Explosion

    South Korea is now a tinderbox on the brink.

    One million protestors hit the streets over the weekend, demanding the Constitutional court deliver its verdict immediately. Some of these protestors had been previously protesting in the snow for weeks, demanding justice.  From the right, there has been open aggression by right wing counter-impeachment protesters, paid up or pumped up with “anti-communist” fervor by religious leaders and the ruling party, repeating ARD and CPAC tropes on “Chinese communist intervention”. These shock troops have destroyed and rampaged through Seoul’s Western District Courthouse, assaulted opposition party politicians, as well as attacked Chinese tourists as “spies”. The right have openly spoken of reconstituting the North West Youth league–the genocidal red-baiting death squads of the Korean war.

    And so, it seems the American flag-waving beatings will continue until the anti-communist morale improves in the country.  Regardless of the rulings to come, South Korea’s destiny is precarious: more potential turbulence, more violence, even potential civil war. Certainly more twists and turns. If the constitutional court acquits Yoon, there will be mass popular protests in the millions: Yoon will be incapable of ruling and is likely to declare Martial Law again, if only to save his bacon (he is facing insurrection charges). Recent news has revealed that Yoon had plans to declare Martial Law multiple times.

    On the other hand, if the constitutional court successfully impeaches Yoon, the ruling party and its followers will pull out all the stops: street violence and a Maidan-type insurrection by the right wing cannot be ruled out.  The quiet acquiescence of the right as was the case after the Park Geun Hye impeachment is unlikely, given the heated propaganda allegations and the polarized ideology.

    So, South Korea is facing risky outcomes either way. The forces acting on this small country are immense. Whether Koreans get a clear diamond or spontaneous combustion from the immense pressure remains to be seen.

    There is a tiny, narrow path that would relieve pressure and facilitate a more peaceful outcome. If the US removes its finger from the scale in South Korean affairs–and disavows the US-flag-waving right that it is stoking and supporting–a single word of reprimand would deflate the South Korean rightwing like a sharp pin to a blow up doll.

    But that would take a geostrategic shift–a downshifting and downsizing dreams of US Hegemony, and a turn towards peace and win-win.

    Is the US capable of this? Or will it continue its dangerous ways? The fate of the peninsula–and possibly the planet–lies in the balance.

    The post Chaos under Heaven: South Korea’s Deepening Political Debacle first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Fraud of Endless War

    There is not a single war or serious military confrontation since WWII involving the U.S. that needed to be fought. Every conflict where soldiers and civilians suffered death or injury was — and is in the case of the ongoing fighting — unnecessary. These battles for territory, control, resources, subjugation, spite, are the direct result of greed, hubris, racist arrogance, ideological fanaticism, sometimes just pure ego. Predictably, we hear high sounding rhetoric in every instance about spreading democracy, safeguarding freedom, responsibility to protect, defending our national interests, rules-based international order, yakkety yak blah blah blah. It’s all just spin to manufacture acquiescence and consent, to get us sheeple to stand down and let the warmongers and empire builders, the MIC and the war industry, have their way.

    Those in the peace movement know the specific details rendered with this next graphic well. People who are preoccupied with living life and overcoming its many obstacles might dismiss it as fake news. But very tragically, it’s entirely factual. The U.S. just can’t stop attacking others.

    There are three fundamental reasons why the U.S. is a belligerent, bullying aggressor, or as Martin Luther King, Jr. famously summed it up, “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world: my own government.”

    Thus there are three reasons we are perpetually at war. These are …

    Ideological Drivers of Endless War

    There has never been a shortage in recorded history of master race ideologies. We find them even enshrined in religious texts. The U.S. has its share of such doctrinal canons, each couched in marvelous language and noble-sounding rhetoric, promoted by a host of noted individuals and organizations, e.g. Paul Wolfowitz, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Council on Foreign Relations, Project for the New American Century, all anointing the U.S. as the indispensable nation, the world’s rightful heir as the master overlord. There is no ambiguity or nuance here. America has formally declared itself as the supreme authority over the entire planet. The latest buzz phrase is “rules-based order”, which effectively means the U.S. will make the rules to establish the order in the world, everyone else will obey or face the consequences. Those consequences take the form of economic or military terrorism, buttressed by the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency and the awesome might of the largest military in the history of the world.

    Social and Political Control Drivers of Endless War

    Defending the homeland and war command our attention. They focus our energy, steel our resolve, unify us, add purpose and drama to otherwise mundane day-to-day life. They play on our most basic instincts for survival and protection of what’s dear to us. But on the flip side, they also shut down critical faculties, create a visceral bond with the worst aspects of human nature, and open the door for tyrannical control and elimination of basic freedoms and rights. War unites us alright — in fear, suffering, misery, deprivation, shame, anger, suspicion, hate, paranoia, dehumanization and death.

    Economic Drivers of Endless War

    There are huge fortunes to be made with war. Conquered nations can be plundered. At home, those who invest in war industries will see magnificent returns. The more war, the greater the profits. It’s no secret that military conflict is encouraged, in fact driven, by profiteers on Wall Street and from within the defense contractors themselves. There’s a rotating door between those who head up defense companies and those who sit at the seats of power shaping policy and making the decisions which countries will be demonized, intimidated and attacked. Our current economic/political model incentivizes an unruly, aggressive, confrontational foreign policy and generously rewards the creation of war zones and arenas of conflict.

    It is often said that the U.S. cannot be without an enemy. This is only partially accurate. More to the point, it is the military-industrial complex that can’t be without an enemy. NATO’s massive bureaucracy and whole reason for existing cannot be without an enemy. What’s the point of the enormously bloated U.S. military, with its 800+ overseas bases, its vast fleets of battle ships and submarines, its vast array of military satellites and surveillance centers, its psyops and special ops and secret ops, its carving up the entire world into combatant command zones if there isn’t an enemy? Here’s how the U.S. sees the world.

    Let’s bear in mind what all of this means by looking at the big picture.


    The entire Imperial Project — world rule by the U.S. as a self-declared hegemon — is at its core and at every layer anti-democratic. It replaces self-determination in the countries we dominate with our authoritarian control — a polite phrase for totalitarian subjugation — making it ironic and odiously cynical that the U.S. claims to spread democracy in the world, when it regularly overthrows democratically-elected governments, then replaces them with despots which do our bidding.

    Just as tragically, the decision to be an empire, the entire program of global domination, mocks the idea of democracy in America itself. It was conceived of and initiated by a tiny minority of power-drunk, monomaniacal, avaricious psychopaths, supported by a ruling elite which sees conquest and plunder as just another day at the office. Put simply and directly: We as citizens never voted for any of this. And if we understood the true nature and agenda of the Imperial Project, we would without hesitation or equivocation entirely reject it and the misery and impoverishment it ultimately entails, both domestically and overseas.

    Right here at home, the Imperial Project by forcing its agenda on U.S. citizens, obliging us to underwrite it every single day of our lives with in-kind and out-of-pocket cash payments of our hard-earned dollars, coupled with the loss of freedom and opportunity, a complete silencing of the voice and priorities of everyday citizens, is at its core and at every layer anti-democratic, despotic, and exploitative. We as citizens have become an ATM machine for the warmongering lunatics trouncing other countries across the globe. We are indentured slaves to a militarized economy which requires war to function, frightened subjects of a regime that creates enemies everywhere, pawns of a power game and calculated strategy to set us against one another, a social-political climate intentionally engineered to maintain “total spectrum domination”, meaning totalitarian control even within our own borders.

    Maybe the idea of a benevolent, enlightened, inspired and visionary U.S. leading the world into a new age of affluence and harmony, guided by the best principles of democracy and driven by shared humanitarian values seems appealing. But it’s an illusion. It’s an illusion fostered by massive deceptions, propaganda, brainwashing, engineered for our compliance and complicity in the madness that has overtaken our governing institutions. Read the speeches of the mentors for this type of hyper-nationalistic insanity, the architects of the Third Reich, and see how closely they align with the promises of our current batch of make-America-great-again demagogues. Creepily, ‘Aryan super race’ and ‘American exceptionalism’ are bedfellows, the spawn of the same lunatic delusions. ‘Indispensable’ is nothing but code for ‘1000 year Reich’.

    Yes, that avuncular icon at the top, embraced, lauded, and emulated by the patronizers of a naive, trusting and gullible citizenry, is pointing at us, you and I, entreating us to be a part of a sinister plan to take over the world.

    We better make the right choice … while we still can make a choice.

    Time is running out.

  • Official Peace Dividend Project Website.
    • The post The Fraud of Endless War first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • There’s a protest at the Treasury TONIGHT over Rachel Reeves’ toxic Spring Statement

    On the eve of Labour Party chancellor Rachel Reeves’ controversial Spring Statement, protesters will rally outside the Treasury to demand the government raises taxes on the wealth of the super-rich instead of slashing public spending.

    Protests on the eve before Reeves’ Spring Statement

    The government sparked fury ahead of the budget, by announcing deep cuts in chronically ill and disabled people’s benefits, and international aid spending. What’s more, it is doing so all while boosting investment in the military.

    So on Tuesday 25 March between 5pm and 7pm, hundreds of protesters will gather with banners and placards outside the Treasury. A light projection will beam “Tax the Super-Rich” onto the building behind them.

    War on Want, Oxfam, Greenpeace, and others have organised the demonstration to take the Labour Party government to task over its warmongering austerity-fueled agenda.

    Author and economist Gary Stevenson, Green Party Co-Leader Carla Denyer, Labour Peer Prem Sikka, and Ecotricity Founder Dale Vince will address the crowd. Alongside them the leaders of union, environmental groups, and anti-poverty organisations will deliver powerful speeches against the disgraceful slate of public spending cuts.

    ‘Cut after cut to the poorest and most marginalised’

    Ahead of the protest, campaigners from various groups involved have underscored the devastating impacts of the budget Reeves is set to lay out to Parliament.

    Tax Justice UK’s head of advocacy Caitlin Boswell said:

    Across the country, inequality is soaring and people are being left behind, struggling to make ends meet and dealing with broken public services, all while the very richest get richer. Choosing to make cut after cut to the poorest and most marginalised, while leaving the vast resource of the extreme wealth of the super rich untouched, is immoral, harmful, and will not deliver for our communities or the economy. Instead, this government could choose to tax the wealth of the very richest people and corporations. This would raise tens of billions annually to address the cost of living crisis and deliver the long-term investment our country needs.

    Linda Burnip of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) said of the government’s cruel and brutal cuts to disability and health-related benefits:

    The Labour government has clearly chosen to target Disabled People for budget savings to finance their war effort instead of targeting the super rich and tax avoiders. Over a decade of Tory cuts have led to the death of thousands of Disabled People”… “Instead of facing the reality that more and more people struggle with their physical and mental health, Labour is feeding in the narrative that Disabled People receiving benefits are work-shy and should be punished. Resistance is mounting and dozens of protests are already taking place across the country.

    Tax the rich: Reeves and Labour ‘siding with the super-wealthy’

    There have been mounting calls for the government to raise taxes on the assets of the super-rich. The Trades Union Congress endorsed one last summer, and in October, a dozen Labour MPs broke ranks to support the call.

    According to Oxfam, the richest 1% of Brits own more wealth than the poorest 70%, and the world could see multiple trillionaires within a decade. Meanwhile, Greenpeace has calculated that levying even a 2.5% tax on assets over £10m could raise £36bn annually.

    Senior economic justice campaigner at War on Want Nuri Syed Corser said:

    Inequality is soaring, the climate is collapsing, and public services are at breaking point. We need huge public investment to tackle these crises. But instead, the government is gearing up to deliver lethal cuts to welfare, international aid and green investment, claiming there is not enough money to fund these life-saving policies. Meanwhile, the obscene wealth of the super-rich is surging and going largely untaxed. It’s time to tax it.

    Others highlighted how the Labour Party’s programme of cuts to public services and welfare makes it a budget fit for billionaires and big polluters only. Campaigns director at Stamp Out Poverty Louise Hutchins said:

    The big oil and gas corporations have raked in billions in profits over years, while households are struggle with soaring bills and the climate crisis deepens. Why is Rachel Reeves punching down and getting ordinary people to pay? Isn’t it obvious that she should be getting the fossil fuel polluters to pay up?

    Similarly, UK Campaigner at 350.org Matilda Borgström argued:

    Rachel Reeves’ decision to slash welfare while refusing to tax the super-rich is both cruel and misguided. Instead of making billionaires like Jim Ratcliffe – who profits from fossil fuels that drive the climate crisis – pay what they owe, she is choosing to side with the ultra-wealthy at the expense of ordinary people. A wealth tax on billionaires could fund vital support for those struggling with the cost of living – accelerating the transition to renewable energy could slash energy bills, insulate homes and create future-proof jobs. Instead, Reeves is prioritising the interests of a handful of elites over the well-being of millions. This is not just an economic failure – it’s a moral one.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • CND slams Labour’s nuclear rhetoric ahead of major protest outside BAE Systems

    As CND prepares for its national demonstration at the BAE Shipyard, Barrow-in-Furness, on Saturday 22 March, the government is ramping up nuclear threats to prop up Britain’s failing nuclear weapons programme and justify military spending hikes in next week’s Spring Statement

    BAE: laughing all the way to the bank, thanks to the Labour Party

    The recent visit to the BAE Shipyard in Barrow and nuclear base at Faslane by Keir Starmer and John Healey, saw the Defence Secretary claim the weapons could do “untold damage” against countries like Russia in the event of a conflict.

    It was also announced that the Port of Barrow, which has built submarines for Britain’s nuclear weapons programme since the 1950s, will be given royal status. This status applies to the dockland where the arms manufacturer’s shipyard is based and not the wider Barrow area.

    CND’s protest comes ahead of the chancellor’s Spring Statement, where it’s expected that billions of pounds will be added to the military budget while brutal cuts are made to overseas aid, and services helping some of the country’s most vulnerable people.

    The government argues that increasing the military budget will help revitalise “left behind” industrial towns and the wider economy. But military spending has one of the lowest employment multipliers of all sectors. Towns like Barrow need sustainable and varied forms of employment that put its people and the planet first.

    Britain’s nuclear weapons accounts for at least 14% of the MoD’s military expenditure but the most recent annual report by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) found that key parts of its nuclear weapons programme are either failing or have major issues. CND is calling on the government to scrap Britain’s nuclear programme once and for all and develop an industrial strategy that generates sustainable economic growth that benefits everyone.

    Protest details

    The protest details for Saturday 22 March are as follows:

    12 noon: activists will meet and take part in a leafletting action outside in Barrow-in-Furness town centre, outside The Forum, Duke Street, LA14 1HH

    1-3pm: March and rally on High Level (Michaelson Road) Bridge over the Devonshire Dock.

    Speakers at rally include: Sophie Bolt, CND General Secretary; Ben Soffa, Palestine Solidarity Campaign National Secretary; Dr Stuart Parkinson, Scientists for Global Responsibility Executive Director; Philip Gilligan, South Lakeland and Lancaster District CND Coordinator; Helen Tucker, NEU Cumbria and International Solidarity Officer for NEU Northern Region; Marianne Birkby, Radiation Free Lakeland; Linda Walker, Manchester Climate Justice; James Aigh, Paper Not Planes – Stop Croppers F35.

    CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt said:

    Starmer and Healey’s recent visit to Faslane and Barrow is part of the government’s reckless attempt to justify Britain’s immoral nuclear weapons programme. We need to see Healey’s nuclear threats for what they are: whipping up global tensions to justify siphoning off billions of pounds to the arms industry. Nuclear weapons do nothing to make people safer. They are a huge drain on public finances that will only make the population poorer and see essential services cut even further to the bone. Nuclear weapons encourage proliferation and make nuclear use more likely. Our protest isn’t about taking jobs away from people. Towns like Barrow could, and should, be at the forefront of a dynamic green economy.

    Palestine Solidarity Campaign National Secretary Ben Soffa said:

    Weapons and components manufactured in Britain – including by BAE Systems – are being used to murder Palestinian men, women and children in Gaza. Despite it being acknowledged that components made in North West England were part of the Israeli F-35 plane that killed 90 Palestinians in a single attack on the so-called ‘safe zone’ of Al-Mawasi, these exports continue. Now is the time for a thorough reassessment of whether exports from the UK’s weapons producers are in reality contributing to growing global instability and breaches of international law, including attacks on civilians.

    No more war from Labour (or BAE)

    Scientists for Global Responsibility Executive Director Dr Stuart Parkinson said:

    The two greatest threats to the world are nuclear war and climate change. We could tackle both by disarming nuclear weapons and diverting the engineering jobs to green energy. This is where Britain and the world need to focus their efforts. Britain’s green economy now employs about 900,000 people – far more than the arms industry – and it is expanding. Barrow could and should be part of this just transition.

    Coordinator of South Lakeland and Lancaster District CND Philip Gilligan said:

    Like many residents of Westmorland and Furness I am delighted that CND will be in Barrow on Saturday calling for a future which is not dependent on investment in weapons which would kill millions of people and threaten all our futures. Barrow deserves better.

    Spokesperson from the campaign Paper Not Planes: Stop Croppers F35 James Aigh said:

    Paper Not Planes: stop Croppers F35 aims to stop the Burneside-based business, James Cropper PLC, supplying parts for F35 war planes, dozens of which are currently being used by Israel in their war on Gaza. No one wants a job supplying arms to a genocidal army, or building weapons of mass destruction. We can meet the needs of people in Barrow and Burneside through a redistribution of wealth.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Sky invited ex-Labour yoon and arms lobbyist Jim Murphy on debate Taj Ali. Whoops.

    Yoon Jim Murphy helped make Labour highly unpopular in Scotland. Then he became a lobbyist for arms companies and other unsavoury characters via Arden Strategies. And now, he would very much like it to be easier for funds to invest money in the arms industry.

    Fortunately, when Sky invited Murphy on TV to share his point of view on the matter, journalist Taj Ali was there to point out the lobbyist’s interests.

    Ali stressed that Murphy:

    is a lobbyist for weapons manufacturers through his firm Arden Strategies. And I think it’s really important to note this. Because Ardern Strategies has actually funded one in ten Labour MPs. And they have this lobbying operation underway to change what we consider ‘ethical’ investment. I think there’s nothing ethical about arms manufacturers who profit from death, destruction and genocide overseas

    Ardern Strategies and private profiteering from destruction

    In 2024, Murphy said Keir Starmer’s Labour government would lead “the first truly private sector Labour government”. And as openDemocracy pointed out:

    In the same interview, Murphy revealed that he and his team at Arden speak regularly with Starmer and other Labour frontbenchers and that the firm is likely the party’s biggest commercial sponsor.

    Ardern, it explained:

    has solidified its access to the party at all levels, from the current leadership to the prospective MPs who may make up the frontbenches of the future.

    Though “little is known about the clients it represents”, the outlet explained, it could reveal that some with connections to Arden were energy firms and “the CEO for the UK, Europe and Middle East operations of Northrop Grumman, a world-leading manufacturer of machines that kill people, and a major exporter of said machines to Israel”.

    Labour government in bed with arms dealers and other deathmongers

    Just as the extent of cronyism in Keir Starmer’s Labour Party came out last year, openDemocracy also revealed how the party had quietly received “£4m from tax haven-based hedge fund with shares in oil and arms”. And it reported that the Labour donation from Quadrature Capital “stood to profit” from Israel’s genocide in Gaza, having “held $121m worth of shares in a range of arms, tech and logistics firms which have all supported the ongoing military campaign”.

    With the closeness of Murphy and Ardern to Starmer’s corrupt machine, meanwhile, it’s perhaps clearer than ever that there’s nothing ethical about what’s going on behind the scenes (or on the stage for that matter) with this Labour government.

    Featured image via screengrab

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • War Architects Enjoy Top Academic Gigs 22 Years After Illegal Invasion of Iraq

    Today, on the 22nd anniversary of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, key architects and commanders of this monstrous war crime, from Condoleezza Rice to David Petraeus, sit comfortably in cushy positions at top American universities. At the same time, the overseers of the ongoing U.S.-backed Israeli bombardment and siege on Gaza, considered a genocide by human rights groups like Amnesty…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • As Israel kills 183 children in Gaza, the UK’s complicity has been exposed yet again

    Israel has unilaterally ended the Gaza ceasefire, killing hundreds of people in the process – including at least 183 children. War criminal prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the apartheid state has “resumed combat in full force” in the occupied Palestinian territory and that “this is just the beginning”. Meanwhile, two separate reports have shown how the UK has been protecting Israel’s genocidal interests.

    One new report reveals how Britain has supported recent attacks on Yemen in response to the anti-genocide resistance of Houthi rebels.

    Another report shows how Britain has been allowing Israeli arms company Elbit to spy on protesters. The firm has also met with the British government, which is holding a number of political prisoners in connection to Palestine Action‘s efforts to disrupt Elbit’s activities in Britain.

    1) UK support for bombing Yemen amid anti-genocide resistance

    In December 2023, as the world witnessed Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, Declassified UK journalist Iona Craig reported that the Houthis had become “the most audacious Arab ally for Palestinians”. A month earlier, they had started efforts to disrupt “all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality”, in solidarity with Palestine. Then, in January 2024, Israel’s enablers in the US and British governments responded by launching attacks on Yemen. The two Anglo-colonial powers had previously supported ally Saudi Arabia’s devastating war against the Houthis, which began in 2015. However, the attacks in defence of Israel’s genocide marked “the first time” they’d officially entered the conflict in Yemen (unofficially is a different matter).

    Now, as US president Donald Trump steps up attacks on Yemen on behalf of Israel, Craig has revealed how Britain is helping out too. She explained how the UK “provided aerial refuelling for US jets during Yemen airstrikes”, via the now notorious genocide-enabling base of RAF Akrotiri. She said “the RAF did not announce its involvement” in Trump’s “multiple waves of air raids across Yemen” starting on 15 March, but “publicly available flight tracking data” showed that:

    A Royal Air Force (RAF) Voyager aerial refuelling tanker carried out two flights from Akrotiri airbase in Cyprus into the northern Red Sea to support the USS Harry S. Truman.

    A defence source told Declassified that:

    the UK provided routine allied air-to-air refuelling support to aid the self defence of a US aircraft carrier in the region from which the strikes were launched.

    The US attacks killed at least 53 people, including five children. In all the months since the Houthis’ anti-genocide resistance began in 2023, they have “targeted dozens of merchant vessels… sunk two vessels, seized a third, and killed four crew members”.

    2) UK government in service of Israel arms company

    Regarding the British government’s support for Israeli arms company Elbit, Declassified‘s John McEvoy reported that, in December 2024:

    Keir Starmer’s government held a private meeting with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons company

    In the meeting were:

    three representatives from Elbit Systems and three officials from Yvette Cooper’s Home Office.

    Declassified got access to this information via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. The Home Office:

    said that a recording of the meeting was made “but by mutual agreement [with Elbit] this was agreed… not to be released” through FOI.

    This was not the first time the Home Office had worked closely with Elbit, however. Because one police report from 2023 showed how:

    the Home Office was apparently instructing the police to prioritise the company and remand activists rather than facilitate freedom of assembly and expression, liberties enshrined in the Human Rights Act.

    Just as worryingly, McEvoy explained:

    Elbit Systems UK has “its own intelligence cell and share[s] information with the Police across the country on a two weekly basis”, a police file observes.

    Meanwhile, Israel chooses war over peace (yet again)

    This year’s ceasefire in occupied Gaza saw a brief pause in the horrors people there faced. It also saw both Israel and Hamas release numerous hostages, something that over a year of genocide had not achieved. Israeli occupation forces, however, violated the ceasefire on a number of occasions. And when its attempts to change the ceasefire deal in its favour failed, it resumed its genocidal assault on Gaza.

    According to the BBC, Netanyahu has insisted that “all ceasefire talks will take place “under fire”” from now on. Families of hostages still in Gaza, however, have criticised the Israeli government’s decision to torpedo the ceasefire.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.