radiofree.asia

Category: Militarism

  • ‘Silent Coup’ reveals how corporations ‘steal resources and ransack the poor’ from the shadows

    The excellent and massively important Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy is now available in paperback. To mark the occasion, we spoke to its co-author Matt Kennard. And we delved into the book, including a powerful new foreword from Jeremy Corbyn.

    As Kennard and co-author Claire Provost write, a key reason for reading the book is that:

    To have hope for a better future we must know more about both of these things: how corporations have stolen our power, and how we can work to get it back.

    Because of the extreme corporate bias of our mainstream media, however, most people don’t hear about either the architects of the current system or the people around the world resisting that system. And that’s where the book comes in.

    It hopes to inform and empower readers by providing not only proof of the silent coup that has occurred, but also of “examples around the world of local communities winning, against the odds, battles against transnational corporate power”. As the authors insist:

    Hidden scripts and untold stories – once found – can be torn up, or built on.

    Kennard: we can run economies democratically

    The Canary asked Kennard about the structure of the book, and he said “We started on the international legal system that allows corporations to sue states then discovered each subsequent section as we went”. The “information we were finding”, he added, “guided us to the next element of corporate control that we felt we had to look at”. And he stressed that:

    There is some overlap between all the sections because this is a massive infrastructure that is all linked by design. It operates as a strait-jacket that seeks to make it impossible for any so-called sovereign government to move against corporate power.

    Within this infrastructure of corporate control, he stated that “the aid industry is particularly important because it gives the system a patina of altruism and ‘doing good’, so it is supported by many well-meaning people”. He continued:

    One of the biggest revelations I had doing the reporting from 25 countries was that nearly all corporate projects in the developing world are supported by some aid money of some sort. This money often insures them against risk and allows them to get cheap loans.

    The whole capitalist system is undergirded by the aid industry which operates as a state insurance and subsidy mechanism to the corporate sector. It goes against everything about how we are told capitalism works.

    I’m not against aid as an idea if it was done as it is presented, but agencies like the World Bank are concerned with upholding a certain neoliberal way of managing economies around the world and because they have all the credit it is very hard for countries to say no and take a different course in terms of a development model.

    But one thing that shines through is the way the book shares stories of hope. As Kennard told the Canary:

    Everywhere we went we saw the other side of this corporate takeover, which was resistance by the people on the ground.

    Literally nowhere I went was this system not being opposed by groups of differing size and strength. In El Salvador we saw a huge mobilisation against ISDS after their country was sued for not granting an environmental permit to a mining company.

    In Argentina we saw the amazing advances made in the ‘fabricas nomads’ (taken factories) which grew up after the cataclysmic financial crisis in the country in 2001. Workers took control of the companies that went bust and ran them themselves.

    There were difficulties and obstacles but they still exist to this day and give a taste of what is possible if power is wrenched back to workers and how our economy could be run along democratic lines, if they were allowed.

    Silent Coup: the road to dystopia and the road away from it

    Although the story of corporate control goes back to colonial times, the authors explain in the book, it was only after the end of the Cold War that the offensive really ramped up. With the Soviet Union out of the way:

    Each of the areas of global corporate power we look at – control over laws, economies, territories and the use of force – reached dizzying new heights.

    There has been resistance, though. And one example they give is the Zapatista movement in southern Mexico, which proved that the success of the global elite’s power grab is not inevitable.

    The authors highlight in particular how ‘joint-stock companies’ (which raise money by promising a share in future profits) were a crucial part of the colonial story. Bit by bit, these companies escaped from the regulation of nation states. In some cases, corporations have even ended up running “whole cities and territories”. And thanks to legal professionals, they have risen to the status of “legal ‘persons’, with corresponding ‘rights’ and protections”.

    In 2023, for example, Kennard and Provost explain that elite backers of Donald Trump set out to “sue Mexico for $3 billion in land dispute with peasants”. This came after the Mexican government had finally ordered corporate giant Amway to return land they had reportedly purchased illegally many years before. But that’s not the type of story the corporate media is fond of sharing. So as the authors insist, stories like these from the book “are too often unfolding above our heads and in the shadows.

    If the dominance of corporations continues, they stress, it won’t be possible to avoid the most severe consequences of the climate crisis we’re living through. Campaigners, however, are ramping up efforts to “block or dismantle structures benefitting corporations at the expense of people and the environment, while also building new structures and rewriting the rules for a better future”.

    Legal warfare, foreign aid, ‘special zones’, and private-sector mercenaries

    Summarising the four main parts of the book, Kennard told the Canary:

    The first section deals with the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system which is a legal mechanism which allows multinational corporations to sue governments all over the world for enacting policies they don’t like, from not granting environmental permits to increasing the minimum wage.

    The second section focuses on so-called foreign aid, which most people think of string-free gifts from the rich world to the poor. This is a completely misplaced assumption. Aid actually developed as a way to repackage economic imperialism after decolonisation after World War 2. Many of the institutions which compose the ecosystem, from USAID to World Bank, are about greasing the entry of corporations into new markets, and subsiding the corporations at the same time.

    The third section deals with what are called Special Economic Zones or Economic Processing Zones, there’s many names. But what they are is carved out pieces of territories where corporations often don’t have to abide by national laws to do with taxation, customs, duties, labour rights, a whole panoply of different carve outs. There are now thousands of them around the world and extreme neoliberal policies are piloted in them and then rolled out at a national level.

    The last section deals with the privatisation of the use of force in our society, whether that be the proliferation of private military contractors helping nation states fight wars, or private security guarding gated communities and other corporate sites around the world. This has huge import for our political systems as the right to the ‘legitimate use of force’ has up until recently always rested with the nation state through the military and police and other agencies. This is now moving to the private sphere, which is thus far completely unregulated.

    Corbyn: Silent Coup will inform, empower, and activate people

    In Jeremy Corbyn’s foreword to the book, he explains how global corporations filled the power vacuum that European empires left behind and used their power to “sabotage the growth of democracy”. But he insists that they’re vulnerable when ordinary people are actually aware of what they’re doing.

    A case in point, regarding the awful behaviour of private corporations, is “how the water companies pollute British rivers and seas by letting raw sewage flow into them”. Although the current government may not be a fan of the idea, he stresses that the obvious solution is to “tell them to bog off and take our water utilities into public ownership”. And if people saw through the corporate PR and really knew about all of the other horrors going on, they would say much the same thing.

    Praising Silent Coup, he stresses that:

    This book demonstrates, with many examples, how a silent yet steady takeover of government and the economy by corporate power means we are faced with a combination of corporate greed, consumerism and a media that is not prepared to investigate the reality of what is happening in front of them.

    A group of Colombian land rights campaigners once told him “political power comes from the power of communities to influence and pressurise those in government”. And the ability to do that, he says, depends on the information those communities have. “To inform people is to empower and activate them”, he insists, and that’s what Silent Coup does.

    Kennard: join a union and support independent media

    Kennard agrees that the information in the book is about empowering people to fight back. As he told us when speaking about the action he would like people to take after reading the book:

    I think the most important thing is to spread the knowledge. This system gets away with all the exploitation and rapacity because it operates in the shadows. We need people to understand the intricacies of the corporate system because when they do they understand that it is about stealing resources and ransacking the poor, the same dynamic since the age of empire began.

    He added:

    Then we need to build up the only force that can challenge this system on the scale it needs to be challenged: organised labour. Join a union and most importantly make that union democratic and responsive to workers.

    And finally, he stressed:

    All the revelations and analysis in the book is impossible to get into the mass media because it is largely owned by the forces we are exposing. We need to build a new media independent of corporate and state control that provides a truthful account of who and what runs our society untainted by the powerful forces which do not want the truth to come out.

    I am hopeful that we are making advances in this regard with outlets like the Canary, Declassified UK and many others. It’s a long-term project but is the most important part of any move towards to creating a world and global economy that is run in the interests of people not concentrated wealth and power.

    We highly recommend reading the book, which you can get here.

    Featured image supplied

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Deconstructing a Military Mindset

    The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of Georgia Tech, the US Air Force, Department of Defense, or the US Government.

    Somewhere around the age of 20, I sat in a large auditorium at the United States Air Force Academy with a thousand other cadets and cheered at footage of real drone strikes on real people, laughing along with everyone else as we watched little, pixelated figures run for cover that we all knew was futile. When I look back on that event, I wonder what part of me I had to sacrifice to find humor in the loss of life.

    In many ways, it’s thanks to the Air Force Academy that I currently have an anti-war stance. I was given the tools to examine my military service and foreign policy in a couple mundane, core classes: law and ethics, though my ethics course has stuck with me the most, ironically enough. I hated my ethics course because I thought most of it was redundant and self-explanatory: don’t do bad things! I couldn’t understand why people dedicated their lives to it.

    Despite my best efforts, I learned a lot about the darker side of American history – we talked about the My Lai Massacre, the dropping of the atomic bombs, Ehren Watada and his refusal to deploy in an unjust war, drone warfare and the moral implications of being so far removed from the resultant violence. We learned to question the moral nature of military decisions.

    This was quite a shock to someone like me, who had until then been so inundated with military stories of valor and bravery, but I wrote it off as best as I could, unwilling to put in the work of deconstructing a pro-military mindset that was six years in the making.

    It wasn’t until 2024 that the pieces of the puzzle started coming together for me.

    The active genocide in Gaza is in blatant disregard of international law and in violation of every rule surrounding civilian casualties in war, both concepts that were heavily covered during my academy schooling. I had tried to take a neutral stance, one that would allow me to continue justifying the US’ actions, but seeing in the news and talking to veterans and active duty members who had the courage to speak up gave me the push I needed to decide for myself that I wouldn’t stand by anymore.

    I was horrified at the violence that was being endorsed and supported by our government in clear violation of what I had once thought was basic ethics. More than that, I realized that the U.S. decides who is worthy of life and who is to die, and by being part of the military, I have a hand in that. War is a terrible business, one that we’ve become desensitized to, and I don’t believe that we have to accept the inevitability of violence.

    I encourage everyone currently serving to critically examine the nature of their service.

    As an active duty service member, I have been told repeatedly that military strength is the only way to counteract the threats we face in the world. But once again we see violence, this time perpetrated by the Israeli government, only leads to death and destruction in an ever growing conflict. Hate begets hate.

    The post Deconstructing a Military Mindset first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US Militarism Remains Front and Center for Many Filipino Voters in 2024

    One of the largest and most visible contingents marching outside the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago this past August was the “U.S. Out of the Philippines.” Its participants included Malaya Movement, Chicago Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (CCHRP), AnakBayan Chicago, and AnakBayan at UIC. The contingent was calling for the end of U.S. militarism in the Philippines…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • North Korea Does Not Pose a Threat to the United States

    In an election year, both US parties are competing to outdo one another with hawkish rhetoric on the Korean Peninsula, leaning heavily into the strategy of confrontation with China through the US-South Korea-Japan tripartite alliance; a flawed vision that threatens to “erupt into a regional war, a full-scale war, or even a nuclear war.”

    In her closing speech during the 2024 Democratic National Convention, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris presented the most openly militaristic take on Washington’s Korea policy “since the GOP convention that nominated [Senator Barry] Goldwater in 1964.” Harris’ hawkish view all but discards diplomacy to focus on herding South Korea and Japan together to form a US-led military triad to confront Chinese interests in East Asia. The candidate’s stance, echoed by the majority of the democratic party, raises what has been called a “truly baffling” prospect of a “Democratic president more aggressive towards [North Korea] than her Republican counterpart.”

    This comes at a time when the virtually nonstop US-led war drills in South Korea have achieved a level of scope and intensity that far exceeds even that of the Cold War.  Taking place in the heavily militarized Korean Peninsula and ostensibly directed at the ubiquitous “North Korean threat,” these exercises are in fact a preparation for a future US-led war against China as part of Washington’s bold new Indo-Pacific strategy.

    These momentous developments cap two years of virtually unabated military maneuvers at North Korea’s doorstep, beginning in 2023 with:

    • 250+ days of US and South Korean joint war drills
    • 21 instances in which US strategic assets, including nuclear-capable weapon platforms, were deployed to South Korea
    • 10+ UN Command joint military maneuvers

    From January 1 to August 10, 2024 there have been:

    • 180 days of US and South Korean joint war drills
    •  17 instances in which US strategic assets, including nuclear-capable weapon platforms, were deployed to South Korea

    With the advent of the Biden administration, the prospect of a negotiated peace with North Korea all but vanished with the ultimate collapse of the modest confidence-building agreement in 2018 between Seoul and Pyongyang and South Korea, and Washington’s North Korea policy shifted to empowering South Korea’s autocratic Yoon administration to spearhead the “end of the North Korean regime” while the US steadily incorporates Korean military potential into its anti–China front.

    The “North Korean threat” has long served as the justification for the increasingly formidable US forward military position in Asia, but how much of a threat does North Korea actually pose to the US?

    North Korea spends only $4 billion annually on defense while the US annual defense budget is close to $900 billion. For North Korea to engage in the offensive use of its military against the US would be little short of suicide.

    In addition to this basic fact, the commander of US Forces Korea himself, Gen. Paul LaCamera, has openly stated that North Korea’s military posture and policy is to establish deterrence and defend its sovereignty, and has characterized Kim Jong-un’s top priorities as “regime survivability” and “preparing to defend his nation.”

    Kim himself has repeatedly stated that North Korea: “will never unilaterally unleash a war.”  Kim’s most urgent priority has been economic development under the “Regional Development 20×10 Policy,” an ambitious 10-year-plan to provide badly-needed improvements to civilian infrastructure and services for ordinary North Koreans.

    In spite of the relentlessly “manufactured image of a war-mad Kim Jong-un,” recent opinion polls show that only 2% of Americans named North Korea as a threat to the US, apparently evincing the common-sense realization that a weak country’s deterrent posture is not regarded as a real threat to the United States.

    Coexistence is an overlooked option

    Current US policy in the Korean peninsula is an extension of its Indo-Pacific doctrine, and relies on coupling economic warfare with military and political pressure against Pyongyang to maintain the level of tension required for the continued deployment of US forward assets against China.

    As Washington veers ever further into its collision course with China, it has recast South Korea as a “linchpin of the US-China strategy in Northeast Asia”; deepening the integration of US assets with South Korean conventional forces and inducting local troops to serve under US command as cannon fodder for a brewing regional war far beyond the confines of the Korean Peninsula.

    The US considers tensions in the Korean Peninsula necessary to justify its forward position in East Asia, which is underpinned by the garrisons it maintains in South Korea and Japan and solidified by its de facto control over the nominally independent military forces of these states. The US has been attempting to prod Beijing into a conflict over Taiwan in the same manner as it has provoked Russia into war over the Ukraine.

    One consequence of this strategy is that Washington’s hostility towards North Korea is becoming ever more entrenched in US foreign policy, with the US provoking South Korea, a US client state that lacks strategic independence, to escalate tensions with Pyongyang as a prelude to instigating a regional conflict with China. Under the pretext of deterring North Korea, the US is forcing South Korea into a brewing confrontation with China, in which the primary role of the South Korean military would be to tie down vital Chinese forces in a bloody inter-Korean conflict, giving the US a freer hand in the broader theater of operations.

    To help cement its hold over South Korea at this crucial juncture in Washington’s grand Indo-Pacific strategy, the Biden administration has propped up the authoritarian and deeply unpopular President Yoon Seok-yeol, whose signature foreign policy platform is a steadfast commitment to allowing his nation to be dragooned into the brewing US war with China. According to the latest opinion survey, more than 66% of South Koreans think that Yoon’s subordination to the US Indo-Pacific strategy makes Korea less safe.

    But what if relations with the North were treated as an inter-Korean or even a purely regional issue, and were decoupled from Washington’s broader anti-China strategy? The prospect of coexistence with the North possesses immense potential for stability and prosperity in the region.

    A North Korea free of US-led sanctions and unburdened by an overriding drive to shore up national  defense could arguably be a regional economic powerhouse. Given that North Korea has been vigorously pushing for ambitious economic development since its last nuclear weapons test in 2017, analysts foresee the North achieving meaningful economic development under the right conditions.

    If geopolitical conditions evolve to the point where some initial meaningful economic engagement becomes possible for the US and South Korea, Kim’s domestic agenda offers important benchmarks for collaboration and support that should be a starting point for helping him achieve success on improvements in the lives of the North Korean people.

    An economically integrated Korean peninsula in a multipolar Northeast Asia has the potential to be the “world’s next epicenter of change,” placing the combined economy of the Korean peninsula second only to China, the US, and India, with the North accounting for approximately one-fourth of this total economic potential.

    Arguably, a fundamental geopolitical shift with respect to North Korean economic integration is already underway: namely, the gradual erosion of US economic isolation as the North strengthens its ties with the two of the world’s largest economies: Russia and China. These developments occur at a critical historical juncture shaped by an increasing trend toward multipolarity coupled with the shifting geopolitical balance of power in Northeast Asia.

    America’s long-term strategic interest lies in unlocking the potential domestic benefits to the US of opening up the North Korean economy rather than attempting to maintain its hegemony through the relentless pursuit of regional destabilization in preparation for a future Sino-American conflict.

    Washington should instead work to reduce regional tensions by halting the increasingly provocative nuclear-conventional war games in the Korean Peninsula and putting US-North Korea normalization at the center of US foreign policy.

    The post North Korea Does Not Pose a Threat to the United States first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • UN’s High Ideals Brought down by American Legislation

    After a full year of unbridled genocide in Gaza, escalating slaughter in the West Bank, and now similar crimes inflicted on the Lebanese, Britain’s brand-new prime minister Keir Starmer made this astounding announcement the other day: “We stand with Israel.”

    He also has the UK military helping to protect Israel from Iran’s rockets while doing nothing to defend unarmed Palestinian women and children from the daily carnage inflicted by Israel’s “most moral” military.

    He refers to Hamas’s murderous breakout last October 7 but never mentions Israel’s massacres and other atrocities against Palestinians in the decades leading up to October 7. Yet he practised as a human rights lawyer and was Director of Public Prosecutions. Would you believe it?

    So what makes Western leaders abandon all sense of justice, all common sense and all norms of human decency in order to support, protect and supply a rogue regime in its lust to dominate, oppress, steal and butcher? Why such adoration for Israel in our corridors of power? Nobody I’ve spoken to can understand it.

    But it looks like the culprit could be America’s QME doctrine. In 2008 Congress enacted legislation requiring that US arms sales to any country in the Middle East other than Israel must not adversely affect Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME).

    Ensuring the apartheid state always has the upper hand over it neighbours

    Legislation defines QME as “the ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from nonstate actors, while sustaining minimal damages and casualties, through the use of superior military means, possessed in sufficient quantity, including weapons, command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that in their technical characteristics are superior in capability to those of such other individual or possible coalition of states or nonstate actors.”

    In a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on 4 November 2011, Andrew Shapiro (Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at the State Department), enlarged on QME saying: “As a result of the Obama Administration’s commitment, our security relationship with Israel is broader, deeper and more intense than ever before. One of my primary responsibilities is to preserve Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge, or QME. This is not just a top priority for me, it is a top priority for the Secretary and for the President.

    “It is widely known that our two countries share a special bond that is rooted in our common values and interwoven cultures…. We are committed to that special bond, and we are going to do what’s required to back that up, not just with words but with actions.’

    “The cornerstone of America’s security commitment to Israel has been an assurance that the United States would help Israel uphold its qualitative military edge. This commitment was written into law in 2008 and each and every security assistance request from the Israeli Government is evaluated in light of our policy to uphold Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge.”

    ‘Strongly in sync’

    Shapiro explained how, for three decades, Israel had been the leading beneficiary of US security assistance through the Foreign Military Financing programme (FMF) which was providing $3 billion per year for training and equipment. A 2007 memorandum of understanding provided for $30 billion in security assistance over 10 years, allowing Israel to purchase the sophisticated defence equipment it needs to maintain its qualitative military edge. 60 percent of US security assistance funding to some 70 countries went to Israel.

    And here’s the funny bit. Shapiro claimed: “Our support for Israel’s security helps preserve peace and stability in the region. If Israel were weaker, its enemies would be bolder. This would make broader conflict more likely, which would be catastrophic to American interests in the region. It is the very strength of Israel’s military which deters potential aggressors and helps foster peace and stability. Ensuring Israel’s military strength and its superiority in the region, is therefore critical to regional stability and as a result is fundamentally a core interest of the United States.”

    That’s worked well, hasn’t it?

    “The United States also experiences a number of tangible benefits from our close partnership with Israel. For instance, joint exercises allow us to learn from Israel’s experience in urban warfare and counterterrorism.” Yes, gained from decades of assaults, bombardments and brutal persecution of the captive Palestinian people under Israeli military occupation.

    “Israeli technology is proving critical to improving our Homeland Security and protecting our troops. One only has to look at Afghanistan and Iraq…..

    “Israel is a vital ally and serves as a cornerstone of our regional security commitments. From confronting Iranian aggression, to working together to combat transnational terrorist networks, to stopping nuclear proliferation and supporting democratic change and economic development in the region – it is clear that both our strategic outlook, as well as our national interests are strongly in sync…. Our security assistance to Israel also helps support American jobs, since the vast majority of security assistance to Israel is spent on American-made goods and services.”

    It was then time for him to demonise Iran. “The Iranian regime continues to be committed to upsetting peace and stability in the region and beyond. Iran’s nuclear program is a serious concern, particularly in light of Iran’s expansion of the program over the past several years in defiance of its international obligations.”

    Speaking of international obligations, how safe is the region under the threat of Israel’s nukes? Why is Israel the only state in the region not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? Are we all supposed to believe that Israel’s 200 (or is it 400?) nuclear warheads pose no threat? Why hasn’t Israel signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, and why has it signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, similarly the Chemical Weapons Convention?

    Shapiro went on: “Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas enables these groups to fire rockets indiscriminately at Israeli population centers.” A bit like America’s support for the Israeli Offence Force then. “Iran’s extensive arms smuggling operations, many of which originate in Tehran and Damascus, weaken regional security and disrupt efforts to establish lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors. As change sweeps the region, Iran has and should be expected to continue its attempts to exploit much positive change for its own cynical ambitions.”

    And are we to believe that Israel’s long-term illegal occupation of its neighbours’ territories such as Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and Shebaa Farms has nothing whatsoever to do with the Zionists’ “cynical ambitions”? Has it never occurred to the Americans that Israel’s QME — all that power in the hands of an abusive regime — makes peace impossible? It is deeply worrying that successive US administration don’t seem to realise that Israel doesn’t want peace and never has — that peace gets in the way of its territorial ambitions. Or has America indeed realised this and made it part of the US’s “cynical ambition”.

    Shapiro complained that despite its instability Syria was still providing Hezbollah with critical military and logistical support and that Syria might be supplying sophisticated missile technology. Perhaps he forgets that Hezbollah was set up in 1982 by Muslim clerics to fight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

    “For six decades, Israelis have guarded their borders vigilantly,” he said. But he surely knows that Israel has never declared its borders for the simple reason it intends to constantly expand them.

    “We are taking steps to help Israel better defend itself from the threat of rockets from Hezbollah and Hamas. This is a very real daily concern for ordinary Israelis living in border towns such as Sderot, who know that a rocket fired from Gaza may come crashing down at any moment.” Funny he should mention Sderot, now home to Israeli land-grabbers. It is built on the lands of a Palestinian village called Najd, which was ethnically cleansed by Jewish terrorists in May 1948 before Israel declared itself a state. The 600+ villagers, all Muslim, were forced to flee for their lives.

    Najd was not allocated to the Jews in the 1947 UN Partition Plan, they stole it using armed force. Britain, the mandated government, was in charge while this and many other atrocities were committed by rampaging Jewish militia, Najd being one of 418 Palestinian villages and towns they wiped off the map. Its 82 homes were bulldozed and their inhabitants, presumably, became refugees in nearby Gaza. Their families are probably still living in camps there. The sweet irony is that some of them are quite likely manning the rocket launchers.

    Being a target for Gaza’s rockets and only a mile from the prison camp fence, Sderot has become known as ‘the bomb shelter capital of the world’, residents having little time to take cover. It is now a major propaganda asset of the Israeli regime and a compulsory stop on the brainwash tour for gullible politicians and journalists. When Barak Obama visited in 2008 he said: “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing.” Yes, Mr Obama. But hopefully you wouldn’t be such a plonker as to live on land stolen from your neighbour at gun-point.

    Shapiro revealed that the funding for Iron Dome was above and beyond the $3 billion from FMF. He also remarked that “many Israeli officers and enlisted personnel attend US military schools such as the National War College. These personnel exchanges allow Israel’s future military leaders to acquire essential professional skills, as well as build life-long relationships with their U.S. military counterparts.”

    So it really is a cosy setup.

    Additionally, “Israel benefits from a War Reserve Stockpile that is maintained in Israel by US European Command. This can be used to boost Israeli defenses in the case of a significant military emergency…. Israel is also able to access millions of dollars in free or discounted military equipment each year through the Department of Defense’s Excess Defense Articles program.”

    Sheer bribery

    Shapiro also touched on how the US keeps other nearby nations sweet. “Our longstanding friendship and our extraordinary relationship of cooperation is reflected in the more than $300 million in security assistance that we provide Jordan annually…. For the past 30 years, the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt has served as the basis for the $1.3 billion in annual Foreign Military Financing (FMF) that we provide Egypt. This assistance helps Egypt maintain a strong and disciplined professional defense force that is able to act as a regional leader and a moderating influence. Our assistance helps build ties between militaries, ensures that foreign militaries conduct themselves in restrained and professional ways, and creates strong incentives for recipient countries to maintain good ties with the United States.

    “We have continued to rely on Egypt to support and advance US interests in the region, including peace with Israel, confronting Iranian ambitions, interdicting smugglers, and supporting Iraq.”

    Shapiro was also aware of diplomatic efforts from some quarters to question Israel’s legitimacy. “As the President has said, Israel’s legitimacy is not a matter for debate. We have consistently opposed efforts to isolate Israel. We have stood up strongly for Israel and its right to defend itself…. We have refused to attend events that endorse or commemorate the flawed 2001 World Conference Against Racism, which outrageously singled out Israel for criticism. This Administration has also made clear that a lasting and sustainable peace can only come though negotiations and remains firmly opposed to one-sided efforts to seek recognition of statehood outside the framework of negotiations, whether in the UN Security Council or other international fora.”

    QME’s collision with international law

    He was referring, presumably, to those same old lopsided negotiations that have led nowhere. Israel has no claim to self-defence against a threat emanating from a territory it belligerently occupies. That has been made perfectly clear by the UN and other authorities. It’s the Palestinians who have a cast-iron right to self-defence, using “armed struggle” if necessary, against Israel’s illegal military occupation and murderous oppression (UN Resolutions 37/43 and 3246). UN Resolution 3246 also calls for all States to recognize the right to self-determination and independence for all peoples subjected to colonial and foreign domination and to assist them in their struggle.

    Furthermore Palestinians should not have to negotiate their freedom and self-determination – it’s theirs by right and doesn’t depend on anyone else, such as Israel or the US, agreeing to it. The US, UK and Israel (the latter stating repeatedly that it will not allow a Palestinian state to be created) arrogantly ignore the rights of others. But legal opinion (Wilde) has it that when 138 of the world’s states at the UN General Assembly voted in 2012 to re-designate Palestine’s status from ‘non-member Entity’ to ‘non-member State’, this had the effect of establishing statehood.

    Seriously, could no-one see that America’s crooked QME doctine would clash with justice and international law?

    A further boost to this US-Israel love affair came in July 2012 with an Act called the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012. It included the following policy statement:

    (1) To reaffirm our unwavering commitment to the security of the State of Israel as a Jewish state. As President Barack Obama stated on December 16, 2011, ‘‘America’s commitment and my commitment to Israel and Israel’s security is unshakeable.’’ And as President George W. Bush stated before the Israeli Knesset on May 15, 2008, on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, ‘‘The alliance between our governments is unbreakable, yet the source of our friend ship runs deeper than any treaty.’’.

    (2) To help the Government of Israel preserve its qualitative military edge amid rapid and uncertain regional political trans-formation.

    (3) To veto any one-sided anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations Security Council.

    (4) To support Israel’s inherent right to self-defense.

    (5) To pursue avenues to expand cooperation with the Government of Israel both in defense and across the spectrum of civilian sectors, including high technology, agriculture, medicine, health, pharmaceuticals, and energy.

    (6) To assist the Government of Israel with its ongoing efforts to forge a peaceful, negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that results in two states living side-by-side in peace and security, and to encourage Israel’s neighbors to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

    (7) To encourage further development of advanced technology programs between the United States and Israel given current trends and instability in the region.

    Policy (6) is nonsensical given the Israelis’ continuing refusal to recognize Palestine’s right to statehood, the recent passing of nation state laws reinforcing Israel’s apartheid, and the sidelining of international law and justice in seeking instead to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by arm-twisting negotiation.

    Need to eliminate the Zionist Tendency

    As Shapiro reminded his audience, President Truman famously took just 11 minutes to extend official, diplomatic recognition to the State of Israel when it was founded in 1948. He didn’t even have the sense to sleep on it, and the US’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s security has been one of the fundamental tenets of America’s national security ever since. While Truman, a self-declared Zionist, felt sorry for “the victims of Hitler’s madness” his hasty decision created millions of victims of Israel’s evil intent, which was so obvious from the start and is now laid bare for all to see.

    It seems as if the UK has been roped in and superglued to America’s ridiculous infatuation with the apartheid regime and its genocidal maniacs. Here it’s a criminal offence to show support for Hamas or Hezbollah, but it’s business as usual with the loathsome regime in Israel. Clubs supporting Israel are still allowed to flourish at Westminster.

    Our new trade secretary Jonathan Reynolds is reported to be in talks with a minister in Tel Aviv, Nir Barkat, who is one of the more extreme proponents of Israel’s brutal war in Gaza. The department says: “Our teams will be entering negotiating rooms as soon as possible, laser-focused on creating new opportunities for UK firms”, while British embassy officials in Israel talk about the “tremendous opportunity for collaboration between Israeli and British companies”.

    Reynolds was responsible for the decision to end a mere 30 out of the 350 arms export licences to Israel, which was widely considered insufficient for sending the right message. Unsurprisingly Reynolds is a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel. As such he appears to be in breach of the Government’s Ministerial Code and Principles of Public Life which state that “holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work….. They must declare and resolve any interests and relationships.” But people with such dangerous affiliation are allowed to occupy many senior Government positions.

    The influence of the Israel lobby is so strong, and its enforcers so enmeshed in the fabric of Westminster politics, that politicians feel they must join their party’s Friends of Israel group and undergo indoctrination to qualify for a senior position.

    With American presidents and senior politicians “either side of the aisle” so firmly shackled to Israel’s nauseating ambitions, it’s no surprise that their poodle, the UK, is similarly compromised. Successive prime ministers and their foreign secretaries have been amazingly keen to endorse Israel’s sense of impunity and grovel to its stooges inside and outside Westminster. How are we to rid ourselves of this malign influence?

    One of the first tasks in securing peace is to purge the ‘Zionist tendency’ from all corridors of power in the West. This is where the problem lies. These are Israel’s pimps and stooges who identify with Zionism and promote its sinister and unlawful ambitions inside the UK and other Western parliaments. They are the root cause of strife in the Middle East. Time they were removed.

    The post UN’s High Ideals Brought down by American Legislation first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • As a Rabbi, Taking Direct Action Against Genocide Is Part of My Sacred Practice

    In Judaism, the first 10 days of the new year — a period we are observing this week — are a time of committed reflection. As I reflect on this year of death and destruction, I think of all the lives that have been taken — 1,189 Israelis were killed or taken hostage and at least 42,000 Palestinians and likely far more were killed. Every human killed in the past year was someone else’s entire world.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Facilitators of Imperialist Terror, Enemies of Socialism


    Photo Above, Yemen, January 2024: U.S and British forces, backed by the Australian, Canadian and New Zealand imperialists, hit Yemeni people and Yemen’s Houthi forces with deadly air and missile strikes. Human Rights Watch facilitated the attacks by producing a report accusing Yemen’s Houthis of “war crimes” for their laudable efforts to defend the people of Gaza through blocking Israel-linked shipping traversing through the Red Sea. By helping to attack actions in support of the Palestinian people of Gaza, Human Rights Watch is complicit in Israel’s ongoing Gaza genocide.7 April 2024: Today, in the course of giving his Israeli ally the gentlest of slaps on its wrists for murdering aid workers, Britain’s foreign minister, David Cameron, referred to Israel as “a proud and successful democracy.” This compliment was given while Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza! And while the Israeli regime is forcing the Palestinian people in the West Bank to live under brutal Apartheid conditions! As for the capitalist ruling class of Britain itself and that of the U.S., Australia, Germany, France and other “Western democracies”, their self-description as “liberal-democracies” supposedly gave them the license to invade Iraq and kill hundreds of thousands of her people on the basis of a false pretext; and today to arm, support and help direct Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It is in the name of “standing up for democracy” that these Western ruling classes are threatening China in the waters of the South China Sea off her own coast and massively arming the anti-China, Western-puppet Taiwanese regime. And it is supposedly a quest to “defend our democratic values” that is driving the Western regimes to engage in a massive military build-up towards war against socialistic China and her North Korean socialistic ally. Here in Australia, the capitalist rulers believe that their status as a supposed “Western democracy” allows their state institutions to continue to strip Aboriginal children from their families and culture in the name of “child protection” and their governments to impose curfews and compulsory “income management” schemes discriminatorily targeting Aboriginal people. Australia’s capitalist government thinks that its self-proclaimed status as a “democracy” allows it to maintain housing policies that enable the capitalist bigwigs that they serve – and other wealthy individuals – to rip off huge fortunes from speculative property investments and exorbitant rents, while shoving millions of low-income renters into poverty and sometimes even homelessness. All of this is supposedly acceptable, because the people are said to have “freely” decided themselves through “democracy”.

    However, the truth is that in these “Western-style democracies” the masses are not truly deciding. To be sure, the “democratic” form of capitalist tyranny is preferable to other, still more repressive, forms of capitalist rule. For it allows the working class masses to more easily organise resistance against their own exploitation. However, in truth, the democracy that exists in capitalist “liberal democracies” is only a “democracy” for the capitalist class. Just like other forms of capitalist rule – like fascism, military dictatorship, absolute monarchy and theocratic dictatorship – the “democratic” form of capitalism is still in essence the dictatorship of the capitalist class over working class people. For in the “democratic” form of capitalist state as in the fascist form, the enforcement arms of the state – the police, army, courts, prisons and bureaucracy – are themselves tied to the financially dominant capitalist class and inevitably serve the exclusive interests of this class. This remains the case no matter who wins elections. Moreover, although “parliamentary democracy” under capitalism allows “one person one vote”, the means to shape public opinion – and in the end that means how people vote too – overwhelmingly resides with the super-rich capitalists. It is this class that owns the media. It is they who, in great disproportion to their numbers, have the financial resources to fund political parties, pay for political advertising, hire lobbyists and establish “independent” think tanks. Whereas in the fascist and military dictatorship form of capitalist rule, capitalist interests are enforced mostly through naked force, in the “democratic” form of capitalist rule, capitalist power is, in the first instance, mostly enforced through deception (and when this doesn’t work, they can of course revert to brutal repression and, if necessary, will even seek to overthrow their own “democracy” and replace it with the fascist form of capitalist rule).

    Of all the different means of deception that the capitalists have at their disposal, their most effective tools are their supposedly “independent”, “human rights organisations”. These are especially crucial for the capitalists of the richer, imperialist ruling classes to make their “own” masses support their predatory interests abroad. Among such “human rights organisations”, there is one that stands out for its level of influence, Human Rights Watch (HRW). When the mainstream Western media or a Western ruling class politician wants to attack an overseas enemy of the capitalist ruling class that they serve, the “credible source” that they will most often quote is HRW. This in turn boosts the authority of HRW.

    HRW’s number one aim is to vilify the socialistic states: the Peoples Republic of China, Cuba, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK – “North Korea”), Vietnam and Laos. HRW also targets any other state that happens to be in the gun sights of the U.S.-led Western imperialists. In 2011, HRW played a key role in facilitating the NATO operation in Libya to overthrow the government of Muammar Gaddafi, who the Western imperialists had decided was not bowing down enough before their demands to be allowed to continue to rule such an oil-rich country. In the lead up to the NATO intervention in Libya that began on 19 March 2011, HRW unleashed a torrent of hyped-up “reports” of alleged human rights atrocities by the Libyan government that provided the “human rights cover” for NATO’s intervention.  There was, for example, this “report” that HRW released just six days before NATO’s terror bombing was unleashed. Then as NATO continued to rain death upon the people of Libya, HRW produced more “reports” of supposed atrocities by Libyan government forces (for example) that served to justify the continuation of the blood-soaked Western imperialist, “regime-change” operation.

    Tripoli, Libya, 19 June 2011: Doctors stand near the bodies of a man and a child killed when NATO destroyed yet another residential building in the Libyan capital during their neo-colonial 2011 military intervention in Libya. Through greatly hyped-up and one-sided “human rights reports” in the days leading up to the NATO attack, Human Rights Watch’s propaganda provided the “human rights” “justification” for the brutal NATO onslaught.
    Photo: Ivan Sekretarev/AP

    The Devious Nature of Human Rights Watch’s “Even Handedness”

    To give themselves credibility, HRW will occasionally also report on human rights violations by the U.S. and other Western ruling classes. But they will mostly only report problems that everyone already knows about and which have been substantiated many times over. That way their “exposés” of human rights atrocities of Western capitalist regimes do minimal damage. In contrast, when HRW launches an attack on China, Cuba or another socialistic state, or on a capitalist state that is being too independent of the Western imperialist rulers, they will produce either entirely new claims or spread, as fact, highly disputed claims made by others – most of which are usually completely unsubstantiated or simply plain lies. Moreover, whenever attacking supposed human rights violations in a workers state or other country in the firing sights of Western imperialism, HRW will not only use the most extreme language as possible but will always make their shrill statements in the context of accusing the targeted state of having an “abysmal human rights record”. By contrast, whenever HRW feels compelled to acknowledge human rights problems in Western capitalist countries they use moderate language and emphasise that the issues occur in the context of the state having an otherwise “strong record of protecting civil and political rights”. Having a “strong record of protecting civil and political rights” is precisely how the Human Rights Watch (HRW) World Report 2022 described the human rights record of Australia’s capitalist regime. The very regime whose special forces murdered dozens of Afghan civilians in cold-blooded, racist executions during their war-crime-ridden participation in the two decade-long U.S./NATO occupation, whose racist police and prison guards have killed, or otherwise caused, the deaths of hundreds of Aboriginal people in custody over the last three decades and which brutally imprisons asylum seekers in offshore hell-holes.

    The full range of HRW’s methods of deception were unleashed during their propaganda campaign buttressing the 2011 NATO operation in Libya. For example, HRW acknowledged that NATO killed civilians during their Libya operation but greatly downplayed the numbers. HRW stated that NATO killed “at least 72 civilians”, when even other pro-Western sources acknowledge that the NATO airstrikes killed at least several hundred civilians – and other sources report the number of civilians killed by NATO in the thousands. In contrast, HRW greatly exaggerated the number of civilians killed by the Gaddafi government enemies of NATO.

    As well as greatly downplaying the numbers of civilians killed by NATO, HRW despicably praised NATO for supposedly making genuine efforts to protect civilians during its 2011 Libya intervention! Check out this disgusting HRW apology for NATO war crimes in Libya disguised as a “criticism”:

    “NATO says it took extensive measures to minimize civilian harm, and those measures seem to have had a positive effect: the number of civilian deaths in Libya from NATO strikes was low given the extent of the bombing and duration of the campaign. Nevertheless, NATO air strikes killed at least 72 civilians, one-third of them children under age 18. To date, NATO has failed to acknowledge these casualties or to examine how and why they occurred.”

    “Unacknowledged Deaths”, 12 May 2012, HRW website

    The truth is that the 2011 NATO regime-change operation that HRW deviously facilitated with its “human rights” reports not only directly killed thousands of civilians in air strikes but produced a horrific, new imperialist-created “order” in Libya. That “order” immediately resulted in murderous racist violence against black African residents of Libya. In the following years, it produced multi-sided sectarian violence and clashes between rival warlords that killed tens of thousands of Libyan people. Human Rights Watch has a lot of blood on its hands!

    HRW followed its Libya playbook when “reporting” on the upheaval in Syria that erupted in 2011. Initially the anti-government protests in Syria had a multi-directional quality. But by early 2012, the U.S.-led imperial powers had taken effective political hegemony of the movement and turned it into an armed proxy war aimed at toppling Syria’s Bashar al-Assad government and replacing it with one more subservient to the Western imperialists. As they poured arms, intelligence and training into their armed proxies, HRW filled the information space with one-sided, hyped-up and often false reports accusing Syrian government forces of horrific crimes. Without ever openly stating their intentions, HRW were key propagandists who justified the imperial powers’ proxy war to subordinate Syria. This proxy war caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrian people and the forced displacement of millions more. HRW has much complicity in this carnage!

    Today, HRW are at it again! This time they are facilitating the attacks of the U.S., British, Australian and other Western imperialists against the most effective international solidarity actions with the embattled Palestinian people over these last six months – the Yemeni Houthi actions to stop Israeli related shipping from traversing the Red Sea. As the U.S.-led imperialist powers took political steps to justify their impending air strikes against the Yemeni supporters of the Palestinian people, HRW provided the “human rights” justification for the attacks by despicably accusing the Yemeni Houthis of “war crimes” for the Houthis’ laudable actions to resist the Gaza genocide by targeting Israeli-linked shipping. To be sure, with Israel’s ongoing genocide of the people of Gaza obvious to most of the world, HRW also has to make stern criticisms of Israel. If they did not do so, they would lose all credibility and thus all ability to serve Western imperialism. However, by equating resistance actions in support of Israel’s victims with Israel’s genocidal terror, HRW is obscuring the one-sided genocide that is taking place. To facilitate attacks on pro-Palestinian resistance actions when a horrific slaughter of Palestinian people is taking place is to be complicit in the mass murder of the Palestinian people. Therefore, HRW shares responsibility for the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

    18 April 2024: Palestinian people survey the damage in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip following yet another murdering Israel strike.
    Photo: Xinhua

    Funded and Led By Wealthy Western Capitalists and Serving Their Class Interests

    Although HRW would like to portray itself as a “grassroots” organisation standing up for “human rights”, it is the very opposite of that. Headquartered in the U.S., HRW is a multi-hundred million dollar operation funded by super wealthy American and other Western donors and corporations. It is indeed run like a corporation. The outfit’s CEO, Kenneth Roth, is paid an annual salary package in excess of $A1.05 million per year (!!) … hardly the practice of an organisation that claims to be devoted to “bringing greater justice and security to the oppressed around the world”! For the last two years, HRW’s annual revenue averaged over $A163 million per year – overwhelmingly from contributions from rich donors and millions more from fundraising events.

    HRW goes to great lengths to hide exactly who the wealthy donors and corporations backing it are. Despite its frequent criticism of various adversaries of Western imperialism for “lack of transparency”, HRW is itself a very shadowy organisation. One massive donor to HRW that the organisation has had to confirm is anti-communist billionaire, George Soros. In September 2010, HRW announced that Soros would be donating a massive $US100 million to the group over ten years. That means that this leaching hedge fund manager, known for his extreme criticisms of socialistic China and his earlier funding for the political forces that destroyed the East European and Soviet workers states through capitalist counterrevolution, has been providing a large proportion of HRW’s funding. Indeed, such corporate bigwigs also make up a big and leading part of HRW’s Board of Directors. Like Soros, many of them extracted their wealth from the especially parasitic finance sector. Thus, one of the two Co-Chairs of HRW’s Board is co-founder and General Partner of venture capitalist group Index Ventures, Neil Rimer. The other Co-Chair, Amy Rao, is a former CEO of a Silicon Valley company. Many of the Board’s Vice Chairs are also bigwigs of investment firms, including the chairman of Japanese financial services company, Monex Group, Oki Matsumoto. This HRW Vice Chair owns $A180 million of shares in his company. Another Vice Chair is Principal at financial services firm KME Consulting, Kimberly Marteau Emerson. Emerson had earlier worked in Bill Clinton’s administration as a senior political appointee and as a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department; which exemplifies the close links between the HRW and the U.S. regime. Indeed, one of the only officers in HRW’s Board who has not been a corporate bigwig is the former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria and the Republic of Congo, Robin Sanders. Meanwhile, the Australian in the HRW Board and indeed a Vice Chair of the Board, is one of the two owners and co-chairs of Australian private equity firm, CHAMP Private Equity, Joseph Skrzynski. Skrzynski, who was once also the chairman of SBS, is known for his ownership of extravagant beach-side mansions in Palm Beach and Elizabeth Bay.

    Given that it is both funded by capitalist tycoons and other wealthy Western donors and led by corporate bigwigs it is little surprise that HRW takes a political line of strident opposition to the workers states created through the overthrow of capitalism. Indeed, anti-communist opposition to socialistic states goes to the very roots of HRW. HRW began in 1978 with Helsinki Watch – an organisation formed to support anti-communist forces seeking to overthrow the workers states then ruling the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This fundamental purpose of HRW, to provide the “human rights” cover to forces seeking the counterrevolutionary overthrow of socialistic states, has not changed to this very day.

    With HRW, together with the rest of the imperialist ruling classes, having succeeded in destroying the former Soviet and East European workers states, their focus has now turned to the goal of destroying the remaining workers states. That HRW has gained much greater prominence in recent years is a reflection of the increasing desperation of the imperialist rulers to achieve this goal. With socialistic China’s spectacular successes in lifting her people out of poverty and improving the economic and cultural lives of her population such a stark contrast to the periodic economic crises, stagnant real wages, growing homelessness, divided societies, social malaise and decay of the capitalist world, the imperialist rulers know that they must destroy socialistic rule in China in order to ensure their own tyrannies at home. They are looking to the likes of HRW to rise to the occasion and spearhead the “human rights propaganda” front of their all-sided Cold War against Red China and the other socialistic states. And unfortunately, HRW is indeed rising to the task! HRW has played a lead role in selling the lie that Red China is persecuting her Uyghur minority and blares anti-communist, anti-PRC propaganda over Tibet, Hong Kong, COVID and a whole lot of other matters.

    It is notable that HRW lists the Ford Foundation as one of their key partners. Established in 1936 by the big-time capitalist Ford family that owned the Ford Motor company, the Ford Foundation has always been devoted to buttressing capitalist rule and opposing communism. It worked closely with the CIA to both spread anti-communist propaganda and to assist CIA covert interference operations around the world. In the 1960s, the Ford Foundation trained elite students in Indonesia in both pro-capitalist political and economic ideology and anti-communist military operations. These students would play an important role in the CIA-backed, 1965 far-right coup in Indonesia that saw the Indonesian military and anti-communist mobs slaughter between one million to two million Indonesian communists, trade unionists, women’s rights activists and members of the Chinese and other minority communities. That HRW and the Ford Foundation should today be working closely together is thus completely natural. It is a bond between organisations that serve the same masters – the U.S. and other Western capitalist classes – share the same anti-communist ideology and have similar blood-soaked histories of providing the “human rights” and “pro-democracy” cover for hideous imperialist-orchestrated terror.

    Separately and Independently Serving Western Imperialist Interests

    It is worth noting that the biggest single backer of HRW, liberal billionaire George Soros, happens to be a favourite hostile target of the reactionary far-right sections of the Western ruling classes. The far right of the capitalist establishment and its liberal wing, exemplified by the likes of Soros and HRW, truly hate each other on many issues. However, when it comes to China and other socialistic states, these feuding wings of the imperialist ruling classes – and the mainstream conservatives in between – unite as one to oppose these workers states. And they also unite as one to oppose most other states that refuse to submit to the “rules-based world order” – which, in practice, is really a “might is right” tyranny – created and dominated by the U.S. and its junior imperialist partners.

    In Australia, too, we see such collaboration between the organisations and representatives of the different ruling class-supporting factions in order to advance the interests of the capitalist class – especially when it comes to attacking the socialistic states. Thus, the ALP, the Teal “independents”, the Liberals and the Far-Right parties will openly cooperate to advance the Australian capitalist regime’s aggressive, U.S.-allied, military buildup targeting socialistic China. They also come together to push through legislation and other measures that allow the regime to forcefully repress and intimidate any people from Australia’s Chinese community and beyond who dare to make statements positive about the PRC. Often such collaboration extends to the Greens – such as in making lying attacks on China and North Korea over “human rights violations” or in preventing the PRC-sponsored, language-teaching Confucius Institutes from teaching Chinese language in Australian schools (the latter McCarthyist campaign was actually driven by Greens politician, David Shoebridge).

    As well as open collaboration between the squabbling wings of Western ruling classes (and the social democratic organisations supporting them), they coordinate behind the scenes. You can bet that senior U.S. ruling class politicians and CIA and State Department officials are making clear to leaders of HRW what they would like the “independent human rights organisation” to emphasise. Often this may be done in an informal manner such as when they run into each other at social functions or at events promoting one of the political forces that they both support. However, for the most part, HRW does not take direct orders from the U.S. regime. There is no overall conspiracy as such. For HRW doesn’t need to receive direct orders! What makes HRW, other prominent Western “human rights” NGOs, all the arms of the U.S. and allied regimes, the different factions of the U.S., British, Australian and other U.S.-allied ruling classes, all the mainstream Western media and all well-funded think tanks in Western countries (like Australia’s ASPI and Lowy Institute) all sing basically the same tune is that they are all institutions ultimately controlled by, often directly funded by and always serving the interests of the very same people – that is, the closely-allied, Western imperialist exploiting classes. In other words, all these institutions and organisations are designed to serve either the U.S. capitalist class or allied capitalist ruling classes – like the Australian one. The fact that they are all not, for the most part, acting together in a giant conspiracy but rather act independently for the same cause, each with their own separate emphasis and nuances and sometimes even openly bickering with each other on the details, actually makes them all the more effective in advancing the predatory interests of the U.S., British and Australian imperialist ruling classes and their allies. For this makes it easier for the likes of HRW to claim that they are “independent”, “non-partisan” organisations.

    HRW likes to present itself as a grass-roots organisation supporting the under-dog that is driven by nice, compassionate people who truly care about “human rights”. But the truth is that Human Rights Watch is an incredibly rich organisation directly funded by American and other Western capitalists and by wealthy, upper-middle class Western individuals. It is led by corporate bigwigs and dedicated to serving the predatory interests of the mass murdering, genocide-in-Gaza-supporting, U.S, British, Australian and allied imperialist ruling classes. We must push back against and discredit the extremely harmful, pro-imperialist propaganda that is being spouted out by Human Rights Watch! This includes through exposé’s of HRW’s deeds facilitating war-criminal-ridden, Western interventions in Libya and Syria; and now through providing the “human rights” cover for U.S./British/Australian/Canadian/New Zealand attacks aimed at crushing Yemeni support for the embattled Palestinian people of Gaza. We must also encourage any current, or former, volunteers and staff working for HRW, who mistakenly thought that they were joining a genuine human rights organisation and who are now disgruntled, to blow the whistle on the highly secretive organisation, expose all its funding sources and make the public aware of all of HRW’s connections to Western regime officials and unsavoury, imperialist-backed “rebel” groups in socialistic countries and other Western-targeted states. We in Trotskyist Platform also call on all genuine opponents of capitalism and imperialism to build street protests and pickets against Human Rights Watch. Let us work hard to obliterate blood-soaked Human Rights Watch through all political means available!

    The post Facilitators of Imperialist Terror, Enemies of Socialism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Russia Confirms Liberation of Key Donbass Town

    Russia confirms liberation of key Donbass townFILE PHOTO. ©  Sputnik/Alexey Maishev

    Russian forces have completely liberated the town of Ugledar in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the Defense Ministry in Moscow has confirmed.

    Ukrainian forces had controlled the settlement since 2014, when the DPR declared independence following a US-backed coup in Kiev. Ugledar was a strategically important position, featuring high-rise buildings overlooking the surrounding plain.

    “As a result of conclusive operations by the units of the ‘East’ group of forces, the town of Ugledar in the DPR has been liberated,” the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Thursday.

    Video footage and images of Russian troops in control of Ugledar appeared on social media on Wednesday, showing a flag raised over its administration building. Later in the day, the Ukrainian high command said it had ordered “a maneuver of withdrawal” from the town. It was unclear whether any units had actually been able to leave the operational encirclement.

    According to a security source who spoke to TASS news agency, Russian forces had almost completed “mopped up” the Ukrainian resistance as of Wednesday afternoon. Some of Kiev’s units had suffered “huge losses” after not being able to leave, the source added.

    The 72nd Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which was stationed in Ugledar, had reportedly sought permission to retreat last week, as Russian troops cut off their supply lines and placed the town under siege. According to multiple Russian military correspondents, their requests were denied because losing Ugledar would look bad while Vladimir Zelensky was visiting the US.

    Russian forces had tried to take Ugledar on several occasions in the past. The most promising attack saw them capture the adjacent cottage district, but ultimately failed because of Ukrainian artillery support located in Kurakhovo to the north. In recent weeks, however, Russian advances collapsed the Ukrainian front north of Kurakhovo and threatened that town as well.

    The post Russia Confirms Liberation of Key Donbass Town first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • October’s Surprise Party

    As another October approaches, the beautiful season of colors begins here in New England. Call it October’s Surprise Party. The turning leaves with all their colors come to announce the earth’s glory, the possibility of peace and happiness for all.

    Yet as the month transpires and November nears, I think we might expect what for many will be the unexpected, as Bob Dylan reminds us with “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” Listen: “I heard the sound of a thunder that roared out a warnin’/I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world.”

    A Black Swan event or the expected?

    And if that hard rain does fall, it won’t just be those ravishing leaves that will be pounded down and die. First comes the beauty, then the dying follows, as every fall decrees.  And while nature always brings the rebirth of spring, in their hubris, humans, thinking they are gods, have devised a technological solution that can bring all life to an end for good – nuclear weapons.

    That their government is provoking their use by waging a war against Russia via Ukraine and backing the Israeli Middle East slaughter and genocide is not a thought that most Americans choose to entertain as they blithely go about their lives.  Such lucidity is deemed too depressing.

    Dylan wrote that song in the summer of 1962, 62 years ago (a symbolic number by the way), shortly before the Cuban Missile Crisis that October when nuclear annihilation was avoided at the last minute when John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev came to their senses.

    Today we are even closer than ever to a nuclear war, as those who closely follow such events tell us.  Scott Ritter, the former U.S. Marine and UN weapons inspector who tried to stop the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 by reporting that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is one.  He is joined by a host of lonely voices crying out their warnings: ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern, journalist Pepe Escobar, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the late Daniel Ellsberg and Randy Kelher, the author James W. Douglass who has been writing and demonstrating (with his wife Shelley) against nuclear weapons for nearly half-a-century, peace activist and former CIA officer Elizabeth Murray, et al. (my apologies for limiting the list).  Many of these irenic and fatidic voices warning the world of the closeness of nuclear war have appeared on Andrew Napolitano’s illuminating Judging Freedom interview show.  Their voices are easily available, for now.

    Ritter, who is being hounded by the U.S. government, has just written an article, “Life Pre-empted” whose opening line reads as follows: “If you’re not thinking about the end of the world by now, you’re either braindead or stuck in some remote corner of the world, totally removed from access to news.” [my emphasis]

    He is right, although contemplating our nearness to nuclear war no doubt gives most people such a serious case of the megrims that they turn away. It is understandable but must be resisted if the world is to avoid disaster.  A world-wide antinuclear movement is necessary, one that links the dangers of the U.S. aggressive Ukrainian proxy-war against Russia with the U.S./Israeli genocide of Palestinians and its expanded war throughout the Middle East together with the U.S. provocations of China.

    Even the corporate mainstream media are here and there starting to recognize the growing danger of nuclear war.  Of course, they blame Russia for this, as they do for everything, even as most of the world correctly points the finger at the United States.

    For it is the USA together with its NATO lap dogs that have brought us to this point, as they have spent decades surrounding Russia with troops and missiles and waging a war to conquer Russian via Ukraine.  For those who don’t know this history, they are in for a big surprise if Russia responds and the nuclear missiles fly, as Pepe Escobar recently tweeted about a statement by Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia and presently the deputy chairman of its Security Council:

    IT’S THUNDERBOLT TIME Medvedev Unplugged does know his Latin. But then Russian educational standards are in a class by itself, as I never cease to learn here in Moscow. Commenting on the update of Russia’s nuclear doctrine, Medvedev noted, “This change in our country’s guidelines for using nuclear weapons, in and of itself, may cool the ardor of those of our opponents who have not yet lost their sense of self-preservation. As for the dim-witted, only the Roman maxim remains: caelo tonantem credidimus Jovem Horace’s Odes. AnRegnare …” All of us who studied Latin know that comes straight from Horace and it goes straight to the point: thunder out of the sky reminds everyone that Jupiter rules. Medvedev’s metaphor is a beauty: the only way the “dim-witted” – Hegemonic and the vassal swamp – will learn is when the Russian Jupiter releases a thunderbolt.

    Let us hope it doesn’t come to that.  But the danger of a nuclear war has increased dramatically as the Biden administration continues to up the ante with its support for Ukraine and Israel.  If it approves the Ukrainian request to use U.S., British, and French-supplied long-range missiles for strikes deep inside Russia, all bets are off.  And the world awaits Russian ally Iran’s response to the current Israel bombing of Lebanon and the killing of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement, a war crime of another government that believes there will be no repercussions for their actions.

    The American public’s problem is not really ignorance of Latin (that is a symptom of a much greater ignorance), but being unable to recognize the truth about its leaders’ insane aggression and nuclear gamesmanship.  A knowledge of the Roman and Greek Classics reminds us that evil is real and tragedy descends on those who surpass the limits.  The tragic flaw – hamartia – is not part of the American lexicon. Disney World talk is.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently issued a warning to the US/NATO that Russia’s nuclear policy has changed as a result of US/NATO/Ukraine’s attacks inside Russia.  “Aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, with the participation or support of a nuclear state, is proposed to be considered as a joint attack on the Russian Federation,” he said.  As a result, he added, “We reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of aggression against Russia and Belarus.”

    But the Biden/Harris administration’s idiot leaders push the nuclear envelope thinking Russia is bluffing.  In their desire to conquer Russia, they have lost all reason and continue on a trajectory that started long ago but has now hit a crisis point.

    For those who think this war against Russia will come to a peaceful conclusion, I refer them to a series of articles in the propaganda organ of the U.S. “deep state,” which is really very shallow and obvious – the journal Foreign Affairs ( January/February 2023) – the mouthpiece for the Council of Foreign Relations.  There you will read articles promoting the destruction of Russia, regime change, and the removal of Vladimir Putin, etc.  All justified by America’s God-given right to rule the world.  One article by Robert Kagan, the neoconservative adviser to Republican and Democratic administrations and the husband of the infamous Victoria Nuland, a central figure in the 2014 US-engineered Ukrainian coup d’état, is laughable, but that it is taken seriously is a sign that the ruling elites are so deluded and intent on never stopping to try to destroy Russia that they will claim anything, no matter how contrary to obvious facts.  They just make things up to fit their narrative.

    In “A Free World If You Can Keep It,” Kagan writes, presumably with a straight face, the following: “Similarly, Putin’s serial invasions of neighboring states have not been driven by a desire to maximize Russia’s security. Russia’s never enjoyed greater security on its western frontier than during the three decades after the end of the Cold War…. But at no time since the fall of the Berlin Wall has anyone in Moscow had reason to believe that Russia faced the possibility of attack by the West.” [my emphasis]

    This crap is so laughable if it weren’t so dangerous and delusional.  If Kagan actually believes what he is saying, which I doubt, then he is dumber that a rock. Since the end of the Cold War, US/NATO has, contrary to their promises, continually moved east, surrounding Russia right up to its borders with troops, bases, and missiles aimed at Russia.  Clear provocations and threats that Russia has been complaining about for a long time.

    *****

    So October approaches, the month of Halloween, actors, and masks.  Gore Vidal got a laugh when years ago he referred to Ronald Reagan as our “acting president.”  But we’ve had six acting presidents since and their acts have left millions dead and wounded around the globe, including thousands of American troops.  The American electoral system is a horror show, a spectacle in what Guy DeBord called “The Society of the Spectacle.”  Many Americans have acquiesced in this ongoing tragedy, playing their parts in this deadly charade. The ghosts of all these victims walk among us, and they will haunt us until we come to life by admitting our own complicity in their deaths. The show must not go on, but it will, as long as we keep acting our parts.

    The Classical scholar Norman O. Brown so well describes our stage set: “Ancestral voices prophesying war; ancestral spirits in the danse macabre or war dance; Valhalla, ghostly warriors who kill each other and are reborn to fight again.  All warfare is ghostly, every army an exercitus feralis (army of ghosts), every soldier a living corpse.”

    So many Americans mask themselves from this savage truth in a futile, face-saving, phony performance.  The act is wearing thin. It is time to see through the illusion that a world war is not in the making, unless vast numbers arise from their sleep and oppose it.

    It is not just our “leaders” who perform at the Devil’s Masquerade Ball, which is the charade we call American Exceptionalism or The American Way of Life. I think of how all persons are, by definition, masked, the word person being derived from the Latin, persona, meaning mask.  Another Latin word, larva, occurs to me, it too means mask, ghost, or evil spirit.

    The living masks light up for me as I think of ghosts, the dead, all the souls and spirits circulating through our days.  The murdered ghosts demanding retribution, and the spirits of the brave and truthful ones urging us to oppose the killers.

    While etymology might seem arcane, I rather think it offers us a portal into our lives, not just personally, but politically and culturally as well. Shakespeare was right, of course, “all the world’s a stage,” though I would disagree that we are “merely” players. It does often seem that way, but seeming is the essence of the actor’s show and tell.

    Who are we behind the masks? Who is it uttering those words coming through the masks’ mouth-holes (the per-sona, Latin, to sound through)?

    October’s surprise party is coming.

    “I heard ten thousand whispering and nobody listening,” sings Dylan.

    The post October’s Surprise Party first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Both Harris and Trump Cite Right-Wing Myths About Fentanyl in Border Policy

    When it comes to the overdose crisis, Donald Trump would like you to believe that the problem — along with almost every other problem currently facing the United States — is rooted in immigration. In a section of the 2024 GOP party platform titled “Secure the Border,” Republicans draw a clear line of connection from immigration to fentanyl, promising to both “use all resources needed” to stop…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • When Wars End, They Still Continue to Take Lives

    Count on one thing: armed conflict lasts for decades after battles end and its effects ripple thousands of miles beyond actual battlefields. This has been true of America’s post-9/11 forever wars that, in some minimalist fashion, continue in all too many countries around the world. Yet those wars, which we ignited in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • US Military Policy Is Stoking the Risk of Nuclear War on Korean Peninsula

    politicians can’t stop talking about Kim Jong Un. The two major party conventions have come and gone, with both presidential candidates mentioning the North Korean leader by name. At the Republican National Convention (RNC), Donald Trump claimed Kim had endorsed him, adding, “He misses me.” Just weeks later at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), Kamala Harris alluded to her opponent’s…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • BAE Systems had more meetings with prime ministers than ANY OTHER private company

    A major new report by Campaign Against Arms Trade and World Peace Foundation details the disturbing level of influence the arms industry has on UK government.  

    The revolving door of the UK arms industry and government

    Key findings from the report, From revolving door to open-plan office: the ever-closer union between the UK government and the arms industry, include:

    • BAE Systems had more meetings with ministers, and more with prime ministers, than any other private company. Two other arms companies, Airbus and Rolls-Royce, were also high on these lists.
    • Over 40% of top-ranked military officers and civilian Ministry of Defence (MoD) personnel took roles in the arms and security industry upon leaving public service, including as employees, board members, and independent consultants to the industry, including a clear majority working in procurement.
    • On average, between 2009-19, senior government officials and ministers met with their arms industry counterparts 1.64 times a day.

    The report shows how the arms industry influences government policy, and how it has developed such a close relationship with government over the years that the lines between the two have been virtually erased.

    The consequences of this include a broken MoD procurement system, that nonetheless ensures steady profits for the UK’s top arms companies, and a lax arms export control regime that has allowed the industry to continue fuelling atrocities in Yemen and Palestine, while evading accountability for severe corruption.

    Two channels

    Two key channels of influence for the arms industry are identified in the report.

    The continued Revolving Door between government and the arms industry –  principally from the MoD, but also other departments, including:
    • An analysis of lists of senior MoD personnel found that over 40% of top-ranked military officers and civilian MoD personnel took roles in the arms and security industry upon leaving public service, including as employees, board members, and independent consultants to the industry.
    • This included a clear majority of those who worked in procurement roles, the part of the MoD that works most closely with industry.
    • While the revolving door is far from unique to the arms industry, separate research by Transparency International shows that the revolving door is far more common for the arms industry than others.
    An unparalleled level of access for the arms industry to the top levels of government, including:
    • Joint government-industry advisory bodies, where arms industry chiefs regularly meet with ministers.
    • A dedicated arms export promotion agency within the Department of Business and Trade.
    • Regular meetings between arms companies and ministers and top civil servants on a variety of topics. On average, between 2009-19, senior government officials and ministers met with their arms industry counterparts 1.64 times a day.
    • Analysis of data from a Transparency International open data portal, shows that from 2012-23, BAE Systems had more meetings with ministers, and more with prime ministers, than any other private company. Two other arms companies, Airbus and Rolls-Royce, were also high on these lists.

    The ‘ever closer union’ and the ‘open-plan office’

    While all industries seek to influence the government, the arms industry is unique in the closeness of its relationship at the highest levels. This is not simply the result of industry efforts, but as the report documents a deliberate policy by successive governments to draw the industry into a tighter embrace.

    As the MoD has come to see its relationship with industry less as one of customer and supplier, and more as one of partners and allies, the report asserts that this has increasingly blurred or even erased the lines between the two. This is especially true of BAE Systems, which dominates the UK industry, and which has become almost a privately-owned branch of the state. The report argues that the flow of personnel between the government and industry is not so much a ‘revolving door’, as an ‘open-plan office’, a natural move from one part of the national security establishment to another.

    Impacts on MOD procurement and arms exports

    MoD procurement: The top arms companies, such as BAE Systems, Rolls Royce, QinetiQ, Babcock, and Leonardo UK, receive a very high proportion of their MoD revenue – sometimes as high as 90% – through non-competitive contracts. Moreover, they continue to receive these contracts and enjoy strong, consistent profits, in spite of a long litany of delays, cost overruns, and under-performance. The House of Commons Defence and Public Accounts Committees regularly describe the MoD’s procurement system as ‘broken’ – but while it is broken for the taxpayer and the armed forces, it is far from broken for the arms industry. The report argues that perennial efforts to reform MoD procurement are doomed to failure unless they address this far too cosy relationship.

    Arms exports: The report shows how key decisions on arms exports over the years have consistently come down on the side of allowing exports and protecting industry profits, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of human rights abuses and attacks on civilians, as by Saudi Arabia in Yemen and Israel in Gaza. The government has consistently interpreted or even bent rules so as to permit exports, and has even been willing to sacrifice the UK’s reputation for anti-corruption, as when it cancelled a Serious Fraud Office investigation into corruption in arms sales to Saudi Arabia. BAE Systems in particular has often been the key beneficiary of these decisions.

    UK arms industry is a ‘broken system’

    The report’s author, CAAT’s research coordinator Dr. Sam Perlo-Freeman, said:

    This is a broken system. No industry should have this level of influence over government, especially one that deals in death and destruction. This level of influence is profoundly undemocratic and means that shareholder profits are protected at all costs  –  even if this means complicity in appalling war crimes. Radical measures are urgently needed to break the arms industry’s stranglehold on government policy.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Our friends at Stop the War Coalition need YOUR help to continue

    The following is a message from Stop The War Coalition

    Israel’s genocide in Gaza could engulf the entire Middle East and the war in Ukraine is currently at a precipice. There is a very real danger of direct war between NATO and Russia, while increasing militarisation in the Pacific has placed the region on high alert.

    The new Labour Party government has no plans to move away from the disastrous foreign policy of recent decades, indeed it has pledged to increase military spending to unprecedented levels.

    Starmer’s Labour has also enabled the far right and the rise in Islamophobia through its deeply racist election campaign and subsequent smearing of pro-Gaza Muslim MPs. It continues to show utter indifference to the suffering of Palestinians and to threaten the civil liberties of those who protest to demand a more peaceful and just world.

    Help us campaign to break with the cycle of violence, hate, militarism and forever wars and to fight for a society based on justice, solidarity and peace.

    This past year Stop the War Coalition has helped organise an unprecedented number of demonstrations and played a vital role in the Palestine movement. We have continued to campaign against the war in Ukraine and increased military spending. But campaigning requires money and we have little.

    We urgently need to expand our office and output and have set our appeal target at an ambitious £60,000. Please donate generously and help fund the fight for peace.

    You can donate to Stop The War Coalition here.

    Featured image via Stop The War Coalition

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Gaza Received Little Mention at Debate. Here’s What Trump and Harris Didn’t Say.

    Kamala Harris won the debate. The banner headline across the top of the New York Times home page — “Harris Puts Trump on Defensive in Fierce Debate” — was accurate enough. But despite the good news for people understandably eager for Trump to be defeated, the Harris debate performance was a moral and political tragedy. “An estimated 40,000 Palestinians are dead…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • US Militarism Is a Leading Cause of the Climate Catastrophe

    This week marks 23 years since George W. Bush declared a U.S.-led “war on terror” and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq are still suffering its consequences. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, an estimated half a million Iraqis were killed and at least 9.2 million were displaced. From 2003-2011, more than 4.7 million Iraqis suffered from moderate to severe food insecurity. Over 243,000…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Remote Southwest Communities Resist Dangerous Combat Flight Training Expansion

    The area from Cochise County, Arizona, to Hidalgo County, New Mexico, is largely remote and highly biodiverse. This part of the Southwest is home to national monuments like the Chiricahua Mountains, national forests and endangered species. It is also home to ranching communities, small towns built around the natural beauty of the area and tribal communities, including the Tohono O’odham…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Who Wants to Kill and Die for the American Empire?

    “It’s brave to admit your fears” – Ukrainian recruiting poster. Photo credit: Ministry of Defense, Ukraine.

    The Associated Press reports that many of the recruits drafted under Ukraine’s new conscription law lack the motivation and military indoctrination required to actually aim their weapons and fire at Russian soldiers.

    “Some people don’t want to shoot. They see the enemy in the firing position in trenches but don’t open fire. … That is why our men are dying,” said a frustrated battalion commander in Ukraine’s 47th Brigade. “When they don’t use the weapon, they are ineffective.”

    This is familiar territory to anyone who has studied the work of U.S. Brigadier General Samuel “Slam” Marshall, a First World War veteran and the chief combat historian of the U.S. Army in the Second World War. Marshall conducted hundreds of post-combat small group sessions with U.S. troops in the Pacific and Europe, and documented his findings in his book, Men Against Fire: the Problem of Battle Command.

    One of Slam Marshall’s most startling and controversial findings was that only about 15% of U.S. troops in combat actually fired their weapons at the enemy. In no case did that ever rise above 25%, even when failing to fire placed the soldiers’ own lives in greater danger.

    Marshall concluded that most human beings have a natural aversion to killing other human beings, often reinforced by our upbringing and religious beliefs, and that turning civilians into effective combat soldiers therefore requires training and indoctrination expressly designed to override our natural respect for fellow human life. This dichotomy between human nature and killing in war is now understood to lie at the root of much of the PTSD suffered by combat veterans.

    Marshall’s conclusions were incorporated into U.S. military training, with the introduction of firing range targets that looked like enemy soldiers and deliberate indoctrination to dehumanize the enemy in soldiers’ minds. When he conducted similar research in the Korean War, Marshall found that changes in infantry training based on his work in World War II had already led to higher firing ratios.

    That trend continued in Vietnam and more recent U.S. wars. Part of the shocking brutality of the U.S. hostile military occupation of Iraq stemmed directly from the dehumanizing indoctrination of the U.S. occupation forces, which included falsely linking Iraq to the September 11th terrorist crimes in the U.S. and labeling Iraqis who resisted the U.S. invasion and occupation of their country as “terrorists.

    A Zogby poll of U.S. forces in Iraq in February 2006 found that 85% of U.S. troops believed their mission was to “retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9/11 attacks,” and 77% believed that the primary reason for the war was to “stop Saddam from protecting Al Qaeda in Iraq.” This was all pure fiction, cut from whole cloth by propagandists in Washington, and yet, three years into the U.S. occupation, the Pentagon was still misleading U.S. troops to falsely link Iraq with 9/11.

    The impact of this dehumanization was also borne out by court martial testimony in the rare cases when U.S. troops were prosecuted for killing Iraqi civilians. In a court martial at Camp Pendleton in California in July 2007, a corporal testifying for the defense told the court he did not see the cold-blooded killing of an innocent civilian as a summary execution. “I see it as killing the enemy,” he told the court, adding, “Marines consider all Iraqi men part of the insurgency.”

    U.S. combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan (6,257 killed) were only a fraction of the U.S. combat death toll in Vietnam (47,434) or Korea (33,686), and an even smaller fraction of the nearly 300,000 Americans killed in the Second World War. In every case, other countries suffered much heavier death tolls.

    And yet, U.S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan provoked waves of political blowback in the U.S., leading to military recruitment problems that persist today. The U.S. government responded by shifting away from wars involving large deployments of U.S. ground troops to a greater reliance on proxy wars and aerial bombardment.

    After the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military-industrial complex and political class thought they had “kicked the Vietnam syndrome,” and that, freed from the danger of provoking World War III with the Soviet Union, they could now use military force without restraint to consolidate and expand U.S. global power. These ambitions crossed party lines, from Republican “neoconservatives” to Democratic hawks like Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

    In a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in October 2000, a month before winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, Hillary Clinton echoed her mentor Madeleine Albright’s infamous rejection of the “Powell Doctrine” of limited war.

    “There is a refrain…,” Clinton declared, “that we should intervene with force only when we face splendid little wars that we surely can win, preferably by overwhelming force in a relatively short period of time. To those who believe we should become involved only if it is easy to do, I think we have to say that America has never and should not ever shy away from the hard task if it is the right one.

    During the question-and-answer session, a banking executive in the audience challenged Clinton on that statement. “I wonder if you think that every foreign country– the majority of countries–would actually welcome this new assertiveness, including the one billion Muslims that are out there,” he asked, “and whether or not there isn’t some grave risk to the United States in this–what I would say, not new internationalism, but new imperialism?”

    When the aggressive war policy promoted by the neocons and Democratic hawks crashed and burned in Iraq and Afghanistan, this should have prompted a serious rethink of their wrongheaded assumptions about the impact of aggressive and illegal uses of U.S. military force.

    Instead, the response of the U.S. political class to the blowback from its catastrophic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was simply to avoid large deployments of U.S. ground forces or “boots on the ground.” They instead embraced the use of devastating bombing and artillery campaigns in Afghanistan, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, and wars fought by proxies, with full, “ironclad” U.S. support, in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and now Ukraine and Palestine.

    The absence of large numbers of U.S. casualties in these wars kept them off the front pages back home and avoided the kind of political blowback generated by the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The lack of media coverage and public debate meant that most Americans knew very little about these more recent wars, until the shocking atrocity of the genocide in Gaza finally started to crack the wall of silence and indifference.

    The results of these U.S. proxy wars are, predictably, no less catastrophic than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. domestic political impacts have been mitigated, but the real-world impacts in the countries and regions involved are as deadly, destructive and destabilizing as ever, undermining U.S. “soft power” and pretensions to global leadership in the eyes of much of the world.

    In fact, these policies have widened the yawning gulf between the worldview of ill-informed Americans who cling to the view of their country as a country at peace and a force for good in the world, and people in other countries, especially in the Global South, who are ever more outraged by the violence, chaos and poverty caused by the aggressive projection of U.S. military and economic power, whether by U.S. wars, proxy wars, bombing campaigns, coups or economic sanctions.

    Now the U.S.-backed wars in Palestine and Ukraine are provoking growing public dissent among America’s partners in these wars. Israel’s recovery of six more dead hostages in Rafah led Israeli labor unions to call widespread strikes, insisting that the Netanyahu government must prioritize the lives of the Israeli hostages over its desire to keep killing Palestinians and destroying Gaza.

    In Ukraine, an expanded military draft has failed to overcome the reality that most young Ukrainians do not want to kill and die in an endless, unwinnable war. Hardened veterans see new recruits much as Siegfried Sassoon described the British conscripts he was training in November 2016 in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer: “The raw material to be trained was growing steadily worse. Most of those who came in now had joined the Army unwillingly, and there was no reason why they should find military service tolerable.”

    Several months later, with the help of Bertrand Russell, Sassoon wrote Finished With War: a Soldier’s Declaration, an open letter accusing the political leaders who had the power to end the war of deliberately prolonging it. The letter was published in newspapers and read aloud in Parliament. It ended, “On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realize.”

    As Israeli and Ukrainian leaders see their political support crumbling, Netanyahu and Zelenskyy are taking increasingly desperate risks, all the while insisting that the U.S. must come to their rescue. By “leading from behind,” our leaders have surrendered the initiative to these foreign leaders, who will keep pushing the United States to make good on its promises of unconditional support, which will sooner or later include sending young American troops to kill and die alongside their own.

    Proxy war has failed to resolve the problem it was intended to solve. Instead of acting as an alternative to ground wars involving U.S. forces, U.S. proxy wars have spawned ever-escalating crises that are now making U.S. wars with Iran and Russia increasingly likely.

    Neither the changes to U.S. military training since the Second World War nor the current U.S. strategy of proxy war have resolved the age-old contradiction that Slam Marshall described in Men Against Fire, between killing in war and our natural respect for human life. We have come full circle, back to this same historic crossroads, where we must once again make the fateful, unambiguous choice between the path of war and the path of peace.

    If we choose war, or allow our leaders and their foreign friends to choose it for us, we must be ready, as military experts tell us, to once more send tens of thousands of young Americans to their deaths, while also risking escalation to a nuclear war that would kill us all.

    If we truly choose peace, we must actively resist our political leaders’ schemes to repeatedly manipulate us into war. We must refuse to volunteer our bodies and those of our children and grandchildren as their cannon fodder, or allow them to shift that fate onto our neighbors, friends and “allies” in other countries.

    We must insist that our mis-leaders instead recommit to diplomacy, negotiation and other peaceful means of resolving disputes with other countries, as the UN Charter, the real “rules based order,” in fact requires.

    The post Who Wants to Kill and Die for the American Empire? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Students protest university’s complicity with Israel’s supply of deadly F-35s from Lockheed Martin

    Students in Greece have taken a stand against a university’s complicity with Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Namely, they’ve called out the university’s ties to Lockheed Martin – the company that provides Israel with its F-35 war planes.

    Lockheed Martin: F-35 complicit in genocide

    Lockheed Martin is the manufacturer of the F-35 bombers. As the Times of Israel reported:

    Israel’s Defense Ministry on Tuesday officially signed a deal with the United States to procure a third F-35 fighter jet squadron.

    The ministry said a delegation to the US signed a letter of agreement for the $3 billion deal that included 25 advanced stealth fighters built by Lockheed Martin.

    The planes would begin to be delivered starting in 2028, in batches of three to five per year, the ministry said. The aircraft would bring the Israeli Air Force’s F-35I fleet to 75 in the coming years. Only 39 of Israel’s original order of 50 F-35s have so far been delivered.

    Of course, the UK’s complicity in this is well-known. As the Canary previously reported, just this week the Labour government refused to block the the ‘Open General’ licence relating to the F-35 combat aircraft, 15% of which is produced in the UK.

    It comes as the Lockheed Martin F-35 has been linked to a potential war crime by Israel. Danish news outlet Information, together with NGO Danwatch, revealed that, for the first time, it has been possible to definitively confirm the use by Israel of an F-35 stealth fighter to carry out a specific attack in Gaza.

    The attack took place on 13 July, on an Israeli-designated ‘safe zone’ in Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza, killing 90 people and injuring at least 300. The Israeli military claims that the target of the attack was Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas’s military wing.

    Athens sees students push back

    Over in Greece, and students have also been pushing back against Lockheed Martin.

    On 2 September, students held a protest against the collaboration of the University of Athens with Lockheed Martin. It happened first outside the Dean’s Office of the School of Sciences of the University of Athens:

    The students demanded to stop immediately the cooperation of the university with the company that arms NATO with weapons and plays a key role in supplying Israel with weapons and war systems, so that the genocide of the Palestinian people continues. Athens University works with Lockheed Martin under its ‘Aerospace Systems Management’ course.

    The students said in a statement:

    Students from all over Greece have made it clear through their mobilizations and decisions that they are on the side of Palestine and will not tolerate any cooperation of the Universities with any company whose weapons are bombing the people of Palestine.

    Under the determined stance of the students’ unions, the Dean himself stated that he disagrees with this cooperation, and that he does not want the university to become a participant in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

    The students obtained a commitment that the issue will be discussed in the next meeting of the Dean’s Office of the Faculty so that it will take an official position. This will be held in the next few days, with the participation of the student unions.

    To this end, the protests and pressure from students over Lockheed Martin continued during the week:

    Lockheed Martin Israel Athens F-35

    Featured image and additional images via PAME International 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Labour will STILL allow exports of F-35 parts to Israel – just as new evidence of its war crimes complicity emerges

    On Monday 2 September, foreign secretary David Lammy today made a statement to parliament on the results of a review of arms export licences to Israel, announcing the suspension of 30 export licences for use by the Israeli military that could be used in Gaza. However, he stated that the ‘Open General’ licence relating to the F-35 combat aircraft, 15% of which is produced in the UK, and for which Israel is one of the recipient countries, would be exempted.

    The UK will continue to export F-35 parts, just as Israel uses them for war crimes

    This statement came on the same day that Danish news outlet Information, together with NGO Danwatch, revealed that, for the first time, it has been possible to definitively confirm the use by Israel of an F-35 stealth fighter to carry out a specific attack in Gaza.

    The attack took place on 13 July, on an Israeli-designated ‘safe zone’ in Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza, killing 90 people and injuring at least 300. The Israeli military claims that the target of the attack was Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas’s military wing.

    The attack involved three GBU-31 2000lb bombs, which have a ‘lethal radius’ of 360m, and are thus certain to kill large numbers of civilians when used in highly-populated areas. Such attacks are clear violations of the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) principles of proportionality and distinction, and are likely war crimes.

    The use of F-35s by Israel in the attack on Gaza has been confirmed since the beginning of the war, including their use to deliver 2000lb bombs. However, it has rarely if ever been possible to establish which type of aircraft was used to attack which targets.

    Parts from the UK

    In this case, Danwatch uncovered an article describing Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant personally going to an F-35 base to thank the pilots involved, and the Israeli military has since confirmed in response to a request by Information and Danwatch that an F-35 carried out the attack.

    The use of such advanced aircraft in intensive combat operations requires a constant supply of spare parts, The US says it has been moving at ‘breakneck speed’ to increase the supply since the start of the war. This supply will certainly include spare parts from the UK.

    Exports of parts for the F-35, whether for their manufacture or for spare parts, do not require individual export licences as they are covered by an “Open General” licence. Therefore, their supply is thus not recorded in regularly-published government information on export licences.

    Breaching international law via F-35 parts?

    In his statement, Lammy highlighted concerns around disrupting the global supply chain for the F-35, which the UK and its allies also use. However, there is nothing to preclude the government from simply removing Israel from the list of approved recipients for the Open General licence.

    Sam Perlo-Freeman, research coordinator for Campaign Against Arms Trade said:

    The government’s statement today that it is suspending 30 arms export licences to Israel is a belated, but welcome move, finally acting upon the overwhelming evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

    But exempting parts for Israel’s F-35 is utterly outrageous and unjustifiable.

    These are by far the UK’s most significant arms supplies to the Israeli military, and just today we have confirmation that they have been used in one of the most egregious attacks in recent months. The government has admitted that there is a ‘clear risk’ that Israel is using fighter aircraft among other weapons to violate international humanitarian law. How can this ‘clear risk’ not apply to the F-35s? The only right and legal course of action is to end the supply of F-35 parts to Israel, along with the rest of UK arms sales.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • War Diary: An Appreciation of Legacies

    Actually, I limit my exposure to daily media considerably. My experience as a journalist, when there was still some conventional meaning assignable to that term, began in school. I had become the news editor of the school paper. Whereas previously the monthly student production was devoted to athletic events and other entertainments, I introduced reporting on issues both in the school and those off the school grounds that nonetheless were relevant for pupils and the routines to which we were all subject. My model in those days was The Economist, still published in the UK and reasonably free from cant. Our school paper received several prizes from the journalism school at the state university that I would later attend. There, I tried to write for the university paper. However the closer one got to the ambitious professionals, the less interest in substance was to be found. The pinnacle of my experience was a two-year tour as an accredited freelance journalist in the UN Headquarters, New York. That was back in the ancient 80s when the regime over which Ronald Reagan nominally presided made its ownership of the United Nations more explicit than it had been since using it to cover its war against Korea (and China). I attended innumerable press conferences including those held by such luminaries as Margaret Thatcher, Rajiv Gandhi, Roland Dumas and some figures from states that receive less attention.

    It was the year when then New Zealand prime minister David Lange accused France of state terrorism before the entire General Assembly—a speech French foreign minister Dumas told me he had not heard. 1985 was a jubilee in which the United Nations organisation celebrated that it had reached 45 years of age. Heads of state and government accumulated in the East Side nest donated by the Rockefeller dynasty to house that august preserver of the world’s peace and prosperity—as the United States defined. There was still a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and a German Democratic Republic. The CIA was still waging counter-insurgency throughout Central America and all was Right in the world. That is to the extent one still could imagine what Left meant.

    Through accident or design, I travelled to Brazil the following year and studied the process of apparent return to civilian rule after the 1964 military coup the US initiated. In 1989, I drove to Berlin for a common weekend visit only to find that by 10 November the last meaningful preservative of Eastern European sovereignty was to be removed. In 1991, I was again surprised. I had booked my flight to South Africa before the announcement of Nelson Mandela’s release. What I witnessed in the first half of that year was prescient. Twenty years later, the book I wrote about that experience has been re-published. Whether it will get any more notice today is anyone’s guess.

    In other words, I have been fortunate enough to enjoy proximity to noteworthy political personalities, remarkable historical events, and those whose ostensible task was to report on them for many years. As I have said to my sporting friends, I prefer observant participation to the spectacles. My cricketing skills are minimal. Yet I would rather play than just watch. Of course I am no politician, “playing” for me is personal observation, not following what others tell me is important.

    This year the war commenced among the imperial powers of the Western peninsula of Eurasia, led by the British Empire and its vassals, has been waged for more than a century, 120 years to be precise. In his 1947 book, The Future in Perspective, German historian Sigmun Neumann called the era 1914-1945 the “second Thirty Years War”. Perhaps we should call the era in which we live the “second Hundred Years War”. That would still only cover a small part of the events of the past century. Given the present situation the most comprehensive designation I can imagine is the “second Fourth Crusade”.

    In 2001, the latent policies that had shaped the previous ten decades of malice and belligerence were articulated in the language most closely resembling the decrees of Innocent III. By 2020 those policies had become manifest in every aspect of Western political, military, economic and social practice. The Global War on Terror was successfully transformed from an episodic campaign against brown people associated with Islam to a general campaign to reduce the world’s population and subordinate the East, beginning with the successor to Orthodoxy in the Christian world. An incident in Wuhan in 2019 was exploited to create conditions for an expanded version of the Opium Wars against China—a war concealed by duplicity and hypocrisy that puts the Arrow incident to shame.

    The journalism to which so much reference is made—as to its virtues and failings—is scarcely able to imagine, let alone report, the era in which we live. Journalism as it has been taught and imitated dwells on the immediate or the fiction of the immediate to be exact. With the contraction of memory and the dissolution of the traditional forms of time and space, the journalist responds by limiting the scope of an already truncated perceptual scheme.

    Although the war being waged by Ukraine against Russia is based on consistent Western policies and methods, the bulk of the discussion and the reporting that feeds it focusses either on the battlefield (now called battlespace in military jargon) or on the relationships between Russia and Ukraine and NATO. At the beginning of Russia’s Special Military Operation, the Russian government stated that one of its key objectives is the de-Nazification of Ukraine. The journalistic response in the West has been mainly to ignore the substance upon which this aim is based. Of course there are references among the reasonably sane to the embarrassing or criminal inclusion of formations in the Ukrainian military that are “neo-Nazi”, the most notorious of these is the Azov Division/ Battalion. Although the US/ NATO spokespersons assert that these are not neo-Nazi elements, it has been necessary to downplay the appearance of NS insignia (not foreign to elements of US Forces either) in order to retain this fiction. A recent RIAS video, obtained from Italian journalists embedded in the Ukrainian units that invaded Kursk, shows a Ukrainian soldier wearing a fatigue cap with an NS badge. Shocked attention is given to the SS runes on the cap — see screenshot below.

    To illustrate how the journalistic microscope functions, the shock is focused on the rune “bacillus”. However the petri dish in which this bacillus was found is largely ignored. The SS runes may catch the superficially informed as formally objectionable national socialist (NS) symbols that make a good cause look bad. For those that oppose the war they may see this as proof that the Ukrainian regime is unscrupulous, willing to use anyone to fight its war. From this follow conclusions like, the NS symbols should be prohibited and purged (without addressing why they are worn in the first place) or the Ukrainian war is wrong because it is being fought by neo-Nazis.

    If the microscope is abandoned and higher magnification is applied, then we find a curious confirmation of the foregoing description of continuous war against the East. First of all, the cap badge the soldier is wearing is that of the SS-Leibstandart “Adolf Hitler”. This formation was an element of the II SS Panzer Gruppe, commanded by Paul Hausser, which waged the 1943 battle of Kursk in which the German Wehrmacht and SS paramilitary divisions were defeated. The Azov Battalion/ Division adopted the standard of the Waffen SS-Division “Das Reich” (also once under Hausser’s command). This could be interpreted as evidence that the vanguard of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is essentially composed of the reconstituted Waffen-SS. The organisation, training and operational deployment of these units is entirely consistent with the manner in which the Waffen-SS was created and deployed in the war against the Soviet Union, a war that only ended with latter’s dissolution.

    These are not neo-Nazi formations. They are fascist units created by the same forces that armed and deployed German military might against the Soviet Union in 1941. They were created from the legacy of the SS units rescued and conserved by the Anglo-American Empire since 1944. Seen in this way these insignia are the inheritance of the regimental history they claim as their own. The British Imperial Government and the United States Government both organized the rescue of at least 1,000 paramilitary men of the Waffen-SS Division Galizia in Italy. With the services of the Gehlen Org (the precursor to the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Federal Germany’s CIA franchise) and the ODESSA, Waffen-SS officers and men were provided with all manner of escape to safe havens, e.g. in North and South America. Officially the SS was declared to be a criminal organisation under the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany after 1945. Even the display of insignia associated with the NSDAP (Nazi Party) and its infrastructure was made a crime. Occasionally, conspicuous trials were held, when unavoidable, to preserve the myth of Western innocence in the creation of the NS regime and conceal its complicity in Operation Barbarossa.

    SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer and Waffen-SS Generaloberst (deemed by the NSDAP regime equivalent to general officer rank in the regular army) Paul Hausser, in his capacity as spokesman for the Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit (HIAG), a benevolent organisation (and lobby) devoted to the promoting the interests of Waffen-SS veterans, pled until his death in 1972 for the rehabilitation of the Waffen-SS; that they be treated on a par with the Wehrmacht veterans. Regular soldiers retained their pension and other benefits. These were denied to members of the Waffen-SS because in the view of the established military they were not soldiers and their organisation had been declared criminal as a whole. The law was cynically applied like much of so-called “de-Nazification” since civil servants who obtained “Persilscheine”, certificates of de-Nazification named after the leading laundry detergent Persil, were not only retained in office but continued their careers, even if they had been NSDAP members. German journalist Bernt Engelmann in his Roman à clef, Grosses Bundesverdienstkreuz (1974) and his 1975 Schwarzbuch: Strauß, Kohl und Co. and 1986 Schwarzbuch. Das Kohl & Co-Komplott, traced the careful erection of West Germany’s regime by the US intelligence services using first generation NSDAP functionaries like Franz-Joseph Strauss and second-generation fascists nurtured by the Heidelberg SS clique around Fritz Ries, including Hans-Martin Schleyer, e.g., the galleon figure for the final assault on the Soviet Union, Helmut Kohl. The first years of this story, including the Gladio terrorist operations of the early 1980s, were dramatized by GDR television in the series Das Unsichtbare Visier in the 1970s and 1980s. It was not until the 1990s that the BBC aired a documentary showing that most of the European “left-wing terrorism”, including the Bologna railway station bombing and the murder of Aldo Moro, were under the direction of the NATO Gladio operation, based on the structures imported from the Gehlen Org. None of this is ever even mentioned when trying to explain the curiously self-destructive policies of the current Berlin government.

    Hausser’s central argument, for which he also published in 1953 the book Waffen-SS im Einsatz (the Waffen-SS in battle) and in 1966 Soldaten wie andere auch (Soldiers like any other), was that the Waffen-SS was a true multi-national force which had honourably served in the defence of “European ideals.” Hausser’s personal defence was no doubt related to the fact that he had been a regular army officer prior to joining the SS. Until the end of the GDR and the Soviet Union, Hausser’s books and all those who followed in his train were attacked officially and in the German mass media for “historical revisionism”. In fact, as late as 1995, the so-called “Wehrmachtausstellung” produced by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, caused a major scandal in military circles with documentary evidence to punch a huge hole in the “clean” Wehrmacht myth. It was also accused of incorrect attribution and captioning of photographs however the essential message was never fully rebutted. If the Waffen-SS was the vanguard of the West’s war of annihilation in the East, the Wehrmacht as a force was necessary for that war to be waged with due ferocity. While until 1990 historical revisionism was the technical term for defending the war in the East (against the Soviet Union), Hausser’s version of history has become the official doctrine of Berlin and Brussels. Today’s Ukrainian Armed Forces are praised as a multi-national force defending Europe. If one listens to any high imperial official, especially Mr Stoltenberg and Ms von der Leyne (NATO and EU, i.e. military and civil households of the Anglo-American Empire), the Ukrainian Armed Forces, commanded nominally from Kiev, are fighting “Europe’s fight”. HM’s Canadian Government in Ottawa even applauded the prior service of a Waffen-SS veteran because he too had been fighting for such ideals as a young man in SS paramilitary uniform. The barely implied declaration is that Russia is not Europe and certainly has no European “ideals”.

    Since the Anglo-American Empire and its vassals in western Eurasia are fully committed to Ukraine, it can be no surprise therefore that they are also fully committed to the IDF slaughter and conquest of Palestine, in absolute defence of European “ideals”. The declared “war of annihilation” (how else can one characterize the boldly proclaimed objectives of the Tel Aviv regime?) underway since 2023 is merely the “sacred right of self-defence”—with which no other state in the region is endowed. It takes enormous strains of the intellect not to compare the rhetoric today with that in NSDAP-ruled Germany from 1939 until 1945. However, the legions of scribes and megaphone operators in journalism assembled are obviously up to the task. Would anyone dare to compare the more than fifty standing ovations the head of that regime received in a joint session of the US Congress with the news reel footage of Reichstag sessions? Would anyone even understand such a comparison were it made?

    Two of the great propaganda slanders of the past hundred years are that the leader of the Soviet Union started the war to expand communism throughout the world—provoking the defensive-offensive response of the West through (its proxy) the National Socialist regime in Germany. Another version of that slander is that Stalin and Hitler were essentially the same, intending to divide the European peninsula between them. The other is that the Grand Mufti of Palestine, Amin al-Husseini, represented the nascent Arab war against Jews. These and other fabrications or distortions of the historical record are in part preserved by the overwhelming control of the world’s mass media and educational/ indoctrination system by the Anglo-American (in widest sense of that term) Establishment. The Establishment history of the past century either exaggerates casualties/ fatalities on its own side or minimises/ ignores them on the side of the victims of Western aggression. One only has to consider the Normandy farce and the refusal of “Western allies” to commemorate the Russian victory over the fascist invasion—not incursion. (Here note that journalists report about the Russian “invasion” of Ukraine but not about the Ukrainian “incursion”.)

    The Soviet Union, which bore the brunt of Western (Nazi) invasion at a cost of more than 20 million dead plus untold destruction, rightly demanded war crimes trials in London. Britain and the US reluctantly conceded. However in Nuremberg the Soviet Union had to be content with the trial of NS officials for crimes against Jews and not war crimes against the citizens of the Soviet Union. By 1967, everyone in the world knew the number “six million”, while scarcely anyone knew about the 20 million plus in the Soviet Union. This omission was so egregious that after a major, prime time 26-episode British documentary about the war between 1941 and 1945, entitled World at War (1973), with narration by Lawrence Olivier, had been broadcast throughout the English-speaking West with almost no mention of the Eastern front, massive protest by the Soviet Union forced the production and broadcast in 1978 of The Unknown War, another twenty episodes, narrated by Bruce Lancaster, to show where the war was really fought and won (episode 7 describes the Battle of Kursk). At least twenty million deaths in China were not counted at all. In a little country like Portugal a typical bookstore has more books on display about the Western theatre of that war, in which Portugal was neutral, and the NSDAP than books about its own national history.

    To this day the only casualties that are universally recognized from that phase of the “second Hundred Years War” are six million non-combatant forced labourers in the occupied East—where the war was fiercest. That fundamental disproportionality is also an essential part of the overall distortion and deception (along with a variety of serious commercial and criminal enforcement penalties) which prevents the daily journalist and his readership from seeing the “second Fourth Crusade” being waged from the Baltic Sea to the Gulf of Aden. It prevents them from recognizing the age in which we live and the conditions that have made it what it is.

    In an article titled, “The Crusade is Over” (The Unz Review, 7 September 2023), Laurent Guyénot argues that the Christian crusade constituted an innovation. He writes:

    The Crusade introduced a new way of individual salvation: penitential warfare. God, speaking through His vicar on earth, now granted full remission of sins (thence a place in Heaven) to whoever would swear to travel to the Holy Land and kill infidels or be killed by them. According to the historian Orderic Vitalis, writing around 1135, “the pope urged all who could bear arms to fight against the enemies of God, and on God’s authority he absolved all the penitent from all their since from the hour they took the Lord’s cross”.

    This idea survived even in the Protestant deviation. The Church militant hymn, The Son of God goes forth to war is just one gory example.

    When the Global War on Terror was proclaimed, the rechristening of the second Hundred Years War as the second Fourth Crusade, penitential warfare needed no mention. On the contrary, the justification offered by all those who preached the crusade was that something or some people embodying “radical Islam” or “Islamists” had sworn to fight the West to the death. A powerful propaganda strategy has always been to accuse the target of the acts, omissions, or policies one is covertly pursuing. Thus the target is seen as the author of the very aggression launched against him.

    Negotiation, both overt and covert, can be used to amplify this drama of guilt and enmity as the target is deceived into acts he believes will end hostilities, which are then shaped to enhance them. Analyst-participants like Scott Ritter—to mention someone everyone probably recognises—have been eyewitness to these deceits, even if late in recognizing them. With such overwhelming control over the world propaganda media for a century now, it is almost impossible for targets to expose the deceptions to which they have been subject. The few journalists who notice and try to report them are no better situated to alter the signal to noise ratio in favour of the defence.

    Details reported may help to correct errors of fact. However, without a fundamental orientation, including a critical, cultural historical point of view—one that necessarily extends beyond the horizon of daily news or even intensive analysis—it is very easy to remain a captive of marketing and info-fashion. New things—newly reported or learned—excite but without context obstruct rather than promote information. Joseph Weizenbaum, in his continued critique of AI before he died, insisted on the distinction between data and information. Information is the product of judgement. Data can be anything. Weizenbaum insisted that judgement can and ought only to be exercised by humans—not machines. Journalism functions as a soft machine. It generates data and packages it so that it appears without judgement or is saturated with judgements. Transfats were developed to enhance the shelf life of processed foods. Transfacts enhance the credibility of processed synthetic data. Like a drug it induces a kind of euphoria (dysphoria) called “being informed”. The actual exercise of judgement requires a level of sobriety that standard journalism—regardless of ideological orientation—was not designed to sustain.

    A great many terms used in reporting or discussing what happened, happens or may happen in our world are unanalysed. “Interests” is perhaps one of the worst but there are many others. To illustrate just how useless this term is consider the following substitution: “the person whom one has seized in the process of setting fire to one’s home, or perhaps with a douse of petrol to one’s self, was merely pursuing his interests.” This is not an absurd use. Another version of this is that a person who engages in a cash transaction on a public thoroughfare and is robbed in the process must expect that there are people who have an interest in theft where they believe it is possible. It is only the occasional enforcement of the criminal code that makes it probably safe to say that these kinds of “interest” are generally termed “criminal” and subject to punishment. However, once the word is applied to corporate or state entities, these actions are beyond judgement. The same applies to such terms as “right of self-defence” or “national security”. This shorthand is readily absorbed as a mark of sophistication when it is really a screen to obscure activities from scrutiny.

    While the objective blockade of Gaza that has been in place for two decades, only to be intensified by the centrally managed mass murder of the population that commenced October 2023, is occasionally mentioned, the compulsion to produce “news” leads to notices of IDF homicidal attacks on every form of food, medical or other relief to the besieged as if these were weather reports. A recent report that the WHO, a private-public partnership (euphemism for fascist parastatal), will launch an experimental polio inoculation campaign on the IDF’s targets of annihilation ought to remind people of the use to which Africans have been put by pharmaments manufacturers with misanthropic funds, or even the medical experiments conducted against captives during the war in the 20th century. Alas, not even the enormous fallout from the 2021-22 global injection terror is compared.

    Journalists swim in a cesspool with just enough water to distort their vision, especially their sense of distance. The “news” demands the appearance of unique data, unusual events or angles. Supposedly repetition is bad for the “news”. What is really meant is that “news” is based on titillation, combining voyeurism, desire, fear and what the Germans call Schadensfreude (enjoying when others are injured, a kind of abstract vengefulness). Of course, repetition is essential to the effect of the “news”. Redundancy in signalling serves to amplify a message as well as to squelch noise (undesired signals/ messages). The inability to accurately assess distance and engage critically is also aggravated by the addiction to unanalysed jargon, sometimes due to the journalist’s ignorance or laziness, but also because of infection with the culture of the powerful and their agents. This culture is transmitted not only by education but also by the rewards and punishments, the seduction and promotion, as both Philip Agee and the late Udo Ulfkotte explained, when one belongs to the scrivener guild at court. The economic and social privilege that accrues when one has been permitted into anterooms of power is hard to dismiss. The proximity to authority lends the charisma of authority. Even the opposition scribe can become complicit in this spectacle, out of vanity or because his benefits accrue (even if the ultimate sources are concealed). That is part of the power of pageantry and the miracle of philanthropy. Salvation is promised if one is willing to take up the cross or pay someone else to do so. The warriors have always had their chroniclers. At the end of the day all we have on which to base our judgements—and judgements we must make—are the legacies, the chronicles and the wasteland.

    The post War Diary: An Appreciation of Legacies first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Israel Used US Arms to Commit at Least 20 Likely War Crimes Since October 7

    The Biden administration recently approved five major arms sales to Israel for F-15 fighter aircraft, tank ammunition, tactical vehicles, air-to-air missiles, mortar rounds, and related equipment for each. Though technically sales, most if not all of this matériel is paid for by U.S. taxpayers — Israel uses much of the military aid Congress approves for it effectively as a gift card to buy U.S.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Political Matrix Sustains the Illusion of Freedom

    What you smell is the stench of a dying republic.

    Our dying republic.

    We are trapped in a political matrix intended to sustain the illusion that we are citizens of a constitutional republic.

    In reality, we are caught somewhere between a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).

    For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.

    In other words, we’re allowed to bask in the illusion of freedom while we’re being stripped of the very rights intended to ensure that we can hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution.

    We’re in trouble, folks.

    This is no longer America, land of the free, where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people.

    Rather, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism go hand in hand.

    Freedom no longer means what it once did.

    This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ commitment to the American experiment in freedom.

    Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

    My friends, we’re being played for fools.

    On paper, we may be technically free.

    In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

    We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

    Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

    With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives.

    As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

    Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, but we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.

    In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.

    Freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every direction.

    The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.

    This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine.

    That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive surveillance.

    We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.

    By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

    Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.

    If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

    So, what’s the answer?

    For starters, stop tolerating corruption, graft, intolerance, greed, incompetence, ineptitude, militarism, lawlessness, ignorance, brutality, deceit, collusion, corpulence, bureaucracy, immorality, depravity, censorship, cruelty, violence, mediocrity, and tyranny. These are the hallmarks of an institution that is rotten through and through.

    Stop holding your nose in order to block out the stench of a rotting institution.

    Stop letting the government and its agents treat you like a servant or a slave.

    You’ve got rights. We’ve all got rights. This is our country. This is our government. No one can take it away from us unless we make it easy for them.

    You’ve got a better chance of making your displeasure seen and felt and heard within your own community. But it will take perseverance and unity and a commitment to finding common ground with your fellow citizens.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re making it way too easy for the police state to take over.

    So, stop being an accessory to the murder of the American republic.

    The post The Political Matrix Sustains the Illusion of Freedom first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Future of Our World by Noam Chomsky

    Noam Chomsky (95) famous dissident and father of modern linguistics, considered one of the world’s leading intellectuals, is recovering from a stroke he suffered at age 94 and now living with his wife in Brazil. According to a report in Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now d/d July 2, 2024, this past June Brazilian President Lula personally visited Chomsky, holding his hand, saying: “You are one of the most influential people of my life” personally witnessed by Vijay Prashad, co-author with Noam Chomsky, The Withdrawal (The New Press).

    Indeed, Noam Chomsky is established as one of the most influential intellectuals of the 21st century.

    A pre-stroke video interview with Chomsky conducted at the University of Arizona is extraordinarily contemporary and insightful with a powerful message: What Does the Future Hold Q&A With Noam Chomsky hosted by Lori Poloni-Staudinger, Dean of School of Behavioral Sciences and Professor, School of Government and Public Policy, University of Arizona.

    Chomsky joined the School of Behavioral Sciences in 2017 and taught “Consequences of Capitalism.”

    This article is a synopsis of some of Chomsky’s responses to questions, and it includes third-party supporting facts surrounding his statements about the two biggest risks to humanity’s continual existence.

    What Does the Future Hold?

    Question: geopolitics, unipolar versus multipolar

    Chomsky: First there are two crises that determine whether it is even appropriate to consider how geopolitics will look in the future: (1) threat of nuclear war (2) the climate crisis.

    “If the climate crisis is not dealt with in the next few years, human society is essentially finished. Everything else is moot unless these two crises are dealt with.”

    (This paragraph is not part of Chomsky’s answer) Regarding Chomsky’s warning, several key indicators of the climate crisis are flashing red, not green. For example, nine years ago 195 nations at the UN climate conference Paris ‘15 agreed to take measures to mitigate CO2 emissions to hold global warming to under 1.5°C pre-industrial. Yet, within only nine years of that agreement amongst 195 nations, according to Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial for the first time in human history for a 12-month period from February 2023 to January 2024 and now fast approaching danger zones. Obviously, nations of the world did not follow their own dictates, and if not them, who will?

    Paleoclimatology has evidence of what to expect if the “climate crisis,” as labeled by Chomsky, is not dealt with (The following paragraph is also not part of Chomsky’s answer): “While today’s CO2-driven climate change scenario is unprecedented in human history, similar circumstances existed in the geological record that give us an idea of what to expect in the way of global sea level rise, and the process that will get us there. About 3.2 million years ago, during the Pliocene epoch, CO2 levels were about 400 ppm (427 ppm today) and temperatures were 2-3°C above the “pre-industrial” temperatures of 1850-1880. At the same time, proxy data indicate global sea level was about 52 feet (within a 39-foot to 66-foot range) higher than today.” (Source: The Sleeping Giant Awakens, Climate Adaptation Center, May 21, 2024)

    Maybe that is why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) strongly suggests keeping temperatures ideally below 1.5°C and certainly not above 2.0°C pre-industrial.

    Chomsky on World Power: Currently the center of world power, whether unipolar or multipolar is very much in the news. This issue has roots going back to the end of WWII when the US established overwhelming worldwide power. But now the Ukraine war has the world very much divided with most of world outside of the EU, US and its allies calling for diplomatic settlement. But the US position is that the war must continue to severely weaken Russia.

    Consequently, Ukraine is dividing the world, and it shows up in the framework of unipolar versus multipolar. For example, the war has driven the EU away from independent status to firm control by the US. In turn the EU is headed towards industrial decline because of disruption of its natural trading partners, e.g., Russia is full of natural resources that the EU is lacking, which economist have always referred to as a “marriage made in heaven,” a natural trading relationship that has now been broken. (footnote: EU industrial production down 3.9% past 12 months)

    And the Ukrainian imbroglio is cutting off EU access to markets in China e.g., China has been an enormous market for German industrial products. Meanwhile, the US is insisting upon a unipolar framework of world order that wants not only the EU but the world to be incorporated within something like the NATO system. Under US pressure NATO has expanded its reach to the Indo-Pacific region, meaning NATO is now obligated to take part in the US conflict with China.

    Meantime, the rest of the world is trying to develop a multipolar world with several independent sectors of power.  The BRICS countries Brazil, Russia, India, China, Indonesia, South Africa, want an independent source of power of their own. They are 40% of world economy that’s independent of US sanctions and of the US dollar.

    These are developing conflicts over one raging issue and one developing issue. Ukraine is the raging issue; the developing issue is US conflict with China, which is developing its own projects in Eurasia, Africa, Middle East, South Africa, S9uth Asia, and Latin America.

    The US is determined to prevent China’s economic development throughout the world. The Biden administration has “virtually declared a kind of war with China” by demanding that Western allies refuse to permit China to carry out technological development.

    For example, the US insist others do not all0w China access to any technology that has any US parts in it. This includes everything, as for example, Netherlands has a world-class lithographic industry which produces critical parts for semi-conductors for the modern high-tech economy. Now, Netherlands must determine whether it’ll move to an independent course to sell to China, or not… the same is true for Samsung, South Korea, and Japan.

    The world is splintered along those lines as the framework for the foreseeable future.

    Question:  Will multinational corporations gain too much power and influence?

    Chomsky suggests looking at them right now… US based multinationals control about one-half of the world’s wealth. They are first or second in every domain like manufacturing and retail; no one else is close. It’s extraordinary power. Based upon GDP, the US has 20% of world GDP, but if you look at US multinationals it’s more like 50%. Multinationals have extraordinary power over domestic policy in both the US and in other capitalistic countries. So, how will multinationals react when told they cannot deal with a major market, like China?

    How does this develop over future years? The EU is going into a period of decline because of breaking relationships in trade and commercial business with the East. Yet, it’s not sure that the EU will stay subordinate to the US and willingly go into decline, or will the EU join the rest of the world and move into a more complex multipolar world and integrate with countries in the East? This is yet to be determined. For example, France’s President Emmanuel Macron (2017-) has been vilified and condemned for saying that after Russia is driven out of Ukraine, a way must be found to accommodate Russia within an international system, an initial crack in the US/EU relationship.

    Threat of nuclear war question: Russia suspended the START Nuclear Arms Treaty with the US and how important is this to the threat of nuclear war?

    Chomsky: It is very significant. It is the last remaining arms control treaty, the new START Treaty, Trump almost cancelled it. The treaty was due to expire in February when Biden took over in time to extend it, which he did.

    Keep in mind that the US was instrumental in creating a regime which somewhat mitigates the threat of nuclear war, which means “terminal war.” We talk much too casually about nuclear war. There can’t be a nuclear war. If there is, we’re finished. It’s why the Doomsday Clock is set at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s been.

    Starting with George W. Bush the US began dismantling arms control. Bush dismantled the ABM Treaty, a missile treaty very significantly part of the arms control system and an enormous threat to Russia. So, the dismantling allowed the US to set up installations right at the border of Russia. It’s a severe threat to Russia. And Russia has reacted.

    The Trump administration got rid of the INF Treaty, the Reagan-Gorbachev treaty of 1987 which ended short-range missiles in Europe. Those missiles are now back in place on the borders of Russia. Trump, to make it clear that we meant business, arranged missile launches right away upon breaking of the treaty.

    Trump destroyed the Open Skies Treaty which originated with Eisenhower stating that each side should share information about what the other side was doing to reduce the threat of misunderstanding.

    Only the new START Treaty remains. And Russia suspended it. START restricts the number of strategic weapons for each side. The treaty terminates in 2026, but it’s suspended by Russia anyway. So, in effect there are no agreed upon restraints to increasing nuclear weapons.

    Both sides already have way more nuclear weapons than necessary; One Trident nuclear submarine could destroy a couple hundred cities all over the world. And land based nuclear missile locations are known by both sides. So, if there is a threat, those would be hit immediately. Which means if there’s a threat, “you’d better send’em off, use’em or lose’em.” This obviously is a very touchy, extraordinarily risky situation because one mistake could amplify very quickly.

    The new START Treaty that’s been suspended by Russia did restrict the enormous excessive number of strategic weapons. So, we should be in negotiations right now to expand it, restore it, and reinstitute the treaties the US has dismantled, the INF Treaty, Reagan-Gorbachev treaty, ABM Treaty, Open Stars Treaty should all be brought back.

    Question: Will society muster the will for change for equity, prosperity, and sustainability?

    Chomsky: There is no answer. It’s up to the population to come to grips with issues and say we are not going to march to the precipice and fall over it. But it’s exactly what our leaders are telling us to do. Look at the environmental crisis. It is well understood that we may have enough time to control heating of the environment, destruction of habitat, destruction of the oceans which is going to lead to total catastrophe. It’s not like everybody will die all at once, but we’re going to reach irreversible tipping points that becomes just a steady decline. To know how serious it is, look at particular areas of the world.

    The Middle East region is one of the most rapidly heating regions of the world at rates twice as fast as the rest of the world. Projections by the end of the century at current trajectories show sea level in Mediterranean will rise about 10 feet.

    Look at a map where people live, it is indescribable. Around Southeast Asia and peasants in India are trying to survive temperatures in the 120s where less than 10% of population has air conditioning. This will cause huge migrations from areas of the world where life will become unlivable.

    Fossil fuel companies are so profitable that they’ve decided to quit any sustainable efforts in favor of letting profits run as fast and as far as possible. They’re opening new oil and gas fields that can produce another 30-40 years but at that point we’ll all be finished.

    We have the same issue with nuclear weapons as with the environment. If these two issues are not dealt with, in the not-too-distant future, it’ll be all over. The population needs to “have the will” to stop it.

    Question: How do we muster that will?

    Chomsky: Talk to neighbors, join community organizations, join activist’s groups, press Congress, get out into the streets if necessary. How have things happened in the past? For example, back in the 1960s small groups of women got together, forming consciousness-raising groups and it was 1975 (Sex Discrimination Act) that women were granted the right of persons peers under US domestic law, prior to that we’re still back in the age of the founding fathers when women were property  Look at the Civil Rights movement. Go back to the 1950s, Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat on a bus that was planned by an organized group of activists that led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, big change… in 1960 a couple of black students in No. Carolina decided to sit in at a lunch counter segregated. Immediately arrested, and the next day another group came… later they became organized as SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinated Committee. Young people from the North started to join. Next freedom buses started running to Alabama to convince black farmers to cast a vote. It went on this way, building, until you got civil rights legislation in Washington.

    What’s happening right now as an example of what people can do? The Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act, IRA. It’s mostly a climate change act. The only way you can get banks and fossil fuel companies to stop destroying the world is to bribe them. That’s basically our system. But IRA is not the substantial program that Biden presented. It is watered down. The original came out of Bernie Sander’s office. As for the background for that, young people, from the Sunrise Movement, were active and organizing and sat in on Congressional offices. AOC joined them. A bill came out of this, but Republican opposition cut back the original bill by nearly 100% They are a denialist party. They want to destroy the world in the interest of private profit.  The final IRA bill is nowhere near enough.

    Summation: Chomsky sees a world of turmoil trying to sort out whether unipolar or multipolar wins the day with the Ukrainian war serving as a catalyst to change. Meanwhile, the EU carries the brunt of its impact. Meantime, nuclear arms treaties have literally dissolved in the face of a tenuous situation along the Russia/EU borders with newly armed missiles pointed at Russia’s heartland. In the face of this touch-and-go Russia vs. the West potentially explosive scenario, the global climate system is under attack via excessive fossil fuel emissions cranking up global temperatures beyond what 195 countries agreed was a danger zone.

    Chomsky sees a nervous nuclear weapons-rattling high-risk world flanked by unmitigated deterioration of ecosystems that global warming steadily, assuredly takes down for the count, as global temperatures set new records. He calls for individuals to take action, do whatever necessary to change the trajectory of nuclear weaponry and climate change to save society. Chomsky offered several examples of small groups of people acting together, over time, turning into serious protests and ultimately positive legislation.

    AmThis article covers the first 34 minutes of a 52-minute video: Noam Chomsky: About the Future of Our World.

    “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” (Margaret Mead, Anthropologist)

    The post The Future of Our World by Noam Chomsky first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Something’s Coming, We Don’t Know What It Is But It Is Going To Be Bad

    With a click, with a shock
    Phone’ll jingle, door’ll knock, open the latch
    Something’s coming, don’t know when but it’s soon . . .

    — “Something’s Coming,” West Side Story, lyrics by S. Sondheim, music by L. Bernstein.

    Shock should not be the word, but when World War III breaks fully loose many who are now sleeping will be shocked.  The war has already started, but its full fury and devastation are just around the corner.  When it does, Tony’s singular fate in West Side Story will be the fate of untold millions.

    It is a Greek tragedy brought on by the terrible hubris of the United States, its NATO accomplices, and the genocidal state of Israel and the Zionist terrorists who run it.

    Tony felt a miracle was due, but it didn’t come true for him except to briefly love Maria and then get killed as result of a false report, and only a miracle will now save the world from the cataclysm that is on the way, whether it is initiated by intent, a false report, an accident, or the game of nuclear chicken played once too often.

    Let us hope but not be naïve.  The signs all point in one direction.  The gun on the wall in the first act of this tragic play is primed to go off in the final one.  Every effort to avoid this terrible fate by seeking peace and not war has been rejected by the U.S. and its equally insane allies.  Every so-called red line laid down by Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinians, and their allies has been violated with impunity and blatant arrogance.  But impunity has its limits and the dark Furies of vengeance will have their day.

    “It is the dead, not the living,” said Antigone, “who make the longest demands.”  Their ghostly voices cry out to be avenged.

    I wish I were not compelled by conscience to write this, but it seems clearly evident to me that we stand on the edge of an abyss.  The fate of the world rests in the hands of leaders who are clearly psychotic and who harbor death wishes.  It’s not terribly complex.  Netanyahu and Biden are two of them.  Yes, like other mass killers, I think they love their children and give their dog biscuits to eat.  But yes, they also are so corrupted in their souls that they relish war and the sense of false power and prestige it brings them.  They gladly kill other people’s children.  They can defend themselves many times over, offer all kinds of excuses, but the facts speak otherwise.  This is hard for regular people to accept.

    The great American writer who lived in exile in France for so many years and who was born 100 years ago this month, James Baldwin, wrote an essay – “The Creative Process” – in which he addressed the issue of how becoming a normal member of society dulls one to the shadow side of personal and social truths.  He wrote:

    And, in the same way that to become a social human being one modifies and suppresses and, ultimately, without great courage, lies to oneself about all one’s interior, uncharted chaos, so have we, as a nation, modified or suppressed and lied about all the darker forces in our history.

    And lie and suppress we still do today.

    Imagine, if you will, that Mexico has invaded Texas with the full support of the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian governments.  Their weapons are supplied by these countries and their drone and missile attacks on the U.S. are coordinated by Russian technology.  The Seven Mile Bridge in Florida has been attacked.  The U.S. Mexican border is dotted with Russian troops on bases with nuclear missiles aimed at U.S. cities.

    It’s not hard to do.  That is a small analogy to what the U.S./NATO is doing to Russia.

    Do you think the United States would not respond with great force?

    Do you think it would not feel threatened with nuclear annihilation?

    How do you think it would respond?

    The U.S/NATO war against Russia via Ukraine is accelerating by the day.  The current Ukrainian invasion of Russia’s Kursk region has upped the ante dramatically.  After denying it knew in advance of this Ukrainian invasion of Russia, the demented U.S. President Joseph Biden said the other day when asked about the fighting in Kursk, “I’ve spoken with my staff on a regular basis probably every four or five hours for the last six or eight days. And it’s — it’s creating a real dilemma for Putin.  And we’ve been in direct contact — constant contact with — with the Ukrainians.”  Do you think Kamala Harris was kept in the dark?

    Now how do you think the Russians are going to respond?  How many red lines will they allow the U.S. to cross without massive retaliation?  And what kind of retaliation?

    Switch then to the Middle East where the Iranians and their allies are preparing to retaliate to Israel’s attacks on their soil. No one knows when but it seems soon.  Something is coming and it won’t be pretty.  Will it then ignite a massive war in the region with the U.S. and Israel pitted against the region?  Will nuclear weapons be used?  Will the wars in Ukraine/Russia and the Middle East join into what will be called WW III?

    While the U.S. continues to massively arm Israel, Russian is arming its ally Iran and likely training them in the use of those weapons as the U.S. is doing in Ukraine. The stage is set.  We enter the final act.

    Natanyahu wants and needs war to survive.  So he thinks.  Psychotic killers always do.

    The signs all point in one direction.  No one should be shocked if the worst comes to pass.

    “Phone’ll jingle, door’ll knock, open the latch.”

    If you have time.

    The post Something’s Coming, We Don’t Know What It Is But It Is Going To Be Bad first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Free the Leftist, Anti-War, and Anti-Nationalist Political Prisoners in Ukraine

    Above: Political prisoner in Ukraine, Inna Ivanochko sits in a dock in a court. Inna Ivanochko is the head of the Lviv organisation of Opposition Platform — For Life, which was Ukraine’ second largest party in parliament until it was persecuted and then banned. She is facing up to 15 years in prison for expressing her political views in the years before the war started – which the Ukrainian regime have now retrospectively deemed to have been in the service of Russia. Her supposed “offences” include allegedly participating in a September 2015 protest rally over living standards grievances and violations of constitutional rights, taking court action in 2018 against a city council decision to knock down a monument to Soviet World War II soldiers and advocating turning Ukraine into a federal state during a 2018 television interview.
    Photo: Supplied

    In late April 2024, the Albanese Labor government in Australia announced yet another $100 million in “aid” to Ukraine. The new “aid” package includes air-dropped bombs and drones. The package was announced by deputy prime minister, Richard Marles during a visit to Ukraine where he encouraged the Ukrainian regime to continue its war against Russia. Marles also affirmed the continued participation of Australian soldiers in an operation training Ukrainian troops in Britain. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops have already been trained in this U.K.-led operation. The U.S. and European NATO powers and their allies, like the Australian imperialist regime, are prepared to fight to the last drop of Ukrainian blood to advance their proxy war against Russia.

    As millions of low-paid workers, working-class youth, unemployed workers and pensioners suffer under soaring rents, Australian governments have failed to provide adequate funding for the public housing that could help drive down rents across the rental market. Meanwhile, governments of all stripes refuse to substantially boost the crushingly low Jobseeker payments. They say that there is a need to be “prudent” to avoid fueling inflation. Yet, when it comes to fueling death and destruction in distant lands to shore up Western imperialist domination of the world, successive federal governments have had no trouble finding large financial resources. The April announcement brings the Australian regime’s total military assistance to its Ukrainian counterparts to $880 million. Earlier announced Australian military support included the provision of armoured vehicles, six M777 155mm howitzers and artillery shells.

    This military assistance is backed by all the parties in the Australian parliament, the entire mainstream media and all of Australia’s influential political think tanks. Yet despite this and the ruling class’ intense propaganda campaign supporting the proxy war against Russia, many Australians do not buy the government’s “rationales” for its military support to its Ukrainian counterparts. Indeed a poll conducted this month by the Australian government-controlled ABC news outlet found that a (small) majority of Australians actually want the government to wind back or end support for Ukraine.

    One of the main narratives that Australia’s ruling class and other Western imperialist ruling classes use to justify their massive military backing of Ukraine is their claim that they are “defending a fellow democracy against an authoritarian power.” However the Ukrainian capitalist regime is no “democracy” of any kind! Fascist forces play a prominent role in Ukraine’s state organs. For example, a key part of Ukraine’s National Guard and prominent part of the regime’s ultra-nationalist folklore is the fascist Azov Assault Brigade. Formed in 2014 by neo-Nazi politician Andriy Biletsky, the Azov Assault Brigade sports Nazi regalia and trains its members in white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideology. It is notorious for murdering, raping and assaulting numerous leftists, members of ethnic minorities and civilians sympathetic to Russia. The character of the Ukrainian regime can also be seen from the fact that in 2015 it made two Nazi-collaborating, anti-Soviet paramilitary groups (the UPA and the OUN), “heroes of Ukraine.” During World War II, the UPA and OUN between them murdered 100,000 Polish people and tens of thousands of Jewish people, while helping their Nazi allies to carry out the Holocaust. The Ukrainian regime has also renamed many streets after the fascist leader of the OUN, Stepan Bandera; and have also erected numerous statues and other monuments to this Nazi-allied war criminal.

    Capitalism and Democracy

    Of course, the Western regimes using Ukraine are hardly true “democracies” themselves. To be sure Western governments are elected and citizens are theoretically able to advance their political views. However, in practice it is the wealthy capitalists, in great disproportion to their small numbers that have the means to shape public opinion and hence steer election outcomes. It is they who own the media, establish and finance the political think tanks, provide much of the funding for political parties and political NGOs and have the financial resources to pay for expensive political advertising and lobbyists. Thus in terms of political influence, “democracies” under capitalism run more on “one dollar, one vote” rather than the nominal, “one person, one vote.” Moreover, due to their tremendous wealth and control of the economy, the capitalists are able to ensure that all the key state institutions remain tied to them by thousands of threads irrespective of which political party is elected to govern. Therefore, in all nominally “democratic” capitalist countries, the form of “democracy” masks the reality that the system is in fact just a form of dictatorship of the capitalist class. To the extent that there is any real democracy it is only that the different capitalists and pro-capitalist factions are able to freely and “democratically” debate their differences and arrive at a majority decision about which policies best serve the interests of their class. Moreover, just as in more openly authoritarian forms of capitalist rule, whenever the rule of the capitalist class faces a serious challenge, the ruling class will resort to the most brutal authoritarian repression to protect their interests.

    Nevertheless, as far as the working-class and other oppressed are concerned, this pseudo-“democratic” form of administering capitalism is preferable to other forms of capitalism – like fascism, military dictatorship etc – because it allows the masses comparatively greater freedoms with which to organise resistance against capitalist exploitation. That is why in capitalist parliamentary democracies like Australia, we oppose every attack of the ruling class on the limited democratic rights that the masses do have. And as decaying, late-stage capitalism is increasingly unable to meet the needs of the masses, in nearly every capitalist parliamentary “democracy” around the world the worried capitalist class is chipping away at the political rights that it had previously conceded to the masses. Just look at the hardline anti-protest laws that have been enacted in NSW and other Australian states and the federal government’s draconian “foreign interference” laws which are aimed at suppressing expressions of sympathy for socialistic China.

    Teacher from Kiev, Alla Dushkina. (Photo: Supplied). She spent three months in a Ukrainian jail for correspondence with an acquaintance from Russia, in which she expressed doubts about the correctness of Ukraine’s political course. Later, she was granted bail and managed to leave the country without waiting for the verdict. Ukrainian journalist Pavel Volkov managed to interview her. Here is an excerpt from what Alla Dushkina told the journalist:

    I was arrested with my son in Khmelnitskiy [a city in Western Ukraine].
    Five cars surrounded us, and then they interrogated me for 72 hours, trying to get a confession. I didn’t sign anything, we were beaten, wrapped in a black and red flag [the flag of the Nazi-collaborating OUN-UPA]. I had to confess that I made some marks [for Russian bombs and missiles] and that I had given shelter to Kadyrovites [Chechens who are fighting for Russia], whom I had never seen in my life. And they took fingerprints, and forced me to pass a lie detector, and threatened to take me in the city square with an announcement that I was putting tags [was a missile gunner] so that the mothers of the murdered soldiers would beat me. Then they realized that I wouldn’t sign anything, put bags on my son and me and started leading us somewhere. They brought us to Kiev, my son was shoved into the basement in front of me, they demanded from him to say that I had killed people, pressed on my conscience, threatened. I was taken to the SSU building on Askold Lane, then to the Lukyanovo pre—trial detention center. The jailer showed me videos on her phone every morning – as far as I can understand, she was instructed to do this – how in both men’s and women’s buildings people were beaten, dipped their heads in the toilet, bullied. They demanded a confession from me to avoid the fate of people on these videos.

    Today’s Ukraine – Not Any Kind of Democracy At All

    Today’s capitalist Ukraine does not even have the truncated, “democratic” form of the dictatorship of the capitalist class that exists today in Australia, the U.S., France and other so-called “Western democracies.” Political parties and activists genuinely opposed to the Ukrainian government’s policies face severe and brutal repression. Such repression greatly intensified after a 2014 far-right coup, engineered by Washington and the European imperialist powers. That coup overthrew the elected government of Viktor Yanukovych who attempted to simultaneously maintain friendly ties with both Russia and the EU. Yanukovych’s government was replaced by a rabidly Ukrainian nationalist regime that was as fiercely anti-Russia as it was pro-Western. The new regime enacted laws discriminating against the Russian-speaking populations in the east of Ukraine as well as against other non-Ukrainian minorities. When the post-2014 regime inevitably met with opposition – especially in the east and south of the country – this was met with extreme repression supplemented by the terror of fascist gangs. In 2015, the regime banned the sizable Communist Party of Ukraine and two smaller other, nominally communist parties. Meanwhile the regime jailed or threatened political opponents and journalists.

    Some Ukrainians have made courageous efforts to detail the persecution that others are facing at the hands of the Ukrainian regime. Among these is Ukrainian journalist Pavel Volkov. Volkov was himself imprisoned from 2017 for thirteen months for merely writing articles critical of the 2014 right-wing coup and for sympathising with the plight of the people of the eastern, mostly Russian-speaking, Donbass region who were attacked for their opposition to the new ultra-nationalist order. For this, he was accused of “separatism,” “terrorism,” and “collaboration with the enemy”. Due to the efforts of out of court supporters and a dedicated team of lawyers, Volkov eventually proved the charges false in court. However, this was a very rare case where the Ukrainian regime’s trumped-up charges against opponents have been defeated in the regime’s courts. Most of those targeted end up in prison or worse. Pavel Volkov described what he observed in the years 2018-2020:

    … people have been tried under `separatist’ and `terrorist’ articles for laying flowers at the Soviet monuments; paying taxes for DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic) [a pro-Russia rebel government that was established in the eastern Donetsk region by opponents of the post-2014 far-right regime]; organizing `Pushkin Balls,’ and so on. Any activity that can be interpreted as the glorification of the Soviet past, the valorization of the Russian culture, or the recognition of the authorities of rebellious Donbass came to be acknowledged as ‘separatist’ and ‘terrorist.’

    Ukrainian journalist, Pavel Volkov, in court.
    Photo: Supplied

    Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022, the Ukrainian regime has used the cover of the war and the mantra of “defending national security against treason” to persecute its opponents to a yet more extreme degree. In June 2022, the regime banned the biggest opposition party, the Opposition Platform — For Life, a party which just 17 months before had been leading Ukraine’s opinion polls. Similarly, the regime banned several other parties – accusing all of either “collaborating with Russia” or “violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine” or “destabilising the social and political situation in Ukraine”. Among the parties that the Ukrainian regime banned include Viktor Yanukovych’s former party, the Party of Regions as well as Derzhava, Nashi, Opposition Bloc, Socialist Party of Ukraine and Union of Left Forces.

    Anyone in Ukraine who expresses even the mildest sympathy for Russia or who advocates peace talks is targeted. Other dissidents are falsely accused of pro-Russia sympathies in order to silence them. As journalist, Pavel Volkov put it:

    Today, there are thousands of civilian prisoners in Ukraine who are deprived of their liberty and human rights for ‘likes’ under ‘incorrect’ social-media posts, Internet discussions of projectile impact location, frank correspondence with relatives in Russia via messengers, performing professional duties (like teaching) in the territories occupied and then abandoned by Russia, and so on. The retreats of the Russian Armed Forces from the Kiev region, parts of the Kharkov region, and parts of the Kherson region in later 2022 were marked by mass arrests, which continue to this day. This is what the SSU [Security Service of Ukraine] calls `the stabilization measures.’ Only in the summer of 2022, as a result of these `measures’ – apartment-by-apartment sweeps – 700 people were detained in Vinnytsa and Nikolaev – two regional centers in the southern part of Ukraine bordering the Odessa region.

    Although Volkov himself was forced to flee Ukraine in the latter part of 2022, he and his colleagues have since then painstakingly analysed the open source data of the various enforcement agencies of the Ukrainian regime in order to estimate the number of political prisoners there. They found that from the time of the 2014 far-right coup to the start of the Russian intervention in early 2022, the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office brought 643 cases to the court on political charges. This repression then escalated such that in 2022 and 2023 alone the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office and regional prosecutor’s offices opened up 26,821 cases on political matters of which 4,315 have already been brought to the court with an indictment. Moreover, when the cases brought by the Ukrainian National Police and the SSU secret police are also included, Volkov and Co. found that the Ukrainian regime had opened up over 74 thousand criminal cases on politically motivated charges. This means that the number of people in today’s Ukraine who are in either prison or pre-trial detention on the basis of political charges is likely to be in the tens of thousands.

    Among the laws that Ukrainian regime have used to persecute dissidents is Article 436-2 of Ukraine’s criminal code which nominally prosecutes people for: justification, recognition as legitimate or denial of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine or glorification of its participants. Articles 110 and 110-2 of Ukraine’s criminal code also targets people for expressing dissident views but does so under the official charge of: trespass against the territorial integrity or inviolability of Ukraine or financing of such actions. Volkov’s research shows that under these three articles of the criminal code alone, Ukrainian prosecutors in 2022 and 2023 have opened up 14,411 political cases of which more than 1,400 were already brought to court during that period. Under the likes of these type of pretexts, Professor Sergey Shubin from the Nikolayev region was sentenced to 15 years in prison for merely making reflections in his personal diary on what life would be like in the region if it were occupied by the Russian army. A pensioner from Sumy region Lyudmila Vazhinskaya was sentenced to six months jail for advocating peace talks between Ukraine and Russia while talking with people in a queue for milk. In a high-profile case, Inna Ivanochko, the head of the Lviv (city in western Ukraine) organisation of Ukraine’ second biggest parliamentary party (until it was persecuted and then banned), Opposition Platform — For Life, was arrested in August 2022 and has been in pre-trial detention ever since. She is facing up to 15 years in prison for expressing her political views in the years before the war started. These include allegedly participating in a September 2015 rally against low pensions, increased tariffs and violations of constitutional rights, taking legal action in a Lviv court (!) against the 2018 decision of the Lviv City Council to knock down a monument to Soviet World War II soldiers and advocating turning Ukraine into a federal state (an idea which is branded “separatism” in contemporary Ukraine) in a television interview in 2018. Outrageously, the three lawyers who defended Inna Ivanochko have also all been arrested. The latest of her lawyers to be arrested was Svetlana Novitskaya who was seized on February 20 of this year and has been imprisoned ever since. She is accused of violating Article 436-2 of Ukraine’s criminal code, “denying the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine” … for her statements in court defending her client, Inna Ivanochko! Defence lawyers imprisoned for their submissions in court defending their clients – such is the “democracy” that the Australian and other Western capitalist rulers say that they are “defending” through sending huge quantities of weapons to their proxy!

    Volkov’s research found that in 2022 and 2023 Ukrainian prosecutors had also opened 3,126 cases of suspicion of “High treason” under Article 111 of its criminal code and 7,058 cases on “Collaborationism” under Article 111-1. Most of the people imprisoned under such charges are those who worked in public institutions in the areas occupied by the Russian army. After the Russian troops withdrew from some of the areas, these public sector workers have been persecuted as “traitors” and “collaborators”. People like Anatoliy Miruta, a man from the Kiev region who was jailed for 10 years for negotiating with the Russian military to take local residents to the hospital and distributing Russian humanitarian aid. Or like, Valentina Ropalo, a resident of Volchansk in the Kharkov region, who was hit with a five year prison sentence for working as the head of the housing and communal services department while the Russian army was in her city, which was deemed to be “collaboration with the enemy”. Meanwhile, Olga Galanina, Deputy Chairman of the Berdyansk Administration for Humanitarian Affairs, is facing a life sentence because she agreed to continue her work in Berdyansk, Zaporozhye region, under the Russian administration. SSU officers kidnapped her student son in Dnepropetrovsk, illegally held him in detention, forcing his mother to come to the territory controlled by Ukraine, where she was arrested.

    In addition to the political prisoners in Ukraine who have either been officially sentenced to jail or are in pre-trial detention, are a large number of others who have been abducted by the regime or its fascist auxiliaries. Among them is Sergey Chemolosov, a resident of the village of Ivanovka in the Kharkov region. Chemolosov had been distributing Russian humanitarian aid and helped restore the village’s electricity supply during the stay of Russian troops there. On 7 September 2022, Ukrainian military officers kidnapped Chemolosov and took him to an unknown destination. On September 9, Kirill Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the office of President Zelensky, published on Facebook a photo in which Chemolosov, with marks showing that he was severely beaten in custody, is sitting blindfolded with his hands tied. What later happened to Chemolosov or whether he is even still alive is unknown. It is also unknown the exact number of political prisoners that the Ukrainian regime has similarly abducted and is illegally detaining at secret locations.

    9 September 2022: Sergey Chemolosov, a resident of the village of Ivanovka in Ukraine’s Kharkov region, is shown in a Facebook post, celebrating his detention, made by the deputy head of the office of President Zelensky, Kirill Tymoshenko. Chemolosov is blindfolded, with his hands tied behind his back and with marks indicating that he was beaten in custody. Two days earlier, Ukrainian military officers had abducted Chemolosov and taken him to an unknown location. Chemolosov’s “crime” is that he had been distributing Russian humanitarian aid and helped restore the village’s electricity supply during the stay of Russian troops in his village. What later happened to Chemolosov is unknown.

    Down With the Ukrainian Regime’s Persecution of Leftists!

    The pro-Western Ukrainian regime has especially targeted avowed communists, leftists and others with sympathy for the former Soviet Union. Thus Pavel Volkov’s research shows that among the politically motivated criminal cases that Ukrainian prosecutors have opened up in 2022 and 2023 are 600 cases of suspected violation of Article 436-1 of Ukraine’s criminal code, which bans the production and distribution of communist symbols and propaganda sympathetic to communist “totalitarian regimes” (which is mostly aimed at supporters of the former Soviet Ukraine and the former Soviet Union). Already 322 people have been brought before the courts on these charges. Formally, Article 436-1 also bans Nazi symbols and propaganda sympathetic to Nazi regimes. However, that part of the law is never applied – especially since support for Stepan Bandera and his Nazi-allied OUN is a key part of the official ideology of the Ukrainian regime. Article 436-1 of Ukraine’s criminal code was indeed never meant to target neo-Nazi elements. The proscription of Nazi symbols in Article 436-1 was included purely to obscure the stridently anti-communist nature of the law.

    Many of the leftists imprisoned have been prosecuted under trumped-up charges under other articles of Ukraine’s criminal code. Among them is left-wing activist from Zaporozhye, Yuriy Petrovsky who was hit with a 15 year jail term for allegedly providing assistance to the Russian military. Also imprisoned is Bogdan Syrotiuk, a leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik Leninists and who is associated with the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). Syrotiuk was arrested eight weeks ago on trumped charges of “treason” because of his opposition to both the Ukrainian and Russian side in the war. If convicted by Ukraine’s thoroughly biased courts, Syrotiuk is threatened with a prison sentence of 15 years to life. The ICFI have held rallies outside Ukraine embassies in several cities demanding freedom for Bogdan Syrotiuk, including a June 14 protest in Canberra conducted by the ICFI’s Australian section, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP). We in Trotskyist Platform add our voice to the demand for immediate freedom for 25 year-old Bogdan Syrotiuk.

    Trotskyist Platform demands the immediate release of all those imprisoned by the Ukrainian regime for expressing pro-Soviet, communist and other leftist sympathies. We say: Immediately scrap the anti-communist Article 436-1 of Ukraine’s criminal code! We also call for the immediate release of all those imprisoned in Ukraine for advocating peace in the war of for expressing sympathy for Russia or merely admiration for Russian culture. Those public sector workers branded as “traitors” and “collaborators” for performing their duties during Russian control of their villages and cities must also be immediately freed. Down with the Ukrainian regime’s mafia-style abductions of dissidents and those-branded as “Russian collaborators”! Lift the regime’s ban on the Communist Party of Ukraine! Lift the Ukrainian regime’s ban on all other leftist, anti-nationalist, anti-war and other opposition parties!

    It should be noted that we support the campaign to free ICFI-associated Bogdan Syrotiuk despite our profound political differences with the ICFI and the SEP. Not least among our differences with the ICFI/SEP is our objection to their decision to “denounce the Russian military intervention in Ukraine” in February 2022 – a point which they have been reiterating of late – which undercuts their nominal position of opposition to both sides in the war and slants towards a position of partially defending Ukraine (a true defeatist on both sides stance would not have taken a position on the question of the February 2022 Russian intervention). Today, recognising that Ukraine’s war with Russia has become subordinate to the Western imperialist tyrants of the world, we in Trotskyist Platform call for the defence of Russia (despite its reactionary capitalist rulers) against imperialism and its Ukrainian proxies. In contrast, the SEP and ICFI continue to take a stated position of opposition to both sides in the war.

    Ukrainian journalist, Pavel Volkov, pictured during his 13 month period of imprisonment, starting in 2017, for writing articles critical of the Ukrainian regime. Since his release, he and his colleagues have analysed open source data revealing thousands of cases of political persecution in his country. Pictured sitting on the left is defence lawyer, Svetlana Novitskaya, who herself has been in pre-trial detention since 20 February 2024. Novitskaya is being persecuted for her defence of many high-profile political prisoner cases. She is accused of violating Article 436-2 of Ukraine’s criminal code, “denying the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine” during her statements in court defending her client, opposition politician, Inna Ivanochko!
    Photo: Supplied

    Extreme Political Repression in Ukraine a Result of the
    Early 1990s Capitalist Counterrevolution

    The political repression in today’s Ukraine is far more intense and brutal than any repression that occurred in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic during the last four decades of the socialistic Soviet Union. To be sure, in the mid-late 1930s when the, by then bureaucratised, leadership of the Soviet worker state, under the impact of profound international defeats for the socialist movement, moved to the right in many areas – from international policy, to economic and social policies, to backsliding on Lenin’s 100% correct insistence on being sensitive to the national rights of the Ukrainian and other non-Russian peoples – the Stalin-led bureaucracy sought to muzzle potential resistance to this rightist turn with murderous persecution of the most devoted and thoughtful communists. Soviet Ukraine was especially hard hit by this repression for a several year period. However, from the late 1950s onwards, the jailing of political dissidents in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (and indeed the whole Soviet Union) became relatively rare. Moreover, the political prisoners that did exist in Soviet Ukraine during this period were largely not leftists. Rather, Soviet Ukraine’s repression mostly targeted opponents of socialistic rule – something which even a workers state operating under the ideal form of workers democracy may be compelled to do during the transition to full socialism if it is facing a world where the richest, most economically powerful countries of the world continue to be under capitalist rule.

    All this is important to understand because the fanatically anti-Soviet Ukrainian regime and its imperialist masters present today’s Ukraine as “democratic” as opposed to the “totalitarian” Soviet period. Similarly, they portray the period of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as an unending series of horrors in which the Ukrainian people were supposedly “oppressed” by Russians. However, during the Soviet Union’s hey days in the late 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, the masses of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic enjoyed full employment, free high-quality education, free health care and a rich cultural, entertainment and sporting life. The 1917 great October Socialist Revolution not only freed all the toilers of the former Russian empire from capitalism but it liberated the people of Ukraine from the intense national oppression that they faced in the pre-Soviet days when they were under the thumb of Russian imperialist rulers. To be sure, during certain periods of Stalin’s administration of the Soviet Union, there were bouts of partial re-institution of policies offending the Ukrainian people’s legitimate national feelings. However, from the late 1950s onwards, although there remained a degree of Russian centredness in the Soviet bureaucracy, the culture of the minority nationalities of the socialistic USSR again flourished with renewed vigour along with the economic standard of living of their peoples. It could not be said that the people of Ukraine were nationally oppressed in this period. Indeed, by the latter days of the Soviet period, the average life expectancy in Soviet Ukraine was nearly a year and a half higher than in Soviet Russia.

    However, the Soviet workers state faced intense hostility from the considerably richer imperialist powers. The immense external pressure that capitalism exerted upon the Soviet Union resulted in a conservative bureaucracy being squeezed up to the top of the workers state. The rule of this bureaucracy, with its petty privileges, politically and economically weakened the workers state. Through suppressing workers democracy, the bureaucracy retarded the Soviet Union’s socialist planned economy from reaching its full and tremendous potential. Eventually, under the relentless pressure of the imperialist powers and the economic stagnation that this caused, the bureaucracy started making more and more international and domestic concessions to capitalism. This encouraged a layer of petty capitalists and speculators and highly educated, mostly younger, people – who were seduced by the promise that capitalism would bring them the standard of living enjoyed by the upper and upper-middle classes in the West along with “democracy” – to push for outright capitalist counterrevolution. They spearheaded their push under the cover of fighting for “democracy”. In Ukraine this was supplemented with virulent Ukrainian nationalism. Yet despite their promises and the massive backing they were gaining from the U.S.-led imperialists, most of the people of Soviet Ukraine did not support these counterrevolutionaries. In a March 1991 Soviet-wide referendum on whether or not to maintain the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, more than 71% of the people of Soviet Ukraine voted to maintain the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in a referendum that had a nearly 84% turnout in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. However, although the majority of the people of Soviet Ukraine – and indeed the whole Soviet Union – were wary of those who wanted to overthrow socialistic rule, lacking authentic leadership and being depoliticised by decades of bureaucratic rule, they were confused as to what to do and, to an extent, were even unclear about the need to forcibly resist the emerging counterrevolution. As a result, a relatively small layer of imperialist-backed counterrevolutionaries were able to destroy the greatest victory the working classes of the world have ever achieved, while the working-class masses watched on by.

    A comparison of life expectancy of Ukraine and China from 1989 to 2021. In 1989, the year before Ukraine and the rest of the Soviet Union started diving rapidly towards its 1991-92 capitalist counterrevolution, the average life expectancy in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was three years higher than in socialistic China (which then still had a long way to go to catch up from the terrible poverty of its pre-1949, semi-colonial capitalist times). But after capitalist counterrevolution, the life expectancy in Ukraine collapsed along with the people’s living standards. Three decades later, in 2021 (which was the year before the war started), the life expectancy in Ukraine was still less than it was near the end of her socialistic days in 1989, despite all the advances in global medical science over the last three decades. By contrast, China, which has remained under socialistic rule has continued to see a strongly rising life expectancy. From having an average life expectancy that was three years below that of Soviet Ukraine in 1989, socialistic China’s average life expectancy by 2021 was more than eight years higher than in, now, capitalist Ukraine (it is today almost 11 years higher).
    Source: World Bank

    The 1991-1992 capitalist counterrevolution and the resulting conversion of collectively-owned, public enterprises into the private ownership of a few was a disaster for the toiling masses of Ukraine. Indeed it was a catastrophe for all the masses of the former Soviet Union. Unemployment soared, people were driven into poverty, industries were dismantled, the social position of women diminished and ethnic tensions intensified. And far from the “democracy” that the leaders of the capitalist counterrevolution promised, every part of the former Soviet Union saw political persecution of opponents. In October 1993, pro-Western “democratic” Russian president, Boris Yeltsin unleashed tanks against protesters and his own parliament, killing nearly 150 people.

    Such political repression in all ex-Soviet countries is driven by two inter-related factors. Firstly and most importantly, the capitalist counterrevolution reduced the living standards of much of the population. Bitter about their position and having known a better life in the Soviet days, the masses could not be held back from opposing the new social “order” through propaganda and nationalism alone. The new capitalist rulers also needed to unleash brutal political repression to keep the masses in check.

    Secondly, the political repression in the now capitalist countries existing in the lands of the former Soviet Union is partly connected with the particular forms of capitalism that arose from the capitalist counterrevolution. In the lands that have never been workers states, capitalism emerged from feudalism (except in some settler colonies when it was brutally imposed on first peoples often living in egalitarian hunter-gatherer type societies) as a higher, more progressive social system than the one that it replaced. Then, after having exhausted its initially progressive content, now decaying capitalism brought only suffering to the masses, social reaction, imperialism and catastrophic inter-imperialist wars; while still containing elements of its ability to develop the productive forces further than the feudalism that it had replaced. However, when capitalism was re-introduced to the lands of the former Soviet Union, it had absolutely no traces of the young, initially relatively progressive, capitalism that replaced feudalism. Instead, the capitalism that was transplanted into the lands of the former Soviet Union was entirely the decrepit, reactionary capitalism of the late 20th century. Moreover, this capitalist rule was not replacing a still more oppressive feudalism but replacing a higher, more progressive social order – one based on collective ownership of the means of production and working-class rule. Therefore, inevitably, the new capitalist ruling classes dreamt not mainly of expanding the productive forces to boost profits but of looting the productive capacity that was already there and of making a killing by dismantling and selling off the former Soviet Union’s massive industrial base. The capitalism installed into the lands of the former Soviet Union was an especially corrupt and venal form of capitalism. Alongside the plunge in the masses standard of living caused by the reversion to a reactionary social system, capitalist restoration in the lands of the former Soviet Union led to a retrogression in the moral substance of the people. The destruction of a collectivist-based economic system and its replacement with one-based on exploitation and dog-eat-dog competition – especially in conditions of newly arisen poverty – has pushed many to abandon some of the caring, mutually aiding outlook that Soviet people were famous for in favour of a ruthless jostling for scarce jobs and assets. For all these reasons, the capitalism that arose on the ashes of the Soviet workers state has been a mafia-style capitalism, characterised by the close inter-twining of capitalists with criminal gangs and collaboration between state agencies and criminal groups. The brutality of the state organs in the now capitalist, ex-Soviet countries is then in part driven by their “need” to defend the interests of the particular capitalists-criminals that they are collaborating with by mercilessly suppressing the objections of both rival mafia capitalists and those citizens daring to challenge this corruption.

    However, at the same time, more far-sighted elements within the capitalist classes in ex-Soviet countries see the need to bring order to their capitalism in order to ensure the efficiency and viability of their system. They seek a political force – typically centred around a “strongman” – to achieve this task. When such a political force is pushed into power by the dominant elements of the capitalist class, this force uses ruthless repression to make particular capitalists – and the sections of the masses that these bigwigs have brought around them – sacrifice some of their short-term criminal-linked plunder in order to ensure the overall interests of the capitalist class as a whole and the long-term survival of the capitalist order. This is the role played in Russia by Putin. The fact that he performs this function reasonably effectively is the reason why he has been backed by the majority of Russia’s capitalist exploiting class for so long – despite his occasional crackdowns on particular oligarchs. To be sure, the discipline to capitalism that such strongmen bring often does not apply to their closest friends and relatives within the capitalist class! That is why the capitalists closest to Putin are given favoured treatment – as long as they don’t drift into opposition to him (like late Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin did!).

    Yet, even amongst the repressive capitalist regimes in the countries of the former Soviet Union, today’s Ukrainian one is especially brutal. There are several reasons for this. One reason is that the people of Ukraine have suffered from capitalist counterrevolution especially hard. Notably, despite all the advances in modern health science over these last three decades, Ukraine’s average life expectancy in the year before the recent war began (2021) was actually lower than it was in 1989, the year before Ukraine and the rest of the USSR started sliding rapidly towards capitalist restoration! Moreover, whereas at the end of the Soviet times in 1990, Ukraine’s GDP per capita (as determined by the more relevant PPP – Purchasing Power Parity – method) was 95% of Russia’s, i.e. basically the same despite being far more resource poor than Russia; by 2021, the year before the war began, her per capita income was less than half that of Russia’s (46% of Russia’s to be exact). By the way, this comparison alone should smash the notion that Ukraine was a “subjugated” nation in Soviet times that became “liberated” through the destruction of the Soviet Union! However, the main point for us here is that the working-class masses of Ukraine have suffered even more cruelly from the capitalist counterrevolution than the masses of Russia. Therefore, the regime enforcing capitalist rule in Ukraine has been compelled to use still more brutal repression to keep the unhappy masses in line.

    The second reason why repression is particularly severe in Ukraine is because the regime there took an especially fanatical anti-Soviet turn after the 2014 right-wing coup. They began knocking down monuments to the Soviet Union and to the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany. The regime even passed a law banning, under the threat of up to five years imprisonment, any singing of the Communist Internationale or the Ukrainian Soviet and Soviet anthems and any flying of the flags of the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the former Soviet Union! Yet a considerable proportion of Ukraine’s population is either old enough to remember how much better life was in Soviet times or at least old enough to hear such accounts from their parents and their aunts and uncles. To people who remember fondly and are proud of the achievements of the Soviet Union and of the Red Army’s heroic victory over Nazi Germany, the extreme anti-Sovietism of Ukraine’s ruling elite and its hailing of anti-Soviet, Nazi collaborators are unbearably offensive. This is especially true for the peoples of the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine, who have been less blinded by extreme nationalism than peoples in the western Galician region generally have. Thus to enforce its anti-Soviet laws, practices and ideology, the regime has had to use naked repression and intimidation against the significant percentage of pro-Soviet minded people in the country.

    Thirdly, given that a significant part of Ukraine’s population speak Russian as well as other non-Ukrainian languages – including Hungarian, Moldovan and Romanian – as their first language, the post-2014 Ukrainian regime’s discrimination against the use of non-Ukrainian languages inevitably provoked strong resistance. Such discrimination is itself a result of the majority of the capitalist class realising that it could only protect itself from the wrath of the masses, discontented as they are over high unemployment and poor living standards, through diverting their anger onto Russian-speakers and ethnic minorities. Ukraine’s rulers are hardly the only capitalist ruling class to enact language discrimination in order to divide the working-class masses and prevent united multi-ethnic mass struggle against themselves. And they are hardly the only regime to face a revolt as a result of such discriminatory language policies! For example, in Sri Lanka, the majority of the capitalist ruling class, terrified by a massive 1953 general strike, which united workers from both the majority Sinhala ethnicity and the minority Tamil ethnicity, in the following years introduced language laws that ostentatiously discriminated against Tamil speakers. It was this discrimination against Tamil language speakers that in good part eventually led to the rise of the Tamil armed national liberation struggle. And similar to Sri Lanka, the Ukrainian regime’s language and other social discrimination against non-Ukraine speakers can only be enforced with brutal state repression against those who resist.

    Fourth, and in good part for the above three reasons, a significant part of Ukraine’s population does not want to fight a war with Russia. Many even sympathise with Russia, which is seen as less oppressive of pro-Soviet sentiment than the Ukrainian regime as well as obviously being more tolerant of Russian speakers. Terrified by this reality, the Kiev regime unleashes hysterical repression and violence against dissidents – both real and perceived.

    Political prisoner, Professor Sergey Shubin in the dock of a Ukrainian court. The Ukrainian regime sentenced Shubin to 15 years in prison for merely making reflections in his personal diary on what life would be like in his Nikolayev region if it were occupied by the Russian army.
    Photo: Supplied

    Fifth, the Ukrainian regime has a sizable support base of fanatical nationalists from which to launch repression against its opponents. Although a significant part of Ukraine’s population rejects the regime’s extreme anti-Soviet and anti-Russian hostility, there is also a sizable part of Ukraine’s self-employed and middle class population who have fallen for the extreme Ukrainian nationalism that they have been fed by the majority of the country’s capitalist class. They have bought the ruling class’ lying anti-Soviet propaganda. However, there is also a genuine fear amongst Ukrainian people that they will be subordinated by a new Russian empire as the Ukrainian people truly were in pre-Soviet, Tsarist times. These fears are born of the reality that today’s Russian Army is not the Soviet Red Army that liberated Ukraine from the Nazi invasion (and from Bandera and other Nazi collaborators). And today’s Russia is no longer a Soviet Russia that proclaims “Friendship of the Peoples” but a capitalist Russia whose rulers openly hail the expansionist, Great Russian chauvinist, Tsarist times. Ukraine’s capitalist rulers manipulate their people’s fear of being subjugated by Russia and inject into those legitimate fears ultra-right-wing nationalism, fanatical anti-Sovietism and loyalty to the program of Bandera and other Nazi collaborators.

    In summary, capitalist counterrevolution has not brought the masses in the former Soviet lands any of the prosperity and “democracy” that the counterrevolutionaries promised – not even the token form of “democracy” that exists in Western capitalist countries. Indeed, it has brought the very opposite! This is true throughout all the lands of the former Soviet Union – and is especially true in today’s Ukraine.


    Above, Ukraine, July 2022: Prime minister Albanese meets with Ukrainian leaders during a visit aimed at encouraging the Ukrainian regime to maintain their war against Russia. Albanese is here holding a model of the Antonov An-225, the world’s largest aircraft that was sadly destroyed during the early days of the war. Ukrainian officials had presented the AN-225 model to Albanese as a symbol of Ukrainian national pride. The people of Ukraine should indeed be proud of the magnificent AN-225. Except the AN-225 was not made during the period of the post-Soviet, capitalist Ukraine but was manufactured in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, with components and design also contributed by various other parts of the Soviet Union (Below: The AN-225 in Soviet times carrying the Soviet spacecraft the Buran). Yet today’s fanatically anti-Soviet, Ukrainian regime, that outlaws any use of Soviet symbols, ended up presenting to Albanese what is in reality a tribute to this marvel of Soviet engineering excellence! Inadvertently, that is an admission of how much more Ukraine achieved in Soviet times. For Ukrainian officials simply could not find any symbol of achievement from the more than three decades of post Soviet, capitalist Ukraine’s existence that was worthy of being presented as a gift to a foreign “dignitary”. For, given the extreme hostility to the Soviet Union of this Ukrainian regime, if there actually was such a symbol of achievement from post-Soviet Ukraine, they would have presented it, rather than having to claim as their own the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic’s – and broader Soviet Union’s – fabulous aircraft. In Soviet times, Ukraine was known for its aircraft manufacturing and other advanced industries, its beautiful tourist destinations and its hospitable people. In contrast, post-Soviet, capitalist Ukraine has been most known by the outside world as one of the scam capitals of the world; and even more so as a place from where large numbers of women facing poverty and lack of opportunity would seek to become “mail-order-brides” to men living in richer countries; or sex workers in the West (many of whom would end up being cruelly exploited by sex industry bosses). Capitalist counterrevolution has been an absolute disaster for most people in Ukraine and most people in all of the former Soviet Union.
    Photo (top): X/Twitter @ukraine_world.
    Photo (below): Peter Volek/JetPhotos.Net

    Defend Russia Against Imperialism and its Ukrainian Proxies!

    The Ukrainian regime’s imprisonment of tens of thousands of political prisoners blows to smithereens the claims of the Australian and other Western capitalist governments that they are backing Ukraine’s war in order to “defend democracy.” So what then is actually driving Ukraine’s war with Russia? When Russia first intervened in February 2022, the war was mostly an inter-capitalist squabble for territory. Ukraine wanted to forcibly keep lands in the eastern Donbass region where the majority of residents, mostly Russian speakers enraged at the fanatically anti-Soviet and anti-Russian character of the post-2014 regime, no longer wanted to be part of Ukraine. On the other hand, the Russian regime, encouraged by the ethnic/cultural solidarity of many of its people with the embattled Russian-speaking population in the Donbass region, wanted to not only grab the clearly pro-Russia portions of Ukraine but to gain additionally territory in regions where the majority of residents did not want to be part of Russia. Both the Ukrainian and Russian governments were driven by the needs of the respective capitalist classes that they serve to maximise the size of their guaranteed markets and the extent of raw materials under their control by maximising their country’s territory. For this reason, when Russia first entered Ukraine in February 2022, we called for opposition to both sides. At the same time, given that our “own” capitalist rulers and its U.S. senior partners were clearly backing Ukraine, we had a tilt that especially emphasized opposition to Ukraine. We demanded an end to all Western sanctions against Russia and an end to all Western military aid to Ukraine.

    However, even from the first days of the Russian intervention there was another aspect to the conflict. The Western imperialist powers wanted to extend NATO to Russia’s borders in order to intimidate her. The imperialist powers wanted to prevent Russia from becoming a potential great power rival and hoped that they could instead, one day, again reduce Russia to the humiliated and dependent status that she had in the first decade after the capitalist counterrevolution. The imperial powers also hoped to pressure Russia into abandoning her friendly ties with socialistic China so that they could advance their main global strategic goal – to overthrow the Chinese workers state. Ideally, the imperialist powers hoped that through exerting pressure on Russia they could foster a “colour revolution” there that would bring to power a Western subservient regime – like the Yeltsin-Putin regime of the 1990s or the Ukrainian regime of today. Against these plans, Russia’s rulers understandably wanted to retard the encroachment of NATO to its borders.

    Initially we judged that this driving force of the conflict was less a factor than the inter-capitalist squabble for territory. However, in our initial detailed coverage of the conflict, we foreshadowed the possibility that the antagonism between the Western imperialist powers and Russia could become the main aspect of the war. Within several weeks into the conflict, this is what indeed occurred. This was shown in late March-early April 2022 when Ukraine and Russia were on the verge of agreeing to a peace deal. However, that was scuttled by not only pressure on Zelensky from Ukraine’s fascist groups but by the diktats that the Western powers made to Kiev. Indeed on 9 April, then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a surprise visit to Kiev where he publicly told the Ukrainian government that no peace deal should be made with Russia. The following month, the U.S. announced a package of arms to Ukraine that was on a qualitatively greater scale than earlier military backing. It had become clear that although the element of inter-capitalist squabble between Ukraine and Russia remained, this was now the minor factor in a war that had become largely a conflict between Western imperialism and Russia, with Ukraine the proxy of the former. Although Russia’s capitalist rulers themselves long to build a new imperialist empire, they currently have neither the capital to do so nor the alliance of a wealthy imperialist power that could allow them to gain a stake in imperialist lootings through acting as a military enforcer for their ally. Therefore, what we now have is a proxy war between the real imperialist plunderers of the world and a capitalist but not imperialist Russia. Therefore, we in Trotskyist Platform called to defend Russia in the conflict, headlining in an article outlining our updated position: “Don’t Let the Western Capitalist Rulers Reinforce Their Tyranny Over the World! Defeat U.S., British, Australian and German Imperialism’s Proxy War to Weaken and Stifle Russia!” As our article explained:

    Such a defeat would weaken the ability of the imperialists to mobilise further predatory interventions abroad. It would also deter their plans to use Taiwan as a proxy to pressure socialistic China or even to incite a world war against the socialistic giant. Moreover, any setback for the U.S. imperialists and their allies in this proxy war would give encouragement to the resistance struggles of all those being subjugated by the U.S. and its allies elsewhere, like the Palestinian people suffering under incessant Israeli terror. More generally, a defeat for the Western powers in their Ukraine proxy war could only encourage the toiling masses of Africa, Latin America, the South Pacific and most of Asia to resist in their own lands the various Western capitalists that super-exploit labour, plunder natural resources, leach loan interest repayments, seize markets and manipulate and stand over governments. Within the Western countries themselves, a defeat for the capitalist ruling classes in their proxy war would weaken their authority. It would thus open opportunities for the working class and oppressed to wage mass resistance against soaring rents and food and fuel prices, plummeting real wages, the incessant expansion of insecure work forms and brutal racist oppression of persecuted communities.

    Our updated position meant that we were no longer calling for the Russian working-class to oppose the war effort of its own rulers – we were only making such an appeal to the Ukrainian masses. But for our work in Australia, the updated line did not change our fundamental slogans on the war. What it did do is to increase the urgency to oppose Australian military support to Ukraine as part of opposing the entire U.S.-NATO-led proxy war against Russia. As part of this it is necessary to campaign to free all leftist, anti-war, anti-nationalist and other political prisoners in Ukraine. This is not only to save tens of thousands of people from terrible suffering or even torture and death but to expose the lie of the Australian and other Western rulers that they are “working to defend democracy in Ukraine”.

    Free the Political Prisoners in Australia Too!

    It is possible through a campaign of exposure and agitation in Australia and other Western countries to make headway in winning the release of the political prisoners in Ukraine. This is because the Western regimes ability to make their own populations accept military aid to Ukraine depends on convincing their own populations that the arms are going to “defend a democracy against authoritarianism”. Therefore, exposure of the anti-democratic nature of the Ukrainian regime could significantly embarrass their Western masters and force the latter to push the Ukrainian regime to try and improve its image by releasing some of its political prisoners. In a similar but slightly different way that is how opponents of Cold War McCarthysim, demanding freedom for pro-North Korea political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi and an end to the broader McCarthyist persecution of supporters of socialistic states, ended up pressuring the Australian regime to give Choi a much shorter sentence than the regime had been planning. Since attacking socialistic North Korea and its socialistic Chinese ally over “human rights” is the key method that the Australian rulers use to mobilise their own populations behind their Cold War drive against these countries, our agitation, exposing how the Australian rulers were violating the human rights of a North Korea supporter and how this was symptomatic of both the bogus character of the regime’s claims to stand for “human rights” and of the biased, anti-working class nature of its “justice system”, was very politically damaging to them. And it is only when our struggle against the capitalist exploiting class – and the state organs that enforce their interests – does political damage to them does the capitalist ruling class ever retreat. So let us fight to win freedom for political prisoners in Ukraine by politically damaging the Australian and other Western rulers through exposing the mass incarceration of dissidents by their supposedly “democratic”, Ukrainian proxies.

    We cannot call for freeing political prisoners in Ukraine without also calling to free the political prisoners in Australia. The latest of these is David McBride, the whistleblower who was last month despicably sentenced to 5 years and 8 months in prison for passing information to the media that had the effect of exposing a large number of horrific war crimes by Australian special forces troops in Afghanistan. The other three political prisoners here are victims of the Australian ruling class’ enthusiastic participation in imperialism’s Cold War drive against socialistic China. The latest of these political prisoners to be jailed was Di Sanh Duong. Duong was outrageously sentenced to nearly three years in prison for supposedly “preparing to conduct foreign interference” on behalf of China, because he … publicly donated money to a Melbourne public hospital charity! Additionally, many Aboriginal people in prison, although not formally political prisoners, are in practice facing a political persecution. For they have been hit with not only over-policing but with especially harsh punishments because of the enduring racist nature of the Australian regime.

    So we demand: Free the Aboriginal victims of Australia’s racist “justice system”! Free David McBride! Free Di Sanh Duong and fellow Cold War prisoners in Australia, Daniel Duggan and Alexander Csergo! Free the thousands of leftist, anti-war, anti-nationalist and other political prisoners in Ukraine!

    The post Free the Leftist, Anti-War, and Anti-Nationalist Political Prisoners in Ukraine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Look away from Israel’s crimes, they say, blame Iran

    They say Iran “masterminded” a Canadian student encampment and is “destabilizing” West Asia. But these crude ‘blame Iran’ claims are nothing more than pathetic attempts to legitimate genocidal Zionism.

    Recently, various commentators, politicians and Zionist groups promoted a deranged report Iran “masterminded” the student divestment encampment at McGill. Seeking to frame student opposition to their university’s complicity with Israel’s holocaust as Iranian interference, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Canada Proud, MP Kevin Vuong, senator Leo Housakos, conservative candidate Neil Oberman, influencer Yasmine Mohammed, journalist Sam Cooper, Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi and others shared an Iran International report headlined “Iran masterminded anti-Israel protest in Canadian university”. Drawing from an analysis by an unnamed official at US cyber company XPOZ, the article claims large numbers of social media posts about the McGill encampment were in Farsi and may have come from Iranian government aligned accounts. A National Post article “Disinformation experts warn Iran, Russia and others encouraging anti-Israel protests in Canada” used the same data though it was slightly more circumspect in concluding Iran “masterminded” the encampment. It was shared by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

    As someone who went to the encampment regularly and has followed activism at McGill for a quarter century it’s hard to not laugh at the absurdity. In the lead up to the encampment several students went on a two-month hunger strike to pressure the university to divest and there were a number of large anti-genocide protests on campus during the last academic year. For a decade there have been referendums on Palestine and in November 78.7% of undergraduates called on the administration to sever ties with “any corporations, institutions or individuals complicit in genocide, settler-colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.” It was the largest referendum turnout in the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) history.

    The broader context in which the encampment grew out of also demonstrates the silliness of the ‘blame Iran’ claim. The students who set up the McGill encampment were quite obviously mimicking the tactics of their US counterparts. And the tactic had little to do with social media. I doubt the reliability of the data quoted by Iran International and the National Post but even if lots of Farsi language Iranian government bots promoted the encampment what impact did this have on a physical occupation of a campus in Montreal?

    At a higher level of ‘blame Iran’ idiocy, foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly is claiming Iran is “destabilizing” the region. A statement she released on Sunday regarding rising tensions in the region concluded, “I reiterated our call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, for the immediate release of all hostages, and demand that Iran and its proxies refrain from destabilizing actions in the region.” On July 26 Canada, Australia and New Zealand released a joint statement with a similar formulation. It noted, “We condemn Iran’s attack against Israel of April 13-14, call on Iran to refrain from further destabilizing actions in the Middle East, and demand that Iran and its affiliated groups, including Hizballah, cease their attacks.”

    Canadian officials never refer to Israel as “destabilizing” the region even though that country has killed hundreds of thousands in Gaza and stolen ever more Palestinian land in the West Bank all the while repeatedly attacking Lebanon and Syria and assassinating the Palestinians’ main ceasefire negotiator in Iran.

    As part of its blame Iran nonsense, Ottawa has ignored Israel’s recent assassination of the Hamas leader in Tehran and top Hezbolah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. But they will no doubt denounce Iran or Hezbollah when they respond.

    Four months ago, Ottawa remained silent when Israel damaged Canada’s embassy in Damascus while murdering eight Iranian officials at the country’s diplomatic compound. Then the Canadian government condemned Iran when it responded to Israel’s flagrant war crime.

    As part of this blame Iran mantra Ottawa recently joined the US in designating the 100,000-member Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization. Listing the IRGC bolsters Israeli violence in the region.

    Canada continues to strengthen Israel as it commits horrific crime after horrific crime across the region. As death from illness and malnutrition grows due to 10 months of IOF barbarism in Gaza, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently said it may be “justified and moral” to starve 2 million Palestinians but the world won’t let Israel do it. At the same time, Knesset members are openly debating the legitimacy of raping the 10,000 Palestinian hostages Israel holds in what a recent B’tselem report refers to as “torture camps”.

    But instead of focusing on Israel’s crimes we’re told to look away. At first, we were told Israel’s genocide was all Hamas’ fault. Now it’s Iran that is to blame.

    Israel and its supporters are like 4-year-olds caught with their hands in the cookie jar. It’s always someone else’s fault. Except this is not about a stolen sweet. This is about the world watching a genocide in real time and doing nothing about it.

    The post Look away from Israel’s crimes, they say, blame Iran first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US Military Has Polluted Guam for Decades. This Year, It Could Get Even Worse.

    Naek Flores’s day-to-day life in Guam has always been shadowed by the U.S. military. The U.S. military owns about one-third of Guam, where it stations three important bases in which about 10,000 military personnel are located. For the Pentagon, Guam is one of its most strategic locations in the Pacific, while the CIA credits military operations as being “the island’s most important…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • New Marching Orders

    No wonder there is a recruitment crisis in the US military.

    The post New Marching Orders first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Labour government confusing EVERYONE over arms exports to Israel

    The following article is a comment piece from Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT)

    The government must clarify its position on issuing Israel arms exports and new licences. Amid media reports that export licensing officials have suspended the processing of new applications for arms exports to Israel, government has repeatedly been quoted as stating there has been “no change” in its approach.

    This failure to clearly articulate the current status of the UK’s arms export licencing regime compounds impunity for Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, and is against the public interest.

    Israel arms exports: what is going on?

    Despite what some reports have claimed, the UK does not have an “arms embargo” in place, and continues to supply UK components and equipment for use in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

    As long as the government refuses to sufficiently explain its position, it allows incorrect reports of an embargo to spread while UK continues to supply arms and components to Israel. Most importantly, existing licences in place include the Open General licence that allows unlimited deliveries of components for Israel’s F-35 combat aircraft, which they are using on a daily basis to bomb Gaza, including with 2000lb bombs.

    A suspension of export licences should have been initiated as soon as the UK government was aware of reports of Israel’s violations of international law, ten months ago.

    Foreign secretary David Lammy has said the government are seeking new legal advice regarding Israel’s compliance with international law in their war in Gaza, to inform their decisions on whether to halt some or all arms exports to Israel.

    It has been reported that this review includes attempting to link specific weapons to specific incidents. Such a review should not be necessary, in the face of the overwhelming evidence of Israeli war crimes presented by the UN and numerous organisations on the ground.

    The International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor has requested arrest warrants for Israeli leaders for war crimes including “extermination”, while the ICJ has ruled that Israel’s actions could plausibly amount to genocide. Israel is continuing to obstruct the flow of aid to Gaza, leading to horrific levels of hunger and disease.

    Stop the “obscene slaughter”

    CAAT’s research coordinator Sam Perlo-Freeman said:

    The case for an immediate arms embargo has been overwhelming for months, and the government’s review appears to be an exercise in kicking the can down the road, while desperately digging for some excuse to maintain the flow of F-35 components, by far the most significant of UK arms sales to Israel.

    A possible suspension of processing of new licence applications could indicate at least that the government is serious in its intent to consider a change in policy. CAAT urges the government to implement a full two-way arms embargo on Israel immediately, as the most concrete step the UK can take to bring an end to this obscene slaughter.

    Featured image via Amnesty

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.