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This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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As Israeli warplanes continue to pummel Tehran and other parts of the country, President Trump has given mixed messages on whether the U.S. will join Israel’s war on Iran. Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt delivered a message on Thursday that Trump will decide on direct U.S. involvement in the next two weeks. Leavitt delivered the message shortly after Trump met with his former advisor Steve Bannon who has publicly warned against war with Iran. The U.S. is reportedly considering dropping “bunker buster” bombs on underground Iranian nuclear facilities. “It’s reminiscent of the beginning of the Iraq War, when they said it’s going to be a cakewalk,” says William Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
A U.S.-based Iranian human rights group reports that the Israeli attacks have killed at least 639 people in Iran, while Iran’s retaliatory strikes in Israel have killed an estimated two dozen.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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BANGKOK – The Trump administration plan to allow mining of deep sea metals in the Pacific Ocean would unequivocally violate international law, experts said, making any attempt to sell the minerals – used in batteries, weapons and smartphones – open to challenge by other nations.
President Donald Trump last month signed an executive order to speed development of the contentious deep sea mining industry, including in off-limits international waters governed by a treaty most nations are signatory to. The order said action is needed to “counter China’s growing influence over seabed mineral resources.”
Unilateral action on deep sea mining by the U.S., legal experts said, also has the potential to weaken its legitimacy in attempting to enforce international law generally, including freedom of navigation in flashpoint waters such as the South China Sea or in combating illegal fishing.
“It is hazardous for the U.S. to throw out the rule book,” said Duncan Currie, an international lawyer, who advises conservation groups and testified to Congress last month on the risks of deep sea mining.
Foreshadowing the executive order, Nasdaq-traded The Metals Company, or TMC, which has been at the forefront of ambitions to exploit the seabed, in March applied for exploration and mining permits under the U.S. umbrella for areas in the Pacific Ocean.
It is attempting to bypass the International Seabed Authority, or ISA, a U.N. organization mandated to set rules by consensus for deep sea mining in international waters. Under ISA jurisdiction, TMC has worked with Tonga and Nauru to explore their allocated areas in a vast swath of the Pacific, but now says the ISA has failed by not agreeing rules after several decades of effort.
The Metals Company CEO Gerard Barron (right) congratulates Leticia Carvalho on her election as International Seabed Authority secretary-general in Kingston, Jamaica, Aug. 2, 2024. (Stephen Wright/RFA)Critics of the nascent industry say the copper, cobalt, manganese and nickel found in the potato-sized nodules that carpet parts of the seafloor is already abundant on land. They warn that hoovering the nodules up from depths of several kilometers will cause irreparable damage to an ocean environment still poorly understood by science.
Amid a general retreat by large corporations from commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, deep sea mining companies have recently emphasized defense uses and security of mineral supply. Previously the nodules were touted as a source of metals needed for green technologies, such as electric vehicles, that would reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
According to Currie’s congressional testimony, the arguments for deep sea mining rest on fallacies. China’s dominance in the cobalt and nickel markets is due to it processing those minerals imported from Congo and Indonesia and deep sea mining would not significantly change that equation. Also a growing proportion of batteries in electric vehicles no longer rely on cobalt and nickel
“TMC promised the people of Nauru jobs and prosperity,” said Shiva Gounden, head of Greenpeace’s Pacific chapter. “But it has taken the first chance it got to turn its back on Nauru and it will do the same to any other Pacific country,” Gounden said in a statement.
Gerard Barron, TMC‘s chief executive, said the company’s partnerships with Tonga and Nauru remain “rock solid.”
“They too have been let down by the lack of performance at the ISA,” he told Radio Free Asia.
The case made by Barron and the Trump administration is that deep sea mining is a legitimate freedom in waters beyond national jurisdiction – an idea that has become antiquated as international law evolved over decades.
The U.S. has not ratified the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which governs international waters and also established the seabed authority, but in practice recognizes and attempts to enforce its principles.
The U.S. in 1970 also formally recognized that a law of the sea treaty accepted by most countries would establish the rules even for states not a party to it.
“For the last thirty years, the United States has engaged in acts that uphold the object and purpose” of the law of the sea treaty, said Coalter G. Lathrop, director of international law firm Sovereign Geographic, in a blog post this month for the European Journal of International Law.
Even so, the Trump executive order appears to be a new lease on life for The Metals Company.
At the end of March, it had only US$2.3 million cash in the bank and short-term debt of US$10 million. This week it announced a sale of shares in the company that will raise about US$37 million, according to a regulatory filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. TMC said the money would keep it afloat until it gets a U.S. license for commercial mining.
Its U.S. application has been criticized by France, China and other countries. A coalition of Pacific island civil society organizations called for TMC to be blacklisted by the seabed authority and for Nauru and Tonga to end their agreements with the company.
Deep sea mining is depicted in a mural at the International Seabed Authority office in Kingston, Jamaica, July 30, 2024. (Stephen Wright/RFA)Currie said the U.N. treaty presents numerous obstacles to TMC realizing its ambitions.
“This casts doubt on whether any metals brought up by TMC under a unilateral permit could be sold,” he told Radio Free Asia.
TMC is a Canadian company while Allseas, the company that owns the ship and mining equipment used by TMC, is Swiss. Both countries, Currie told RFA, have obligations under the U.N. treaty to ensure their nationals don’t participate in breaches of it.
TMC also has an agreement for metals processing with a company based in another treaty signatory nation – Japan.
TMC‘s prospectus for its share sale acknowledges the possibility of legal consequences if it gets a U.S.-issued mining permit.
The ISA and many nations that are signatories to the law of the sea treaty “are likely to regard such a permit as a violation of international law,” it said.
This could “affect international perceptions of the project and could have implications for logistics, processing and market access” including legal challenges in the court systems of treaty member nations.
Attempting a unilateral route to mine the international seabed risks severe geopolitical repercussions “and it could be U.S. interests that get burnt,” said Greenpeace deep sea mining campaigner Louisa Casson.
“Going against the Law of the Sea could trigger impacts far beyond deep sea mining – for maritime boundaries, freedom of navigation and other security interests,” she told RFA.
Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Stephen Wright for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Today, House Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee released the text of their tax bill, which would provide massive tax giveaways to billionaires and big corporations. The Republicans’ bill would be paid for by making massive cuts to Medicaid, nutrition for children, and other vital programs. In response, Americans for Tax Fairness, released a new analysis unpacking the committee’s plans for the Trump tax bill and sent a letter to Congressional leaders urging them to repeal this deeply harmful bill.
“The House GOP has revealed in broad daylight that their tax bill is a clear scam—one that hands out massive giveaways to their billionaire and corporate donors off the backs of their constituents with a price tag of over $5 trillion,” said David Kass, ATF Executive Director. “The plan’s massive cuts to vital programs like Medicaid and SNAP will drive up healthcare and food prices for millions of workers and families, while billionaires pocket the money and the national debt soars. Working and middle-class families—and future generations—shouldn’t have to pay higher prices simply to enrich billionaire elites and the politicians in their pocket.”
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist
Australia’s plan to recruit from Papua New Guinea for its Defence Force raises “major ethical concerns”, according to the Australia Defence Association, while another expert thinks it is broadly a good idea.
The two nations are set to begin negotiating a new defence treaty that is expected to see Papua New Guineans join the Australian Defence Force (ADF).
Australia Defence Association executive director Neil James believes “it’s an idiot idea” if there is no pathway to citizenship for Papua New Guineans who serve in the ADF
“You can’t expect other people to defend your country if you’re not willing to do it and until this scheme actually addresses this in any detail, we’re not going to know whether it’s an idiot idea or it’s something that might be workable in the long run.”
However, an expert associate at the Australian National University’s National Security College, Jennifer Parker, believes it is a good idea.
“Australia having a closer relationship with Papua New Guinea through that cross pollination of people going and working in each other’s defence forces, that’s incredibly positive.”
Parker said recruiting from the Pacific has been an ongoing conversation, but the exact nature of what the recruitment might look like is unknown, including whether there is a pathway to citizenship or if there would be a separate PNG unit within the ADF.
Extreme scenario
When asked whether it was ethical for people from PNG to fight Australia’s wars, Parker said that would be an extreme scenario.“We’re not talking about conscripting people from other countries or anything like that. We’re talking about offering the opportunity for people, if they choose to join,” she said.
“There are many defence forces around the world where people choose, people who are born in other countries, choose to join.”
However, James disagrees.
“Whether they’re volunteers or whether they’re conscripted, you’re still expecting foreigners to defend your society and with no link to that society.”
Both Parker and James brought up concerns surrounding brain drain.
James said in Timor-Leste, in the early 2000s, many New Zealanders in the army infantry who were serving alongside Australia joined the Australian Army, attracted by the higher pay, which was not in the interest of New Zealand or Australia in the long run.
Care needed
“You’ve got to be real careful that you don’t ruin the Papua New Guinea Defence Force by making it too easy for Papua New Guineans to serve in the Australian Defence Force.”Parker said the policy needed to be crafted very clearly in conjunction with Papua New Guinea to make sure it strengthened the two nations relationship, not undermined it.
Australia aims to grow the number of ADF uniformed personnel to 80,000 by 2040. However, it is not on track to meet that target.
Parker said she did not think Australia was trying to fill the shortfall.
“There are a couple of challenges in the recruitment issues for the Australian Defence Force.
“But I don’t think the scoping of recruiting people from Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands, if it indeed goes ahead, is about addressing recruitment for the Australian Defence Force.
“I think it’s about increasing closer security ties between Papua New Guinea, the Pacific Islands, and Australia.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Organizers across the United States are planning a massive day of May Day protests against the Trump administration. Organizers say that they have broad support from groups targeted by the administration, including immigrants, federal workers and more. “Instead of attacking only one community … they are attacking everybody at the same time, and that enabled us to gather a really broad coalition,” says Jorge Mújica, strategic organizer for Arise Chicago.
In New York, organizers are calling on people to march alongside them in Foley Square. “We need to fight this corporate takeover,” says Nisha Tabassum, lead organizer for worker issues at Make the Road New York. “We are the many; they are the few.”
Los Angeles organizers are expecting hundreds of thousands of protesters to join them in opposition to Trump’s policies. “We are taking our power back,” says Georgia Flowers Lee, National Education Association vice president for United Teachers Los Angeles.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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So Hamas have finally got around to appealing against the UK Government branding their political wing a terrorist organisation.
In their legal submission, they say “the proscription has hindered the group’s ability to broker a political solution to the conflict, stifled conversations in securing a long-term political settlement, criminalised ordinary Palestinians residing in Gaza, and undermined the possibility of a peaceful settlement”.
They also argue that being branded terrorists infringes fundamental rights and has a disproportionate impact on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and open debate and political expression, which makes sensible journalism and public discourse on Israel’s actions in Palestine impossible.
Hamas’s submission also points out that Britain’s Terrorism Act “covers all groups and organisations around the world that use violence to achieve political objectives, including the Israeli armed forces, the Ukrainian Army and, indeed, the British armed forces”.
And it claims proscription obstructs humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip because any form of assistance can be labelled “terrorism” if it is “seen as supporting a group that has been labelled a terrorist organisation”.
On the other hand, proscribing Hamas was a clever move because it makes it so much easier for Israel’s stooges at Westminster to avoid having to explain that regime’s far worse war crimes and crimes against humanity. We have to thank Priti Patel who, while International Development Secretary, was so taken-in by Zionist claptrap and so adoring of Israel that, in 2017, she reportedly had around a dozen meetings with Israeli politicians and organisations during a family holiday in Israel without telling the Foreign Office, her civil servants or her boss Theresa May, and without government officials present. This was not only a middle finger to the Ministerial Code of Conduct but a gross breach of security.
She was also said to have tried persuading colleagues to send British taxpayers’ money as aid for an Israeli forces project in the Golan Heights…. and she actually visited the Golan. As everyone and his dog knows, the Golan Heights is Syrian territory stolen in 1967 by the Israelis who have illegally occupied it ever since. Touring it with the thieving occupation army was another serious diplomatic blunder.
Patel’s meetings are said to have been arranged by Lord Polak, an official of the Board of Deputies of British Jews in the 1980s who joined the Conservative Friends of Israel in 1989, and served as its director for 26 years until appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for political service and made a life peer. It’s difficult to see what political service Polak performed for anyone other than the Israeli regime.
Patel was forced to resign but later restored to favour and promoted to Home Secretary. She proscribed Hamas’s political wing in 2021 with hardly a murmur of opposition. There seemed no legitimate reason for doing so unless it was part of the UK/US/Israel axis aim to bring about coercive regime change. But would that be legal? Are the Palestinians to be denied self-determination and the right to choose their own government? Well, yes, so it seems.
What’s to fear from Hamas?
No-one in the UK Government has properly explained, probably because no-one has bothered to sit down and shoot the breeze with them. Instead they eagerly welcome Netanyahu and his thugs with red-carpet hugs, handshakes and vows of affection and endless co-operation, and soak up the nonsense they talk.
And has anyone at Westminster bothered to read Hamas’s 2017 Charter? If so, did they notice Sections 16 and 20? They are reasonably in tune with international law while the Israeli government pursues policies that definitely are not.
- Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
- Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.
Under international law the correct way to deal with the threat posed by Hamas is (and always has been) by requiring Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and theft of Palestinian resources.
JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace), who claim to be the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world, said of the genocide in Gaza: “We’re organizing a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of US Jews into solidarity with Palestinian freedom struggle.” Here’s an extract from their no-nonsense statement on the hostilities in Palestine.
“The Israeli government may have just declared war, but its war on Palestinians started over 75 years ago. Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence. Reality is shaped by when you start the clock.
For the past year, the most racist, fundamentalist, far-right government in Israeli history has ruthlessly escalated its military occupation over Palestinians in the name of Jewish supremacy with violent expulsions and home demolitions, mass killings, military raids on refugee camps, unrelenting siege and daily humiliation. In recent weeks, Israeli forces repeatedly stormed the holiest Muslim sites in Jerusalem.
For 16 years, the Israeli government has suffocated Palestinians in Gaza under a draconian air, sea and land military blockade, imprisoning and starving two million people and denying them medical aid. The Israeli government routinely massacres Palestinians in Gaza; ten-year-olds who live in Gaza have already been traumatized by seven major bombing campaigns in their short lives.
For 75 years, the Israeli government has maintained a military occupation over Palestinians, operating an apartheid regime. Palestinian children are dragged from their beds in pre-dawn raids by Israeli soldiers and held without charge in Israeli military prisons. Palestinians’ homes are torched by mobs of Israeli settlers, or destroyed by the Israeli army. Entire Palestinian villages are forced to flee, abandoning the homes orchards, and land that were in their family for generations.
The bloodshed of today and the past 75 years traces back directly to US complicity in the oppression and horror caused by Israel’s military occupation. The US government consistently enables Israeli violence and bears blame for this moment. The unchecked military funding, diplomatic cover, and billions of dollars of private money flowing from the US enables and empowers Israel’s apartheid regime.”
The Zionists’ Dalet Plan, or Plan D
It’s not just America’s complicity and Britain’s 110-years of betrayal that have brought us to this appalling situation. Plan D was the Zionists’ terror blueprint for their brutal takeover of the Palestinian homeland drawn up 77 years ago by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency, and relentless pursued by the Israeli regime to this day.
Plan D was a carefully thought-out, step-by-step plot choreographed ahead of the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood. It correctly assumed that the British authorities would no longer be there.
It’s a sign of the shoddy times we live in that the lawyers involved in the appeal case felt obliged to state that Hamas did not pay them or the experts who provided evidence for their submission, as it is illegal to receive funds from a group designated as a terrorist organisation.
Hopefully their appeal will skewer the Government’s utter hypocrisy and undying support for the real terrorists in the Holy Land. Priti Patel will have to reckon with the consequences of her actions in terms of the huge numbers of innocent lives lost or reduced to unimaginable misery.
I hasten to add that I am no supporter of Hamas. I support truth and justice, simple as that. And of course the Laws of Cricket.
The post How Fair Was it to Label Hamas “Terrorists”? first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stuart Littlewood.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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On March 21, the Japan Ministry of Defense Joint Staff Office announced the successful monitoring of movements by two Chinese Navy vessels in waters near Uotsuri Island in the Senkaku Islands and between Yonaguni Island and Taiwan. This maritime surveillance operation, conducted by the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) from March 16 to 20, leveraged […]
The post “Japanese Aegis”-Equipped JS Akizuki Participates in Surveillance of Chinese Navy Vessels appeared first on Asian Military Review.
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Read RFA coverage of this topic in Burmese.
Observers on Monday dismissed plans announced by Myanmar’s junta to hold elections in the war-torn country by January, saying the military won’t be able to hold the vote in territory it doesn’t control — about half the country — and that the public will view the results as a sham.
On March 7, while on a visit to Russia and Belarus, junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing announced that the elections are “slated for December 2025, with the possibility of … January 2026,” according to a report by the official Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.
On Sunday, a day after Min Aung Hlaing returned to Myanmar from his March 3-9 trip, junta spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Htun confirmed the timing of the ballot in a briefing to military-controlled media outlets.
The generals who seized power in a February 2021 coup d’etat hope that elections will end widespread opposition to their grip on power politics.
But opponents say any vote under the military while the most popular politicians are locked up and their parties are banned will be illegitimate.
Additionally, the junta is in control of only about half the country after significant losses to pro-democracy and ethnic minority insurgents fighting to end military rule, and observers on Monday questioned how the results of such a limited vote could be seen as legitimate.
Sai Leik, the general secretary of the ethnic Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, which has not yet filed its party registration, told RFA Burmese it is “uncertain whether the election will take place at all.”
Even if it happens, it will likely be limited to cities such as Yangon, Naypyidaw, and Mandalay, he said. “This will create significant tensions between areas where the election is held and those where it is not.”
Sai Leik said that a limited election that fails to reflect the will of the people “will only worsen the conflict between opposing sides.”
He noted that the junta has repeatedly vowed to hold an election since August 2022, but has been unable to implement one.
Less than half of townships under junta control
Voting is expected to be held in fewer than half of Myanmar’s 330 townships in the first phase of a staggered vote, a political party official said late last year after discussion with election organizers.
In Myanmar’s last election in 2020, voting was held in 315 out of the 330 townships.
Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, or NLD, party swept the vote, as it did in a 2015 election, but the army complained of cheating and overthrew her government. The junta jailed her in the aftermath of its coup and has since sentenced her to 27 years in prison.
Political commentator Than Soe Naing said that the people of Myanmar won’t trust a junta-run election.
“Even if the junta attempts it, it will never happen,” he said.
Myanmar Junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing inspects the electronic voting system and its machines on Feb.9, 2023. (Myanmar Military)Than Soe Naing said that past attempts by the junta had been stymied by its lack of territorial control, the ongoing conflict across Myanmar, the lack of security for representatives and campaigns, and the restrictions of the junta-backed election commission.
Rather than taking those concerns into account, Hla Thein, a spokesperson for the pro-junta Union Solidarity and Development Party told RFA that Min Aung Hlaing likely chose the end of the year for elections so that political parties and the election commission “will have more time to prepare.”
Independent observers?
Meanwhile, Min Aung Hlaing said on Sunday that Russia and Belarus had committed to sending officials to observe the elections in Myanmar.
But a vote monitored by those two countries cannot be considered “free and fair,” an election observer who requested anonymity for security reasons said.
“Russia and Belarus are not really countries with a good reputation for democratic, free and fair elections,” the observer said. “And since they have stood with and supported the junta in various ways, their observers won’t be fair. They are meant only for political support.”
So far, more than 50 parties have registered with and been approved by Myanmar’s election commission. Nearly all of them are military-aligned, while the country’s most popular party — the NLD — was banned in the aftermath of the coup and cannot be added to the ballot.
Tun Myint, an NLD Central Working Committee member, warned that the junta’s elections would be nothing more than a “sham.”
“No one … who wants justice will accept the junta’s elections,” he said.
Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Janine Jackson interviewed the University of Guelph-Humber’s Gregory Shupak about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine for the February 21, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
New York Times (12/23/21)
Janine Jackson: When a Los Angeles police officer killed a child in a department store, the New York Times ran the story with the headline “Stray Bullet Kills Girl as Officers Fire at Suspect in Los Angeles Store.” A later headline from the Times referred to the ”Officer Whose Bullet Killed a 14-Year-Old Girl.”
That used to be thought of as just newspaper speak, but we can now recognize how that distorted, passive-voice language is a choice that obscures agency and undermines accountability. It’s not just words.
We see that obscuring of agency, and undermining of accountability, writ larger when crimes are committed by governments corporate media favor, against populations they don’t care much about. Here, journalistic language takes on another level of import, because calling those crimes by their name brings on particular legal and political responses. New research from our guest explores that question in Gaza and the West Bank.
Gregory Shupak is a media critic and activist. He teaches English and media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto, and he’s author of the book The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, from OR Books. He joins us now by phone from Toronto. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Gregory Shupak.
Gregory Shupak: Hi, how are you?
JJ: Well, I’m OK. When Trump declared his plans for Gaza: “You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” and then later he declared that the US would “take over the Gaza Strip” and “own it,” if you still have an outrage bone in your body, you may have thought, surely this will be seen as the wildly illegal, immoral move that it is.
How can it be resisted? Who can counter it? What bodies do we have to protect Palestinians in the face of this? All of those would be questions for journalists to pursue, but you can’t challenge something that you won’t name. Which brings us to the research that you’ve just been working on. Tell us about that.
Politico.eu (2/9/25)
GS: Sure. So this plan that Trump has put forth and stuck to for quite some time—I thought perhaps it would just be one of his many deranged statements that would be later walked back by, if not him, then others in administration, but he keeps pressing on this—it was widely described as ethnic cleansing by people who are positioned to make that assessment. So people like António Guterres of the United Nations, their secretary general, or Navi Pillay, who is another UN official focusing on Palestine. This plan that Trump brought forth was denounced by them and by others, like Human Rights Watch, as ethnic cleansing.
And yet that term has seldom found its way into the coverage. I looked at coverage of the first, just over a week, since Trump’s racist fever dream, and I found that 87% of the articles in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post did not include the term “ethnic cleansing.” And, in fact, only 26% of the coverage included a term like “ethnic cleansing,” or something similar that captures the violence of what he is proposing. So terms like “forced displacement” or “expel” or “expulsion” or “forced transfer.”
Just automatically, you have a whitewashing of what he’s proposing to do, even in coverage that is critical of it. And that’s really leaving audiences, who’re maybe not terribly well-versed in international law, not in a very strong position to understand just how egregious of a crime it is that Trump is advocating.
JJ: And ethnic cleansing is almost like just a pejorative, as though it had no actual meaning. In fact, I think it was the Wall Street Journal, you found, put it in scare quotes, like it’s an accusation and not a phenomenon.
New York Times (2/11/25)
GS: Exactly. And I talk in my piece about Bret Stephens and a couple of Wall Street Journal pieces that endorsed Trump’s plan. However, I didn’t mention that Stephens had a second piece that addressed Trump’s plan in passing, and he blatantly lied and said that Trump’s plan does not involve forcing Palestinians to leave Gaza. But Trump has been quite clear that that’s exactly what he has in mind. So not only do we have a widespread failure to properly name this plan for ethnic cleansing, we also have quite a few cases of endorsements of what Trump is calling for.
JJ: We know that for many US media—and you illustrated it—US exceptionalism, just the idea that, “Oh, sure, we can do this anywhere in the world,” extends to the point where they don’t even really acknowledge international law. And this is a longstanding problem, where the UN is just kind of meddling in US power, and that sort of thing. But it really comes to the point where they don’t even invoke the idea that there is something called international law.
GS: Yeah, that’s quite important. Only 19% of the coverage of Trump’s proposal for Gaza, if you can even call it that, only 19% include the term “international law,” which is really a key paradigm through which this, and any kind of international armed conflict, needs to be understood. But it’s just not even being presented to the audience as something that they need to think about.
Al Jazeera (2/26/24)
And it put me in mind of Richard Falk and Howard Friel, [who] wrote a book 20 years ago or so, called The Record of the Paper, and it talked about how in coverage of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, international law was totally absent from New York Times editorials that were in various ways endorsing or at least giving credibility to the concept of the attack. And we still see the same pattern with regard to Gaza, as well as the West Bank, where patterns of ethnic cleansing are also unfolding.
JJ: And yet we know they will invoke international law when it suits, when it seems like something that bolsters the US case.
You found, finally, similar issues with coverage of the West Bank, and I think it’s important for folks to understand this is not just a story of Gaza anymore, obviously; this is an expansive story. And when we talk about the West Bank here, as is often the case, you can find an example of an outlet or a journalist who is doing straightforward, informative witnessing, and you can actually use that to contrast with what many powerful, better resourced outlets are doing. And that’s the case in coverage of the West Bank, right? It’s not that everyone is refusing to witness or acknowledge.
GS: No, I think that one of the main problems I see in the way that the events unfolding in the West Bank are being portrayed is that there’s a refusal, you might call it, to connect how each “individual” event or incident connects to others.
So you’ll have reports that’ll say, Israel’s invasion of Jenin refugee camp that has unfolded in recent weeks has largely emptied out the entire area. But the coverage of that fails to situate that in relation to the fact that we are seeing similar types of violence unfolding in other parts of the West Bank that Israel is attacking, particularly the lower West Bank, and that these are part of a longer-term trend towards, as several observers that I cite in the article have pointed out, of ethnic cleansing the territory.
So, for example, I talk about how in October of last year, the UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese put forth a report in which she describes escalated patterns of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. And she talks about how, since October 7, 2023, at least 18 West Bank communities have been depopulated under the threat of force.
So what she and others have observed is that this is not a matter of, OK, there’s a couple days of fighting, and people go back to their homes when it’s safe. It’s part of a longer-term trajectory whereby it’s becoming difficult, and often impossible, for people in West Bank towns to go back to their homes once Israel drives them out. So not at all unlike what we have seen in Gaza.
Gregory Shupak: “What we’re talking about is driving out the indigenous population so that settlers can take over their land.”
JJ: But the refusal to connect those dots, and to make it seem as though, oh, a skirmish happened over here today, and oh, a skirmish happened over there yesterday, and not telling the bigger story, is the failure.
GS: Exactly. And as is so often the case with coverage of Palestine, and other issues as well, we get a muddying of the agency of the perpetrators of the violence, right? Everything’s reduced to just “clashes” and “conflict,” rather than efforts to enforce colonial subjugation, and resistance to that. So that kind of power dynamic is completely glossed over, when you get this anodyne language about just conflicts and clashes. There’s no space within that language for communicating that what we’re talking about is driving out the indigenous population so that settlers can take over their land.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Gregory Shupak. He’s a media critic, activist and teacher; his book The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media is available from OR Books. And his research on “Media Afraid to Call Ethnic Cleansing by Its Name” can be found on FAIR.org. Gregory Shupak, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
GS: Thanks for having me.
This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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By Anish Chand in Suva
Palestine has strongly condemned Fiji’s decision to open a Fiji embassy in Jerusalem, calling it a violation of international law and relevant United Nations resolutions.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry and the Hamas resistance group that governs the besieged enclave of Gaza issued separate statements, urging the Fiji government to reverse its decision.
According to the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, the Fijian decision is “an act of aggression against the Palestinian people and their inalienable rights”.
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The Palestinian group Hamas said in a statement that the decision was “a blatant assault on the rights of our Palestinian people to their land and a clear violation of international law and UN resolutions, which recognise Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territory”.
Fiji will become the seventh country to have an embassy in Jerusalem after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Papua New Guinea, and Paraguay.
- The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on 18 September 2024 (124-14) to adopt a resolution that demands Israel “brings to an end without delay its unlawful presence” in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Asia Pacific Report
Sultan Barakat, a professor at Qatar’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University, says the release of Palestinian prisoners is a “symbolic win” rather than a victory for the Palestinians, primarily showing the inhumane conditions they live under.
“Israel can capture people in the West Bank and Gaza because they all live in a confinement area under the control of Israel,” he told Al Jazeera.
Dr Barakat discussed the way Palestinians were “arbitrarily rounded up, taken to prison and treated badly” by Israel.
- READ MORE: ‘Ignore Trump’s bully’ and take stand over genocide, PSNA tells Peters
- UN rapporteur welcomes ‘best news’ — Hague Group coalition pushing for Palestinian state
- Moral bankruptcy, Israel’s genocide and the betrayal of the Palestinians
- Other Palestine reports
A total of 183 Palestinian prisoners were released today from Israeli jails as part of the exchange for three Israeli hostages under the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel.
They included 18 serving life sentences and 54 serving lengthy sentences, as well as 111 detained in Gaza since 7 October 2023.
Dozens of Palestinians released from Israeli jails showed signs of torture and starvation, said the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.
Barakat stressed that the release of prisoners also “shows the unity of the Palestinians in the face of occupation”.
“The prisoners are not all necessarily Hamas sympathisers — some were at odds with Hamas for a long time,” the academic said.
“But they are united in their refusal of occupation and standing up to Israel,” he added.
Hamas ‘needs to stay in power’
Another academic, Dr Luciano Zaccara, an associate professor at Qatar University’s Gulf Studies Center, told Al Jazeera that Hamas needed to stay in power for the ceasefire agreement to be implemented in full.“How are you going to reconstruct Gaza without Hamas? How are you going to make this deal complied [with] if Hamas is not there?” he questioned.
Dr Zaccara also said Israel seemed to have no plan on what to do in Gaza after the war.
“There was never a plan,” he said, adding that Israel did not want Hamas or the Palestinian Authority in the enclave running the administration.
The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, quoting a security source, reported that the Red Cross had expressed “outrage” at how the Israel Prison Service handled the Palestinian prisoners being released from Ketziot Prison.
Ha’aretz said the Red Cross alleged that the prisoners were led handcuffed with their hands above their heads and bracelets with the inscription “Eternity does not forget”.
The newspaper quoted the Israel Prison Service spokesman as saying that “the prison warders are dealing with the worst of Israel’s enemies, and until the last moment on Israeli soil, they will be treated under prison-like rule.
“We will not compromise on the security of our people.”
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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As survivors in Gaza begin to return to their homes during the first ceasefire in over a year, we speak to Sharif Abdel Kouddous of Drop Site News about the future of those who have been displaced. As Palestinians are “returning to a devastated landscape … determined not to leave their land” in defiance of “plans of ethnic cleansing that have dated back to the 1950s for Israel,” President Trump told reporters that he wants to “clean out” Gaza, suggesting that Palestinian Arabs should be ethnically cleansed into Egypt and Jordan. Both countries have “rejected this, and they’ve done so since the beginning of this genocidal assault,” says Kouddous.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Longer range/endurance UAVs make a different to the tyranny of distance when it comes down to ISR. For full situational awareness, governments and their armed forces are electing to perform intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions across international waters and borders with uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAV), and this is most evident in the Asia Pacific […]
The post Uncrewed Eyes Look East appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
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Read more on this topic in Vietnamese
More than 1,000 reporters, editors and administrative staff from state-controlled Vietnamese broadcasters, including Voice of Vietnam’s VTC Digital Television, lost their jobs on Wednesday as the channels were taken off the air, state media reported.
VTC’s 13 channels, along with others unconnected to Voice of Vietnam such as People’s Television and Vietnam News Agency Television, stopped broadcasting on the morning of Jan. 15. National Assembly Television had already shut down on Jan. 1. While regional broadcasters are still on air, the goal is to make Vietnam Television the country’s only channel.
The closures are part of a plan by the Communist Party’s top decision making body the Politburo to streamline the political system and cut costs as outlined in Resolution 18, which aims to eliminate overlap in government enterprises and reduce the number of civil servants by a fifth.
VTC Digital Television was established in 2004 and became a non-business unit under the Ministry of Information and Communications in 2014. The following year, it was merged into the state Voice of Vietnam news agency.
VTC, Vietnam’s second most-watched station behind Vietnam Television, broadcast nationwide, disseminating party propaganda.
One staff member, who worked for VTC for 20 years, told Radio Free Asia she and her colleagues were shocked and confused by its abrupt closure.
“They don’t know where to go and what to do,” said the woman, who didn’t want to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter. “Employees haven’t been informed about any [compensation] policies. Any decision should consider workers’ interests.”
“ We have dedicated many years to the job, are financially independent, and are not paid by the state budget. Why do they shut down our channels so abruptly without a proper roadmap?”
A man transports equipment being removed from the VTC Digital Television office building in Hanoi on Jan. 15, 2025. (Nhac Nguyen/AFP)Administrative staff described the closure of VTC as “destructive,” wasting millions of dollars of machinery and equipment – state assets now idle.
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Ho Chi Minh City-based independent journalist Nam Viet said he wouldn’t miss the propaganda channels, often considered the “lifeblood of the government.”
“Quite a few reporters have taken to social media to lament and regret that they have dedicated many years [to the state]. Now they’re being forced out but their sharing is more ironic than pity-inducing, because they have been the henchmen of a propaganda system that is nothing to be proud of … not journalists who dared to speak up for people’s suffering and fight for justice.”
Academic Nguyen Hoang Anh, who has worked on programs for VTC and other broadcasters, said relying on a single channel would likely lead to many important issues being overlooked.
“Shutting down VTC will scale down the dissemination of information and leave viewers with fewer choices,” she said, adding that Vietnam Television mainly focuses on politics, whereas VTC covered social issues such as women’s rights and education.
Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Vietnamese.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This coverage is made possible through a partnership between BPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
After spending more than two years drafting a plan to manage and protect the nation’s old-growth forests as they endure the ravages of climate change, the Biden administration has abruptly abandoned the effort.
That decision by the U.S. Forest Service to shelve the National Old Growth Amendment ends, for now, any goal of creating a cohesive federal approach to managing the oldest trees on the 193 million acres of land it manages nationwide. Such steps will instead be taken at the local level, agency chief Randy Moore said.
“There is strong support for, and an expectation of us, to continue to conserve these forests based on the best available scientific information,” he wrote in a letter sent Tuesday to regional foresters and forest directors announcing the move. “There was also feedback that there are important place-based differences that we will need to understand in order to conserve old growth forests so they are resilient and can persist into the future, using key place-based best available scientific information based on ecological conditions on the ground.”
President Biden launched a wide-ranging effort to bolster climate resilience in the nation’s forests in an executive order he issued on Earth Day in April, 2022. In complying with the order, the Forest Service sought to bring consistency to the protection of mature and old-growth trees in the 154 forests, 20 grasslands, and other lands it manages. Such a change was warranted because the agency defines “old growth” differently in each region of the country depending on the characteristics of the local forest, but generally speaking they are at least 100 years old.
Much of the nation’s remaining ancient forests are found in places like Alaska, where some of the trees in the Tongass National Forest are more than 800 years old, and California. In the East, much old-growth is concentrated in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and North Carolina. All told, old-growth forests cover about 24 million acres of the land the Forest Service manages, while mature forests cover about 67 million.
The plan would have limited logging in old-growth forests with some exceptions allowed to reduce fire risk. The Forest Service spent months gathering public comment for the proposal, which the Associated Press said was to be finalized any day now. Many scientists and advocates worried the amendment would have codified loopholes that allow logging in old-growth forests. On the other side, Republican legislators, who according to the AP introduced legislation to block any rule, and timber industry representatives argued that logging is critical to many state economies and they deserved more input into, and control over, forest management. Such criticism contributed to the decision to scuttle the plan, the AP reported.
Ron Daines, the Republican senator from Montana, issued a statement calling the Forest Service decision “a victory for commonsense local management of our forests” and said “Montana’s old growth forests are already protected by each individual forest plan, so this proposal would have simply delayed work to protect them from wildfire, which is the number one threat facing our old growth forests.”
Read Next Political disagreements over old growth conservation are not new. Jim Furnish, a former deputy director of the Forest Service who retired in 2002, said that the Forest Service has become more responsive to calls for old growth protection over the years. In the 1950s and ’60s, “they typically looked at old growth for us as the place to get the maximum quantity of wood for the highest value,” Furnish said. The debate over conservation of the spotted owl, and the 2001 Roadless Rule, helped paved the way for more dedicated protection of virgin forest, and the creation of “new” old growth through the conservation of mature second-growth forests.
Ultimately, Furnish said, the Forest Service’s failure to move quickly after Biden issued his executive order doomed the amendment. Under the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to review and potentially overturn regulations issued by federal agencies, the new Republican-controlled Congress could have killed any new regulation within 60 days, precluding any future efforts to adopt such an amendment.
Will Harlan, the Southeast director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said the plan’s death may be for the best, as old-growth protection can continue at the local level under current regulations while leaving room for future protections.
“Probably for the next few years it’s going to be a project-by-project fight, wherever the Forest Service chooses a logging project,” he said. “Advocates and conservation groups are going to be looking closely at any old growth that might be in those projects and fighting to protect them.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden administration axes controversial climate plan for old growth forests on Jan 9, 2025.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Katie Myers.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Read more on this topic in Vietnamese.
An international pressure group is calling on governments and financial institutions to reconsider funding a plan to help Vietnam transition from fossil fuels to clean energy while it jails climate activists.
The Just Energy Transition Partnership, or JETP, was unveiled two years ago by Vietnam and the International Partners Group, comprising the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Japan and Canada.
The partners committed to provide US$15.5 billion in loans, along with technical assistance to support the elimination of fossil fuels. Under the plan, Vietnam has obtained $2.75 billion so far in concessional loans from international financial institutions, according to the Coalition for Human Rights in Development, a grouping of more than 100 non-governmental organizations from over 50 countries.
But Vietnam has also cracked down on environmental activists, as it does on almost anyone who questions the authority of the ruling Communist Party, invariably for spurious reasons, government critics say.
“The Vietnamese government has been criminalizing environmental and climate leaders on false charges,” the rights coalition said in a report released last month and posted on social media platform X on Dec. 16.
“Although the resulting Just Energy Transition Partnership agreement includes references to the importance of holding consultations and ensuring broad social consensus, the authorities have targeted climate and environmental leaders who were conducting legitimate policy and advocacy work around the just transition, and the need to phase out coal and scale-up renewable energy alternatives,” the group said.
It cited environmentalists Dang Dinh Bach, Nguy Thi Khanh, Hoang Thi Minh Hong, Mai Phan Loi and Bach Hung Duong who were convicted of “tax evasion” and sentenced to terms of as much as five years in prison.
It also mentioned Ngo Thi To Nhien, who was sentenced to three years and six months in prison for “appropriating documents.” Nhien was executive director of the Vietnam Initiative for Energy Transition Social Enterprise, which worked with Vietnamese authorities, foreign governments and corporations to try to reform the energy sector and accelerate its transition to carbon neutrality.
The JETP says that in order for a transition to clean energy to be just and equitable “regular consultation is required, including with media, NGOs and other stakeholders to ensure broad social consensus.”
The Coalition for Human Rights in Development argues that Hanoi’s imprisonment of activists sends a different message.
“The criminalization of these six environmental and climate leaders, along with broader civic space restrictions, indicate that it is not safe for local human rights defenders and community members to meaningfully participate, seek information, or raise concerns about just energy transition plans,” it said.
Radio Free Asia emailed Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs asking for comment on the statement but did not receive a response by time of publication.
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The 2023 Goldman Environmental Prize laureate Diane Wilson said she agreed that international financiers needed to think again about providing funds to Vietnam.
“As a grassroots environmental activist in the United States and a fourth-generation fisherman in the Gulf of Texas, I support the coalition in urging international partners and donors to reconsider their plans to support the communist regime in its clean energy transition,” Wilson said.
Thuc Quyen, a German-Vietnamese activist, said the Vietnamese government should improve its human rights record, protect the environment, and fight corruption in order to receive international attention and assistance.
“Vietnam needs to release Dang Dinh Bach and other environmental activists, and establish minimum standards that protect civil space, protect fundamental human rights and transparency, and respect independent oversight,” she told RFA.
Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Vietnamese.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.
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- House votes down Trump-backed government funding plan as deadline to avoid shutdown approaches.
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- Anti-abortion activists testify before Congress on law against blocking abortion clinic entrances.
The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – December 19, 2024 House votes down Trump-backed government funding plan as deadline to avoid shutdown approaches appeared first on KPFA.
This content originally appeared on KPFA – The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Closing out the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam’s on Dec. 1, General Secretary To Lam and allies announced a sweeping set of proposals to streamline the Vietnamese government, legislature, ruling party apparatus.
If enacted, it would be the most sweeping changes that the Vietnamese government system has seen in decades, involving ministerial restructuring, the elimination of parliamentary committees, the shuttering of government offices and party committees, and some consolidation within the state-owned media, educational and research sectors.
At the government level, five of 21 ministries will be eliminated through mergers and closures.
The Ministry of Finance will absorb the Ministry of Planning and Investment, while the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Construction will merge, and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment will merge with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
The Ministry of Information and Communications will merge with the Ministry of Science and Technology, while the Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs will be dissolved with individual components parceled out to other ministries.
Three central-level government agencies will be dissolved. The Ministry of Finance and the State Bank will assume the responsibilities of the State Capital Management Committee and the National Financial Supervisory Commission.
Lam is making his mark
The Religious Affairs Committee and Ethnic Minority Affairs Committees will merge.
Other consolidation will occur within the state education and research sectors and broadcast media. Even ministries that are not affected by the restructuring will be required to streamline their own activities.
The National Assembly will eliminate four committees and one agency that reside beneath the legislature’s Standing Committee.
The proposal calls for the merger of the Economic and Finance Committees, the Social and Culture Committees, and the Judicial and Legal Committees, with the complete dissolution of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
A matter of concern is that the Legislative Research Institute, which was modeled on the U.S. Congressional Research Service to provide technical expertise on legislation, will be eliminated altogether.
Within the CPV, the Central Propaganda and Education Committee will merge with the Central Mass Mobilization Committee, while the External Relations Committee will be dissolved, with its functions transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Vietnam’s President Luong Cuong, left, and General Secretary of the Communist Party To Lam, walk to the National Assembly in Hanoi, Vietnam, Oct. 21, 2024. The Health Care Committee will likewise be dissolved with its authorities split between the Ministry of Health and the Organization Commission.
The new central-level committee will be established to oversee other central agencies, the judiciary, including the Supreme People’s Procuracy and the Supreme People’s Court.
Lam is clearly trying to make his mark just five months after being elected CPV general secretary.
Cumbersome bureaucracy
While his predecessor Nguyen Phu Trong sought to legitimize the party in the eyes of an increasingly disgusted and apathetic public through his “Blazing Furnace” anti-corruption campaign, Lam seeks to legitimize the party through rapid economic growth.
An impediment to performance-based legitimacy is Vietnam’s cumbersome bureaucracy.
In his speech to the Central Committee, Lam reiterated that “In parallel, administrative reforms must be accelerated to create the most favorable conditions for citizens and businesses, which will contribute to improving the living standards of the people.”
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Trong was a career ideologue, who spent much of his 13 years rebuilding the party apparatus in order to serve as a check on technocrats.
Lam is charting a completely different path, seeking to do away with some key communist party offices, and trying to streamline the “dual-hatted” system whereby every government and military organization has both a civil executive and a parallel party leadership structure.
The one place where this dual hat system will not be touched is the military: The party always controls the gun.
Lam knows that the country is entering into a “new revolutionary era” with significant challenges.
Labor productivity is slipping and while Vietnam attracted $36 billion in pledged foreign investment in 2024, it remains an assembler. There is an insufficient production ecosystem in the country.
There is a reason that Vietnam’s trade deficit with China is almost the same as its surplus with the United States: Vietnamese exports are made from imported components. Lam is acutely aware of the dangers of being caught in the middle income trap.
Rising star Hung
The man behind all of this is Le Minh Hung, a rising star within the Communist Party and a key ally of Lam, who oversaw his recent promotion to the Politburo.
Hung was the governor of the state bank of Vietnam, the youngest man to hold that position.
Vietnam’s State Bank Governor Le Minh Hung is seen in Hanoi, Vietnam May 31, 2017. He is currently in charge of the CPV’s Organization Commission, which is in charge of all personnel issues, a key assignment ahead of the 14th Congress.
Hung’s father was the former Minister of Public Security and in that role a mentor to Lam during his rise through the security bureaucracy.
And this shakeup was orchestrated by the CPV Secretariat, which Lam has stacked with his allies.
Lam’s big plan appears to have the backing of the majority of the Central Committee. Editorials in state-owned media have endorsed the proposal, striking notes of urgency. But clearly not everyone in the party is on board.
Normally, we see very little change or policy implementation in the year preceding a CPV Congress.
That Lam is willing to push this is a strong indication that he is confident of the Central Committee’s faith in his leadership. He is much less of an ideologue, and more of a state-led capitalist authoritarian.
The ambitious move also speaks to Lam’s personal confidence that he will be elected to a full term at the 14th Congress in early 2026.
Empowering technocrats
Lam has called on all party organizations to complete their internal review and draft guidelines for reform by the end of the year.
The reports will be studied in mid February, and submitted by the steering committee to the Politburo in early March ahead of the next Central Committee Plenum scheduled for mid March.
But that also means no government body will be working until at least March 2025.
There is not just efficiency at play with the government and party reorganization. This is clearly a way to get rid of some dead wood and neutralize some rivals.
But more importantly, the reorganization can be seen as a way for Lam to empower close allies and true technocrats.
It is believed that the head of the Central Committee’s External Relations Committee, Le Hoai Trung, who sits on the CPV Secretariat and is a close advisor to Lam, will become the next foreign minister.
Hung is clearly being set up for a key economic position. While many had seen him being groomed for the prime ministership, the consolidation will turn the Ministry of Finance into a super-ministry, which he would be well poised to lead.
After Trong’s war against technocrats, Lam is empowering them, aware that they are needed to take Vietnam to its next stage of development.
A clear winner in this is the Ministry of Public Security, which not only came out unscathed, but with some additional autonomy.
But while this reorganization may look good to foreign investors, Vietnamese citizens don’t see how the reforms will impact or improve their day-to-day interactions with the government. Shouldn’t they be the primary beneficiaries?
Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or Radio Free Asia.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Zachary Abuza.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
