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Category: Ukraine

  • How the U.S. Carries out Its Oppression

    The U.S. regime carries out its oppression by coercion, and by delay and outright suppression of news-reporting about the key facts of the case. It does this both in domestic matters and in international ones, as will here be exemplified first by the example of an innocent man who was framed by the U.S. regime and given a life sentence in a murder-case, and then by the example of the deeply corrupted Ukrainian nation which was grabbed by the U.S. regime in a February 2014 U.S. coup that the U.S. regime hid behind popular 2013-2014 anti-corruption demonstrations on the Maidan square in Kiev and so turned that nation into a battering-ram against the U.S. regime’s top target for conquest, which is Russia right next door to Ukraine.

    In both examples — both domestic and foreign — the U.S. regime’s motivation was to increase and to intensify the power of its owners, whom it serves and who are never satisfied with the immense power that they already have but always crave to acquire yet more.

    How It Does Domestic Oppression

    On 4 May 2020, Jordan Smith headlined “MISSOURI’S ATTORNEY GENERAL IS FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHT TO KEEP AN INNOCENT MAN IN PRISON: Despite ample evidence that Lamar Johnson was wrongfully convicted, Eric Schmitt is sparing no effort to keep him locked up as the coronavirus spreads”, and reported that:

    The police had nothing concrete to go on. But by the time they finally interviewed Elking, they had already latched onto a suspect: 20-year-old Lamar Johnson.

    Johnson would soon be arrested and tried for the October 1994 murder on thin and troubling evidence. …

    In 1995, Johnson was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Still, he has long maintained his innocence — and now has a powerful ally in his corner: Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, chief prosecutor for the city of St. Louis.

    Gardner ran on a reform agenda and in 2016 became the first black elected prosecutor in the city’s history. She won federal funding to start a conviction integrity unit and in 2018, at the behest of the Midwest Innocence Project, began investigating Johnson’s case. A year later, she concluded that he was innocent.

    In July 2019, Gardner filed a motion with Circuit Court Judge Elizabeth Hogan conceding that Johnson was wrongfully convicted. She asked the judge to grant a hearing on the matter and, ultimately, a new trial for Johnson. “When a prosecutor becomes aware of clear and convincing evidence establishing that a defendant in the prosecutor’s jurisdiction was convicted of a crime that the defendant did not commit — the position in which the circuit attorney now finds herself — the prosecutor is obligated to seek to remedy the conviction,” Gardner wrote in the court filing.

    But [Judge] Hogan balked, questioning whether Gardner had the power to challenge the conviction. She called in Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt to see what he had to say about it. Schmitt argued that not only did Gardner lack that authority, but the court couldn’t even entertain the matter. Hogan aligned herself with Schmitt and dismissed the case without considering the evidence Gardner had uncovered.

    Hogan’s decision sparked a unique legal battle that, on April 14, culminated in a video conference hearing before the Missouri Supreme Court. The question before the judges, who are working remotely amid the coronavirus crisis, is whether a prosecutor has any power to right a wrongful conviction. …

    Gardner’s yearlong inquiry revealed that Johnson’s conviction had been marred by extensive police and prosecutorial misconduct. She found that police had fabricated witness statements in an effort to frame Johnson (the witnesses said they’d never told police the things that had been attributed to them) and had pressured Elking into making an identification after he’d repeatedly told them he did not know who had attacked Boyd that night. Elking said that a detective told him who to pick out of the lineup.

    Elking said that a detective told him who to pick out of the lineup.

    Gardner learned that Elking had been paid more than $4,000 in exchange for his testimony and that prosecutors had also fixed a string of traffic tickets for him. None of this information was turned over to Johnson’s defense. … The state also failed to tell the defense that the jailhouse informant, Mock, had an epic criminal history (some 200 pages long) and a history of testifying for the state. … There was also the fact that Johnson had an alibi: He was with his girlfriend, child, and two friends several miles away at the time of the shooting.. … On top of it all, Gardner learned that not long after Johnson was convicted, two men, Phillip Campbell and James Howard, had each separately confessed to killing [Markus] Boyd. Both insisted that Johnson had nothing to do with it. … Given the breadth of the misconduct, Gardner felt she had to find a way to make things right — after all, it was her office that was responsible for Johnson’s conviction.  …

    Not everyone agrees with that position. Schmitt’s office has since doubled down in opposition to Gardner with a mind-numbing array of arguments. …

    No prosecutor in the state of Missouri has the power to undo a wrongful conviction, sys the attorney general. … Schmitt says that Johnson can vindicate his rights by following regular post-conviction procedure: File a challenge based on the evidence Gardner has supplied and let the legal system work its ordinary, slogging magic. …

    Even if Johnson’s appeal were to survive a procedural challenge, the process would only draw out his already wrongful incarceration. …

    Unless the Missouri Supreme Court steps in, prosecutors in the state may remain hobbled, which is essentially what Schmitt is advocating: Keep the power to vet these claims in his hands and dismiss from the process elected prosecutors like Gardner, who vowed on the campaign trail to work toward a more equitable criminal justice system. …

    Reform prosecutors across the country have faced varying degrees of backlash from the entrenched power structures they’ve challenged, and they’ve repeatedly had their discretion questioned as they’ve sought changes that upset the old guard. …

    On 15 February 2023, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch bannered “Judge frees Lamar Johnson after 28 years in prison: Original murder case was ‘suspect at best’”, and reported:

    Lamar Johnson walked out of the downtown courthouse Tuesday afternoon, a free man for the first time in decades.

    Just hours earlier, a St. Louis Circuit judge vacated Johnson’s murder conviction, ruling he was wrongly imprisoned nearly 30 years ago and that there is clear and convincing evidence of his innocence.

    The ruling by 22nd Circuit Court Judge David Mason comes roughly two months after a weeklong hearing in December during which another man confessed to the 1994 killing of Marcus Boyd — the crime that sent Johnson to prison with a life sentence.

    Cheers erupted in the courtroom as Mason read his decision. …

    The ruling ends Johnson’s decadeslong fight to prove his innocence. After years of being turned down on appeals and habeas corpus petitions, Johnson’s case attracted national attention in 2019 when Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s Conviction Integrity Unit reported misconduct by the investigation’s lead detective and other constitutional errors in the 1995 trial. …

    Much of Mason’s decision centered on the main witness in Johnson’s 1995 trial, Greg Elking, who said at the December hearing that police coerced his original identification of Johnson as the man who wore a ski mask and shot Boyd. Mason described that identification as “suspect at best.”

    ”All Elking witnessed was the assailant’s eye, giving a new meaning to the phrase ‘eye witness,’” Mason said, describing it as “yet another serious weakness in the case against Johnson.”

    Without Elking’s identification, there was no case. …

    Photos: Wrongfully convicted inmate Lamar Johnson set free after serving 28 years for murder he did not commit. …

    Once Lamar Johnson was freed, the national press reported the case, as being an example showing that though ‘mistakes’ can happen in American ‘justice’, they can be rectified: in this ‘democracy’, such mistakes can be rectified — the Government isn’t set up so as to produce these ‘mistakes’; it’s not set up that way so as to produce the world’s highest percentage of its population (almost all of which are poor people) being in prisons. It’s only mistakes. So, the public don’t know that it’s NOT mistakes — that it’s the way ‘our’ Government functions.

    On 8 November 2022, Eric Schmitt won Missouri’s election to the U.S. Senate, and became appointed to the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he joins the other key Senators that represent the interests of U.S. armaments contractors (America’s most profitable industry), such as Boeing Corporation, which is the largest manufacturer in the state and is seeking tax-breaks from people such as Schmitt.

    How It Does Foreign Oppression

    Ukraine was neutral between Russia and America until Obama’s brilliantly executed Ukrainian coup, which his Administration started planning by no later than June 2011, culminated successfully in February 2014 and promptly appointed a rabid anti-Russian to impose in regions that rejected the new anti-Russian U.S.-controlled government an “Anti-Terrorist Operation” to kill protesters, and, ultimately, to terrorize the residents in those regions in order to kill as many of them as possible and to force the others to flee into Russia so that when elections would be held, pro-Russian voters would no longer be in the electorate.

    The war in Ukraine started in 2014, as both NATO’s Stoltenberg and Ukraine’s Zelensky have said; but Russia responded militarily on 24 February 2022 in order to prevent Ukraine from allowing the U.S. to place a missile there a mere 317 miles or five minutes of missile-flying-time away from The Kremlin and thus too brief for Russia to respond before its central command would already become beheaded by America’s nuclear strike.

    However, even after at least $360 billion in support to Ukraine’s war against Russia after Russia’s invasion, from the U.S. and its colonies and their IMF, Ukraine’s prospects of winning against Russia have been declining not increasing throughout the course of the war and are now close to nil.

    So: how did the U.S. regime carry out this oppression of the Ukrainian people? It was done by the same means as it had been done in the Lamar Johnson case: coercion, including coercion against the mind, which is deceit, and including coercion against public officials who might otherwise try to do the right thing in order to serve the public instead of to serve their masters who have been funding their political careers.

    On 17 June 2015, I headlined “The Who’s Who at the Top of the Coup” in Ukraine, and focused upon Dmitriy Yarosh, whom Obama’s Victoria Nuland chose to run the Maidan demonstration in Kiev that provided cover for the Obama-Nuland-organized February 2014 coup in Ukraine; and, on 1 February 2015, I headlined “The Ideology of the New Ukraine”, and focused upon Andrei Biletsky (or Beletsky), who organized and ran the openly nazi Ukrainiani Azov Battalion and, unlike Yarosh, Biletsky didn’t equivocate about his being a Ukrainian Social Nationalist or (National Socialist) in the Hitler vein, but he aimed “to create a Third Empire [a Ukrainian Third Reich],” instead of Hitler’s German “Third Reich.” Then, on 20 March 2022, I headlined “How The Western Press Handles The Ukrainian Government’s Nazism” and presented a universally hidden-in-The-West photo of Biletsky leading his men in salute to what had been Nazi Germany’s Wolfsangel insignia.

    On 27 May 2019, the OBOZREVATEL online Ukrainian news site headlined (as translated into English) “Yarosh: if Zelensky betrays Ukraine, he will lose not his position, but his life” , the transcript of their interview with Yarosh, right after Zelensky had won the Presidential election against Poroshenko, and, in that interview, Yarosh made unambiguously clear that if as President, Zelensky were to negotiate seriously with Russia,”he will lose not his position, but his life.” Yarosh — the agent of the regime in Washington DC — was sending the new Ukrainian President the very clear message, that even if the U.S. wouldn’t get rid of such a Ukrainian President, Ukraine’s nazis would. So: Zelensky (like Poroshenko before him) was being controlled not only from above, the empire’s imperial regime in Washington, but also from below, the U.S.-empowered nazis whom the U.S. regime had used in order to take over Ukraine during February 2014.

    Conclusion

    The U.S. Establishment (called “neocons” in foreign policy, and “neoliberals” or “libertarians” in domestic policy, but, in any case, America’s under-1,000 billionaires and their numerous employees and other agents) work via threats, not only against heads-of-state abroad such as Zelensky, but ALSO  against domestic public officials such as the Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, to turn the screws upon those down below (such as in plea-bargains to lie in court cases) in order to keep those billionaires on top, and everyone else down below; and this is the empire’s social and political and even international, “rules-based order.” Whereas Lamar Johnson, as an extremely lucky exception to the rule (or “rules-based order”) managed finally to get free in 2023 after entering prison in 1995 for a frame-up against him by the regime that he and other Americans are forced to fund with their taxes, few others are and will be so lucky, but America’s ‘news’-media won’t and don’t report this fact. For example: there is nothing to indicate that Lamar Johnson sees what happened to him as being a frame-up by the regime instead of just a bunch of tragic mistakes that the U.S. Government had made. Even the victims usually remain ignorant of the reality. — the ‘news’-media cover it up. But the whole operation — like that of any other empire — is based ultimately upon requiring the public officials to impose by raw coercion if necessary, their masters’ rule, in this “rules-based order.” It’s the way that any empire functions. And, in the world of today, the only empire that remains is the U.S. and its colonies (‘allies’).

    The post How the U.S. Carries out Its Oppression first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Critics of Ukraine war could have property seized under new Russian law

    Draft legislation allowing for confiscation of valuables has been backed by main political parties

    A bill to confiscate property and valuables from Ukraine war critics convicted of, among other crimes, “discrediting the Russian army” or calling for foreign sanctions has been drawn up by the Kremlin.

    The draft legislation to the criminal code was registered in Russia’s State Duma on Monday, where it has been backed by the main political parties and appears likely to pass into law.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The human cost of blocking injunctions on Rwanda | Letters

    Dr Alice Donald and Prof Philip Leach on cases where ‘pyjama injunctions’ have ensured British prisoners of war were not executed. Plus letters from Michael Meadowcroft, Jol Miskin and John Weightman

    In a story about the Rwanda bill, you refer to Rishi Sunak toughening up his rhetoric on “pyjama injunctions” (Sunak faces Tory meltdown as deputy chairs back Rwanda bill rebellionReport, 15 January), meaning interim measures issued by the European court of human rights in exceptional circumstances. We should be careful about buying into this characterisation, as it trivialises the court’s urgent and legally binding injunctions, which are issued – sometimes out of hours – to avert an imminent risk of irreparable harm, such as death or torture.

    Both the Illegal Migration Act 2023 and the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill give ministers discretion to disregard interim measures in cases relating to the removal of a person from the UK. Rightwing Tory MPs would like to go further and block interim measures entirely.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Imperialism and Anti-imperialism Collide in Ukraine (Part 2 of 16)

    It was not surprising that the U.S.’s earsplitting anti-Russian uproar has recently slowed down considerably. Israel’s Zionist genocidal war on the Palestinian people entrapped in Gaza (occupied first in 1967, and then totally blockaded since 2005) stole the limelight. The momentary slowdown gave Russia some breathing time, and the U.S. a possible way out of the mess it had engineered. Irrespective of Russian voices claiming the conflict has “Entered its endgame”, or American declarations talking about a “Negotiated settlement”, the conflict continues unabated.

    Let us assume that Russia would accept withdrawing from Donbass in exchange for Ukraine meeting all or some of its conditions. Would that change U.S. behavior toward Russia? No. Extensive political and military indicators (aid, weapons, statements, effective policy, etc.) enacted by the United States and its allies preclude such possibility—U.S. objectives in Ukraine go beyond Donbass and Crimea. Clues: Several U.S. political quarters and think tanks are now calling for a policy of containment toward Russia.

    It is elementary that spoiling relations among states is easier than repairing them. In the case of the United States, the idea of repairing ties with Russia has been consistently anathema to U.S. imperialists —even before Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. By force of consolidated ideological patterns, U.S. ruling circles systematically seek submission not agreement. Accordingly, their view of conflict resolution is conditioned by (a) the scope of U.S. intervention in Ukrainian politics vis-à-vis Russia’s objectives, (b) historical precedents whereby hegemonic ambitions takes precedence over other matters, and (c) intense enmity toward a Russia that has been proving its resilience to subjugation.

    As a primer to understand deep-seated U.S. political personality disorder, consider the following. In the American imperialistic mentality of coercion, changing foreign policy conduct means retreat, and retreat means loosing. It is known though that changing course for the sake of settlement is not losing. What is happening here is easy to explain: U.S. ideologues of war abhor giving up any of the geopolitical advantages they have obtained so far at the expense of Russia. Reading between the lines: those same ideologues appear to be thinking in terms of opportunity—if they do not succeed at incapacitating Russia now, they never will.

    Still, could Russia impose its conditions whereby Ukraine declares neutrality, forgoes joining NATO, and accepts post-intervention realties? Would the United States accept relinquishing its heavy encroachment in Ukraine thus leading it to (a) erase its established military footprints and political control, and (b) reprise its normal relations with Russia?

    Russia has all means to inflict irreparable military defeat on Ukraine. But after almost two years of war without a decisive solution, such prospect seems out of favor with Russia for reasons it did not disclose. This leaves a diplomatic solution open. But this seems out of Russia’s hand because in the pursuit of maintaining its grip on Ukraine, the U.S. would not allow it. The collective answer to the questions above would be as follows: because U.S. calculations are global in nature, the immovable tenets of U.S. super-militarized capitalism and aggressive hegemonic world outlook will be the determinant factors in deciding future directions. Said otherwise, the ideological superstructure of the U.S. Empire– coupled with the prospect of material profits—is the engine driving its decision-making.

    Consequently, the chance that the United States could reach a compromise with Russia soon is dim. The U.S. ruling establishment would keep the tension going with the expectation that something beneficial to the American imperium could still happen. In retrospect, a compromise could have happened had Russia crushed Ukraine militarily from the very beginning, and had U.S. rulers abstained from putting all their weight to defeat Russia through a protracted multi-actor proxy war. To recap, today, the prospect that Russia could impose its conditions on Ukraine is next to nil for no other reason than the United States is materially in full charge of Ukraine and its policymaking.

    America’s decision for a protracted proxy war comes in varied ways. A mouthpiece of U.S. imperialism, former NATO secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen, conveyed U.S. thinking about Ukraine joining NATO in the following words:

    The time has come to take the next step and extend an invitation for Ukraine to join Nato. We need a new European security architecture in which Ukraine is in the heart of Nato. . . The absolute credibility of article 5 guarantees would deter Russia from mounting attacks inside the Ukrainian territory inside Nato and so free up Ukrainian forces to go to the frontline. [sic], [Italics added].

    “Free up Ukrainian forces to go to the frontline” are the keywords. Meaning: U.S. war by delegation would continue. But the core meaning is unequivocal:  according to Rasmussen’s formula, the U.S. would continue pursuing its war efforts notwithstanding Russia’s objections. Reminder: one reason why Russia intervened in Ukraine was to stop it from joining NATO. Rasmussen’s intent, therefor, was all too evident: he [actually, the United States] wants to poke Russia right in the eye by admitting Ukraine to NATO. Logically, his call can be interpreted as a blatant provocation to spur Russia into an expanded reaction. Once done, NATO would invoke article 5. Clear purpose: create a pretext for direct war with Russia.

    Another mouthpiece is retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis. Stavridis thinks of Ukraine in terms of financial opportunities for U.S. economic imperialism and future Ukrainian dependency. He cites, with twisted ideologism, the South Korean example and gives his far-reaching views as follows:

    In terms of advantages for the alliance, Ukraine would have the most battle-tested, innovative and motivated forces in Europe. The Ukrainians have earned a spot on the team, and as I look back on my time as NATO’s military commander, I would have been happy to welcome them into alliance…. If such a deal is reached, here is my prediction: Despite being far smaller in terms of population and land, Ukraine will overtake Russia in a few decades in terms of gross domestic product, overall agrarian output, and certainly in the sense of being a vital, democratic society in which people want to live. I see nothing in the twisted policies of Czar Putin that will change that depressing outcome for Moscow. Let’s hope a Korean-style miracle of reconstruction is on the horizon for Ukraine. [Italics added]

    Discussion

    U.S. imperialism assumes diverse denominations according to circumstances. The following are a few examples. Diplomatic Imperialism: is when the U.S. coerces foreign governments to go along its foreign and domestic policies. Financial Imperialism: through financial institutions (World Bank, SWIFT system, International Monetary Fund, Central banks of targeted countries, currency conversion rates, etc.), the United States exercises its hegemony by denying and/or regulating access by designated adversaries. Management Imperialism: is when American citizens connected to the high echelons of power directly manage the economic assets and political decision-making of foreign nations.

    With regard to Management Imperialism as applied to Ukraine, Mike Pompeo has already started the process proposed by Stavridis. Just like Hunter Biden before him sitting on the Board of Directors of Burisma, Pompeo will be sitting on the Board of Directors of the Ukrainian branch of Veon. Beyond that, Stavridis wants a future Ukraine to continue exercising its proxy military role vs. Russia, which is, per se, what the United States wants: a lasting war with Russia.

    Rasmussen and Stavridis’ opinions follow a coordinated script with two postulations: (1) The United States would not give up its newly found protectorate Ukraine, and (2) it would continue to wage war against Russia regardless of potential global conflagration—with the hopeful gamble that the “endgame” would not come to that.

    As stated, the United States seems not ready to concede its footprints in Ukraine unless by some sort of a war with Russia. Or, a better scenario: the U.S. concludes there is no way out except by compromise.  Overall, abandoning the coveted conquest of Ukraine would mean halting U.S. imperialistic expansions. Explanation: having footprints in Ukraine means that the United States would re-apply its old methods of domination—a process begins with a pretext, followed by intervention, and ends up with entrenched encroachment that political exorcism is incapable of dislodging. Consider the following limited examples:

    Germany: after occupying half of Germany (West) at the end of WWII; after the U.S., Britain, and the USSR slapped it with the Potsdam Agreement; after it and Britain took the lion shares of war reparations; and in spite of Germany’s formal status as an independent country within NATO structures, the U.S. is still occupying it on permanent basis. Today there are 35,221 U.S. troops stationed in Germany. British and French troops still exists in different form. Pay attention.  While the Potsdam Agreement imposed the dismantling of the German military industry, the United States reversed it by absorbing West Germany into NATO in 1955. This means the re-armament of Germany—NATO countries must have a standing military force with budget and with contribution from their Gross National products to the efforts of future wars—with the USSR being the target. The point: once the United States intervened in a country, it remains there until events change the status of occupation.

    Italy: after occupying Italy at the end of WWII, etc., the U.S. is still occupying it through 7 military bases and 12,493 troops. Pay attention: After the defeat of Italy, the U.S. first shackled it with the Paris Conference, and then absorbed it in NATO structures in 1949,      

    [Note: on the case of Germany (before reunification in 1990-1) and Italy, the conversion from vanquished enemies to NATO allies was a planned U.S. strategy to absorb them as occupied countries by other means.]

    Japan: after occupying Japan at the end of WWII, etc., and after shackling it with myriad treaties and the writing of a new constitution serving its interests, the U.S. is still occupying Japan through 5 military bases and 50,000 troops,

    Kuwait: after ending Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait in 1991, the U.S. is now occupying Kuwait through 7 military bases and 13,500 troops

    Philippines: After it conquered the Philippines from Spain consequent to Spain-U.S. war, the U.S. granted independence to that nation in 1946. Pay attention: the United States shackled the Philippines with the Mutual Defense Treaty. U.S. military encroachment or occupation continues today with enhanced treaties and four military bases,

    Saudi Arabia: from so-called Desert shield 1990 forward, the U.S. has been occupying Saudi Arabia through 3 military bases and 2,700 troops,

    Iraq: Iraq is a yardstick to judge the U.S. plan for Ukraine. The United States invaded that country in 2003 and immediately partitioned it in two federated entities—Arab and Kurdish—without having any authority to do so. As per military dot com (connected to the Pentagon) the United States has 12 military bases in Iraq, and as per PBS (connected to U.S. Zionism and the wider imperialist system) the U.S. has 2,500 troops on the ground.  [Note: Iraqi reports speak of 16,000 U.S. troops across the country. Comment: the notion of 2,500 troops is both risible and fake. If divided by 12, each base would have 208 service members. Observation: no military base could function with such a low number of service members].

    Pay attention: before removing the bulk of its invasion force from Iraq, and after building several military bases around the country, U.S. imperialists shackled it with a treaty and called it “U.S.–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement”. With this ruse, the United States has been occupying Iraq for 21 consecutive years. For the record, on May 1, 2020, so-called Iraqi parliament passed a resolution calling for the American forces to leave Iraq. Over three a half years later, U.S. forces are still entrenched on Iraqi soil like a rock stuck inside deep mud.

    What happened before and after the U.S.‑created Iraqi parliament issued that resolution?

    On January 10, 2020, the Washington Post stated, “The Trump administration refused again Friday to recognize Iraq’s call to withdraw all U.S. troops, saying that any discussion with Baghdad would center on whatever force size the United States determines is sufficient to achieve its goals there”. Well. Finally, we know that so-called “Operation Iraqi Freedom” was about “whatever force size the United States determines is sufficient to achieve its goals there”. [Italics added]. (Also, read the statement by Mike Pompeo). “Goals”, they say. What goals are these if not the perpetual occupation of Iraq by any means?

    On January 10, 2024, Iraqi Prime Minister al-Sudani—the U.S. greenlighted his appointment—asked the United States to initiate dialogues for the exit of U.S. forces from Iraq. [Reuter’s: Exclusive: Iraq seeks quick exit of US forces but no deadline set, PM says]. Knowing about his request in advance, the Pentagon stated, “It was not currently planning to withdraw its roughly 2,500 troops from Iraq, despite Baghdad’s announcement last week it would begin the process of removing the U.S.-led military coalition from the country.”  [Italics added]. [January 8, 2024, Reuter’s: Pentagon says not planning a US withdrawal from Iraq].

    Now take a guess: who is ruling over so-called sovereign Iraq today, and who would be ruling over so-called sovereign Ukraine once the conflict is over?

    Kosovo: the United States bombed Serbia, severed Kosovo (a genuine Serbian territory despite its large Albanian ethnicity), and proclaimed it an “independent” State. Remark: soon after it bombed Serbia and after declaring Kosovo’s independence, the United States transformed this historically Serbian province into a U.S.-occupied territory with its Camp Bondsteel. How is this so? Forget that NATO troops are in the camp and disregard its small size (955 acres). But, Bondsteel is a Regional Command under the control of the U.S. Army. As such, it is a plain symbol of U.S. imperialist encroachment, i.e., occupation by other means.

    Taiwan: the U.S. may not object to re-unification; but its intent is apparent. It wants its protégé: the small island of anti-Communist Taiwan (23 million) to rule over great and independent China (1.4 billion)—not the other way around.

    South Korea: After partitioning Korea (with the Soviet Union that successively withdrew) in North and South, the U.S. is still occupying South Korea through 12 military bases and 23,468 troops. (For more info: U.S. military around the world by Aljazeera).

    To close, even if the conflict would resolve with compromise, Ukraine would end up being occupied by the United States in multiple ways—whether Russia likes it or not. Similarly, the prospect of the United States would occupy Ukraine somehow and shackle it with bases and treaties—with or without NATO—is potentially possible.

    Generally, U.S. conduct in Ukraine follows an established ideological attitude that has been applied without pause since the end of WWII. Briefly, it rests on the self-serving idea that U.S. status as a military hyperpower (with 12 combatant commands spread in all continents) grants it extraordinary license to supervise, manage, and direct world assets and relations according to its exclusive views and objectives. One such view is the baseless pretension that whatever happens around the world is a matter of U.S. “national security”—recently, the Biden Administration declared, “Security assistance for Ukraine is a smart investment in our national security.” Senator Jack Reed goes beyond exaggerating the investment deception. He stated, “U.S. Aid to Ukraine is Vital to America’s Security & Economic Interests”.

    These are bombastic words. (a) Biden’s White House is lying big—who are benefiting from that investment are weapons manufactures not ordinary Americans, and (b) the argument of the national security stuff is preposterous. To settle this issue without dissertation, suffice it to say there are no functional, structural, or any another artificially implied correlations between the events in Ukraine and so-called national security of super fortress America.

    Statement: U.S. practice of calling anything that does not meet its criteria of acceptance a “threat to its national security” is fraudulent and deceptive. Discussion: the notion of “national security” paradigm of any nation is valid only when its physical existence and conditions for normal living of its people are threatened by external forces. Consider the following limited examples:

    • Egypt continues to oppose Ethiopia “Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam” not for any reason except that the huge reduction of water entering into Egypt is effectively dooming its agricultural lands. When Ethiopia persists in ignoring Egypt’s legitimate concerns on water sharing (governed by stipulated treaties), then it is materially threatening Egypt’s national security and survival.
    • When the CIA overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh’s government to control Iranian oil, it certainly damaged Iran’s national security.
    • Venezuela never threatened the United States in anyway. But when Donald Trump threatened Venezuela with military intervention, his threat was a clear attack against Venezuela’s national security.
    • When Britain and the United States declared war (Opium War) on China to open its ports for trade with the U.S. and the West—that was a flagrant infringement on China’s national security and sovereignty.
    • Britain declared war on China because this prohibited the opium trade—a product Britain needed for its drug industry. But Britain and United States attacked and went to war with China for more reasons. They wanted China to open its ports for trade with the U.S. and the West. I need not debate that these acts were a flagrant infringement on China’s
      national security and sovereignty. [ Read: “How were the Opium Wars an example of imperialism in China?”; “U.S. Department of State: Opium War“).

    Conclusion: whereas themes and theories are invented to support the political concept of “national security”, countless other factors restrict its definition, scope, and applicability. But for the United States to enforce its so-called right to security by deeming any fathomable action taken by foreign nations in defense of their societal development as a threat to its “national security” is a barefaced blackmail on a domestic level, as well as a twisted pretext for confrontation on a foreign level.

    Now, can anyone name one single incident whereby a country—excluding Russia (re: Cuban missile crisis)—has ever posed any threat to the United States? (For the record, the USSR tried to install nuclear missiles in Cuba in response to the US installing similar missiles in Turkey pointing to Soviet territory. Kennedy and Khrushchev resolved the impasse by dismantling the disputed missile systems.)

    Conclusion: U.S. pretension that its security is uniquely important but not that of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Madagascar, Algeria, Columbia, Togo, India, etc. is a ploy to establish a world order under its tight command. Accusing others of premeditated malfeasance or intention to harm the United States is the easiest way to initiate planned hostilities.

    With regard to Ukraine, the meaning of the preceding could not be terser: U.S. imperialists are manifestly scheming. They pretend to see Ukraine “free” from the “Russian invaders”, while at the same time they are roaming the globe to pacify it with death, destruction, sanctions, and economic strangulation, and while treating Ukraine as an “investment” to deter hypothetical connections to frivolous “security anxieties”. Deduction: U.S. fury over Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is quite readable. Russia interrupted U.S. march for world control.

    Claiming, therefore, that Donbass or the whole of Ukraine is important to European and NATO security is a trite farce. If Donbass were so important, the U.S. should not have staged the Maidan coup, and should have worked to implement the Minsk Agreements. Commenting on how the United States turns things around in the attempt to muddy things à la Donald Trump, Maria Zakharova (Russian Foreign Ministry) responded eloquently to Antony Blinken’s call to revise the Agreements. She said, “It is strange how the US is trying to find a sequence in a document where the entire sequence of steps is spelled out for all parties”.

    Incidentally, I read nowhere that Russia threatened Germany, Finland, or any other European country. But when trained propagandists at the State Department say, “Ukraine is a key regional strategic partner that has undertaken significant efforts to modernize its military and increase its interoperability with NATO,” they imply that this newly-found “strategic partner” is important to the United States because any arrangement with it increases the prospect of added security to NATO and the United States. The propaganda message is transparent: “Russia is threatening Europe”. American Progress dot org goes further. Johan Hassel and Kate Donald explain, “Why the United States Must Stay the Course on Ukraine”, and elaborate by saying, “Because it is essential to America’s national security interests and democratic values. A Ukraine defeat would create a more dangerous and unstable world.” [Italics added]. “Democratic values” they write. Could they intelligently—not stupidly to be precise—explain what values are these, and in which way they interact with the Ukrainian situation?

    Now, imagine how the United States would react to hearing Russia claiming that the Sonora province or Mexico is “essential to Russian security and democratic values”.

    To stay with the events, Russian intervention in Ukraine has led to the formation of two opposing camps. On one camp, stand U.S. super-militarized imperialism and arrays of vassal European States—most of them coerced to follow Washington’s direct orders. On the other, stands Russia alone but with only Belarus openly at its side.

    At this tense stage of world history, there should be no illusion that Ukraine has become a peculiar arena. Russia’s limited intervention has swiftly gone beyond its initial purpose to protect ethnic Russians in Donbass, and beyond U.S. posturing that Russia breached international norms. No need to state that at no time in modern history did the United States ever care to abide by such norms—unless enacted to serve its purpose or to hold others accountable.

    Russia’s Camp: From the time in which Bill Clinton and Zionist neocons (Madelaine Albright [State], Willian Cohen [Defense], Samuel Berger [National Security Advisor] took control of U.S. foreign policy until its intervention in Ukraine, Russia—despite its conversion to capitalism—has gradually but convincingly reached the ineluctable conclusion that its own existence is constantly threatened. With its decision to take action in Donbass, Russia has crossed the Rubicon without looking back. It launched a daring challenge against the fascist-tyrannical world order imposed by the United States.

    With that challenge, Russia transformed itself from protector of ethnic Russians in Donbass to a powerful forerunner in the resistance against U.S. stranglehold on the world. Yet, judging from the myriad statements that Putin, Medvedev, and Lavrov have been making since after the intervention, said transformation appears to be evolutionary rather than planned. That is, although Russia has been criticizing U.S. bent on absolutist domination long before its entry in Ukraine, that entry was not enacted with the slogan to terminate U.S. unipolarism in Ukraine and the world. The successive bold statements denouncing and prospecting the end of U.S. world order came about gradually as Russia realized that the entire Western system of nations was aligned behind the U.S. hegemon.

    To close, Russia of Putin is not an anti-imperialist state. From my readings, Russian political lexicon of the past 34 years never spoke of or referred to imperialism as an issue for Russia’s foreign policy. As a concept and term, it seems that the new Russia treated imperialism as a thing belonging to Leninist Soviet Russia, not new capitalistic Russia. Wrong. U.S. and European imperialisms never disappeared—they are well, alive, and super-fortified with rage and racism. The irony of it: after Russia’s intervention, U.S. mastodontic propaganda started depicting Russia as an imperialist state.

    Now then, considering that all sanctions and threats against Russia have, so far, failed to achieve their objectives, then Russia’s ultimate purpose—focused on terminating U.S. hallucinations for permanent hegemony over the international system of nations—appears highly possible. The fact that many nations are now breaking free from using the dollar in their bilateral exchanges proves the unthinkable: capitalistic Russia is on the right path to rebuild the international order on equitable foundations.

    America’s Camp: The United States has always been a static superpower that thrives on the status quo. When confronted with resolute countries that it cannot bomb, it remedies by repeating tricks that no longer work. In the case of Russia, it tried to replay the card it played on the Iraq of Saddam Hussein—with the complicity of failed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and traitorous Arab rulers. Sanctions, seizing of assets, name-calling, lies, instigation, congressional resolutions, mobilizing NATO, use of the UN, ruses of all sorts, and threats of war are just a few outmoded means of pressure that worked against Iraq, but cannot work against today’s Russia. In short, the shrewd American illusionist has run out of tricks.

    The show of anti-Russian reactions is not confined to the imperialist camp. Surprisingly, some peace and antiwar activists in the West has joined in the violent bashing of Russia. But if Russia, China, and other counties are for an equitable international system that a) respects all nations and their right for self-determination, and b) is applicable to all equally, then how do we explain all those anti-Russian attacks coming from self-designating peace and antiwar activists?

    Agreed, Russian forces crossed onto the Donbass province of Ukraine. Now, if Washington’s hypocrites consider Russia’s act criminal and contrary to their “rule-based international order”, then we have the right to ask if their repeated crossings into countless countries are innocent and abiding by that order. On this issue, can those who oppose Russia’s intervention explain by whose authority did the United States cross into Syria from U.S.-occupied Iraq? According to what article of the “international law” did the hyperpower settle its occupation force around Syria’s oil fields? Lastly, can they explain why is the United States working frenetically to partition Syria as it did Iraq? (Later in this series, I shall discuss the issue of war and antiwar)

    What we need to do next is to establish a context for the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the reaction to it.

    Next Part 3 of 16

    The post Imperialism and Anti-imperialism Collide in Ukraine (Part 2 of 16) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Washington’s Unconditional Support for Israel Mirrors its Unconditional Support for Sectarianism

    Poor Ophelia divided from herself and her fair judgment
    Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts….

    — Hamlet (IV.v.)

    As was the case with the British and Roman empires that preceded it, Washington has long had a fondness for the divide and conquer paradigm and has ruthlessly fomented sectarianism in the post-Cold War era. This frenetic push towards sectarianization has ushered in a new dark age of socio-economic chaos and failed states, an amenable environment for rapacious corporate entities to ravage and plunder. Furthermore, in neoliberal ideology US-backed extremists are invariably hailed as the guardians of tolerance and reason locked in an apocalyptic struggle with the forces of ignorance and bigotry which foments the pathologization, and if we are not vigilant, ultimately the criminalization of dissent.

    The unflagging support for extremism and concurrent vilification of those who attempt to resist its infernal grasp saturates every aspect of Washington’s contemporary policy-making. Domestically, neoliberal indoctrination that encourages Americans of color and immigrant youth to embrace black nationalism, Latino nationalism, and anti-white jihad has cataclysmically destabilized American society by cultivating illiteratization and through relentlessly pitting Americans against one another.

    While the neoliberal racism of today couches itself in the language of revolution and “anti-racism” minorities end up being no less dehumanized. Instead of being told point-blank that they are racially inferior, these students are taught to have contempt for everything Western and American. Once inculcated with this anti-literacy vaccine they become pawns in the hands of the oligarchs and used to destroy working class unity.

    Those who attempt to provide some context regarding the Maidan “revolution of dignity” which saw the cult of Bandera illegally seize power in a violent putsch in February of 2014 are called “Putin stooges,” “Putin apologists,” and equated with Westerners that were sympathetic to the Nazi party. This upends reality, as those who extol Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and the 14th Waffen-SS Division are portrayed as sensible defenders of the rule of law.

    During the lockdowns “anti-vaxxers” and Branch Covidians were pitted against one another, and the struggle between those who believe in informed consent and those who seek its annihilation persists with regards to the Church of Vaccinology, the Cult of Psychiatry, and the trans cult, along with other ethically dubious medical practices. Supporters of anti-white Manifest Destiny are pitted against Americans who resent the growing fragmentation, atomization, and dissolution of their society. As the concerns of marginalized natives are ignored and they are dismissed as bigots their frustration and anger grow, which can in fact fuel traditional far-right attitudes, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    In Zionism there is no such thing as a Palestinian – there are only “terrorists.” In multiculturalism there is no such thing as an American – there are only “racists.” The extent to which the latter has unleashed a war of all against all, handmaiden of unbridled corporate pillage, cannot be overstated.

    The fracturing of American Judaism is likewise emblematic of the unraveling of American society, with the ultra-Orthodox shunning Jews that aren’t ultra-Orthodox, and with the Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews filled with acrimony towards one another. When holding up a sign saying “Jews Say Ceasefire Now” at a rally in Washington DC in November, Medea Benjamin was confronted by a female Zionist who said she should be raped. In the ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist community of Mea She’arim in Jerusalem the police frequently harass and behave violently towards the locals (who are essentially Jewish Palestinians).

    The Pentagon destroyed Iraqi society by inciting Kurdish nationalism, Sunni fundamentalism, and by placing a Shiite fundamentalist government in power, knowing full well that this would cause the country to become a failed state. Attempts by Tel Aviv and Washington to maintain and capitalize on Sunni-Shia tensions by stoking fear and animosity between Riyadh and Tehran played a critical role in their strategy of attempting to dominate the region. Now that China has successfully facilitated a rapprochement between the two countries, this weakens the position of the US and Israel in the Middle East, as it fosters greater unity within the ummah allowing the Muslim populations to turn their attention to the terrible crimes being committed against the Palestinians.

    Another example where the rational have been denounced as extremists and vice versa was during Syria’s “civil war,” where the most fanatical and bloodthirsty jihadists (many of whom were not Syrian) were romanticized ad nauseam by Western presstitutes and incessantly portrayed as heroic freedom fighters.

    By opting to act militarily to defend the Donbass from ethnic cleansing, Moscow has decided to obliterate the Banderite military, and if possible, remove the Banderite junta altogether by replacing it with a Russophile government in conjunction with an anti-Maidan coup. After waiting for the greater part of a decade for Kiev to implement the Minsk Accords, the Kremlin arrived at the conclusion that if they were to continue to sit on their hands, the nationalists would eventually reach a level of military capability at which point they could no longer be removed or significantly weakened in any meaningful way. In actuality, Moscow is doing what the Zionist entity’s neighbors failed to do during the brief window of Zionist vulnerability prior to the IDF’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.

    One of the problems with sectarianism is how easy it is for the elites to indoctrinate impressionable children. I grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, in the ‘80s and early ‘90s where many of my friends were indoctrinated into the cult of Zionism, and by junior high school they were already zealots. These children are taught from the earliest possible age that Jews are always the oppressed, that they can never be the oppressor, and that Zionism and Judaism are synonymous with one another.

    (In a heated exchange that recently took place on the streets of the settler colonial entity, an Israeli woman sarcastically asked a Golani Brigade soldier, “How many innocent people have you killed in this war?” To which he replied, not without irony, “Your parents failed in raising you.”)

    Jews that descend into the valley of Zionism commit the greatest possible sacrilege: they participate in the violent oppression of another people. Indeed, this is analogous to doctors betraying the informed consent ethic and the oath to do no harm. In both scenarios a primordial Rubicon is irrevocably violated. While Nazism slew Jewish bodies, Zionism slays Jewish souls.

    Education in Teaneck today is in many ways a microcosm of the multicultural society. In a town of around 40,000 there are four radically different education systems: an Islamic school system, a system of modern Orthodox yeshivas (the ultra-Orthodox have a completely different set of yeshivas); and the Teaneck public school system, which has long segregated black students, often resulting in their receiving an inferior education. Black nationalism exacerbates the education crisis facing African American youth, as these children are frequently inculcated with the idea that doing well in school would make them an “Oreo” (black on the outside, white on the inside) and an “Uncle Tom.” Just as Feminism and The Handmaid’s Tale are two sides to the same reactionary coin, so too are anti-white jihad and white supremacy.

    Without a return to a strong public school system anchored in a traditional American canon our society will continue to disintegrate, as there will be no cultural glue to hold it together. The ease with which a child can be indoctrinated into being a Banderite, a Zionist, an anti-white jihadi, or radical feminist poses many challenges, and is difficult to combat once an education system has fallen into the hands of sociopaths. As the Chinese like to say, “Children are white paper.”

    One of the most extraordinary instances of Washington cultivating extremism is its long-standing relationship with the Zionist entity, with the former never failing to provide its favorite attack dog with virtually unlimited political, military, and economic aid, and like the entity itself, labeling all criticism of Israel as “anti-Semitism.” Following a recent Jewish Voice for Peace rally that was held in New York’s Grand Central Station, New York governor Kathy Hochul issued a statement decrying what she described as an unconscionable “anti-Semitic” incident. And so a rally where hundreds of Jews protesting the barbarities of a Jewish supremacist and ethnosupremacist crusader state became transformed into an incident whereby an imaginary gang of neo-Nazis viciously attacked an imaginary group of defenseless Jews. Naturally, Hochul, who is also a fan of biofascism, proceeded to call for more internet censorship to combat “extremism” and “anti-Semitism.” (In addition to Jewish Voice for Peace, anti-Zionist Jewish organizations such as IfNotNow, B’Tselem, Shoresh and Neturei Karta continue to play a critically important role in countering the lie that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are one and the same).

    Biden’s preposterous attempts to equate Putin and Hamas (“They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy”) further exemplifies the neoliberal penchant for romanticizing extremism. Aside from the most rabid Russophobes and Islamophobes, it is principally the Western elites that regard the Banderite entity and the Zionist entity as “model democracies.”

    Always eager to march to the tune of Washington’s drum, these sentiments have been echoed by the European elites, with British MP Suella Braverman calling the Free Palestine marches “hate marches,” describing them as “sickening,” and claiming that the phrase “from the river to the sea” was “a call to arms used by terrorists.” Clearly, this language seeks to criminalize any criticism of the Zionist entity. (Braverman might consider moving to Germany where the authorities have violently suppressed anti-Zionist rallies).

    When not dropping bombs on cats, dogs, journalists, bakeries, ambulances, universities (see here and here), hotels, houses of worship and heritage sites, demolishing Palestinian homes, destroying cemeteries, uprooting olive trees, torturing Palestinians, stealing corpses of Palestinian martyrs, carrying out summary executions, depriving Gazans of food and water, butchering and traumatizing children, torturing West Bank residents and holding them in “administrative detention,” using pogromists to force West Bank residents from their land, invoking the Hannibal Directive and murdering their own citizens, using the Star of David as a fascist symbol, collapsing Gaza’s health care system and turning much of the strip into a lifeless wasteland, Zionists can say some pretty revealing things, particularly following “Israel’s 9/11.”

    Following the Hamas raids on October 7th the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed the Palestinians in Gaza:

    Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.

    Writing in Yedioth Ahronoth, retired major general and former head of the Israeli National Security Council Giora Eiland, wrote that “Israel needs to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, compelling tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in Egypt or the Gulf.” Elaborating, he went on to say that “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist….” Appearing on Israeli television, journalist Shimon Riklin hailed the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure, saying “I am unable to sleep without watching homes in Gaza being destroyed.”

    On October 11th Energy Minister Israel Katz posted on social media:

    For years, we have given Gaza electricity, water, and fuel. Instead of a thank you, they sent thousands of human animals to butcher, murder, rape and kidnap babies, women and elderly people. This is why we have decided to cut off the supply of water, electricity and fuel, and now, the local power plant has collapsed, and there is no electricity in Gaza. We will keep holding a tight siege until the Hamas threat is lifted from Israel and the world. What has been will be no more.

    Never one to shy away from violent rhetoric, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Otzma Yehudit party, tweeted on the 17th of October that “So long as Hamas does not release the hostages – the only thing that should enter Gaza is hundreds of tons of air force explosives – not an ounce of humanitarian aid.”

    Two days after the Hamas raids, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a press conference:

    We are imposing a complete siege on [Gaza]. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel – everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we must act accordingly.

    Tzipi Navon, office manager of Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, furiously condemned the Hamas raids, calling for those responsible to be brutally tortured. Knesset member for Likud Galit Distel-Atbaryan said that Israeli society should unite so that it could focus its energies on “erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth.” Israeli lawmaker Revital Gotliv and Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu both called for the IDF to use nuclear weapons, while Knesset member Merav Ben-Ari said that the children of Gaza brought their suffering upon themselves.

    IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari has openly acknowledged that “while balancing accuracy with the scope of damage, right now we’re focused on what causes maximum damage.” Shortly after “the second Holocaust” Israeli president Isaac Herzog said of the Palestinians that “it is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” further encouraging the Zionist army to engage in illegal acts of collective punishment.

    Minister of Agriculture and former Shin Bet director Avi Dichter said nonchalantly on television that yes, the IDF was carrying out a second Nakba in Gaza. Addressing the nation, Netanyahu’s appeal that “you must remember what Amalek has done to you” was an open messianic call to genocide.

    (Netanyahu has referred to Iran as a country ruled by “fanatics,” denouncing Tehran’s “terror tentacles” and “murderous nature.” Does the Iranian military routinely bomb their neighbors? Does Tehran persecute Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian Iranians? Do they destroy non-Shia houses of worship? Do they, like ISIS, refuse to formally declare their borders?)

    Ayelet Shaked (of fascism perfume fame) has reiterated this call for ethnic cleansing, saying that Khan Younis should be turned into a soccer field. When asked about the Netanyahu government’s response to the events of October 7th, Likud MK and Minister for the Advancement of the Status of Women May Golan, replied:

    I don’t care about Gaza. I literally don’t care. For all I care they can go out and just swim in the sea. I want to see dead bodies of terrorists around Gaza.

    Moshe Feiglin, founder of the Zehut party, demanded “complete incineration” and for Gaza to be annihilated as Dresden was during the Second World War, while Metula Mayor David Azoulai called for Gaza to be razed and turned into an open-air memorial like the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

    Eliyahu Yossian, veteran of the Military Intelligence Directorate Unit 8200, has echoed this drumbeat of Hitlerian bloodlust demanding that a war of extermination be unleashed on the people of Gaza:

    Because the woman is an enemy, the baby is an enemy, the first grader is an enemy, the Hamas militant is an enemy, and the pregnant woman is an enemy.

    American Zionists spew no less venomous rhetoric, with RFK Jr. saying that “The Palestinian people are arguably the most pampered people by international aid organizations in the history of the world,” and former State Department official Stuart Seldowitz saying to a Manhattan halal food cart vendor in November that “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough.”

    Genocidal words, if left unchecked, inevitably spawn genocidal deeds.

    All of this satanic language has trickled down to the Israeli rank and file leading to a number of extremely violent ultra-nationalist songs (see here, here, and here). In Ness and Stilla’s hit “Harbu Darbu,” an appalling display of Zionist death music, and which is currently one of the most popular songs within the settler colonial entity (the YouTube video has more views than the population of Israel), the barbarian hip hop artists refer to Hamas militants as “rats getting out of the tunnel” and Palestinians as “sons of Amalek.”

    The song, which one might categorize as “genocide drill,” and which is oozing with a glorification of the Zionist army and a total disregard for Palestinian lives, concludes with “All IDF units are coming to do Harbu Darbu on their head.” (“Harbu Darbu” comes from Arabic, translates as “swords and strikes,” and is used as slang in modern Israeli Hebrew to mean “hellfire” or “raining hell on one’s enemy.”)

    Cogitate upon this for a moment, gentle reader: do these people seem even remotely sane, let alone capable of “fighting extremism?”

    There have also been an array of despicable videos and social media posts where Zionists mock the suffering of Palestinians (see here, here, and here), further demonstrating the fascistic nature of Israeli society, how malleable people can be, and how easily the masses can be ideologically molded by their teachers, leaders, and the mass media. An eight-year-old is an innocent victim (who Ness and Stilla were not that long ago), but the elementary school student becomes a junior high school student, the junior high school student becomes a high school student, who then graduates and is not a child any more. All too often, the dogma that is instilled by ideologues who prey on the innocent and vulnerable leaves an indelible mark. As Yeats once penned in “The Second Coming:”

    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned

    Israelis often join the military at eighteen where they can be even more brainwashed. For most Americans, they go to college and have their minds warped by any number of depraved cult ideologies: Zionism, anti-white jihad, humanitarian interventionism and American exceptionalism, radical feminism (an anti-love cult contemptuous of due process), unfettered capitalism and biofascism.

    (In a feminism meets Zionism moment, Mia Schem, who was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7th and later returned to the entity in a prisoner exchange, said that a Hamas man guarding her raped her “with his eyes.” Do Israeli fighter pilots drop imaginary bombs from imaginary planes?)

    In the end, those who are promised Elysium and the coming of the Messiah meet their doom. Zionism destroys its acolytes as ethical human beings and has made Jews less safe, initially in the Muslim world, and more recently in Europe. (Israeli intelligence applauds these developments, as it fuels aliyah, or Jewish colonization of Palestine). Anti-white jihad has made millions of Americans of color and immigrant youth illiterate while rendering them ghettoized and unassimilable. Humanitarian interventionism has eviscerated the United States morally and economically while jeopardizing the rule of law. The cult of Bandera has obliterated Ukraine culturally, morally, and economically and has taught Ukrainians to feel the deepest hatred for those they once regarded as their brothers: Russian speaking Ukrainians and Ukrainians of ethnic Russian origin. Biofascism destroys the souls of doctors, nurses, and biomedical researchers; while radical feminism debases girls and young women by encouraging them to “cast off the shackles of the patriarchy” through either embracing promiscuity or shunning men altogether, and by severing the connection between sex and love. Just as the Zionist is the greatest anti-Semite, the Feminisis mujahid is the greatest misogynist.

    Unlike the gullible Western masses, the Global South is not buying NATO propaganda with regards to the Russo-Ukrainian War, and in the “third world” there is considerable awareness that Washington’s attempts to turn Ukraine into a Banderite battering ram with which to destabilize Russia is at the root of the conflict.

    Nevertheless, the outpouring of anger felt by millions in the West regarding the savagery being unleashed by the Zionist entity is emblematic of the fact that Westerners are not inherently evil, per se, and that when they are educated on an important issue a significant percentage will embrace light over darkness. With Ukraine this has not happened due to the fact that only a minuscule percentage of Westerners – especially in the United States – have any understanding of the basic chronological sequence of events that led to this terrible war in the first place. Moreover, in contrast with “the Middle East’s only democracy,” Ukrainian nationalists are kept as far as possible from the mass media, although they say similarly deranged things to their domestic audience.

    In all likelihood Washington will continue to support extremist ideologies and fuel sectarian hatreds. Indeed, as imperialism and anti-white jihad foment racism, and multiculturalism and radical feminism fan the flames of sexism, tribalism, and atomization Zionism fans the flames of anti-Semitism. This is by design.

    Support for the Banderite junta has isolated Washington and tarnished its already dubious credibility, while the unmitigated support shown for the Zionist entity’s genocidal onslaught has eradicated what little moral authority the American ruling establishment had left, especially in the Middle East. Domestically, the decision to scrap their national identity in favor of a Neronian Tower of Babel devoid of trust, tradition, a common value system, and solidarity bolsters their power in the short term, but threatens their long-term viability, underscoring the fact that at home and abroad sectarianism remains Washington’s deadliest, yet most self-destructive, weapon.

    The post Washington’s Unconditional Support for Israel Mirrors its Unconditional Support for Sectarianism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Budget Deal Ensures Bombs Will Keep Dropping While Fewer Human Needs Are Met

    Every year, Democrats in Congress use an implicit threat to keep fiscal extremists in the Republican Party from gutting the safety net: cuts to the military budget. And every year, they back off that threat. The resolution, every time, is a growing military budget. This year, congressional leadership in the House and Senate have negotiated a budget with domestic spending — everything from public…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Imperialism and anti-imperialism collide in Ukraine (Part 1 of 16)

    Yeah, because investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea. You should feel the same.

    — Congressman Dan Crenshaw

    Premise

    Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell introduce their book, Hiroshima in America, with this imposing statement, “You cannot understand the twentieth century without Hiroshima.” Equally, we cannot understand the twenty-first century without knowing why Russia intervened in Ukraine.

    Introduction

    U.S. proxy war with Russia by way of Ukraine is intensifying and maybe reaching a critical mass for direct war. Despite its military intervention, Russia was not seeking confrontation with the United States—no casus belli. Nor was Russia the one who started the slide towards near-direct hostilities—the United States did. To stress a cardinal point from the onset, the conflict in Ukraine cannot be discussed cogently without addressing the two factors that propelled it: U.S. imperialist and hegemonic agendas.

    Prime Minister Victor Orban of Hungary, a NATO country, clearly understood the situation. He explicitly pinpointed to the U.S. feverish drive for a military faceoff with Russia. He said, “The United States has not given up its plan to squeeze everyone, including Hungary, into a war alliance, to go with the crowd”. Orban’s “war alliance” remark is the key to decode U.S. intentions.

    While engaging in extremist anti-Russian policies and despite all fanfare, the United States is surely worried to engage Russia in a direct war. Inducing others to sanction, isolate, or fight a proxy war before moving to the next phase is a convenient U.S. strategy to intensify anti‑Russian punitive measures. Depleting Russia’s conventional military resources, test its weapon systems, and uncover its strategic assets are just a few examples of such measures.

    So far, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and other Western vassals, have been pouring billions of dollars and advanced weapons in support of the fascist Ukrainian regime. What the United States appears to be hoping for is a direct WWII-style war pitting various European national armies against Russia. In such scenario, the United States would be the overseeing godfather of war but without directly involving its own military.

    Even so, with stakes so high and dangers so explosive, an expanded U.S. war against Russia via some European states does not come without potential perils to the hyperpower. Now, by taking into account the steady flow of weapons to Ukraine, never-ending sanctions on Russia, and the decision to avoid nuclear confrontation, the United States seems betting on long ball tactics to weaken Russia through protracted pan-European war of attrition.

    On the subject of U.S. role in Ukraine, Donald Trump externalized the inner thinking of the ruling establishment when he stated that Ukraine is “A European problem”. Trump’s assessment is not as simple as it sounds. Was he proposing that the United States should stay away from what he called European problems because Ukraine is geographically European and, therefore, Europe should be in charge of resolving the conflict? How does Russia fit in this scheme anyway since it is partially located in Europe?

    If this is a “Trumpian continental doctrine”, then one may ask, why is the United States not leaving the Taiwan issue, for example, to be resolved by Asia— or, congruently, by China and Taiwan without interference by outsiders? Because the issue that Trump raised is not about “continental responsibility”, then what hides behind his remark—especially knowing that with its 750 military bases in at least 80 countries, geography was never a barrier to its interventionist actions anywhere in the world?

    Trump is an open book. He obliquely put forward the insidious idea that NATO governments should be the ones fighting Russia on behalf of the United States. Trump, a hyper-supremacist demagogue, and a know-it-all charlatan glossed over a fundamental fact of modern wars: geographic location of an armed conflict is utterly unimportant. Proving this point, U.S. imperialist wars against Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Libya are just a few known examples whereby geography posed no appreciable logistical hindrance.

    Contrary to U.S. and European propaganda, the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine is neither a European nor an American problem. By strict logic and on technical ground, it cannot be but a bidirectional affair tying two adversaries (Russia and Ukraine) in a violent struggle to untie tangled geodemographic and territorial issues, as well as legitimate Russian security concerns relating to NATO’s planned expansion to Russia’s borders.

    Logic and technicalities could surely elucidate many things. But they cannot dialectically explain why Russia moved into Ukraine in that particular point in history. Regardless of timing, Russia’s intervention was not sudden, was not an invasion, and was not aggression. Rational thinking and pertinent analysis of the events leading to the conflict cannot support counter-arguments to the opposite. As such, the conflict cannot be reduced artificially to geodemography and inter-state contentions. Something else exceedingly larger than Donbass and Ukraine must have been smoldering under the ashes—what is it?

    The day after Russia crossed into Ukraine was a scene without equal. The United States, or by antonomasia, the top aggressor, warmongering, and interventionist power in history, mobilized its massive propaganda outlets to inveigh against Russia—dubbed as invader, criminal, and aggressor. Within just a few hours, manufactured pandemonium followed. Russia was put inside the bull’s-eye and targeted for cancellation.

    American planners took two bellicose steps to antagonize Russia and worsen confrontation. First: they embraced the Zelensky’s regime (successor to the stridently anti-Russian regime of Petro Poroshenko) in spite of its fascist stance toward Russians and Russia. U.S. propagandists called that embracement “solidarity” with Ukraine and love for its “democracy”. Second: they circulated the illusion that Ukraine, with the U.S. and NATO’s help, could defeat Russia.

    I discussed the first step below. As for the second step, because the United States well knew that Ukraine is incapable of defeating Russia, why keep selling the illusion that it could? The grandstanding plan behind the U.S. ruse is perceptible: to keep the war going by putting U.S. and NATO’s military resources at the side of Ukraine, not much as a fighting force, but as a supplier of money, weapons, and training. Considering Russia’s formidable military history, it is unlikely that heavy Western involvement has any chance of turning the tables on the predictable outcome of war.

    That did not stop U.S. war planners from adjusting aims and tactics. In no time, the Afghan model was ready for re-use: a proxy war while inundating Ukraine with empty slogans of pending victory. But that model has no chance of succeeding in Ukraine. There is a fundamental difference between the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and that of Russia in Ukraine. Leonid Brezhnev intervened in Afghanistan to support its communist government, not to alter its borders or resolve ethnical and territorial disputes. The distinction is important. It meant that Russia could have left Afghanistan at will if circumstances were to change—this is what Gorbachev did in 1989. He withdrew all Soviet forces. Conversely, Vladimir Putin intervened in Ukraine for reasons that go way beyond Donbass or the future of ethnic Russians living in Ukraine.

    As for the first step; i.e., the American embracement of the Ukrainian regime, by history and by imperialistic tradition, the United States has never been in the business of solidarity. Solidarity in the American lexicon of imperialism is a meaningless term—except when the U.S. is executing a plan but is pretending otherwise. What matters to the U.S. is the consolidation of geopolitical and strategic gains—even if their action could result in the destruction of the country they purport to help. Observation: U.S. interventions in WWI and WWII do not fit the solidarity model. They were no more than an opportunity to implement hegemonic agendas in Europe and the world. Confirming this is the fact that in both wars, the United States had joined just toward the end of hostilities.

    Are U.S. aggressive actions against Russia due to concerns for Ukraine’s territorial integrity or love for Ukrainians? Knowing the voluminous record of U.S. military interventions and rationalizations thereof, the answer is no. As it stands, Russia’s intervention offered the United States the opportunity to confront it for purposes unrelated to the Ukrainian events.

    Further, the U.S. claim of solidarity with Ukraine because of Russian “aggression” is dishonest at best. Solidarity cannot be selective. For a claim to be valid, the claimant [United States] must prove that its opposition to aggressions is: (a) rooted in its history, conduct, and ethics; and (b) based on principles thus applied universally. With regard to those elementary requirements, the United States would not only be unable to satisfy but also would fail to prove the contrary.

    U.S. propaganda is a gargantuan super-machine that U.S. doctrinaires of empire shape it according to needs.  It does not matter if one points to its duplicity, multiple standards, false claims, misinformation, accusations, mirror politics, hypocrisy, projection, and so on. Take. for example, the U.S. propagandistic usage of the aggression concept. The ideologues of U.S. hegemony routinely dub their interventions as “legitimate”, in defense of things such as “values”, “freedom”, “human rights”, fend off “dangers to the security of the hyper-imperialist state”, and all similar memorized recitations. The flip of the coin is predicable: they call interventions by others “aggressions”, “breach of international law”, and so on. All such fancy rigmaroles are manipulative tactics to subvert facts thus creating favorable conditions for intervention.

    To refute U.S. claims that it is helping Ukraine resisting “aggression”, consider the example of Palestine. Briefly, no example could ever top how the United States is treating Israeli aggressions against all Arab states—the latest of which is the genocidal assault on Gaza. Known Facts: Israel, an illegal settler state created by Britain and United States on Palestinian lands, has been attacking—with impunity—many Arab countries for decades. Yet, the “virtuous and peace-loving” Zionist-controlled United States and the hypocrite West always reacted with criminal indifference.

    It is public knowledge that U.S. imperialists not only condone Israel’s aggressions under the rubric that Israel has “the right to defend itself”, but also brag about their infatuation with the Nazi “Zionist miracle”. (The ongoing Palestinian genocide at the hands of Israel and the United States consequent to the Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas attacking Israel on October 7, 2023 goes beyond the scope of this work.).

    Other examples are significant. India and Pakistan have been having countless skirmishes and wars since 1947. One such war was India’s campaign to partition Pakistan. In 1971, India severed East Pakistan from West Pakistan to create Bangladesh. The “virtuous and peace-loving” U.S. and the West reacted by siding with India. In 1982, Margaret Thatcher sent her navy 8000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to attack Argentina after this country tried to recover its Malvinas Islands (occupied by colonialist Britain during the 18th c.). The “virtuous and peace-loving” West remained indifferent. In that occasion, and while the United States publicly feigned neutrality, Ronald Reagan said,” Give Maggie enough to carry on…”, and Alexander Haig added, “We are not impartial.”

    Is the argument that the United States is determined to confront Russia for purposes unrelated to its intervention in Ukraine sustainable? Considering the antagonistic history of the U.S.-Russian relations, the answer confirms the premise. On the other hand, it is axiomatic that whether Donbass remains in Ukraine or goes to Russia is of no critical value to the physical survival of the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Poland, etc. Now, suppose that Russia would keep Donbass (historically a Russian territory despite its Ukrainian relative majority).

    Would that indicate in any way that Russia is seeking to expand its territory at the expense of other Soviet nations by force? My answer is no. Ponder on the following: before February 24, 2022 (the day Russian forces crossed over Ukraine’s international borders) Russia had never threatened any European country. Preponderant meaning: Russia’s problems are confined to U.S.-controlled Ukraine. The implication is self-explanatory:  when the U.S., NATO, Canada, Australia, New Zealand are behaving as if Russia was poised to invade other countries, we inescapably conclude that propaganda is preparing the ground for premeditated goals and mechanisms of execution.

    Could anyone tell us why U.S. warmongers are frothing like rabid dogs to fight Russia? Could we explain why Poland and Ukraine’s anti-Russian rhetoric goes beyond toxic hatred and far beyond all definitions given to Nazism? Equally, we want to know why the U.S. is pushing Japan to hone its horns against Russia. We also want to know why Joe Biden, speaking from Hiroshima, is promising to extend U.S. “nuclear umbrella” to Japan as if Russia is about to invade it?

    Three observations on Biden in Japan: (1) Biden’s disparagement of Japan was painted all over his face—he delivered his remarks from the same city that the United States had incinerated with a nuclear bomb on August 6, 1945. (2) He reminded Japan that the United States was the one who gutted its military power, but now it wants to be in charge of its “defense”. (3) He used the gimmicks of the nuclear umbrella to call on Japan to re-arm. The last observation can be validated by the fact that numerous American politicians are now calling for Indo-Pacific NATO that includes Japan.

    On the funny side of things, it is amusing to hear U.S. ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety, saying, “The arming of Russia by South Africa…is fundamentally unacceptable… [and a] deviation from South Africa’s policy of non-alignment”. [Sic]

    Could the ambassador enlighten us as how he reached the “sharp” conclusion that arming Russia is “fundamentally unacceptable”? What is the basis for such fundamentality? Specifically, why is the arming of Ukraine acceptable but not the arming of Russia? Also, what is the story with the phrase “deviation from . . .” Are U.S. imperialists keeping logs on “deviations” by foreign governments and ways to correct them?

    Further, Brigety seems implying that Russia is a weak country that needs to be armed by others in order to fight. This is disinformation. Despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia is still a military superpower and a top maker and exporter of sophisticated defense systems and offensive hardware at par with that of the United States—if not more.

    Understanding U.S. praxis for imperialist control

    U.S. strategy for world domination is based on variable expediencies that change according to circumstances. Knowing all that, what is the U.S. expediency to confront Russia in Ukraine? Answer: coerce all potentially coercible countries to punish Russia—even if that could damage their national interests. But coercion thusly applied raises a question. What is the reason behind the United States pushing some countries to maintain neutrality while urging others to align with its anti-Russian campaign? Assumption: the U.S. has run out of options—its blackmail of other nations no longer works.

    For example, talking about the U.S. wanting Serbia to impose sanctions on Russia, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic complained, “Whoever comes [to Belgrade feels their] first obligation is to explain to me that I am a jerk who did not introduce sanctions”.  In a similar vein, Foreign Policy Magazine, one among many ubiquitous voices of U.S. imperialism, wonders whether “Too much pressure on African countries to condemn Russia could backfire”. Implication: the United States and allies are not leaving free breathing space for foreign governments to make up their minds independently.

    Down in the article, the writers clownishly ask, “Can the West Rally the Rest against Putin?” The psychological problem that afflicts U.S. imperialists is palpable: they invariably put themselves in a different category as in “West and Rest”. Pay attention: while the word “West” denotes geographical belonging, the word “Rest” is indistinct and can be anywhere. Meaning: the Rest is void of identity thus of value except when is being by the United States. With that, a superiority complex is established.

    Then they said, “Rally”. Rally how, one may ask? Is that through sanctions, enticement, or threats? Pay attention again: their question does not name Russia as a target for the rallying cry. Instead, it names Putin. On this subject, the United States repeatedly used this ploy (assigning culpability to specific persons) in Nicaragua, Panama, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Serbia, North Korea, China, and elsewhere. Purpose: demonize the top individuals to justify possible attack on their country.

    What does it mean when U.S. pressure on other nations does not yield results? Arguably, it is a sign that structural fatigue is fracturing the system that applies it. So, when the United States catapults all sorts of threats and sanctions against any country that deals with Russia—but no one listens except NATO vassals—, the unassailable inference is transparent: Russia’s campaign in Ukraine is finally producing irreparable fracture lines inside the American architecture for world control.

    They say history is a teacher. Among the countless things that history teaches, one is telling. At some point in their existence, marauding empires always die during their panting trek for uncontested domination. This explains why U.S. rulers always rely on lies, bribery, calls for “partnerships”, coercion, and threats as a means for obtaining consent. These contraptions cannot be other than venting mechanisms to help coping with the unstoppable weakening of the structural underpinnings of the imperialist enterprise.

    Pressure tactics aimed at forcing countries to take anti-Russian stance are so banal that they are worth mentioning. Janet Yellen, Biden’s secretary of the treasury and a vocal proponent of U.S. economic hyper-imperialism, offered a sample. She sent her Nigerian-born deputy (Wally Adeyemo) to Nigeria with the hope that a Nigerian-American might have a better chance at convincing his compatriots to “Pitch African Countries on pressuring Russia”.

    Another example is Josep Borrell, EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy. Borrell, a stiff-like-a-stone warmongering ideologue, is unquestionably confused. He suggests that the “European Union should ban Indian fuel made from Russian oil”. In other words, he is directly threatening India not to buy Russian oil or else.

    Wait a minute. We were told that in capitalism (romantically dubbed free market economy), when A sells B a commodity, then B becomes its lawful owner. Accordingly, B has every right to resell it. This is how B makes a profit: by buying and re-reselling. In effect, what Borrell wants to do is to stop the sacred totem of capitalism from working when the objective is punishing Russia. Whether capitalism works or not is not the problem. The problem is that Western officials spare no method to destabilize and inflict economic pains on countries that do not share their anti-Russian policies.

    A formula-like practice that the United States has been applying and re-applying with tenacity is contradictory dualism. Contradictory dualism, as applied to international relations, goes beyond “what I say is not what I do”, and beyond the outdated formula of “double standard”. Briefly, it is a self-given license to sell a product with counterfeit ingredients. Consider the following limited examples:

    • It defends Ukraine’s sovereignty, but it repeatedly violated the sovereignty of countless independent nations;
    • It condemns “aggressions” by others, while it is the number one aggressor in the world;
    • It prints money on cheap paper but wants the world to accept it as a universal currency;
    • It condemns so-called invasions, but it has invaded so many countries with total impunity’
    • It makes yearly lists of “state sponsor of terrorism”, while it is the top terrorist state in the history of humanity;
    • It claims that it was appalled by crimes of Nazi Germany, but it had committed unspeakable mass murders and genocides that exceeded the motives of Nazism. The near extermination of the Original Peoples, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Eisenhower’s concentration camps for German soldiers, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Libya, Serbia, and Afghanistan are indelible examples.

    Is contradictory dualism psychological projection? Hardly. Aside from being a tool for making politically motivated decisions, it is a modus operandi powered by interventionist ideology, culture of war, and by a dangerous multi-angled system with its own peculiar legislations and laws. The model has a function. It defines the U.S. in two ways: 1) it confirms the intent to dominate as in the phrase “leader of the free world”, and (2) it presents its own system as epitome of statecraft and unparalleled progress. Is the U.S. a model for an unparalleled progress?

    It is a fact that the United States is an advanced country. But U.S. claim of greatness is a matter open for debate. A country with (a) sadistic proclivity for wars and aggressions, (b) structurally flawed financial-capitalistic and political order, (c) gravitational pull toward collapse ($26.3 trillion of foreign debt on October 6, 2023—and still counting), and (d) countless mega social problems, domestic racism, international supremacism, corruption, and degraded civilian infrastructures could never claim entitlement to exceptionalism.

    Alternatively, even if the hyper-empire is credited with excellence in every sector, that does not erase the fact that we are dealing with a criminal, lawless, and genocidal entity. Above all, U.S. advancement in medicine, technology, space research, etc., is never an alibi for violent imperialism and wholesale domination, and it is not a license to rule the world. Lastly, a parasitic superpower that exists for the sake of controlling others, to suck up their resources, and to destroy their societies for the benefit of its ruling establishment, its orbiting special interest corporations and their satellite groups cannot possibly possess the accolades it loves to heap upon itself.

    In terms of the U.S. ideological doctrines— pivoting around military interventions, coercions, and world domination—a recent statement, again by Janet Yellen, is useful. After minimizing the prospects of war with China, Yellen talked about one such doctrine when she touched on the status of the Chinese economy. Showing off a standard U.S. foreign policy smugness, she said, “China’s economic growth need not be incompatible with U.S. economic leadership”. Translation: you [China] cannot or have no right to grow your economy—if this clashes with our imperialistic economic interests. Yellen’s statement was not casual. She confirmed that in order for the U.S. to consolidate its domination, it must first dominate the modes of production and assets of designated rival states.

    To summarize, if we want to evaluate the role being played by the United States in its quasi-direct war with Russia, we need to see all relevant matters in their proper contexts and dimensions. That being said, a protracted war of attrition against Russia would be a U.S. success. It implies that the United States, using others, has managed to force Russia into a corner. It also implies the de facto conversion of U.S. indirect conflict with Russia from war by proxy through Ukraine to war by proxy through most of Europe.

    It can be argued that if things go as planned, an indirect U.S. war with Russia through NATO proxies would act as a self-restraining mechanism. Said differently, the United States would protect itself by not engaging Russia face to face. As I stated earlier, a direct conventional American-Russian war could easily turn into nuclear exchange. Again, the logic of such an exchange leaves no space for doubt—destruction for all. Clue: while the United States could care less if Russia is annihilated to the finite particles, it is certainly unwilling to accept its own annihilation.

    Related to the preceding, seizing on the opportunity offered by Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, the United States swiftly dusted off decades-old anti-Russian agendas. And, just like that, in the blink of an eye, U.S. rulers turned Ukraine into a daily show and Russia into an existential threat. Seeing the magnitude of the United States involvement in Ukraine, there is no denying that it is looking for any possible way to degrade Russia’s military capabilities by prolonging the war and ruining its economy through sanctions and restrictions on foreign trade. In short, there can be no objective other than weakening Russia to the point of provoking its collapse.

    At this time, a dilemma sets in: Russia won’t collapse and the U.S. won’t give up. Is that stalemate before the conflagration? What comes next? In a tweet on X, retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor gives a straightforward answer. He stated, “We have sent almost all of our war stocks, weapons systems and ammunition to Ukraine. We don’t have a great deal left. The war in Ukraine is lost. Make Peace you fools!” Would his exhortation find recipients?

    Now, considering the objectives of all forces involved in Ukraine, the first line of enquiry should focus on making questions and trying to come up with some answers. For example,

    How Russia’s move into Donbass has changed the rules of engagement with the hyper-imperialist superpower of the United States? Was that move really about Donbass or about the fate of the Russians living in the region—or something else? Is NATO expansion a real problem for Russia? How did it happen that most of NATO countries are aligned behind the United States knowing that post-Soviet Russia never threatened them? Is Ukraine joining NATO a big deal? Why does the U.S. want to preserve NATO as an organization? Why is France (who never won a war as an empire or as a republic) waving its sword at Russia? Why is the United States instigating India against Russia and China? What is the story with Japan’s revanchism and belligerence vs. Russia? Why is the United States pushing for expanding NATO to the East Pacific? Have Russia’s post-Soviet accommodating policies with the U.S. come back to haunt it? Can Russia explain its many foreign policy blunders—especially in taking the side of U.S. imperialism on critical international issues? Are Israel and American Zionists playing any role in the conflict? Does Israel, via the power of the United States, have any specific interest in Ukraine? Where does China stand on this war? Where do the American people stand on the issue of U.S. imperialism and quest to dominate the world? Does that matter anyway? Is the culture of war and violence programmed so deep inside the collective American psyche that it is hard to eradicate?  Are fascism, militarism, Zionism, ignorance, and MAGA style political illiteracy driving U.S. hyper-imperialist foreign policy and wars? Is it true that the U.S. wants to dominate the world? Is Russia fighting to end U.S. hegemonic control of the planet, or solely interested in preserving its rights as a sovereign nation? Where do antiwar activists stand on the issue of war in Ukraine? Why is Russia kowtowing to the fascist settler state of Israel, while this effectively is supporting U.S. proxy war in Ukraine? Is the conflict in Ukraine about imperialism vs. anti‑imperialism? Is Russia an anti-imperialist state?

    Next: Part 2 of 16

    The post Imperialism and anti-imperialism collide in Ukraine (Part 1 of 16) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Why NZ should join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel

    COMMENTARY: By John Minto

    Two years ago New Zealand joined 22 other countries in supporting the Ukrainian case against Russia at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its invasion of Ukraine.

    We sent a legal team to The Hague where the ICJ is based and our representatives spoke directly to the court on New Zealand’s behalf. We used international law to argue the Russian invasion was illegal and warranted sanction by the ICJ.

    Successive New Zealand governments for as long as I can remember have said we believe in an “international rules-based order” of which the ICJ and the ICC are an important part.

    This makes sense because we are a small country without the economic or military clout to take unilateral action to protect our interests. Like other small countries we rely on international rules to provide a measure of protection when bigger countries, like Russia in this case, break the rules.

    We have used such rules ourselves by making applications to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) when our trade interests have been threatened. Without such rules the biggest bully will win every time.

    Last week South Africa filed papers at the ICJ alleging Israel’s actions in Gaza over the past 12 weeks amount to genocide.

    South Africa said it “is gravely concerned with the plight of civilians caught in the present Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip due to the indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants”.

    It described its case saying “acts and omissions by Israel . . .  are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent . . .  to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group”.

    Their court papers go on to claim that, “the conduct of Israel — through its state organs, state agents, and other persons and entities acting on its instructions or under its direction, control or influence — in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, is in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention”.

    Australian protesters against Israel's genocide in Gaza
    Australian protesters against Israel’s genocide in Gaza in Rundle Mall, Adelaide. Image: David Robie/APR

    This case is important because Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and South Africa are all signatories of the Genocide Convention and are bound to abide by any decision made by the court.

    The most important part of South Africa’s case is its application for an interim injunction to stop Israel’s indiscriminate killing immediately. If this interim injunction is successful it could put in place an immediate ceasefire to end the war and Israel’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinians.

    It would allow unfettered humanitarian aid to enter Gaza where the need for food, water, fuel, medicine and vaccinations is desperate.

    This is the outcome the majority of people in New Zealand, and across the world, want to see. New Zealand should back up the South African case which is most likely to get a first hearing on January 11.

    Those who have been paying attention will not be surprised at claims of genocide.

    Genocide always begins with words and there is a wealth of reporting on the dehumanising language being used by Israel’s political and military leaders to set the scene for what has followed.

    For example, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said “it is an entire nation out there that is responsible”, and two days after the attack Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant spelt out genocidal intentions saying:

    “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.”

    Israelis more generally have taken up this talk across social media with calls for Gaza to be “flattened,” “erased” or “destroyed”. More tragic is a social media post showing Israeli children singing “we will annihilate everyone” in Gaza.

    Israel’s Defence Minister’s statement matches the UN Convention closely to the point where Israeli scholar of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Raz Segal, has described Israel’s rhetoric and actions as “a textbook case of genocide”.

    It is clear Israel’s political and military leaders have a case to answer before the International Court of Justice, just as Russia does for its invasion of Ukraine.

    As well as backing South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice we should also call for a swift, well-resourced International Criminal Court investigation into war crimes committed in the October 7 attack on Israel and the Israeli response.

    This investigation should include examining the crimes of genocide and apartheid.

    Palestinians deserve our support as much as the people of Ukraine.

    John Minto is the national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by The Post and is republished with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Why NZ should join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel

    COMMENTARY: By John Minto

    Two years ago New Zealand joined 22 other countries in supporting the Ukrainian case against Russia at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its invasion of Ukraine.

    We sent a legal team to The Hague where the ICJ is based and our representatives spoke directly to the court on New Zealand’s behalf. We used international law to argue the Russian invasion was illegal and warranted sanction by the ICJ.

    Successive New Zealand governments for as long as I can remember have said we believe in an “international rules-based order” of which the ICJ and the ICC are an important part.

    This makes sense because we are a small country without the economic or military clout to take unilateral action to protect our interests. Like other small countries we rely on international rules to provide a measure of protection when bigger countries, like Russia in this case, break the rules.

    We have used such rules ourselves by making applications to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) when our trade interests have been threatened. Without such rules the biggest bully will win every time.

    Last week South Africa filed papers at the ICJ alleging Israel’s actions in Gaza over the past 12 weeks amount to genocide.

    South Africa said it “is gravely concerned with the plight of civilians caught in the present Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip due to the indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants”.

    It described its case saying “acts and omissions by Israel . . .  are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent . . .  to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group”.

    Their court papers go on to claim that, “the conduct of Israel — through its state organs, state agents, and other persons and entities acting on its instructions or under its direction, control or influence — in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, is in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention”.

    Australian protesters against Israel's genocide in Gaza
    Australian protesters against Israel’s genocide in Gaza in Rundle Mall, Adelaide. Image: David Robie/APR

    This case is important because Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and South Africa are all signatories of the Genocide Convention and are bound to abide by any decision made by the court.

    The most important part of South Africa’s case is its application for an interim injunction to stop Israel’s indiscriminate killing immediately. If this interim injunction is successful it could put in place an immediate ceasefire to end the war and Israel’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinians.

    It would allow unfettered humanitarian aid to enter Gaza where the need for food, water, fuel, medicine and vaccinations is desperate.

    This is the outcome the majority of people in New Zealand, and across the world, want to see. New Zealand should back up the South African case which is most likely to get a first hearing on January 11.

    Those who have been paying attention will not be surprised at claims of genocide.

    Genocide always begins with words and there is a wealth of reporting on the dehumanising language being used by Israel’s political and military leaders to set the scene for what has followed.

    For example, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said “it is an entire nation out there that is responsible”, and two days after the attack Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant spelt out genocidal intentions saying:

    “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.”

    Israelis more generally have taken up this talk across social media with calls for Gaza to be “flattened,” “erased” or “destroyed”. More tragic is a social media post showing Israeli children singing “we will annihilate everyone” in Gaza.

    Israel’s Defence Minister’s statement matches the UN Convention closely to the point where Israeli scholar of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Raz Segal, has described Israel’s rhetoric and actions as “a textbook case of genocide”.

    It is clear Israel’s political and military leaders have a case to answer before the International Court of Justice, just as Russia does for its invasion of Ukraine.

    As well as backing South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice we should also call for a swift, well-resourced International Criminal Court investigation into war crimes committed in the October 7 attack on Israel and the Israeli response.

    This investigation should include examining the crimes of genocide and apartheid.

    Palestinians deserve our support as much as the people of Ukraine.

    John Minto is the national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by The Post and is republished with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Belarusian president signs law granting him lifelong immunity from prosecution

    Alexander Lukashenko’s law also bars exiled opposition leaders from standing in presidential elections

    The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has signed a new law granting him lifelong immunity from criminal prosecution and preventing opposition leaders living in exile from running in future presidential elections.

    The law theoretically applies to any former president and members of his or her family. In reality, it is only relevant to the 69-year-old Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for almost 30 years.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • FEC Filing Shows AIPAC Made Record Donations to Congress in November

    The American Israel Public Affairs Committee delivered more than $3.7 million in November to the campaigns of U.S. lawmakers, the most it has ever doled out in a single month, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been working to convince members of the U.S. Congress to send more aid to Israel for its war against…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Putin Names Russia’s Real Enemies

    Putin names Russia’s real enemiesRussian President Vladimir Putin meets with participants in the special military operation at Vishnevsky Central Military Clinical Hospital in Moscow, Russia. ©  Sputnik/Kristina Kormilitsyna

    Ukraine is a mere tool in the hands of the collective West which is using it to fight Russia, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday. He was speaking at a military hospital in Moscow where he met servicemen wounded during the ongoing conflict.

    Asked about the enduring Western support for Kiev, the president said the elites of the collective West were actually the true enemy of Russia, rather than Ukraine itself.

    “The point is not that they are helping our enemy, but that they are our enemy. They are solving their own problems with [Ukraine’s] hands, that’s what it’s all about,” Putin stated.

    The conflict between Moscow and Kiev was orchestrated by Western elites, who seek to defeat Russia, he suggested. However, the collective West has been unable to achieve its goals, with the failure already showing in the change of its rhetoric on the conflict, the president explained.

    Those who only yesterday were talking about the need to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia are now looking for words on how to quickly end the conflict.

    “We want to end the conflict too, and as quickly as possible, but only on our terms. We have no desire to fight forever, but we are not going to give up our positions either,” Putin said.

    The battlefield situation is now changing, despite all the aid Kiev has received from the West, the president observed. Russia has been effectively outproducing the entire Western alliance militarily, he suggested, with the country’s output destined to grow even further.

    “Despite the fact that from time immemorial [the West] has had such a goal – to deal with Russia, it looks like we will deal with them first,” Putin stated.

    “You probably see it on the battlefield that they are gradually ‘deflating’. When a shell flies, it is probably difficult to tell whether they are ‘deflated’ or not, but in general you probably know: the situation on the battlefield is changing. And this is happening despite the fact that the entire so-called civilized West is fighting against us,” he told the servicemen.

    According to Russia’s latest estimates, over 380,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded during the conflict. Ukraine has also sustained heavy materiel losses, with an estimated 14,000 tanks and other armored vehicles destroyed. Nearly 160,000 troop losses were during Kiev’s botched counteroffensive, launched in early June last year, Moscow claims.

    The post Putin Names Russia’s Real Enemies first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Amoral Compass: Palantir and its Quest to Remake the World

    Finance analysts free of moral scruple can point to Palantir with relish and note that 2023 was a fairly rewarding year for it.  The company, which bills itself as a “category-leading software” builder “that empowers organizations to create and govern artificial intelligence”, launched its initial public offering in 2020.  But the milky confidence curdled, as with much else with tech assets, leading to the company stock falling by as much as 87% of value.  But this is the sort of language that delights the economy boffins no end, a bloodless exercise that ignores what Palantir really does.

    The surveillance company initially cut its teeth on agendas related to national security and law enforcement through Gotham.  A rather dry summation of its services is offered by Adrew Iliadis and Amelia Acker: “The company supplies information technology solutions for data integration and tracking to police and government agencies, humanitarian organizations, and corporations.”

    Founded in 2003 and unimaginatively named after the magical stones in The Lord of the Rings known as “Seeing Stones” or palantíri, its ambition was to remake the national security scape, a true fetishist project envisaging technology as deliverer and saviour.  While most of its work remains painfully clandestine, it does let the occasional salivating observer, such as Portugal’s former Secretary of State or European Affairs Bruno Maçães, into its citadel to receive the appropriate indoctrination.

    It’s impossible to take any commentary arising from these proselytised sorts seriously, but what follows can be intriguing.  “The target coordination cycle: find, track, target, and prosecute,” Maçães writes for Time, reflecting on the technology on show at the company’s London headquarters.  “As we enter the algorithmic age, time is compressed.  From the moment the algorithms set to work detecting their targets until these targets are prosecuted – a term of art in the field – no more than two or three minutes elapse.”  Such commentary takes the edge of the cruelty, the lethality, the sheer destruction of life that such prosecution entails.

    While its stable of government clients remain important, the company also sought to further expand its base with Foundry, the commercial version of the software. “Foundry helps businesses make better decisions and solve problems, and Forrester estimated Foundry delivers a 315% return on investment (ROI) for its users,” writes Will Healy, whose commentary is, given his association with Palantir, bound to be cherubically crawling while oddly flat.

    This tech beast is also claiming to march to a more moral tune, with Palantir Technologies UK Ltd announcing in April that it had formed a partnership with the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine (OPG) to “enable investigators on the ground and across Europe to share, integrate, and process all key data relating to more than 78,000 registered war crimes.”

    The company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Alexander C. Karp, nails his colours to the mast with a schoolboy’s binary simplicity.  “The invasion of Ukraine represents one of the most significant challenges to the global balance of power.  To that end, the crimes that are being committed in Ukraine must be prosecuted.”

    Having picked the Ukrainian cause as a beneficial one, Palantir revealed that it was “already helping Ukraine militarily, and supporting the resettlement of refugees in the UK, Poland and in Lithuania.”  For Karp, “Software is a product of the legal and moral order in which it is created, and plays a role in defending it.”

    Such gnomic statements are best kept in the spittoon of history, mere meaningless splutter, but if they are taken seriously, Karp is in trouble.  He is one who has admitted with sissy’s glee that the “core mission of our company always was to make the West, especially America, the strongest in the world, the strongest it’s ever been, for the sake of global peace and prosperity”.  Typically, such money-minded megalomaniacs tend to confuse personal wealth and a robber baron’s acquisitiveness with the more collective goals of peace and security.  Murdering thieves can be most moral, even as they carry out their sordid tasks with silver tongs.

    When Google dropped Project Maven, the US Department of Defense program that riled employees within the company, Palantir was happy to offer its services.  It did not matter one jot that the project, known in Palantir circles as “Tron”, was designed to train AI to analyse aerial drone footage to enable the identification of objects and human beings (again bloodless, chilling, instrumental).  “It’s commonly known that our software is used in an operational context at war,” Karp is reported as saying.  “Do you really think a war fighter is going to trust a software company that pulls the plug because something becomes controversial with their life?  Currently, when you’re a war fighter your life depends on your software.”

    War is merely one context where Palantir dirties the terrain of policy.  In 2020, Amnesty International published a report outlining the various human rights risks arising from Palantir’s contracts with the US Department of Homeland Security.  Of particular concern were associated products and services stemming from its Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  Human rights groups such as Mijente, along with a number of investors, have also noted that such contracts enable ICE to prosecute such activities as surveillance, detentions, raids, de facto family separations and deportations.

    In 2023, protests by hundreds of UK health workers managed to shut down the central London headquarters of the tech behemoth. The workers in question were protesting the award of a £330 million contract to Palantir by the National Health Service (NHS) England.  Many felt particularly riled at the company, given its role in furnishing the Israeli government with such military and surveillance technology, including predictive policing services.  The latter are used to analyse social media posts by Palestinians that might reveal threats to public order or praise for “hostile” entities.

    As Gaza is being flattened and gradually exterminated by Israeli arms, Palantir remains loyal, even stubbornly so.  “We are one of the few companies in the world to stand and announce our support for Israel, which remains steadfast,” the company stated in a letter to shareholders.  With a record now well washed in blood, the company deserves a global protest movement that blocks its appeal and encourages a shareholder exodus.

    The post Amoral Compass: Palantir and its Quest to Remake the World first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 2023 Was a Bad Year for Joe Biden

    Polls are not a crystal ball that show us the future. Democrats learned this the hard way in 2016, when an underperformance by Hillary Clinton and the anachronisms of the Electoral College helped to deliver a surprise victory for former President Donald Trump. However, the number crunchers at FiveThirtyEight combine data from dozens of polls to create a solid indicator of political trends…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Digital Verification Unit assists United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine with reports on: Digital Verification Unit assists United Nations Independent (i) sexual and gender-based violence, and (ii) speech crimes Digital Verification  

    In 2022 and 2023, teams from the University of Essex Digital Verification Unit (DVU) assisted the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine (“Commission of Inquiry”) with reports on digital materials relevant to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), and speech crimes committed in connection with the conflict in Ukraine. For the SGBV project, which the DVU conducted in 2022, the DVU […]

    This post was originally published on Human Rights Centre Blog.

  • Democrats Are Prepared to Destroy Immigrant Rights to Fund Israel’s War on Gaza

    President Joe Biden and some Democrats in Congress are trying to make one hell of a bad deal. A recent vote for emergency military funding that would have traded extremist demands from the Republican Party on immigration for billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine failed in the Senate. But now, some Democrats have signaled that they’re willing to trade human rights for…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • How Putin’s Explanation of Why Russia Invaded Ukraine Facilitated or Even Caused NATO to Win 2 New Members: Finland and Sweden

    NATO’s having won Finland as a member is the worst blow to Russia’s national security in decades, and it wouldn’t have happened if Putin had played his cards right. This fact will be explained here:

    No one is perfect; and, as I’ve explained elsewhere (such as here) I believe that Putin’s track-record during his now nearly 23 years of being the leader of Russia is vastly superior to that of any leader of any U.S.-and-allied country during any portion of that 23-year period. However, I shall explain here why I believe that Putin’s public-relations errors regarding his handling of Ukraine constitute a major flaw in his leadership-record and produced Finland’s becoming a NATO member — and potentially the most dangerous one to Russia in all of Europe.

    The most crucial thing to understand is why did Russia actually need to invade Ukraine? The answer is very simple (far simpler than Putin’s many and confusing statements about that). Putin’s many explanations never made clear the core reason: The U.S. Government has been planning to win a WW III by blitz-nuking The Kremlin so fast that Russia’s central command wouldn’t have enough time to press the button to launch its retaliatory missiles and bombers; and therefore immediately after that blitz-nuclear first-strike decapitation of Russia, the U.S. regime would be able entirely on its own schedule to then knock out virtually all of Russia’s retaliatory weaponry and so to win WW III with perhaps only a few million dead on its side and thus, finally, at long last, possessing (at a small enough cost in American lives so as to be attractive to the few individuals who actually control the U.S. Government) full control over Russia, which is the world’s most-natural-resources-rich country — which is why the U.S. regime was so set, for so long a time, on winning Ukraine as a NATO member. And this is also the reason why Obama finally grabbed Ukraine in 2014.

    The ideal place from which to launch that blitz attack against Russia would be Ukraine, because it has the nearest border to Russia’s central command in The Kremlin, which is only 317 miles (511 km) away from Ukraine — a mere five minutes of missile-flying time away — from Shostka in Ukraine, to Moscow in Russia. A mere five minutes away from decapitating Russia’s central command. That is the real answer to the crucial question of why did Russia actually need to invade Ukraine? Putin never clearly stated it, and never focused on it; and, so, in both Finland and Sweden (and throughout Europe), Russia’s essential defensive invasion of Ukraine was instead widely viewed as being aggressive not defensive: aggression against Ukraine, instead of defensive against America (which has controlled Ukraine ever since America’s February 2014 coup there). Thus, both Finland and Sweden (on the basis of that false impression) joined NATO, and American troops and weapons will be pouring into Finland even closer to The Kremlin than had previously been the case — almost as close as-if Ukraine DID join NATO. Maybe Ukraine will be kept out of NATO, but Finland, which is around 500 miles from The Kremlin, joined NATO largely because of Putin’s PR failure regarding his invasion of Ukraine.

    Just like in chess, the way to win the game is to capture the king, in war-strategy the way to win is to decapitate the opposite side’s leadership by capturing or disabling its Commander-in-Chief. The U.S. regime had started by no later than 2006 to plan for winning a WW III instead of to use its nuclear weapons only in order to work alongside Russia to PREVENT there being any WW III. During the George W. Bush Administration, neoconservatism became — and has remained since — bipartisan in both of America’s two political Parties. The only way that this “Nuclear Primacy” strategy can even conceivably be achieved would be via a blitz-nuclear attack beheading ’the enemy’.

    Russia has in place a “dead-hand” system to release, automatically-and-instantaneously after being beheaded, its entire arsenal against the U.S. and its colonies (‘allies’), but the system can’t be tested before it’s used; and, so, whether it would function (which would require all parts of the system to function as planned) can only be a huge question-mark. Moreover: even if it would work, Russia’s central command would already have been eliminated; and, so, the dead-hand system is a dooms-day system in any case: it wouldn’t protect Russia. At best, it will result in M.A.D.: Mutually Assured Destruction. And if it fails, then Russia would lose WW III.

    America’s capturing Ukraine, which it did in 2014 by Obama’s brilliantly successful coup that he hid behind anti-corruption demonstrations on Kiev’s Maidan Square, was intended to make it possible for America to checkmate Russia by positioning a missile in or near Shostka. This was why Putin had established as being a red line that America must not cross, Ukraine’s possibly becoming a NATO member.

    On 17 December 2021, Putin buried in two proposed treaties — one delivered to Biden and the other to NATO — his demand for America and its colonies never to allow Ukraine into NATO, and he did this as quietly as possible and failed to explain to the public why Russia could never tolerate a possibility that Ukraine would join NATO. His proposed two treaties buried the entire matter of Ukraine, and mentioned “Ukraine” only once, in the propsal to NATO, by saying, “All member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commit themselves to refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine as well as other States.” He gave no hint of why Ukraine was the only nation that was singled-out to be named. Both of the proposed treaties were intended to be understood only by the recipients, not by any nation’s public. They weren’t written so as to make clear to the public what the motivation behind them was — though both of them could have been. Neither Biden nor NATO were willing to negotiate about anything in those two documents. There was just silence for three weeks, and neither of the two documents was published or discussed in the ‘news’-media. The Kremlin did nothing to facilitate access to the documents even to the press. Putin himself wanted it that way; he handled this as strictly a matter of private diplomacy, not at all of public relations, much less of helping the public to understand the Russian Government’s motivation behind the documents.

    Then, suddenly, and little reported or commented upon, on 7 January 2022, the AP headlined “US, NATO rule out halt to expansion, reject Russian demands” — every one of his demands. Putin now had no other option than to invade Ukraine to take it militarily so as to prevent any U.S. nuclear missile possibly becoming placed there — to do it BEFORE Ukraine would be already seriously on the road to NATO membership, because if he were to wait any longer, then it might already be too late — and there would then be zero chance once Ukraine would already be a NATO member.

    He invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

    He had done no public relations in order to help the publics in The West to understand WHY he invaded. His explanations seemed to have been intended to resonate ONLY to his fellow-Russians, NOT to any international audience.

    This was tragic because not only was Ukraine the MOST dangerous nation to be admitted into NATO, but the second-most dangerous nation to become a NATO member is Finland, which at Kotka is only 507 miles or 815 km. away from blitz-nuking Moscow (and that would be a 7-minute missile-flight-time away); and whereas Putin had done nothing in order to explain to their public that Ukraine was a unique and special case and that Russia at that time actually had no national-security worries about Finland, Finland’s public couldn’t see why he wouldn’t want to take their country too, now that Russia had invaded ‘democratic Ukraine’.

    As is normal for the U.S. regime and its agents, they had long been working upon the Finnish public in order to stir them to fear Russia; and polling is always one of the tools that it uses in order to manipulate public opinion in such a target-country. On 28 January 2022, Helsinki’s MTV News headlined (as autotranslated) “MTV Uutisten survey: Support for NATO membership has risen to 30 percent, opposition has clearly decreased – ‘It would be safer with the West’,” and reported:

    Opposition to NATO membership has decreased, while the position of more and more people is uncertain, according to a recent survey by MTV Uutisten. If Finland’s top management supported joining NATO, half of the Finns would already be on the side of NATO membership.

    Based on a survey conducted by MTV Uutisten, 30 percent of Finns support Finland’s application for NATO membership. 43 percent of those who responded to the survey oppose applying for membership, and 27 percent are unsure of their position. …

    The National Defense Information Planning Board (MTS) analyzed the support for NATO membership at the end of 2021. At that time, 24 percent of respondents supported applying for membership. More than half, or 51 percent, opposed applying for NATO membership.

    Since then, Russia has presented a list of demands to the West, which included, among other things, NATO’s commitment not to expand to the east. The concern for Europe’s security has been increased by the heavy military equipment that Russia has moved near the Ukrainian border.

    According to everyone, Russia’s actions are not yet so burdensome that they should apply to NATO. …

    In recent years, in NATO polls, support has typically been close to 20 percent and opposition over 50 percent.

    Based on the survey conducted now, the opposition is no longer as strong as before. In addition to the supporters of NATO membership, the number of undecideds has also increased. The difficulty of forming an accurate opinion is also evident in the comments. …

    In addition to the current NATO position, the respondents were asked whether Finland should apply for NATO membership if the top government was in favor of it.

    In this case, support for NATO membership rose from 30 percent to as much as  [NO — TO EXACTLY] 50 percent [saying that on this question they’d trust that the Government’s leaders would make the best decision on this matter]. 33 percent of the respondents chose not to answer, and 18 percent could not form their opinion.

    The majority of respondents would follow the government if it decided to join NATO.

    That was before Russia invaded Ukraine — a country that Finnish ‘news’-media had already long presented favorably against Russia and as being a victim of Russia’s opposing Ukraine’s ‘democratic revolution’ at the Maidan Square in February 2014. No Finnish news-medium existed that indicated this ‘democratic revolution’ to have been actually a U.S. coup. Finnish ‘news’-media had censored-out all of that actual history. When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Finns were therefore terrified, and the Finnish Government — right along with Sweden’s, which had similarly been worked on for decades by U.S. and its NATO agents — promptly requested NATO membership. On 16 September 2022, Gallup’s polling reported that 81% of Finns and 74% of Swedes approved of their country’s joining the NATO anti-Russian military alliance. Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, the figures had been almost the exact reverse.

    Presidential elections are expected to be held in Finland on Sunday, 28 January 2024, with a possible second round on Sunday, 11 February 2024. The leading candidate now is Alexander Stubb, who is one of Finland’s top CIA assets. In a 28 October 2023 campaign speech he said, “If I am elected president of the republic, I promise that Finland will support Ukraine as long as necessary. Ukraine is fighting for the whole civilized and free world – against oppression and tyranny. And that war it will win, has already won. Slava Ukraine! … Fortunately, Finland has now chosen its place. We are part of the alliance of Western democracies. The next president of the republic will literally be the international NATO president. … Our NATO path began to open with the Russian war of aggression. … I consider Russia’s attack on Ukraine to be the time of a new turning point in world politics.” (Actually, Obama’s 2014 coup in Ukraine was that.)

    But already, on 18 December 2023, Finland and the U.S. signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) enabling Washington to send troops there and store weapons and ammunition, up to and including nuclear weapons, at 15 locations in Finland. Drago Bosnik at South Front headlined “FINLAND’S NEW ‘DEFENSE’ DEAL WITH US EERILY REMINDS OF SIMILAR ONE WITH NAZI GERMANY”, and he wrote: “For Russia, this is particularly concerning, as Finland and Estonia, now both NATO members, are in close proximity to St. Petersburg, its second most important city.” However, St. Petersburgh isn’t actually a concern here any more than Miami was a concern when America in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis wouldn’t allow Soviet missiles to be posted in Cuba — Washington DC was the concern, and it was nearly a thousand miles farther away from Cuba than Moscow is from Ukraine. Similarly to JFK then, Russia’s worry now is how close Finland is to Moscow — not to St. Petersberg. And whereas Cuba was 1,131 miles away from DC, Finland is only 507 miles from Moscow. Putin never made clear that his concern regarding American nukes in Ukraine was the same as JFK’s was regarding Soviet nukes in Cuba — but twice as much so. If Putin had made that point clearly and often, then demagogues such as Stubb wouldn’t have been able to get the impact they did from phrases such as “Our NATO path began to open with the Russian war of aggression. … I consider Russia’s attack on Ukraine to be the time of a new turning point in world politics.” America has been the aggressor here — against Russia; Russia was by then forced, by America and by its NATO, to respond militarily, since all diplomatic efforts by Russia had been ignored by the aggressors. Just like JFK was not the aggressor in 1962, Putin was not the aggressor in 2022. Putin could easily have made that point, but he never did — he buried it in with a mess that in Western countries seemed like merely a blur. He handed the Russia-the-aggressor argument to America’s agents in Finland, and they ran with it and thereby easily succeeded to present Russia as the bogeyman, against which NATO represented safety. This was a major blunder by Putin — not just in Finland, but throughout The West.

    One might blame the Finnish (and Swedish) people for having fallen for what was actually the U.S. empire’s narrative on the Ukraine situation; but to do so would confuse the liars with their victims — the deceived public. For example: I personally submitted to all of Finland’s major ‘news’-media right after Finland’s Government expressed the intention to seek admission into NATO, arguing that to enter NATO would increase — NOT decrease — the danger to Finland’s national security, by causing Finland to thereby become targeted by Russia’s missiles (which had previously NOT been aimed at them); and all of those media refused even to reply — no questions or editorial suggestions, but simply refused to respond to or contemplate presenting a counter-argument. The Finnish public were never presented such an argument. Is that a ‘democracy’?

    Moreover: the same situation, of a widely deceived public falling into the grip of the U.S. empire and believing its lies, is widespread, not only within this or that nation. For example, on December 19th, the Danish peace-researcher and professor at Sweden’s Lund University, Jan Oberg, headlined at Dissident Voice, “How Much Longer Can Danes Snore While Their Security and Democracy are Being Stripped away and Danish Politics Increase the Risk of World War III?,” and he reported the very same trap being fallen-into by the Danes that Finns are falling into. Blaming this phenomenon on the victims, the public, instead of on the billionaires who have engineered and provided the trap (and who enormously profit from it), is simply more of the standard blame-the-victim morality.

    By this time, Putin ought to be well aware that it was a huge blunder. As I noted with concern on 28 October 2022, “NATO Wants To Place Nuclear Missiles On Finland’s Russian Border — Finland Says Yes”. His blunder was blatantly clear by that time. And I already had outlined, on 13 May 2022, “Russia’s Weak Response to Finland’s Joining NATO” and presented there a strategy to replace that weak response with a much stronger and entirely diplomatic strategy for Russia to terminate the NATO alliance. I am surprised that Putin still, even to the present day, has failed to initiate some such policy. His passivity in that regard is stunning.

    However, on 5 April 2023, since that proposed strategy wasn’t being even mentioned in the press by anyone but myself, I concluded that the time had come to lay out an alternative strategy, “Russia’s only safe response to Finland in NATO is to move Russia’s capital to Novosibirsk.” Whereas Finland (Kotka) is only 507 miles or 816 kilometers from Moscow, it is 2,032 miles or 3,271 kilometers from Novosibirsk.

    Furthermore: Novosibirsk is 2,716 miles or 4,372 kilometers from Japan (Hokkaido). And it is 2,371 miles or 3,815 kilometers from South Korea (Seoul). Placing Russia’s central command in Novosibirsk would eliminate the danger from the U.S. regime and its colonies.

    Obviously, if Russia’s capital city becomes relocated to Novosibirsk, then the Cold War (the danger that the U.S. empire poses to Russia) will effectively be ended. But Putin has initiated no new approach to addressing the problem that his own continuing blunder has largely assisted to cause to Russia’s national security.

    The post How Putin’s Explanation of Why Russia Invaded Ukraine Facilitated or Even Caused NATO to Win 2 New Members: Finland and Sweden first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Peace and Reindustrialization: Beyond Thatcher’s Trauma

    The European left suffers from a post-traumatic stress disorder that has its origins in Margaret Thatcher’s policies and does not know how to cope with it in a functional way.

    This post was originally published on Real Progressives.

  • Will Biden Cave on GOP’s Immigration Demands in Ukraine Funding Request?

    President Biden appears to be caving to hard-line Republican demands for a new crackdown on asylum seekers and immigrants nationwide in exchange for more Ukraine funding. As negotiations on the emergency funding request continue, we speak with Democratic Congressmember Greg Casar of Texas about how he and other lawmakers oppose “some of the worst changes to our immigration system in decades.”…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • UN and US efforts to stop mass atrocities have waned, activists warn

    Human rights campaigners say ‘responsibility to protect’ principle and ambition to prevent genocides have diminished

    Human rights activists say that the international community has given up on intervention efforts to stop mass atrocities, leading to fears that such occurrences may become the norm around the world.

    The warnings come on the 75th anniversaries this weekend of the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both signed in the aftermath of the Holocaust in the hope that the world would act in concert to prevent a repeat of such mass slaughter.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • UK has high rate of teenagers missing meals due to poverty, OECD says – as it happpened

    This live blog is now closed, you can read more of our UK political coverage here

    The UK has suffered a sharp decline in its performance in the latest round of influential international academic tests, wiping out recent progress, as the widespread disruption caused by Covid continued to take its toll on education, the Guardian reports.

    Yesterday, when he was being interviewed at the Resolution Foundation conference, Keir Starmer was asked by Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor of the Economist, if he could say in what way his policies were different from the Conservatives’. Starmer was able to provide a half-decent answer, but he did not entirely dispel her suggestion that in many areas the policy overlap is getting more and more pronounced.

    Today’s announcement is an admission of years of Tory failure on both the immigration system and the economy, as net migration has trebled to a record high under the Tories since they promised to reduce it at the last election.

    Labour has said repeatedly that net migration should come down and called for action to scrap the unfair 20% wage discount, raise salary thresholds based on economic evidence, bring in new training requirements linked to the immigration system, as well as a proper workforce plan for social care. Immigration is important but the system needs to be controlled and managed. But whilst the Conservatives have finally been forced to abandon the unfair wage discount that they introduced, they are still completely failing to introduce more substantial reforms that link immigration to training and fair pay requirements in the UK, meaning many sectors will continue to see rising numbers of work visas because of skills shortages.

    What that means is, if you’ve got a shortage occupation, not just health and social care workers – that might be also engineers, might also include now bricklayers – employers will still be able to recruit at less than the threshold. And yet the government is still doing nothing to tackle those skills.

    We think the Migration Advisory Committee should look at this very swiftly before it is introduced, particularly at the impact this is going to have on British citizens who fall in love across borders.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Media Holocaust Revisionism After Canada’s Standing Ovation for an SS Vet

     

    Politico: Nazi-linked veteran received ovation during Zelenskyy’s Canada visit

    Canadian House Speaker Anthony Rota (Politico, 9/24/23) said of the SS veteran, “He’s a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service.”

    Media coverage of the Canadian Parliament’s standing ovation in September for Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old Ukrainian Canadian who fought for the Nazis in World War II, has included egregious Holocaust revisionism.

    On September 22, following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address to the Canadian parliament, Canada’s then–Speaker of the House Anthony Rota introduced Hunka:

    We have here in the chamber today a Ukrainian-Canadian veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians and continues to support the troops today.

    Rota went on to call Hunka “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service” (Politico, 9/24/23). Parliamentarians of all political parties gave Hunka two standing ovations, and Zelenskyy raised his fist to salute the man (Sky News, 9/26/23).

    Then the New York–based Forward (9/24/23) pointed out that Hunka had fought for the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division, also known as the Galicia Division, of the SS. (The SS, short for Schutzstaffel, “Protection Squadron,” was the military wing of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party.)

    ‘A complicated past’

    CBC: Speaker's honouring of former Nazi soldier reveals a complicated past, say historians

    “You have to tread softly on these issues,” said the main expert used by the CBC (9/28/23) to discuss the topic of Ukraine and Nazism.

    Covering the subsequent controversy, the CBC (9/28/23) ran the headline, “Speaker’s Honoring of Former Nazi Soldier Reveals a Complicated Past, Say Historians.” In the context of the Holocaust, “complicated” functions as a hand-waving euphemism that gets in the way of holding perpetrators accountable: If a decision is “complicated,” it’s understandable, even if it’s wrong.

    Digital reporter/editor Jonathan Migneault, who wrote the piece, soft-pedaled the Galicia Division in other ways too. He said that some of the Ukrainians who joined it did so “for ideological reasons, in opposition to the Soviet Union, in hopes of creating an independent Ukrainian state.”

    That’s quite a whitewashing of the ideological package that goes with signing up for the SS, leaving out that this vision for an “independent Ukrainian state” included the extermination of Jewish, LGBTQ, Roma and Polish minorities. As far as the “hopes of creating an independent Ukrainian state” alibi, the Per Anders Rudling (Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 2012) documents that “there is no overt indication that the unit [of Ukrainian Waffen-SS recruits] in any way was dedicated to Ukrainian statehood, let alone independence.”

    ‘Caught between Hitler and Stalin’

    Toronto Star: House Speaker pays price for ignorance — meanwhile Ukraine still needs weapons

    Toronto Star columnist Heather Mallick (9/26/23) mocked Poland for wanting to extradite Hunka, whose unit massacred Poles during World War II, because “Poland has a notorious history of antisemitism.”

    Toronto Star columnist Heather Mallick (9/26/23) also used the word “complicated” to diminish Nazi atrocities, and mock the Polish government’s interest in having Hunka extradited for war crimes:

    Funny, they’ve had 73 years to ask Canada for him. It’s almost as if Poland has a notorious history of antisemitism but that’s crazy talk….

    Rota should have understood how complicated history is, how, post-Holodomor, a Ukrainian caught between Hitler and Stalin made a fatal choice.

    We can hate Hunka for that now. I do.

    But would every Canadian MP have made immaculate choices inside Stalin’s “Bloodlands” in 1943? Of course you and I would have been heroic, joined the White Rose movement, been executed for our troubles. But everyone?

    Mallick refers to Ukraine as “Stalin’s ‘Bloodlands,’” citing the Holodomor, the 1930s famine in the Soviet Union that killed an estimated 3.5 million Ukrainians, as well as millions in other parts of the USSR. Yet her link takes readers to a review of the book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, which—its own flaws notwithstanding (Jacobin, 9/9/14)—discusses the killings in Ukraine and elsewhere by Stalin and, on a significantly more egregious scale, Hitler. Acknowledging that the phrase she’s borrowing refers to both Soviet crimes and the Nazis’ genocides would have made the choice of joining the Nazis seem rather less sympathetic.

    Meanwhile, Mallick’s baffling comments about Poland erase the Nazis’ systematic killing of Polish people. Polish history has indeed been marred by horrific antisemitism, with many Polish people complicit in the Holocaust, as she glibly references; this does not erase the fact that the Nazis also murdered 1.8 million non-Jewish Poles, or negate Poland’s desire to see their killers brought to justice. As Lev Golinkin (Forward, 9/24/23) pointed out, the Galicia Division that Hunka belonged to

    was visited by SS head Heinrich Himmler, who spoke of the soldiers’ “willingness to slaughter Poles.” Three months earlier, SS Galichina subunits perpetrated what is known as the Huta Pieniacka massacre, burning 500 to 1,000 Polish villagers alive.

    The non-Nazi SS

    Politico: Fighting against the USSR didn’t necessarily make you a Nazi

    Keir Giles (Politico, 10/2/23) advances the argument that joining the SS and swearing “absolute obedience to the commander in chief of the German Armed Forces Adolf Hitler” doesn’t make you a Nazi.

    An old cliché uses the analogy of gradually boiling a frog to explain how fascism takes hold in societies, but readers of Keir Giles’ intervention (Politico, 10/2/23) will feel like they are eyes-deep in a bubbling cauldron.

    Giles, who said the relevant history is “complicated” four times and “complex” twice, wrote an article entitled “Fighting Against the USSR Didn’t Necessarily Make You a Nazi.” That’s a dubious claim in a piece focused on World War II, when the Soviet Union was the main force fighting Nazi Germany, and thus fighting the Soviets made you at least an ally of Nazis.

    More to the point, the unit Hunka belonged to was a formal division of the SS, trained and armed by Nazi Germany (Forward, 9/27/23), which “fought exclusively to serve Nazi aims” (National Post, 9/25/23).

    Giles, however, opened by writing:

    Everybody knows that a lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth has even got its boots on.

    And the ongoing turmoil over Canada’s parliament recognizing former SS trooper Yaroslav Hunka highlights one of the most important reasons why.

    Something that’s untrue but simple is far more persuasive than a complicated, nuanced truth….

    In the case of Hunka, the mass outrage stems from his enlistment with one of the foreign legions of the Waffen-SS, fighting Soviet forces on Germany’s eastern front.

    Setting aside that Giles omits “and butchering innocent people” when he describes Waffen-SS activities as “fighting Soviet forces,” his suggestion that calling Hunka a Nazi is a “lie” does not withstand even minimal scrutiny. For instance, Rudling (Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 2012) documents that, from August 29, 1943, onward, Ukrainian Waffen-SS recruits were sworn in with the following oath:

    I swear before God this holy oath, that in the battle against Bolshevism, I will give absolute obedience to the commander in chief of the German Armed Forces Adolf Hitler, and as a brave soldier I will always be prepared to lay down my life for this oath.

    Vowing “absolute obedience” to Hitler, and swearing that you’re willing to die for him, makes you as root and branch a Nazi as Rudolf Hess or Hermann Göring.

    ‘Simple narratives’

    Himmler inspecting Galicia Division troops

    SS commander Heinrich Himmler inspecting troops from the Galicia Division.

    After drawing these bogus distinctions between the Nazis and their units, Giles moved on to genocide denial:

    The idea that foreign volunteers and conscripts were being allocated to the Waffen-SS rather than the Wehrmacht on administrative rather than ideological grounds is a hard sell for audiences conditioned to believe the SS’s primary task was genocide….

    Repeated exhaustive investigations—including by not only the Nuremberg trials but also the British, Canadian and even Soviet authorities—led to the conclusion that no war crimes or atrocities had been committed by this particular unit.

    Giles doesn’t name any investigations by British or Soviet officials, so it’s unclear what he’s talking about on those points, but he’s lying about Nuremberg. The Nuremberg Tribunals did not specifically address the Galicia Division (Guardian, 9/25/23), but found that the combat branch of which they were a part, the Waffen-SS, “was a criminal organization”:

    In dealing with the SS, the Tribunal includes all persons who had been officially accepted as members of the SS, including the members of the Allgemeine SS, members of the Waffen-SS, members of the SS Totenkopfverbaende, and the members of any of the different police forces who were members of the SS.

    Giles asserted that “simple narratives like ‘everybody in the SS was guilty of war crimes’ are more pervasive because they’re much simpler to grasp”—but everybody in the SS was, quite literally, guilty of war crimes.

    Heavily censored report

    Ottawa Citizen: Liberal government called on to release still-secret documents on Nazi war criminals living in Canada

    The Ottawa Citizen (9/27/23), citing B’nai Brith, reported that “the Canadian government’s approach to Nazi war criminals had been marked with ‘intentional harboring of known Nazi war criminals.’”

    The Canadian investigation Giles refers to is a 1986 Canadian government report that claims that membership in the Galicia Division did not in and of itself constitute a war crime. This conclusion is highly suspect when read against the Nuremberg tribunal’s judgment, and the report also has to be understood in the broader context of Canadian state investigations into Nazis in the country. As the Ottawa Citizen’s David Pugliese (9/27/23) explained:

    The federal government has withheld a second part of a 1986 government commission report about Nazis who settled in Canada. In addition, it has heavily censored another 1986 report examining how Nazis were able to get into Canada. More than 600 pages of that document, obtained by this newspaper and other organizations through the Access to Information law, have been censored.

    Neither Giles nor any other member of the public knows what the Canadian government is hiding about its investigation, or why it’s concealing this information, so it’s disingenuous for him to present the fraction of the government’s conclusions to which he has access as if it is the final word on the Galicia Division or anything else.

    As to Giles’ jaw-dropping complaint that people are “conditioned to believe the SS’s primary task was genocide,” the Nuremberg Trial concluded that the SS carried out

    persecution and extermination of the Jews, brutalities and killings in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave labor program, and the mistreatment and murder of prisoners.

    Perhaps the public is “conditioned to believe the SS’s primary task was genocide” because the SS carried out genocide.

    As disconcerting as it is that authors like Giles are writing fascist propaganda—and that Mallick veers perilously close to the same—it’s even more alarming that editors at outlets like the Star, CBC and Politico deem such intellectually and morally bankrupt material worthy of publication.

    The post Media Holocaust Revisionism After Canada’s Standing Ovation for an SS Vet appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • In Newly Released Letter, Ukrainian Activists Declare Solidarity With Palestine

    Our world is being torn asunder by two horrific wars. Israel is carrying out a genocidal war against Palestine, massacring and wounding tens of thousands of people in Gaza. At the very same time, Russia continues its imperialist war to annex Ukraine, killing and maiming untold numbers in the process. Instead of building solidarity between Palestine and Ukraine’s struggle for self-determination…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The media’s Nord Stream lies just keep coming

    Want to understand why the media we consume is either owned by billionaires or under the thumb of government? The latest developments in the story about who was behind the explosions that destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines that brought Russian gas to Europe provide the answer.

    Although largely forgotten now, the blasts in the Baltic Sea in September 2022 had huge and lasting repercussions. The explosion was an act both of unprecedented industrial sabotage and of unparalleled environmental terrorism, releasing untold quantities of the most potent of the greenhouse gases, methane, into the atmosphere.

    The blowing up of the pipelines plunged Europe into a prolonged energy crisis, tipping its economies deeper into a recession from which they are yet to recover. Europe was forced to turn to the United States and buy much more expensive liquified gas. And one of the long-term effects will be to accelerate the de-industrialisation of Europe, especially Germany.

    There can be almost no one in Europe who did not suffer personal financial harm, in most cases significant harm, from the explosions.

    The question that needed urgently answering at the time of the blasts was one no media organisation was in a hurry to investigate: Who did it?

    In unison, the media simply recited the White House’s extraordinary claim that Russia had sabotaged its own pipelines.

    That required an unprecedented suspension of disbelief. It meant that Moscow had chosen to strip itself both of the lucrative income stream the gas pipelines generated, and of the political and diplomatic leverage it enjoyed over European states from its control of their energy supplies. This was at a time, remember, when the Kremlin, embattled in its war in Ukraine, needed all the diplomatic influence it could muster.

    The main culprit

    The need to breathe credibility into the laughably improbable “Russia did it” story was so urgent at the time because there was was only one other serious culprit in the frame. No media outlet, of course, mentioned it.

    US officials from Biden down had repeatedly threatened that Washington would intervene to make sure the Nord Stream pipelines could not operate. The administration was expressly against European energy dependency on Russia. Another gain from the pipelines’ destruction was that a more economically vulnerable Europe would be forced to lean even more heavily on the US as a guarantor of its security, a useful chokehold on Europe when Washington was preparing for prolonged confrontations with both Russia and China.

    As for the means, only a handful of states had the divers and technical resources enabling them to pull off the extremely difficult feat of successfully planting and detonating explosives on the sea floor undetected.

    Had we known then what is gradually becoming clear now, even from establishment media reporting – that the US was, at the very least, intimately involved – there would have been uproar.

    It would have been clear that the US was a rogue, terrorist state, that it was willing to burn its allies for geostrategic gain, and that there was no limit to the crimes it was prepared to commit.

    Every time Europeans had to pay substantially more for their heating bills, or filling up their car, or paying for the weekly shop, they would have known that the cause was gangster-like criminality by the Biden administration.

    Evidence ignored

    Which is precisely why the establishment media were so very careful after the explosions not to implicate the Biden administration in any way, even if it meant ignoring the mass of evidence staring them in the face.

    It is why they ignored the incendiary report by legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh – who has broken some of the most important stories of the last half century – detailing exactly how the US carried out the operation. When his account was occasionally referenced by the media, it was solely to ridicule it.

    It is why, when it became obvious that the “Russia did it” claim was unsupportable, the media literally jumped ship: credulously reporting that a small group of “maverick” Ukrainians – unknown to President Volodymyr Zelensky, of course – had rented a yacht and carried off one of the most daring and difficult deep-sea stunts ever recorded.

    It is why, later, the media treated it as entirely unremarkable – and certainly not worthy of comment – that new evidence suggested the Biden administration was warned of this maverick Ukrainian operation against the whole of Europe. It apparently knew what was about to happen but did precisely nothing to stop it.

    And it is why the latest reporting from the Washington Post changes the impossible-to-believe “maverick” Ukrainian operation into one that implicates the very top of the Ukrainian military. Still, once again, the paper and the rest of the media steadfastly refuse to join the dots and follow the implications contained in their own reporting.

    The central character in the new drama, Roman Chervinsky, belongs to Ukraine’s special operations forces. He supposedly oversaw the small, six-man team that rented a yacht and then carried out the James Bond-style attack.

    The ingenuous Post claims that his training and operational experience meant he was “well suited to help carry out a covert mission meant to obscure Ukraine’s responsibility”. It lists his resistance activities against Russia. None indicate that he had the slightest experience allowing him to mastermind a highly challenging, extremely dangerous, technically complex attack deep in the waters of the Baltic Sea.

    Prior knowledge

    If the Ukrainian military really was behind the explosions – rather than the US – all the indications are that the Biden administration and Pentagon must have been intimately involved in the planning and execution.

    Not least, it is extremely unlikely that the Ukrainian military had the technical capability to carry out by itself such an operation successfully and undiscovered.

    And given that, even before the war, the Ukrainian military had fallen almost completely under US military operational control, the idea that Ukraine’s senior command would have been able to, or dared, execute this complex and risky venture without involving the US beggars belief.

    Politically, it would have been quite extraordinary for Ukrainian leaders to imagine they could unilaterally decide to shut down energy supplies to Europe without consulting first with the US, especially when Ukraine’s entire war effort was being paid for and overseen by Washington and Europe.

    And, of course, Ukrainian leaders would have been only too aware that the US was bound to quickly work out who was behind the attack.

    It would be telling indeed that, in such circumstances, the Biden administration would apparently choose to reward Ukraine with more money and arms for its act of industrial sabotage against Europe rather than punish it in any way.

    It would be equally astonishing that the three states supposedly investigating the attack – Germany, Sweden and Denmark – would not also soon figure out for themselves that Ukraine was culpable. Why would they decide to cover up Ukraine’s attack on Europe’s economy rather than expose it – unless they were worried about upsetting the US?

    And, of course, there is the elephant in the room: the Washington Post’s earlier reporting indicated the US had prior knowledge that Ukraine was planning the attack. That is even more likely if the pipeline blast was signed off by Ukrainian military commanders rather than a group of Ukrainian “mavericks”.

    The Washington Post’s new story repeats the line that the Biden administration was forewarned of the attack. Now, however, the Post casually reports that, after expressing opposition, “US officials believed the attack had been called off. But it turned out only to have been postponed to three months later, using a different point of departure than originally planned”.

    The Post simply accepts the word of US officials that the most powerful country on the planet fell asleep at the wheel. The CIA and the Biden administration apparently knew the Ukrainian military was keen to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines and plunge Europe into an energy crisis and economic recession. But US officials were blindsided when the same small Ukrainian operational team changed locations and timings.

    On this account, US intelligence fell for the simplest of bait and switches when the stakes were about as high as could be imagined. And the Washington Post and other media outlets report all of this with a faux-seriousness.

    Ukrainian fall guy

    Either way, the US is deeply implicated in the attack on Europe’s energy infrastructure and the undermining of its economy.

    Even if the establishment media reporting is right and Ukraine blew up Nord Stream, the Biden administration must have given the green light, overseen the operational planning and assisted in the implementation and subsequent cover-up.

    Then again, if as seems far more likely, Hersh is right, then there was no middle man – the US carried out the attack on its own. It needed a fall guy. When Russia no longer fitted the bill, Ukraine became the sacrificial offering.

    A year on, these muffled implications from the media’s own reporting barely raise an eyebrow.

    The establishment media has played precisely the role expected of it: neutering public outrage. Its regimented acceptance of the initial, preposterous claim of Russian responsibility. Its drip-feed, uncritical reporting of other, equally improbable possibilities. Its studious refusal to join the all-too-visible dots. Its continuing incuriousness about its own story and what Ukraine’s involvement would entail.

    The media has failed by every yardstick of what journalism is supposed to be there for, what it is supposed to do. And that is because the establishment media is not there to dig out the truth, it is not there to hold power to account. Ultimately, when the stakes are high – and they get no higher than the Nord Stream attack – it is there to spin narratives convenient to those in power, because the media itself is embedded in those same networks of power.

    Why do billionaires rush to own media corporations, even when the outlets are loss-making? Why are governments so keen to let billionaires take charge of the chief means by which we gain information and communicate between ourselves. Because the power to tell stories, the power over our minds is the greatest power there is.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US Arms Industry Profits From Gaza Genocide as Pentagon Budget Nears $1 Trillion

    The New York Times headline said it all: “Middle East War Adds to Surge in International Arms Sales.” The conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, and beyond may be causing immense and unconscionable human suffering, but they are also boosting the bottom lines of the world’s arms manufacturers. There was a time when such weapons sales at least sparked talk of “the merchants of death” or of “war profiteers.”…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • NATO Provoked Putin: Stoltenberg Comes Clean on the Ukraine War

    For years, John J. Mearsheimer, that seemingly ageless, if somewhat chilly presence at the University of Chicago, has been a thorn of irritation to certain establishment ideas. With his pugnacious sense of realist politics, he has little time for the sentimentality that accompanies what he calls the “liberal delusions” of power.  It’s all good to feel anguish and worry at the predations of power, but why encourage them when there is no need to?

    This somewhat crude summation only does some justice to JJM’s thought process.  But it does provide an interesting backdrop to the recent revelations regarding the Ukraine conflict, one that is falling into a horrendous, bleeding stalemate.

    In his Foreign Affairs assessment of 2014 on the Ukraine-Russian conflict, Mearsheimer throws in the usual grenades. “US and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border.”  He noted the pernicious, meddling roles played by such characters as US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, Victoria Nuland, who revealed in 2013 how the US had invested more than $5 billion since 1991 to aid Ukraine achieve “the future it deserves.”  This involved the spearheading efforts of the National Endowment for Democracy.

    As Russian tanks moved into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Mearsheimer proved unrelenting: Russia had been needlessly provoked into “a preventive war”.  While not permissible in just war theory, “Russian leaders certainly saw the invasion as ‘just’, because they were convinced that Ukraine joining NATO was an existential threat that had to be eliminated.”  The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was so enthusiastic at the views of the realistic scholar, it endorsed his 2014 Foreign Affairs contribution.

    For taking such a stance, dreamy liberal humanitarians and neoconservative provocateurs came to detest Mearsheimer.  The New Statesman would suggest that he became, as a consequence “the world’s most hated thinker.”  Anne Applebaum, in her usual neoconservative biliousness, wondered “if the Russians didn’t actually get their narrative from Mearshimer [sic] et al.  Moscow needed to say West was responsible for Russian invasions (Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine), and not their own greed and imperialism.”

    Mearsheimer was already representative of a field filled with foreboding assessments about what an eastern strategic expansion against Russia would do, warmed by the almost throwaway assurances from US Secretary of State James Baker to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990.  At that point, the still extant Soviet Union had 380,000 troops stationed in East Germany.  Baker’s suggestion: Why not remove those troops if NATO did “not shift one inch eastwards from its position”?

    The following day, Baker repeated the formula to West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl via letter: “Would you prefer to see a unified Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no US forces, or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastwards from its present position?”  Kohl had preferred to directly inform Gorbachev of his own assurance that no NATO bases would be established in the former East Germany.

    In October 1990, the US State Department concluded in an analysis that “it is not in the best interest of NATO or the US that these states be granted full NATO membership” warning against “an anti-Soviet coalition whose frontier is the Soviet border.”

    George F. Kennan’s observations seven years later are also prickly with concern.  As the father of Cold War Soviet containment, he could only see trouble brewing on the horizon were a now diminished Russia provoked.  The decision to expand NATO “may be expected to inflame nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”

    That same year, the current US President noted that, irrespective of the merits of the countries keen to participate in the alliance, an enlarged NATO would constitute the “tipping point” for Russia. His reference point then was the various Baltic States.

    A number of former US ambassadors to Moscow have also warned, at stages, about the dangers.  In 1997, it was Jack Matlock, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  At the time, the Clinton administration’s recommendation to enlarge NATO membership was considered “misguided.  If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War.”

    Eight years later, William J. Burns, then still ambassador to Russia and currently director of the CIA, shot a number of flares on the issue: “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).”

    In a February 2008 memorandum published by WikiLeaks, the assessment by Burns is stark: “NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains ‘an emotional and neuralgic’ issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia.”  Such strategic policy considerations included, among other things, a fear that the country could be “split in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.”  Concerns also abounded regarding the “impact on Russia’s defense industry, Russian-Ukrainian family connections, and bilateral relations generally.”

    What then made September 2023 special in this overview was an unusually frank admission from the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in remarks made to the joint meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) and the Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE).

    That admission concerned Putin’s unequivocal intentions to invade Ukraine were NATO to be further enlarged: “The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement.  That was what he sent us.  And was a pre-condition to not invade Ukraine.  Of course, we didn’t sign that.”

    Stoltenberg went on to pour scorn on this revealing point.  Putin demanded the “removal of our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership.  We rejected that.”  The conclusion is then indefatigably clear: “So [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.”

    In such statements, the lines between explanation, justification and wilful blindness are not always demarcated. But here we have a stunning confession that should be minted in every historical overview of a calamitous conflict that may eventually result, in some form or rather, in the very same de facto arrangements Putin demanded in 2021.  Russia will have to contend with its own problems and nightmares regarding the Ukraine War, but as such, Stoltenberg, NATO and the US imperium deserve a withering stare from history’s muse.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • $20m in home-grown tech bound for Ukraine

    Australia will provide Ukraine with $20 million worth of home-grown technology, including counter-drone systems and deployable 3D printers, as part of its latest military assistance package. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed the Australian innovation package during his trip to the United States, where he is meeting with legislators on a way forward with the trilateral…

    The post $20m in home-grown tech bound for Ukraine appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • $20m in home-grown tech bound for Ukraine

    Australia will provide Ukraine with $20 million worth of home-grown technology, including counter-drone systems and deployable 3D printers, as part of its latest military assistance package. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed the Australian innovation package during his trip to the United States, where he is meeting with legislators on a way forward with the trilateral…

    The post $20m in home-grown tech bound for Ukraine appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • Cliodynamics

    Clio, Muse of History, Charles Meynier (1768–1832)

    Peter Turchin, author of End Times: Elites, Counter-elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, (2023), is one of the founders of the new ‘science’ of cliodynamics, a discipline which coalesced in the 1990s, statistical juggling ‘facts’ from the past, stitched together from bare bones (literally) of archeology, climate, geopolitics, crimes, arrests/ executions, wine imports, lots and lots of numbers. There’s probably even a case for kitchen sinks. Think: weather forecasting. My favourite historian, Arnold Toynbee, when asked by a critic what the secret of history was, answered: Just one damned thing after another. Well, it seems Turchin has finally trumped the great master.

    We can use computers to plumb the depths of human civilization for social darwinian ‘laws’ for how societies form, how individuals develop within family and state structures. We have even revolutionized astrology, churning out detailed astrological charts that connect each of us to the planets (especially the gas giants). Just as stunning is how we can now look back at the rise and fall of civilizations and detect ‘laws’ for how and why they collapse. I put quotation marks around laws, as we all know there is no Absolute Truth, only relative truths, truths for each individual universe/ bubble that each of us lives in, only generalizations in human knowledge, even so-called science.

    Turchin was born Soviet, emigrated as a teen to the West, and as a math whiz and biologist, found the perfect niche: exploring the collapse of civilizations, in the first place his own, which he surely mourns, though his deadpan style and mordant sense of humor tempers any hint of nostalgia. Another Soviet emigre whiz kid, Dmitry Orlov has made a career out of predicting US collapse along the lines of the Soviet one.1 But Turchin’s work is more serious, dare I say scientific?

    Axioms: 1) Our main engine for civilizations is power. Power comes from force, wealth, bureaucracy, ‘soft’ ideology.

    2) Turchin doesn’t come out and say it in so many words, but the natural state of civilization is plutocracy, rule by the elite. It’s possible to keep this in check (Mamluks in Egypt) but there are always external factors that undermine the best of intentions (Ottomans with gunpowder). Democracy is no magic bullet as it is easily subverted by elites.

    Laws: 1) Revolution arises only from immiseration and elite overproduction.

    2) The iron law of oligarchy: where an interest group acquires a lot of power, it inevitably uses this power in self-interested ways.

    If whoever ‘wins’ just replaces the old elite with a new elite, this creates a wealth pump, which syphons the society’s wealth from the poor to the new elite, over time creating more immiseration and more useless elites, leading to collapse and the cycle repeats.

    3) There are only so many places for elites. When the wealth pump is active, it creates more elites and more immiseration, leading to collapse.

    4) The rise-collapse is generally in long cycles of 200+ years. (100 years for polygamy.)

    Revolutions should be a last resort. They are never pretty, and usually end up at a place no one expected or wanted. Except for the handful of conspirators that end up on top and can create a new elite before the masses figure out what has happened. Occasionally, the revolution works beautifully, at least in the short term. Russia 1917, Cuba 1959, Egypt 1952, Libya 1969, Iran 1979, Venezuela 1999. Those were the ‘easy’ ones. Then there’s China 1948, which took 20 years of hell. Vietnam, ditto. Ditto hegemon. Let’s not even mention poor Afghanistan. Or Cambodia.

    Our above select revolutions all took very different but equally nasty turns, sometimes internal (not controlling the wealth pump), all face(d) fierce efforts to undermine them by the ruling world hegemon, that have left revolutionaries bitter and disillusioned.

    Case studies

    Turchin focuses on France, where the state was flourishing in the 13th C but collapsed in the 1350s as elite factions fought among themselves and with the English, massacring each other until Henry V’s iconic battle of Agincourt in 1415 and a second collapse till 1453, as the English soldiers stayed behind for the pickings. That saw the population fall by half to 10m. The ‘good’ news was the quantity of nobles fell by 3/4, leaving room for the next cycle to begin.

    The rise-collapse is generally in long cycles. France went through cycles of 250, 210, 210 years. England had its own glitches, so its cycles are less uniform. Civil war anarchy under King Stephen 1150s, then 1315+ famine, Black Death and the (civil) War of Roses 1455+. it was able to export its surplus elites to 14th c France but they returned and then there was the peasant revolt of 1381. For history nuts, all this turbulence is heady stuff which makes great swashbuckling. Game of Thrones. Richard II deposed by Lancaster (Lannister). Turchin identified the fall of elite status by English wine imports. By the end of the War of Roses 1490, there were few wine-drinkers.

    Dynamics of rise-collapse

    Clidynamics was in fact invented in the 14th c by Ibn Khaldun who proposed cycles of 4 generations which then replace their elites, stabilized for a new cycle. But he was writing for the polygamous Muslim world, which shortens the cycle, as new elites grow rapidly and need replacing more often. And without the masses of statistics and computers, Ibn Khaldun was limited in what could be done with his insight

    Another curiosity is dynamic entrainment, as observed when metronomes, randomly started, eventually come into sync. Instabilities sometimes coincide. The 17th C English civil war, the Russian time of troubes, the collapse of the Ming dynasty. Then followed the 18th c time peace and imperial expansion, excess elite population, the wealth pump shifting wealth to the elites leading to immiseration and the rollicking 19th C.

    Of course the elephant in the room is the hegemon. Where one size is made to fit all, the Roman/British/US steamroller flattens most bubbles, making our cycles fit its cycles. Whether there is positive feedback, increasing the violent swings of rise and collapse, I’m not sure. Probably. Turchin doesn’t go that far. But it seems likely, especially when an angry hegemon and global warming are put into the same equation.

    Where are we today?

    In Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (2018), Steven Pinker is optimistic about the world, seeing a bright future of tech blessings lifting the poor out of poverty. Turchin sees our present world as one of turmoil, with far too many elite wannabees, the masses revolting. Most of Pinker’s decline in poverty since 1970 is from China. Median wages have hardly increased, the lowest wages even fell since 1970s. Numbers are easily cooked so Turchin looks at the most important ‘basket of goods’: education, home, health. Tuition has increased 10x or more; it is impossible to buy a house; life expectancy is falling most for white males 30–50 (dropped by 1.6 yrs from 2014–2020.).

    The last quasi-collapse for the US was, like in Europe, in the mid-19th C, culminating in the civil war, when US average height fell by 4+ cm 1830-1900. In the US, after the civil war, the elites managed to pull together to stave off revolution, reducing the immiseration during what’s called the Progressive era and then New Deal reforms. The elites paid for all this. The number of millionaires plummeted. Corporations paid 90% of profits to the public good till 1960. The post-WWII prosperity was based on an unwrtten contract among workers, business, and the state.

    But the next generation of elites didn’t remember. The turning point into chaos was 1980, Reagan’s ‘greed is good’ neoliberalism. The 1970s sharpened the struggle with new eager elites sharpening their knives, creating an age of discord, as the pillars of postwar prosperity were dismantled. Wages stagnated, institutions eroded. The happiness quotient has dropped from 2000 on. The wealth pump was shifting wealth to the overproduced elite.

    As in the 19th C, US height stopped increasing in 1960 (now the tallest humans are in the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany). Real wages stopped growing in the late 1970s. There is even a new term for the sharp increase in suicides among the nonelite (i.e. no college education) in America: deaths of despair. Now for women too. And the mad rush to join the elite is at fever pitch (note: cheating on entrance to elite universities).

    So it’s pretty clear that the 2020s are crisis time in the US, and all of the collective West, like dutiful metronomes, coming together in one big rave. (Nothing like war to line the dominoes up.) Immiseration and elite overproduction. Roll out the ‘red’ carpet. But remember revolution is deadly business. Look for off ramps.

    What about the tragedy of Ukraine?

    The US, Ukraine and Russia are classic plutocracies, Belarus far less so, having avoided the privatizing/looting that both Russia and Ukraine suffered in the 1990s. So no oligarchs. A benign, stable dictatorship. No collapse imminent despite lots of external shenanigans.

    Russia managed to bring the oligarchs sort-of into line. Not Ukraine, where the state is powerless over the oligarchs and fell prey to external forces (the US State Department) to govern among the feuding oligarchs in the 2000s.

    Belarus, surprise, has been the big winner. Lukashenko was elected with 80% of the vote in 1994 with the promise to keep Soviet system as much in tact as possible. No mass privatizations. No billionaires. Strong links with the military.

    The Ukraine oligarchs were never overthrown. Ukraine had a higher GDP per capita in 1990 than either Belarus or Russia, but by 2013 was less than half ($7,400 vs Russia $18,100, Belarus $16,100). All elected Ukrainian politicians just filled their pockets, divided oligarch spoils. All were western-oriented as ther stashes were in western banks, their kids at Oxford, Stanford.

    By 2014, it was run by proconsul Victoria Nuland, who came with $5b to tame the oligarchs. Ukraine had/has three ‘classes’: the masses, oligarchs and the State Department. Elections were/are a joke, so immiserated masses change leaders each time, producing only new scandals. Only the first leader Kuchma served two terms. It’s as if Turchin’s laws are working at warp speed, with elites slogging it out and masses more and more immiserated with each election, until the current collapse in war.

    Some sobering outcomes of past crises:

    1. Population declines are common—through history, half of the exits from crises resulted in population loss. Ukraine’s population has fallen by about half, like France in the 15th C.
    1. 30% from epidemic
    1. 16% with extermination of elite groups
    1. 40% with ruler assassination
    1. 75% of crises ended in revolutions or civil wars
    1. 20% recurrent civil wars dragging on for a century
    1. 60% of exits led to the death of the state. Conquered or simply disintegrated.

    1830-70 was spectacularly turbulent. All major states have had revolutions or civil wars, including the US and China. France managed to get three revolutions—in 1830, 1848, 1871. Japan’s regime felll in 1867.

    Some conclusions:

    1) Success stories: US Progressive era and New Deal, Chartist Britain, Russian reforms of Alexander II. The US and Britain avoided revolution. Russia didn’t. We can be optimistic if it is possible to shut down the wealth pump and rebalance the masses-elite division without resorting to revolution or catastrophic war. We can use cliodynamics to predict coming collapse and the policies necessary to remedy and bring the society back into balance.

    2) There is no permanent solution. Beware the iron law of oligarchy. We must constantly fine-tune the system to shut down the wealth pump and avoid unstable disequilibrium.

    • The early Russian empire was a service state with the elite serving in the army and as administrators, but the nobility subverted the tripartite compact by freeing themselves from service, turning on the wealth pump to oppress the peasants and becoming a parasitic class.
    • The Progressive era/New Deal stopped the slide down the slippery slope, but the elites turned the pump back on in the 1970s. The Democratic party by 2000 was now the party of the elite. Piketty studied hundreds of elections and found that political parties all increasingly cater to the well-educated and rich.

    3) Money allows the plutocrats to plan and then implement their plans for the long term. Only immiseration and intra-elite squabbles can undermine them. The share of income to the top 1% since 1945 was 10%, but rapidly increased after 2000. In Germany to 13%. In nice Denmark it went from 7% to 14%. In the US it started shifting in 1980 and is now a whopping 19%. In contrast, in France it is still a modest 10%.2

    We are living through a real-life experiment to see how the different strategies pan out. We all are now in the disintegrative phase of the clio-cycle, our own age of discord, entrained by multiple crises. It’s hard to just wipe out the excess elite these days, although the war in Ukraine is helping. Complex human societies need rulers, administrators, thought leaders to function well. The trick is to constrain them to act for the benefit of all.

    4) Democracy is usually a plus, but the fate of Ukraine is a stark reminder of its inherent weakness. If the elites are too greedy and too powerful, they subvert democracy through soft power, their control of the bureaucracy, and their wealth. When that fails, war.

    19th C Britain gets the Nobel prize for social change, avoiding the dreaded, inevitably violent revolution that came to France in 1871 and more fatefully, Russia in 1917. The Chartist period 1819-1867 saw a breakdown of elite solidarity, hurried liberal reforms to mitigate the immiseration of the masses, the export of surplus elites and workers by opening the floodgates to emigration, even subsidizing travel to the new colonies. There was just enough unrest, demos, riots, deaths to persuade just enough of the political elite to undertake critical reforms, repealing the Corn Laws, allowing trade unions, the vote, etc. Workers regained their physical height, lost since the rise of industrial capitalism. Britain moved from ‘a fiscal-military state to an administrative state capable of meeting the needs of complex commercial and industrial society.’3

    Sadly, Turchin doesn’t mention basic income. It is increasingly promoted by worried elites. This is surely a kind of magic bullet to deflate the wealth pump, if used in conjunction with a new resolve as in WWII, when corporations were harnessed to produce for society, and were taxed at 90+%, turning off the wealth pump. Cliodynamics provides a powerful tool to support it.

    Turchin doesn’t dwell on the Soviet experience, but there the wealth pump was directly in the hands of the state. It was stable but finally it too overproduced elites and, at the same time stagnated without democracy to keep renewing the elite in balance with the interests of society (i.e., Belarus today). His prescription is the cruder version of ‘basic income’: bringing the relative wage up too the equilibrium livel, shutting down elite overproduction.

    We now face a massive overproduction of elite wannabees at the same time as we are confronted by the need to cut back on consumption to meet external threats (climate). It certainly looks like socialism is the only way out. The most elegant and transparent mechanism to get there is the basic income and higher corporate taxes. As for excess elites, we must educate ourselves away from snobbism, find other ways to keep humans busy, engaged, developing, sans money/status.

    ENDNOTES

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The West’s double standards are once again on display in Israel and Palestine

    ANALYSIS: By M. Muhannad Ayyash, Mount Royal University

    American President Joe Biden is among the latest Western politicians to land in Tel Aviv in a show of support to Israel.

    As Israel’s primary backer, the United States has sent two aircraft carriers to the region and indicated it could deploy 2000 American troops to Israel.

    Biden was also set to meet Palestinian and Arab leaders in the Jordanian capital Amman. But Jordan cancelled the meeting after a reported airstrike on October 17 killed about 500 people at a Gaza hospital.

    In the days after Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against Israel, European and North American governments (with few exceptions) were quick to provide a unified and consistent message of support for Israel.

    That message contains at least four interconnected elements:

    • Israel is the victim of an unprovoked terrorist attack;
    • Israel has the right to defend itself;
    • The West fully stands with Israel against the barbaric and wanton violence of the Palestinians; and
    • Hamas is to blame (either partially or fully) for all civilian deaths on both sides since they began these hostilities and forced Israel’s hand while hiding behind civilians.

    Palestinians erased
    There are a few important features of this message, but I want to focus on two that highlight the West’s double standards.

    First, is the advancement of anti-Palestinian racism in the West. It is critical to underscore a salient feature of anti-Palestinian racism: the silencing of the Palestinian critiques of Zionism and Israel.

    This is a dynamic which has its roots in the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) and erases Palestinian voices, history, presence, aspirations and identity from public discourse.

    Political, media and educational institutions in the West regularly sideline and silence Palestinians and their supporters. This is not just an issue among the right-wing or even centrists, but occurs across the political spectrum.

    Left-wing politics, including progressive spaces, that purport to be anti-racist often remain hostile to Palestinian voices

    Here in Canada, a statement by progressive Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow painted a rally in support of Palestinians as allegedly supporting violence and as a threat to the safety and security of Canadian Jews. That statement is still up on her X account.

    This is precisely the anti-Palestinian narrative that has permeated in the West for years: that all support for Palestine is inherently violent and driven by antisemitic hatred of all Jews. Thus, in the name of anti-racism, Palestinians and their supporters are denounced and even criminalised.

    Differing reactions to civilian death
    Second, the double standard is on display in the reactions we have seen to the killing of Israeli civilians and the reactions — or lack thereof — to the killing of Palestinian civilians. Many are rightly highlighting Western hypocrisy by drawing comparisons to how the West responded to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

    We need to look at how Western governments have responded to the killing of Israeli civilians versus the killing of Palestinian civilians. For the Israeli state and Israeli victims, political, military, economic, cultural and social institutions have fully mobilised to provide support.

    The same is entirely absent for the Palestinians. For the Palestinians, there are no evacuations. Aircraft carriers are not sent to provide military support. Mainstream political and cultural discourse does not humanise Palestinian life and mourn Palestinian death.

    Aid relief is withheld and used as a bargaining counter. Economic support is not forthcoming. Institutions do not send Palestinians messages of support.

    In some ways, this silence is not surprising. No one expressing support for Israel risks losing their livelihood. Many who have voiced solidarity with Palestinians have lost their jobs, been rebuked, suspended and faced doxing.

    Western self-interest
    States are not moral entities, but act purely in self-interest. Palestinian freedom and liberation does not align with the interests of the US-led West.

    Therefore, Western institutions repeat the increasingly weak talking point that “terrorism” is the cause of all the violence. This talking point is used to provide Israel with the green light to unleash uninhibited violence against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Jerusalem.

    The idea that Western governments and institutions are horrified by violence against civilians rings hollow because of their silence when it comes to violence against Palestinian civilians and other groups around the world.

    For decades, Palestinians have been expelled from their land, killed and maimed in great numbers, including in mass atrocities and many well-documented cases of sexual violence and torture in Israeli prisons.

    This only scratches the surface of the violence that Palestinians continuously experience, and have experienced, since well before Hamas was formed.

    Palestinians continue to suffer what Palestinian scholars Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha have called an ongoing Nakba and genocide of the Palestinian people. Yet, when Palestinians suffer, as they are now in Gaza, what Israeli historian and expert on genocide Raz Segal has called “a textbook case of genocide,” Western governments remain silent.

    There was no Western outrage when Israel ordered more than a million Palestinians to leave their homes in 24 hours. In February, Israeli settlers went on an hours-long rampage in the Palestinian town of Huwara after two settlers were shot by a Palestinian.

    Western condemnations of the rampage were muted or non-existent.

    Hundreds of scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies are now sounding the alarm about the possibility of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

    The stories of Palestinian lives that end with the sudden drop of a bomb are not told. Palestinian voices that explain the settler colonialism they suffer remain sidelined. And Palestinian aspirations for decolonised liberation are denied.

    The West’s institutional reaction is not just hypocritical, it is an expression of where Western governments stand on the question of Palestine. The West is an active participant in the erasure of Palestine, and when moments of intensified violence like this happen, the West’s true position becomes clear for all to see.

    However, people power across the world, including in the US, provide reason for hope. Increasingly, many in the West are disgusted and ashamed by the erasure of Palestine and the killing of Palestinian civilians.

    More people are joining the protests and calling for the siege on Gaza to be lifted once and for all. More people power is needed to demand that governments do everything they can to resolve this issue, which can only begin to move towards peace and justice when the Palestinian people are free.The Conversation

    M. Muhannad Ayyash is professor of sociology, Mount Royal University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.