The tiltrotor V-22 Osprey has a plagued, bloodied history. But blighted as it is, the aircraft remains a cherished feature of the US Marines, regarded as vital in supporting combat assault, logistics and transport, not to mention playing a role in search-and-rescue missions and delivering equipment for the Navy carrier air wings.
In March this year, V-22 flights were again permitted after a three-month pause following a fatal crash on November 29 of an Air Force CV-22B off Yakushima Island, Japan and the grounding of all V-22S aircraft in early December. Col. Brian Taylor, program manager for the V-22 Joint Program Office, told a media roundtable two days prior to rescinding the ground order that a “meticulous and data-driven approach” had been used in investigations.
The approach, however, may well have been less meticulous and data-driven than a matter of desperation and self-interest, not to mention the role the aircraft is intended to play in the lighter, more agile forms of conflict envisaged by the “Force Design 2030” strategy. A feature of that strategy is EABO, known to the military wonks as Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations.
Bryan Clark, senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, offers a blunt assessment. “There’s not a clear backup for the Marines, there’s not a clear backup for the Air Force, and soon there won’t be a backup for the Navy’s [carrier onboard delivery] mission.”
The Osprey’s failures have also left their spatter in Australia. On August 27, 2023 a V-22B Osprey with 23 US marines crashed to the north of Darwin on Melville Island, leading to three fatalities. Darwin, having become a vital springboard in projecting US power in the Indo-Pacific, hosts an annual Marine Rotational Force, so-called to avoid suspicions of a permanent garrisoning of the city.
The crash also stirred unwanted memories of a previous Osprey crash in Australia, when a Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 265 failed to safely land on the flight deck of USS Green Bay on August 5, 2017. That lethal occasion saw three deaths and 23 injuries.
The Osprey has pride of place in a military force that specialises in lethal aviation mishaps during training and routine operations. Join the US Armed Forces, and you might just get yourself killed by your own machinery and practices. The investigation into the Melville Island crash was instructive to that end, showing the aircraft to be, yet again, an object of pious reverence in US defence circles.
The initial investigation into the crash was initially eclectic: the Northern Territory police, fire and emergency services, along with personnel from the Australian Defence Force and the US Marine Corps. At the time, acting assistant commissioner and incident controller, Matthew Hollamby, expressed his enthusiasm in carrying out a “thorough investigation”. “We are in the recovery phase and working closely with NT Fire and Rescue Service to assist us with a safe and respectful recovery operation of the three deceased US marines.”
Despite such utterances, it soon became clear that any investigation into the matter would ultimately be pared back. Either the servitors were not considered up to the task, or all too capable in identifying what caused the crash. In September 2023, the local press reported that territory officials were no longer needed, with NT News going so far as to claim that local agencies had been “ousted from the investigation”. The Marines had taken full reins over the matter.
The top brass accordingly got the findings they wanted from the US Marines’ official report, which involved sparing the Osprey and chastising the personnel. There had been no “material or mechanical failure of any component on the aircraft”. The crash had been “caused by a series of poor decisions and/or miscalculations.”
The squadron’s attitude to procedure had also been less than enviable, marked by a “culture that disregarded safety of flight procedures”. There had been a “lack of attention to detail and failure to comply with proper pre-flight procedures”. There had also been a “lackadaisical attitude across the squadron” towards maintenance practices. Command responsibility in not addressing that particular culture was also acknowledged, while the conduct of the Australian Defence Forces and “local nationals” in responding to the crash were deemed “admirable”.
Such reports are hardly intended as ironic, but the executive summary notes how Australian defence protocols were so developed as to enable the Marines to operate with even greater daring than they otherwise would. The ADF’s “casualty evacuation (CASEVAC) and mass casualty (MASSCAS) support structure is allowing Marine units to conduct multi-national military training events in the Northern Territories without sacrificing force requirements. Without these well-established relationships in place this mishap may have been more tragic.”
The findings should have given the then Northern Territory Chief Minister Eva Lawler pause for concern. Squadrons of personnel operating such machinery indifferent to safety would surely stir some searching questions. But NT officials, under the eagle eye of the Canberra military establishment, aim to please, and Lawler proved no different. She knew “that the US Marines will do the work that’s needed now to make sure that any recommendations out of any inquiry are implemented in full.”
In a statement of unconvincing worth, the Marines insisted that they remained “unwavering” in their “commitment to the world class training of our aircrews and ensuring their safety”. And that commitment, not to mention the type of training, is precisely what we should be afraid of.
During a week of action focused on UN potential to end Israel’s genocidal attacks, I was part of a coalition that met with twelve different permanent missions to the United Nations. We urged that if countries that are parties to the Genocide Convention or the Geneva Conventions stop trading with Israel as international law demands, (cf. the July 19th advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice), the genocide will end quickly.
In each encounter at a Permanent Mission to the UN, its staff asked if we, as U.S. citizens, have addressed our government’s unwavering support for the genocide against impoverished and forcibly displaced people.
It was a deeply meaningful moment when the Irish Ambassador to the United Nations showed our delegation a miniature replica of John Behan’s poignant statue depicting the Irish exodus – it showed weary, hungry people disembarking from a boat after a stormy ocean voyage.
“You have to see each one of these as a human being,” he said.
My mother was an Irish indentured servant first in Ireland and then in England. As things go, she was among the more fortunate. She never endured being chained day and night in the Middle Passage of a slave ship carrying captives here, or in a human trafficker’s overcrowded, lethally airless truck container. Nor did she have to cling to the remains of an overcrowded ship to keep from drowning after it capsized in the Mediterranean.
Life in Gaza is a desperate moment-to-moment ordeal of clinging to such wreckage, trying to stay above water, to stay alive, while both major U.S. political parties struggle to push you under.
In an article published by The Guardian, Israeli-American Omer Bartov, an eminent Holocaust historian and expert on genocide, lamented the unwillingness of many Israelis—some of whom are his friends, neighbors, colleagues, and even former students—to see Palestinians as human beings. He comments: “Many of my friends…feel that in the struggle between justice and existence, existence must win out…it is our own cause that must be triumphant, no matter the price… This feeling did not appear suddenly on 7 October.”
Is it futile to ask Israelis to reconsider this vengeance – avenging hundreds of civilians with several hundred thousand, half of them children – while the U.S. continues to arm Israel for the task?
Bartov continues: By the time I travelled to Israel, I had become convinced that …Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions. … the ultimate goal of this entire undertaking from the very beginning had been to make the entire Gaza Strip uninhabitable, and to debilitate its population to such a degree that it would either die out or seek all possible options to flee the territory. In other words, … as the 1948 UN Genocide Convention puts it, … Israel was acting ‘with intent to destroy, in whole or in part’, the Palestinian population in Gaza, ‘as such, by killing, causing serious harm… inflicting conditions of life meant to bring about the group’s destruction’”.
How can United States citizens cope in a nation not just gone mad on war, but gone mad on genocide? We do not have to cope with lingering, state-enforced starvation or the memory of our lifeless children pulled from under rubble. But we must cope with our complicity.
When we can, we must act.
We cannot say we did not know. The United Nations member states watch the entire edifice of international law crumble as a genocide is broadcast across our screens. Israeli military forces may have killed close to 200,000 Gazans although only 40,000 bodies have been recovered for counting. The Israeli government’s siege is starving Palestinian children and has brought Gaza to the brink of a full-blown famine. Meanwhile, polio has made a return.
From September 10 – September 30, World BEYOND War, Code Pink, Veterans For Peace, Pax Christi and other coalition partners will leaflet, demonstrate, and nonviolently act to expose and oppose Israeli and U.S. actions which flout international law. We will gather before both the United States’ U.N. Mission and the Israeli consulate demanding both nations desist from further massacres, forcible displacement, and the use of starvation and disease as weapons.
We will remind people that Israel possesses thermonuclear weapons but refuses to acknowledge this fact and thereby avoids any assessment or safeguards by the International Atomic Energy Association and any involvement in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
We will express earnest concern both for Hamas’ prisoners and the more than a thousand Palestinians incarcerated without charge by Israel, many of them women and children.
Currently, the United States and Israel have effectively decided on death for the remaining hostages rather than a settlement that would free Palestinian women and children. In a reckless bid to spark a U.S.-Iran war, Israel recently assassinated, in Tehran, the chief Hamas negotiator for a hostage release.
And still the U.S.’ arms flow continues.
Last week, the world watched as the Democratic Party leadership, at its convention, squelched voices of the uncommitted delegates. DNC speakers repeated the lie that their party was seeking a ceasefire, while flatly refusing to stop replacing the guns and missiles Israel has used to shed blood and destroy infrastructure.
We all should rely on the covenant virtues of traditional Judaism, those virtues celebrated as essential for survival: truth, justice, and forgiving love. We should appeal to secular and faith-based people across the United States as we face precarities of nuclear annihilation and ecological collapse. Securing a better future for all children requires bolstering respect for human rights, searching always for ways to abolish war.
The U.S. government is complicit in genocide, and we, in whose name it is acting, are also complicit if we remain silent.
It is time for the United Nations to liberate itself from a Security Council structure giving five permanent, nuclear armed members a vise-like grip on the world’s ability to counter the scourge of war. We must join with the call of the South African government which bravely upheld international law. We must clamor for the General Assembly to enact the “uniting for peace” resolution.
As the forthright Jewish delegate at last week’s DNC, after he and two others unfurled a banner “STOP ARMING ISRAEL”, said, “Never again means never again!”
This blog originally appeared here on Proof That I’m Alive.
A couple of weeks ago, I plunged into Lake Michigan. Unlike usual, the water felt warm. It was easy to run all the way in and easy to float over the waves. Montrose beach was crowded with families, pitching tents to keep out of the sun. Children played, laughed, and cried. Midwesterners who still hadn’t made it out into the sun crisped their pale shoulders. It would have been a perfectly relaxing day, but fighter jets circled above everyone’s heads — doing dives and turning every which way. Mothers plugged their children’s ears and I saw a baby wearing noise canceling headphones.
It was the Air and Water show — an annual proud display of American military capabilities. They are the same jets that fly over the shores of Gaza, dropping bombs on families. That’s what I thought about — it was just by happenstance that we were there watching these planes as a performance rather than in Gaza as a weapon of mass slaughter. The more places I travel to, the more I realize how much the world looks the same. People everywhere are really kind and generous — the only thing that separates us is if the stars align to have us born under the boot of the United States or not.
As the jets flew over our heads I felt my stomach sour. In two weeks, the Democratic National Convention would come to Chicago and it was a present opportunity to make clear the contradictions that kept me up at night. Once months and months away, the DNC was finally around the corner.
This week, members of the Democratic Party came from all parts of the country to convene in Chicago. They were coronating Kamala Harris as their presidential nominee, a woman no one really voted for. Even in the face of this blatant lack of democracy, the party members were elated to choose her. They carried signs with her husband’s name and applause erupted from the tens of thousands of people in the United Center when she declared that the United States would have the “most lethal military” in the world under her leadership. To the people well aware of the millions of people the United States killed in the last twenty years alone, her statement was a threat.
The week was marked by the obvious gaps between the people going into the United Center and the people outside of it.
There was a young woman that sat outside the exit of the Democratic National Convention on its third night reading the names of the children Israel has killed in the last ten months. She did it for hours, until her speaker battery died. She did it alone, taking care to pronounce every child’s name correctly and to say their age at the time of their murder. Without her, many of the DNC guests wouldn’t necessarily be confronted with the carnage members of their party is carrying out.
Outside the gates of the DNC I saw a young woman making sure the children of Palestine weren’t just numbers, and I saw people laughing at her for doing so. They laughed loudly and mocked her voice. They mocked the names of the dead babies. They yelled at her to leave them alone. They left the coronation ceremony livid that they had to even hear about Gaza.
That night was demoralizing, and it’s something I will remember for the rest of my life.
Democrats laugh at the names of dead children. They openly refuse to let a Palestinian speak for two minutes at their four day long event. They order riot cops on people protesting a genocide. They have their parties, fundraisers, and happy hours while bodies pile up. If they really didn’t think the genocide was so bad, they wouldn’t get so mad at us for reminding them. They knew that the people they were rallying behind are cheering on mass slaughter — they’ve just weighed their fun, their careers, and their vanity against the lives of 180,000 Palestinians and decided that nothing could be more important than themselves. I don’t care what they said to me, or my friends, but I hope our faces and our presence made them feel even an ounce of discomfort. In the best case scenario, I hope they went to sleep hearing the echoes of the martyrs’ names. I still foolishly hope they turn a corner at some point.
There’s a lot to be said about the Democratic National Convention. It happened in the city with the largest Palestinian population in the United States. Plenty of our neighbors here have lost dozens and dozens of their immediate and extended families and Kamala Harris took to the stage to promise her ironclad support to their executioners. Riot cops filed into the streets, prepared to use the kettling tactics they used from the Israeli military. All of a sudden, the place I call home felt unrecognizable. The air of the coronation felt heavy — it didn’t feel like home. There were points where I was with thousands of other people, chanting in unison, but still felt so lonely. Luxury SUVs carried important people into important buildings for important events. And between us and the importance, there were police with rifles strapped to their chests.
But there were also good people. Like the girl outside the convention. And the thousand of people that marched with us. And the Shake Shack worker that joined us because he had 15 minutes before his shift started. And the security that had to kick us out to keep their job but told us how much what we were doing meant to them.
In the lead up to the DNC, we spent so much time thinking about the last DNC that happened here in 1968. Protests against the Vietnam war took to the streets in small numbers, demanding an end to the war. They were met with horrible police brutality, and mass arrests with long legal battles in their wake. Our mentors from ‘68 urged us not to be nostalgic for those days. I still admire them for going face to face with the Chicago riot cops, but I’ve also taken their reflections of ‘68 very seriously — they didn’t end the war on Vietnam. Many of them feel like they could have focused more on building a sustainable movement that people could join for the long haul. The 2024 DNC in Chicago presented us a unique opportunity — we had to take this huge moment of mass mobilization and make sure our efforts and organization doesn’t get washed away when all the balloons on the United Center floor are popped, and the important people fly out of O’Hare. When the dust settles and the most powerful people in the world leave our city, how will we keep fighting? I was happy when so many people asked us what was next, because it meant we were thinking long term.
In our own discourses on the left, the week was consumed by the discussion of tactics – what works and what doesn’t. An organizer I know reminded us about our responsibility to be a movement people want to join. There are plenty of people who are sympathetic to our cause but haven’t figured out how to be part of it. There’s millions of people without a movement home. Our cause is already popular, it’s already growing every day. Are we doing what we can to make sure people know where to go? Are we keeping our eyes on the prize or are we getting so wrapped up in nostalgia that we can’t see what we will be capable of a year from now if we move strategically? We are nothing without the people. Our responsibility is to the people —not to our egos, not to our careers, not to the vanity of our organizations, and not to our impulses. As a movement we generally have to be better at unlearning instant gratification and also embracing a diversity of tactics. But that’s something for another day.
It is easy to stand on a police line. It’s easy to yell at politicians. It’s easy to say things and do things by yourself. It’s hard to organize your neighbors and talk to new people about things they don’t immediately understand — my hope comes from the idea that once we get really good at that, the light at the end of the tunnel will be as clear as day.
Chicagoans are loud, principled, and good people and because of that there are 2.6 million reasons to love this city. For a few days Chicagoans made certain democrats couldn’t walk around our city without seeing and hearing about the people of Gaza. It’s my hope that we see that as a small success, and also my hope that we saw the week of mobilizations as a jumping off point for building the world we want to see.
Lake Michigan is connected to the ocean through narrow waterways along the northern border of the United States, and someone mentioned at a protest that it’s not unfathomable that the waves crashing onto the shores of Gaza were once here in Chicago, and vice versa. Even if we don’t have skies that are absent of fighter jets in my lifetime, every second spent moving us towards that kind of life was worth it. As long as we don’t throw in the towel, we are closer than ever to that reality.
It began as a devastating, confined storm off the coast of Sicily, striking the luxury yacht Bayesian in the form of a devastating water column resembling a tornado. Probability was inherent in the name (Thomas Bayes, mathematician and nonconformist theologian of the 18th century, had been the first to use probability inductively) and improbability the nature of the accident.
It also led to rich speculation about the fate of those on the doomed vessel. While most on the sunk yacht were saved (the eventual number totalled fifteen), a number of prominent figures initially went missing before being found. They included British technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his daughter, along with Morgan Stanley International Bank chairman, Jonathan Bloomer, and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo.
Lynch, co-founder of the British data analytics firm Autonomy and co-founder and investor in the cybersecurity firm Darktrace, had been recently acquitted by a US federal jury of fifteen counts of fraud and conspiracy, along with his co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain, regarding Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition of Autonomy in 2011. While the firm’s acquisition had cost a mighty US$11 billion, HP wrote off a stunning US$8.8 billion within 12 months, demanding an investigation into what it regarded as “serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations at Autonomy.” Clifford Chance was instructed by Lynch to act for him following the write down of Autonomy’s value in November 2012, hence Morvillo’s presence.
Lynch had his fair share of unwanted excitement. The US Department of Justice successfully secured his extradition, though failed to get a conviction. The investor proved less fortunate in a 2022 civil suit in the UK, one he lost.
For all his legal travails, Lynch stayed busy. He founded Invoke Capital, which became the largest investor in the cybersecurity firm Darktrace. Other companies featured in terms of funding targets for the company, among them Sophia Genetics, Featurespace and Luminance.
Darktrace, founded in 2013, has thrived in the thick soup of security establishment interests. British prime ministers have fallen within its orbit of influence, so much so that David Cameron accompanied its CEO Nicole Egan on an official visit to Washington DC in January 2015 ahead of the opening of the company’s US headquarters.
Members of the UK signals intelligence agency GCHQ are said to have approached Lynch, who proceeded to broker a meeting that proved most profitable in packing Darktrace with former members of the UK and, eventually, US intelligence community. The company boasts a veritable closet of former operatives on the books: MI5, MI6, CIA, the NSA, and FBI. Co-founder Stephen Huxter, a notable official in MI5’s cyber defence team, became Darktrace’s managing director.
Other connections are also of interest in sketching the extensive reach of the cyber industrial complex. This need not lend itself to a conspiratorial reading of power so much as the influence companies such as Darktrace wield in the field. Take Alexander Arbuthnot, yet another cut and dried establishment figure whose private equity firm Vitruvian Partners found Darktrace worthy of receiving a multi-million-pound investment as part of a push into cybersecurity.
Fascinating as this is, such matters gather steam and huff on looking at Arbuthnot’s family ties. Take Arbuthnot’s mother and Westminster chief magistrate, one Lady Emma Arbuthnot. The magistrate presided over part of the lengthily cruel and prolonged extradition proceedings of Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks and hounded for alleged breaches of the US Espionage Act. (Assange recently pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information under the Espionage Act of 1917.) Any conflict of interest, actual or perceived, including her husband’s own links to the UK military community as former UK defence minister, were not declared during the legal circus. Establishment members tend to regard themselves as above reproach.
With such a tight tangle of links, it took another coincidence to send the amateur sleuths on a feverish digital trawl for sauce and conspiracy. On August 17, a few days prior to Lynch’s drowning, his co-defendant was struck while running in Cambridgeshire. Chamberlain died in hospital from his injuries, with the driver, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, assisting at the scene with inquiries.
Reddit and the platform X duly caught fire with theories on the alleged role of hidden corporate actors, disgruntled US justice officials robbed of their quarry, and links to the intelligence community. Chay Bowes, a blustery Irish businessman with an addiction to internet soapbox pontification, found himself obsessed with probabilities, wondering, “How could two of the statistically most charmed men alive meet tragic ends within two days of each other in the most improbable ways?”
A better line of reflection is considering the influence and power such corporations exercise in the cyber military-industrial complex. In the realm of cyber policy, the line between public sector notions of security and defence, and the entrepreneurial pursuit of profit, have ceased to be meaningful. In a fundamental sense, Lynch was vital to that blurring, the innovator as semi-divine.
Darktrace became an apotheosis of that phenomenon, retaining influence in the market despite a scandal spotted record. It has, for instance, survived claims and investigations of sexual harassment. (One of those accused at the company was the most appropriately named Randy Cheek, a sales chief based in the San Francisco office.)
In 2023, its chief executive Poppy Gustafsson fended off a stinging report by the US-hedge fund Quintessential Capital Management (QCM) alleging questionable sales and accounting practices intended to drive up the value of the company before it was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2021. This sounded rather typical and seemed eerily reminiscent of the Autonomy affair. “After a careful analysis,” QCM reported, “we are deeply sceptical about the validity of Darktrace’s financial statements and fear that sales, margins and growth rates may be overstated and close to sharp correction.”
QCM’s efforts did no lasting damage. In April this year, it was revealed that Darktrace would be purchased by US private equity firm Thoma Bravo for the punchy sum of US$5.32 billion. The Darktrace board was bullish about the deal, telling investors that its “operating and financial achievements have not been reflected commensurately in its valuation, with shares trading at a significant discount to its global peer group”. If things sour on this one, Thoma Bravo will only have itself to blame, given the collapse of takeover talks it had with the company in 2022. Irrespective of any anticipated sketchiness, Lynch’s troubled legacy regarding data-driven technology and its relation to the state will remain.
The problem with satellite states and subject powers is that their representatives are rarely to be trusted, especially on matters regarding security. Their idea of safety and assurance is tied up in the interests of some other power, one who supposedly guarantees it through a promised force of arms come the place and come the time. The guarantee is often a sham one, variable in accordance with the self-interest of the guardian. In the case of the United States, the island continent of Australia is only useful as an annexure of Washington’s goal: maintaining less the illusion of a Pax Americana than a state of threatened military aggression against any upstart daring to vex an empire.
In an interview with the Weekend Australian published on August 16, Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chair of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, did something few Australian politicians or think tankers dare do: offer a bracingly frank assessment about the military intentions of the AUKUS security pact. Forget the peaceful dimension here. A militarised, garrisoned Australia is essential to maintaining US military supremacy – on the pretext of maintaining the peace, naturally.
Australia’s vastness and geography has always mesmerised explorers, writers and planners of the military inclination. In the case of McCaul, Australia was to be praised as offering “key advantages” in deterring China. “It is the central base of operations in the Indo-Pacific to counter the threat.”
In the scheme of things, the northern city of Darwin was vital. “If you really look at the concentric circles emanating from Darwin – that is the base of operations, and the rotating (US) forces there are providing the projection of power and force that we’re seeing in the region.” On Sky News, the congressman went so far as to call Darwin “the epicentre of the organisation projecting power through the South China Sea to China.”
McCaul’s reasons for this state of affairs are given the usual dressing, the gingered sauce we have come to expect from the standard bearers of empire: the entire effort was a collaborative, cooperative one between two equal states with the same interests, an effort to “provide more deterrence in the region and project power and strength so we don’t have a war.” It sounded much like a shabby confection by one superior power to a vastly inferior one: manufacture the security threat – in this case, unchecked, possibly mad Chinese ambitions – and then gather military forces to battle it. Make it a joint affair, much like a married couple menaced by a nightmare.
The monster, once conjured, can only grow more dangerous, and must be fought as a matter of urgency. Their creators demand it. “Time is really of the essence right now, as Chairman Xi has announced his 2027 project,” warned McCaul, taking that all too familiar position on China’s leader as a barking mad despot keen on world war over a small piece of real estate. That year is only of significance to US planners since the Chinese president has promised Beijing’s readiness to invade Taiwan by that time. But such visions have no meaning in a vacuum, and the other power essential to that talk of toughness is Washington’s own provocative role. Australia has no reason to play in such playgrounds of nonsense, but AUKUS has been shown to be an open license for Canberra to commit personnel to any futile conflict over that island.
The integration, which has become synonymous with absorption, of Australia’s defence into the US military industrial complex, is also a matter of interest to McCaul. “I envision there being co-production in Australia … helping to build up our defence industrial base, which is really stressed right now with war in the Middle East and Ukraine and the eastern Europe threat.” Australia, servant to US global power.
This latest visit affirms the content of the recent AUSMIN meeting held in Annapolis, Maryland, where Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong confirmed that the US war machine would find itself operating in every sphere of Australian defence in what is clumsily described as “Enhanced Force Posture Cooperation”.
The occasion also gave McCaul a chance to announce that defence trade exemptions had been granted to Australia and the UK under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation. He still expressed regret over “big government regulation” as a barrier to “this crucial alliance’s ability to truly deter a conflict in the Indo-Pacific.”
The removal of some defence licensing restrictions has thrilled Marles, who continues to labour under the assumption that this will somehow favour Australia’s barely existing sovereign capability. “This is really important in terms of our ability to build our future submarines, but also to pursue that AUKUS Pillar II agenda of those new innovative technologies.” The embarrassingly naïve Marles ignores the vital feature of any such agreements: that the US maintains control over all intellectual property, including any relevant classified material associated with those technologies.
The comments from Rep. McCaul square with those made by previous officials who see Australia as a vital staging ground for war. US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, during his April 3 visit to Washington’s Center for a New American Security (CNAS), was also candid in the promise offered by nuclear powered submarines.
In a discussion with CNAS Chief Executive Officer, Richard Fontaine, Campbell foresaw “a number of areas of conflict and in a number of scenarios that countries acting together,” including Japan, Australia, South Korea and India, when it came to the Indo-Pacific. “I think that balance, the additional capacity will help strengthen deterrence more general [sic].” The nuclear-powered submarines intended for the Royal Australian Navy, along with the boats of likeminded states “could deliver conventional ordinance from long distances. Those have enormous implications in a variety of scenarios, including in cross-strait circumstances”.
Even with such open admissions on the reasons why AUKUS is important to Washington, the timid, the bought, and the bribed, hold the reins in Canberra. For them, the march to war amidst the false sounding notes of peace is not only inevitable but desirable.
Don’t ask what business the US had in backing a candidate in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election. Certainly that was not a question that the corporate press ever asked.
Of course, the US should never have been meddling in Venezuelan elections in the first place. But given the machinations of the hemisphere’s hegemon, it is instructive to examine why and who Washington backed.
Insurrectionary rather than democratic strategy
It came as no surprise that the US-backed opposition called the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election fraudulent when they lost. They had announced that intention before the election.
Cries of fraud have been the far-right’s practice in nearly every one of the 31 national contests since the Bolivarian Revolution began a quarter of a century ago, except for the two contests lost by the Chavistas, the movement founded by Hugo Chávez and carried on by his successor Nicolás Maduro.
That is because this far-right opposition, funded and largely directed by Washington, pursues an insurrectionary strategy, rather than a democratic one. Neither they nor the US have recognized the legitimacy of the Venezuelan government since Maduro was first elected in 2013.
The US-backed opposition boycotted the 2018 election in anticipation of what appeared to them as an imminent governmental collapse under US assault. But in 2024, they were compelled to contend in the presidential contest. Conditions had changed with the successes by the Maduro administration in turning around the country’s economic freefall, largely precipitated by US unilateral coercive measures. In addition, Washington had failed to diplomatically isolate Venezuela by such stunts as recognizing the self-proclaimed “interim presidency” of Juan Guaidó.
US picks its candidate
The reentry of the US-backed opposition into the electoral arena was not based on democratic participation that recognized the constitution or the institutions of the Venezuelan state. The US-backed opposition’s “primary” was not conducted by the official Venezuelan electoral authority, the CNE, as had previous ones. Rather, it was a private affair administered by the NGO Súmate, a recipient of US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funds, a CIA-cutout.
Washington’s prechosen candidate, Maria Corina Machado, won in a crowded field of 13 candidates with an incredulous 92%. When some of the other candidates in the primary called fraud, Machado had the ballots destroyed. She could do that because Súmate was her personal organization.
Ms. Machado was despised by much of the other opposition. A faux populist, she is a member of one of the richest families in Venezuela, went to Yale, and lived in Florida. While the populace suffered under US unilateral coercive measures, she championed them and even called for military intervention. Internationally, Machado has strong ties with the international far-right, notably Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
Washington backed Machado knowing full well that in 2015 she had been barred from running for office. Back then, while she was a member of the National Assembly, she had accepted a diplomatic post with a foreign country in order to testify against her own country. Such treason is constitutionally prohibited in Venezuela as it is in many other countries.
For the US, Machado’s disbarment was a bonus. The State Department could claim that its candidate was unfairly disqualified, when that was a given to begin with. Washington’s intent was not to encourage a free and fair democratic process, but to delegitimize the one already in place.
Disbarred, Machado then personally chose her surrogate, Edmundo González. The former diplomat from the 1980s was completely unknown and with no electoral experience. The infirm surrogate literally had to be propped up by Machado at campaign rallies, although most of the time he convalesced in Caracas while she barnstormed the country.
An alternative strategy
Contrary to the nonsense in the corporate press of a “unified opposition,” the non-Chavista elements have been anything but unified. Had they been, they may have made the most of the 48% of the electorate that did not support Maduro according to the count by the CNE.
The assertion by Machado/González that they had won the 2024 election by a margin of 70% lacks credibility. That seven out of ten Venezuelans supported them was not proven in the streets. Machado called her followers out on the 3rd and again on the 17th, but the turnout was smaller than even her pre-election rallies. Meanwhile pro-Maduro rallies dwarfed the opposition’s. This was an indication of the high level of organization and popular support for the Bolivarian Revolution.
Still, in retrospect, the US could have tried to galvanize support for an alternative project. There were politically moderate state governors and legislators, who might have unified the fractious opposition. Instead, the US, anticipating a Maduro victory, obstinately clung to the disqualified Machado with her surrogate González.
The Machado/González platform was not a popular one, calling for extreme neoliberal privatization of education, health care, housing, food assistance, and the national oil agency. A far more attractive and winning platform would have been to retain the social benefits of Chavismo with the promise of relief from US unilateral coercive measures.
In backing someone as unattractive, unknown, and unpopular as González, the US showed its disinterest in a good faith engagement in the democratic electoral process.
The real obstacle to free and fair elections in Venezuela
That brings us to the heart of the matter. Truly free and fair elections in Venezuela were impossible – not due to the supposed conspiracies of the ruling Chavistas – but because of conditions imposed by Washington by their hybrid war against Venezuela.
The 930 unilateral coercive measures imposed on Caracas by Washington – euphemistically called sanctions – are no less deadly than bombs, causing over 100,000 casualties. This form of collective punishment is illegal under the charters of the UN and the Organization of American States (OAS) and even US law.
In short, the Venezuelan people went to the polls on July 28 with a gun aimed at their heads. If they voted for Maduro, the coercive measures would likely continue and even be intensified. This fundamental reality was ignored by the Western press and other critics.
The narrative on Venezuela has been shifted by Washington and echoed in the corporate press. The paramount interference of US’s coercive measures was ignored, while attention was shifted to the intricacies of Venezuelan electoral law. The larger picture got lost in the statistical weeds. This shifted narrative is designed to place the burden of proof on the sovereign government to prove its legitimacy.
Solutions are being proffered by outside actors calling for new elections in Venezuela and establishment of a “transitional government.” However, there are no constitutional mechanisms for doing that in Venezuela. Nor are there any such mechanisms in most countries, including the US. More importantly, this is a gross violation of Venezuelan sovereignty. Even the far-right opposition in Venezuela rejected these as unacceptable.
The CNE has by law 30 days after the election to release the official results. Meanwhile in response to the accusations of fraud, the Maduro administration turned the matter over to the Venezuelan constitutional institution designed to adjudicate such matters, which is the Electoral Chamber of the Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ).
On August 22, the TSJ affirmed the CNE’s count, confirming Maduro’s victory. A Hinterlaces poll found that 60% of Venezuelans trust the CNE’s results.
President Maduro commented: “Venezuela has the sovereignty of an independent country with a constitution, it has institutions, and the conflicts in Venezuela of any kind are solved among Venezuelans, with their institutions, with their law and with their constitution.” The US responded with a call for a regime-change “transition.”
Insistence on its rightto defend national sovereignty in the face of continued US imperial aggression will make for tumultuous times ahead for Venezuela.
On 16 August 2024, the Organisation of American States (OAS), whose 1948 formation as a Cold War institution was instigated by the United States, voted on a resolution regarding the Venezuelan presidential elections. The nub of the resolution proposed by the US called upon Venezuela’s election authority, the National Electoral Council (CNE), to publish all the election details as soon as possible (including the actas, or voting records, at the local polling station level). This resolution asks the CNE to go against Venezuela’s Organic Law on Electoral Processes (Ley Orgánica de Procesos Electorales or LOPE): since the law does not call for the publication of these materials, doing so would be a violation of public law. What the law does indicate is that the CNE must announce the results within 48 hours (article 146) and publish them within 30 days (article 155) and that the data from polling places (such as the actas) should be published in a tabular form (article 150).
It is pure irony that the resolution was voted upon in the Simón Bolívar room at the OAS headquarters in Washington, DC. Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) liberated Venezuela and neighbouring territories from the Spanish Empire and sought to bring about a process of integration that would strengthen the region’s sovereignty. That is why the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela pays tribute to his legacy in its name. When Hugo Chávez won the presidency in 1998, he centred Bolívar in the country’s political life, seeking to further this legacy through initiatives such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) that would continue the journey to establish sovereignty in the country and region. In 1829, Bolívar wrote, ‘The United States appears to be destined by providence to plague [Latin] America with misery in the name of liberty’. This misery, in our time, is exemplified by the US attempt to suffocate Latin American countries through military coups or sanctions. In recent years, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have been at the epicentre of this ‘plague’. The OAS resolution is part of that suffocation.
José Chávez Morado (Mexico), Carnival in Huejotzingo, 1939
Bolivia, Honduras, Mexico, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines did not come to the vote (nor did Cuba, as it was expelled by the OAS in 1962, leading Castro to dub the organisation the ‘Ministry of Colonies of the United States’, or Nicaragua, which left the OAS in 2023). Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) described why his country decided not to appear at the OAS meeting and why it disagrees with the US-proposed resolution, quoting from article 89, section X of the Mexican Constitution (1917), which states that the president of Mexico must adhere to the principles of ‘non-intervention; peaceful settlement of disputes; [and] prohibiting the threat or use of force in international relations’. To that end, AMLO said that Mexico will wait for the ‘competent authority of the country’ to settle any disagreement. In Venezuela’s case, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice is the relevant authority, though this has not stopped the opposition from rejecting its legitimacy. This opposition, which we have characterised as the far right of a special type, is committed to using any resource – including US military intervention – to overthrow the Bolivarian process. AMLO’s reasonable position is along the grain of the United Nations Charter (1945).
Many countries with apparently centre-left or left governments joined the US in voting for this OAS resolution. Among them are Brazil, Chile, and Colombia. Chile, even though it has a president who admires Salvador Allende (killed in a US-imposed coup in 1973), has displayed a foreign policy orientation on many issues (including both Venezuela and Ukraine) that aligns with the US State Department. Since 2016, at the invitation of the Chilean government, the country welcomed nearly half a million Venezuelan migrants, many of whom are undocumented and now face the threat of expulsion from an increasingly hostile environment in Chile. It is almost as if the country’s president, Gabriel Boric, wants to see the situation in Venezuela change so that he can order the return of Venezuelans to their home country. This cynical attitude towards Chile’s enthusiasm for US policy on Venezuela, however, does not explain the situation of Brazil and Colombia.
Pablo Kalaka (Chile), Untitled, 2022, sourced from Lendemains solidaires no. 2.
Our latest dossier, To Confront Rising Neofascism, the Latin American Left Must Rediscover Itself, analyses the current political landscape on the continent, beginning by interrogating the assumption that there has been a second ‘pink tide’ or cycle of progressive governments in Latin America. The first cycle, which was inaugurated with the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and came to an end following the 2008 financial crisis and US counter-offensive against the continent, ‘frontally challenged US imperialism by advancing Latin American integration and geopolitical sovereignty’, while the second cycle, defined by a more centre-left orientation, ‘seems more fragile’. This fragility is emblematic of the situation in both Brazil and Colombia, where the governments of Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva and Gustavo Petro, respectively, have not been able to exercise their full control over the permanent bureaucracies in the foreign ministries. Neither the foreign minister of Brazil (Mauro Vieira) nor Colombia (Luis Gilberto Murillo) are men of the left or even of the centre left, and both have close ties to the US as former ambassadors to the country. It bears reflection that there are still over ten US military bases in Colombia, though this is not sufficient reason for the fragility of this second cycle.
In the dossier, we offer seven explanations for this fragility:
the worldwide financial and environmental crises, which have created divisions between countries in the region about which path to follow;
the US reassertion of control over the region, which it had lost during the first progressive wave, in particular to challenge what the US sees as China’s entry into Latin American markets. This includes the region’s natural and labour resources;
the increasing uberisation of labour markets, which has created far more precarity for the working class and negatively impacted its capacity for mass organisation. This has resulted in a significant rolling back of workers’ rights and weakened working-class power;
the reconfiguration of social reproduction, which has become centred around public disinvestment in social welfare policies, thereby placing the responsibility for care in the private sphere and primarily overburdening women;
the US’s increased military power in the region as its main instrument of domination in response to its declining economic power;
the fact that the region’s governments have been unable to take advantage of China’s economic influence and the opportunities it presents to drive a sovereign agenda and that China, which has emerged as Latin America’s primary trading partner, has not sought to directly challenge the US agenda to secure hegemony over the continent;
divisions between progressive governments, which, alongside the ascension of neofascism in the Americas, impede the growth of a progressive regional agenda, including policies for continental integration akin to those proposed during the first progressive wave.
These factors, and others, have weakened the assertiveness of these governments and their ability to enact the shared Bolivarian dream of hemispheric sovereignty and partnership.
Antonia Caro (Colombia), Colombia, 1977.
One additional, but crucial, point is that the balance of class forces in societies such as Brazil and Colombia are not in favour of genuinely anti-imperialist politics. Celebrated electoral occasions, such as the victories of Lula and Petro in 2022, are not built on a broad base of organised working-class support that then forces society to advance a genuinely transformative agenda for the people. The coalitions that triumphed included centre-right forces that continue to wield social power and prevent these leaders, regardless of their own impeccable credentials, from exercising a free hand in governance. The weakness of these governments is one of the elements that allows for the growth of the far right of a special type.
As we argue in the dossier, ‘The difficulty of building a political project of the left that can overcome the day-to-day problems of working-class existence has unmoored many of these progressive electoral projects from mass needs’. The working classes, trapped in precarious occupations, need massive productive investments (driven by the state), premised on the exercise of sovereignty over each country and the region as a whole. The fact that a number of countries in the region have aligned with the US to diminish Venezuela’s sovereignty shows that these fragile electoral projects possess little capacity to defend sovereignty.
Daniel Lezama (Mexico), El sueño del 16 de septiembre (The Dream of September 16th), 2001.
In her poem ‘Quo Vadis’, the Mexican poet Carmen Boullosa reflects on the problematic nature of pledging allegiance to the US government’s agenda. Las balas que vuelan no tienen convicciones (‘flying bullets have no convictions’), she writes. These ‘progressive’ governments have no conviction regarding regime change operations or destabilisation efforts in other countries in the region. Much should be expected of them, but at the same time too much disappointment is unwarranted.
We are trapped in a political matrix intended to sustain the illusion that we are citizens of a constitutional republic.
In reality, we are caught somewhere between a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).
For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.
In other words, we’re allowed to bask in the illusion of freedom while we’re being stripped of the very rights intended to ensure that we can hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution.
We’re in trouble, folks.
This is no longer America, land of the free, where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people.
Rather, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism go hand in hand.
Freedom no longer means what it once did.
This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ commitment to the American experiment in freedom.
Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.
My friends, we’re being played for fools.
On paper, we may be technically free.
In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.
We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.
Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.
With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives.
As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”
Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, but we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.
In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.
Freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every direction.
The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.
This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine.
That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive surveillance.
We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.
By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.
Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.
If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.
So, what’s the answer?
For starters, stop tolerating corruption, graft, intolerance, greed, incompetence, ineptitude, militarism, lawlessness, ignorance, brutality, deceit, collusion, corpulence, bureaucracy, immorality, depravity, censorship, cruelty, violence, mediocrity, and tyranny. These are the hallmarks of an institution that is rotten through and through.
Stop holding your nose in order to block out the stench of a rotting institution.
Stop letting the government and its agents treat you like a servant or a slave.
You’ve got rights. We’ve all got rights. This is our country. This is our government. No one can take it away from us unless we make it easy for them.
You’ve got a better chance of making your displeasure seen and felt and heard within your own community. But it will take perseverance and unity and a commitment to finding common ground with your fellow citizens.
From what is read and what is said, Iran is the major sponsor of international terrorism — creating turmoil, preventing peace, and wanting to dominate the Middle East. One problem with the accepted scenario is that the facts do not coincide with the assumptions.
Except for revenging terrorist attacks by Iranian dissidents and Israeli intelligence and military services, the Islamic Republic has not harmed anybody in the Western nations. In the last 200 years, Iran has fought only one war ─ a defensive battle against aggressor Iraq. It has assisted friendly nations in their conflicts with other nations, similar to United States actions, but on a smaller scale. The demise of Ayatollah Khomeini established a refreshed Islamic Republic that promoted cordial relations with nations who were willing to return the cordiality. Iran has not sought hegemony, economic advantage, or extension of its influence to others than those who desire the influence.
Do a somersault and find the real Iran. The real Iran has tried to cooperate with the United States and other nations and bring peace and stability to the Middle East.
This does not excuse Iran’s semi-autocratic regime and human rights violations, no more than they can be excused in nations with whom the United States has friendly relations — Israel, Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Mexico, Tajikistan, and others. For American diplomats, the concept of “cannot excuse” is an excuse for not engaging in diplomacy and resolving problems with Iran. The results have been disasters — harm to American society, harm to the American people, and an unending voyage to calamities.
Designating Iran as the greatest menace to peace assumes there is peace in the Middle East. Is there peace and has there been peace since the words Middle East entered the lexicon? The conflagrations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria would have existed without the presence of the Islamic Republic; the former two wars occurred due to United States’ invasions in those nations. Is the Islamic Republic responsible for Israel’s continuous wars with its neighbors and for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the Emirates battles with their own citizens and quarrels they had with Yemen and Gaddafi’s Libya. The Islamic Republic and its well-educated and alert citizens have not initiated a war against another nation and their restraint holds the key to Middle East peace. The United States refusal to allow the key to unlock the cages that maintain the doves of peace is one of the great tragedies of the century. This was shown in the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Unlike America, Iran had special connections and interests in Afghanistan. After the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. officials responsible for preparing the war in Afghanistan, solicited help to unseat the Taliban and establish a stable government in Kabul. Iran had organized the resistance by the Northern Alliance and provided the Alliance arms and funding, which helped topple the Taliban regime. In an interview with Iranian Press Service (IPS), Flynt Leverett, senior director for Middle East affairs in the National Security Council (NSC), said, “The Iranians had real contacts with important players in Afghanistan and were prepared to use their influence in constructive ways in coordination with the United States.”
Because the Northern Alliance played a significant role in driving the Taliban out of Kabul in November 2001, they demanded 60 percent of the portfolios in an interim government and blocked agreement with other opposition groups. According to the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Dobbins, Iran played a “decisive role” in persuading the Northern Alliance delegation to compromise its demands.
Dobbins, J. (2009). “Negotiating with Iran: Reflections from Personal Experience,” The Washington Quarterly, 33(1), 149–162.
The Northern Alliance delegate, Younis Qanooni, on instructions from Kabul, was insisting that his faction not only retain the three most important ministries—defense, foreign affairs, and interior—but also hold three-fourths of the total. These demands were unacceptable to the other three Afghan factions represented in Bonn. Unless the Northern Alliance demand could be significantly reduced, there was no way the resultant government could be portrayed as broadly based and representative.
Finally Iranian representative, Javad Zarif, stood up, and signaled Qanooni to join him in the corner of the room. They spoke in whispers for no more than a minute. Qanooni then returned to the table and offered to give up two ministries. He also agreed to create three new ones that could be awarded to other factions. We had a deal. For the following six months, Afghanistan would be governed by an interim administration composed of 29 department heads plus a chairman. Sixteen of these posts would go to the Northern Alliance, just slightly more than half.
Emerging from a larger gathering in Tokyo, one of the Iranian representatives took me aside to reaffirm his government’s desire to continue to cooperate on Afghanistan. I agreed that this would be desirable, but warned that Iranian behavior in other areas represented an obstacle to cooperation. Furthermore, I cautioned him by saying that my brief only extends to Afghanistan. He replied by saying, “We know that. We would like to work on these other issues with the appropriate people in your government.”
On returning to Washington, O’Neill and I reported these conversations, to then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and cabinet level colleagues, and to the Middle Eastern Bureau at the Department of State (DOS). No one evinced any interest. The Iranians received no private reply. Instead, they received a very public answer. One week later, in his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush named Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, an “axis of evil.” How arch-enemies Iran and Iraq could form any axis, evil or otherwise, was never explained.
How would the Afghanistan fiasco have played out if the American governments cooperated with the Iranian governments? No analysis can supply a definite and credible answer; clues are available.
The result of 20 years of U.S. occupation and battle in Afghanistan resulted in nearly 111,000 civilians killed or injured, more than 64,100 national military and police killed, about 2500 American soldiers killed and 20,660 injured in action, and $1 trillion spent by the U.S. in all phases of a conflict that ended with the Taliban return to power. The only accomplishment of the twenty years of strife had Osama bin Laden leave the isolated, uncomfortable, and rugged mountain caves in Tora Bora for a comfortable and well-equipped walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a gift from Pakistan intelligence. Note that the al-Qaeda leader did not flee to U.S. adversary, Iran; he joined his family in U.S. friendly, Pakistan. The 20-year U.S. occupation of Afghanistan was a catastrophe and anything is better than a catastrophe.
More than any other nation Iran had justifiable reasons for wanting a stable, friendly, and economically secure government in Afghanistan.
Iran had previous problems with the Taliban and did not want to repeat them.
Terrorists enter Iran from Afghanistan and cause havoc to the Islamic Republic.
Iran and the Afghan government created a free trading zone on their border and Iran wanted to continue to continue to exploit the arrangement.
In 2017, Iran surpassed Pakistan as Afghanistan’s top trade partner and, in 2019, Iranian exports reached $1.24 billion.
Iran had funded construction of the 90-mile (140 kilometer) line from Khaf in northeastern Iran to Ghoryan in western Afghanistan.
Iran and Afghanistan had several mutual problems that needed, and still need, close contact to resolve. Among them are water distribution, poppy production in Afghanistan, export of opium to Iran, and refugee flow to Iran. “Between 1979 and 2014, Iran claims to have lost some 4,000 security forces fighting heavily armed drug traffickers along its eastern border. In 2019, Iran seized more heroin and illicit morphine than any other country, according to U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.”
Iran shared ethnic, linguistic and religious links with millions of Afghan Shi’a and was interested in their protection.
More than any other nation, Iran had assets to assist in achieving a stable, friendly, peaceful, and economically secure government in Afghanistan.
Iran was a large source of foreign direct investment, and provided millions of dollars for Afghanistan’s western provinces to build roads, electrical grids, schools, and health clinics.
Afghanistan found Iran could assist Afghanistan in trade. “On April 2016, Iran, Afghanistan and India signed an agreement to develop the Chabahar port in southeastern Iran as a trading hub for all three nations. Afghan goods would be transported to the Iranian port by rail, and then be shipped to India by sea. The first phase of the port was inaugurated in 2017.”
Iran had knowledge of Taliban personnel, arrangements, and activities. It had contacts and informants who could provide intelligence.
Not sure if they would acquiesce, but the Iranians could accommodate bases from which to attack the Taliban and to which fighters could retreat.
The U.S. State Department learned nothing from its disjointed and catastrophic actions in Afghanistan. It repeated the same worthless and aggressive policy in its invasion of Iraq.
After supporting Iraq against Iran in the 1980s Iraq-Iran war, the U.S. declared war in 1991 against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and performed a first in the history of foreign policy ─ helping a nation that wars against a nation that is not doing any harm to you, and then attacking the nation that it helped do the harm to the nation that was not harming you. The U.S. continued with sanctions against the nation it previously supported, Iraq, and then, in 2003, engaged it in another war, finally ending up with the nation it initially wanted to contain, Iran, essentially winning the war without firing another shot, and gaining influence in Iraq; another example of a U.S. policy toward Iran that backfired. Foreign policy at its finest.
While stumbling and fumbling its way into destroying Iraq, the U.S. managed to have al-Qaeda (remember them, the guys that America invaded Afghanistan to defeat) reconstitute itself in Iraq. This renewed al-Qaeda, “organized a wave of attacks, often suicide bombings, that targeted security forces, government institutions, and Iraqi civilians.” The American military was forced to use Iraq’s notorious militias, known as “Awakening Councils,” to expel the al-Qaeda organization; a short-lived victory that led to the formation of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS).
A statement by the ever-unaware President Trump, in a January 8, 2020 speech, argued the US had been responsible for defeating ISIS and the Islamic Republic should realize that it is in their benefit to work with the United States in making sure ISIS remained defeated. The US spent years and billions of dollars in training an Iraqi army that fled Mosul and left it to a small contingent of ISIS forces. Showing no will and expertise to fight, Iraq’s debilitated military permitted ISIS to rapidly expand and conquer Tikrit and other cities. Events energized Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, which, with cooperation from Iran and personal assistance from Major General Qasem Soleimani, was able to retake Tikrit and Ramadi, push ISIS out of Fallujah, and eventually play a leading role in ISIS’ defeat in Mosul. The U.S. honored Soleimani’s efforts by assassinating him ─ one of the most vicious crimes in history ─ and commended Iran by continually sanctioning it. No good deed goes unpunished.
As in Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic assisted in the re-building of Iraq. As far back as 2012, The Guardian reported that “Iran is one of Iraq’s most important regional economic partners, with an annual trade volume between the two sides standing at $8bn to $10b.” The U.S. confused competitive advantage with diabolical meddling and regarded Iran as a troubling factor in the Fertile Crescent, even though the inhabitants of Mesopotamia considered the United States as the troublemaker in the region. Iran had leverage in Iraq that could not be ignored nor easily combated.
Why is the Islamic Republic, sanctioned, vilified, and isolated? One clue is that almost all references to Iran in the U.S. media succeed with the phrase, “leading state sponsor of terrorism.” The phrase is stuck onto the word Iran as if by Velcro and all the words are one word. How does this coincidental commonality occur?
It occurs because the Zionist press distributes most reports on Iran to the American media. Israel has used U.S. support to subdue Israel’s adversaries — Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, and Iraq —and has turned its national army to coerce Iran, the last man standing, into battle. It has turned its worldwide army of thought controllers to vilify Iran and entice Western powers to remove the Islamic member of the “axis of evil” from the map. Blind the world to reality.
Substitute the nation Israel for the nation Iran in each of the salient accusations made against Iran and the accusations become correct. Nowhere do the facts and historical narrative demonstrate that Iran has disrupted peace and stability by any of the combining factors. Israel is present in all the factors. During the 2016 presidential campaign, contender Donald Trump said, “Many nations, including allies, ripped off the US.” Doesn’t Donald Trump, in his support for apartheid Israel, know that he verified his statement? Bet on the wrong horse and you are sure to lose.
The following table summarizes the factors and clarifies the issues.
Iran ─ Key to World Peace
Analysis shows that Iran has not displayed characteristics of a “major sponsor of international terrorism — creating turmoil, preventing peace, and wanting to dominate the Middle East.” The only directives against Iran are sanctions and some human rights violations. The former are engineered by the U.S., Israel and their allies, have proved ineffective, not accomplished their intentions and greatly harmed the Iranian people. The latter need attention and can be addressed to almost any country on the planet, including the U.S. in its treatment of its African American citizens.
Israel displays all the characteristics falsely attributed to Iran plus being recipient of tens of Resolutions and decisions by International agencies that accuse Israel and its leaders of aspects of genocide, war crimes, apartheid, illegal occupation, and crimes against humanity. In the 21st century, in Resolutions by the UN that condemn nations, Israel is mentioned more times than all others combined, an enviable record.
Incorrect U.S. policies have led to continuous warfare in the Middle East, the unnecessary sacrifice of U.S. lives, economic disturbances, and waste of taxpayer money. When something is wrong, the normal practice is to make it right. Why does the United States maintain an aggressive attitude toward Iran and a permissive attitude to Israel? The answer is that the U.S. is controlled by traitors to American principles and to the American people. This cannot continue until its final denouement ─ settled by Armageddon.
Only Iran has been willing to challenge Israel and halt its destructive path. Iran cannot do it alone. By supporting Israel, the Western powers have turned their backs on their own people. It is radical and will be greeted with gasps, but it is time to turn the other way and support Iran in its endeavors. Stopping war is mandatory and preliminary to achieving peace. If fortifying Iran stymies Israel’s aggression and stops the wars, then peace can be achieved. Iran is the key to world peace.
In the cauldron of corruption and autocracies, which pits Sunni against Shi’a, Gulf states and Saudi Arabia against Iran, religious extremists against moderates and Israel against all, the United States makes its choice of allies. Whom does Washington support – those who are the most repressive, most corrupt, most militaristic, most prone to cause Middle East instability, and to add to the obvious State Department confusion, Israel, the principal instigator of Al Qaeda terrorism, and Saudi Arabia, the principal supplier of al-Qaeda terrorists. A new perspective of Iran yields a revised perspective of a violent, unstable, and disturbed Middle East. Israel would finally receive attention as the major participant in bringing chaos to the region.
Discouraging to note that policies that determine war or peace proceed from agendas and not from facts and obligations. Maybe, when the makers and shakers realize their warlike polices will one day result in the eventual nuclear catastrophe, they will have an awakening and comprehend that the quotation, attributed to Plato, “Only the dead know the end of war,” is given more meaning by adding, “after you’re dead, it’s too late to stop the war.”
Noam Chomsky (95) famous dissident and father of modern linguistics, considered one of the world’s leading intellectuals, is recovering from a stroke he suffered at age 94 and now living with his wife in Brazil. According to a report in Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now d/d July 2, 2024, this past June Brazilian President Lula personally visited Chomsky, holding his hand, saying: “You are one of the most influential people of my life” personally witnessed by Vijay Prashad, co-author with Noam Chomsky, The Withdrawal (The New Press).
Indeed, Noam Chomsky is established as one of the most influential intellectuals of the 21st century.
A pre-stroke video interview with Chomsky conducted at the University of Arizona is extraordinarily contemporary and insightful with a powerful message: What Does the Future Hold Q&A With Noam Chomsky hosted by Lori Poloni-Staudinger, Dean of School of Behavioral Sciences and Professor, School of Government and Public Policy, University of Arizona.
Chomsky joined the School of Behavioral Sciences in 2017 and taught “Consequences of Capitalism.”
This article is a synopsis of some of Chomsky’s responses to questions, and it includes third-party supporting facts surrounding his statements about the two biggest risks to humanity’s continual existence.
What Does the Future Hold?
Question: geopolitics, unipolar versus multipolar
Chomsky: First there are two crises that determine whether it is even appropriate to consider how geopolitics will look in the future: (1) threat of nuclear war (2) the climate crisis.
“If the climate crisis is not dealt with in the next few years, human society is essentially finished. Everything else is moot unless these two crises are dealt with.”
(This paragraph is not part of Chomsky’s answer) Regarding Chomsky’s warning, several key indicators of the climate crisis are flashing red, not green. For example, nine years ago 195 nations at the UN climate conference Paris ‘15 agreed to take measures to mitigate CO2 emissions to hold global warming to under 1.5°C pre-industrial. Yet, within only nine years of that agreement amongst 195 nations, according to Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial for the first time in human history for a 12-month period from February 2023 to January 2024 and now fast approaching danger zones. Obviously, nations of the world did not follow their own dictates, and if not them, who will?
Paleoclimatology has evidence of what to expect if the “climate crisis,” as labeled by Chomsky, is not dealt with (The following paragraph is also not part of Chomsky’s answer): “While today’s CO2-driven climate change scenario is unprecedented in human history, similar circumstances existed in the geological record that give us an idea of what to expect in the way of global sea level rise, and the process that will get us there. About 3.2 million years ago, during the Pliocene epoch, CO2 levels were about 400 ppm (427 ppm today) and temperatures were 2-3°C above the “pre-industrial” temperatures of 1850-1880. At the same time, proxy data indicate global sea level was about 52 feet (within a 39-foot to 66-foot range) higher than today.” (Source: The Sleeping Giant Awakens, Climate Adaptation Center, May 21, 2024)
Maybe that is why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) strongly suggests keeping temperatures ideally below 1.5°C and certainly not above 2.0°C pre-industrial.
Chomsky on World Power: Currently the center of world power, whether unipolar or multipolar is very much in the news. This issue has roots going back to the end of WWII when the US established overwhelming worldwide power. But now the Ukraine war has the world very much divided with most of world outside of the EU, US and its allies calling for diplomatic settlement. But the US position is that the war must continue to severely weaken Russia.
Consequently, Ukraine is dividing the world, and it shows up in the framework of unipolar versus multipolar. For example, the war has driven the EU away from independent status to firm control by the US. In turn the EU is headed towards industrial decline because of disruption of its natural trading partners, e.g., Russia is full of natural resources that the EU is lacking, which economist have always referred to as a “marriage made in heaven,” a natural trading relationship that has now been broken. (footnote: EU industrial production down 3.9% past 12 months)
And the Ukrainian imbroglio is cutting off EU access to markets in China e.g., China has been an enormous market for German industrial products. Meanwhile, the US is insisting upon a unipolar framework of world order that wants not only the EU but the world to be incorporated within something like the NATO system. Under US pressure NATO has expanded its reach to the Indo-Pacific region, meaning NATO is now obligated to take part in the US conflict with China.
Meantime, the rest of the world is trying to develop a multipolar world with several independent sectors of power. The BRICS countries Brazil, Russia, India, China, Indonesia, South Africa, want an independent source of power of their own. They are 40% of world economy that’s independent of US sanctions and of the US dollar.
These are developing conflicts over one raging issue and one developing issue. Ukraine is the raging issue; the developing issue is US conflict with China, which is developing its own projects in Eurasia, Africa, Middle East, South Africa, S9uth Asia, and Latin America.
The US is determined to prevent China’s economic development throughout the world. The Biden administration has “virtually declared a kind of war with China” by demanding that Western allies refuse to permit China to carry out technological development.
For example, the US insist others do not all0w China access to any technology that has any US parts in it. This includes everything, as for example, Netherlands has a world-class lithographic industry which produces critical parts for semi-conductors for the modern high-tech economy. Now, Netherlands must determine whether it’ll move to an independent course to sell to China, or not… the same is true for Samsung, South Korea, and Japan.
The world is splintered along those lines as the framework for the foreseeable future.
Question: Will multinational corporations gain too much power and influence?
Chomsky suggests looking at them right now… US based multinationals control about one-half of the world’s wealth. They are first or second in every domain like manufacturing and retail; no one else is close. It’s extraordinary power. Based upon GDP, the US has 20% of world GDP, but if you look at US multinationals it’s more like 50%. Multinationals have extraordinary power over domestic policy in both the US and in other capitalistic countries. So, how will multinationals react when told they cannot deal with a major market, like China?
How does this develop over future years? The EU is going into a period of decline because of breaking relationships in trade and commercial business with the East. Yet, it’s not sure that the EU will stay subordinate to the US and willingly go into decline, or will the EU join the rest of the world and move into a more complex multipolar world and integrate with countries in the East? This is yet to be determined. For example, France’s President Emmanuel Macron (2017-) has been vilified and condemned for saying that after Russia is driven out of Ukraine, a way must be found to accommodate Russia within an international system, an initial crack in the US/EU relationship.
Threat of nuclear warquestion: Russia suspended the START Nuclear Arms Treaty with the US and how important is this to the threat of nuclear war?
Chomsky: It is very significant. It is the last remaining arms control treaty, the new START Treaty, Trump almost cancelled it. The treaty was due to expire in February when Biden took over in time to extend it, which he did.
Keep in mind that the US was instrumental in creating a regime which somewhat mitigates the threat of nuclear war, which means “terminal war.” We talk much too casually about nuclear war. There can’t be a nuclear war. If there is, we’re finished. It’s why the Doomsday Clock is set at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s been.
Starting with George W. Bush the US began dismantling arms control. Bush dismantled the ABM Treaty, a missile treaty very significantly part of the arms control system and an enormous threat to Russia. So, the dismantling allowed the US to set up installations right at the border of Russia. It’s a severe threat to Russia. And Russia has reacted.
The Trump administration got rid of the INF Treaty, the Reagan-Gorbachev treaty of 1987 which ended short-range missiles in Europe. Those missiles are now back in place on the borders of Russia. Trump, to make it clear that we meant business, arranged missile launches right away upon breaking of the treaty.
Trump destroyed the Open Skies Treaty which originated with Eisenhower stating that each side should share information about what the other side was doing to reduce the threat of misunderstanding.
Only the new START Treaty remains. And Russia suspended it. START restricts the number of strategic weapons for each side. The treaty terminates in 2026, but it’s suspended by Russia anyway. So, in effect there are no agreed upon restraints to increasing nuclear weapons.
Both sides already have way more nuclear weapons than necessary; One Trident nuclear submarine could destroy a couple hundred cities all over the world. And land based nuclear missile locations are known by both sides. So, if there is a threat, those would be hit immediately. Which means if there’s a threat, “you’d better send’em off, use’em or lose’em.” This obviously is a very touchy, extraordinarily risky situation because one mistake could amplify very quickly.
The new START Treaty that’s been suspended by Russia did restrict the enormous excessive number of strategic weapons. So, we should be in negotiations right now to expand it, restore it, and reinstitute the treaties the US has dismantled, the INF Treaty, Reagan-Gorbachev treaty, ABM Treaty, Open Stars Treaty should all be brought back.
Question: Will society muster the will for change for equity, prosperity, and sustainability?
Chomsky: There is no answer. It’s up to the population to come to grips with issues and say we are not going to march to the precipice and fall over it. But it’s exactly what our leaders are telling us to do. Look at the environmental crisis. It is well understood that we may have enough time to control heating of the environment, destruction of habitat, destruction of the oceans which is going to lead to total catastrophe. It’s not like everybody will die all at once, but we’re going to reach irreversible tipping points that becomes just a steady decline. To know how serious it is, look at particular areas of the world.
The Middle East region is one of the most rapidly heating regions of the world at rates twice as fast as the rest of the world. Projections by the end of the century at current trajectories show sea level in Mediterranean will rise about 10 feet.
Look at a map where people live, it is indescribable. Around Southeast Asia and peasants in India are trying to survive temperatures in the 120s where less than 10% of population has air conditioning. This will cause huge migrations from areas of the world where life will become unlivable.
Fossil fuel companies are so profitable that they’ve decided to quit any sustainable efforts in favor of letting profits run as fast and as far as possible. They’re opening new oil and gas fields that can produce another 30-40 years but at that point we’ll all be finished.
We have the same issue with nuclear weapons as with the environment. If these two issues are not dealt with, in the not-too-distant future, it’ll be all over. The population needs to “have the will” to stop it.
Question: How do we muster that will?
Chomsky: Talk to neighbors, join community organizations, join activist’s groups, press Congress, get out into the streets if necessary. How have things happened in the past? For example, back in the 1960s small groups of women got together, forming consciousness-raising groups and it was 1975 (Sex Discrimination Act) that women were granted the right of persons peers under US domestic law, prior to that we’re still back in the age of the founding fathers when women were property Look at the Civil Rights movement. Go back to the 1950s, Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat on a bus that was planned by an organized group of activists that led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, big change… in 1960 a couple of black students in No. Carolina decided to sit in at a lunch counter segregated. Immediately arrested, and the next day another group came… later they became organized as SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinated Committee. Young people from the North started to join. Next freedom buses started running to Alabama to convince black farmers to cast a vote. It went on this way, building, until you got civil rights legislation in Washington.
What’s happening right now as an example of what people can do? The Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act, IRA. It’s mostly a climate change act. The only way you can get banks and fossil fuel companies to stop destroying the world is to bribe them. That’s basically our system. But IRA is not the substantial program that Biden presented. It is watered down. The original came out of Bernie Sander’s office. As for the background for that, young people, from the Sunrise Movement, were active and organizing and sat in on Congressional offices. AOC joined them. A bill came out of this, but Republican opposition cut back the original bill by nearly 100% They are a denialist party. They want to destroy the world in the interest of private profit. The final IRA bill is nowhere near enough.
Summation: Chomsky sees a world of turmoil trying to sort out whether unipolar or multipolar wins the day with the Ukrainian war serving as a catalyst to change. Meanwhile, the EU carries the brunt of its impact. Meantime, nuclear arms treaties have literally dissolved in the face of a tenuous situation along the Russia/EU borders with newly armed missiles pointed at Russia’s heartland. In the face of this touch-and-go Russia vs. the West potentially explosive scenario, the global climate system is under attack via excessive fossil fuel emissions cranking up global temperatures beyond what 195 countries agreed was a danger zone.
Chomsky sees a nervous nuclear weapons-rattling high-risk world flanked by unmitigated deterioration of ecosystems that global warming steadily, assuredly takes down for the count, as global temperatures set new records. He calls for individuals to take action, do whatever necessary to change the trajectory of nuclear weaponry and climate change to save society. Chomsky offered several examples of small groups of people acting together, over time, turning into serious protests and ultimately positive legislation.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” (Margaret Mead, Anthropologist)
If Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Kuzinski were the candidates for the Republican and Democratic parties, which one would you vote for?
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris both have more blood on their hands than either of these serial killers, and they promise to kill many more. Both of them supported the latest $20 billion to Israel, to keep the project to eradicate the people of Gaza on schedule. Voting for them means giving them permission and encouragement to keep the rivers of blood flowing, so I won’t do it. I might vote for Jill Stein or the Libertarian candidate, but I’m inclined not to play the game. It’s a personal choice — a symbolic one, you might contend.
But so is yours, if you are voting for a major party candidate. Did you select either of them to be a candidate? Can you think of a better one? Of course you can. In fact, every one of you is probably a better candidate yourself. That’s why your vote is symbolic. You don’t win either way. And either way, your vote says to the party or candidate, “Your support for genocide is not going to keep me from voting for you.”
What can we do about it? As Emma Goldman said, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” That was a century ago, and it is more true today — with Citizens United solidifying corporate and special interest (e.g. AIPAC) control of our elections and our electeds — than it was then. Our only influence in government is with issues that have little interest for the powerful, such as women’s reproductive rights, other than to be used by the powerful to manipulate and deceive us into thinking that our vote makes a difference.
As individuals, we must take responsibility for our participation in this rigged game. Are we willing to vote for one mass murderer over another just for the opportunity to play? Daddy, what did you do during the Great Genocide?
Collectively, a voter strike might be in order. Vote None of the Above! Perhaps we need a new movement that defies the system rather than participating in it. Picket the polling stations and tell people not to vote, that doing so sends the message that they support genocide.
I have no illusions how difficult it is to create a mass movement, especially one that seeks to wrest control from those who rule us. But genocide puts special obligations upon us. Individually, at the very least, our integrity is at stake. Are you actually going to participate — and be complicit — in genocide? We all have choices. Let your conscience decide. Make yourself and your descendants proud of you.
According to the New York Times, U.S. officials say there’s no excuse, on the warmakers’ own terms, for the genocide they are arming:
“Israel has achieved all that it can militarily in Gaza, according to senior American officials, who say continued bombings are only increasing risks to civilians while the possibility of further weakening Hamas has diminished…. William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, is due in Qatar on Thursday. Brett McGurk, President Biden’s Middle East coordinator, has headed to Egypt and Qatar. Amos Hochstein, a senior White House adviser, landed in Lebanon. One of the messages the officials are expected to deliver is that there is little more Israel can accomplish against Hamas.”
But there’s another message they’re delivering:
the weapons will never stop flowing from the United States to Israel.
According to opinion polls, the majority of U.S. voters want the weapons shipments to stop now and have wanted that for some time.
But there’s another message many of them are delivering:
OMG it’s so awesome how Kamala tells peace advocates to shut up, she and Walz bring joy to my life like like like like yeah you know?
If Harris were to demand that Biden or Congress or the UN stop the weapons shipments, and were they to stop, I would start campaigning for Harris-Walz to take office in Washington. As long as that doesn’t happen, I’ll support Biden-Harris taking seats in the dock at The Hague.
Unless of course somebody takes a notion to uphold U.S. laws and prosecute them here. Every weapons shipment violates the Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, the Foreign Assistance Act, the Arms Export Control Act, the U.S. War Crimes Act, the Genocide Convention Implementation Act, and the Leahy Law. Just ask former Senator Leahy who says the U.S. government is making a mockery of the law that bears his name.
Biden is still scheduled to be officially president for about as long as the Gulf War took from start to finish, about twice as long as the Spanish-American war, about three times the Falklands war, several times various U.S. wars in Latin America and around the globe, and several times what it took for the U.S. to overthrow the government of Afghanistan prior to failing to grasp the need to leave that place for decades.
Biden’s remaining months are also longer than it has taken for polls to show dramatic turns of opinion against wars, commonly labeled “war fatigue” as though noticing the horror of the mass killing requires sleepiness rather than insight. But the “fatigue” has already been awakened.
Of course, politicians also hear messages from war-profiting bribers of their campaigns, and from weapons-funded stink-tankers. The war machine has a great deal of inertia even when it has no excuse. Peace making has been bizarrely redefined as “anti-Semitism.” Opposition to genocide is now “terrorism.” And all the microphones have been gathered up in a big pile and placed in front of corporations peddling that BS.
But too many people know better. Too many people grew up believing genocide was evil. We’ve been here before, and it didn’t work out well for the forever-war candidate. His losing worked out horribly for everyone, of course, but his winning would likely have done the same.
We need an election in which people insist on not voting for war. We need an election in which people develop too much self-respect to give a flying F-35 what kind of tacos a candidate eats, which candidate you’d like a beer with, which you’d hire as a babysitter, which you’d vote for as prom king or queen.
Why does the killing never end? Panem et circenses.
With a click, with a shock
Phone’ll jingle, door’ll knock, open the latch
Something’s coming, don’t know when but it’s soon . . .
— “Something’s Coming,” West Side Story, lyrics by S. Sondheim, music by L. Bernstein.
Shock should not be the word, but when World War III breaks fully loose many who are now sleeping will be shocked. The war has already started, but its full fury and devastation are just around the corner. When it does, Tony’s singular fate in West Side Story will be the fate of untold millions.
It is a Greek tragedy brought on by the terrible hubris of the United States, its NATO accomplices, and the genocidal state of Israel and the Zionist terrorists who run it.
Tony felt a miracle was due, but it didn’t come true for him except to briefly love Maria and then get killed as result of a false report, and only a miracle will now save the world from the cataclysm that is on the way, whether it is initiated by intent, a false report, an accident, or the game of nuclear chicken played once too often.
Let us hope but not be naïve. The signs all point in one direction. The gun on the wall in the first act of this tragic play is primed to go off in the final one. Every effort to avoid this terrible fate by seeking peace and not war has been rejected by the U.S. and its equally insane allies. Every so-called red line laid down by Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinians, and their allies has been violated with impunity and blatant arrogance. But impunity has its limits and the dark Furies of vengeance will have their day.
“It is the dead, not the living,” said Antigone, “who make the longest demands.” Their ghostly voices cry out to be avenged.
I wish I were not compelled by conscience to write this, but it seems clearly evident to me that we stand on the edge of an abyss. The fate of the world rests in the hands of leaders who are clearly psychotic and who harbor death wishes. It’s not terribly complex. Netanyahu and Biden are two of them. Yes, like other mass killers, I think they love their children and give their dog biscuits to eat. But yes, they also are so corrupted in their souls that they relish war and the sense of false power and prestige it brings them. They gladly kill other people’s children. They can defend themselves many times over, offer all kinds of excuses, but the facts speak otherwise. This is hard for regular people to accept.
The great American writer who lived in exile in France for so many years and who was born 100 years ago this month, James Baldwin, wrote an essay – “The Creative Process” – in which he addressed the issue of how becoming a normal member of society dulls one to the shadow side of personal and social truths. He wrote:
And, in the same way that to become a social human being one modifies and suppresses and, ultimately, without great courage, lies to oneself about all one’s interior, uncharted chaos, so have we, as a nation, modified or suppressed and lied about all the darker forces in our history.
And lie and suppress we still do today.
Imagine, if you will, that Mexico has invaded Texas with the full support of the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian governments. Their weapons are supplied by these countries and their drone and missile attacks on the U.S. are coordinated by Russian technology. The Seven Mile Bridge in Florida has been attacked. The U.S. Mexican border is dotted with Russian troops on bases with nuclear missiles aimed at U.S. cities.
It’s not hard to do. That is a small analogy to what the U.S./NATO is doing to Russia.
Do you think the United States would not respond with great force?
Do you think it would not feel threatened with nuclear annihilation?
How do you think it would respond?
The U.S/NATO war against Russia via Ukraine is accelerating by the day. The current Ukrainian invasion of Russia’s Kursk region has upped the ante dramatically. After denying it knew in advance of this Ukrainian invasion of Russia, the demented U.S. President Joseph Biden said the other day when asked about the fighting in Kursk, “I’ve spoken with my staff on a regular basis probably every four or five hours for the last six or eight days. And it’s — it’s creating a real dilemma for Putin. And we’ve been in direct contact — constant contact with — with the Ukrainians.” Do you think Kamala Harris was kept in the dark?
Now how do you think the Russians are going to respond? How many red lines will they allow the U.S. to cross without massive retaliation? And what kind of retaliation?
Switch then to the Middle East where the Iranians and their allies are preparing to retaliate to Israel’s attacks on their soil. No one knows when but it seems soon. Something is coming and it won’t be pretty. Will it then ignite a massive war in the region with the U.S. and Israel pitted against the region? Will nuclear weapons be used? Will the wars in Ukraine/Russia and the Middle East join into what will be called WW III?
While the U.S. continues to massively arm Israel, Russian is arming its ally Iran and likely training them in the use of those weapons as the U.S. is doing in Ukraine. The stage is set. We enter the final act.
Natanyahu wants and needs war to survive. So he thinks. Psychotic killers always do.
The signs all point in one direction. No one should be shocked if the worst comes to pass.
A licence-free environment for AUKUS technology transfer will come into effect next month after the three nations finalised legislative reforms that unlock billions of dollars in defence exports. The Biden Administration will on Friday morning (AEDT) formally certify legislation exempting Australia and the United Kingdom from US export control licensing requirements from September 1. The…
In the quarter century of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, initiated by the election of Hugo Chávez and continued by his successor Nicolás Maduro, 31 national elections have been held. Invariably, the US-backed opposition claimed fraud in all but the two contests that they won. Equally unvaryingly has been the corporate press’s supporting and indeed embellishing of the claims of fraud as described below.
Blackmailing the Venezuelan electorate
The moment that Venezuela’s election authority (CNE in its Spanish initials) reported that incumbent Maduro had prevailed in the July 28 presidential contest over his nearest challenger, Edmundo González, howls of fraud were to be heard throughout the world’s corporate press. Just a few hours after the CNE announcement, CNNreported that the vote “was marked by accusations of fraud and counting irregularities.”
The next day, CNNprovided a backgrounder on “what you need to know” about the election. Leading off was the risible description “of a unified opposition movement that overcame their divisions.” Such a misrepresentation is indicative of a press that confounds the “Washington consensus” for the will of the Venezuelan people.
In fact, there were nine candidates on the ballot besides Maduro; all of them were opposition. They were not unified and for good reason. In its meddling into the internal affairs of Venezuela, Washington has backed the far right in the opposition spectrum.
The US-backed González ran on a platform of radically reorienting Venezuela’s foreign policy from support of the Palestinians to unconditional approval of the current campaign of genocide by Israel and the US. Domestically, he stood for an extreme neoliberal program of privatizing practically everything – schools, transportation, national oil company, housing, hospitals, food assistance. These were not stands that could possibly unify the opposition and certainly were not stands that would appeal to the vast majority of Venezuelans.
So why would the US choose a completely unknown and inexperienced candidate running on an unpopular platform when they could have given the nod to a moderate opposition politician with far more political backing and experience? This is the elephant-in-the-room that CNN and the rest of the corporate press ignore.
Left out of the media barrage against the government of Venezuela has been reporting on the context of the 930 unilateral coercive measures that Washington has levied on Venezuela with the explicit intention to asphyxiate the economy and cause the people to abandon the Bolivarian Revolution. The US banked on blackmailing Venezuela to vote out Maduro or continue to suffer what are euphemistically called “sanctions.”
Battle of the bean counters
Now that the election is over, followed by the predictable accusations of fraud, the corporate media has intensified its campaign to delegitimize the results. In particular, we analyze a CNN article that reports “after Venezuela’s contested presidential vote, experts say government results are a ‘statistical improbability.’”
CNN casts doubt on the results of the Venezuelan presidential election based in part on a post published by the Quantitative Methods in Social Science program at Columbia University. The post cites the official results published by the CNE showing the votes for each candidate followed by their percentage of the total rounded to a single decimal place.
Then the post notes that using the original percentages (51.2, 44.2, and 4.5) to compute the votes for candidates results in fractional vote counts that do not match the original vote totals published by the CNE:
Of course, the counts don’t match but that is an artifact of the misuse of statistics by the post. For example, let’s apply the same method to the official results of the 2020 US presidential election, published by the US Federal Election Commission (FEC):
Biden 81,268,924 51.31%
Trump 74,216,154 46.86%
Total 158,383,403 100.00%
If you multiply the percentage given for Biden 51.31% times the total number of votes, (158,383,403), the result is 81,266,524, which is different from the total reported by the FEC above (81,268,924). Perhaps CNN has uncovered and should be reporting on statistically significant evidence of fraud that was committed by the FEC in the 2020 presidential election?
Nevertheless, the post concludes, referring to the discrepancy that they created: “If it is not evidence of fraud by itself I do not know what is.” Then the posts wildly speculates: “Anyhow, the image of the Chavista bosses fabricating the results with a napkin and their phone calculators seems to be as plausible as amusing.” The post continues: “That seems fishy… Can it be, that instead of calculating the percentages from the number of votes, someone decided the percentages and then calculated the number of votes?”
So there you have it. The “Chavista bosses,” starting from their desired fabricated percentage results, computed candidate totals (using phone calculators on a napkin!), only to be exposed because their clumsily computed fabricated totals do not match their fabricated percentages!
But what CNN is really doing is statistical arm waving. The supposed discrepancy that CNN exposes is nothing more than their misuse of statistics.
The CNN article then goes on to provide additional dramatic and equally sketchy evidence for fraud, citing Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University who “ran a mathematical simulation with a probability model.” Gelman apparently concluded that “there is about a 1 in 100 million chance that this particular pattern will occur by chance.”
Are they correct? The short answer is that CNN is trying to baffle us.
There is a simple response that provides an easy (and highly probable) explanation of the results published by the Venezuelan CNE: the percentages were computed by dividing the reported vote totals for each candidate by the total number of votes cast, and then the result was rounded to one decimal place.
This is the normal and standard practice. Voting percentages in elections aren’t usually published and displayed to seven decimal places.
If the starting point is the observed vote totals, the percentages can be computed and then rounded to one decimal place as shown in the CNE report. This is nothing more than a simple case of rounding numbers for the purpose of displaying them in a readable form.
Professor Gelman’s “dramatic” simulation only shows that rounding can have a significant impact on decimal calculations; not any evidence of fraud.
In technical jargon, rounding X/N and then multiplying the result times N almost never equals N, unless N is a multiple of X. If you randomly generate a million numbers and divide them each by their sum, it is extremely unlikely that any of the numbers is a factor of the sum. It says nothing about whether the proportion X/N is fabricated or not.
In lay terms, Gelman is misleading readers by misapplying statistical modeling.
Misuse of statistics
The starting point for the post cited by CNN is the assumption that there are “strong allegations of fraud in the recent Venezuelan elections.” The goal of exposing an imagined scenario of “Chavista bosses fabricating the results” as well as other political comments present in the post (comparing, for example, the supposed fraud in Venezuela to the US election deniers and January 6th), indicates that this “expert analysis” providing “strong evidence of fraud” had political motivations. There may be other aspects of the election pointing to fraud, but none of the above does so.
By falsely generating suspicions of fraud in the election, CNN heightens the risk of violence, extra-constitutional resolution of the crisis, and support for outside interference in the electoral process. If you are looking for trustworthy, unbiased reporting and analysis of the Venezuelan election, stay away from CNN
The push towards an all-out war in the Middle East is moving out of its sleepwalking phase to that of conscious eschatological reckoning. A blood filled, fiery Armageddon will reveal the forces of virtue, linking the evangelicals of the United States with the right-wing Jewish nationalists in Israel. That appalling prospect is certainly not one to discount: the messianic are always a frightful bunch, thinking history and selectively pruned religions texts to be on their side.
Each week now comes with some measure of sabotage, mutilation and disruption to prospects of peace. In his July 24 address to the US Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined his crude Manichean vision in routine barking fashion. In doing so, his intention, as Noa Landau pithily put it, was not to end the war in Gaza so much as prolong it.
For Netanyahu, the strained chords of civilisational rhetoric are never far away. He would like other powers to muck in, battling the fiends he calls an “axis of terror”. Impediments to the Jewish state’s war efforts had to be rejected. To impose them would see other countries of similar kidney shackled. “If Israel’s hands are tied, America is next. I’ll tell you what else is next: the ability of all democracies to fight terrorism will be imperilled.”
Room was reserved to attack the International Criminal Court, whose chief prosecutor has sought warrants of arrest against himself and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and the presidents of notable US universities. As for protesting students, they had chosen to “stand with evil. They stand with Hamas. They stand with rapists and murderers.” With daring outrage, he blotted out any notion that Palestinian civilians were being butchered, despite a death toll in the densely populated strip hovering near 40,000. Indeed, civilian deaths had been “practically none,” with Israel scrupulous in “getting civilians out of harm’s way, something people said we could never do”.
With this blood crusted Weltanschauung, acts of destabilising mayhem are automatic. Showing an utter contempt for Israeli hostages, let alone any humanity for the Palestinians they regard with expansive condescension, the Netanyahu government thought it wise to carry out two assassinations: that of Hamas’ political chief and chief negotiator Ismail Haniyeh, and Hezbollah’s top military chief Fuad Shukr, both killed within twenty-four hours in Beirut and Tehran respectively.
The response to the assassinations in Israel was one of relish – at least for those of the Itamar Ben-Gvir school of thought. As David Issacharoff, writing in Haaretz, described it, “Israel has become a Matryoshka doll of pyromaniacs.” From his skewed vantage point as National Security Minister, assassinations are staple food for the state. The killing of Hezbollah’s second in command, ostensibly for his alleged role in an attack on a Druze village in the Golan Heights, drew the gleeful response that “Every god has his day”.
Despite certain Israeli media reports claiming an order from Netanyahu that ministers were to stay silent over Haniyeh’s killing, the enthusiasts were voluble in rapture. Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, also of Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, expressed his glee on social media, claiming that “this is the right way to clean the world of this filth.” There were to be “No more imaginary ‘peace’/surrender agreements, no more mercy for these sons of death.”
Other cabinet ministers also joined the gloating chorus. “Careful What You Wish For,” wrote Minister for the Diaspora Amichai Chikli over a video of Haniyeh in a conference hall while people chanted “Death to Israel.” Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi resorted to biblical verse: “So may all your enemies perish, O Lord.”
Despite no official confirmation of Israel’s role in the killing of the senior Hamas official, the Government Press Office posted, if only briefly, an image of Haniyeh which left no room for nuance: “Eliminated: Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas highest-ranking leader, was killed in a precise strike in Tehran, Iran.”
The richly violent musings of Ben-Gvir and his circle of sanctified terror have even proven indigestible for some members of the war cabinet. Defence Minister Gallant, not immune from the urge to dehumanise the residents of Gaza, accused his national security counterpart of being a “pyromaniac”. On the X platform, he declared his opposition against “any negotiations to bring him into the war cabinet – it would allow him to implement his plans.” The same Gallant, however, was also in celebratory mood about the assassinations.
Even outside the war cabinet, the views of Ben-Gvir, not to mention his overall influence, travel with toxic rapture. In the background, incandescently inspiring, is Rabbi Dov Lior, a figure of glowing nationalist fury. It was he who incited members of the Jewish Underground to conduct various terrorist attacks in the 1980s against Palestinians. (The same group also unsuccessfully plotted to blow up the Dome on the Rock.)
This, as former UK diplomat Alastair Crooke observes, is the State of Judea doing battle against the State of Israel. He quotes Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, who sees such bloody eschatology as resting on a fundamental concept: “Jewish supremacy” or “Mein Kampf in reverse”. For Rabbi Lior, the next big war cannot come soon enough, one, he anticipates, that is bound to feature Gog and Magog.
The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear… They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else… It’s called the American Dream, ’cause you have to be asleep to believe it.”
Is it the government? The politicians? The corporations? The foreign investors? The American people?
While the Deep State keeps the nation divided and distracted by a presidential election whose outcome is foregone (the police state’s stranglehold on power will ensure the continuation of endless wars and out-of-control spending, while disregarding the citizenry’s fundamental rights and the rule of law), America is literally being bought and sold right out from under us.
We’re losing more and more of our businesses every year to foreign corporations and interests. Although China owns a small fraction of foreign-owned U.S. land at 380,000 acres (less than the state of Rhode Island), Chinese companies and investors are also buying up major food companies, commercial and residential real estate, and other businesses. As RetailWire explains, “Currently, many brands started by early American pioneers now wave international flags. This revolution is a direct result of globalization.” The growing list of once-notable American brands that have been sold to foreign corporations includes: U.S. Steel (now Japanese-owned); General Electric (Chinese-owned); Budweiser (Belgium); Burger King (Canada); 7-Eleven (Japan); Jeep, Chrysler, and Dodge (Netherlands); and IBM (China).
We’re digging ourselves deeper and deeper into debt, both as a nation and as a populace. Basically, the U.S. government is funding its existence with a credit card, spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford. The bulk of that debt has been amassed over the past two decades, thanks in large part to the fiscal shenanigans of four presidents, 10 sessions of Congress and two wars. The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) is more than $34 trillion and will grow another $19 trillion by 2033. Foreign ownership makes up 29% of the U.S. debt held by the public. Of that amount, reports the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, “52 percent was held by private foreign investors while foreign governments held the remaining 48 percent.”
The Fourth Estate has been taken over by media conglomerates that prioritize profit over principle. Independent news agencies, which were supposed to act as bulwarks against government propaganda, have been subsumed by a global corporate takeover of newspapers, television and radio. Consequently, a handful of corporations now control most of the media industry and, thus, the information dished out to the public. Likewise, with Facebook and Google having appointed themselves the arbiters of disinformation, we now find ourselves grappling with new levels of corporate censorship by entities with a history of colluding with the government to keep the citizenry mindless, muzzled and in the dark.
Most critically of all, however, the U.S. government, long ago sold to the highest bidders, has become little more than a shell company, a front for corporate interests. Nowhere is this state of affairs more evident than in the manufactured spectacle that is the presidential election. As for members of Congress, long before they’re elected, they are trained to dance to the tune of their wealthy benefactors, so much so that they spend two-thirds of their time in office raising money. As Reuters reports, “It also means that lawmakers often spend more time listening to the concerns of the wealthy than anyone else.”
In the oligarchy that is the American police state, it clearly doesn’t matter who wins the White House, because they all work for the same boss: a Corporate State that has gone global.
So much for living the American dream.
“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America.
We’re being forced to shell out money for endless wars that are bleeding us dry; money for surveillance systems to track our movements; money to further militarize our already militarized police; money to allow the government to raid our homes and bank accounts; money to fund schools where our kids learn nothing about freedom and everything about how to comply; and on and on.
This is no way of life.
It’s tempting to say that there’s little we can do about it, except that’s not quite accurate.
There are a few things we can do (demand transparency, reject cronyism and graft, insist on fair pricing and honest accounting methods, call a halt to incentive-driven government programs that prioritize profits over people), but it will require that “we the people” stop playing politics and stand united against the politicians and corporate interests who have turned our government and economy into a pay-to-play exercise in fascism.
Unfortunately, we’ve become so invested in identity politics that label us based on our political leanings that we’ve lost sight of the one label that unites us: we’re all Americans.
The powers-that-be want us to adopt an “us versus them” mindset that keeps us powerless and divided. Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the only “us versus them” that matters is “we the people” against the Deep State.
circa 1830: A slave auction in America. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)
Through the centuries, the Republic that eventuated in North America has maintained a maximum of chutzpah and minimum of awareness in forging a creation myth that sees slavery and dispossession not as foundational but as inimical to the nation now known as the United States. But, of course, to confront the ugly reality would induce sleeplessness interrupted by haunted dreams, so far this unsteadiness has prevailed.
— Dr. Gerald Horne1
When an origin story is considered sacrosanct, any challenge to it is sacrilege.
— Prof. Abby Reisman2
In most areas of the United States, school will be starting up in a few weeks. This reminds me of the song “What Did You Learn in School Today?” which was written by Tom Paxton and then recorded and released by Pete Seeger in 1963. Paxton’s lyrics mock the misinformation and lies provided by the public school system. This prompted me to wonder what would happen if today’s school children returned home from school and responded to Paxton’s question.
You’ll need to imagine that their teacher, (let’s call her, Ms Brown) is able to recast what follows in age appropriate language, a skill that lies far beyond my limited capacity and that he adopted a creative, critical thinking approach and not rote learning. Finally, how the precocious student conveys this information to parents might take the form of a jumbled response but we can hope the essential information is intact.
Okay. How about something along the following lines: “What did you learn in school today?” We discussed the America Revolution in 1776 and Ms Brown said that when she was in school, she was taught that the American Revolution was about besieged colonists courageously standing up against British tyranny and it was all about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. She said the textbook authors characterized it as a glorious confirmation of American exceptionalism.
One of countless celebratory examples that she was taught was from Joseph J. Ellis, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783 (New York: Liveright 2021). According to Ellis and other myth-making historians, the greatest activity of this “Revolutionary generation” was their devotion to popular sovereignty and their “common sense of purpose.”3
Ms Brown said that she later learned that this devotion excluded the majority of people in the new nation and that slavery existed in all 13 British colonies and had begun at least in 1619. And Africans weren’t the only ones aware of specious reasoning in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Hutchinson, the last colonial governor of Massachusetts, queried that if the rights were “absolutely inalienable” how could the delegates deprive so many Africans of “their right to liberty?”4 And this apparently included George Washington’s order for the genocidal attack on the Haudenosaunee nation in upstate New York where more than 40 villages were burned to the ground and all crops and winter provisions destroyed. Those not killed or captured fled to Canada. This event was, in truth, an example of the Founder’s “common purpose.”
We learned that in 1700, roughly 75 percent of land in colonial New York state was owned by only 12 individuals. In Virginia, 1.7 million acres was held by seven individuals.5 In 1760, less than five hundred men in just five colonies controlled most of the shipping, banking, mining and manufacturing on the eastern seaboard and in1767 the richest 10 percent of Boston’s taxpayers had 66 percent of Boston’s taxable income while some 30 percent had no property at all.6 Ms Brown said that fifty-six of these propertied men later signed the Declaration of Independence.7
Many of the Founders were not only slave holders but obsessive land speculators This included George Washington who began acquiring land in 1752, while still a teenager. He eventually owned more than 70,000 acres in what became seven states and the District of Colombia. Ms Brown smiled and said, “I cannot tell a lie. George Washington became the richest person in America.” We also learned that even before King George III issued his Proclamation forbidding settlements from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi, individuals and colonial land speculators were staking claims to millions of acres of and were eager to push forward into Indigenous land. Ms. Brown said that we must consider the possibility that Native dispossession and exclusion played a key role in creating the country through speculative capitalism.8 The patriotic fantasy or fig leaf for all of this was that America was destined by God to expand democracy and the Protestant ethos to the native inhabitants.
Ms Brown said we should always look for other sources of information and rely on evidence. She learned from her own reading — outside of school — that there’s an entirely different view of the so-called Revolutionary War of 1776 and that it was actually part of a “counter-revolution,” a conservative movement that the “Founding Fathers” — Britain’s “revolting spawn” — fought to oust London. When the colonial elites broke with the Mother Country, the world’s first-ever apartheid state came into being.9 We learned that in the 1770s, the British Parliament was moving toward abolition and in 1773 there was the famous Somerset case in Britain in which Lord Mansfield banned slavery — calling it “odious” —within the country but not yet in the colonies. There was a real fear that Britain would soon cease to support slavery in the thirteen colonies. Simultaneously, Alexander Hamilton, another Founding Father, bought and sold slaves for his wife’s family, owned slaves himself and called Indigenous people “savages.”
More specifically, Ms Brown told us that “…In November 1775, Lord Dunsmore in Virginia issued his famous — or infamous, in the view of the settlers — edict offering to free and arm Africans to squash an anti-colonial revolt, he entered a pre-existing maelstrom of insecurity about the fate of slavery and London’s intentions. And by speaking so bluntly, Dunsmore converted the moderates into radicals.” Indeed, another expert on the Colonial period says that Dunsmore’s edict “did more than any another measure to spur uncommitted white Americans into the camp of rebellion.”10 Our teacher said that many more Africans — some estimates run as high as 100,000 — allied with the Red Coats rather than with their masters. Of course there were risks for the Africans because if the Revolution succeeded they would be considered traitors and punished as such. It was a terrifying choice and their fears were justified because after the 1776-1783 Revolutionary War, tens of thousands of formerly enslaved people were returned to enslavement.
We learned that in 1787, after the war, James Madison made sure that the Constitution guaranteed that the government would, in his words, “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” He was firmly against agrarian reform of any sort and opposed to anything akin to actual functioning democracy. Why? Because the majority — the poor and landless — might use the political power they were granted to force a redistribution of wealth.
We learned that the British were jeopardizing numerous fortunes, not only based on slavery, but the slave trade. So, the war was necessary to protect the freedom of a small white elite to maintain slavery and further, not have any interference as they went ahead with dispossessing and exterminating indigenous people. In short, British colonialism was replaced with U.S. capitalist state colonialism.11
Ms Brown said there was evidence strongly suggesting that the American Revolution was, in the words of historian William Hoagland, “The first chapter in an inter-imperial war between Great Britain and its dissident elite in North America.” We learned that the Euro-American elite ‘patriots” had only contempt and fear of actual democracy which they termed “The tyranny of the majority.” One historian pointed out that “The American state, even in its earliest incarnation was more concerned with limiting popular democracy than securing and expanding it.”12 He told us that the Declaration’s phrase “Life, liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” was changed in the Constitution to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property.”
In support of this revisionist history, Ms Brown shared a few excerpts from Howard Zinn’s magisterial book, A People’s History of the United States, in which he cogently explains that over a relatively short period, the colonial elite were able to:
… take over land, profits and power from the British empire. In the process they could hold back a number of potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new privileged leadership. When we look at the American Revolution in that way it was a work of genius.
The Declaration of Independence was a wonderfully useful device because the language of liberty and equality could unite just enough whites to fight for the Revolution, without ending either slavery or inequality.
…the rebellion against British rule allowed a certain group of the colonial elite to replace those loyal to England, give some benefits to small holders and leave poor white working people and tenant farmers in very much the same situation.13
Finally, we considered that in 1776, nascent capitalists pulled off the ultimate coup and succeeded in “convincing the deluded and otherwise naive (to this very day) that this naked grab for land, slaves and power was somehow a great leap forward for humanity.”14
Just before the bell rang, one kid in my class asked the teacher, “If what we’ve previously been taught about the American Revolution may not be true what else may not be true?” Ms Brown said that was a good question and we’d talk about it next week and also do some role playing.
1 Gerald Horne, The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in the Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018) p.191. Dr. Horne is a national treasure and I concur with those who’ve described him as the preeminent radical historian of our era. I suspect this accounts for why so few people know of his indispensable work.
2 Abby Reisman, “America as it actually was: Symposium confronts American myth, complexities of teaching 1777 in light of 1619. Penn GSE News, April 1 2022.
4 Comment, in Woody Holton, ed. Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era: A Brief History With Documents, (Boston: Bedford, 2009) 6-7 in Horne, p.238. Here it should be noted that the Reconstruction period of 1865-1877 was the sole attempt to realize interracial democracy — what W.E.B. Du Bois termed “abolition democracy — and with it, the potential for economic democracy. The best account of Reconstruction’s remarkable achievements and its ultimate defeat at the hands of racial terrorism and the withdrawal of Federal support is Manisha Sinha’s new book, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic (New York: Norton, 2024). Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut.
5 Michael Parenti, Democracy for the Few. (Boston: Wadsworth, 2011), p.5
6 Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States. (New York: Harpers, 2008, 2011).
7 Parenti, p.11.
8 For more on this topic, see, Michael A. Blackman, Speculation Nation: Land Mania in the Revolutionary American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023); Colin Calloway, The Indian World of George Washington (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); “The Founders and the Pursuit of Land,” The Lehrman Institute.
9 Gerald Horne, The Counter Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. (New York: New York University Press, 2014), p.222 and 224. This section relies on Horne’s thoroughly documented Chapter Nine “Abolition in London” with its 147 footnotes.
circa 1830: A slave auction in America. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)
Through the centuries, the Republic that eventuated in North America has maintained a maximum of chutzpah and minimum of awareness in forging a creation myth that sees slavery and dispossession not as foundational but as inimical to the nation now known as the United States. But, of course, to confront the ugly reality would induce sleeplessness interrupted by haunted dreams, so far this unsteadiness has prevailed.
— Dr. Gerald Horne1
When an origin story is considered sacrosanct, any challenge to it is sacrilege.
— Prof. Abby Reisman2
In most areas of the United States, school will be starting up in a few weeks. This reminds me of the song “What Did You Learn in School Today?” which was written by Tom Paxton and then recorded and released by Pete Seeger in 1963. Paxton’s lyrics mock the misinformation and lies provided by the public school system. This prompted me to wonder what would happen if today’s school children returned home from school and responded to Paxton’s question.
You’ll need to imagine that their teacher, (let’s call her, Ms Brown) is able to recast what follows in age appropriate language, a skill that lies far beyond my limited capacity and that he adopted a creative, critical thinking approach and not rote learning. Finally, how the precocious student conveys this information to parents might take the form of a jumbled response but we can hope the essential information is intact.
Okay. How about something along the following lines: “What did you learn in school today?” We discussed the America Revolution in 1776 and Ms Brown said that when she was in school, she was taught that the American Revolution was about besieged colonists courageously standing up against British tyranny and it was all about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. She said the textbook authors characterized it as a glorious confirmation of American exceptionalism.
One of countless celebratory examples that she was taught was from Joseph J. Ellis, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783 (New York: Liveright 2021). According to Ellis and other myth-making historians, the greatest activity of this “Revolutionary generation” was their devotion to popular sovereignty and their “common sense of purpose.”3
Ms Brown said that she later learned that this devotion excluded the majority of people in the new nation and that slavery existed in all 13 British colonies and had begun at least in 1619. And Africans weren’t the only ones aware of specious reasoning in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Hutchinson, the last colonial governor of Massachusetts, queried that if the rights were “absolutely inalienable” how could the delegates deprive so many Africans of “their right to liberty?”4 And this apparently included George Washington’s order for the genocidal attack on the Haudenosaunee nation in upstate New York where more than 40 villages were burned to the ground and all crops and winter provisions destroyed. Those not killed or captured fled to Canada. This event was, in truth, an example of the Founder’s “common purpose.”
We learned that in 1700, roughly 75 percent of land in colonial New York state was owned by only 12 individuals. In Virginia, 1.7 million acres was held by seven individuals.5 In 1760, less than five hundred men in just five colonies controlled most of the shipping, banking, mining and manufacturing on the eastern seaboard and in1767 the richest 10 percent of Boston’s taxpayers had 66 percent of Boston’s taxable income while some 30 percent had no property at all.6 Ms Brown said that fifty-six of these propertied men later signed the Declaration of Independence.7
Many of the Founders were not only slave holders but obsessive land speculators This included George Washington who began acquiring land in 1752, while still a teenager. He eventually owned more than 70,000 acres in what became seven states and the District of Colombia. Ms Brown smiled and said, “I cannot tell a lie. George Washington became the richest person in America.” We also learned that even before King George III issued his Proclamation forbidding settlements from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi, individuals and colonial land speculators were staking claims to millions of acres of and were eager to push forward into Indigenous land. Ms. Brown said that we must consider the possibility that Native dispossession and exclusion played a key role in creating the country through speculative capitalism.8 The patriotic fantasy or fig leaf for all of this was that America was destined by God to expand democracy and the Protestant ethos to the native inhabitants.
Ms Brown said we should always look for other sources of information and rely on evidence. She learned from her own reading — outside of school — that there’s an entirely different view of the so-called Revolutionary War of 1776 and that it was actually part of a “counter-revolution,” a conservative movement that the “Founding Fathers” — Britain’s “revolting spawn” — fought to oust London. When the colonial elites broke with the Mother Country, the world’s first-ever apartheid state came into being.9 We learned that in the 1770s, the British Parliament was moving toward abolition and in 1773 there was the famous Somerset case in Britain in which Lord Mansfield banned slavery — calling it “odious” —within the country but not yet in the colonies. There was a real fear that Britain would soon cease to support slavery in the thirteen colonies. Simultaneously, Alexander Hamilton, another Founding Father, bought and sold slaves for his wife’s family, owned slaves himself and called Indigenous people “savages.”
More specifically, Ms Brown told us that “…In November 1775, Lord Dunsmore in Virginia issued his famous — or infamous, in the view of the settlers — edict offering to free and arm Africans to squash an anti-colonial revolt, he entered a pre-existing maelstrom of insecurity about the fate of slavery and London’s intentions. And by speaking so bluntly, Dunsmore converted the moderates into radicals.” Indeed, another expert on the Colonial period says that Dunsmore’s edict “did more than any another measure to spur uncommitted white Americans into the camp of rebellion.”10 Our teacher said that many more Africans — some estimates run as high as 100,000 — allied with the Red Coats rather than with their masters. Of course there were risks for the Africans because if the Revolution succeeded they would be considered traitors and punished as such. It was a terrifying choice and their fears were justified because after the 1776-1783 Revolutionary War, tens of thousands of formerly enslaved people were returned to enslavement.
We learned that in 1787, after the war, James Madison made sure that the Constitution guaranteed that the government would, in his words, “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” He was firmly against agrarian reform of any sort and opposed to anything akin to actual functioning democracy. Why? Because the majority — the poor and landless — might use the political power they were granted to force a redistribution of wealth.
We learned that the British were jeopardizing numerous fortunes, not only based on slavery, but the slave trade. So, the war was necessary to protect the freedom of a small white elite to maintain slavery and further, not have any interference as they went ahead with dispossessing and exterminating indigenous people. In short, British colonialism was replaced with U.S. capitalist state colonialism.11
Ms Brown said there was evidence strongly suggesting that the American Revolution was, in the words of historian William Hoagland, “The first chapter in an inter-imperial war between Great Britain and its dissident elite in North America.” We learned that the Euro-American elite ‘patriots” had only contempt and fear of actual democracy which they termed “The tyranny of the majority.” One historian pointed out that “The American state, even in its earliest incarnation was more concerned with limiting popular democracy than securing and expanding it.”12 He told us that the Declaration’s phrase “Life, liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” was changed in the Constitution to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property.”
In support of this revisionist history, Ms Brown shared a few excerpts from Howard Zinn’s magisterial book, A People’s History of the United States, in which he cogently explains that over a relatively short period, the colonial elite were able to:
… take over land, profits and power from the British empire. In the process they could hold back a number of potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new privileged leadership. When we look at the American Revolution in that way it was a work of genius.
The Declaration of Independence was a wonderfully useful device because the language of liberty and equality could unite just enough whites to fight for the Revolution, without ending either slavery or inequality.
…the rebellion against British rule allowed a certain group of the colonial elite to replace those loyal to England, give some benefits to small holders and leave poor white working people and tenant farmers in very much the same situation.13
Finally, we considered that in 1776, nascent capitalists pulled off the ultimate coup and succeeded in “convincing the deluded and otherwise naive (to this very day) that this naked grab for land, slaves and power was somehow a great leap forward for humanity.”14
Just before the bell rang, one kid in my class asked the teacher, “If what we’ve previously been taught about the American Revolution may not be true what else may not be true?” Ms Brown said that was a good question and we’d talk about it next week and also do some role playing.
1 Gerald Horne, The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in the Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018) p.191. Dr. Horne is a national treasure and I concur with those who’ve described him as the preeminent radical historian of our era. I suspect this accounts for why so few people know of his indispensable work.
2 Abby Reisman, “America as it actually was: Symposium confronts American myth, complexities of teaching 1777 in light of 1619. Penn GSE News, April 1 2022.
4 Comment, in Woody Holton, ed. Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era: A Brief History With Documents, (Boston: Bedford, 2009) 6-7 in Horne, p.238. Here it should be noted that the Reconstruction period of 1865-1877 was the sole attempt to realize interracial democracy — what W.E.B. Du Bois termed “abolition democracy — and with it, the potential for economic democracy. The best account of Reconstruction’s remarkable achievements and its ultimate defeat at the hands of racial terrorism and the withdrawal of Federal support is Manisha Sinha’s new book, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic (New York: Norton, 2024). Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut.
5 Michael Parenti, Democracy for the Few. (Boston: Wadsworth, 2011), p.5
6 Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States. (New York: Harpers, 2008, 2011).
7 Parenti, p.11.
8 For more on this topic, see, Michael A. Blackman, Speculation Nation: Land Mania in the Revolutionary American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023); Colin Calloway, The Indian World of George Washington (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); “The Founders and the Pursuit of Land,” The Lehrman Institute.
9 Gerald Horne, The Counter Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. (New York: New York University Press, 2014), p.222 and 224. This section relies on Horne’s thoroughly documented Chapter Nine “Abolition in London” with its 147 footnotes.
From his own redoubt of critical inquiry, the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating has made fighting the imperialising leprosy of the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the UK and the United States a matter of solemn duty.
In March 15, 2023, he excoriated a Canberra press gallery seduced and tantalised by the prospect of nuclear-powered submarines, calling the Albanese government’s complicit arrangements with the US and UK to acquire such a capability “the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since the former Labor leader, Billy Hughes, sought to introduce conscription to augment Australian forces in World War one.”
His latest spray was launched in the aftermath of a touched-up AUKUS, much of it discussed in a letter by US President Joe Biden to the US House Speaker and President of the Senate. The revised agreement between the three powers for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion is intended to supersede the November 22, 2021 agreement between the three powers on the Exchange of Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information (ENNPIA).
The new agreement permits “the continued communication and exchange of NNPI, including certain RD, and would also expand the cooperation between the governments by enabling the transfer of naval nuclear propulsion plants of conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines, including component parts and spare parts thereof, and other related equipment.” The new arrangements will also permit the sale of special nuclear material in the welded power units, along with other relevant “material as needed for such naval propulsion plants.”
The contents of Biden’s letter irked Keating less than the spectacular show of servility shown by Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles, and Foreign Minister Penny Wong on their visit to Annapolis for the latest AUSMIN talks. In what has become a pattern of increasing subordination of Australian interests to the US Imperium, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken played happy hosts and must have been delighted by what they heard.
The details that emerged from the conversations held between the four – details which rendered Keating passionately apoplectic – can only make those wishing for an independent Australian defence policy weep. Words such as “Enhanced Force Posture Cooperation” were used to describe the intrusion of the US armed forces into every sphere of Australian defence: the domains of land, maritime, air, and space.
Ongoing infrastructure investments at such Royal Australian Air Force Bases as Darwin and Tindal continue to take place, not to bolster Australian defence but fortify the country as a US forward defensive position. To these can be added, as the Pentagon fact sheet reveals, “site surveys for potential upgrades at RAAF Bases Curtin, Learmonth, and Scherger.”
The degree of subservience Canberra affords is guaranteed by increased numbers of US personnel to take place in rotational deployments. These will include “frequent rotations of bombers, fighter aircraft, and Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft”. Secret arrangements have also been made involving the disposal of nuclear propulsion plants that will feature in Australia’s nuclear powered submarine fleet, though it is unclear how broad that commitment is.
The venomous icing on the cake – at least for AUKUS critics – comes in the form of an undisclosed “Understanding” that involves “additional related political commitments”. The Australian Greens spokesperson on Defence, Senator David Shoebridge, rightly wonders “what has to be kept secret from the Australian public? There are real concerns the secret understanding includes commitments binding us to the US in the event they go to war with China in return for getting nuclear submarines.”
Marles has been stumblingly unforthcoming in that regard. When asked what such “additional political commitments” were, he coldly replied that the agreement was “as we’ve done it.” The rest was “misinformation” being spread by detractors of the alliance.
It is precisely the nature of these undertakings, and what was made public at Annapolis, that paved the way for Keating’s hefty salvo on ABC’s 7.30. The slavishness of the whole affair had made Keating “cringe”. “This government has sold out to the United States. They’ve fallen for the dinner on the White House lawn.”
He proved unsparing about Washington’s intentions. “What AUKUS is about in the American mind is turning [Australia into suckers], locking us up for 40 years with American bases all around … not Australian bases.” It meant, quite simply, “in American terms, the military control of Australia. I mean, what’s happened … is likely to turn Australia into the 51st state of the United States.”
Having the US as an ally was itself problematic, largely because of its belligerent intentions. “If we didn’t have an aggressive ally like the United States – aggressive to others in the region – there’d be nobody attacking Australia. We are better left alone than we are being ‘protected’ by an aggressive power like the United States.”
As for what Australian obligations to the US entailed, the former PM was in little doubt. “What this is all about is the Chinese laying claim to Taiwan, and the Americans are going to say ‘no, no, we’re going to keep these Taiwanese people protected’, even though they’re sitting on Chinese real estate.” Were Australia to intervene, the picture would rapidly change: an initial confrontation between Beijing and Washington over the island would eventually lead to the realisation that catastrophic loss would simply not be worth it, leaving Australia “the ones who have done all the offence.”
As for Australia’s own means of self-defence against any adversary or enemy, Keating uttered the fundamental heresy long stomped on by the country’s political and intelligence establishment: Canberra could, if needed, go it alone. “Australia is capable of defending itself. There’s no way another state can invade a country like Australia with an armada of ships without it all failing.” Australia did not “need to be basically a pair of shoes hanging out of Americans’ backside.” With Keating’s savage rhetoric, and the possibility that AUKUS may collapse before the implosions of US domestic politics, improbable peace may break out.
They say Iran “masterminded” a Canadian student encampment and is “destabilizing” West Asia. But these crude ‘blame Iran’ claims are nothing more than pathetic attempts to legitimate genocidal Zionism.
Recently, various commentators, politicians and Zionist groups promoted a deranged report Iran “masterminded” the student divestment encampment at McGill. Seeking to frame student opposition to their university’s complicity with Israel’s holocaust as Iranian interference, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Canada Proud, MP Kevin Vuong, senator Leo Housakos, conservative candidate Neil Oberman, influencer Yasmine Mohammed, journalist Sam Cooper, Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi and others shared an Iran International report headlined “Iran masterminded anti-Israel protest in Canadian university”. Drawing from an analysis by an unnamed official at US cyber company XPOZ, the article claims large numbers of social media posts about the McGill encampment were in Farsi and may have come from Iranian government aligned accounts. A National Post article “Disinformation experts warn Iran, Russia and others encouraging anti-Israel protests in Canada” used the same data though it was slightly more circumspect in concluding Iran “masterminded” the encampment. It was shared by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.
As someone who went to the encampment regularly and has followed activism at McGill for a quarter century it’s hard to not laugh at the absurdity. In the lead up to the encampment several students went on a two-month hunger strike to pressure the university to divest and there were a number of large anti-genocide protests on campus during the last academic year. For a decade there have been referendums on Palestine and in November 78.7% of undergraduates called on the administration to sever ties with “any corporations, institutions or individuals complicit in genocide, settler-colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.” It was the largest referendum turnout in the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) history.
The broader context in which the encampment grew out of also demonstrates the silliness of the ‘blame Iran’ claim. The students who set up the McGill encampment were quite obviously mimicking the tactics of their US counterparts. And the tactic had little to do with social media. I doubt the reliability of the data quoted by Iran International and the National Post but even if lots of Farsi language Iranian government bots promoted the encampment what impact did this have on a physical occupation of a campus in Montreal?
At a higher level of ‘blame Iran’ idiocy, foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly is claiming Iran is “destabilizing” the region. A statement she released on Sunday regarding rising tensions in the region concluded, “I reiterated our call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, for the immediate release of all hostages, and demand that Iran and its proxies refrain from destabilizing actions in the region.” On July 26 Canada, Australia and New Zealand released a joint statement with a similar formulation. It noted, “We condemn Iran’s attack against Israel of April 13-14, call on Iran to refrain from further destabilizing actions in the Middle East, and demand that Iran and its affiliated groups, including Hizballah, cease their attacks.”
Canadian officials never refer to Israel as “destabilizing” the region even though that country has killed hundreds of thousands in Gaza and stolen ever more Palestinian land in the West Bank all the while repeatedly attacking Lebanon and Syria and assassinating the Palestinians’ main ceasefire negotiator in Iran.
As part of its blame Iran nonsense, Ottawa has ignored Israel’s recent assassination of the Hamas leader in Tehran and top Hezbolah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. But they will no doubt denounce Iran or Hezbollah when they respond.
Four months ago, Ottawa remained silent when Israel damaged Canada’s embassy in Damascus while murdering eight Iranian officials at the country’s diplomatic compound. Then the Canadian government condemned Iran when it responded to Israel’s flagrant war crime.
As part of this blame Iran mantra Ottawa recently joined the US in designating the 100,000-member Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization. Listing the IRGC bolsters Israeli violence in the region.
Canada continues to strengthen Israel as it commits horrific crime after horrific crime across the region. As death from illness and malnutrition grows due to 10 months of IOF barbarism in Gaza, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently said it may be “justified and moral” to starve 2 million Palestinians but the world won’t let Israel do it. At the same time, Knesset members are openly debating the legitimacy of raping the 10,000 Palestinian hostages Israel holds in what a recent B’tselem report refers to as “torture camps”.
But instead of focusing on Israel’s crimes we’re told to look away. At first, we were told Israel’s genocide was all Hamas’ fault. Now it’s Iran that is to blame.
Israel and its supporters are like 4-year-olds caught with their hands in the cookie jar. It’s always someone else’s fault. Except this is not about a stolen sweet. This is about the world watching a genocide in real time and doing nothing about it.
There is much to loathe about the AUKUS security agreement between Canberra, Washington and London. Of the three conspirators against stability in the Indo and Asia Pacific, one stands out as the shouldering platform, the sustaining force, the political and military stuffing. But Australian propagandists and proselytisers of the US credo of power prefer to see it differently, repeatedly telling the good citizens down under that they are onto something truly special in being a military extension, the gargantuan annexe of another’s interests. Give them nuclear powered submarines, let them feel special, and a false sense of security will follow.
The August 2024 AUSMIN talks in Annapolis, Maryland, held between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and their Australian counterparts, Richard Marles (Minister of Defence) and Penny Wong (Foreign Minister) provided yet another occasion for this grim pantomime. No one could be in doubt who the servitors were.
The factsheet from the US Department of Defense on the meeting is worth noting for Washington’s military capture – no other word describes it – and Australia’s sycophantic accommodation. As part of the “Enhanced Force Posture Cooperation,” the US and Australia are to advance “key priorities across an ambitious range of force posture cooperation efforts”. This is merely a clumsy way of describing the deeper incorporation of Australia’s own military requirements into the US military complex “across land, maritime, air, and space domains, as well as the Combined Logistics, Sustainment, and Maintenance Enterprise”. US military forces, in short, are to occupy every domain of Australia’s defence.
The greedy and speedy US garrisoning of Australia is evident through ongoing “infrastructure investments at key Australian bases in the norther, including RAAF Bases Darwin and Tindal” and “site surveys for potential upgrades at RAAF Bases Curtin, Learmonth, and Scherger.” Rotational deployments of US forces to Australia, “including frequent rotations of bombers, fighter aircraft, and Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft” are to increase in number. As any student of US-Australian relations knows, rotation is the disingenuous term used to mask the presence of a permanently stationed force – occupation by another name.
The public relations office has obviously been busy spiking the language with a sense of false equality: the finalising, for instance, by December 2024 of a Memorandum of Understanding on Co-Assembly for Guided Multiple Rocket Systems (GLMRS) – a “co-production”; finalising, by the same date, an MOU “on cooperative Production, Sustainment, and Follow-on Development of the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM)”; and institutionalising of “US cooperation with Australia’s Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) Enterprise”. Everywhere we look, a sense of artificial cooperation under the cover of Washington’s heavy-handed dominance, be it cooperative activities for Integrated Air and Missile Defence, or the hypersonic weapons program, can be found.
In this even more spectacular surrender of sovereignty and submission than previous undertakings, Canberra is promised second hand nuclear-powered toys in the form of Virginia Class submarines, something forever contingent on the wishes and whimsy of the US Congress. But even this contingent state of affairs is sufficient for Australia to bury itself deeper in what has been announced as a revised AUKUS agreement. More accurately, it constitutes a touch-up of the November 22, 2021 agreement between the three powers on the Exchange of Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information (ENNPIA).
The ENNPIA allows the AUKUS parties the means to communicate and exchange relevant Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information (NNPI), including officially Restricted Data (RD) as part of what is described as the “Optimal Pathway” for Australia’s needless acquisition of nuclear powered vessels.
In his letter to the US House Speaker and President of the Senate, President Joe Biden explains the nature of the revision. Less cumbersomely named than its predecessor, the new arrangements feature an Agreement between the three powers for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion. In superseding the ENNPIA, it “would permit the continued communication and exchange of NNPI, including certain RD, and would also expand the cooperation between the governments by enabling the transfer of naval nuclear propulsion plants of conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines, including component parts and spare parts thereof, and other related equipment.”
The Agreement further permits the sale of special nuclear material in the welded power units, and other relevant “material as needed for such naval propulsion plants.” Transferrable equipment would include that necessary for research, development, or design of naval propulsion plants. The logistics of manufacture, development, design, manufacture, operation, maintenance, regulation and disposal of the plants is also covered.
Tokenistic remarks about non-proliferation are then made in Biden’s letter. The powers, for instance, commit themselves to “setting the highest nonproliferation standard” while protecting US classified information and intellectual property. This standard is actually pitifully low: Australia has committed itself to proliferation not only by seeking to acquire submarine nuclear propulsion, but by subsidising the building of such submarines in US and UK shipyards.
Marles, the persistently reliable spokesman for Australia’s wholesale capitulation to the US war machine, calls the document “the legal underpinning of our commitment to our international obligations so it’s a very significant step down the AUKUS path and again it’s another demonstration that we are making this happen.”
Obligations is the operative word here, given that Australia is burdened by any number of undertakings, be it as a US military asset placed in harm’s way or becoming a radioactive storage dump for all the AUKUS submarine fleets. Marles insists that the only nuclear waste that will end up on Australian soil will be that generated by Australia. “That is the agreement that we reached with the UK and the US back in March of last year, and so all this is doing is providing for the legal underpinning of that.”
Given that Australia has no standalone, permanent site to store high-level nuclear waste, even that undertaking is spurious. Nor does the understanding prevent Australia from accepting the waste accruing from the fleets of all the navies. Given the cringing servitude of Canberra, and the admission by the Australian government that they have made undisclosed “political commitments”, such an outcome cannot be ruled out.
Always reliably waspish, former Australian Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating gave his assessment about the latest revelations of the AUSMIN talks. “There’ll be an American force posture now in Australia, involving every domain.” The Albanese government had “fallen for the dinner on the White House lawn.” That, and much more besides.
If one views the classic 1993 Claude Berri film Germinal one can see what 19th century feudalism was all about. It took place in a mid-century Northern France mining region. Here in the USA we had John Sayle’s 1987 film Matawan, which portrayed the 1920 Matawan, West Virginia miner’s strike. Both films gave viewers a taste of how feudalism operates. Well, hang on gang because Amerika 2024 is fast approaching the evil of Capitalism on steroids.
We have less than 10% of private sector workers here in unions, and about half of our states have what are called Right to Work laws. In a nutshell, this allows workers at a company to NOT join the union at that workplace, and still get ALL the benefits from collective bargaining agreements between the union and the company. Thus, you can refuse to join a union and still get ALL the benefits the union contract accomplishes. In 2018, the right-wing dominated Supreme Court allowed public sector AKA government workers to get the same benefits from union contracts WITHOUT having to join or pay union dues. Yes, the MAGA baseball cap should be MAFA (Make America Feudalist Again). Getting back to the private sector for a minute, just imagine that 90+ % of those workers don’t even have a union to represent them! So, the former cleaning lady we knew had a husband who was a highly skilled carpenter who worked at a local cabinet company — of course non-union. He and his three other cabinetmakers colleagues were really at the mercy of the owner, with no guarantee of sick days, paid vacations or health coverage paid by the company. The icing on the cake was when the owner decided to purchase new BMWs for himself, his wife, and their two kids — who were all on the books for great tax write-offs.
In the winter of ’73, I was getting ready to finish my last year of college and was engaged to be married. I decided to look for a management trainee job and found one in the good old Sunday Times. My first day on the job, the sales manager of this linen supply company took me for a tour of the plant. First, we went into the humongous area where the dirty linens were washed and dried. This was mid January in a very cold and snowy Brooklyn, NY. That area of the plant had a number of massive dryers, which made that area heat up like one was in the subtropics. I looked at the workers and every single one of them was Afro American, the men dressed in white pants and shirts and the women looking honestly like the Aunt Jemima character from the pancake box. I was told later that these folks were non-union hourly waged employees. The sales manager, a sweaty, too fat for his tight suit Italian American like myself, leaned over to me as the terribly loud noises of the washers and dryers made it almost impossible to talk. He said, “Kid, the more we save the company the more we get in bonuses!” He then turned me over to the plant manager for more training.
The next week, I was directed to spend it with a different delivery driver each day. I had to be there at 6 AM, and the truck garage was as cold and damp as the January winter would extend. I found out that these guys were actually in a union, but repeatedly each one of them told me how this was a ‘Sweetheart Union’ which did not do much for them. Sitting in an old truck that seemed to have arthritis, with a terrible heater and obviously balding tires I could see that point. These drivers did not just stop at a pickup at some bakery, butcher or supermarket, run in, drop off the new linens and run out with the old, dirty ones. No sir! I went in with each guy on each day and saw for myself how disgraceful this job was. We went into our first stop, a butcher in the Bronx. The owner said that he didn’t have time to have the dirty linens in a pile for pickup, so we had to go and find them. When we went down the dark, squeaky stairs to the basement, I could see a few sets of eyes peering at me in the darkness. The driver laughed. “They’re rats, they won’t bother you if you don’t go too close. Part of the job kid.” This seemed to be the same on just about every stop. We had to search for the linens just about every time. The rear or basement of these stores all looked like they needed an intensive cleaning.
I quit the job after my third day on the trucks. Each driver told me how the company paid as little as possible in benefits and bonuses — and these guys had a union! Some union! The only caveat was that they could not get fired so easily because of the union. And, they got two or three major holidays off with pay. A one-week paid vacation and maybe a handful of paid sick days a year. They had to contribute towards their health coverage, and that insurance had high deductions, very high. When I found out what these guys were earning for the **** they had to go through, I couldn’t believe it! Driving a dinosaur in freezing cold weather with a terrible heater, or in the hot 90+ degree summer with NO AC, I really felt for these guys.
Well, whenever the Amazons or Wal-Marts decide to squeeze their workers a bit more, that linen company in ’73 would look like Nirvana. How about the tens of millions of small businesses nationwide with no support at all for the workers? Do we have to continue to hope for the kindness of the bosses, and overlook the fleet of BMWs for family while many of us are treading the economic waters? You decide.
US political and media elites tried but failed to sink the Chinese swimming team at the Paris Olympics. The Chinese swimmers performed well despite the increased stress caused by media-induced rumors of “Chinese doping”. And now, the tables are being turned as the US anti-doping regime is coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism.
The media manufactured cloud of suspicion
Just a few months ago the NY Times and German ARD media ignited the controversy with an “investigation” regarding an incident from December 2021. At that time, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a trace amount of the heart medication Trimetazadine (TMZ) during a swim meet for top swimmers from across the country. The Chinese Anti Doping Agency investigated and learned that all the positively tested swimmers were staying at the same hotel and eating in the same dining room. The amount of TMZ detected was so low that in some cases it was detected one day, and not the next. Testing in the kitchen revealed that TMZ was on the counters and in the vent hood.
The Chinese Anti Doping Agency (CHINADA) concluded that the athletes had been contaminated through food served in the dining room. They reported the facts to the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and the international swimming federation (World Aquatics, formerly known as FINA) . Both organizations concurred with the conclusion that the athletes were innocent and should not be charged with an anti-doping rule violation.
But the NY Times and ARD suggested something shady had occurred and the athletes may not have been innocent. They further suggested that CHINADA and WADA may be in collusion and covering up mass doping. .
This story ignited a storm of accusations with the head of the US Anti Doping Agency (USADA), Travis Tygart, leading the pack. Some prominent international swimmers have joined the fray with suggestions that the Chinese swimming accomplishments at the 2022 Tokyo Olympics were tainted, “not clean,” or based on cheating. The insinuations and suspicions continued into swimming competitions at the Paris Olympics. Many TV commentators at the Olympics referred to the insinuation one way or another. Media kept the suspicion alive by highlighting when a prominent international swimmer said anything about it. American champion swimmer Katie Ledecky said it was difficult to accept coming second behind a Chinese swimmer who might have doped. Legendary US swimmer Michael Phelps said any athlete guilty of doping should be banned forever – “one and done”.
The US Congress got involved with Congressional representatives to suspend or cancel US contributions to WADA. With the 2019 Rodchenkov Act, the US Congress has granted itself the power to arrest and penalize anyone in the world involved in “doping”.
Paris 2024 Olympics
Swimming at the 2024 Paris Olympics is now over. The swimming powerhouses US and Australia won the most medals with 28 and 18 respectively. But China did well, coming third with 12 swimming medals. China’s Pan Zhanle was one of the superstars of the event, setting a new world record in the 100 m freestyle. He also anchored the Chinese relay team to their victory in the 4 x 100 meter medley relay, an event the US has dominated for 64 years.
Chinese swimmers spoke about feeling additional stress and discomfort because of the accusations and rumors about doping. They were tested much more than any other team, with some 600 doping tests conducted leading into and during the games. There were zero violations.
The superstar Pan Zhanle was not one of the swimmers who tested positive in 2021.
So it was left to some critics to say his performance was not “humanly possible”.
Tables are turned
Chinese and other media are now pushing back and exposing the hypocrisy and double standards of the US anti-doping regime. Even the mainstream Newsweek magazine headlines “China turns the table on US doping accusations.”
More significantly, on August 7 the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) publicly denounced USADA for having “allowed athletes who had doped, to compete for years, in at least one case without ever publishing or sanctioning their anti-doping rule violations, in direct contravention of the World Anti-Doping Code and USADA’s own rules. The USADA scheme threatened the integrity of sporting competition, which the Code seeks to protect.”
Other international organizations are also reacting negatively to the US efforts to be the global judge and jury. The International Olympic Committee has said that the US may lose hosting of future Olympic Games if the US undermines the global anti doping establishment.
NY Times misleading information.
The NY Times and Germany’s ARD launched and spurred this controversy with misleading reporting. A recent NYT article titled “A Doping Scandal” claims there is “a troubling pattern of positive doping tests in the Chinese swimming program.” Twelve members of the Chinese Olympic team tested positive in recent years for powerful performance-enhancing drugs but were cleared to keep competing.” They insinuated malfeasance on the part of the Chinese swimmers, China Anti Doping Agency and World Anti Doping Agency. By implication, the world swimming federation (World Aquatics) was also guilty.
The NY Times claim that Trimetazidine is a “powerful performance-enhancing drug” is false. The medication is helpful for elderly individuals with weak hearts but does nothing for young athletes with healthy hearts. As noted at SwimSwam magazine, “Dr. Benjamin Levine, a renowned sports cardiologist at UT Southwestern Medical School, says he doesn’t think it provides any benefit.” If Western athletes doubt this or want to test it, Dr. Levine says they can imbibe RANOLAZINE which is very similar to TMZ and NOT PROHIBITED.
The insinuation that dozens of Chinese swimmers from diverse parts of the country with different coaches were collectively imbibing a prohibited medication risking their careers and reputations does not pass the sniff test. Simple logic would indicate an accidental contamination of the food they were all eating, confirmed by the presence of the chemical in the dining room kitchen. That is what CHINADA, WADA and World Aquatics all determined. The commitment of Chinese swimmers to anti-doping and clean sport is confirmed by the renowned Australian swim coach Denis Cotterell.
The need for thresholds
This incident points to the need for there to be appropriate thresholds for determining a doping rule violation. Currently this is inconsistent. There are minimum levels for some chemicals and none for others. Modern test instruments can detect extremely small amounts – molecules – of a chemical. As a scientist at an official doping test laboratory said, “It is very dangerous to not have a minimum threshold because all sorts of chemicals are in the environment.”
How did the TMZ get in the kitchen?
A very important question remains unanswered: How did TMZ get into the hotel kitchen and the food that was being prepared for consumption by the Chinese athletes?
There is a curious coincidence. During the same month, December 2021, the Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva – widely recognized as the best in the world – tested positive for a trace amount of TMZ when she was competing in the Russian Nationals in St. Peteresburg. However this was not reported by the Swedish laboratory until February, just in time to disrupt the Beijing Winter Olympics. Unlike the Chinese swimmers, Valieva was alone and unable to identify where the contamination seven weeks earlier came from. This one positive test for a trace amount of TMZ resulted in huge turmoil in Beijing, assumption of guilt contrary to common sense, and ultimately the destruction of Valieva’s international competitive career. Her suggestion there may have been sabotage was ignored. The NY Times thinks this case is “how it’s supposed to work.”
Summary
In Paris unlike Beijing in 2022, the accusations were a distraction but not totally disruptive. The fans in the swimming arena were respectful and appreciative of the Chinese athletes. Some international swimmers also ignored the controversy and did the right thing. They congratulated the Chinese swimmers when they were victorious. Australian Kyle Chalmers congratulated Pan Zhanle. American Caleb Dressel acknowledged the Chinese swimmers were the best that day they won the 4 x 100m medley.
The attempt to torpedo the Chinese swimmers and undermine China’s international image did not succeed.
The headline above, about yet another Israeli operation to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians in the tiny, besieged and utterly destroyed enclave of Gaza, was published in yesterday’s Middle East Eye.
When I began studying Israeli history more than a quarter of a century ago, people claiming to be experts proffered plenty of excuses to explain why Israelis should not be held responsible for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes – what Palestinians call their Nakba, or Catastrophe.
1. I was told most Israelis were not involved and knew nothing of the war crimes carried out against the Palestinians during Israel’s establishment.
2. I was told that those Israelis who did take part in war crimes, like Operation Broom to expel Palestinians from their homeland, did so only because they were traumatised by their experiences in Europe. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, these Israelis assumed that, were the Jewish people to survive, they had no alternative but to drive out the Palestinians en masse.
3. From others, I was told that no ethnic cleansing had taken place. The Palestinians had simply fled at the first sign of conflict because they had no real historical attachment to the land.
4. Or I was told that the Palestinians’ displacement was an unfortunate consequence of a violent war in which Israeli leaders had the best interests of Palestinians at heart. The Palestinians hadn’t left because of Israeli violence but because they has been ordered to do so by Arab leaders in the region. In fact, the story went, Israel had pleaded with many of the 750,000 refugees to come home afterwards, but those same Arab leaders stubbornly blocked their return.
Every one of these claims was nonsense, directly contradicted by all the documentary evidence.
That should be even clearer today, as Israel continues the ethnic cleansing and slaughter of the Palestinian people more than 75 years on.
1. Every Israeli knows exactly what is going on in Gaza – after all, their children-soldiers keep posting videos online showing the latest crimes they have committed, from blowing up mosques and hospitals to shooting randomly into homes. Polls show all but a small minority of Israelis approve of the savagery that has killed many tens of thousands of Palestinians, including children. A third of them think Israel needs to go further in its barbarity.
Today, Israeli TV shows host debates about how much pain soldiers should be allowed to inflict by raping their Palestinian captives. Don’t believe me? Watch this from Israel’s Channel 12:
?SHOCKING?
Israel is quite possibly the only nation in the world where it is permissable and commonplace to go on TV and openly declare that the RAPING of prisoners should be a LEGITIMATE and OFFICIAL POLICY of the state and must be widely implemented. pic.twitter.com/1PyRXk8fxU
2. If the existential fears of Israelis and Jews still require the murder, rape and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians three-quarters of a century on from the Holocaust, then we need to treat that trauma as the problem – and refuse to indulge it any longer.
3. The people of Gaza are fleeing their homes – or at least the small number who still have homes not bombed to ruins – not because they lack an attachment to Palestine. They are fleeing from one part of the cage Israel has created for them to another part of it for one reason alone: because all of them – men, women and children – are terrified of being slaughtered by an Israeli military, at best, indifferent to their suffering and their fate.
The official death toll in Gaza is a lie. The casualty numbers are far, far higher.
4. No serious case can be made today that Israel is carrying out any of its crimes in Gaza – from bombing civilians to starving them – with regret, or that its leaders seek the best for the Palestinian population. Israel is on trial for genocide at the world’s highest court precisely because the judges there suspect it has the very worst intentions possible towards the Palestinian people.
We have been lied to for decades about the creation of Israel. It was always a settler colonial project. And like other settler colonial projects – from the US and Australia to South Africa and Algeria – it always viewed the native people as inferior, as non-human, as animals, and was bent on their elimination.
What is so obviously true today was true then too, at Israel’s birth. Israel was born in sin, and it continues to live in sin.
We in the West abetted its crimes in 1948, and we’re still abetting them today. Nothing has changed, except the excuses no longer work.
Although the current U.S. presidential campaign has focused almost entirely on domestic issues, Americans live on a planet engulfed in horrific wars, an escalating arms race, and repeated threats of nuclear annihilation. Amid this dangerous reality, shouldn’t we give some thought to how to build a more peaceful future?
Back in 1945, toward the end of the most devastating war in history, the world’s badly battered nations, many of them in smoldering ruins, agreed to create the United Nations, with a mandate to “maintain international peace and security.”
It was not only a relevant idea, but one that seemed to have a lot of potential. The new UN General Assembly would provide membership and a voice for the world’s far-flung nations, while the new UN Security Council would assume the responsibility for enforcing peace. Furthermore, the venerable International Court of Justice (better known as the World Court) would issue judgments on disputes among nations. And the International Criminal Court―created as an afterthought nearly four decades later―would try individuals for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression. It almost seemed as if a chaotic, ungovernable, and bloodthirsty pack of feuding nations had finally evolved into the long-standing dream of “One World.”
But, as things turned out, the celebration was premature.
The good news is that, in some ways, the new arrangement for global governance actually worked. UN action did, at times, prevent or end wars, reduce international conflict, and provide a forum for discussion and action by the world community. Thanks to UN decolonization policies, nearly all colonized peoples emerged from imperial subjugation to form new nations, assisted by international aid for economic and social development. A Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, set vastly-improved human rights standards for people around the world. UN entities swung into action to address new global challenges in connection with public health, poverty, and climate change.
Even so, despite the benefits produced by the United Nations, this pioneering international organization sometimes fell short of expectations, particularly when it came to securing peace. Tragically, much international conflict persisted, bringing with it costly arms races, devastating wars, and massive destruction. To some degree, this persistent conflict reflected ancient hatreds that people proved unable to overcome and that unscrupulous demagogues worked successfully to inflame.
But there were also structural reasons for ongoing international conflict. In a world without effective enforcement of international law, large, powerful nations could continue to lord it over smaller, weaker nations. Thus, the rulers of these large, powerful nations (plus a portion of their citizenry) were often reluctant to surrender this privileged status.
Symptomatically, the five victorious great powers of 1945 (the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China) insisted that their participation in the United Nations hinged upon their receiving permanent seats in the new UN Security Council, including a veto enabling them to block Security Council actions not to their liking. Over the ensuing decades, they used the veto hundreds of times to stymie UN efforts to maintain international peace and security.
Similarly, the nine nuclear nations (including these five great powers) refused to sign the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which has been endorsed by the overwhelming majority of the world’s nations. Behind their resistance to creating a nuclear weapons-free world lies a belief that there is much to lose by giving up the status and power that nuclear weapons afford them.
Of course, from the standpoint of building a peaceful world, this is a very short-sighted position, and the reckless behavior and nuclear arrogance of the powerful have led, at times, to massive opposition by peace and nuclear disarmament movements, as well as by many smaller, more peacefully-inclined nations.
Thanks to this resistance and to a widespread desire for peace, possibilities do exist for overcoming UN paralysis on numerous matters of international security. Unfortunately, it would be very difficult to abolish the Security Council veto outright, given the fact that, under the UN Charter, the five permanent members have the power to veto that action, as well. But Article 27(3) of the Charter does provide that nations party to a dispute before the Council must abstain from voting on that issue―a provision that provides a means to circumvent the veto. In addition, 124 UN nations have endorsed a proposal to scrap the veto in connection with genocide, crimes against humanity, and mass atrocities, while the UN General Assembly has previously used “Uniting for Peace” resolutions to act on peace and security issues when the Security Council has evaded its responsibility to do so.
Global governance could also be improved through other measures. They include increasing the number of nations accepting the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and securing wider ratification of the founding statute of the International Criminal Court (which has yet to be ratified by Russia, the United States, China, India, and other self-appointed guardians of the world’s future).
It won’t be easy, of course, to replace the law of force with the force of law. Only this May, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court took a bold step toward strengthening international norms by announcing that he was seeking arrest warrants for top Israeli officials and Hamas commanders for crimes in and around Gaza. In response, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed the “Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act,” legislation requiring the U.S. executive to impose sanctions on individuals connected with the ICC.
Despite the nationalist backlash, however, the time has arrived to consider bolstering international institutions that can build a more peaceful world. And the current U.S. presidential campaign provides an appropriate place for raising this issue. After all, Americans, like the people of other lands, have a personal stake in ensuring human survival.
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This July, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) held its annual summit in Washington, DC, where they celebrated themselves for continuing to exist for 75 years, despite the growing opposition around the world to Western hegemony that the US, EU, and their military gang of thugs NATO carry out.
Even after months of massive and consistent protests against the genocide in Gaza, it seems inconceivable that NATO would still gather to plan the next phase in maintaining Western imperialist hegemony over the world, but this is logical and necessary for their purposes because imperialism cannot continue to rule the world without the military might of the Western powers to enforce it.
So, they had to meet to discuss the fire sale and privatization of a war-decimated Ukraine, as well as their next aggressive actions toward China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, the Sahel States in Africa, as well as their ability to meddle in Sudan, Chad, Congo, and other states on the Continent that have been resource-extraction and labor-exploitation playgrounds for global capitalists, protected by NATO and AFRICOM forces to keep the people opposed to them under control.
But there is always a radical response to this deadly status quo. Several counter-summits were organized, and members of BAP participated at every level, in planning, delivering speeches, and participating in mobilizations as part of them. Our focus has for years been to recognize NATO not as a singular entity, but as part of the US/EU/NATO AXIS OF DOMINATION that must be opposed by all liberation- and peace-minded people, and we shared that focus with the people in these events. Our resistance work continues to hold to and advance this line, as we also continue to organize with oppressed people in our communities and around the world against the deadly manifestation of NATO and its US and EU imperialist masters.
There is only one country in the world right now, in the midst of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is guaranteed dozens of standing ovations from the vast majority of its elected representatives.
That country is not Israel, where he has been a hugely divisive figure for many years. It is the United States.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu was back-slapped, glad-handed, whooped and cheered as he slowly made his way – hailed at every step as a conquering hero – to the podium of the US Congress.
This was the same Netanyahu who has overseen during the past 10 months the slaughter– so far – of some 40,000 Palestinians, around half of them women and children. More than 21,000 other children are reported missing, most of them likely dead under rubble.
It was the same Netanyahu who levelled a strip of territory – originally home to 2.3 million Palestinians – that is expected to take 80 years to rebuild, at a cost of at least $50bn.
It was the same Netanyahu who has destroyed every hospital and university in Gaza, and bombed almost all of its schools that were serving as shelters for families made homeless by other Israeli bombs.
It was the same Netanyahu whose arrest is being sought by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, accused of using starvation as a weapon of war by imposing an aid blockade that has engineered a famine across Gaza.
It was the same Netanyahu whose government was found last week by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to have been intensifying Israel’s apartheid rule over the Palestinian people in an act of long-term aggression.
It was the same Netanyahu whose government is standing trial for committing what the ICJ, the world’s highest judicial body, has termed a “plausible genocide”.
And yet, there was just one visible protester in the congressional chamber. Rashida Tlaib, the only US legislator of Palestinian heritage, sat silently grasping a small black sign. On one side it said: “War criminal”. On the other: “Guilty of genocide”.
One person among hundreds mutely trying to point out that the emperor was naked.
Cocooned from horror
Indeed, the optics were stark.
This looked less like a visit by a foreign leader than a decorated elder general being welcomed back to the Senate in ancient Rome, or a grey-haired British viceroy from India embraced in the motherland’s parliament, after brutally subduing the “barbarians” on the fringes of empire.
This was a scene familiar from history books: of imperial brutality and colonial savagery, recast by the seat of the imperium as valour, honour, civilisation. And it looked every bit as absurd, and abhorrent, as it does when we look back on what happened 200 or 2,000 years ago.
It was a reminder that, despite our self-serving claims of progress and humanitarianism, our world is not very different from the way it has been for thousands of years.
It was a reminder that power elites like to celebrate the demonstration of their power, cocooned both from the horrors faced by those crushed by their might, and from the clamour of protest of those horrified by the infliction of so much suffering.
It was a reminder that this is not a “war” between Israel and Hamas – let alone, as Netanyahu would have us believe, a battle for civilisation between the Judeo-Christian world and the Islamic world.
This is a US imperial war – part of its military campaign for “global, full-spectrum dominance” – carried out by Washington’s most favoured client state.
The genocide is fully a US genocide, armed by Washington, paid for by Washington, given diplomatic cover by Washington, and – as the scenes in Congress underlined – cheered on by Washington.
Or as Netanyahu stated in a moment of unintentional candour to Congress: “Our enemies are your enemy, our fight is your fight, and our victory will be your victory.”
Israel is Washington’s largest military outpost in the oil-rich Middle East. The Israeli army is the Pentagon’s main battalion in that strategically important region. And Netanyahu is the outpost’s commander in chief.
What is vital to Washington elites is that the outpost is supported at all costs; that it doesn’t fall to the “barbarians”.
Outpouring of lies
There was another small moment of inadvertent truth amid Netanyahu’s outpouring of lies. The Israeli prime minister stated that what was happening in Gaza was “a clash between barbarism and civilisation”. He was not wrong.
On the one side, there is the barbarism of the current joint Israeli-US genocide against the people of Gaza, a dramatic escalation of the 17-year Israeli siege of the enclave that preceded it, and the decades of belligerent rule under an Israeli system of apartheid before that.
And on the other side, there are the embattled few desperately trying to safeguard the West’s professed values of “civilisation”, of international humanitarian law, of the protection of the weak and vulnerable, of the rights of children.
The US Congress decisively showed where it stood: with barbarism.
Netanyahu has become the most feted foreign leader in US history, invited to speak to Congress four times, surpassing even Britain’s wartime leader, Winston Churchill.
He is fully Washington’s creature. His savagery, his monstrousness is entirely made in America. As he implored his US handlers: “Give us the tools faster and we’ll finish the job faster.”
Finish the job of genocide.
Performative dissent
Some Democrats preferred to stay away, including party power broker Nancy Pelosi. Instead, she met families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza – not, of course, Palestinian families whose loved ones in Gaza had been slaughtered by Israel.
Vice President Kamala Harris explained her own absence as a scheduling conflict. She met the Israeli prime minister, as did President Joe Biden, on Thursday.
Afterwards, she claimed to have pressed Netanyahu on the “dire” humanitarian situation in Gaza, but stressed too that Israel “had a right to defend itself” – a right that Israel specifically does not have, as the ICJ pointed out last week, because Israel is the one permanently violating the rights of the Palestinians through its prolonged occupation, apartheid rule and ethnic cleansing.
But the dissent of Pelosi – and of Harris, if that is what it was – was purely performative. True, they have no personal love for Netanyahu, who has so closely allied himself and his government with the US Republican right and former president Donald Trump.
But Netanyahu simply serves as an alibi. Both Pelosi and Harris are stalwart supporters of Israel – a state that, according to the ICJ’s judgment last week, decades ago instituted apartheid rule in the Palestinian territories, using an illegal occupation as cover to ethnically cleanse the population there.
Their political agenda is not about ending the annihilation of the people of Gaza. It is acting as a safety valve for popular dissatisfaction among traditional Democratic voters shocked by the scenes from Gaza.
It is to deceive them into imagining that behind closed doors, there is some sort of policy fight over Israel’s handling of the Palestinian issue. That voting Democrat will one day – one very distant day – lead to an undefined “peace”, a fabled “two-state solution” where Palestinian children won’t keep dying in the interests of preserving the security of Israel’s illegal settler-militias.
US policy towards Israel has not changed in any meaningful sense for decades, whether the president has been red or blue, whether Trump has been in the White House or Barack Obama.
And if Harris becomes president – admittedly, a big if – US arms and money will continue flowing to Israel, while Israel will get to decide if US aid to Gaza is ever allowed in.
Why? Because Israel is the lynchpin in a US imperial project for global full-spectrum dominance. Because for Washington to change course on Israel, it would also have to do other unthinkable things.
It would have to begin dismantling its 800 military bases around the planet, just as Israel was told by the ICJ last week to dismantle its many dozens of illegal settlements on Palestinian territory.
The US would need to agree a shared global security architecture with China and Russia, rather than seek to bully and batter these great powers into submission with bloody proxy wars, such as the one in Ukraine.
The coming fall
Pelosi, remember, smeared students on US campuses protesting Israel’s plausible genocide in Gaza as being linked to Russia. She urged the FBI to investigate them for pressuring the Biden administration to support a ceasefire.
Netanyahu, in his address to Congress, similarly demonised the demonstrators – in his case, by accusing them of being “useful idiots” of Israel’s main foe, Iran.
Neither can afford to recognise that millions of ordinary people across the US think it is wrong to bomb and starve children – and to use a war with an unachievable aim as the cover story.
Hamas cannot be “eliminated” through Israel’s current bout of horrifying violence for a very obvious reason: The group is a product, a symptom, of earlier bouts of horrifying Israeli violence.
As even western counter-terrorism experts have had to concede, Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza are strengthening Hamas, not weakening it. Young men and boys who lose their family to Israeli bombs are Hamas’s most fervent new recruits.
That’s why Netanyahu insisted Israel’s military offensive – the genocide – in Gaza could not end soon. He demanded weapons and money to keep his soldiers in the enclave indefinitely, in an operation he termed as “demilitarisation and deradicalisation”.
Decoded, that means a continuing horror show for the Palestinians there, as they are forced to continue living and dying with an Israeli aid blockade, starvation, bombs and unmarked “kill zones”.
It means, too, an indefinite risk of Israel’s war on Gaza spilling over into a regional war, and potentially a global one, as tripwires towards escalation continue to grow in number.
The US Congress, however, is too blinded by championing its small fortressed state in the Middle East to think about such complexities. Its members roared “USA!” to their satrap from Israel, just as Roman senators once roared “Glory!” to generals whose victories they assumed would continue forever.
The rulers of the Roman empire no more saw the coming fall than their modern counterparts in Washington can. But every empire falls. And its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become.
