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Category: United States

  • Imperialism and Anti-imperialism Collide in Ukraine (Part 5)

    If a direct war would erupt between the United States and Russia, it is not going to be conventional and would surely involve NATO via article 5, and maybe China, Japan, Australia, North Korea, South Korea, Iran, and Israel. Arguments attributing to Russia the responsibility for the evolving mess because it intervened in Ukraine do not hold up. Background, facts, and conflict timeline irrefutably point to the United States. If war comes, it is going to be another American war—no more and no less.

    On the specific issue of the U.S. domination of NATO and its war decisions, consider the following arguments. Currently, NATO has 31 members including the United States. If we remove the United States from the count, could NATO’s remaining 30 members opt for war with Russia to resolve the Ukrainian Question? The answer is no.

    First, it is assumed that a war involving any NATO member would automatically trigger Article 5 above. Most importantly, even if NATO-minus-USA has the means to wage war, it cannot do that—technically, as much as politically. NATO’s inability to act independently from the United States is not due to lack of military capabilities or willpower (e.g., Britain and France are nuclear powers with hardened animosity toward Russia). The reason, therefore, lies elsewhere—the United States holds all political, military, and financial cards, as well as decision- making processes.

    Alternatively, could the United States go to war without the backing of NATO-minus-USA? Yes, it can. But the premise is false. First, the United States will not take high risks without minor actors doing the legwork. Second, it needs other participants for cover-up and sharing of consequences. This explains why the United States chained up NATO members to the Collective Defense Obligation tool.

    Now, because Russia has not attacked the United States, and because Ukraine is not a NATO state, could an alliance member refuse joining U.S. war projects? Technically, the answer should be yes because Article 5 does not apply to the situation. In reality though, the United States, experienced at creating pretexts and rationales, could invent favorable conditions to ease involvement by reluctant states, or simply enforce Article 5 without appeal.

    For the record, discussing statute and obligations by NATO members is Byzantine. Based on NATO’s history, the treaty was written with one thing in mind: upholding the interests and views of the largest powers–especially the United States. What matters at the end are two interchangeable facts: (1) the U.S. has the power to impose its will on NATO, and (2) NATO is subservient to the United States. Proving this assertion is the U.S.-NATO’s bombing of Serbia, Libya, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq—especially knowing that none of these countries had attacked the United States or any other NATO member. Did these facts stop the U.S. and NATO from invoking Article 5 as an alibi for all subsequent U.S. imperialist wars?

    Is the assertion that NATO is an appendage to and a foot soldier for U.S. global agendas and military objectives verifiable? Yes. The United States is the boss of the group—politically, diplomatically, and militarily.

    With over 22%  (as per the British-imperialist BBC) and 70% (as per the hyper-imperialist SCIS of Anthony Cordesman) of  the organization’s costs paid for by the United States, and with about 85,000 U.S. troops stationed on European soil, the United States is, de facto, the occupying power of Europe and decision maker inside NATO. (Also read, “Number of active-duty United States military personnel in Europe in 2022, by country”. For the record, Cordesman’s talk about percentages and billions spent is meant to confound the issues of the U.S. super role within NATO. He justified it under the rubric that the United States must spend all that money to keep its status as a superpower)

    Confirming the assertion that NATO is a U.S. tool to control Europe is uncomplicated. A 42-word passage in the Department of Defense’s Military Construction Program (fiscal year 2023) provides an authoritative clue. Under the heading: United States (U.S.) Interests in NATO, the authors of the program put it this way:

    The United States has an abiding national security interest in a stable, integrated European region. The political and military presence of the U.S. and of NATO fosters the conditions necessary to ensure that democratic and market-based institutions can flourish across the region.

    Reading between the Lines

    • The sentence, “Abiding national security interest” is a self-centered claim that the U.S. looks at Europe as a useful accessory to ensure its own “security” schemes—abiding is the keyword. Accordingly, NATO is a U.S. pawn.
    • The sentence, “In a stable, integrated European region” is code for the U.S. implying that Europe is no more than an unstable area thus NATO is going to be the means by which the United States would put it under its control and command. Besides, recalling the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Balkan wars, hegemonic U.S.A. is the direct cause for Europe’s instability. Meaning, U.S. rulers create conditions of instability, and thereafter use them as a pretext for expanded management and control.
    • The sentence, “Necessary to ensure that democratic and market-based institutions can flourish across the region”, is a code for implementing subaltern economic systems to ensure their lasting submission to the U.S. financial interests and control. As for the diction “democratic based-institution”, this is rubish. Europe has been always a theater for great social changes and differing forms of government. For the record, U.S. ruling circles have gutted the word “democracy” from any intelligent meaning while keeping the veneer—voting—visible.

    Special Comment on NATO’s NSIP (NATO Security Investment Programme): the statement that “NSIP programming and authorization decisions are based on consensus decision-making among the 30 Allied nations” is a brazen lie. Does anyone really think that Albania, Montenegro, or Romania have the audacity to dissent from whatever the U.S. wants?
    Pay attention to how the U.S. is using the so-called defensive alliance to further its imperialistic objectives. Article (a) of “The most essential NSIP CPP [Cultural Property Protection] Categories” spells out U.S. basic plans with the following deceptive wording:

    “Alliance Operations and Missions: Infrastructure to support ongoing military operations and missions, including Iraq and Kosovo.”

    REMARK: after 25 years of the United States and vassals occupying Kosovo, and after 21 years of continuing occupation of Iraq with NATO’s participation under the guise of “coalition of the willing”, the United States is imposing or involving NATO states to continue with the occupation of both regions. By itself, this shows NATO’s collective will to impose U.S. imperialist order on the world. As a curiosity, what missions are these? Who ordered them and under which rulings and authority? What is their scope? Do they have expiration date?

    Through the U.S. conceived structure of NATO, the United States not only declared its military occupation of Europe as a vital matter for its “national security”, but also established its paramount leading role within the organization. A Wall Street Journal article (“The U.S. Controls NATO”) confirms my arguments and conclusion on NATO right from the opening paragraph:

    “Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has been primarily concerned with serving American political and military interests. That has been its problem. It has been the Greek gift that just keeps on giving, enabling America to maintain bases and a large contingent of military manpower in Europe.”

    When They Talk about War with Russia

    For decades, a war with Russia has been a fixture on the minds of U.S. ruling circles. Still, thinking of war is something, preparing for it is something else. In the latter case, it is a tangible process whereby rationales and program act as one entity. In concrete terms, it means building all required political, cultural, and military structures, and then coalesce them by ideology to implement that goal. Oddly, the dismantlement of the USSR did not end U.S. preparation process—it only accelerated it. Explanation: U.S. fanaticized project to subjugate Russia and rule it by proxy remained unchanged.

    Now, given that a direct military confrontation is possible, it is extraordinary that something so important is consistently missing from the conversations about war. I am alluding to the loss of life on both sides. With regard to potential civilian loss, have a look at the following figures from WWII and compare it to what might happen today—while keeping in mind that advancement in modern military technology make any comparison with the old data incongruous.

    For instance, the United States—protected by two oceans—had lost only six civilians due to a Japanese balloon attack. During the same war, the Soviet Union lost 19 million civilians, Italy: over 150,000 civilians, Japan: 337,000 civilian by firebombing plus 165,000 by Truman’s nuclear holocaust, Germany: 410,000 civilians were killed by British and American bombing. (For further reading: Casualties of World War II)

    Discussion: when countless Americans clamor for war with any country that opposes the dictatorial unipolarism of the Zionist “exceptional nation”, the scenario of what would happen if equally powerful opponents hit back is rarely mentioned in the daily conversations. Regardless, where is the logic that the mostly uninformed American society is blasé to the consequences of war with Russia?

    On top of all that, we have to deal with warmongering morons dispensing sermons on how to confront Russia and win. Is that hot air or pathetic figures of speech? Further, because elliptical thinking, deceptive speaking patterns, and convoluted semantics are dominant, untangling what we hear and read is a challenge. Recalling that the linguistics of imperialism is not something to be taken too lightly— it hides ideology, political determinism, and plan for action—, can we, for once, decode what western politicians are saying when they talk about Russia?

    The Cloaked Languages of War

    Asserting that Western politicians are practitioners of doublespeak, circular thinking, and elliptical verbiage is easy to demonstrate. Consider the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. On June 30, 2023, he stated, “We are not a party to what is happening in Russia, our goal is not a regime change in Russia. Instead, Berlin seeks to continue to help Ukraine in its fight against Moscow”.

    Scholz introduces his goal for a protracted war with Russia via Ukraine with a lie. He stated that Germany is “Not a party to what is happening in Russia”. He was referring to the Wagner Group’s rebellion episode, which, of course, is an internal Russian affair. Face value, this appears to be correct—we have no knowledge of occurred collusion between the group and external forces fighting Russia by proxy. However, the fact that Germany has been attacking Russia tenaciously through Ukraine for the past two years makes Germany a party to the conflict.

    This is how the reasoning goes. Dialectically, within the context of war between Russia and Ukraine, any event that could alter the course of war in either country is necessarily going to affect the sponsors of Ukraine including Germany. Meaning, radical changes in the internal affairs of Russia or Ukraine would have direct consequences not only on both countries, but also on the sponsors of Ukraine. To back up the assertion that Germany is a real party to what might happen in Russia can be argued along the following lines.

    When Germany applies across-the-board sanctions on Russia, when it declares it wants to freeze or takeover Russian assets in Germany, and when it declares that it wants Ukraine to win (defeat Russia), then the manifest purpose is evident. With their military supplies, training, political support, logistic, and financial contribution to the war against Russia, German politicians are counting on the theory that all such combined measures would provoke widespread domestic troubles inside Russia thus possibly leading to social and military unrest culminating in a revolt against the legitimate government of Vladimir Putin. By all tools of analysis, Scholz was indeed plotting for a regime change in Russia.

    (For the record, the United States has been applying this strategy to Iraq, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, and Iran with the hope that coercion, sanctions, blockades, and selective military measures could induce national unrest in the targeted countries thus leading to “regime change”.)

    Second, who are “we” in the statement: Germany, the U.S., or collective NATO? Here is a clue: if the U.S. were to change course in Ukraine, Germany would, for sure, fold its bellicose tail and gag its mouth. Third, with billions of dollars in aid and advanced weapons to Ukraine, Germany is certainly a big party to the conflict. Fourth, with his allusion to regime change, Scholz insinuated that if Germany (the West] wants, it has the means to destabilize Russia. If so, he is deluding himself. Excluding the circumstances when Gorbachev and Yeltsin caved in to the United States, Russia’s traditional political structures are not prone to coups.

    Now, since neither Germany nor U.S.-led NATO has the ability to overthrow the president of a superpower [Russia] unless by a total direct war that ends with the defeat of Russia, why did Scholz bother to insinuate he could? Overall, what did Scholz say exactly?

    Aside from rhetorical boasting to hide failure, Scholz’ oblique meaning is transparent: Germany and NATO have the means and are capable to keep the fight in Ukraine going—and could even extend it to Russia proper, which they did. Is that what he meant with the phrase, “To help Ukraine in its fight against Moscow”? Deduction: Scholz, following in the footsteps of the U.S., is treating Russia’s military action in Donbass as aggression and trespass—that is why “he wants to punish it”. If so, are we to assume that he is upholding some sort of lofty Teutonic principles against interventions and aggressions?

    Let us now consider another German politician, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. In a conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Von Der Leyen told Zelensky, “But what we can tell you is that you’ll have your European friends by your side as long as it takes”. She said that in February 2022 right after the intervention. Now, because what has started as a limited Russian operation has transformed into a protracted proxy war, the implication is apparent: Germany, U.S., and all other leaders of the European Union are taken over by the delusion that they can defeat Russia. (To inspect Von Der Leyen’s imperialist mindset on Russia, read the statement she made on behalf of the Commission in February 27, 2022.)

    As with Scholz, was Von Der Leyen trying to uphold “lofty” German principles? The wider question: has Germany ever applied those principles in other arenas? First, Germany was a party—in active support positions—to U.S.-led interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere. Second, I never heard or read that post-WWII Germany supplied any sort of military aid to the Palestinians so they could fight the genocidal settler state of Israel that has been occupying their ancestral lands officially since 1948? What is reason for which Scholz and Von Der Leyen are so determined to help the Ukrainians but not the Palestinians?

    Conclusion: “noble” principles are not the motive for Scholz and Der Leyen’s declared enmity toward Russia. Fact: Germany is not a free country as it wishes to depict itself. Germany has lost its independent status since it lost WWII. With never-ending U.S. soft occupation (over 35,000 U.S. military personnel) even after its re-unification, Germany is technically a militarily occupied country.

    Further, Germany’s political and military servitude to the United States is not only about a great power that succumbed to the U.S. order, but also about the United States castrating it for good. Now, if mighty Germany has been reduced to a vassal status, then it would be easy to explain why weak NATO countries (including self-important France and Britain) have become vassals— and supporters for U.S. war against Russia.

    Based on how things work amidst U.S. system of center and periphery, there can be only one answer. Decisions taken by a single big power belonging to a club whose members share similar ideologies are more than what they appear. On the surface, those decisions give the idea to have been taken independently. In reality, they are (a) transnational by fact of membership and charters, and (b) they are always directed by the higher power that set the club’s policies.

    From ideology to practice, and from language of war to possible America-Russia war, how the U.S. enmity to Russia is debated, institutionalized, and adopted?

    Next: Part 6

    The post Imperialism and Anti-imperialism Collide in Ukraine (Part 5) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Gaza War: Deceptions, Distortions, Misperceptions

    Responses to the current violence in, and from, Gaza vary as follows.

    • Israeli leaders, much of the Israeli public, and Zionists in the West, thirsting for vengeance, call for genocidal mass murder and/or wholesale ethnic cleansing operations against the people of Gaza.
    • Israel and its Western imperial allies (US et al) evade the actual causes (Palestinian grievances for which peaceful appeals for redress invariably go unanswered); and they condemn all resorts to violent resistance by the long-persecuted Palestinians.
    • Many liberal leftists, evidently obsessive to distance themselves from all US-designated “terrorists” and other alleged enemies of “democracy”, always preface any condemnation of Israeli crimes against the Palestinians with an absolute condemnation of the October 07 attack against Israel by resistance forces in Gaza. Thusly, they purvey a false moral equivalence between the violence of the oppressed and that of their oppressor.
    • A very few partisans of the Palestinian cause have asserted that all Israeli suffering from the October 07 attack by Gaza resistance fighters was deserved, thereby exhibiting a lack of recognition and empathy for the innocent victims thereof. In fact, innocent victims are generally inevitable in war, even in just and necessary wars, but nevertheless deserving of sympathetic recognition.
    • Consistent activists for social justice: condemn the Zionist persecution of the Palestinian people; acknowledge the right of the oppressed to resist, including by violent means when left with no viable alternative; acknowledge obvious faults and mistakes in the resistance forces; and sympathize with all innocent victims, whether deliberately targeted or unavoidably caught in the crossfire.

    Unfortunately, after decades of racist distortions by Zionists and supportive imperial Western states, and given hard-to-avoid reliance upon a dominant and biased Western mainstream media; even consistent supporters of the Palestinian cause sometimes take, as fact, notions which have become generally accepted as “true” (unaware that critical investigation may disprove it).  Consequently, mistakes can occur when there is rush to judgment and publication without questioning and scrutinizing so as to ascertain what are the relevant actual facts.

    ROOTS OF THE CONFLICT.  The current Gaza War can be fully and accurately understood only when placed in the context of Jewish and Palestinian history.

    Defining Palestine.  Prior to the 16th century BCE, the territory on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean was populated by small Canaanite city-states.  In the 10th and 9th centuries BCE, 3 small kingdoms (Israel, Judah, and Philistia) occupied the territory south of the Lebanon.  From the Assyrian conquest (BCE 8th century) until CE 1917 the territory was nearly always under the rule of a succession of tributary empires, the Ottoman being the last of those.  Throughout those centuries, various episodes of oppression and revolt, as well as opportunities in other places, resulted in a large Judean/Jewish diaspora.  After the Roman Empire made trinitarian Christianity the established religion (CE 4th century), the population in Palestine began increasingly to convert (from Judaism, Samaritanism, paganism, other forms of Christianity, et cetera) to the established faith.  Similarly, following conquest by the first Islamic empire, the population gradually began converting to Islam, until it was more than 80% Muslim by mid-19th century.  Imperial Britain, which conquered the country in 1917, was given a League of Nations Mandate over Palestine, specifically defined as the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.  Since then, the term “Palestine”, despite Zionist objections (that a larger expanse of land is rightfully theirs or alternatively that there is no such country as Palestine and no such people as “Palestinians”), has generally meant the Mandate territory “from the river to the sea”.

    “Jewish problem”?  European Jews had experienced centuries of persecution (segregation into ghettos, abusive impositions, and pogroms) under medieval Christian European autocracies.  In the late 19th and early 20th   centuries, Jewish activists responded to the most recent pogroms and other persecutions in two opposing ways: whereas anti-racist secularists (liberal democrats and socialists) strove, along with likeminded gentiles, for equal rights for Jews in their home countries; Zionists, defining Jewish presence in gentile countries as a “Jewish problem” [1], embraced a racial conception of Jews and refused to do so [2].  They sought instead to remove Europe’s Jews to colonial settlements in Palestine where they intended to eventually displace the indigenous population in order to establish a “Jewish state” [3].

    Resistance to Judeophobia?  Until the Axis War (1939—45), Zionist organizations routinely colluded with Judeophobe governments (including Nazi Germany) in facilitating Jewish removal (with preference for emigration to Palestine) [4].  Moreover, in the face of extreme persecution in Nazi Germany (1933—39), the Zionist Organization (formed in 1897) discouraged efforts, as at the Évian Conference (1938), to obtain refuges for persecuted European Jews in countries (United States, Canada, Australia, Latin America, et cetera) other than Palestine.

    Jewish-Arab conflict.  Unlike in much of Europe, Palestinian Jews (about 4% of the population in 1880) lived amicably with their Muslim and Christian neighbors until the in-migration of European Zionist colonizers in the early 20th century.  Zionist settlement was sponsored by some European and American Jewish capitalists who provided money for land acquisitions (generally from absentee landlords who owned most of the arable land).  The Zionists then evicted the indigenous Arab tenant farmers thereby violating the traditional rights of the latter.  Moreover, the Zionist sponsoring organization (Jewish Agency) and its landholding body (Jewish National Fund) required that Jewish employers hire only Jews and prohibited the sale of any Jewish-owned land to Arabs.  Such racial discrimination was standard practice within the Zionist settlements; and it quite predictably provoked Palestinian Arab resentment against the Zionist settlers.  [See UNISPAL: The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917—1947 (Part I) ~ §§ V and VI].

    Imperialism.  After other colonialist powers had turned down Zionist applications; imperial Britain decided, with its Balfour Declaration (in 1917), to sponsor the Zionist project of establishing a European Jewish colonial settler state in Palestine [5].  Britain visualized said state as developing into a useful protectorate [UNISPAL: The Origins … (Part I) ~ § II] thru which to project British imperial and commercial power over a part of the world in which British capital and empire were already heavily invested (notably in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company [now BP Inc.], Shell Oil, and the Suez Canal).

    Democratic governance denied.  Throughout its (1917—48) rule over Palestine, Britain, deferred to the Zionists by refusing to meet its obligations (pursuant to Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant), which required the Mandatory power to respect the wishes of the country’s population and to prepare said country for independence by establishing a democratically-elected representative governing body [UNISPAL: The Origins … (Part I) ~ §§ IV—IX].  Why?  Because such body would undoubtedly have opposed continued moves to transform Palestine into a Zionist nation-state and would have demanded an end to: unconstrained Zionist immigration, Zionist land acquisitions, evictions of Arab tenant farmers, and racially discriminatory employment practices.

    Revolt.  Throughout its first nearly two decades of colonial rule, Britain refused any consideration of mostly peaceful appeals and protests for redress of the foregoing Palestinian grievances.  When Palestinians finally lost patience and revolted (1936—39); Britain armed, trained, and used Zionist militias to help put down said revolt with massively murderous violent repression, killing thousands of Palestinian Arabs.  Said militias would be constituted, in 1948, as the Israeli army.

    Partition [UNISPAL: The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917—1947 (Part II) ~ §§ I—IV].  The then 57-member United Nations [UN], dominated by mostly European and American states ruled by white and/or Eurocentric* elites, proposed (in 1947) a partition of Palestine (then with a population 32% Jewish and 68% Arab) such that: a “Jewish state” would have 55% of the territory, a Palestinian Arab state would have 42%, and 3% around Jerusalem would be under UN administration.  Moreover, the “Jewish state” was to rule over a huge Arab minority (more than 40% of Palestinian Arabs), while the “Arab state” would have almost no Jews.  Representative democracy was evidently deemed unacceptable where Arabs were the majority, but acceptable where Jews (mostly recent immigrant colonists from Europe) were the majority.  (* Note.  Although most Latin American countries’ populations were majority non-white [indigenous, mestizo, et cetera]; in most of those, the ruling elites belonged to racial groups (white and/or mestizo) which identified with their European ethnic heritage).

    Nakba [UNISPAL: The Origins … (Part II) ~ § V].  The Zionist militias waged a terrorist war of conquest thru which they: massacred peaceful Palestinian villagers, seized and annexed (1947—49) half of the territory allocated by the UN for the Palestinian Arab state, and forcibly expelled over 80% of the Palestinians (directly and/or thru terrorist threat) from territory which came under Israeli control. four Arab states intervened militarily with mostly ill-trained and poorly-equipped military forces in ineffectual defense of the Palestinians.  The Zionist state confiscated: all of the properties of the expelled Palestinians (whom it barred from returning) and nearly 40% of the landholdings of the Palestinians who remained in its territory.  It also subjected the latter to repressive military rule for the next 18 years [6].

    Later conquests.  Israel launched surprise wars of conquest (1956 and 1967).  US pressure forced it to give up its 1956 conquests (Gaza and Sinai) and to abort its planned seizure of the West Bank and parts of Syria and Lebanon.  US acquiescence, in 1967, allowed Israel to seize much the same territories which it had wanted to annex in 1956.  Subsequent Israeli rule (over Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Syria’s Golan, and Lebanon’s Sheba’a Farms) since 1967 has subjected their Arab populations to persistent violations of their human rights, continuing to the present day.

    Subsequent aggressions.  Murderous Israeli aggressions against its neighbors (especially Syria and Lebanon) persist until the present day.  In addition to repeated violations of territory, said aggressions include multiple large-scale military invasions of Lebanon.  These included using a false allegation, of PLO involvement in an assassination attempt on an Israeli ambassador, as pretext for invasion and occupation (1982) of 40% of Lebanon in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to impose a subservient client regime.  Death toll: Arabs (Lebanese, Palestinians, and Syrians) 14,000 to 19,000 (mostly civilians); Israelis fewer than 400 (mostly soldiers).  Israel made partial withdrawals until 1985, but (despite most Palestinian resistance forces having been removed (in 1982) it occupied a swath of southern Lebanon until persistent armed Lebanese resistance (by Hezbollah, Amal, and units of the Lebanese Army) induced its withdrawal (in 2000).

    Holocaust weaponized.  Ever since the Axis War (1939—45), Zionists and their supporters have manipulated popular sympathy for the Jewish victims of the European holocaust in order to obtain support for Zionism.  They speak as though Jews were nearly the only victims of the deliberate Nazi mass murder (systematic mass killing plus intentional starvation programs in occupied territory and POW camps).  In fact, the actual death toll was more than 17 million (at least 11 million Slavs, some 5.9 million Jews, and probably more than 250,000 Romani).  Zionists and supporters insist that the world must atone for the genocide of the six million Jews by granting them Palestine for a “Jewish state”; but they evade the fact that justice would require any such compensation to be borne by Christian Europe, which perpetrated and/or permitted the genocide, not by the Palestinian Arabs, who had no part in it.

    Antisemitism?  Zionists and their supporters routinely attempt to silence opponents of Zionism and critics of Israeli crimes against humanity by smearing said critics as purveyors of “antisemitism”, the word which Zionists and their allies use exclusively to mean Judeophobia (hatred of Jews), even though the Arab victims of Zionism are also Semitic in language and ancestral origin.  When their critics are Jewish, as many are; Zionists routinely disparage and dismiss them as “self-hating Jews”.  As Zionists obsessively smear their anti-racist critics, they generally give much less attention to actual Judeophobes.  With growing popular opposition to Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people, states abetting those crimes have increasingly enacted laws criminalizing free-speech activities in support of said Palestinians.  Those enactments include: prohibitions against boycott and divestment [BDS] participation; and laws defining opposition to Zionism as “antisemitism”, using the Zionist IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition which includes, as “antisemitism”, opposition to the existence of Israel as a Jewish supremacist state.

    HAMAS.  Israel, its Western allies, and their mainstream media portray Hamas as a “genocidal” “terrorist” organization.  Relevant actual facts, listed below, mostly go unreported, distorted, or falsified.

    Origin.  Hamas originated (1987) in Palestine as a transformation of Mujama al-Islamiya, which had been formed (1973) as a Palestinian affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Hamas, unlike the Brotherhood, embraced a Palestinian national liberationist political orientation.

    Governance doctrine.  Like the Brotherhood, Mujama al-Islamiya adhered to a Salafist (patriarchal and theocratic) approach to governance; whereas a majority of Palestinians preferred the progressive secularism of the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO].  However, Western alliance and Israeli motivations for condemning Hamas have nothing to do with its Salafist leanings; they are solely on account of its militant resistance to Zionist oppression of the Palestinians.  In fact, Western supporters of Israel make no complaints where autocratic Arab states (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar), allied to the West, impose patriarchal and theocratic policies similar to those embraced in Brotherhood doctrine.  It must be noted that Hamas’ doctrine and actual practice (since obtaining governing power) have been inconsistent.  For example, in Gaza, a local faction (along with some rival Islamist groups), has periodically attempted to impose the Brotherhood interpretation of sharia law (including hijab) thru religious coercions and persecutions, in defiance of the contrary policy prescribed by Hamas’ more permissive leadership.  In fact, said leadership (though still embracing widely-held patriarchal views on the role of women) has not decreed any such imposition.

    Palestinian Islamic Jihad [PIJ].  Most commentators make no effort to recognize the differences between PIJ and Hamas.  PIJ (founded 1981) is, unlike Hamas, a purely anti-colonial and anti-imperialist Palestinian national-liberation organization.  Whereas Hamas is a multifaceted (political, religious, and social-welfare) movement; PIJ is strictly an organization of revolutionary activists.  PIJ, in contradistinction to the theocratic faction in Hamas, has no interest in Islamist religious impositions; it is “Islamist” only in that it embraces the Islamic principle of struggle (jihad) against injustice.  As national liberation organizations, Hamas and PIJ, though their doctrinal and strategic visions diverge, largely cooperate in the common struggle against Israeli oppressin.

    Muslim Brotherhood versus PLO.  Gaza (along with the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Syria’s Golan, and Lebanon’s Sheba’a Farms) had been, and remain, under repressive Israeli occupation since Israel’s 1967 war of conquest.  From its founding, Mujama al-Islamiya (as a Salafi Islamist organization) competed with the secular PLO for support among Palestinians, and their competition sometimes erupted into violent clashes.  Israel exploited that antagonism by enabling the activities of the Islamist organization as an alternative to the far-more-popular PLO which then represented the militant Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and persecution.

    Intifada [Arabic for “uprising”].  Ongoing Israeli repression (land seizures for illegal settlements, arbitrary detentions, torture of detainees, days-long curfews, indiscriminate killings, deportations, home demolitions, et cetera) provoked a spontaneous mass resistance, the First Intifada (1987—93), which included: strikes, boycotts, mass protests, road-blocks, use of stone-throwing and petrol bombs against Israeli police using violence to suppress protests, and other acts of civil disobedience.  Israeli government ministers responded with calls for wholesale expulsion of the Palestinian population (a policy too extreme to be condoned by Israel’s Western allies in need of credibility with Arab states).  Israel’s indiscriminate intensified repression affected all Palestinians, Islamists and PLO-sympathizers alike.  Some leaders of Mujama al-Islamiya, concerned that inaction would render it irrelevant, decided to join that militant resistance; and they then created “Hamas” (Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement”).  For the first year of the Intifada, there was a near-totally-adhered-to policy (prescribed by a soon-established PLO-influenced local leadership) of refraining from lethal attacks against Israelis.  Nevertheless, Israel responded to the Intifada with its “iron fist” policy including lethal force, ultimately killing 1,087 Palestinians including 240 children. 

    Oslo peace process (1991—93).  When the Fatah-dominated PLO agreed, in the Oslo negotiations, to recognize the “Jewish state” on 78% of Palestine in return for duplicitous promises of negotiations toward the establishment of a Palestinian state in the 22% of Palestine then classified as Israeli-occupied territories; it effectively abandoned the demand for the human rights of all Palestinians throughout Palestine and in the diaspora.  In fact, no Israeli government has ever been willing: to accept a genuinely independent and sovereign Palestinian state in any part of Palestine, or to grant equal rights to Palestinian Arabs in any part of the territory, or to permit the return of Palestinian refugees.  The Oslo agreements produced the Fatah-dominated Palestinian National Authority [PNA] (a quasi-government for the West Bank and Gaza) which has devolved into a corrupted client regime with no effective capacity to prevent: Israeli land grabs (which every Israeli government has actively encouraged since the 1967 conquest), and the many other persecutions of the Palestinians whom it purports to serve.  The Palestinian response to Oslo was divided with Hamas and allies (including PIJ), along with some factions of the PLO, refusing to concede legitimacy to the Zionist state.  Whether we like it or not, Hamas soon thereafter became the leading organized force of the Palestinian resistance (which is why it won all-Palestine legislative elections in 2006).

    Judeophobia?  The US and its principal allies join Israel in branding Hamas as a Jew-hating “genocidal” “terrorist” organization.  It is true that Hamas first Charter (1988), advocating armed struggle to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation, embraced some discredited Judeophobe tropes (Articles 7, 22, 28, 32).  However, pursuant to said Charter, Hamas: (Article 6) “strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine [so that] followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned”; and (Article 31) “is guided by Islamic tolerance when dealing with the followers of other religions” (which would include Christianity and Judaism).  Assertions, that Hamas wanted to kill all Jews or kill them because they were Jews, rest upon out-of-context interpretations of references to ancient Islamic quotations pertaining to specific Jewish communities which were then at war with the Muslim community.  Moreover, its revised Charter (2017) drops the aforementioned Judeophobe tropes and clearly states (Article 16) that its fight is against Zionist oppressors and not against Jews in general.  While Hamas believes that all of Palestine ought to be governed by an officially Islamic state; it embraces the Qur’anic obligation (sura 2:62) to respect the rights of peaceful non-Muslims (including resident Jews) to live and prosper in the land as long as they are not oppressing others.

    “Terrorism”.  Until Israeli forces killed more than 20 unarmed Palestinians protesting the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre of 29 Muslim worshipers (1994) by an Arab-hating Israeli extremist ; Hamas policy was to avoid targeting Israeli civilians.  Since then, Hamas, like Israel, has permitted its forces to attack any enemy target, civilian or military; whereas the Zionist state, throughout its existence, has routinely engaged in such indiscriminate killings of Palestinians.  Moreover, Hamas has repeatedly offered to end violent attacks upon Israelis conditional upon Israeli reciprocation which has never been forthcoming for very long.  In Israel and its Western enablers: Hamas attacks are always branded as “terrorism”, while far more massive Israeli violence against Palestinians (including unarmed civilians of both sexes and all ages) never is.

    Equating to the Islamic State [IS] or Al Qaeda [AQ].  In 2008, a small group of AQ sympathizers organized in Gaza as Jund Ansar Allah [JAA].  They denounced Hamas: for being “too lenient” by not enforcing Sharia law, and for being “no different than a secular nationalist state”.  JAA also executed violent attacks (including bombings) against those Gazans whom they deemed to be in violation of Islamist morality, and they declared an “Islamic Emirate” in Gaza.  Hamas then took forceful action to suppress said JAA.  Hamas has likewise opposed other Salafi-jihadist Gazan groups which embrace AQ or IS.  Whereas AQ and IS oppose democratic elections and pragmatic political compromises, Hamas embraces them.  Whereas the former make war on alleged apostates and infidels and condemn Hamas for its tolerance; Hamas, in accordance with the Qur’an, embraces (though some local supporters have sometimes acted otherwise) an acceptance of respectful religious diversity.  Despite the actual facts, Israel and its apologists persist in propagating lies to equate Hamas with Al Qaeda et al.

    Democracy.  Hamas surprised Israel and the US by fairly winning Palestinian legislative elections (2006 Jan) and thereby obtaining the right to lead the PNA.  Obstruction by Israel and the West has prevented any subsequent Palestinian election.  Israel and its Western allies responded to the 2006 election outcome by demanding that Hamas abandon its commitment to fundamental Palestinian human rights by legitimizing Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing.  That demand was designed to produce a Hamas refusal, so that said refusal could then be used as pretext for acts designed to cripple Hamas efforts to govern.  The US then pressured PNA President Abbas (of Fatah) to dismiss the fairly elected Hamas administration in defiance of the will of the Palestinian electorate.  The Hamas Prime Minister (Ismail Haniyeh) attempted to overcome the hostility by asking Fatah to participate in a unity government (which Fatah refused), and by inducing Hamas ministers to formally resign their memberships in Hamas, all to no avail.  Moreover, Abbas, under US pressure, provoked a power struggle (in Gaza) over control of security services in a move to undermine and marginalize the Hamas administration.  The resulting violent conflict ended: with Hamas firmly in control in Gaza; and with Fatah in partial control in the West Bank, most of which was and is under Israeli military rule.

    Peace proposals.  Hamas, has repeatedly (since 2006) proposed peace thru hudna (Islamic decade-long renewable truce resolving issues upon which current agreement can be obtained while negotiating upon remaining issues in effort to reach a final peace agreement).  Hamas’ proposed truce terms would include provisional acceptance by Hamas of Israel as an existential current reality, in return for a Palestinian state in the occupied territories with East Jerusalem as its capital (same as PLO except that Hamas would not concede legitimacy to the ethnic cleansings of 1948 and 1967 nor to the racial supremacist and apartheid character of the Zionist state).  Hamas would continue to seek eventual acceptance by Israel of all Palestinian civil and human rights (the effect of which would be to end its apartheid, its ethnic cleansing, its other persecutions, and its continuation as a “Jewish state”).  Israel, making Hamas’ refusal to give de jure recognition of the racist apartheid “Jewish state” as its pretext, has consistently refused to negotiate toward any peace agreement.

    GAZA.  Since the end of the Second Intifada (2005), Hamas has repeatedly sought and, when possible, entered ceasefire agreements with Israel.  In fact, since seeking a role in government, Hamas evidently took seriously its obligation to serve the people of Palestine.  Other resistance groups, often in defiance of Hamas, have sometimes committed small-scale violations of ceasefires, generally in response to Israeli violence.  Whereas Hamas has striven to preserve said ceasefires, Israel has repeatedly perpetrated major violations thereby provoking resumption of violent conflict.

     Israeli response to 2006 election outcome.  Israel and all significant Palestinian resistance factions (including Hamas) had agreed (2005 Feb and Mar) to a ceasefire under which the resistance would cease violent attacks upon Israelis on condition that Israel cease military operations against said resistance organizations.  Despite Hamas having respected said ceasefire agreement, Israel responded to Hamas electoral victory (2006 Jan) by imposing, upon Gaza, a suffocating economic blockade (an act of war as well as an act of collective punishment which is illegal under international law).  Said blockade ultimately included denial of access to 1/3 of Gaza’s already limited arable land and 85% of its fishing areas.  Moreover, Israel blatantly violated the ceasefire by assassinating (2006 June) the Hamas-appointed security chief (Jamal Abu Samhadana).  Hamas responded by resuming attacks against Israel, which then commenced its “Operation Summer Rains” bombing of Gaza.  Death toll: 416 (mostly noncombatant) Gaza Palestinians and 11 Israelis.

    “Cast Lead”.  A mediated 6-month ceasefire ended (2008 Nov 04) with an Israeli raid which killed several Palestinians in Gaza.  Resistance organizations responded with rocket fire into Israel.  Israel then commenced “Operation Cast Lead”, bombing Gaza in December and invading in January.  Israeli war crimes included using Palestinian children as human shields and use of white phosphorus weapons with indifference to its horrific injuries to civilians (both being war crimes under international law).  Amnesty International and other independent investigators found no substantiation for Israeli allegations that Hamas: made a practice of using civilians as human shields, or used healthcare facilities as bases for military operations.  Death toll: 1,400 Palestinians (85% non-combatants), 13 Israelis.

    “Returning Echo”.  Israel not only refused to lift its suffocating economic siege of Gaza, it assassinated (2012 Mar 09, by airstrike) the secretary-general (Zohair al-Qaisi) of the Popular Resistance Committees (then the 3rd largest armed resistance group in Gaza) thereby provoking retaliatory rocket attacks by resistance groups in Gaza.  Israel then commenced its “Operation Returning Echo” (consisting of additional murderous airstrikes).  Death toll: 28 Palestinians, no Israelis.

    “Pillar of defense”.  Repeated Israeli attacks (from 2012 July) upon Palestinian fishermen, farmers, and other civilians provoked some additional clashes.  Hamas and PIJ proposed (Nov 12) discussions to establish a ceasefire.  Two days later, Israel assassinated the Hamas military chief (Ahmed Jabari) in Gaza thereby provoking an escalation of attacks from both sides.  Israeli forces followed with “Operation Pillar of Defense”, a massive bombardment striking some 1,500 sites in Gaza (including residential apartment buildings).  Death toll: 174 Palestinians (60% noncombatants) and 6 Israelis.

    “Protective Edge”.  Hamas and Israel agreed to a mediated ceasefire (2012 Nov 21).  Israel violated that ceasefire the very next day, killing a Palestinian farmer and wounding 19 other Gazans.  A week later Israeli forces opened fire on a peaceful Palestinian fishing boat.  On Nov 30, Israeli soldiers killed another man in Gaza.  On Dec 01, Palestinian Islamic Jihad warned that it would respond militarily to any further Israeli violations.  In the first 3 months of the ceasefire, Israeli firing into Gaza killed 4 and wounded another 91; and there were 13 armed Israeli incursions into Gaza and some 30 attacks on Gazan fishermen.  These attacks provoked rocket attacks from Gaza by PIJ and other resistance groups, attacks which Israel then used as pretext for further attacks and intensification of the blockade.  Despite all of that, Hamas complied with the ceasefire agreement and acted, with some success, to minimize attacks by other resistance groups.  After PNA President Abbas agreed to include Hamas in a unity government (formed 2014 June 02), Israel (opposed to any unified Palestinian leadership) acted to destroy it.  Specifically, Israel stepped up its attacks upon Palestinians, thereby provoking more rocket launches from Gaza.  Ultimately, Hamas, unable to persuade armed resistance forces to desist from retaliatory rocket attacks against Israel, abandoned (in early July) the already-ineffective ceasefire.  Israel then responded (2014 July 08) with its (“Operation Protective Edge”) ground invasion and bombing of Gaza.  Death toll: 2,300 Gazans (65% civilian) and 73 Israelis (all but 5 being soldiers).

    “Guardian of the Walls”.  Multiple Israeli provocations (2021 Apr and May) in Jerusalem (including: ethnic-cleansing confiscations of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem [in violation of international law], unimpeded settler violence, police harassment of Palestinian residents, and police invasions and denials of Muslim access at the Al Aqsa Mosque) provoked Hamas and PIJ rocket fire into Israel.  Israel responded (2021 May 16—21) with a bombardment of Gaza (“Operation Guardian of the Walls”).  Death toll: 256 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.  72,000 Gazans were displaced by the Israeli bombing.

    “Al-Aqsa Flood”.  Hamas and PIJ had demonstrated a willingness to establish and maintain truces (long-term and short-term) with the Zionist state.  Israel, however, evidently expected, despite ceasefires in effect, to have impunity as it perpetrated attacks, including assassinations, upon Palestinian resistance organizations.  Then, when resistance organizations responded with counter-attacks; Israel subjected Gaza to grossly disproportionate violence.  Moreover, the current extreme racist Israeli government had increased its persecutions and violations of Palestinian human rights: impunity for settler attacks upon West Bank Palestinians, stepped up grabs of land and water-rights, dispossessions and expulsions, arbitrary detentions, increased killings of unarmed Palestinians, blockings of Muslim access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, continued assassinations of resistance leaders, et cetera.  Finally, Hamas responded with its “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” (2023 Oct 07) against Israeli forces in areas around Gaza.

    ATROCITIES?  The nature of warfare is such that, it would be unrealistic to presume that none of the October 07 Gaza fighters (some of whom were not affiliated with either Hamas or PIJ) committed excesses in violation of Hamas’ rules of engagement or in the heat of the moment.  That said, lurid sensationalized allegations of mass atrocities by those Gaza fighters are fundamentally false (refuted below and in the noted sources).

    Numbers and identities.  “1,400” “innocent” Israelis murdered (October 07) by Hamas?  In fact, around 200 of the dead were apparently Gazan resistance fighters; and the actual number of Israeli dead as acknowledged by Israel has been revised down to “around 1,200”.  Moreover, of the 1,133 identified and listed by Israel, 369 (32%) were soldiers, police, and other armed security personnel (most of whom were enforcing the Gaza blockade and/or had offensive or supportive roles in Israeli attacks upon Palestinians in Gaza).  Further, more than 421 (another 37%) of the 764 listed as “civilians” were of the age (20 to 40) at which most Israelis are obligated to be military reservists, and some of those were killed (often while resisting capture) at kibbutz[es] (which are constituted as militarized settlements).

    Killed by whom?  A great many of the Israeli civilian dead were killed: in crossfire, others (including many of the dead at the music festival) by indiscriminate Israeli air attacks failing to distinguish Israelis from Gazan resistance fighters, and some deliberately by Israeli forces to prevent their becoming captives in Gaza.

    Decapitated babies?  Israeli babies and toddlers decapitated by Hamas fighters?  Absolutely false allegation, subsequently retracted.

    Rape?  We are asked to believe that Hamas and PIJ fighters, in difficult combat against Israeli armed forces, diverted their attention in order to amuse themselves by raping and murdering Israeli women, despite: that their essential objective was to bring as many captives as possible back to Gaza, and that such conduct would violate the Qur’an[’s] rules mandating humane treatment of captives.  Israel refuses: to provide real evidence or to permit any independent investigation of this allegation.  Moreover, accusers misuse photos and videos of scantily dressed woman captives as “evidence”, despite that some (including many participants at the music festival) were undoubtedly thusly clothed when captured.  Israel evidently is using said allegations of mass sexual abuse as a defamatory racist portrayal of Palestinians so as to excuse the very real atrocities currently being perpetrated by Israel against the people of Gaza.  Meanwhile, captives released by Hamas generally report having been treated humanely.

    Dehumanization and genocidal intent!  In their propaganda war, Israel and its Western allies evade the injustices perpetrated by the Zionist state and falsely portray Palestinian resistance fighters as genocidal Jew-hating extremists.  In actual fact, it is Israeli leaders and their Western apologists who routinely dehumanize and express genocidal intentions (including for ethnic cleansing and mass murder), not only against those who fight, but against an entire victimized population.  Some examples.

    • Soon-to-be-appointed Israeli Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, endorsed (2015 summer) an Israeli writer’s statement asserting: that Israel is in a war, “not against terror”, but “a war between two peoples”, the “enemy” being “the entire Palestinian people”; that Palestinian children are “snakes”; and that “the mothers” also should die to prevent their raising more “little snakes”.
    • Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in his guidance for Israeli action in the current outbreak of violence, twice referenced (Oct 28 & Nov 03) a biblical passage (about the Israelite war against the people of Amalek) which states “Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings”.
    • Israeli President Isaac Herzog asserted (October 12) “Its an entire nation … that is responsible [for October 07].
    • Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated (Oct 09) that Israel was “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. … We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly”.
    • Minister of Heritage, Amichai Eliyahu, posted (November 01) “The north of the Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever. Everything is blown up and flattened, simply a pleasure for the eyes”.
    • Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, Nissim Vaturi, ‘tweeted’ (October 07) “we all have one common goal — erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.”
    • Minister of Agriculture, Avi Dichter, stated (November 11) “[w]e are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba”.
    • Former Head of the Israeli National Security Council, Major General Giora Eiland, said (October 07) “The people should be told that they have two choices; to stay and to starve, or to leave. If Egypt and other countries prefer that these people will perish in Gaza, this is their choice.” He later asserted (November 06) that there should be no distinction between Hamas combatants and Palestinian civilians, saying: “‘They’ are not only Hamas fighters with weapons, but also all the ‘civilian’ officials, including hospital administrators and school administrators, and also the entire Gaza population”.
    • One former Knesset member called for all Palestinians in Gaza to be killed saying: “I tell you, in Gaza without exception, they are all terrorists, sons of dogs. They must be exterminated, all of them killed”.
    • South Africa’s indictment lists several additional such comments by additional Israeli leaders.
    • When a group of Israeli soldiers and settlers assaulted three Palestinians in the West Bank (October 12); the three were beaten, stripped naked, bound, tortured, and urinated upon. Such abuse was nothing new.  During the First Intifada (1987—93), this kind of humiliation by Israeli forces was routine.  Men would be threatened with the rape of their wives or sisters; women would be threatened with sexual violence.
    • In response to Al-Aqsa Flood, multiple US political leaders have urged genocide against Gaza: US Senator Lindsey Graham urged (Oct 10 on Fox News) “level the place”; US Senator Marco Rubio wrote on social media (October 09) “Israel must respond disproportionately”; US Republican Presidential Candidate Nikki Haley (October 7 or 8 on Fox News) urged Israel to “finish them”, the Palestinians. Although US President Biden and his aides have not made such extreme public statements, his actual policy has been to abet those genocidal actions.

    Israel’s “Arab problem”.  Despite Netanyahu’s denial, Israel’s policy vis-à-vis Palestinians (whether in Israel, in the West Bank, or in Gaza) is to make their conditions as oppressive as possible (within the limits to which its Western allies will acquiesce) so that said Palestinians will out migrate to other countries.  That is in accordance with Zionist prescriptions from the time of Herzl (1890s) [7], to solve the “Arab problem” thru “population transfer” (that is ethnic cleansing).

    Media bias.  In the first days after October 07, the Western mainstream media focused almost exclusively upon grieving Israelis.  It was only after the killings, destruction, and extreme suffering in Gaza became so unavoidably blatant and massive that it began reporting on that.  The racist anti-Palestinian bias of the Western mainstream media is exemplified by its response to reports of the 3 Hamas-captured Israeli men (shirtless, hands raised, holding a white flag of truce, and speaking Hebrew) nevertheless killed (Dec 15) by trigger-happy Israeli soldiers.  That was treated as a horrific tragedy, but there was no thought to question how, with Israeli soldiers acting thusly with captured Israelis, do they act toward unarmed Palestinians.

    Biden’s humanitarian concerns.  US President Biden (along with most Congressional Democrats) expresses lip-service concern regarding Israel’s mass murder of tens of thousands of Gaza Palestinians (no more than 3% of whom could be armed resistance fighters).  Biden could force a stop to it by supporting deployment of neutral UN peace-keepers into appropriate locations in Gaza, with US guarantees of their safety, to protect: hospitals, schools, desalination plants, sewage treatment facilities, humanitarian aid shipments, food and water dispensers, and UNRWA relief operations.  It is highly likely that Hamas et al would welcome the introduction of such humanitarian intervenors as long as they are truly neutral.  Meanwhile, for Israel to attack them would put it in armed conflict with the US (and its allies) upon which it is extremely dependent.  Instead of intervening in any real way to save lives in Gaza, Biden (along with most of Congress) shows his true colors by sending munitions to Israel, by demanding billions of dollars for more no-strings military aid to the Zionist state, and by vetoing near-unanimous UN demands for a ceasefire.

    CONCLUSIONS. 

    The conflict.  The Zionists (seeking to build and expand their racist colonial settler state) and their imperial Western allies (serving the selfish interests of their war industries and other profit-producing commercial entities with interests in the region) have subjected the Palestinian Arabs to a century of systematic subjugation and persecutions.  The Zionists’ ultimate applicable objective is to eliminate the threat to Zionist Jewish supremacy by removing most of the indigenous Palestinian population: thru expulsion and mass murder whenever they can find pretext acceptable to Western allies, and by making life so difficult for Palestinians that they will choose to out migrate.  Systematic oppression always provokes resistance by the oppressed (including violent resistance when peaceful appeals prove futile), and Palestinians are no exception.  The Zionist state has always responded to that resistance (even peaceful protests) with repressive violence, attempting to bludgeon the Palestinians into passive acceptance of their Zionist-intended fate.  That fate: to be treated as subhuman, to be massacred, to be permanently expelled from their homeland, to be robbed of their property, to be denied their right to equal civil rights and democratic self-government, and (for those allowed at least temporarily to remain in Palestine) to be exploited as cheap labor to perform work which Israelis choose to avoid.

    End.  This conflict and the inevitable resulting violence will not end until: Israel has eliminated nearly the entire remaining Palestinian population; or its Western abettors have been compelled (by organized popular pressure) to cease enabling it (enabling: thru funding and arming the Zionist state, thru preventing Israel from being held accountable for its crimes, and by refusing to intervene in support of the victimized Palestinian population).

    NOTED SOURCES (those which lack URL’s).

    [1] Sachar⸰ Howard M [Zionist American historian]: A History of Israel (© 1979, Knopf) ~ pp 10—17 ♦ ISBN 0-394-73679-6.

    [2] Brenner⸰ Lenni [American social-justice writer/activist]: Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (© 1983, Lawrence Hill Books) ~ pp 22—25, 29—32 ♦ ISBN 0-7099-0628-5.

    [3] Morris⸰ Benny [Zionist Israeli historian]: 1948 – A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (© 2008, Yale University Press) ~ pp 3—4, 18—19 ♦ ISBN 978-0-300-12696-9.

    [4] Brenner⸰: ~ chapters 5, 6, 7, 12.

    [5] Sachar⸰: ~ pp 96—109.

    [6] Sachar⸰: ~ pp 386—389.

    [7] same as [3].

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  • Round the World, the Truth Will Echo

    An American writer and political commentator says the self-immolation of US Airman Aaron Bushnell shows the desperation of a people completely ignored by their own government.

    Daniel Patrick Welch added that the isolation of the United States and Israel is a life-changing, time-changing thing.

    Welch made the remarks in an exclusive interview with the Press TV website on Tuesday, after initially balking at the topic of the young man’s death.

    He explains: “When I was asked to be interviewed on the death of Aaron Bushnell, I was a bit reticent. I have been reticent to do interviews for a few months, because here in the Belly of the Beast it’s quite depressing, and feels almost hopeless.”

    This feeling didn’t last long, Welch says. “But enough of that. I’m an American writer, and he was an American boy—soldier—and his death is a result of actions of the American ruling class, as well as the conflagration to which he responded.”

    It made sense that this point of view should be heard, especially given how tightly US media is controlled. “I’ll give an American perspective that is, I think, unique, in the sense that there are no more truthtellers among reporters and journalists,” he says. “It is insane to be living in this environment and speak out in this vacuum.” Why does he call it a vacuum? “ I mean, the entire world knows what’s going on and is beginning to wake up in ways that they haven’t yet. And over here, it never reaches above a whisper. It is shocking.”

    What is unique or specific about this death? Welch points out “It is also important to say that he was an American soldier. There is a way in which some people might be shocked, or think it is a little self-involved for Americans to mourn their own kids more than the tens of thousands that have been killed in Gaza in the past few months.”

    But he is quick to correct that impression, adding “That is obviously not my point. What I mean is that it hits home in a slightly different way. He’s not my child. But he *is* a child.”

    Aside from his political commentary, Welch has spent his career teaching and mentoring students who are faced with the choice of joining the US military, which is not a requirement unlike in most other countries. “I have not only encountered kids like this; I’ve raised kids like this. I’ve encouraged kids to explore their options, he says. However, he has usually steered students away from this choice. “I’ve always been reticent to tell them to go to the military instead of going directly to college. I’ve always avoided advising kids to go on to a military career.  But times change, and we live in a society that doesn’t pay for *anything* except through military service.”

    Of course, Welch is talking broadly about his own history with students. “I don’t know his background, so I’m not talking specifically about this young man. But some of the kids that I have advised and a lot of the kids from poor and working class families have no choices.”

    They often choose enlistment, Welch points out, because it is a sort of backdoor way  to get government funding for pursuing their career aims. “There are few programs, there is no free education, there is no anything. There is no free *anything* like there is in every other industrial economy in the world. And so to have the opportunity to have a career via this option is a kind of blackmail by the ruling class. It’s a kind of way to get cannon fodder.”

    Additionally, according to Welch, youth of this age are naturally questioning—and vulnerable. “I think the feeling of that age, that youth, that exposure—is mind-numbing. And mind changing.

    However, he says, he felt almost chagrined to hear Bushnell admit to being complicit in genocide. “I do think it is important to say that this kid isn’t any more culpable than you, or me, or anyone else who is paying taxes to this regime. Who is not occupying the halls of government. Who keeps voting? Voting?? For what???” Welch scoffs at the notion that activism should be directed to the voting duopoly that seems designed to keep things exactly as they are. “To think that there is any political party that is any different than another party in order to put a stop to this wanton violence is…”naïve” is a lousy word to use. Because it’s deliberate. It’s cynical.”

    Welch also cautions against what he calls the “nightmare” of putting words in the young man’s mouth, or authorities in questioning his mental health, and so on. “I also don’t want to speak for him. I don’t think that is appropriate either. He said it himself. He said, ‘My name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active duty member of the US Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what the people in Palestine have been experiencing at the hands of the colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal. Free Palestine.’”

    This statement alone is a sort of clarion call that should speak for itself. “That also should set the record straight that this kid knew what he was doing. Obviously, the notion of taking one’s life is very extreme and very disturbed.” Here again, though, Welch has to reflect on the depth of passion and hopelessness he felt in his activist youth. “But I also  have to put that through my own sieve. When I came back, around his age, I think, from my stint in Nicaragua. I felt hopeless, I felt depressed, and when I heard the idiocy of people speaking, the complete lack of compassion, lack of understanding. And I was thinking of the babies, the hungry babies—the boys who had had their limbs blown off by CIA bombs. Talking to them in person the night before the vote. I got so angry and hopeless that I kind of withdrew.”

    This is a lens we have to look through, he asserts. “I can sense this. I know. Obviously we went through a whole generation of Vietnam, young men and women who had to go through that. It ruins lives on this end, as well as on the receiving end of all the bombs.”

    But the chilling reality is that Americans are incredibly adept—shockingly so—at avoiding any discussion. “Now the problem is that no one talks about it. There is nothing in the morning news, in the local TV news—nothing at all. Really, since October 7, there is nothing that tells the truth. Even beyond the idea that saying 70 thousand wounded 30 thousand killed in Gaza by the Occupation Forces of Israel—that is since October 7. Why? Why is this a magic date? It’s kind of like taking the baton from the runner on the Propaganda Team and carrying it through the rest of the race.”

    “There is no magic,” Welch continues, “despite what the propaganda machine says. October 7? What about 1948? What about decades of occupation, colonization. And even now, the narrative of October 7 completely  dismisses the lies that were told in the aftermath. The existence of the Hannibal Doctrine in Israeli military is ruthless. Civilians don’t matter. Pro or con doesn’t matter. You just blow the crap out of everything. So that, of the initial killed, most were killed by Israeli fire. You can still blame an attacker. But again, you have to zoom out.”

    Welch points to the larger picture of how the world is rejecting US’ hegemony. “What we get when we zoom out is that there is a world on fire. A world who sees what we are doing. South Africa took it to the ICJ. Nicaragua, Venezuala, Brazil joined them. Even Japan and Spain have ceased sending arms.” But it’s not a done deal, he cautions. “Still the US controls large swathes of governments. Governments, not people. I guess India has been sending drones that help kill people in Gaza—that is shocking, and repulsive. But this is a life-changing, time-changing thing. It hurts that a young man thought that he could make people talk about it by giving up his life.”

    Mainstream Western media and its controllers in government will try to shape the narrative, he asserts. “They are going die on the hill of not letting his name and voice speak. And that is shameful. But it is no more shameful than The Game—what is going on with this country. This ruling class.” He sees no political solution existing in the current environment. “There is no difference in the parties. There is no one on either “side of the aisle” (because we seem to love British references so much). There is no one who tells the truth. And no one within the halls of power who is wedded to anything but the continuation of their own power.”

    “Carter was right,” he says. Former president Jimmy Carter made it clear in his retirement that he though the US was no longer a democracy, but an oligarchy. “Carlin was right.” (American comedian George Carlin often pilloried the US elites and the institutions and culture that produced them. “The Oligarchy is what it is.” In the debate over whose voice matters, Welch cautions that the present is not always the last word, citing Irish rebel Robert Emmet, whose famous Speech From the Dock before his execution is still quoted  two centuries later. “Robert Emmet spoke the truth from the dock, and his voice still echoes. We have to keep our heads down, and keep speaking out. Keep speaking out. Forever.”

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  • Warning space treaty cedes Australian sovereignty

    Australia’s space treaty with the United States will prevent the federal government from using revenue collected from US launches to fund the development of local rocket technology, leading to warnings it has ceded sovereignty on industry development in the space sector. The Technology Safeguards Agreement (TSA), made public for the first time on Tuesday, also…

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  • The US just returned to the Moon. How big a deal is it, really?

    In the few short years since the COVID pandemic changed our world, China, Japan and India have all successfully landed on the Moon. Many more robotic missions have flown past the Moon, entered lunar orbit, or crashed into it in the past five years. This includes spacecraft developed by South Korea, the United Arab Emirates,…

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  • Defund UN and Give Cash to Israel – US Lawmaker

    Defund UN and give cash to Israel – US lawmaker
    US Representative Matt Gaetz speaks at the CPAC conference on Friday in suburban Washington. ©  Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images

    US Representative Matt Gaetz has called for withdrawing from the UN and cutting off funding to the global body to free up money to support Israel’s war effort against Hamas.

    Speaking at a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event on Friday in suburban Washington, the Florida Republican demanded that Washington account for all new spending on foreign aid by making equivalent cuts to the federal budget. Gaetz made his comments as US President Joe Biden’s administration continued to scold Republican lawmakers for failing to approve an emergency spending bill that includes about $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel.

    “We shouldn’t have any foreign aid to any other country without corresponding cuts to our own bloated federal budget,” the congressman told a cheering CPAC crowd. “If you want to send aid to Israel, fine, pay for it by defunding the United Nations.”

    I want the UN to be zeroed out in our budget. The US should be out of the UN, and the UN should be out of the US.”

    Gaetz and other conservative lawmakers have balked at approving additional support for Kiev, saying Biden is merely prolonging Ukraine’s conflict with Russia while providing no plan for ending the bloodshed. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a $14.3 billion aid bill for Israel in November, but Biden has insisted that assistance to West Jerusalem be bundled with military funding for Ukraine and Taiwan.

    The White House admitted last month that it had run out of money for Kiev after burning through $113 billion in previously approved funding. Biden has claimed that Republicans are blocking aid to Ukraine at the behest of Donald Trump, his likely opponent in this year’s presidential election. He told supporters this week that GOP politicians are worse than the racist segregationists he worked with decades ago in the Senate. “These guys do not believe in basic democratic principles.”

    Gaetz said Washington’s previously approved Ukraine aid packages are now “slushing around the money-laundering capitals of the world.” He noted that amid Western outrage over the death earlier this month of Russian activist Alexey Navalny in a Siberian penal colony, the media should be reminded that American journalist Gonzalo Lira died in a Ukrainian prison.

    The congressman added that wealthy European allies have relied on Washington to fund their defense. “What’s really left unsaid in this Ukraine aid debate is that Europe’s fecklessness is a direct result of them becoming national security welfare queens, largely at your expense.”

    Quitting the UN would be a logical way to free up funds for Israel, Gaetz argued. “How about take the money away from the entity that had some of their own people attacking and killing Israelis?” he asked. “It seems like a good offset.”
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  • Imperial Venality Defends Itself: Day Two of Julian Assange’s High Court Appeal

    On February 21, the Royal Courts of Justice hosted a second day of carnivalesque mockery regarding the appeal by lawyers representing an ill Julian Assange, whose publishing efforts are being impugned by the United States as having compromised the identities of informants while damaging national security.  Extradition awaits, only being postponed by rearguard actions such as what has just been concluded at the High Court.

    How, then, to justify the 18 charges being levelled against the WikiLeaks founder under the US Espionage Act of 1917, an instrument not just vile but antiquated in its effort to stomp on political discussion and expression?

    Justice Jeremy Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp got the bien pensant treatment of the national security state, dressed in robes, and tediously inclined.  Prosaic arguments were recycled like stale, oppressive air.  According to Clair Dobbin KC, there was “no immunity for journalists to break the law” and that the US constitutional First Amendment protecting the press would never confer it.  This had an undergraduate obviousness to it; no one in this case has ever asserted such cavalierly brutal freedom in releasing classified material, a point that Mark Summers KC, representing Assange, was happy to point out.

    Yet again, the Svengali argument, gingered with seduction, was run before a British court.  Assange, assuming all the powers of manipulation, cultivated and corrupted the disclosers, “soliciting” them to pilfer classified government materials.  With limping repetition, Dobbin insisted that WikiLeaks had been responsible for revealing “the unredacted names of the sources who provided information to the United States,” many of whom “lived in war zones or in repressive regimes”.  In exposing the names of Afghans, Iraqis, journalists, religious figures, human rights dissidents and political dissidents, the publisher had “created a grave and immediate risk that innocent people would suffer serious physical harm or arbitrary detention”.

    The battering did not stop there.  “There were really profound consequences, beyond the real human cost and to the broader ability to the US to gather evidence from human sources as well.”  Dobbin’s proof of these contentions is thin, vague and causally absent: the arrest of one Ethiopian journalist following the leak; unspecified “others” disappeared.  She even admitted the fact that “it cannot be proven that their disappearance was a result of being outed.”  This was certainly a point pounced upon by Summers.

    The previous publication by Cryptome of all the documents, or the careless publication of the key to the encrypted file with the unredacted cables by journalists from The Guardian in a book on WikiLeaks, did not convince Dobbin.  Assange was “responsible for the publications of the unredacted documents whether published by others or WikiLeaks.”  There was no mention, either, that Assange had been alarmed by The Guardian faux pas and had contacted the US State Department of this fact.  Summers, in his contribution, duly reminded the court of the publisher’s frantic efforts while also reasoning that the harm caused had been “unintended, unforeseen and unwanted” by him.

    With this selective, prejudicial angle made clear, Dobbin’s words became those of a disgruntled empire caught with its pants down when harming and despoiling others.  “What the appellant is accused of is really at the upper end of the spectrum of gravity,” she submitted, attracting “no public interest whatsoever”.  Conveniently, calculatingly, any reference to the enormous, weighty revelations of WikiLeaks of torture, renditions, war crimes, surveillance, to name but a few, was avoided.  Emphasis was placed, instead, upon the “usefulness” of the material WikiLeaks had published: to the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden.

    This is a dubious point given the Pentagon’s own assertions to the contrary in a 2011 report dealing with the significance of the disclosure of military and diplomatic documents by WikiLeaks.  On the Iraq War logs and State Department cables, the report concluded “with high confidence that disclosure of the Iraq data set will have no direct personal impact on current and former US leadership in Iraq.”  On the Afghanistan war log releases, the authors also found that they would not result in “significant impact” to US operations, though did claim that this was potentially damaging to “intelligence sources, informants, and the Afghan population,” and intelligence collection efforts by the US and NATO.

    Summers appropriately rebutted the contention about harm by suggesting that Assange had opposed, in the highest traditions of journalism, “war crimes”, a consideration that had to be measured against unverified assertions of harm.

    On this point, the prosecution found itself in knots, given that a balancing act of harm and freedom of expression is warranted under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.  When asked by Justice Johnson whether prosecuting a journalist in the UK, when in possession of “information of very serious wrongdoing by an intelligence agency [had] incited an employee of that agency to provide information… [which] was then published in a very careful way” was compatible with the right to freedom of expression, Dobbin conceded to there being no “straightforward answer”.

    When pressed by Justice Johnson as to whether she accepted the idea that the “statutory offence”, not any “scope for a balancing exercise” was what counted, Dobbin had to concede that a “proportionality assessment” would normally arise when publishers were prosecuted under section 5 of the UK Official Secrets Act.  Prosecutions would only take place if one “knowingly published” information known “to be damaging”.

    Any half-informed student of the US Espionage Act knows that strict liability under the statute negates any need to undertake a balancing assessment.  All that matters is that the individual had “reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the US,” often proved by the mere fact that the information published was classified to begin with.

    Dobbin then switched gears.  Having initially advertised the view that journalists could never be entirely immune from criminal prosecution, she added more egg to the pudding on the reasons why Assange was not a journalist.  Her view of the journalist being a bland, obedient transmitter of received, establishment wisdom was all too clear.  Assange had gone “beyond the acts of a journalist who is merely gathering information”.  He had, for instance, agreed with Chelsea Manning on March 8, 2010 to attempt cracking a password hash that would have given her access to the secure and classified Department of Defense account.  Doing so meant using a false identity to facilitate further pilfering of classified documents.

    This was yet another fiction.  Manning’s court martial had revealed the redundancy of having to crack a password hash as she already had administrator access to the system.  Why then bother with the conspiratorial circus?

    The corollary of this is that the prosecution’s reliance on fabricated testimony, notably from former WikiLeaks volunteer, convicted paedophile and FBI tittle-tattler Sigurdur ‘Siggi’ Thordarson.  In June 2021, the Icelandic newspaper Stundin, now publishing under the name Heimildin, revealed that Assange had “never asked him to hack or to access phone recordings of [Iceland’s] MPs.”  He also had not “received some files from a third party who claimed to have recorded MPs and had offered to share them with Assange without having any idea what they actually contained.”  Thordarson never went through the relevant files, nor verified whether they had audio recordings as claimed by the third-party source. The allegation that Assange instructed him to access computers in order to unearth such recordings was roundly rejected.

    The legal team representing the US attempted to convince the court that suggestions of “bad faith” by the defence on the part of such figures as lead prosecutor Gordon Kromberg had to be discounted.  “The starting position must be, as it always is in these cases, the fundamental assumption of good faith on the part of those states with which the United Kingdom has long-standing extradition relationships,” asserted Dobbin.  “The US is one of the most long-standing partners of the UK.”

    This had a jarring quality to it, given that nothing in Washington’s approach to Assange – the surveillance sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency via Spanish security firm UC Global, the contemplation of abduction and assassination by intelligence officials, the after-the-fact concoction of assurances to assure easier extradition to the US – has been anything but one of bad faith.

    Summers countered by refuting any suggestions that “Mr Kronberg is a lying individual or that he is personally not carrying out his prosecutorial duties in good faith. The prosecution and extradition here is a decision taken way above his head.”  This was a matter of “state retaliation ordered from the very top”; one could not “focus on the sheep and ignore the shepherd.”

    Things did not get better for the prosecuting side on what would happen once Assange was extradited.  Would he, for instance, be protected by the free press amendment under US law?  Former CIA director Mike Pompeo had suggested that Assange’s Australian citizenship barred him from protections afforded by the First Amendment.  Dobbin was not sure, but insisted that there was insufficient evidence to suggest that nationality would prejudice Assange in any trial.  Justice Johnson was sharp: “the test isn’t that he would be prejudiced.  It is that he might be prejudiced on the grounds of his nationality.”  This was hard to square with the UK Extradition Act prohibiting extradition where a person “might be prejudiced at his trial or punished, detained, or restricted in his personal liberty” on account of nationality.

    Given existing US legal practice, Assange also faced the risk of the death penalty, something that extradition arrangements would bar.  Ben Watson KC, representing the UK Home Secretary, had to concede to the court that there was nothing preventing any amendment by US prosecutors to the current list of charges that could result in a death sentence.

    If he does not succeed in this appeal, Assange may well request an intervention of the European Court of Human Rights for a stay of proceedings under Rule 39.  Like many European institutions so loathed by the governments of post-Brexit Britain, it offers the prospect of relief provided that there are “exceptional circumstances” and an instance “where there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm.”

    The sickening irony of that whole proviso is that irreparable harm is being inflicted on Assange in prison, where the UK prison system fulfils the role of the punishing US gaoler.  Speed will be of the essence; and the government of Rishi Sunak may well quickly bundle the publisher onto a transatlantic flight.  If so, the founder of WikiLeaks will go the way of other prestigious and wronged political prisoners who sought to expand minds rather than narrow them.

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  • Identifying Imperial Venality: Day One of Julian Assange’s High Court Appeal

    On February 20, it was clear that things were not going to be made easy for Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who infuriated the US imperium, the national security establishment, and a stable of journalists upset that he had cut their ill-tended lawns.  He was too ill to attend what may well be the final appeal against his extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States.  Were he to be sent to the US, he faces a possible sentence amounting to 175 years arising from 18 venally cobbled charges, 17 spliced from that archaic horror, the Espionage Act of 1917.

    The appeal to the High Court, comprising Justice Jeremy Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp, challenges the extradition order by the Home Secretary and the conclusions of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser who, despite ordering his release on risks posed to him on mental health grounds, fundamentally agreed with the prosecution.  He was, Varaitser scorned, not a true journalist.  (Absurdly, it would seem for the judge, journalists never publish leaked information.)  He had exposed the identities of informants.  He had engaged in attempts to hack computer systems.  In June 2023, High Court justice, Jonathan Swift, thought it inappropriate to rehear the substantive arguments of the trial case made by defence.

    Assange’s attorneys had informed the court that he simply could not attend in person, though it would hardly have mattered.  His absence from the courtroom was decorous in its own way; he could avoid being displayed like a caged specimen reviled for his publishing feats.  The proceedings would be conducted in the manner of appropriate panto, with dress and procedure to boot.

    Unfortunately, as things chugged along, the two judges were seemingly ill versed in the field they were adjudicating.  Their ignorance was telling on, for instance, the views of Mike Pompeo, whose bilious reaction to WikiLeaks when director of the Central Intelligence Agency involved rejecting the protections of the First Amendment of the US Constitution to non-US citizens.  (That view is also held by the US prosecutors.)  Such a perspective, argued Assange’s legal team, was a clear violation of Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

    They were also surprised to be informed that further charges could be added to the indictment on his arrival to the United States, including those carrying the death penalty.  To this could be added other enlightening surprises for the judicial bench: the fact that rules of admissibility might be altered to consider material illegally obtained, for instance, through surveillance; that Assange might also be sentenced for an offence he was never actually tried for.

    Examples of espionage case law were submitted as precedents to buttress the defence, with Edward Fitzgerald KC calling espionage a “pure political offence” which barred extradition in treaties Britain had signed with 158 nation states.

    The case of David Shayler, who had been in the employ of the British domestic intelligence service MI5, saw the former employee prosecuted for passing classified documents to The Mail on Sunday in 1997 under the Official Secrets Act.  These included the names of various agents, that the agency kept dossiers on various UK politicians, including Labour ministers, and that the British foreign intelligence service, MI6, had conceived of a plan to assassinate Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.  When the UK made its extradition request to the French authorities, they received a clear answer from the Cour d’Appel: the offence charged was found to be political in nature.

    Mark Summers KC also emphasised the point that the “prosecution was motivated to punish and inhibit the exposure of American state-level crimes”, ample evidence of which was adduced during the extradition trial, yet ignored by both Baraitser and Swift.  Baraitser brazenly ignored evidence of discussions by US intelligence officials about a plot to kill or abduct Assange.

    For Summers, chronology was telling: the initial absence of any prosecution effort by the Obama administration, despite empanelling a grand jury to investigate WikiLeaks; the announcement by the International Criminal Court that it would be investigating potential crimes committed by US combatants in Afghanistan in 2016, thereby lending gravity to Assange’s disclosures; and the desire to kill or seek the publisher’s extradition after the release of the Vault 7 files detailing various espionage tools of the CIA.

    With Pompeo’s apoplectic declaration that WikiLeaks was a hostile, non-state intelligence service, the avenue was open for a covert targeting of Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.  The duly hatched rendition plan led to the prosecution, which proved “selective” in avoiding, for instance, the targeting of newspaper outlets such as Freitag, or the website Cryptome.  In Summer’s view, “This is not a government acting on good faith pursuing a legal path.”

    When it came to discussing the leaks, the judges revealed a deep-welled obliviousness about what Assange and WikiLeaks had actually done in releasing the US State Department cables.  For one thing, the old nonsense that the unredacted, or poorly redacted material had resulted in damage was skirted over, not to mention the fact that Assange had himself insisted on a firm redaction policy.   No inquiry has ever shown proof that harm came to any US informant, a central contention of the US Department of Justice.  Nor was it evident to the judges that the publication of the cables had first taken place in Cryptome, once it was discovered that reporters from The Guardian had injudiciously revealed the password to the unredacted files in their publication.

    Two other points also emerged in the defence submission: the whistleblower angle, and that of foreseeability.  Consider, Summers argued hypothetically, the situation where Chelsea Manning, whose invaluable disclosures WikiLeaks published, had been considered by the European Court of Human Rights.  The European Union’s whistleblower regime, he contended, would have considered the effect of harm done by violating an undertaking of confidentiality with the exposure of abuses of state power.  Manning would have likely escaped conviction, while Assange, having not even signed any confidentiality agreements, would have had even better prospects for acquittal.

    The issue of foreseeability, outlined in Article 7 of the ECHR, arose because Assange, his team further contends, could not have known that publishing the cables would have triggered a lawsuit under the Espionage Act.  That said, a grand jury had refused to indict the Chicago Times in 1942 for publishing an article citing US naval knowledge of Japanese plans to attack Midway Island.  Then came the Pentagon Papers case in 1971.  While Summers correctly notes that, “The New York Times was never prosecuted,” this was not for want for trying: a grand jury was empanelled with the purpose of indicting the Times reporter Neil Sheehan for his role in receiving classified government material.  Once revelations of government tapping of whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was revealed, the case collapsed.  All that said, Article 7 could provide a further ground for barring extradition.

    February 21 gave lawyers for the US the chance to reiterate the various, deeply flawed assertions about Assange’s publication activities connected with Cablegate (the “exposing informants” argument), his supposedly non-journalistic activities and the integrity of diplomatic assurances about his welfare were he to be extradited.  The stage for the obscene was duly set.

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  • After Two Years of War in Ukraine, It’s Time for Peace

    The ruins of Avdiivka. Photo Credit: Russian Defense Ministry

    As we mark two full years since Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukrainian government forces have withdrawn from Avdiivka, a town they first captured from the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in July 2014. Situated only 10 miles from Donetsk city, Avdiivka gave Ukrainian government forces a base from which their artillery bombarded Donetsk for nearly ten years. From a pre-war population of about 31,000, the town has been depopulated and left in ruins.

    The mass slaughter on both sides in this long battle was a measure of the strategic value of the city to both sides, but it is also emblematic of the shocking human cost of this war, which has degenerated into a brutal and bloody war of attrition along a nearly static front line. Neither side made significant territorial gains in the entire 2023 year of fighting, with a net gain to Russia of a mere 188 square miles, or 0.1% of Ukraine.

    And while it is the Ukrainians and Russians fighting and dying in this war of attrition with over half a million casualties, it is the United States, with some its Western allies, that has stood in the way of peace talks. This was true of talks between Russia and Ukraine that took place in March 2022, one month after the Russian invasion, and it is true of talks that Russia tried to initiate with the United States as recently as January 2024.

    In March 2022, Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey and negotiated a peace agreement that should have ended the war. Ukraine agreed to become a neutral country between east and west, on the model of Austria or Switzerland, giving up its controversial ambition for NATO membership. Territorial questions over Crimea and the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk would be resolved peacefully, based on self-determination for the people of those regions.

    But then the U.S. and U.K. intervened to persuade Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskyy to abandon the neutrality agreement in favor of a long war to militarily drive Russia out of Ukraine and recover Crimea and Donbas by force. U.S. and U.K. leaders have never admitted to their own people what they did, nor tried to explain why they did it.

    So it has been left to everyone else involved to reveal details of the agreement and the U.S. and U.K.’s roles in torpedoing it: President Zelenskyy’s advisers; Ukrainian negotiators; Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Turkish diplomats; Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who was another mediator; and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, who mediated with Russian President Vladimir Putin for Ukraine.

    The U.S. sabotage of peace talks should come as no surprise. So much of U.S. foreign policy follows what should by now be an easily recognizable and predictable pattern, in which our leaders systematically lie to us about their decisions and actions in crisis situations, and, by the time the truth is widely known, it is too late to reverse the catastrophic effects of those decisions. Thousands of people have paid with their lives, nobody is held accountable, and the world’s attention has moved on to the next crisis, the next series of lies and the next bloodbath, which in this case is Gaza.

    But the war grinds on in Ukraine, whether we pay attention to it or not. Once the U.S. and U.K. succeeded in killing peace talks and prolonging the war, it fell into an intractable pattern common to many wars, in which Ukraine, the United States and the leading members of the NATO military alliance were encouraged, or we might say deluded, by limited successes at different times into continually prolonging and escalating the war and rejecting diplomacy, in spite of ever-mounting, appalling human costs for the people of Ukraine.

    U.S. and NATO leaders have repeated ad nauseam that they are arming Ukraine to put it in a stronger position at the “negotiating table,” even as they keep rejecting negotiations. After Ukraine gained ground with its much celebrated offensives in the fall of 2022, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley went public with a call to “seize the moment” and get back to the negotiating table from the position of strength that NATO leaders said they were waiting for. French and German military leaders were reportedly even more adamant that that moment would be short-lived if they failed to seize it.

    They were right. President Biden rejected his military advisers’ calls for renewed diplomacy, and Ukraine’s failed 2023 offensive wasted its chance to negotiate from a position of strength, sacrificing many more lives to leave it weaker than before.

    On February 13, 2024, Reuters Moscow bureau broke the story that the United States had recently rejected a new Russian proposal to reopen peace negotiations. Multiple Russian sources involved in the initiative told Reuters that Russia proposed direct talks with the United States to call a ceasefire along the current front lines of the war.

    After Russia’s March 2022 peace agreement with Ukraine was vetoed by the U.S., this time Russia approached the United States directly before involving Ukraine. There was a meeting of intermediaries in Turkey, and a meeting between Secretary of State Blinken, CIA Director Burns and National Security Adviser Sullivan in Washington, but the result was a message from Sullivan that the U.S. was willing to discuss other aspects of U.S.-Russian relations, but not peace in Ukraine.

    And so the war grinds on. Russia is still firing 10,000 artillery shells per day along the front line, while Ukraine can only fire 2,000. In a microcosm of the larger war, some Ukrainian gunners told reporters they were only allowed to fire 3 shells per night. As Sam Cranny-Evans of the U.K.’s RUSI military think-tank told the Guardian, “What that means is that Ukrainians can’t suppress Russian artillery any more, and if the Ukrainians can’t fire back, all they can do is try to survive.”

    A March 2023 European initiative to produce a million shells for Ukraine in a year fell far short, only producing about 600,000. U.S. monthly shell production in October 2023 was 28,000 shells, with a target of 37,000 per month by April 2024. The United States plans to increase production to 100,000 shells per month, but that will take until October 2025.

    Meanwhile, Russia is already producing 4.5 million artillery shells per year. After spending less than one tenth of the Pentagon budget over the past 20 years, how is Russia able to produce 5 times more artillery shells than the United States and its NATO allies combined?

    RUSI’s Richard Connolly explained to the Guardian that, while Western countries privatized their weapons production and dismantled “surplus” productive capacity after the end of the Cold War in the interest of corporate profits, “The Russians have been… subsidizing the defense industry, and many would have said wasting money for the event that one day they need to be able to scale it up. So it was economically inefficient until 2022, and then suddenly it looks like a very shrewd bit of planning.”

    President Biden has been anxious to send more money to Ukraine–a whopping $61 billion—but disagreements in the U.S. Congress between bipartisan Ukraine supporters and a Republican faction opposed to U.S. involvement have held up the funds. But even if Ukraine had endless infusions of Western weapons, it has a more serious problem: Many of the troops it recruited to fight this war in 2022 have been killed, wounded or captured, and its recruitment system has been plagued by corruption and a lack of enthusiasm for the war among most of its people.

    In August 2023, the government fired the heads of military recruitment in all 24 regions of the country after it became widely known that they were systematically soliciting bribes to allow men to avoid recruitment and gain safe passage out of the country. The Open Ukraine Telegram channel reported, “The military registration and enlistment offices have never seen such money before, and the revenues are being evenly distributed vertically to the top.”

    The Ukrainian parliament is debating a new conscription law, with an online registration system that includes people living abroad and with penalties for failure to register or enlist. Parliament already voted down a previous bill that members found too draconian, and many fear that forced conscription will lead to more widespread draft resistance, or even bring down the government.

    Oleksiy Arestovych, President Zelenskyy’s former spokesman, told the Unherd website that the root of Ukraine’s recruitment problem is that only 20% of Ukrainians believe in the anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalism that has controlled Ukrainian governments since the overthrow of the Yanukovych government in 2014. “What about the remaining 80%?” the interviewer asked.

    “I think for most of them, their idea is of a multinational and poly-cultural country,” Arestovych replied. “And when Zelenskyy came into power in 2019, they voted for this idea. He did not articulate it specifically but it was what he meant when he said, ‘I don’t see a difference in the Ukrainian-Russian language conflict, we are all Ukrainians even if we speak different languages.’”

    “And you know,” Arestovych continued, “my great criticism of what has happened in Ukraine over the last years, during the emotional trauma of the war, is this idea of Ukrainian nationalism which has divided Ukraine into different people: the Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers as a second class of people. It’s the main dangerous idea and a worse danger than Russian military aggression, because nobody from this 80% of people wants to die for a system in which they are people of a second class.”

    If Ukrainians are reluctant to fight, imagine how Americans would resist being shipped off to fight in Ukraine. A 2023 U.S. Army War College study of “Lessons from Ukraine” found that the U.S. ground war with Russia that the United States ispreparing to fight would involve an estimated 3,600 U.S. casualties per day, killing and maiming as many U.S. troops every two weeks as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq did in twenty years. Echoing Ukraine’s military recruitment crisis, the authors concluded, “Large-scale combat operations troop requirements may well require a reconceptualization of the 1970s and 1980s volunteer force and a move toward partial conscription.”

    U.S. war policy in Ukraine is predicated on just such a gradual escalation from proxy war to full-scale war between Russia and the United States, which is unavoidably overshadowed by the risk of nuclear war. This has not changed in two years, and it will not change unless and until our leaders take a radically different approach. That would involve serious diplomacy to end the war on terms on which Russia and Ukraine can agree, as they did on the March 2022 neutrality agreement.

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  • We Have Met the Enemy and they are Other Democrats

    Photo courtesy of Ross Rowley

    The Israeli government is like the bad friend who only calls to ask for money or favors. For 75 years, Jewish supremacists beguiled our nation into believing their problems were America’s problems too. By using the tragedy of the Holocaust, they captured our sympathies and eventually played us for suckers — now democrats are angry.

    Not all, but a growing number are once they find out the 260 billion dollars U.S. taxpayers have given the Israeli government since WWll is money down the rathole when measured next to their broken promises, outright lies and deplorable treatment of Palestinians. No wonder these dems are trying to put the kibosh on Israeli funding after learning that Israelis along with their apologists, have done everything they could for decades to surreptitiously steer U.S. foreign policy toward a favorable view of Israel. Netanyahu, the Israeli imperial wizard of deception, made this abundantly clear in his infamous 2001 comment “ America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.”

    Biden, who sometimes resembles an ineffectual palace eunuch more than a wise king, confirms this every time he shakes a finger at Israeli leaders during their incursions or implores them to be more careful with their two and five-thousand pound bombs while they’re ethnically cleansing. His reluctance to call Netanyahu out for the genocidal slaughter in Gaza is beyond disappointing and embarrassing.

    dwhat can these democrats do when so many others only give lip service to a ceasefire? Congress hasn’t been much help — so far, less than 60 members have called for one. At a grassroots level, groups typically on the front lines in fights for equal rights and fair play like liberal artists, musicians, feminists and Jews are noticeably absent.

    In early February this year, the Minneapolis City Counsel passed a ceasefire resolution after Jewish and Democratic Party mayor Jacob Frey vetoed it because he believed the proposal was “one-sided.” One might wonder what the other side of an unstopped genocidal war would be. According to the StarTribune “Frey said he is open to signing a “truly unifying ceasefire resolution,” but noted his office has not drafted its own version yet. He told reporters the veto was “not an easy decision” and that he made it after listening to “people in my family, my extended Jewish community, and people throughout the city.” There was no mention of him talking with Palestinians.

    Just before the resolution passed, thirty-four Minnesota rabbis signed a statement supporting the mayor’s veto. To date, this city counsel resolution has the strongest language in the country because it calls for the U.S. to stop military funding to Israel. One of the signatories was a Senior Rabbi I wanted to interview for a local anti-war newsletter, but she turned me down a couple months ago. That makes five refusals from rabbis in less than a year.

    Even those progressive artists who do publicly support a ceasefire can get wish-washy about it later. One recently qualified his online ceasefire statement with a call for lowering rhetorical tones and suggested that the U.S. facilitate discussions between Israel and surrounding Arab countries. Turning down the volume is one thing, but why anyone would still believe that an inveterate liar such as Netanyahu or his murderous gang of sociological mutants should be trusted again is beyond me. If there ever is an agreement, it would have to come with enforceable, ironclad guarantees from the outside.

    Then there was a luminary folk singer/songwriter who shared a green room with Bob Dylan who soon removed his ceasefire post and replaced it with a flower. He later posted the words to a lullaby-like song he wrote about poets, artists and doctors parachuting into war zones. When I commented on his FB page about the futility of airdropping poets and artists who have yet to condemn the Israeli government, he removed the post and blocked me.

    One can only imagine the impact Bob Dylan might have if he called for sanctions and a ceasefire, but that might be too much to expect. According to a two-year old NWC/FORBES report, he has 70 cars, 15 mansions, 3 yachts, over 180 luxury watches and a nuclear bunker. Maybe he became one of the people he warned us about. On the other hand, Taylor Swift went to a comedy club last December that was raising money for Gazans. Bless her 1.1 billion dollar heart.

    It can be especially irksome when artists with long histories of showing sympathy to Native Americans don’t use their personas and platforms to publicly damn the US for supporting the genocidal Israeli government. Perhaps that’s understandable given all the whispers about Zionist Jews holding so many purse strings in the arts and entertainment business. It might seem prudent then for artists to focus on fairness issues concerning women and the LGBT community instead of the beleaguered Palestinians After all — a show of support for Palestinians may reduce audience sizes or wreck chances for an audition, gig or a place on the arts-grants-gravy-train.

    Artist Frank Big Bear combines early dreams from his childhood on the White Earth Reservation along with tribal and urban imagery in personal storytelling narratives told largely through surrealistic and cubistic traditions. He also drove a cab in Minneapolis for over thirty years to support his family.

    I think maybe people are starting to speak out more about what’s happening in Gaza around the country — maybe not on my Facebook page, because most of them are democrats who voted for Biden. I still speak out on Facebook knowing that I might be blacklisted because of Jewish influences in the art market and other institutions. I know I was kinda ignored by museums and institutions that supported native art around the country before the war in Gaza, especially for shows and grants. I guess you have to play the game by their rules and be popular and know the juries. It was difficult for me to play the game when I was younger because I was raising six children and had a full time job. I didn’t have the money or time to fly around the country and promote my work. I had to rely on and trust art dealers who are not exactly trustworthy. But getting back to why some people are not saying anything, I think it’s because they’re afraid of losing their jobs which would devastate their livelihood, especially in this economy.

    — Frank Big Bear

    Feminists too have been slow to join the call for a ceasefire and ending support for Israel. Member of the European Parliament and Irish firebrand Clare Daly recently voiced a call for the United Nations to look into how war affects women: Particularly in Gaza where “70% of the victims are women and children” and those giving birth still go without anesthetics or professional help and use tent scraps sometimes to mop up postpartum bleeding. She went on at length about the horrific, war-related traumas mothers and kids experience and ended her talk with a scathing rebuke to feminists who have not shown any solidarity with Gazan women “that’s not feminism, that’s an abomination and I don’t know if God will forgive them, but I and millions of others certainly won’t.”

    Meanwhile, the chatter classes drone on about how the Israel/Palestine dilemma is unsolvable, too complicated or how they have sympathy for both sides or feel so emotionally torn they can’t bring themselves to take a stand — perhaps they need some new material.

    The post We Have Met the Enemy and they are Other Democrats first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Israel Is Assaulting Hospitals in Gaza with Full U.S. Support

    Many decades ago in Chicago, my favorite of several part-time student jobs was operating the “old-style” telephone switchboard at a small hospital called Forkosh Memorial. The console of coils and plugs included a mirror so operators could keep an eye on the hospital entrance, which on weekends and evenings was also monitored by an elderly, unarmed security guard named Frank. He sat at a classroom style desk near the entrance with a ledger book. Over the course of four years, on weekends and evenings, “security” at the hospital generally consisted solely of Frank and me. Fortunately, nothing much ever happened. The possibility of an attack, invasion or raid never occurred to us. The notion of an aerial bombardment was unimaginable, like something out of “War of the Worlds” or some other sci-fi fantasy.

    Now, tragically, hospitals in Gaza and the West Bank have been attacked, invaded, bombed and destroyed. News of additional Israeli attacks is being reported on a daily basis. Last week, Democracy Now! interviewed Dr. Yasser Khan, a Canadian ophthalmologist and eye surgeon who recently returned from a humanitarian surgical mission at the European Hospital in Khan Yunis in Gaza. Dr. Khan spoke of bombings taking place every few hours resulting in a constant influx of mass casualties. The majority of patients he treated were children from age 2 to 17. He saw horrific eye injuries, shattered faces, shrapnel wounds, abdominal injuries, limbs severed above the bone, and traumas caused by drone launched laser guided missiles. Amid the overcrowding and chaos, health care workers tended to patients while lacking basic equipment, including anesthesia. Patients lay on the ground in unsterile conditions, vulnerable to infection and disease. Most of them also suffered from severe hunger.

    Normally, a child who undergoes an amputation faces as many as twelve additional surgeries.  Khan wondered who would do the follow-up care for these children, some of whom have no surviving relatives?

    He also noted sniper fire prevented doctors from going to work. “They’ve killed health care workers, nurses, paramedics; ambulances have been bombed. This has all been systematic,” Khan explained. “Now there are 10,000 to 15,000 bodies decomposing. It’s the rainy season right now in Gaza so all the rainwater mixes with the decomposing bodies and that bacteria mixes with the drinking water supply and you get further disease.”

    According to Khan, Israeli forces have kidnapped forty to forty-five doctors, specifically targeting specialists and hospital administrators. Three health care professional organizations have issued a statement  expressing deep concern that the Israeli military has abducted and unlawfully detained Dr. Khaled al-Serr, a surgeon at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza.

    On February 19, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described conditions in the Nasser hospital after Israel ordered evacuation of Palestinians from the complex. “There are still more than 180 patients and 15 doctors and nurses inside Nasser,” he said. “The hospital is still experiencing an acute shortage of food, basic medical supplies, and oxygen. There is no tap water and no electricity, except a backup generator maintaining some lifesaving machines.”

    Eight years ago, in October of 2015, the United States military destroyed Afghanistan’s Kunduz hospital, run by Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). For more than an hour, a C-130 transport plane repeatedly fired incendiary devices at the hospital’s emergency room and intensive care unit, killing 42 people. Thirty-seven additional people were injured. “Our patients burned in their beds,” read the MSF’s in-depth report. “Our medical staff were decapitated or lost limbs. Others were shot from the air while they fled the burning building.”

    The horrific attack outraged war resisters and human rights groups. I remember joining a group of activists in upstate NY who assembled outside a hospital emergency room with a banner proclaiming “To bomb this site would be a war crime.”

    In 2009, on a smaller, yet still horrific scale, I witnessed an Israeli onslaught in Gaza called “Operation Cast Lead.” In the emergency room of the Al Shifa hospital, Dr. Saeed Abuhassan, an orthopedic surgeon, described experiences similar to  Khan’s. This surgeon grew up in Chicago, very close to the neighborhood where I lived. I asked him what he would want me to tell our neighbors back home. He listed a litany of horrors and then he stopped.  “No,” he said. “First, you must tell them that U.S. taxpayer money paid for all of these weapons.”

    Taxpayer money feeds the bloated, swollen Pentagon budget. U.S. Senators, last week, cowed by AIPAC, decided to send Israel an additional $14.1 billion to boost military spending. Only three Senators voted against the bill.

    From Palestine, Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American human rights attorney, wrote on X:: “The scary part is not that Israel is planning the forcible transfer of the Palestinians it hasn’t slaughtered, but that the so-called ‘civilized world’ is allowing it to happen. The ramifications of this coordinated evil will haunt its collaborators for generations to come.”

    At Forkosh Hospital in the 1970s, I had a mirror to see what was happening behind my back, but everyone on earth can see, directly, the horror of U.S. support for a genocidal event happening on our watch.  Gravely distorted versions of what occurred on October 7th, cannot – even if believed – justify the scale of the horrors being reported in Gaza and the West Bank each day.

    The U.S. government continues enthusiastically to bankroll Israel’s systemic and inhumane destruction of Gaza. U.S. advisors make feeble attempts to suggest Israel should pause or at least try to be more precise in their attacks. In its quest for hegemonic superiority, the United States tears into ever tinier shreds whatever remains of a commitment to human rights, equality and human dignity.

    What kept Forkosh Hospital secure, decades ago, was a social contract that presumed safety for a small hospital serving the local population.

    If we can’t find the morality to stop supplying weapons for ongoing Israeli onslaughts against Gaza and its places of healing, we may find we have created a world in which no-one can count on upholding basic human rights. We may be creating intergenerational wounds of hatred and sorrow from which there will never, ever be any safe place to heal.

     Smoke rising after an Israeli air strike on Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, on January 3, 2024
    Photo Credit:  Shutterstock

     Palestinian Red Crescent first aid waiting to receive bodies from Al-Najjar Hospital in the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, on January 10, 2024
    Photo Credit: Shutterstock

    • A version of this article first appeared on The Progressive website.

    The post Israel Is Assaulting Hospitals in Gaza with Full U.S. Support first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Wars on Terrorism

    Domestic and international terrorism have caused havoc in several nations. Each nation exhibits a unique approach to combatting terrorism; each nation exhibits a unique outcome from its approach. Examining types, causes, approaches, and outcomes of wars on terrorism in four nations — United States, Israel, China, and Russia — discloses successful strategies, self-destructive strategies, and strategies that deceive the public and terrorize others with impunity. The words “terrorist” and “terrorism” are not always allied; terrorist actions are not always due to terrorists.

    Depending on perspective, the word “terrorism” ─ the unlawful use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government ─ can be falsely labeled and falsely applied. Those who exhaust peaceful protests against oppression and provocation lash out at their oppressor and inflict damage on the civilian population that keeps the oppressor in power. Not understanding the origins of terrorism and the reasons it is committed have unfavorably skewed the responses and led to more terrorism.

    United States

    United States administrations exhibited a strange method for repelling terrorists — let them enter an area, establish themselves, become strong, and commit atrocities, and then attack them — the spider approach. Muhammad Atta and his eighteen partners freely entered the United States, studied how to go up and not come down, and did their dirty deeds.

    After facing several terrorist situations during the 1990s, the September 11, 2001 bombings compelled the United States government to wage a War on Terrorism. The U.S. government used one strategy to respond to terrorism ─ brute force.

    Twenty-three years after the 9/11 attack the U.S. breathes easier, no terrorism on its mainland, and the major terrorist organizations — al Qaeda and ISIS — decimated. From appearances, the U.S. applied an effective counter-terrorism strategy and contained terrorism. Not quite. U.S. strategy expanded terrorism and moved terrorism into parts of Africa. The reduction in terrorism came mainly from the efforts of other nations.

    By blending its battles against terrorism with preservation of American global interests, the U.S. initially expanded terrorism. The battles to overcome terrorism evolved into conflagrations in Afghanistan and Iraq; the former beginning and ending with undefined meaning and the latter having no relation to terrorism.

    U.S. assistance to Pakistan intelligence during the Soviet/Afghan war indirectly supplied weapons to Osama bin Laden, financed his activities, and helped create the al-Qaeda network.

    U.S. manufacture of terrorists continued during Clinton’s administration. Battles between U.S. and Somali forces weakened Somali leadership. From an imposed anarchy in Somalia, al-Shabaab eventually emerged. In 2023, the militant group continues its violent insurgency in Somalia.

    The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan succeeded in moving bin Laden from a grim and arduous perch in a rugged and isolated mountain to a comfortable villa in Pakistan, from where he was eventually captured and killed. Other than that accomplishment, the 20-year incursion into Taliban territory accomplished nothing positive — the Taliban returned to power and, thanks to the U.S. counter-terrorism strategy, other terrorist groups operate within its boundaries. In August 2022, the U.S. government located al-Qaeda leader Aimen al-Zawahiri residing in Kabul and killed him in a drone strike.

    By invading and occupying Iraq, the U.S. extended the battle against terrorism rather than confining it. Except for Ansar al-Islam, a northern radical Islamic group close to the Iran border, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq contained no Al-Qaeda affiliated elements. After the U.S. invasion destroyed the Iraqi armed forces and policing functions, Al Qaeda members moved into Iraq from Pakistan and formed ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq’ (AQI ).

    AQI was responsible for its downfall. Sunni tribes revolted at al-Qaeda’s indiscriminate violence and the “Iraqi surge,” with assistance from U.S. troops, inflicted heavy losses on the al-Qaeda organization. Stability returned to Iraq until the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, emerged from the remnants of AQI, and took advantage of growing resistance to U.S. troops in Iraq and discontent with Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. Baghdadi formed a force that captured about a third of Syria and 40 percent of Iraq, including the cities of Raqqa and Mosul.

    Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

    Contributed by Sémhur, Flappiefh – Own work from Near East topographic map-blank.svg by Sémhur ; data from the New York Times.

    President Barack Obama and his administration share blame for the creation of ISIS, allowing its recruitment throughout the world, not preventing recruits from entering Syria, its rapid capture of territory, and expansion into a caliphate. Former President Donald Trump exaggerated the claim that his administration was the primary force in defeating ISIS. U.S. airpower, which killed too many civilians and was not always welcome, helped; other groups liberated the ISIS dominated areas.

    ·         Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), mainly composed of Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG) militia, backed by U.S. airpower, liberated Raqqa.

    ·         Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russian airpower, recaptured Aleppo.

    ·         Iraqi soldiers, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, Sunni Arab tribesmen, and Shia militiamen, assisted by US-led coalition warplanes, drove ISIS from Mosul.

    Amnesty international lists 1,600+ civilians dead from the war in Raqqa and between 9,000 to 11,000 civilians killed in the battle for Mosul, mostly from U.S. air attacks. Foreign Policy estimates that “8,000 buildings were destroyed or heavily damaged in Mosul’s Old City. Include other parts of the city where the battle raged and the estimates of buildings damaged or destroyed are as high as 138,000.”

    The irony of Trump’s Trumpism is his assassination of a person responsible for ISIS’ defeat, Iranian Major General Qassim Soleimani. The U.S. contributed to ISIS’ initial successes by training an inept Iraqi army that fled Mosul and left the city to a small contingent of ISIS forces that equipped itself with captured weapons. Showing no will and expertise to fight, Iraq’s debilitated military permitted ISIS to rapidly expand and conquer Tikrit and other cities. The disasters energized Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Force (PMF). With cooperation from Iran and leadership from Major General Qassim Soleimani, the PMF recaptured Tikrit and Ramadi, pushed ISIS out of Fallujah, and eventually played a role in ISIS’ defeat at Mosul. Instead of receiving praise for his efforts, Major General Qassim Soleimani, who was never responsible for any terrorist activity, was eliminated as an arch-terrorist. Who committed the terrorism in his death? Israel’s PM, Benjamin Netanyahu dropped out of the joint assassination plan at the last minute and left President Chump holding the bag.

    NATO, with the U.S. providing air force and ballistic missile support, played the decisive role in overthrowing Moammar Gadhafi, a leader who constrained Radical Islam and its terrorist activities. Militants from Libya flowed east, through friendly Turkey into Syria and Iraq, and added to ISIS ranks. Weapons captured from Gadhafi’s stockpiles flowed west to equip al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). AQIM led the 2013 attack on a gas facility in southern Algeria; individuals trained in Libya attacked tourists at beaches and museums in Tunisia; and Boko Haram spread havoc throughout northern Nigeria.

    Another defect in U.S. strategy ─ Osama bin Laden left no doubt that America’s unqualified support of Israel provided terrorists with a reason to augment its ranks.

    During the 1990s, two documents,”Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places” and the “Declaration of the World Islamic Front,” retrieved from Osama bin Laden, jihad, and the sources of international terrorism, J. M. B. Porter, Indiana International & Comparative Law Review, provide additional information on bin-Laden’s attachment of his terrorist responses to Zionist activities.

    [T]he people of Islam have suffered from aggression, iniquity, and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist/Crusader alliance … Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon, are still fresh in our memory.

    So now they come to annihilate . . . this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors. … if the Americans’ aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel’s survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula

    From Pakistan, through Egypt to North Africa and Nigeria, and South to Somalia and Kenya, al-Qaeda, Daish, and a multitude of terrorist organizations perform daily bombings, killings, and insurrections, a result of policies of all U.S. administrations since the “gipper” assumed the presidential office.

    Israel

    Israelis have been victims of many terrorist attacks; few of these attacks have been performed by terrorists. The great magnitude has been done by Palestinians who had exhausted the means to overcome their oppression. To express their oppression and popularize their cause, they have lashed out at their oppressor and inflicted damage on the civilian population that keeps the oppressor in power. The terrorist actions are mostly revenge attacks due to provocations, succeeding Israeli military and civilian terror attacks on innocent Palestinian civilians.

    Depicting Israel as a nation that has suffered excessive terrorism is a mischaracterization. More correct is that by magnitudes more than any nation, not even close, Israel is the major terrorist nation in the world. Look at the record. In almost every country of the world, apartheid Israel has committed terrorist actions.

    Begin with the 1948-49 war against the Palestinians. From Wikipedia:

    According to several historians, between 10 and 70 massacres occurred during the 1948 war. According to Benny Morris the Yishuv (or later Israeli) soldiers killed roughly 800 Arab civilians and prisoners of war in 24 massacres. Aryeh Yizthaki lists 10 major massacres with more than 50 victims each.

    The newly established Israeli government continued its aggression against the Palestinians by terrorizing Palestinian communities, ethnically cleansing 1.1 million Palestinians, and forcing them into displaced persons and refugee camps.

    Israel followed the ethnic cleansing by instituting apartheid and continually terrorizing West Bank and Gazan Palestinians with provocative terror attacks.

     

    Gaza before Oct. 7-Courtesy of ABC News

    Gaza after Oct. 7-Courtesy of Aljazeera

    Going beyond its borders, Israel drove the PLO out of Lebanon and used terror attacks on the Lebanese population.

    Going worldwide, Israel uses its intelligence service, Mossad, to assassinate foreign scientists, military hardware suppliers, Palestinian activists, and those who harmed Israelis.

    Israel displays a dual strategy in the war on terrorism. Building walls to separate Israel from the West Bank and Gaza, restricting travel between Israel and its occupied territories, scrutinizing entry at checkpoints, and cleverly surveilling all Palestinians have prevented terrorism within Israel. Provoking Palestinians into committing terrorist acts and stimulating settlers to make revenge “price tag” attacks against Palestinian communities and the military to wage war against the terrorists is the other side of the coin.

    The violence committed against the Palestinians emits a backlash from worldwide supporters of the Palestinians and causes harm to Jews. The backlash is converted into spurious charges of anti-Semitism and used to justify Israel’s actions.

    Add it up and Israel is an apartheid country, the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism, and planner of the genocide of the Palestinian people, a triple combination that no nation in all history has been able to equal. The Israeli government and its worldwide public relations machine convince the world it is an innocent victim of Hezbollah terrorists, Hamas terrorists, anti-Semites, surviving Nazis, liberal misfits, and disoriented people who cannot get out of the way of bullets and bombs. Western governments pay no heed to the triple play.

    Russian Federation

    A reported 1,312 terrorist attacks caused 1,179 Russian deaths between 2007 and 2021 and gripped the Russian Federation. After peaking in 2009, attacks and deaths in Russia consistently declined to only one attack and two deaths in 2021. Three of the major attacks happened when Chechen insurgents attacked apartment buildings in Moscow in September 1999, killing 200 people and injuring several hundred; on October 23, 2002, when Chechen insurgents attacked the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow and an estimated 129 people were killed during the rescue operation, and during September 1–3, 2004, when Chechen and Ingush insurgents attacked a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, and held more than 1,100 hostages. A careless rescue operation caused more than 300 deaths, including 186 children.

    Terrorism arose from a combination of extremist ethno-nationalist and Islamist militants from North Caucasus’s republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Kabardino-Balkariya. The dual nature of terrorism ─ people seeking more autonomy and extremists seeking more Islam complicated the Kremlin’s strategy to combat terrorism.

    In retaliation for Chechnya terrorist attacks in Moscow, Russian troops invaded the Republic of Chechnya, a name whose roll from the lips has an endearing quality. Massive and indiscriminate bombings of cities and villages that caused high civilian casualties, herding of people into camps, extra-judicial killings, torture, and disappearances occurred from both sides and made it difficult to ascertain, who were the ‘good guys’ and who were the ‘bad guys.’ Which side was more guilty of terrorism?

    Vladimir Putin registered his name, ruthlessness, pragmatism, and authority by resolving the Chechnya terror crisis. He followed Abraham Lincoln’s pattern of using force and making friends with the enemy. Putin convinced Akhmad Kadyrov, Chief Mufti of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria in the 1990s, to switch sides. Kadyrov later became the President of the Chechen Republic. Grozny has been rebuilt and Chechnya exists on multi-billion-dollar subsidies from Moscow.

    Grozny

    Recognizing that Islamist insurgents in the North Caucasus were loosely allied with al-Qaeda’s network and many traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State, the Russian president realized that joining Syria in its civil war against ISIS was a means of preventing the Islamic extremists from extending their reach. Decimating the central authorities of the terrorist campaigns would subdue the morale and incentives of the al-Qaeda “look-alikes” on Russian soil. Without having to use Russian ground troops, and air force pilots not facing challenges in the sky, support of the be-sieged al-Assad regime was a “win-win proposition for Moscow. Putin’s strategy to combat terrorism has been successful — ISIS and al-Qaeda are mostly gone from the Arab lands of the Middle East (still in Syria, Afghanistan, and Africa) and the Russian Federation has had no terrorist attacks in the last two years.

    China

    A shadowy and shifting group of Uyghur separatists is responsible for terrorism committed against Chinese authorities and citizens. Incomplete statistics from The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China show that “from 1990 to the end of 2016, separatist, terrorist, and extremist forces launched thousands of attacks in Xinjiang, killing large numbers of innocent people and hundreds of police officers, and causing immeasurable damage to property.” From 1990 to 2001 the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, which proposes the establishment of a fundamentalist Muslim state, “was responsible for over 200 acts of terrorism, resulting in at least 162 deaths and 440 injuries.”

    Two of the reported and more serious terrorist attacks.

    On May 22, 2014, five terrorists drove two SUVs through the fence of the morning fair of North Park Road of Saybagh District, Urumqi, into the crowd and detonated a bomb that claimed the lives of 39 and left 94 injured.

    On 1 March 2014, a group of 8 knife-wielding terrorists attacked passengers in the Kunming Railway Station in Kunming, Yunnan, China, killing 31 people, and wounding 143 others. The attackers pulled out long-bladed knives and stabbed and slashed passengers at random.

    A more complete description of the terrorist attacks is available in an article by The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China.

    As the terrorist attacks rose, Beijing had one strategy ─ ruthlessly seek out the perpetrators. “In the period 2013–2017 police arrested 330,918 in the province, 7.3 percent of total arrests in China. This compares to 81,443 arrests in the previous five years. In March 2019, Chinese officials said that they had arrested more than 13,000 militants in Xinjiang since 2014.”

    Realizing their strategy had developed into a “tit-for-tat” operation, where each blow against the terrorist apparatus was countered by a blow against Chinese, the Chinese government changed its strategy. In 2014, China launched the Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism in Xinjiang and combined the use of force with initiatives that integrated the Uyghur populations into Chinese society and improved their standard of living. The new strategy has been successful — no reported terror attacks in recent years, the GDP of a stagnant Xinjiang province increased from 963 billion yuan in 2016 to 1,774  billion yuan in 2022, and the unemployment rate decreased from 2.48 percent to 2.04 percent during the same interval.

    While Western media accuses China of destroying mosques, the Xinjiang Islamic Association states, “There are some 24,400 mosques in Xinjiang. Many in the region were built in the 1980s and 1990s or earlier, but some of these mud-and-brick structures (ED: the demolished Kargilik’s Grand Mosque was a mud-and-brick structure) or small buildings were not well maintained or repaired. They became unsafe for religious activities and posed a serious threat in the event of an earthquake. The mosques were also inadequately designed, making worship difficult.”

    Kashgar’s Id Kah Mosque

    Before Renovation

    After Renovation

    Conclusion

    Terrorism’s principal strategy is to inflict pain, pain, and more pain on a civilian population until the civilian population’s government agrees to their demands. Governments may care but always place national interests above that of the local population. The struggle to overcome terrorism has had two principal strategies

    (1)    Give ‘em nothing and fight them until the death, and

    (2)    Use force to keep terrorism contained and offer benefits that will satisfy some grievances and lower the temperature until the heat becomes normal.

    The United States pursued the ‘fight until death’ strategy. After excessive deaths from the ongoing terrorism and civilians caught in the battles, the U.S. appears to have won the war; terrorism in the Middle East has declined to an acceptable level.

    Israel has pursued a strategy of “we can outdo all terrorist attacks by being more terrorist than the terrorists.” Pushing the oppressed Palestinians into terrorist attacks enables Israel to respond tenfold to the attack on its populace. Terrorizing opposition in other nations is neatly performed by false charges of anti-Semitism, cyber attacks, and, when necessary, Mossad hitmen.

    Russia went from ‘fight until death’ to offering the leaders of domestic terrorism a good bribe and letting them take care of it. Total force was used against international terrorism. Both strategies have been successful.

    China departed from brute force to a more conciliatory strategy that recognized the wants of the Uyghurs and devised plans to satisfy the population. Most successful of all of the strategies.

    Each nation that confronts terrorism may have unique characteristics that shape the terrorism and the response to it. This investigation shows that Chinese President Xi-Jinping eventually realized the exact nature of the terrorism his country was experiencing and accepted a plan that quickly solved the problem. Russian President Vladimir Putin also was pragmatic and changed his stance as events unfolded. Soon afterward, Russia had no more terrorism.

    For Israel, terrorism is part of the daily diet. Israel commits terrorism, Israel invites terrorism, Israel commits terrorism, Invites terrorism, on and on until there will be none.

    The United States invited terrorism by helping Pakistan’s intelligence fortify Osama bin Laden, not listening to the al-Qaeda leader’s grievances, and invading Iraq. In 1998, bin Laden demanded the expulsion of all American soldiers from the Arabian Peninsula and voiced objections to a U.S. foreign policy that armed Israel. Did U.S. troops need a base in Saudi Arabia? Why has the U.S. had close ties with the apartheid country, which is the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism, and planner of the genocide of the Palestinian people? Assuredly, the date 9/11 would just be another day on the calendar if U.S. administrations understood the origins of terrorism and the reasons it is committed.

    The post Wars on Terrorism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 67 Countries Banned This Toxic Product but the EPA Says: “Go for it!”

    Sixty-seven (67) countries have banned paraquat, a toxic chemical used to control weeds that was discovered in the 1950s subsequently widely used throughout the world in agriculture. Despite a deadly toxic reputation, it’s still used throughout America. Moreover, it’s a cheap effective product used as a common pesticide by third-world countries that do not proactively regulate chemical products.

    As of 2024, the US EPA, once again, reapproved paraquat in the face of stiff public opposition and criticism via a slew of negative scientific studies. With more than 60 major developed countries banning the product, why is the United States still onboard?

    Syngenta is the manufacturer of paraquat. Syngenta was purchased by a state-owned Chinese company named ChemChina in 2017 for $43 billion. Revenues run $20B, and it’s very profitable. This is a prime example of Chinese Communist Party capitalism hard at work.

    Astonishingly, and inexplicably, China prohibits paraquat use in its own backyard, eight (8) years ago the state government banned its use, but China shamelessly allows production of the chemical for export to third-world countries and the United States.

    China banned paraquat, 2016.

    China buys Syngenta in 2017 to produce and sell paraquat to the world outside of China.

    The UK banned paraquat, 2007.

    The EU banned paraquat, 2007.

    Sixty-seven (67) countries have banned paraquat.

    The US EPA reapproves paraquat, 2023-24.

    The US EPA reapproval of the paraquat product Gramoxone is subject to further review. There’s plenty to review, for example:

    Syngenta deliberately hid important scientific knowledge about possible serious health effects caused by paraquat, a product and herbicide banned in Europe because it is so toxic that a single sip can kill.” (“EU Lobby Profile: Syngenta, A Toxic ‘World Champion“, Corporate Europe Observatory, October 20, 2022.)

    According to an article posted in the National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, as of December 2019, entitled: “Paraquat: The Poison Potion”:

    Paraquat, when ingested, is extremely toxic. It causes a spectrum of complications, including acute respiratory distress syndrome, renal failure, hepatotoxicity, and pulmonary fibrosis. The clinical course in paraquat poisoning is often protracted and there is no known antidote for this toxin.

    Interestingly, this article is dedicated to various clinical treatment strategies that can be attempted when exposed to the highly toxic chemical. In short, whatever you do, don’t ingest it, don’t inhale it, stay away from it.

    A significant study was completed well in advance of the recent EPA reapproval “Go for it!” which discusses much safer alternatives than paraquat poisoning, to wit:

    A new study, led by Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK) and supported by the Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention, has shown that a highly hazardous pesticide can be banned without affecting agricultural productivity… Paraquat is highly toxic and fatal to humans when ingested. There is no effective treatment for paraquat poisoning. Banning paraquat is the most effective way to prevent exposure and deaths. More than sixty-seven countries have already banned its use; however, it is still widely used in many low and middle income countries. (“Deadly Pesticide Can be Replaced by Safer Alternatives, New Study Shows”, Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention, The University of Edinburgh, January 12, 2023.)

    We already know that paraquat is a highly dangerous pesticide, responsible for many tens of thousands of deaths each year due to intentional and unintentional poisoning. There is no antidote for paraquat poisoning. Banning paraquat is the most effective way to prevent exposure and deaths… Pesticide bans may raise concerns from farmers, who worry that their crops will be adversely affected. This study clearly shows that there are many safer alternatives to paraquat that don’t affect agricultural productivity.” (Ibid.)

    Regardless, America is gung-ho toxic paraquat weed killer in the face of incredible evidence against its use:

    There is an incredibly overwhelming body of evidence on this that has been accepted by scientists across the globe, and the EPA’s decision really placed it at odds with the best available science, according to Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a senior attorney with Earthjustice, the suit’s lead plaintiff against the EPA. (“EPA Again OKs Use of Toxic Herbicide Linked to Parkinson’s Disease”, The Guardian, February 11, 2024.)

    The Earthjustice suit against the EPA represents Petitioners: California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, Farmworker Association of Florida, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, Farmworker Justice, Alianza Nacional De Campesinas, Pesticide Action Network North America, Center for Biological Diversity, and Toxic Free North Carolina.

    The science is clear that this highly lethal pesticide threatens all living things, including our country’s wildlife,” according to Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity: The EPA should follow the lead of nearly every other major agricultural country in the world and ban this dangerous stuff for good. (“Controversial Herbicide Tied to Parkinson’s Gets Green Light from EPA for Continued Use”, The San Francisco Chronicle, January 31, 2024.)

    America seemingly has a special bond and unique love affair with paraquat. Usage in America tripled over the past decade. Accordingly, 8,000,000 pounds of it is sprayed on grapes, almonds, soya beans, cotton, corn, wheat, garlic, strawberries, rice, potatoes, artichokes, and pears especially prevalent in California, Iowa, and the Mississippi River Valley. (US Geological Survey source)

    Chronic exposure, even at low doses, can cause Parkinson’s disease… banned in the European Union (EU) since 2007, as well as Switzerland since 1998, on the grounds that it is too dangerous for European farmers even when wearing protective equipment. (“Banned in Europe: How the EU Exports Pesticides Too Dangerous for Use in Europe“, Public Eye, September 10, 2020.)

    Even though the EPA publicly acknowledges high risks of toxicity of paraquat, it nevertheless has determined that human risks are far outweighed by the beneficial use of paraquat to kill weeds. Ergo, in a mindboggling exercise of reverse-humanism, weed killers take priority over human life.

    Searching for answers as to how and why toxic chemicals remain in America (and there are thousands) the answer is agrochemical companies use undue influence on federal regulators.

    Interviews with more than two dozen experts on pesticide regulation — including 14 who worked at the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, or OPP — described a federal environmental agency that is often unable to stand up to the intense pressures from powerful agrochemical companies, which spend tens of millions of dollars on lobbying each year and employ many former EPA scientists once they leave the agency. (“The Department of Yes, How Pesticide Companies Corrupted the EPA and Poisoned America”, The Intercept, June 30, 2021.)

    The enormous corporate influence has weakened and, in some cases, shut down the meaningful regulation of pesticides in the U.S. and left the country’s residents exposed to levels of dangerous chemicals not tolerated in many other nations.” (Ibid.)

    Scientists who identify toxic hazards face enormous pressure from within the Agency to overlook the risks they find.  One toxicologist who worked for the Agency’s pesticide department told The Intercept: “It is an unwritten rule that to get promotions, all pesticides need to pass.”

    Additional pressure to approve questionable toxic chemicals comes from weak-kneed, easily bought, ignorant, stupid, greedy members of Congress who push what’s referred to as “Yes Packages,” forcing the Agency to approve quickly even with incomplete information about product safety.

    America’s elected officials receipt of contributions from Syngenta Corp PAC for federal candidates for 2023-24: $26,000 to Democrats, $136,500 to Republicans. (Syngenta Corp PAC Contributions to Federal Candidates, opensecrets.org)  This analysis does not include “dark money,” when both the donor and lagniappe are not identified.

    According to Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn):

    The pesticide industry has brazenly exploited loopholes in federal law for years and strong safeguards are needed to protect the public and our environment from harmful and sometimes lethal pesticide exposure. (The Intercept)

    Four years ago, in June of 2021 in response to The Intercept article, the EPA responded. EPA spokesperson Kenneth Labbe wrote in an email:

    The agency is committed to ensuring our pesticide registration decisions are free from interference and that the agency’s scientific integrity policy, which is a bedrock principle for the Biden-Harris Administration, is upheld. EPA is home to world-class scientists. As it has in the past, the agency will continue to ensure their voices and the role of science will guide its decisions going forward.

    Four years later and the referenced “science guidance used by the EPA” is still highly questionable and under legal attack by numerous sources but appears to be stuck swirling in the toilet, going nowhere fast.

    The post 67 Countries Banned This Toxic Product but the EPA Says: “Go for it!” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 67 Countries Banned This Toxic Product but the EPA Says: “Go for it!”

    Sixty-seven (67) countries have banned paraquat, a toxic chemical used to control weeds that was discovered in the 1950s subsequently widely used throughout the world in agriculture. Despite a deadly toxic reputation, it’s still used throughout America. Moreover, it’s a cheap effective product used as a common pesticide by third-world countries that do not proactively regulate chemical products.

    As of 2024, the US EPA, once again, reapproved paraquat in the face of stiff public opposition and criticism via a slew of negative scientific studies. With more than 60 major developed countries banning the product, why is the United States still onboard?

    Syngenta is the manufacturer of paraquat. Syngenta was purchased by a state-owned Chinese company named ChemChina in 2017 for $43 billion. Revenues run $20B, and it’s very profitable. This is a prime example of Chinese Communist Party capitalism hard at work.

    Astonishingly, and inexplicably, China prohibits paraquat use in its own backyard, eight (8) years ago the state government banned its use, but China shamelessly allows production of the chemical for export to third-world countries and the United States.

    China banned paraquat, 2016.

    China buys Syngenta in 2017 to produce and sell paraquat to the world outside of China.

    The UK banned paraquat, 2007.

    The EU banned paraquat, 2007.

    Sixty-seven (67) countries have banned paraquat.

    The US EPA reapproves paraquat, 2023-24.

    The US EPA reapproval of the paraquat product Gramoxone is subject to further review. There’s plenty to review, for example:

    Syngenta deliberately hid important scientific knowledge about possible serious health effects caused by paraquat, a product and herbicide banned in Europe because it is so toxic that a single sip can kill.” (“EU Lobby Profile: Syngenta, A Toxic ‘World Champion“, Corporate Europe Observatory, October 20, 2022.)

    According to an article posted in the National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, as of December 2019, entitled: “Paraquat: The Poison Potion”:

    Paraquat, when ingested, is extremely toxic. It causes a spectrum of complications, including acute respiratory distress syndrome, renal failure, hepatotoxicity, and pulmonary fibrosis. The clinical course in paraquat poisoning is often protracted and there is no known antidote for this toxin.

    Interestingly, this article is dedicated to various clinical treatment strategies that can be attempted when exposed to the highly toxic chemical. In short, whatever you do, don’t ingest it, don’t inhale it, stay away from it.

    A significant study was completed well in advance of the recent EPA reapproval “Go for it!” which discusses much safer alternatives than paraquat poisoning, to wit:

    A new study, led by Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK) and supported by the Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention, has shown that a highly hazardous pesticide can be banned without affecting agricultural productivity… Paraquat is highly toxic and fatal to humans when ingested. There is no effective treatment for paraquat poisoning. Banning paraquat is the most effective way to prevent exposure and deaths. More than sixty-seven countries have already banned its use; however, it is still widely used in many low and middle income countries. (“Deadly Pesticide Can be Replaced by Safer Alternatives, New Study Shows”, Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention, The University of Edinburgh, January 12, 2023.)

    We already know that paraquat is a highly dangerous pesticide, responsible for many tens of thousands of deaths each year due to intentional and unintentional poisoning. There is no antidote for paraquat poisoning. Banning paraquat is the most effective way to prevent exposure and deaths… Pesticide bans may raise concerns from farmers, who worry that their crops will be adversely affected. This study clearly shows that there are many safer alternatives to paraquat that don’t affect agricultural productivity.” (Ibid.)

    Regardless, America is gung-ho toxic paraquat weed killer in the face of incredible evidence against its use:

    There is an incredibly overwhelming body of evidence on this that has been accepted by scientists across the globe, and the EPA’s decision really placed it at odds with the best available science, according to Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a senior attorney with Earthjustice, the suit’s lead plaintiff against the EPA. (“EPA Again OKs Use of Toxic Herbicide Linked to Parkinson’s Disease”, The Guardian, February 11, 2024.)

    The Earthjustice suit against the EPA represents Petitioners: California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, Farmworker Association of Florida, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, Farmworker Justice, Alianza Nacional De Campesinas, Pesticide Action Network North America, Center for Biological Diversity, and Toxic Free North Carolina.

    The science is clear that this highly lethal pesticide threatens all living things, including our country’s wildlife,” according to Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity: The EPA should follow the lead of nearly every other major agricultural country in the world and ban this dangerous stuff for good. (“Controversial Herbicide Tied to Parkinson’s Gets Green Light from EPA for Continued Use”, The San Francisco Chronicle, January 31, 2024.)

    America seemingly has a special bond and unique love affair with paraquat. Usage in America tripled over the past decade. Accordingly, 8,000,000 pounds of it is sprayed on grapes, almonds, soya beans, cotton, corn, wheat, garlic, strawberries, rice, potatoes, artichokes, and pears especially prevalent in California, Iowa, and the Mississippi River Valley. (US Geological Survey source)

    Chronic exposure, even at low doses, can cause Parkinson’s disease… banned in the European Union (EU) since 2007, as well as Switzerland since 1998, on the grounds that it is too dangerous for European farmers even when wearing protective equipment. (“Banned in Europe: How the EU Exports Pesticides Too Dangerous for Use in Europe“, Public Eye, September 10, 2020.)

    Even though the EPA publicly acknowledges high risks of toxicity of paraquat, it nevertheless has determined that human risks are far outweighed by the beneficial use of paraquat to kill weeds. Ergo, in a mindboggling exercise of reverse-humanism, weed killers take priority over human life.

    Searching for answers as to how and why toxic chemicals remain in America (and there are thousands) the answer is agrochemical companies use undue influence on federal regulators.

    Interviews with more than two dozen experts on pesticide regulation — including 14 who worked at the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, or OPP — described a federal environmental agency that is often unable to stand up to the intense pressures from powerful agrochemical companies, which spend tens of millions of dollars on lobbying each year and employ many former EPA scientists once they leave the agency. (“The Department of Yes, How Pesticide Companies Corrupted the EPA and Poisoned America”, The Intercept, June 30, 2021.)

    The enormous corporate influence has weakened and, in some cases, shut down the meaningful regulation of pesticides in the U.S. and left the country’s residents exposed to levels of dangerous chemicals not tolerated in many other nations.” (Ibid.)

    Scientists who identify toxic hazards face enormous pressure from within the Agency to overlook the risks they find.  One toxicologist who worked for the Agency’s pesticide department told The Intercept: “It is an unwritten rule that to get promotions, all pesticides need to pass.”

    Additional pressure to approve questionable toxic chemicals comes from weak-kneed, easily bought, ignorant, stupid, greedy members of Congress who push what’s referred to as “Yes Packages,” forcing the Agency to approve quickly even with incomplete information about product safety.

    America’s elected officials receipt of contributions from Syngenta Corp PAC for federal candidates for 2023-24: $26,000 to Democrats, $136,500 to Republicans. (Syngenta Corp PAC Contributions to Federal Candidates, opensecrets.org)  This analysis does not include “dark money,” when both the donor and lagniappe are not identified.

    According to Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn):

    The pesticide industry has brazenly exploited loopholes in federal law for years and strong safeguards are needed to protect the public and our environment from harmful and sometimes lethal pesticide exposure. (The Intercept)

    Four years ago, in June of 2021 in response to The Intercept article, the EPA responded. EPA spokesperson Kenneth Labbe wrote in an email:

    The agency is committed to ensuring our pesticide registration decisions are free from interference and that the agency’s scientific integrity policy, which is a bedrock principle for the Biden-Harris Administration, is upheld. EPA is home to world-class scientists. As it has in the past, the agency will continue to ensure their voices and the role of science will guide its decisions going forward.

    Four years later and the referenced “science guidance used by the EPA” is still highly questionable and under legal attack by numerous sources but appears to be stuck swirling in the toilet, going nowhere fast.

    The post 67 Countries Banned This Toxic Product but the EPA Says: “Go for it!” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US Military Projection in Latin America and the Caribbean Intensifies

    Upon assuming the US presidency, Joe Biden asserted in his first major foreign policy address, “America is back!” For Latin America and the Caribbean, this has meant an “aggressive expansion” of the US military in the region.

    In just the last year, US Marines and special forces landed in Peru in May 2023, brought in by the unelected rightwing government to address internal unrest. In October, the US got the UN Security Council to approve the military occupation of Haiti using proxy troops from Kenya. Also in October, the rightwing government of Ecuador resorted to deploying US troops to deal with their domestic insecurities. This month, Mexico and Peru joined the annual US naval exercises in mock war against China. And that just scratches the surface of US military engagement in the region.

    Militarizing diplomacy

    The Pentagon, along with the National Security Council and even the CIA, have taken on an increasingly pronounced role in diplomatic relations formerly the purview of the State Department. Former CIA agent and current US ambassador to Peru Lisa Kenna, for instance, was implicated in the overthrow of the elected leftist president there a year ago.

    This drift in diplomatic function to the military became more pronounced with the appointment of Laura Richardson as head of the US Southern Command in October 2021. When asked about her interest in the region, she unapologetically admitted that the US seeks hegemony over the region and possession of its rich resources.

    In January 2022, General Richardson signed a bilateral agreement with Honduras. She met with Brazilian and Colombian military brass last May. Previously, she had visited Argentina, Chile, Guyana, and Surinam. From August to September 2022, US and Colombian militaries conducted joint NATO exercises, while Richardson made a five-day visit to meet with the newly elected Colombian president. This week, she is meeting with the president of Ecuador, who declared his country is under a state of “internal armed conflict.”

    Status of US military forces in the region

    Washington is by far the largest source of military aid, supplies, and training in the region. The US has twelve military bases each in Panama and Puerto Rico, nine in Colombia, eight in Peru, three in Honduras, and two in Paraguay, along with military installations in Aruba, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Cuba (Guantanamo), and Peru.

    In total, the US has 76 bases in the region as of 2018, plus numerous “unconfirmed operational bases.” All function as military centers as well as cyberwarfare posts. Among the problems associated with these bases are displacement of resources that otherwise would be used for social programs. These installations are notorious for their lack of transparency and accountability. In addition, they cause ecological damage with little or no provisions for environmental cleanup.

    The US also has, in addition to bases, major military operations in Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay, Guatemala, Bolivia, and Mexico. Colombia is a “global NATO partner” and Brazil is an “extra-NATO preferential ally.” The State Partnership Program of the US National Guard joins eighteen states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia in active partnerships with militaries in 24 regional countries.

    Evolving US military mission

    The post World War II mission of the US military has evolved: first, the fight against communism ending around 1991; then the “drug wars” continuing to the present; followed by the “war on terror” and combatting transnational criminal networks of the early 2000s; and now great power competition.

    Thus, US regional military strategy has pivoted from fighting communism, terrorism, and drugs to containing China and, to a lesser extent, Russia and even Iran. China is now the leading trading partner with South America and the second largest with the region as a whole, after the US. Some 21 or 31 regional countries have joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The Southern Command’s budget, which had declined in the 2010s, is now ballooning as the US gears up to confront China.

    The Latin American “theater” is pitched by the Southern Command as a “nearby test bed” and “prime location for experimenting with and testing new technologies” to be used particularly against China. General Richardson warns that China is “a communist country that’s spreading its tentacles across the globe so far away from its homeland.”

    The Southern Command has especially targeted Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua because of their friendly relations with China and Russia. Key to the command’s strategy is disrupting regional unity in the Americas.

    Development of US military tactics

    In the bad old days of 1898-1934, Washington simply and nakedly sent its troops to take over the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama. In the post-World War II years, the US still overthrew governments not to its liking the old fashioned way in Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989. But for the most part, the US has developed more sophisticated means of asserting its control.

    Proxy armies using mercenaries were deployed against Cuba in 1961 in the Bay of Pigs invasion and in Nicaragua in the 1981-1990 contra war– both unsuccessful.

    Increasingly in the last 75 years or so, covert operations have been employed. The CIA was created in 1947. By 1954, the agency helped engineer the overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz in what has become known as the first of many CIA coups in the Americas.

    From 1975 to 1980, the US-coordinated Operation Condor installed military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the US sponsored “dirty wars” in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Then in 1991 and again in 2004, Washington backed coups in Haiti, followed by coups in Honduras in 2009 and Boliva in 2019.

    The US also fomented numerous unsuccessful coup attempts against Venezuela, most notably in 2002, but continuing to the present. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro revealed that four assassination plots were made against him and other high-ranking officials in 2023; the CIA and the DEA were accused. The US has posted a $15M bounty on Maduro’s head. Nicaragua, too, has been targeted, including a major coup attempt in 2018. Cuba, as well, has noted a recent uptick of US terror attacks.

    Expanding scope of military missions

    Combatting forest fires and other climate-driven disasters have recently been incorporated into the expanding US military scope. The militarists are not so much concerned about the environment as they are about perturbances that can upset the existing political order.

    In October 2022, Colombia invited US and NATO military forces into the Amazon on the pretext that they could be repurposed to protect the environment. These new ecological tasks are best understood not as non-military functions but as the militarization of environmentalism. These environmentally “woke” missions operate under such cover as the NATO Science for Peace and Security Program and even the UN Environmental Program, which cooperates with NATO.

    So-called “humanitarian missions” have also been incorporated into the expanding military scope. Former head of the Southern Command, Admiral Craig S. Faller, described such missions as an important component in strengthening military ties with “partners” in the region. He boasted of 25 countries participating in the US military’s regional “warfighting-focused exercises” in 2021. By the next year, his successor General Richardson referenced 28 regional “like-minded democracies.”

    Perhaps the prime non-traditional mission for the US military in the region is “counter-narcotics.” A US military Security Force Assistance Brigade was sent to Panama and Colombia last May to curb drug smuggling as well as migration. The US troops work with other US agencies already in the region, including the Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security.

    Hybrid warfare

    In addition to the explicitly military exercises, described above, the US has increasingly employed “hybrid warfare” to try to maintain its dominance in an emerging multipolar geopolitical context. Unilateral coercive economic measures are now imposed on over a quarter of humanity. Also known as sanctions, these tactics can be just as deadly as bombs.

    Sanctions on Venezuela – started by Obama, intensified by Trump, and seamlessly continued by Biden – have taken their toll: over 100,00 deaths, 22% of children under five stunted, and over 300,000 chronic disease patients without access to treatment. Despite the UN nearly unanimously condemning the US blockade of Cuba for its devastating effects on civilians and as a violation of the UN Charter, ever-tightening economic warfare has left the island in crisis. Washington is also escalating the hybrid war against Nicaragua.

    Return to gunboat diplomacy

    With the new year and with Washington’s blessings, a British warship cruised into waters contested between Venezuela and Britain’s former colony, Guyana. The disputed Essequibo territory between Venezuela and Guyana became an international flashpoint in December.

    The US Southern Command announced joint air operations with Guyana. US boots are already reportedly on the ground in Guyana. What is in essence an oil company landgrab by ExxonMobil is disrupting regional unity and is a Trojan horse for US military interference.

    Waters at the southern end of the continent are also troubled with US-NATO nuclear submarine exercises around the Malvinas and the Southern Ocean. The US Army is working on the Master Plan for the Navigability of the Paraguay River.

    With the new presidency of devotedly pro-Yankee Javier Milei in Argentina a month ago, the US is again pushing to install new military bases in the strategic triple border region of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. The Wall Street Journal reports: “Milei has maintained strong support since taking office…as Argentines so far embrace austerity measures.” [emphasis added] The WSJ is referring to the financially secure elites who are not among the 40% below the poverty line in Argentina. The trade unions mounted a general strike on January 24.

    In conclusion, the enduring extra-territorial protection of Yankee military power has always been for the purpose of controlling its southern neighbors, but has become more sophisticated and pervasive. In this two-hundred-first year of the Monroe Doctrine, Simón Bolívar’s words are ever more prescient: “The United States appears to be destined by providence to plague America with misery, in the name of freedom.”

    The post US Military Projection in Latin America and the Caribbean Intensifies first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Why the US Is Reimposing Sanctions on Venezuela

    Even the US business magazine Forbes expressed surprise at the reimposition of US sanctions on Venezuela’s gold sales and its threat to do the same with oil. The oil sanctions especially, if reinstated, would precipitate higher gas prices and further debilitate the Venezuelan economy, forcing more people to leave the country out of economic necessity.

    The Venezuelan government, for its part, has not been contrite. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez protested “the wrong step of intensifying economic aggression against Venezuela.” She warned that if Washington takes the threatened measures, Venezuela will cancel repatriation flights returning Venezuelan immigrants back from the US.

    Is Biden shooting himself in the foot in an election year with major vulnerabilities from inflation and unpopular immigration? The New Times describes these weaknesses as a “major crisis” for the incumbent US president. Adding to the Democrats’ woes, many Venezuelans in the US – driven here by sanctions –support Republicans.

    Barbados agreement temporarily eases sanctions

    The State Department accused the Venezuelan government of actions that are “inconsistent” with Barbados agreement, negotiated last October. This accord arranged a prisoner exchange with the US and the issuance of licenses allowing Venezuela to sell some of its own oil and gold. The agreement promised temporary and partial sanctions relief for Venezuela, although major coercive economic provisions were still left in place.

    Even with limited sanctions relief, Venezuela anticipated a 27% increase in revenues for its state-run oil company. Experts predicted a “moderate economic expansion” after having experienced the greatest economic contraction in peacetime of any country in the modern era. Venezuela was on the road to recovery.

    Then on January 30, the US rescinded the license for gold sales and threatened to allow the oil license to expire on April 18, which could cost $1.6B in lost revenue. The ostensible reason for the flip in US policy was the failure of the Venezuelan supreme court to overturn previous prohibitions on Maria Corina Machado and some other opposition politicians from running for public office.

    The Barbados agreement was predicated on “electoral guarantees.” But there was no mention of specific individuals who had been legally barred from running for office due to past offenses. In fact, these cases were well known. Venezuelan officials had repeatedly insisted that those disqualified would continue to be ineligible. According to Héctor Rodríguez, a member of the Venezuelan government’s delegation to Barbados, forgiveness for crimes was never on the negotiating agenda.

    The case of opposition politician Maria Corina Machado

    Machado’s treatment by the Venezuelan government has arguably erred more on the side of leniency than severity. In most other countries, a person with her rap sheet would be behind bars. In the US, for example, 467 individuals involved in the 2021 Capitol riot have been sentenced to incarceration for offenses far less egregious than Machado’s.

    Back in 2002, Machado signed the Carmona Decree, establishing a coup government. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had been deposed in a military coup backed by the US. The constitution was suspended, the legislature dismissed, and the supreme court shuttered.

    Fortunately for democracy in Venezuela, the coup lasted less than three days. The people spontaneously took to the streets and restored their elected government. Machado, who now incredulously claims she signed the coup government’s founding decree mistakenly, was afforded amnesty.

    Machado was subsequently banned from running from public office after she served as the diplomatic representative for Panama in order to testify against her own country. She was also implicated in tax evasion and fraud along with coup attempts. In addition, the hard-rightist had called for a military intervention by the US and for harsh economic coercive measures.

    Machado had adamantly refused to contest her electoral ineligibility before the Venezuelan supreme court. But when Washington instructed her to go before the tribunal, she obediently complied. That Machado’s appeal would be denied was “obvious” even to Luis Vicente León, president of the pro-opposition Venezuelan polling company Datanalisis. He explained: “If we are honest, the US government knew full well this was going to happen.”

    The New York Times described the supreme court’s decision to uphold her ban as “a crippling blow to prospects for credible elections…in exchange for the lifting of crippling US economic sanctions.” In other words, the Venezuelans did not bow to blackmail and allow a criminal to run for public office.

    Venezuelan opposition

    Under-reported is how Machado became the unofficially designated opposition candidate according to the corporate press. Normally in Venezuela opposition presidential primaries are run by the national election authorities, as they are in the US. Machado, however, engineered the primary election to be run privately.

    The primaries were riddled with irregularities, and other opposition leaders are livid with Machado. Not only did her political alliance (Plataforma Unitaria) omit some opposition parties from the primaries, but voting records were destroyed after the election. This prevented any accounting when some members of her own coalition claimed fraud. Further, the administration of the opposition primary involved Súmate. Machado was the founder and first president of this private non-governmental organization, a recipient of NED funds.

    The opposition has lost credibility with even conservative political commentators in the US such as Ariel Cohen, associated with the Atlantic Council and the Heritage Foundation. He describes the US seizure of the Venezuelan-owned oil subsidiary Citgo as part of its “asphyxiation tactics.” Handed over to the opposition, they ran Citgo to the ground and used their country’s assets for personal gain.

    Sanctions “don’t work”

    Washington has a problem. Geoff Ramsey with the Atlantic Council revealingly laments: “How do you threaten a regime that’s endured years of crippling sanctions, multiple coup attempts and a failed mercenary invasion?” The unfortunate Yankee solution is more of what Forbes calls “Washington DC’s heavy-handed response” knowingly causing “enormous” human suffering.

    As a recent US Congressional Research Service report admitted, the US sanctions “failed” in their implicit goal of regime change but have exacerbated an economic crisis that “has prompted 7.7 million Venezuelans to flee.” The Hill ran an opinion piece stating that “sanctions are still hurting everyday Venezuelans – and fueling migration.”

    Some Congressional Democrats have called for ending US sanctions. Domestic corporations, such as Chevron, have been clamoring to reopen the Venezuelan market. The UN has roundly condemned sanctions, which they call “unilateral coercive economic measures.” Mexico insists that Biden address the root causes of migration. Other governments in Latin America and beyond are pressuring the US to lift sanctions. Meanwhile, experts in international human rights law censure Washington for illegal collective punishment.

    Arguably, the US economy would benefit more by promoting commerce with some 40 sanctioned countries than from restricting trade. And the surest remedy for the immigration crisis on the country’s southern border is to end the sanctions, which are producing conditions that have compelled so many to leave their homes. Even US mainstream media has nearly universally concluded that sanctions “don’t work.”

    The underlying purpose of sanctions on Venezuela

    If sanctions “don’t work,” if they are economically counterproductive, and if they cause so much suffering and ill will, why impose them? The regrettable answer is that sanctions do “work” for the purposes of the US empire.

    In 2015 President Obama declared a “national emergency.” Venezuela, he claimed, posed an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the national security of the US. That was not fake news. The imperial hegemon recognizes the “threat of a good example” posed by a country such as Venezuela. As Ricardo Vaz of Venezuelanalysis observed, Venezuela is “a beacon of hope for the Global South, and Latin America in particular, an affront to US hegemony in its own ‘backyard.’”

    Washington’s self-proclaimed “rules-based order” is threatened, especially with the emergence of China as a major world economic power. In the imperial worldview, it is better to have failed states like Libya and Afghanistan than the anathema of a sovereign and socialist Venezuela.

    In short, sanctions are a tool to prevent states striving for socialism from succeeding. The US-imposed misery on Venezuela is used by Washington as a cautionary warning of the consequences for a sovereign socialist project in defiance of Yankee domination.

    The post Why the US Is Reimposing Sanctions on Venezuela first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism Collide in Ukraine (Part 4)

    The relentless campaign promoting the inevitability of a direct war with Russia is proceeding without challenge. That does not mean that war could erupt at any moment, or it could never happen. First, war is not based on a timetable. Second, war has no deterministic quality of any sort—it can be avoided. Third, but most important, war is contingent upon deliberation and subsequent decision—without decision, there is no war. For the record, neither the United States nor Russia has ever publically declared that they intend to go to war at some point in the future. So far, we only hear dire threats flying around.

    When American think tanks, opinion-makers, and the omnipresent “experts” talk about going to war with Russia, they often disclose the inner workings of the system. Of importance are the ideological processes used to implement agendas and related tactics. World domination themes (our leadership, our national interests, our allies, free world, our values, our democracy, our resolve, state sponsor of terrorism, our sanctions, defending liberty, our this and our that, and all that empty jargon) appear at every turn.

    Processes need avenues to formulate. The climax is reached when those avenues become both overlapped and interconnected. As a result, propaganda, fake diplomacy, false reporting, exaggeration, naked lies, vilification, accusation, crocodile tears for Ukraine, and military “assessments” move in unison with the plans of U.S. ruling circles.

    As stated early on, since the dismantlement of the Soviet Union, the sole remaining superpower (as the United States likes to call itself) has been obsessively pursuing the goal for world control by any means—including war. The countless wars that the United States has been launching against any country that actively dares pursuing its own policie are testimony. War, of course, is easy on paper. Among powerful nuclear states, war is terra incognita. This fact alone, confirms the reasons why the United States, Britain, and other imperialist states treat the project for war with Russia in theatrical ways while depending on rhetorical bravados, sanctions, seizing of assets, and the arming of Ukraine to elicit concessions.

    Now that Russia’s limited military operation in Ukraine has transformed into a wider war involving NATO countries indirectly, what comes next? First, that transformation begs an old-new argument. Do wars have any validity? Posing this argument brings to mind the anti-colonialist wars in the period 1950-1975. Second, although the scope of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine differs from those wars, the basics are the same. Explanation: the struggle for independence, sovereignty, and security can take many forms and transcends time and circumstances. This applies to Russia to a tee. How so?

    Discussion: the charge that the anti-colonialist struggle posed challenge to and imperiled peace (as Petra Goedde opined, retrospectively, in her book, The Politics of Peace: A Global Cold War History) is bogus. Discussion: what peace are we debating? Is it peace of mind for occupiers, colonizers, and imperialists or is it pacification by sanctions, blockades, and death and destruction to the occupied and the threatened? By analogy, the argument that Russia should not have disturbed the peace with its intervention in Ukraine is bogus too. For instance, considering that Ukraine has become a powerful American tool to destabilize and attack Russia, was it feasible for Russia to assure its survival from U.S. nuclear encirclement without intervening in Ukraine?

    About the principle of armed struggle against all forms of neocolonialism and imperialism: how if not by war could have Algeria, Viet Nam (before U.S. intervention), and Angola, for examples, ended French and Portuguese colonialisms in their respective lands? About Viet Nam: does anyone think that the United States would have left South Viet Nam without being defeated in battle first? Further, because the U.S. and vassals are effectively waging war on Russia while pretending to be defending peace and principles, should Russia smile and wave its arms in jubilation?

    The wider argument: The United States and satellites couch their wars under the rubric, “just and unjust wars”. They deem their wars just and wars by others unjust. U.S. think tanks go further by invoking the concept of legality as if the lawless hyper‑empire is the guardian and depositary of legality. On such think tank is the Brookings Institution, the voice of Zionist academia. The hyper-imperialist Michael O’Hanlon (director of research and senior fellow of the foreign policy program at Brookings) wrote a specious article full with inaccuracies and distorted facts on the American invasion of Iraq, and named it as such: “Why the War Wasn’t Illegal”.

    O’Hanlon starts his article as follows, “United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was wrong in recently terming the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq “illegal”. So, now we know that the warmongering Zionist O’Hanlon thinks that he knows what is right and what is wrong! Aside from that, not only did he distort facts, but also erased the entire body of evidence confirming that Iraq had been abiding by all so-called U.N. resolutions on the matter of disarmament.

    Setting the Record Straight on War and Peace

    At present, only one concept can pass the test of rationality thus it is irrefutable. Wars can be either legitimate or illegitimate based on the tenets of the Natural Law, not the laws of the imperialist west and its institutions. The statement leads to an implacable consequence that could never be ignored or dismissed. Opposing legitimate wars (e.g., Russia’s in Ukraine, and the Palestine people resistance’s against the Zionist settler state of Israel, or the improbable but potential war by China for Taiwan) just because we advocate peace is antithetical to the anti-imperialist cause.

    For one, wars fought to defend national independence from imperialist or occupying powers are an exclusive category. Consequently, the implication of selling antiwar agendas to aggressed, squeezed, occupied, or threatened states in the name of western-defined peace and goodwill could not be more obvious. It means that the collective chauvinist west would continue trampling on the natural rights of all nations resisting subjugation. Seeing the magnitude of restrictions, sanctions, and destruction heaped upon them, those nations are left with no choice but to resist and fight back to preserve their very existence.

    In sum, and as far as it concerns Ukraine, the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa, it does not matter if the U.S. and European imperialisms define their ongoing wars in any context. The fact remains, no matter what contexts and laws they invent in support of their aims, the targeted countries would not acknowledge them—effectively they have no validity. The implication resulting from rejecting western rules of domination is unambiguous. Legitimate states (not installed by colonialist powers) threatened by marauding imperialists have every right to resort to any form of resistance to preserve their security, improve social welfare, and defend their freedom from the fascist clique that is ruling the world today.

    Discussion      

    The western intelligentsia obliquely calls it the “Suez Crisis”. It wasn’t. By all attributes, it was a standard colonialist war. Briefly, Britain and France (in collusion with the then 8-year old Zionist settler state (Israel) attacked Egypt in July 1956 because it nationalized the Suez Canal Company—English, French, and other European shareholders owned the operating enterprise; Egypt owned the waterway itself. Remark: during that time, no one suggested that war with Britain, France, and Israel had become inevitable because of their war against Egypt.

    When the United States intervened in Somalia, then invaded and occupied Afghanistan, Iraq, and then attacked Libya, Syria, and Yemen, no one suggested that going to war with the United States is inevitable to stop its Zionist wars. Pay attention: but when Russia intervened in Ukraine, the uproar reached the moon. The United States and major western powers repeatedly spoke of the inevitability of war with Russia. Are we missing something?

    These few facts are enough to corroborate an important assertion. The notion positing the inevitability of war with this or that country is a U.S. stratagem to intimidate all independent nations. Manifest intent: to enforce or induce compliance under the threat of violence. At this stage, do we need to prove that the U.S. obsession for war with Russia goes beyond “Russophobia”, “Russophrenia”, and similar hazy terms? Said obsession is now an ideologically and objectively developed strategic purpose meant as a mechanism to impose the American order on Russia.

    Observation: the old paradigm that governed the relation between capitalist America and communist Russia fell in disuse today. Although vanished in its old form, that paradigm (U.S. ideological enmity toward Russia) morphed into something new: strategic hostility. The core of this new anti-Russian stance is not the intervention in Ukraine, but a set of revamped U.S. geostrategic objectives. Accordingly, something very big has pushed the U.S. into chaotic frenzy. This cannot be but the U.S. certainty that Russia had come out into the open, re-asserted its role on the international arena, and challenged the American plan for world domination.

    Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, stated the fixed purpose of the American empire unequivocally. He declared, “The United States must remain the most powerful nation on Earth if peace is to continue between the U.S., China, and Russia.” In other words, the United States is opposing to maintaining peace—meaning it would go to war—with Russia and China should it conclude that either country or both pose threat to its military domination over the planet. By stating that, Milley has implicitly confirmed that war with Russia and China is inevitable under the condition he outlined.

    The British Sky News of Rupert Murdock is a gigantic factory of lies, tabloid news, and journalistic prostitution. Armed with such “credentials”, Sky News joins the American crowds in discussing the inevitability of war with Russia. Pretending serious journalism, the online tabloid asks, “Are we heading for World War Three?”

    Sky News then provides “verdicts” by its so-called panel of experts. Not surprising was that such experts recycled superficial opinions spread by the American media. Of interest, is the view presented by Sky News’ “military analysist”, Simon Diggins. Using shallow “analysis” and language, Diggins reproduced simplistic clichés taken from Fox News of Murdoch and from worthless stories taken from Microsoft Network (MSN) of Bill Gates.

    I’m not going to comment on Diggins’ quote (below) except for putting the “important” stuff in Italics. Purpose: to stress that the italicized text is nearly identical to the phraseology and lingo employed by American imperialists and Zionists in their daily shows. He writes,

    In one sense, we are always in a ‘pre-war’ world, as wars can start from miscalculation, from hubris, or misunderstandings as well as deliberate design.

    However, the last months have seen some loud rumblings, and the sense that the inevitable tensions of a complex world may only be resolvable by war.

    Nothing is inevitable, but the Ukraine invasion in particular has shown that Russia sees war as an instrument of policy, as a tool to change the world order in its favour, and not simply as a means of defence.”

    China likewise seeks reunification with Taiwan, and Iran, in its region, wants its ‘place in the sun’.

    Josep Borrell, European Union foreign policy chief, never ceases to amaze. His colonialist mindset is closed for reformation, and the bizarre statements he often makes keep getting worse from one to the next. Claiming that Russian influence causing dilemma in Africa’s Sahel, he stated,

    Russia’s “very strong” influence in Ouagadougou, Bamako, and Niamey “creates a new geopolitical configuration” in the Sahel. France has had to leave; we have left our military mission – an incipient military mission – in Niger. We have now been invited to abandon Niger with our civilian mission,” he said, adding that EU member states “will have to decide if they want to stay” and extend Mali’s EUTM [European Union Trade Mark], which is set to expire in May. [Italics added]

    Comment: Can Borrell explain to us why Russia’s influence on Africa’s Sahel is bad, but the European influence on the same is good? Another issue: does he think that war with Russia has become inevitable because Russia is breaking the “sacred” European colonialist legacy in Africa?

    Commenting on article written by the anti-Russian British journalist Gideon Rachman (Financial Times: “How to stop a war between America and China“), American economist Scott B. Sumner made this important remark. He said, “Unfortunately, the article doesn’t tell us how to stop a war between the US and China.  …” In fact, all what Rachman tried to do is upholding the U.S. notion of deterrence against China’s legitimate claims on Taiwan. (Before I forget, Rachman won a few prizes and awards for his superficial analyses.)

    The Zionist-controlled publication of The Atlantic published an article written by Eric Schmidt and Robert O. Work. The title is intriguing: “How to Stop the Next World War.” You would expect a convincing proposal, or at least a generic idea as how to stop the U.S. mad race for war with everyone. After attentively reading the article, I realized that the authors had already “suggested” how to stop the next war in the subtitle: “A strategy to restore America’s military deterrence”. So, now we know the answer to their question: in order to stop the next world war, the United States should not engage in negotiation or something like that, but it must protect and expand its imperialistic spheres of influence through increased military deterrence.

    Comment: U.S. and British imperialist and Zionists are not in the business of stopping wars. On the contrary, they incite for wars and justify them. Their favorite methods are open belligerency and swamping verbosity. In both cases (Rachman’s article and the Atlantic piece), the march toward the inevitable wars with Russia and China was not only hypothesized and marketed, but also rationalized to give the impression of unarguable conclusion.

    To sum it up, western governments (especially the U.S. government) and legions of war promotors have been tirelessly theorizing on the inevitability of war with Russia. Conspicuously absent from their coordinated scripts, however, is the postscript—the aftermath of war. That absence is neither lapsus nor negligence. It is a calculated strategy to advance the abstract notion of war without addressing its concrete consequences on their societies.

    U.S. post-WWII foreign and domestic policies need no introduction. Summary: in building consensus and silence for its wars around the world, the imperialist state relied on indoctrination, concealment, deception, and propaganda. Aside from being the pillars of control, these four categories form a specialized school of thought. Accordingly, those who govern the direction of domestic affairs (finance, Congress, weapons manufacturing, legislation, executive orders, etc.) will also govern the conduct of foreign policy and wars.

    What did the system do to insure that the American people remain passive toward its wars? It relied on a formidable psychological tool: desensitization. Desensitization such as this leads to emotional inebriation. For some (without quantifying), this type of emotions is rewarding whereby the scenes of mass destruction act as psychedelic narcotic. Arguably, the images of victory over a designated enemy are the experience.

    Desensitization has another function. In the hands of warmongers and war planners, it is a contraption to eradicate critical thinking vis-à-vis the plethora of factors and actors pushing for war. The odd thing is that visualizing the destruction of enemy while not contemplating own destruction by retaliatory strikes is not normal and raises myriad questions. For instance, could this behavior equate to sedation? Materially though, it lays the emotional foundation for the acceptance of war by protracted induction.

    Consider the Newsweek article, “Nuclear Bomb Map Shows Impact if Biden’s New Weapon Dropped on Russia,” published on November 3, 2023. The Zionist-imperialist weekly reports on “A nuclear bomb being developed by the Biden administration could wreak havoc in Moscow’. Newsweek broadcasts the bomb’s destructiveness by including a visualization map made by NUKEMAP. Newsweek continues by saying that with its “360 kilotons TNT, the bomb is 24 times the explosive power of the 15-kiloton bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II.”.

    Newsweek editors are cynically leaving to the readers the burden of calculating the human cost to Russia. In the case of Hiroshima, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists put the number of dead and injured between (200,000 and 340,000); the average therefore is 270,000. Now, 270,000 x 24 = 6,480,000. Effectively, therefore, the United States is telling Russia that it can and has all means to kill or injure about 6.5 million Russians in one single strike. [Note: those will die— consequent to radiation and other causes related to the blast—in the successive six months to the detonation are not included.] No doubt, the U.S. wants to intimidate Russia as if this is incapable of returning the gift of death to selected U.S. cities.

    Pay attention: Newsweek did not give details on who divulged the news about this new bomb. Skepticism is warranted;  for example, the whole thing could be fiction to scare Russia. But this is unimportant. At this point, we need to learn how the process of indoctrination to war works.

    To start, we know that NUKEMAP was created by Alex Wellerstein. A question: did the Pentagon ask Alex Wellerstein to talk about the 360 kiloton bomb, or did Wellerstein, knowing about it from other sources, decide to open the secret? This hypothesis cannot be true—it is unfathomable that the Pentagon allows its most secret weapons to be known to the enemy. Most likely, the Pentagon ordered the divulgence of information to intimidate Russia. Either way, this whole episode casts light on the multi-pronged interactions between the war apparatuses of the United States and its civilian contributors like Wellerstein.

    Expanded Discussion

    First, NUKEMAP is visualization software designed to help those who covet seeing real nuclear and missile wars. Second, the Pentagon and Wellerstein well know that the program can be used effectively to garner support for war by prospecting a “joyous” outcome, which is visualizing the incineration of Moscow.

    Now, could it be that the Pentagon is offering Wellerstein’s visualization to the public as a form of ideological catharsis to release their “repressed violent emotions”? Can this be true? It implies that the American people at large are addicted to visceral violence. But violence, as philosophy and practice, is acquired. In addition, no nation is uniform in its feelings and reactions to wars initiated by their country. With regard to the U.S. wars on foreign nations in the name of “security” and nominal values, indoctrination targeting the American people has worked on two levels: (a) countless Americans see their foreign wars as patriotic, or (b) they are indifferent to the magnitude of death, destruction, and consequences that their country has been inflicting on foreign nations.

    Pay attention: Wellerstein did not create NUKEMAP to warn against nuclear annihilation or to bring attention to its horrors. His article NUKEMAP is explicit. Not even once does he refer to the consequences of his concept. His focus was on the praise of his software and the awards it obtained.

    Remarks

    • First, Newsweek says that the Pentagon is developing a B61-13 nuclear device to give Biden options to hit large area military target. We understand, therefore, that the Pentagon is actually instigating Biden to consider the option for hitting Russia if he and his associates choose to do so.
    • Second: in turn, Newsweek takes upon itself the responsibility to send a message to Russia by showing what this bomb can do by publishing a simulation by NUKEMAP. Meaning, Newsweek is threating Russia directly on behalf of Biden—as if it is seeking an irrational Russian response to the U.S. visual provocation.
    • Third: of relevance to the process of desensitization is what Alex Wellerstein has done. He gave online users a tool that “Lets you to detonate nuclear weapons over an interactive map of the world”. In a sense, he created an online army of volunteers ready to push the button and wait to see the simulated cataclysmic result. To close, those who love the idea of war and the annihilation of their perceived enemy are now being geared to the idea of vaporizing Russia, China, and any other nation that stands in the U.S. trajectory for world domination.

    To summarize, because the ideological devotion to war with Russia has become a vast cult with unpredictable consequences, how many still remember Russell J. Oakes’ book, The Day After, and how many still recall the eponymous adapted film starring Jason Robards?

    Next: Part 5

    The post Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism Collide in Ukraine (Part 4) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Hell’s Endless Trails from the USA

    Hell is probably one of the most universal concepts of our species. In this article I describe “Hell at Home” and “Hell Away.”

    Hell at Home

    Gazette Sampler

    Beware of Your Medicine Cabinet

    Several years ago, I collected many descriptions of incidents of wrongdoing in industry and government. Here is a small sample of wrongdoing in “Big Pharma:”

    Big Pharma gouges prices in the absence of Government’s price controls. Uses improper techniques to test drugs. Intimidates and threatens their in-house scientists. Fabricates drug safety data and lies to the FDA. Routinely bribes doctors with luxury vacations and paid speaking gigs. Provides drugs to doctors at a discount so they can be sold to patients at a big profit. Markets a drug that is more expensive than alternative drugs and deadly among adults and children. Raises drug prices before new legislation passed seeking to curb drug prices. Aware for at least a decade of animal studies linking breast implants to cancer and other illnesses but waits years before telling women the risks. Dilutes cancer drugs to boost profits. Sells to other countries a drug taken off the U.S. market because of concerns about the drug’s adverse effects.  Blocked state legislation designed to lower drug prices for state residents without insurance coverage.

    Some Selective “Sadtistics”

    In no Particular Order:

    U.S. has highest infant mortality of comparable OECD countries.

    17 million children in poor families don’t get nutritious food regularly.

    Consumer fraud cost Americans 8.8 million dollars in 2022.

    About 3.6 million are jobless.

    37.9 million Americans live in poverty.

    Over one-half million are homeless and living outdoors.

    About 13 million Americans work two jobs to make ends.

    Roughly 5,000 die annually from workplace accidents.

    About 26 million do not have health insurance.

    Over 324,000 home foreclosures in 2022.

    In 2021 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S.

    Enough is Enough

    Some Unmeasurable Harms Done

    Unfulfilled Potential

    Due to denied opportunities, few people have the means to reach their fullest potential.

    Denial of Universal Huan Rights

    Ordinary Americans are denied their universal human rights declared by the United Nations in 1948; rights such as a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of everyone, including food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services, or the right to economic security during crises beyond the person’s control.

    Lost Peace and Democracy

    The two biggest lost opportunities stolen from us are the chance for worldwide peace and to create a true democracy. My guess is that converting our entire national security budget every year into a peacetime budget would be more than enough to rebuild America into a civilized land of fulfilled people and to end our scavenging of the world. A peacetime budget would force weapons makers into making things useful for all of America, a conversion that could be made since the weapons makers know how to make things.

    Had we not lost the opportunity, had our government, as prescribed in the Constitution “provided for the general welfare” and not the welfare of the corpocracy, America would be a very different America today, an America in which its citizenry share power and wealth more equally, an educated America, an employed America, a healthy America, a happy America, and an America at peace with the world. Call this different America the “People’s America.”

    The Loss of Privacy

    Americans have lost their Constitutional right to privacy and live in the land of the watched. The National Security Agency is the government’s master spy agency that probably spies on us daily.

    The Loss of Trust and Faith. How much trust or faith do you really have that the products and services you acquire have no faults given the “Gazette Sampler.”

    The Burden of Fear. Living in a police state and a gun spiked state like America is tantamount to living fearfully for most everybody but the power elite (except the latter’s fear of an uprising may be a repressed or guarded one). Think twice about joining a protest movement, going to a theater, a major outdoor event, or even to the shopping mall?

    USA Hell Away

    Counting sand would be easier than tallying the total number of casualties and property destroyed from US overt and covert military operations since 1776. So, I decided to share with you the tally made by S.B. Wilson of the deaths and destruction from one war alone, the US war waged against the Southeast Asian people in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia – what is known as the Viet Nam War. Mr. Wilson, now a lawyer, lost both legs crushed by an oncoming munitions train he had attempted to halt. Seventy-five percent of South Viet Nam was considered a free-fire zone (i.e., genocidal). Here is his tally:

    –Over 6 million Southeast Asians killed.

    –Over 64,000 US and Allied soldiers killed.

    –Over 1,600 US soldiers, and 300,000

    Vietnamese soldiers remain missing.

    –Thousands of amputees, paraplegics, blind, deaf, and other maiming’s created.

    –13,000 of 21,000 of Vietnamese villages, or 62 percent, severely damaged or destroyed, mostly by bombing.

    –Nearly 950 churches and pagodas destroyed by bombing.

    –350 hospitals and 1,500 maternity wards destroyed by bombing.

    –Nearly 3,000 high schools and universities destroyed by bombing.

    –Over 15,000 bridges destroyed by bombing.

    –10 million cubic meters of dikes destroyed by bombing.

    –Over 3,700 US fixed-wing aircraft lost.

    –36,125,000 US helicopter sorties during the war; over 10,000 helicopters lost or severely damaged.

    –26 million bomb craters created the majority from B-52s (a B-52 bomb crater could be 20 feet deep, and 40 feet across).

    –39 million acres of land in Indochina (or 91 percent of the land area of South Viet Nam) littered with fragments of bombs and shells, equivalent to 244,000 (160 acre) farms, or an area the size of all New England except Connecticut.

    –21 million gallons (80 million liters) of extremely poisonous chemicals (herbicides)  applied in 20,000 chemical spraying missions between 1961 and 1970 in the most intensive use of chemical warfare in human history, with as many as 4.8 million Vietnamese living in nearly 3,200 villages directly sprayed by the chemicals.

    –24 percent, or 16,100 square miles, of South

    Viet Nam sprayed, an area larger than the states of Connecticut, Vermont, and Rhode Island combined, killing tropical forest, food crops, and inland forests.

    –Over 500,000 Vietnamese died from chronic conditions related to chemical spraying with an estimated 650,000 still suffering from such conditions; 500,000 children have been born with Agent Orange-induced birth defects, now including third generation offspring.

    –Nearly 375,000 tons of fire balling napalm

    dropped on villages.

    –Huge Rome Plows (made in Rome, Georgia), 20-ton earthmoving D7E

    Caterpillar tractors, fitted with a nearly 2.5-ton curved 11-foot-wide attached blade protected by 14 additional tons of armor plate, scraped clean between 700,000 and 750,000 acres (1,200 square miles), an area equivalent to Rhode Island, leaving bare earth, rocks, and smashed trees.

    –As many as 36,000,000 total tons of ordnance expended from aerial and naval bombing, artillery, and ground combat firepower. On an average day US artillery expended 10,000 rounds costing $1 million per day; 150,000-300,000 tons of UXO remain scattered around Southeast Asia. 40,000 have been killed in Viet Nam since the end of the war in 1975, and nearly 70,000 injured; 20,000 Laotians have been killed or injured since the end of the war.

    –7 billion gallons of fuel consumed by US forces during the war.1

    In Closing

    “Forever War”

    The murdering and destruction ever since by America’s evil power elite has never stopped and will not stop unless and until. Nick Turse calls this grizzly phenomenon, “Forever War.”2 He is a journalist, winner of a 2009 Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction as well as a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, book author and currently a fellow at New York University’s Center for the United States and the Cold War.

    What if the tables were turned and the US became the target of the “Forever War?”

    Endnotes

    The post Hell’s Endless Trails from the USA first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    Wilson, S.B.  “Remembering All the Deaths from All of Our Wars.” Counterpunch, May 27, 2016.
    2    Turse, N. “Forever War Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry.” LA Progressive, January 30, 2024. See also his book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives. Metropolitan Books, First Edition (March 3, 2009).

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Hell’s Endless Trails from the USA

    Hell is probably one of the most universal concepts of our species. In this article I describe “Hell at Home” and “Hell Away.”

    Hell at Home

    Gazette Sampler

    Beware of Your Medicine Cabinet

    Several years ago, I collected many descriptions of incidents of wrongdoing in industry and government. Here is a small sample of wrongdoing in “Big Pharma:”

    Big Pharma gouges prices in the absence of Government’s price controls. Uses improper techniques to test drugs. Intimidates and threatens their in-house scientists. Fabricates drug safety data and lies to the FDA. Routinely bribes doctors with luxury vacations and paid speaking gigs. Provides drugs to doctors at a discount so they can be sold to patients at a big profit. Markets a drug that is more expensive than alternative drugs and deadly among adults and children. Raises drug prices before new legislation passed seeking to curb drug prices. Aware for at least a decade of animal studies linking breast implants to cancer and other illnesses but waits years before telling women the risks. Dilutes cancer drugs to boost profits. Sells to other countries a drug taken off the U.S. market because of concerns about the drug’s adverse effects.  Blocked state legislation designed to lower drug prices for state residents without insurance coverage.

    Some Selective “Sadtistics”

    In no Particular Order:

    U.S. has highest infant mortality of comparable OECD countries.

    17 million children in poor families don’t get nutritious food regularly.

    Consumer fraud cost Americans 8.8 million dollars in 2022.

    About 3.6 million are jobless.

    37.9 million Americans live in poverty.

    Over one-half million are homeless and living outdoors.

    About 13 million Americans work two jobs to make ends.

    Roughly 5,000 die annually from workplace accidents.

    About 26 million do not have health insurance.

    Over 324,000 home foreclosures in 2022.

    In 2021 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S.

    Enough is Enough

    Some Unmeasurable Harms Done

    Unfulfilled Potential

    Due to denied opportunities, few people have the means to reach their fullest potential.

    Denial of Universal Huan Rights

    Ordinary Americans are denied their universal human rights declared by the United Nations in 1948; rights such as a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of everyone, including food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services, or the right to economic security during crises beyond the person’s control.

    Lost Peace and Democracy

    The two biggest lost opportunities stolen from us are the chance for worldwide peace and to create a true democracy. My guess is that converting our entire national security budget every year into a peacetime budget would be more than enough to rebuild America into a civilized land of fulfilled people and to end our scavenging of the world. A peacetime budget would force weapons makers into making things useful for all of America, a conversion that could be made since the weapons makers know how to make things.

    Had we not lost the opportunity, had our government, as prescribed in the Constitution “provided for the general welfare” and not the welfare of the corpocracy, America would be a very different America today, an America in which its citizenry share power and wealth more equally, an educated America, an employed America, a healthy America, a happy America, and an America at peace with the world. Call this different America the “People’s America.”

    The Loss of Privacy

    Americans have lost their Constitutional right to privacy and live in the land of the watched. The National Security Agency is the government’s master spy agency that probably spies on us daily.

    The Loss of Trust and Faith. How much trust or faith do you really have that the products and services you acquire have no faults given the “Gazette Sampler.”

    The Burden of Fear. Living in a police state and a gun spiked state like America is tantamount to living fearfully for most everybody but the power elite (except the latter’s fear of an uprising may be a repressed or guarded one). Think twice about joining a protest movement, going to a theater, a major outdoor event, or even to the shopping mall?

    USA Hell Away

    Counting sand would be easier than tallying the total number of casualties and property destroyed from US overt and covert military operations since 1776. So, I decided to share with you the tally made by S.B. Wilson of the deaths and destruction from one war alone, the US war waged against the Southeast Asian people in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia – what is known as the Viet Nam War. Mr. Wilson, now a lawyer, lost both legs crushed by an oncoming munitions train he had attempted to halt. Seventy-five percent of South Viet Nam was considered a free-fire zone (i.e., genocidal). Here is his tally:

    –Over 6 million Southeast Asians killed.

    –Over 64,000 US and Allied soldiers killed.

    –Over 1,600 US soldiers, and 300,000

    Vietnamese soldiers remain missing.

    –Thousands of amputees, paraplegics, blind, deaf, and other maiming’s created.

    –13,000 of 21,000 of Vietnamese villages, or 62 percent, severely damaged or destroyed, mostly by bombing.

    –Nearly 950 churches and pagodas destroyed by bombing.

    –350 hospitals and 1,500 maternity wards destroyed by bombing.

    –Nearly 3,000 high schools and universities destroyed by bombing.

    –Over 15,000 bridges destroyed by bombing.

    –10 million cubic meters of dikes destroyed by bombing.

    –Over 3,700 US fixed-wing aircraft lost.

    –36,125,000 US helicopter sorties during the war; over 10,000 helicopters lost or severely damaged.

    –26 million bomb craters created the majority from B-52s (a B-52 bomb crater could be 20 feet deep, and 40 feet across).

    –39 million acres of land in Indochina (or 91 percent of the land area of South Viet Nam) littered with fragments of bombs and shells, equivalent to 244,000 (160 acre) farms, or an area the size of all New England except Connecticut.

    –21 million gallons (80 million liters) of extremely poisonous chemicals (herbicides)  applied in 20,000 chemical spraying missions between 1961 and 1970 in the most intensive use of chemical warfare in human history, with as many as 4.8 million Vietnamese living in nearly 3,200 villages directly sprayed by the chemicals.

    –24 percent, or 16,100 square miles, of South

    Viet Nam sprayed, an area larger than the states of Connecticut, Vermont, and Rhode Island combined, killing tropical forest, food crops, and inland forests.

    –Over 500,000 Vietnamese died from chronic conditions related to chemical spraying with an estimated 650,000 still suffering from such conditions; 500,000 children have been born with Agent Orange-induced birth defects, now including third generation offspring.

    –Nearly 375,000 tons of fire balling napalm

    dropped on villages.

    –Huge Rome Plows (made in Rome, Georgia), 20-ton earthmoving D7E

    Caterpillar tractors, fitted with a nearly 2.5-ton curved 11-foot-wide attached blade protected by 14 additional tons of armor plate, scraped clean between 700,000 and 750,000 acres (1,200 square miles), an area equivalent to Rhode Island, leaving bare earth, rocks, and smashed trees.

    –As many as 36,000,000 total tons of ordnance expended from aerial and naval bombing, artillery, and ground combat firepower. On an average day US artillery expended 10,000 rounds costing $1 million per day; 150,000-300,000 tons of UXO remain scattered around Southeast Asia. 40,000 have been killed in Viet Nam since the end of the war in 1975, and nearly 70,000 injured; 20,000 Laotians have been killed or injured since the end of the war.

    –7 billion gallons of fuel consumed by US forces during the war.1

    In Closing

    “Forever War”

    The murdering and destruction ever since by America’s evil power elite has never stopped and will not stop unless and until. Nick Turse calls this grizzly phenomenon, “Forever War.”2 He is a journalist, winner of a 2009 Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction as well as a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, book author and currently a fellow at New York University’s Center for the United States and the Cold War.

    What if the tables were turned and the US became the target of the “Forever War?”

    Endnotes

    The post Hell’s Endless Trails from the USA first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    Wilson, S.B.  “Remembering All the Deaths from All of Our Wars.” Counterpunch, May 27, 2016.
    2    Turse, N. “Forever War Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry.” LA Progressive, January 30, 2024. See also his book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives. Metropolitan Books, First Edition (March 3, 2009).

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Washington Promotes Opposition Candidate Setting the Stage for Delegitimizing the Venezuelan Presidential Election

    Despite continuous US-led hybrid warfare to overthrow the socialist project, this month marks the 25th anniversary of the Bolivarian Revolution. The Venezuelan government of President Nicolás Maduro has successfully forced the US to de facto engage with it, although Washington still maintains the fiction that the defunct 2015 National Assembly is the “last remaining democratic institution” there.

    While still egregiously interventionist, the imperial power has been relegated to vetting candidates for the upcoming Venezuelan presidential election, having failed to achieve outright regime change. The appearance of Venezuelan politician Maria Corina Machado before a US congressional committee is the latest in the empire’s quest for a trustworthy confederate. Hopes are high among Republicans that she is the right collaborator. The Democrats may have another endgame.

    The opposition to the ruling Venezuelan socialist government is composed of many small and fractious sects, usually associated with a dominant personality, such as Machado’s Vente Venezuela party. The US spends millions each year meddling in the internal affairs of Venezuela in what it euphemistically calls “democracy promotion.” USAID alone pledged $50M to “push” the presidential elections, scheduled for later this year.

    Washington’s efforts to force a unified opposition have been so far unsuccessful in Venezuela. But that has not deterred the Yankees from imperiously selecting the candidate they think ought be Venezuela’s leader.

    Farewell to Venezuelan “interim president” Juan Guaidó

     The last contender for the role of the empire’s factotum was the now disgraced Juan Guaidó. Despite his popularity abroad as the “interim president” of Venezuela, the hapless security asset was not as well received at home and was dismissed by his own opposition bloc in 2022.

    The US and its allies gave Guaidó and his cronies illegally seized Venezuelan assets such the Monómeros agrochemical complex in Colombia and the Citgo oil franchise in the US. They used the enterprises to grossly enrich themselves while running them into the ground. According to the Venezuelan attorney general, an estimated $19B was embezzled by Guaidó’s “fictious government.”

    With his deer-in-the-headlights visage and stilted oratory, Guaidó appeared every bit like a puppet. In the case of Mr. Guaidó, appearances did not deceive. In contrast, the new contestant is photogenic and with a quick wit. Besides, Machado speaks fluent English.

    Machado auditions before the “bipartisan roundtable”

    The February 7th House Foreign Affairs Committee “bipartisan roundtable” was entitled “The Fight for Freedom in Venezuela.” Streamed live, committee chair Maria Salazar (R-FL)

    gushed in support of featured guest María Corina Machado as the sole opposition presidential candidate. Salazar asserted that no other opposition candidate will be tolerated: “There is no plan B!”

    In what amounted to an audition, Machado painted a dire picture of today’s Venezuela as the “largest torture center in Latin America.” She accused the Maduro government of “intentionally destroying the quality of life.”

    When asked how she would solve Venezuela’s problems, Machado said she would “open markets.” Not mentioned was that the very US economic sanctions, which she had championed, had closed the markets and imposed an asphyxiating blockade immiserating Venezuela’s less fortunate citizens. Machado comes from one the richest families.

    Alluding to current president Nicolás Maduro and National Assembly leader Diosdado Cabello, Machado said she would not be for “a system of impunity” when she’s president.

    Although no one else had brought Nicaragua up, she pledged to work for a “transition” there too. Statements like this prompted the Perú Libre party, reflecting leftist sentiment throughout Latin America, to warn that Machado “constitutes a threat to continental peace.”

    Machado’s political baggage

     Machado comes with considerable political baggage. In 2002, she signed the infamous Carmona Decree, establishing the short-lived coup government that temporarily deposed Hugo Chávez. Machado received amnesty for supporting that coup, but has continued to be associated in coup attempts. She was active in promoting the violent guarimbas in 2014 and 2017 to overthrow the elected government and has called for a US military invasion.

    In 2014, she was barred from running for public office, in accordance with the Venezuelan constitution, when she served as a diplomat for Panama in order to testify against Venezuela before the Organization of American States. She had initially refused to contest her barring before the supreme court (TSJ), which she regarded as illegitimate. But when Washington wanted to use her electoral disqualification as an excuse for reimposing some sanctions, she obediently complied, though she still remained barred.

    Other congressional initiatives

    Last December, Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) introduced House Resolution 911 designating Machado as the “official presidential opposition candidate.” Besides being a blatant interference in the internal affairs of another country, the resolution is tone deaf to the opposition in Venezuela, which does not recognize Machado as the sole legitimate candidate.

     On January 30, after Machado lost her appeal to have her electoral eligibility reinstated, Republican Senators Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, and Bill Cassidy sent Biden a letter urging him to immediately reimpose sanctions on Venezuela in order to maintain US “credibility.” That same day, the Biden State Department issued a statement revoking sanctions relief on Venezuelan gold sales and threatened to do the same on gas and oil.

    Four days before, the Congressional Research Service reported that US sanctions on Venezuela have “failed” to achieve regime change but have caused profound human suffering. This is the same “humanitarian crisis” that Machado claims was deliberately precipitated by the Venezuelan government.

    How popular is Machado off of Capitol Hill?

     Most knowledgeable analysts identify Machado as the opposition politician in Venezuela with the greatest name recognition and the single most popular one. But she does not command the unanimity of support in Venezuela that she is receiving inside the beltway.

    Venezuelan sociologist Maria Paez Victor, now residing in Canada, reports that Machado is deeply resented by most in the opposition. “She is a hated figure among the people because of her enthusiastic support and plea for more sanctions that have caused such suffering.”

    To begin with, Machado’s much vaunted opposition primary was problematic. Machado swept a crowded field of contestants with a suspicious 92%. The October contest excluded some opposition parties, while others chose not to contend and still others participated but subsequently claimed fraud.

    The primary was not conducted by the national election authority (CNE) as they usually are, but was a private affair run by Machado’s own non-governmental organization Súmate, which has received NED funding. Some of the polling places were in private homes rather than public venues such as schools. And after the ballots were counted manually, they were quickly destroyed so that there was no way to verify the validity of the count.

    Reflecting the primary’s questionable nature, the US press usually refers to it as “an” opposition primary rather than “the” opposition primary, although a close and critical reading is needed to detect the weasel-word usage. Due to the irregularities, the Venezuelan supreme court subsequently suspended the primary results.

    Machado’s prospects

     Although Maduro has yet to announce his candidacy, it is widely believed that the incumbent president will be his party’s choice. For her part, Machado says, “there can be no elections without me.” The European Union agrees, saying they will not recognize the election unless Machado runs.

    The Orinoco Tribune reports that the White House does not especially care who the opposition candidate is in Venezuela. According to Biden official Juan González, “the process and not the candidate” is most important.

    This translates to the White House anticipating a Maduro victory and, accordingly, planning to pronounce the election fraudulent. In the last Venezuelan presidential election, the US took no chances when it declared the contest fraudulent a half a year in advance and even threatened opposition candidate Henri Falcón with sanctions for running.

    The manufactured drama around Machado’s electoral eligibility has a purpose that has little to do with the far-right opposition politician. Washington knew with near certainty that she would not be allowed to run for political office due to manifest past transgressions. That is precisely why she was not named in the Barbados Agreement’s electoral roadmap negotiated between the US and Venezuela. Rather, the charade is being played out to cast doubt and calumny on the upcoming election. If Maduro wins, the US will surely pronounce the contest illegitimate.

    The post Washington Promotes Opposition Candidate Setting the Stage for Delegitimizing the Venezuelan Presidential Election first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • US Chooses Genocide Over Diplomacy in the Middle East


    Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in Rafah, the last refuge in southern Gaza. Photo credit: MENAFN

    On February 7, 2024, a U.S. drone strike assassinated an Iraqi militia leader, Abu Baqir al-Saadi, in the heart of Baghdad. This was a further U.S. escalation in a major new front in the U.S.-Israeli war on the Middle East, centered on the Israeli genocide in Gaza, but already also including ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Syria, and the U.S. and U.K.’s bombing of Yemen.

    This latest U.S. attack followed the U.S. bombing of seven targets on February 2, three in Iraq and four in Syria, with 125 bombs and missiles, killing at least 39 people, which Iran called “a strategic mistake” that would bring “disastrous consequences” for the Middle East.

    At the same time, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been touring the shrinking number of capitals in the region where leaders will still talk to him, playing the United States’ traditional role as a dishonest broker between Israel and its neighbors, in reality partnering with Israel to offer the Palestinians impossible, virtually suicidal terms for a ceasefire in Gaza.

    What Israel and the United States have proposed, but not made public, appears to be a second temporary ceasefire, during which prisoners or hostages would be exchanged, possibly leading to the release of all the Israeli security prisoners held in Gaza, but in no way leading to the final end of the genocide. If the Palestinians in fact freed all their Israeli hostages as part of a prisoner swap, it would remove the only obstacle to a catastrophic escalation of the genocide.

    When Hamas responded with a serious counter-proposal for a full ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Biden dismissed it out of hand as “over the top,” and Netanyahu called it “bizarre” and “delusional.”

    The position of the United States and Israel today is that ending a massacre that has already killed more than 27,700 people is not a serious option, even after the International Court of Justice has ruled it a plausible case of genocide under the Genocide Convention. Raphael Lemkin, the Polish holocaust survivor who coined the term genocide and drafted the Genocide Convention from his adopted home in New York City, must be turning in his grave in Mount Hebron Cemetery.

    The United States’ support for Israel’s genocidal policies now goes way beyond Palestine, with the U.S. expansion of the war to Iraq, Syria and Yemen to punish other countries and forces in the region for intervening to defend or support the Palestinians. U.S. officials claimed the February 2 attacks were intended to stop Iraqi Resistance attacks on U.S. bases. But the leading Iraqi resistance force had already suspended attacks against U.S. targets on January 30th after they killed three U.S. troops, declaring a truce at the urging of the Iranian and Iraqi governments.< A senior Iraqi military officer told BBC Persian that at least one of the Iraqi military units the U.S. bombed on February 2nd had nothing to do with attacks on U.S. bases. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani negotiated an agreement a year ago to clearly differentiate between Popular Mobilization Force (PMF) units that were part of the “Axis of Resistance” fighting a low-grade war with U.S. occupation forces, and other PMF units that were not involved in attacks on U.S. bases.

    Tragically, because the U.S. failed to coordinate its attacks with the Iraqi government, al-Sudani’s agreement failed to prevent the U.S. from attacking the wrong Iraqi forces. It is no wonder that some analysts have dubbed al-Sudani’s valiant efforts to prevent all-out war between U.S. forces and the Islamic Resistance in his country as “mission impossible.”

    Following the elaborately staged but carelessly misdirected U.S. attacks, Resistance forces in Iraq began launching new strikes on U.S. bases, including a drone attack that killed six Kurdish troops at the largest U.S. base in Syria. So the predictable effect of the U.S. bombing was in fact to rebuff Iran and Iraq’s efforts to rein in resistance forces and to escalate a war that U.S. officials keep claiming they want to deter.

    From experienced journalists and analysts to Middle Eastern governments, voices of caution are warning the United States in increasingly stark language of the dangers of its escalating bombing campaigns. “While the war rages in Gaza,” the BBC’s Orla Guerin wrote on February 4, “one false move could set the region alight.”

    Three days later, Orla would be surrounded by protesters chanting “America is the greatest devil,” as she reported from the site of the U.S. drone assassination of Kataib Hezbollah leader Abu Baqir al-Saadi in Baghdad – which could prove to be exactly the false move she feared.

    But what Americans should be asking their government is this: Why are there still 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq? It is 21 years since the United States invaded Iraq and plunged the nation into seemingly endless violence, chaos and corruption; 12 years since Iraq forced U.S. occupation forces to withdraw from Iraq at the end of 2011; and 7 years since the defeat of ISIS, which served as justification for the United States to send forces back into Iraq in 2014, and then to obliterate most of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in 2017.

    Successive Iraqi governments and parliaments have asked the United States to withdraw its forces from Iraq, and previously scheduled talks are about to begin. But the Iraqis and Americans have issued contradictory statements about the goal of the negotiations. Prime Minister al-Sudani and most Iraqis hope they will bring about the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, while U.S. officials insist that U.S. troops may remain for another two to five years, kicking this explosive can further down the road despite the obvious dangers it poses to the lives of U.S. troops and to peace in the region.

    Behind these contradictory statements, the real value of Iraqi bases to the U.S. military does not seem to be about ISIS at all but about Iran. Although the United States has more than 40,000 troops stationed in 14 countries across the Middle East, and another 20,000 on warships in the seas surrounding them, the bases it uses in Iraq are its closest bases and airfields to Tehran and much of Iran. If the Pentagon loses these forward operating bases in Iraq, the closest bases from which it can attack Tehran will be Camp Arifjan and five other bases in Kuwait, where 13,500 U.S. troops would be vulnerable to Iranian counter-attacks – unless, of course, the U.S. withdraws them, too.

    Toward the end of the Cold War, historian Gabriel Kolko observed in his book Confronting the Third World that the United States’ “endemic incapacity to avoid entangling, costly commitments in areas of the world that are of intrinsically secondary importance to [its] priorities has caused U.S. foreign policy and resources to whipsaw virtually arbitrarily from one problem and region to the other. The result has been the United States’ increasing loss of control over its political priorities, budget, military strategy and tactics, and, ultimately, its original economic goals.”

    After the end of the Cold War, instead of restoring realistic goals and priorities, the neocons who gained control of U.S. foreign policy fooled themselves into believing that U.S. military and economic power could finally triumph over the frustratingly diverse social and political evolution of hundreds of countries and cultures all over the world. In addition to wreaking pointless mass destruction on country after country, this has turned the United States into the global enemy of the principles of democracy and self-determination that most Americans believe in.

    The horror Americans feel at the plight of people in Gaza and the U.S. role in it is a shocking new low in this disconnect between the humanity of ordinary Americans and the insatiable ambitions of their undemocratic leaders.

    While working for an end to the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people, Americans should also be working for the long-overdue withdrawal of U.S. occupying forces from Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

    The post US Chooses Genocide Over Diplomacy in the Middle East first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • The Dangers of Complicity: The US Courts, Gaza and Genocide

    Holding the foreign policy of a country accountable in court, notably when it comes to matters criminal, can be insuperably challenging.  Judges traditionally shun making decisions on policy, even though they unofficially do so all the time.  The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based civil liberties group, was not to be discouraged, most notably regarding the Biden administration’s unflagging support for Israel and its war in Gaza.

    In a filing in the US District Court for the Northern District of California last November, the CCR, representing a number of Palestinian human rights organisations including Palestinians in Gaza and the United States, sought an order “requiring that the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense adhere to their duty to prevent, and not further, the unfolding genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza.”  Such a duty, arising in the UN Genocide Convention of 1948, “is judicially enforceable as a peremptory norm of customary international law.”

    The complaint alleged that the genocidal conditions in Gaza had “so far been made possible because of unconditional support given [to Israel] by the named official-capacity defendants in this case,” namely, President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

    At the time proceedings were initiated, the Israeli campaign in Gaza, launched in response to the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas, had already claimed the lives of 11,000 Palestinian civilians, “more than 4,500 of them children, as well as entire families, numerous journalists and UN workers.”  The bombardment had crippled critical infrastructure, led to the displacement of 1.6 million persons, and had been “accompanied by a total siege of Gaza, depriving Palestinians in Gaza the conditions of life necessary for human survival: food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity.”  (Currently, the displaced number exceeds 2 million; the number of dead towers at 26,000.)

    In reaching his decision to dismiss the case on jurisdictional grounds, Jeffrey S. White admitted it was the “most difficult” of his career.  He acknowledged South Africa’s action in the International Court of Justice against Israel, which argues that Israel’s conduct against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip satisfies the elements of genocide.

    The January 26 interim order of provisional measures granted by the ICJ explicitly put Israel on notice to comply with the Genocide Convention, punish those responsible for directly and publicly inciting genocide, permit basic humanitarian assistance and essential services to the Gaza Strip, preserve relevant evidence pertaining to potential genocidal acts and submit a report to the ICJ on its compliance within a month.  In international law, these interim measures are accepted as binding.

    The ICJ also showed some scepticism to arguments that Israel had taken adequate measures to minimise harm to Palestinian civilians and respond to instances where an incitement to genocide could be imputed.  None of the measures taken till that point had removed the risk of irreparable harm; to merely assert compliance was not sufficient evidence of it.

    In White’s words, “the undisputed evidence before this Court comports with the finding of the ICJ and indicates that the current treatment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military may plausibly constitute a genocide in violation of international law.”  Lawyers representing the government also chose not to cross-examine witnesses, bar one Holocaust scholar who testified that Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip could be classed as genocidal.  Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, the claims advanced in this case, involving disputes over foreign policy, raised “fundamentally non-justiciable political questions.”  To compel the US government to cease military and financial assistance to Israel were matters “intimately related to foreign policy and national security”.

    The plaintiffs had encountered that great limitation articulated by Chief Justice Marshall in 1803: that ‘[q]uestions, in their nature political, or which are, by the constitution and laws, submitted to the executive, can never be made in this court”.  To do so would violate the separation of powers.  The judiciary was, according to White, “not equipped with the intelligence or the acumen necessary to make foreign policy decisions on behalf of the government.”

    Despite being bound by weighty precedent and rulings in previous cases, White concludes with a plea.  The ICJ had found it “plausible that Israel’s conduct amounts to genocide.”  The judge implored the “Defendants to examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza.”  Not bad for one lacking intelligence or the acumen necessary to make foreign policy decisions.

    While disappointed in White’s ruling, Brad Parker, a senior advisor to one of the organisational plaintiffs, Defense for Children International Palestine, saw the thickest of silver linings.  Along with the ICJ decision, “and the increasing recognition that what Israel is carrying out is a genocide and the US is complicit in those genocidal acts, I think the strong language from a US federal court judge increasingly works to isolate Israel’s actions and also bring pressure on the Biden administration to change course.”

    To date, the slaughter in Gaza continues.  Israeli politicians and military officials persist in claiming that murderously innovative approaches to killing Palestinian civilians are not, by definition, genocidal.  But the walls of justifiable impunity, so proudly claimed by Israel in its righteous mission of self-defence, are proving increasingly porous.

    The post The Dangers of Complicity: The US Courts, Gaza and Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Zoom or You Won’t See Me!

    If you have a friend or loved one in the Volusia Cty Jail here in the Daytona Beach area of Florida, get ready to play the man’s game of Telephone. Until you have someone close to you incarcerated there you cannot believe how this current penal system works. Bottom line: They forbid any in person visits… period! You want to talk with an inmate then fork over your money to IC Solutions, another in the slew of for profit private companies that our government sold out to. It’s not so much the few dollars you must pay, but the whole concept that sucks! Here’s how this convoluted system works: First off, and most heinous of all, is trying to figure out how to sign onto IC Solutions with your computer. My wife, pretty computer savvy from her years of administrating our sales business, took almost four hours getting an appointment to see and speak to my son via Zoom. And that was after waiting on the phone for nearly 45 minutes for an IC Tech person to help her. The tech person was helpful and we got to have the zoom visit… which is of course monitored.

    They only allow such a visit from Tuesdays through Saturdays. One must secure a time slot for the 30 minute session. Having been at a first appearance at the jail, it is very sad to see how many of the recently arrested lack either an education or the social and verbal skills needed to understand what in the hell is going on! One wonders how many of those poor souls have a friend or family member to be able to navigate what IC Solutions requires for them to visit. This is absolutely ridiculous! Sorry, but when our loved ones wind up in the bottom of the barrel, if anyone deserves an in person visit it is them… and us their family and friends.

    This writer sent an email to ALL our County Council members this weekend as to this system. So far, one councilman answered me. I give him that for being so conscientious. This is what he sent me:

     To Whom This May Concern,

     First of all, I am sorry that you had a bad experience with the Inmate Video Visitation system. However, this system was implemented in May of 2001 and has proven over and over to be a much safer and cost effective way to conduct inmate visitation. It is now being used in almost every correctional environment in the United States. It reduces the amount of time and manpower needed to transport/escort inmates to supervised visits, which is a cost savings to every taxpayer in the county. It also reduces the amount of contraband being brought into the correctional setting, which in itself is the best benefit.

    The old system of contact visitation only allowed the inmate one to two visits per week. The current video visitation system allows family members/friends of the incarcerated individual to schedule one session per day Tuesday through Saturday.

    The old system had to have a minimum of 6 to 8 correctional officers to work it as the new system only requires 1 to 2. Another savings to taxpayers and much more efficient.

    Prior to my election to County Council, I worked for the Volusia County Division of Corrections for over 30 years. I was present when the new system was implemented and absolutely support this method of inmate visitation.

    Since you didn’t sign your email, it will make if difficult to ascertain if your problems were isolated to this specific inmate (whomever it may be) or a general problem. I have checked with our jail and there is no general problems with the system to report.

    Basically, what he was alluding to was really just about ‘Saving money’… period! The movers and shakers of our system obviously think that this is the best solution to deal with the dregs of our society. Perhaps if a  wife, husband, child or grandchild of our political leaders wind up in that jail they might see things more clearly. Perhaps if we taxed the large corporations, mega millionaires and billionaires like we did in the 1960s and 1970s there would be barrels of revenue to help our prison system.

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  • Deplorable: Plans to Expand US Drone Atrocities in West Africa

    The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and the U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN) opposes in the strongest terms the U.S. plans, in collusion with West Africa’s comprador class, to further violate Africa’s sovereignty and right to self determination in the form of three new military drone bases in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin. Further, we condemn the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) for not publicly renouncing this proposal in particular, and the existence of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in general. Their silence around this development confirms their complicity and betrayal of Pan-Africanism and the interests of the African masses struggling against the ravages of neo-colonialism.

    More U.S. drone bases in Africa spell more violence, vicious anonymity, and “collateral damage” from drone assassinations. It spells enhanced surveillance capabilities for imperialism to use against any threat to the neocolonial order. U.S. maneuvering to expand its already massive military drone operations is consistent with the U.S. incessant drive to wage war globally and its militarization of the planet. U.S. drone and air strikes in Africa have primarily been in Libya and Somalia with the numbers of confirmed civilian deaths from drones as high as 3,200 in these two countries, and studies have shown these conditions “have inadvertently aided the growth of terrorist groups in the region.” This is what the U.S. proposes now for West Africa.

    There are clear and disturbing geostrategic implications regarding the countries they have chosen for these U.S. drone bases. The bases will form a border along the three countries of the Alliance of Sahel States – Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger – countries which have been adopting an anti-imperialist disposition. In fact, Burkina Faso’s entire southern flank would be surrounded by these U.S. drone bases. The last two administrations as well as members of Congress have clearly stated in policy declarations and legislation that the U.S.’ primary objective in Africa is to counteract the presence and influence of China and Russia in order to maintain its full spectrum dominance of all regions of the world. This is also consistent with the Global Fragility Act that states the Biden administration’s first sites of focus would be Haiti, Libya, and “West African coastal states,” where the U.S. seeks to place the drone bases.

    The bases will not be there to end so-called terrorism of extremists in Africa; they will be there for the U.S. to terrorize the region. It is folly to believe that the settler criminals who rule the U.S. state, who can justify the genocidal assault on Gaza, and who systematically murder, sanction, and attack nations globally to maintain white supremacy and global capitalism, are spending hundreds of millions to “fight terrorism” in Africa.

    Rather than “an urgent effort to stop the spread of al Qaeda and Islamic State in the region,” according to American and African officials, the USOAN contends that this is more likely a contingency plan to preserve drone capabilities in the event of losing their $110 million U.S. drone base in Agadez, Niger. Niger has also recently temporarily suspended the granting of new mining licenses and ordered an audit of the sector, a move that would invariably raise the eyebrows of the U.S.-EU-NATO axis of domination, concerned over the future of exploitative access to the mineral resources there, such as uranium. Resource sovereignty runs counter to the true colonialist objectives of U.S. foreign policy.

    BAP and the USOAN call on all who support African sovereignty to denounce the U.S.’ latest imperialist moves in Western Africa as well as the neocolonial African governments and collaborators like the Ghanaian president Nana Akufo-Addo who, face-to-face with U.S. Secretary Antony Blinken, openly begged for the U.S. to violate the sovereignty of the countries in the Alliance of Sahel States.

    BAP and the USOAN will continue to expose the puppets of neocolonialism in Africa and the misleaders masquerading as Black representatives in the legislative branches of the U.S. setter state. We maintain that the U.S. and its Western Europe progenitors are the root cause and primary sustenance for the poverty, displacement, despair, and violence in Africa, born from decades of colonialist plunder.

    #ShutDownAFRICOM!

    #USOutofAfrica!

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  • Deplorable: Plans to Expand US Drone Atrocities in West Africa

    The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and the U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN) opposes in the strongest terms the U.S. plans, in collusion with West Africa’s comprador class, to further violate Africa’s sovereignty and right to self determination in the form of three new military drone bases in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin. Further, we condemn the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) for not publicly renouncing this proposal in particular, and the existence of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in general. Their silence around this development confirms their complicity and betrayal of Pan-Africanism and the interests of the African masses struggling against the ravages of neo-colonialism.

    More U.S. drone bases in Africa spell more violence, vicious anonymity, and “collateral damage” from drone assassinations. It spells enhanced surveillance capabilities for imperialism to use against any threat to the neocolonial order. U.S. maneuvering to expand its already massive military drone operations is consistent with the U.S. incessant drive to wage war globally and its militarization of the planet. U.S. drone and air strikes in Africa have primarily been in Libya and Somalia with the numbers of confirmed civilian deaths from drones as high as 3,200 in these two countries, and studies have shown these conditions “have inadvertently aided the growth of terrorist groups in the region.” This is what the U.S. proposes now for West Africa.

    There are clear and disturbing geostrategic implications regarding the countries they have chosen for these U.S. drone bases. The bases will form a border along the three countries of the Alliance of Sahel States – Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger – countries which have been adopting an anti-imperialist disposition. In fact, Burkina Faso’s entire southern flank would be surrounded by these U.S. drone bases. The last two administrations as well as members of Congress have clearly stated in policy declarations and legislation that the U.S.’ primary objective in Africa is to counteract the presence and influence of China and Russia in order to maintain its full spectrum dominance of all regions of the world. This is also consistent with the Global Fragility Act that states the Biden administration’s first sites of focus would be Haiti, Libya, and “West African coastal states,” where the U.S. seeks to place the drone bases.

    The bases will not be there to end so-called terrorism of extremists in Africa; they will be there for the U.S. to terrorize the region. It is folly to believe that the settler criminals who rule the U.S. state, who can justify the genocidal assault on Gaza, and who systematically murder, sanction, and attack nations globally to maintain white supremacy and global capitalism, are spending hundreds of millions to “fight terrorism” in Africa.

    Rather than “an urgent effort to stop the spread of al Qaeda and Islamic State in the region,” according to American and African officials, the USOAN contends that this is more likely a contingency plan to preserve drone capabilities in the event of losing their $110 million U.S. drone base in Agadez, Niger. Niger has also recently temporarily suspended the granting of new mining licenses and ordered an audit of the sector, a move that would invariably raise the eyebrows of the U.S.-EU-NATO axis of domination, concerned over the future of exploitative access to the mineral resources there, such as uranium. Resource sovereignty runs counter to the true colonialist objectives of U.S. foreign policy.

    BAP and the USOAN call on all who support African sovereignty to denounce the U.S.’ latest imperialist moves in Western Africa as well as the neocolonial African governments and collaborators like the Ghanaian president Nana Akufo-Addo who, face-to-face with U.S. Secretary Antony Blinken, openly begged for the U.S. to violate the sovereignty of the countries in the Alliance of Sahel States.

    BAP and the USOAN will continue to expose the puppets of neocolonialism in Africa and the misleaders masquerading as Black representatives in the legislative branches of the U.S. setter state. We maintain that the U.S. and its Western Europe progenitors are the root cause and primary sustenance for the poverty, displacement, despair, and violence in Africa, born from decades of colonialist plunder.

    #ShutDownAFRICOM!

    #USOutofAfrica!

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  • Defence scientists red team robotic vehicles in AUKUS trial

    Australian defence scientists have carried out a series of trial electronic attacks against robotic vehicles operated by the United States and the United Kingdom as part of the latest advanced technologies trial under AUKUS. The exercise, which took place in South Australia in late 2023, was designed to gauge the behaviour of autonomic vehicles when…

    The post Defence scientists red team robotic vehicles in AUKUS trial appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

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  • “Victoria Nuland — she’s the real ruler of Ukraine”

    Alexander Mercouris has perhaps the best track-record of all prognosticators on the important international news-stories, and this very much includes on the important news stories regarding the Ukraine crisis, not only since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started on 24 February 2022, but going all the way back to 2016 when he first reported. And, more generally, for example, compare his 10 October 2016 “U.S. Intelligence meddles in U.S. Presidential election: backs Hillary Clinton, tries to stop Donald Trump” to what the rest of the press were saying at the same time about the then-emerging manufactured ‘Russiagate’ story, such as the Democratic Party Time magazine’s Joe Klein headlining on 13 October 2016, “Why the Russian Hacks of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Should Reassure Us All”, which fell for the U.S. Government’s lie that Russia was ‘hacking’ the U.S. Democratic Party’s emails and maybe, just maybe, colluding with Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign in order to win the 2016 election for Trump — none of which turned out to have been true (but loads of Democratic Party voters believed it to be true, at least as recently as 2019). Mercouris instead exposed that fraud right away — and it was a fraud by the Obama Administration and the Hillary Clinton campaign instead of by the Trump campaign and Russia’s Government. (The closing Durham Report, which issued on 17 May 2023, blamed only Obama’s FBI, as-if it were independent of Obama and of his ‘Justice’ Department — and thus John Durham himself participated in the cover-up so as to leave the public still believing the Democratic Party’s lies that Russia had hacked the 2016 election — a lie that Lockheed Martin and other ‘Defense’ contractors greatly profit from being spread and sustained because it fools the public to support increasing the ‘defense’ budget while cutting everything else.) Mercouris has this ability — which only extremely few people have — to see to the heart of major news-events almost in real time, and to report immediately with a penetration and depth of insight into current events that exceeds even what normally passes for ‘history’ about those same events years if not decades later. His historical knowledge and ability to bring it all immediately to bear upon current events is at the very highest level if not at the very top.

    And here is an example of that in regards to the emergency now in Ukraine concerning the power-struggle between Ukraine’s current President Volodmyr Zelensky versus Ukraine’s immediately preceding President Petro Poroshenko and which has caused Biden to send Victoria Nuland to Kiev, the person who had run Obama’s 2014 coup in Ukraine that replaced the democratically elected and neutralist Government of Ukraine by the current rabidly anti-Russian and illegitimate government on Russia’s doorstep only 317 miles away from being able to hit The Kremlin with possibly a U.S. missile:

    He reports that Nuland has decided that Zelensky will fire Ukraine’s current general Valerii Zaluzhnyi (who is backed by Poroshenko) and replace him probably with either General Oleksandr Syrsky or else the head of Ukraine’s CIA or the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine, Kyrylo Budanov. If this is true, then it would probably indicate that Nuland wants Zelensky to stay as being Ukraine’s President.

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  • How to Interpret Washington’s New Version of “Hacker Script”

    Bloated hype beyond all reason. Illustration: Liu Rui/GT
    Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

    The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Christopher Wray, made sensational remarks on Wednesday in Congress, elevating the “China threat theory” to a new level. He claimed that hackers associated with the Chinese government are “positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities.” Targets include water treatment plants, electrical infrastructure and oil and natural gas pipelines, he said. In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin explicitly stated that China firmly opposes and cracks down on all forms of cyberattacks in accordance with law. Without valid evident, the US jumped to an unwarranted conclusion and made groundless accusations against China. It is extremely irresponsible and is a complete distortion of facts.

    On the same day, the US government added more than a dozen Chinese companies to a list created by the Defense Department to highlight firms it says are allegedly working with China’s military. US Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, exaggerated the potential national security risks posed by Chinese electric vehicles entering European market in talks with EU officials. From public opinion manipulation to actual actions, the US’ measures containing China were both intensive and frequent in recent days. The US once again unleashed a cold wind, at a time when communication and exchanges between high-level officials of China and the US have rapidly resumed since the beginning of 2024, and signs of stabilization in China-US relations have increased.

    This has become an increasingly common phenomenon in China-US relations, reflecting the high complexity and uncertainty of US policy toward China and the depth of distortions in the US understanding of China. However, we also notice that Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor to the US president, in his latest remarks on China-US relations on January 30, while emphasizing the need for the US to strengthen its “competitive position,” also highlighted the importance of building stability, managing differences, and stressed the significance of maintaining communication and intensive diplomacy.

    Taking a comprehensive view, US policy toward China is increasingly resembling a tightrope walk, with the key technique lying in maintaining balance. The US government is currently managing this with difficulty, and the challenge of maintaining balance is rapidly intensifying. The US clearly recognizes the serious consequences if balance cannot be upheld, but without timely adjustments, it is only a matter of time before it falls off the tightrope.

    This year is the US presidential election year, and negative topics concerning China will be further magnified and intensified. However, aside from the election factors, people can see at a glance that the two ends of the “balance pole” between the US and China are gradually shifting, with the rational end toward China becoming shorter and the irrational end toward China becoming longer. One major manifestation is the continuous innovation and upgrading of the “China threat theory,” which has contaminated the decision-making atmosphere and environment toward China, resulting in an increasingly imbalanced US policy toward China, even to the extent of losing control. This poses a significant risk for the US, the Asia-Pacific region, and the world.

    Why do American officials and politicians like Christopher Wray work so hard to create and spread the “China threat theory”? The reasons are multifaceted. For example, the most common occasions are often in the US Congress, both because Congress has become a gathering place for anti-China politicians and because Congress controls the purse strings. Using the “China threat” as a gimmick is the best way to secure funding. Additionally, some individuals project their inner world onto China. There are also those who have developed a delusion about China, where anything related to the word “China” becomes a “terrifying monster” that must be guarded against. This is a result of extreme lack of confidence, anxiety, and even delusion in the face of China’s rapid development.

    Also on January 31, the Senate Judiciary Committee hosted a hearing titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis.” The chief executives of five major social media giants, including TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew attended to testify. Although the meeting had a predetermined theme and many attendees, Chew once again became the focus. Many senators bypassed the main topic and questioned Chew about his relationship with China. Republican Senator Tom Cotton even aggressively questioned Chew’s citizenship with eight questions. It is well known that Chew is from Singapore. Even netizens on X platform couldn’t stand it and condemned Cotton for his “xenophobia” and “blatant racism.” Isn’t this a microcosm of Washington politicians?

    It is evident that the US authorities have the intention to use anti-China rhetoric and need a strategic imaginary enemy or scapegoat in Washington politics. However, this is feeding a monster with malice and hostility toward China. The monster is growing day by day, with an increasing appetite and becoming more cunning. In the past, stories about “Chinese hackers” could satisfy it for a while, but now the story has to be escalated to the level of threatening all Americans. When this monster breaks free, its first target will be the US itself.

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  • Flashpoint for War: The Drone Killings at Tower 22

    The BBC’s characteristically mild-mannered note said it all: What is Tower 22?  More to the point, what are US forces doing in Jordan?  (To be more precise, a dusty scratching on the Syria-Jordan border.)  These questions were posed in the aftermath of yet another drone attack against a US outpost in the Middle East, its location of dubious strategic relevance to Washington, yet seen as indispensable to its global footprint.  On this occasion, the attack proved successful, killing three troops and wounding dozens.

    The Times of Israel offered a workmanlike description of the site’s role: “Tower 22 is located close enough to US troops at Tanf that it could potentially help support them, while potentially countering Iran-backed militants in the area and allowing troops to keep an eye on remnants of Islamic State in the region.”  The paper does not go on to mention the other role: that US forces are also present in the region to protect Israeli interests, acting as a shield against Iran.

    While Tower 22 is located more towards Jordan, it is a dozen miles or so to the Syria-based al-Tanf garrison, which retains a US troop presence.  Initially, that presence was justified to cope with the formidable threat posed by Islamic State as part of Operation Inherent Resolve.  In due course, it became something of a watch post on Iran’s burgeoning military presence in Syria and Iraq, an inflation as much a consequence of Tehran’s successful efforts against the fundamentalist group as it was a product of Washington’s destabilising invasion of Iraq in 2003.

    A January 28 press release from US Central Command notes that the attack was inflicted by “a one-way attack UAS [Unmanned Aerial System] that impacted on a base in northeast Jordan, near the Syrian border.”  Its description of Tower 22 is suitably vague, described as a “logistics support base” forming the Jordanian Defense Network.  “There are approximately 350 US Army and Air Force personnel deployed to the base, conducting a number of key support functions, including support to the coalition for the lasting defeat of ISIS.”  No mention is made of Iran or Israel.

    Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh found it hard to conceal the extent that US bases in the region have come under attack.  Clumsily, she tried to be vague as to reasons why such assaults were taking place to begin with, though her department has, since October 17 last year, tracked 165 attacks, 66 on US troops in Iraq and 98 in Syria.  The singular feature in the assault on Tower 22, she stressed, was that it worked.  “To my knowledge, there was nothing different or new about this attack that we’ve seen in other facilities that house our service members,” she told reporters on January 29.  “Unfortunately, this attack was successful, but we can’t discount the fact that other attacks, whether Iraq or Syria, were not intended to kill our service members.”

    A senior official from the umbrella grouping known as Islamic Resistance in Iraq justified the attack as part of a broader campaign against the US for its unwavering support for Israel and its relentlessly murderous campaign in Gaza.  (Since October 17, the group is said to have staged 140 attacks on US sites in both Iraq and Syria.)  “As we have said before if the US keeps supporting Israel, there will [be] escalations.”  The official in question went on to state that, “All the US interests in the region are legitimate targets, and we don’t care about US threats to respond.”

    A generally accepted view among security boffins is that US troops have achieved what they sought to do: cope with the threat posed by Islamic State.  As with any such groups, dissipation and readjustment eventually follows.  Washington’s military officials delight in using the term “degrade”, but it would be far better to simply assume that the fighters of such outfits eventually take up with others, blend into the locale, or simply go home.

    With roughly 3,000 personnel stationed in Jordan, 2,500 in Iraq, and 900 in Syria, US troops have become ripe targets as Israel’s war in Gaza rages.  In effect, they have become bits of surplus pieces on the Middle Eastern chessboard and, to that end, incentives for a broader conflict.  The Financial Times, noting the view of an unnamed source purporting to be a “senior western diplomat” (aren’t they always?), fretted that the tinderbox was about to go off.  “We’re always worried about US and Iranian forces getting into direct confrontation there, whether by accident or on purpose.”

    President Joe Biden has promised some suitable retaliation but does not wish for “a wider war in the Middle East.  That’s not what I’m looking for.”  A typically mangled response came from National Security Council spokesman John Kirby: “It’s very possible what you’ll see is a tiered approach here, not just a single action, but potentially multiple actions over a period of time.”

    Rather than seeing these attacks as incentives to leave such outposts, the don’t cut and run mentality may prove all too powerful in its muscular stupidity.  Empires do not merely bring with them sorrows but incentives to be stubborn.  The beneficiaries will be the usual coterie of war mongers and peace killers.

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  • Redefining US-Latin American Relations: From Outdated Monroe Doctrine to a 21st Century Good Neighbor Policy

    The Trump administration dusted off the 19th century Monroe Doctrine that subjugates the nations of the region to U.S. interests. The Biden administration, instead of reversing course,  followed suite, with disastrous results for the region and a migration crisis that threatens Biden’s re-election.

    It has left most of Trump’s sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba intact and has tightened those against Nicaragua.

    U.S. policy towards Venezuela has been a fiasco. Try as it might, both Trump and Biden were unable to depose President Maduro and found themselves stuck with a self-proclaimed president, Juan Guaidó. U.S. support for Guaidó backfired as he was held responsibility for massive corruption involving Venezuelan assets abroad that were turned over to him. Now Washington is openly siding with presidential hopeful María Corina Machado, who has a long history of engagement in violent disruptions and has called on the U.S. to invade her country. The Venezuelan people have paid a heavy price for the debacle, which has included crippling economic sanctions and coup attempts. The U.S. has also paid a price in terms of its prestige internationally.

    This is only one example of a string of disastrous policies toward Latin America.

    Instead of continuing down this imperial path of endless confrontation, U.S. policymakers need to stop, recalibrate, and design an entirely new approach to inter-American relations. This is particularly urgent as the continent is in the throes of an economic recession that is compounded by low commodity prices, a belly-up tourist industry and the drying up of remittances from outside.

    A good reference point for a policy makeover is Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy” in the 1930s, which represented an abrupt break with the interventionism of that time. FDR abandoned “gunboat diplomacy” in which Marines were sent throughout the region to impose U.S. will. Though his policies were criticized for not going far enough, he did bring back U.S. Marines from Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and scrapped the Platt Amendment that allowed the U.S. to intervene unilaterally in Cuban affairs.

    So what would a Good Neighbor Policy for the 21st Century look like? Here are some key planks:

    An end to military intervention. The illegal use of military force has been a hallmark of U.S. policy in the region, as we see from the deployment of Marines in the Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989; involvement in military actions leading to the Guatemalan coup in 1954 and destabilization in Nicaragua in the 1980s; support for coups in Brazil in 1964, Chile in 1973 and elsewhere. A Good Neighbor Policy would not only renounce the use of military force, but even the threat of such force (as in “all options are on the table”), particularly because such threats are illegal under international law.

    U.S. military intimidation also comes in the form of U.S. bases that dot the continent from Cuba to Colombia to further south. These installations are often resisted by local communities, as was the case of the Manta Base in Ecuador that was shut down in 2008 and the ongoing opposition against the Guantanamo Base in Cuba. U.S. bases in Latin America are a violation of local sovereignty and should be closed, with the lands cleaned up and returned to their rightful owners.

    Another form of military intervention is the financing and training of local military and police forces. Most of the U.S. assistance sent to Latin America, particularly Central America, goes towards funding security forces, resulting in the militarization of police and borders, and leading to greater police brutality, extrajudicial killings and repression of migrants. The training school in Ft. Benning, Georgia, formerly called the “School of the Americas,” graduated some of the continent’s worst human rights abusers. Even today, U.S.-trained forces are involved in egregious abuses, including the assassination of activists like Berta Cáceres in Honduras. U.S. programs to confront drugs, from the Merida Initiative in Mexico to Plan Colombia, have not stopped the flow of drugs but have poured massive amounts of weapons into the region and led to more killings, torture and gang violence. Latin American governments need to clean up their own national police forces and link them to communities, a more effective way to combat drug trafficking than the militarization that Washington has promoted.  The greatest contribution the U.S. can make to putting an end to the narcotics scourge in Latin America is to control the U.S. market for those drugs through responsible reforms and to prevent the sale of U.S.-made weapons to drug cartels.

    No more political meddling. While the U.S. public has been shocked by charges of Russian interference in its elections, this kind of meddling is par for the course in Latin America. USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), created in 1983 as a neutral sounding alternative to the CIA, spend millions of tax-payer dollars to undermine progressive movements. Following the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, for instance, NED ramped up its assistance to conservative groups in Venezuela (which became the foundation’s number one Latin American recipient) as a leadup to regime change attempts.

    An end to the use of economic blackmail. The U.S. government uses economic pressure to impose its will. The Trump administration threatened to halt remittances to Mexico to extract concessions from the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador on immigration issues. A similar threat persuaded many voters in El Salvador’s 2004 presidential elections to refrain from voting for the candidate of the left-leaning Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).

    The U.S. also uses economic coercion. For the past 60 years, U.S. administrations have sanctioned Cuba—a policy that has not successfully led to regime change but has made living conditions harder for the Cuban people. The same is true in Venezuela, where one study says that in just 2017-2018, over 40,000 Venezuelans died as a result of sanctions. With coronavirus, these sanctions have become even more deadly. A Good Neighbor Policy would lift the economic sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua and help them recover economically.

    Support trade policies that lift people out of poverty and protect the environment. U.S. free trade agreements with Latin America have been good for the elites and U.S. corporations, but have increased economic inequality, eroded labor rights, destroyed the livelihoods of small farmers, furthered the privatization of public services, and compromised national sovereignty. When indebted nations seek loans from international financial institutions, the loans have been conditioned on the imposition of neoliberal policies that exacerbate all ofthese trends.

    In terms of the environment, too often the U.S. government has sided with global oil and mining interests when local communities in Latin America and the Caribbean have challenged resource-extracting projects that threaten their environment and endanger public health. We must launch a new era of energy and natural resource cooperation that prioritizes renewable sources of energy, green jobs, and good environmental stewardship.

    Massive protests against neoliberal policies erupted throughout Latin America shortly prior to the pandemic and will return with a vengeance unless countries are free to explore alternatives to neoliberal policies. A New Good Neighbor Policy would cease imposing economic conditions on Latin American governments and would call on the International Monetary Fund to do the same. An example of international cooperation is China’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” which, even with some downsides, has generated goodwill in the Global South by prioritizing investments in much-needed infrastructure projects without conditioning its funding on any aspect of government policy.

    Humane immigration policy. Throughout history, U.S. administrations have refused to take responsibility for the ways the U.S. has spurred mass migration north, including unfair trade agreements, support for dictators, climate change, drug consumption and the export of gangs. Instead, immigrants have been used and abused as a source of cheap labor, and vilified according to the political winds. President Obama was the deporter-in-chief; President Trump has been caging children, building walls, and shutting off avenues for people to seek asylum; President Biden is better than his predecessor when it comes to rhetoric, but not so much action-wise. A Good Neighbor policy would dismantle ICE and the cruel deportation centers; it would provide the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States a path to citizenship; and it would respect the international right of people to seek asylum.

    Recognition of Latin America’s cultural contributions. President Trump’s blatant disrespect towards Latin Americans and immigrants, including his call for building a wall “paid for by Mexico,” intensified racist attitudes among his base which has continued ever since. A new Latin America policy would not only counter racism but would uplift the region’s exceptional cultural richness. The controversy surrounding the extensive commercial promotion of the novel “American Dirt,” written by a U.S. author about the Mexican immigration experience, is an example of the underestimation of talent south of the border. The contributions of the continent’s indigenous population should also be appreciated and justly compensated, such as the centuries-old medicinal cures that are often exploited by U.S.-based pharmaceutical companies.

    An all-encompassing expression of goodwill in the form of a New Good Neighbor Policy will meet resistance from vested economic and military interests, as well as those persuaded by racist arguments. But the vast majority of people in the United States have nothing to lose by it and, in fact, have much to gain. Universal threats, such as coronavirus and the climate crisis, have taught us the limits of borders and should act as incentives to construct a Good Neighbor Policy for the 21st Century based on those principles of non-intervention and mutual respect.

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