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Category: United States

  • Greenpeace Calls on US and Mexico to Defuse Largest Carbon Bomb in North America

    Ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden’s Tuesday meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Greenpeace implored the two men to commit to ending all new oil and gas development in the Permian Basin, increasing clean energy investments, and securing a just transition for fossil fuel workers.

    As detailed in a recent multimedia report, the Permian Basin—home to two million people in West Texas and southeast New Mexico—was transformed into “the world’s single most prolific oil and gas field” during last decade’s drilling and fracking boom.

    If fossil fuel executives’ plans to expand extraction in the basin and boost exports from the Gulf Coast are allowed to go forward, experts estimate that nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide would be emitted by 2050—equivalent to 10% of the world’s remaining “carbon budget,” or the amount of pollution compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels by the century’s end. Meanwhile, a recent study found that the basin’s pipelines are currently leaking 14 times more methane than previously thought.

    “Mexico’s updated climate goals can only be attained if both Mexico and the U.S. put an end to exploitation of the Permian Basin,” Gustavo Ampugnani, executive director of Greenpeace Mexico, said Tuesday in a statement. “Greenpeace offices in the two countries will campaign on all fronts until Presidents López Obrador and Biden put their money where their mouths are.”

    According to Greenpeace:

    As both nations face increased threats from the climate crisis, leaders from the U.S. and Mexico continue to incentivize the fossil fuel industry to ramp up oil and gas production in the Permian Basin and greenlight polluting fossil fuel infrastructure projects that will lock us into decades of emissions. From drilling and refining operations in Texas, to pipelines carrying Permian oil and gas through Mexico, the fossil fuel industry jeopardizes the health and safety of communities at each stage of the fossil fuel production process.

    Last year, the U.S. became the world’s top exporter of liquefied natural gas. “Around 70% of Mexico’s natural gas supply is being met by U.S. pipeline imports,” Greenpeace noted. “This is not what climate leadership looks like.”

    “From drought and record heatwaves to stronger, more frequent storms and flooding, we are living in a climate emergency.”

    Prior to last November’s COP27 climate conference—which ended, like the 26 meetings before it, with no blueprint for rapidly cutting off planet-wrecking fossil fuels—the United Nations published reports warning that due to woefully inadequate emissions reductions targets and policies, there is “no credible path to 1.5°C in place,” and only “urgent system-wide transformation” can prevent a cataclysmic temperature rise of nearly 3°C by 2100.

    According to the latest data, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—the three main heat-trapping gases pushing temperatures upward—reached an all-time high in 2021, and greenhouse gas emissions only continued to climb in 2022.

    Despite ample evidence that new fossil fuel projects will worsen deadly climate chaos, oil and gas corporations—supported by trillions of dollars in public subsidies each year—are still planning to expand dirty energy production in the coming years, including in the Permian Basin.

    “The oil and gas industry has lit a fuse on the Permian Basin carbon bomb that threatens to blow up any hope of a livable future,” John Noel, senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace USA, said Tuesday. “The technology to address the climate crisis already exists. It’s time for Presidents Biden and López Obrador to commit to ending the exploitation and destruction of our communities at the hands of the oil and gas industry.”

    “From drought and record heatwaves to stronger, more frequent storms and flooding, we are living in a climate emergency,” Noel added. “Last year, President Biden said that he will treat it as such. It’s time for him to make good on those words by kickstarting a fossil fuel phaseout and declaring a climate emergency.”

    Greenpeace’s intervention came as Biden and López Obrador prepared to engage in bilateral talks as part of the so-called “Tres Amigos” summit in Mexico City, which also features Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

    In the lead-up to the meeting, more than 100 progressive advocacy groups from around North America urged the continent’s heads of government to cooperate on mitigating the climate crisis, ensuring the just treatment of migrants, and reducing gun violence.

  • The U.S. Regime Made me a Non-Person

    This is what happens to anyone who happens to report the types of things that America’s billionaires want to be hidden from the public.

    To understand how it happened to me (and has happened to lots of others), an introduction is needed, first, about the American Government:

    America’s First Amendment to its Constitution is this sentence: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

    The best summary-description of what that means (as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court) is by the American Library Association, and includes the following crucial statement:

    “The First Amendment only prevents government restrictions on speech. It does not prevent restrictions on speech imposed by private individuals or businesses. Facebook and other social media can regulate or restrict speech hosted on their platforms because they are private entities.”

    So long as a “private” entity censors public debate, the nation’s laws cannot get involved in that — that censorship cannot be outlawed. If public debate can be squelched by private entities, that’s okay, in America’s system of Government.

    The false assumption of this system is that allowing private entities to squelch “the press” or “the news media,” is okay because different private entities will squelch different truths from being presented to the public; and, so, each citizen will select which types of truths not to know, and which types of lies to believe instead — and that’s ‘democracy’ in America. Having different private entities black-out different truths and filter-in different lies instead, will give each citizen whatever he or she wants to believe. The individual will select on the basis of one’s own prejudices. That’s the individual’s ‘freedom’. The consumer will choose which type of fool to be (such as a fool of Democratic Party billionaires, or a fool of Republican Party billionaires), and will buy (believe) whatever lies he or she wants. But is that — belief in the political falsehoods that the individual prefers — really democracy? Won’t the result be instead to cement-in whatever myths that are setting different groups in the society against each other — instead of going against whatever is actually wrong with the Government? How will whatever is wrong with the Government get fixed, that way? Is it even possible?

    Scientific empirical studies that compare what the American public want to become laws in America and of what they don’t want to become laws, versus what actually does become law and what does not, have shown that only the preferences of the very wealthiest Americans affect and shape the nation’s laws. This is a one-dollar-one-vote country, not a one-person-one-vote country. (This is an empirical fact, not a theory.) America’s Government is an aristocracy, not a democracy. It’s controlled by counting the wealth, not really by counting the persons. Furthermore, 57.16% of the money that is donated to political campaigns in the U.S. comes from the richest one-ten-thousandth (top 0.01% wealthiest) of the American people (the “original donors” — the actual individuals who donated it); so, the individuals who own the controlling interests in the corporations, think tanks, foundations, and media that shape public opinion in America and who thus determine who becomes elected and who does not, are only the very richest few, America’s actual aristocrats, the people who control the public. The public thus vote the way that the super-rich of both Parties want them to vote. There is a technology of “manufactured ‘public’ consent,” and it’s controlled by the billionaires — NOT by the public. And whereas Democratic Party billionaires determine who get nominated by their Party, and Republican billionaires determine who get nominated by their Party, virtually no one gets elected who wasn’t first selected and backed by that Party’s billionaires.

    Since those few individuals control the media, they ALSO are the ULTIMATE employers of the various censors — both on the Republican side and on the Democratic side.

    All of the media that are NOT controlled by the super-rich are small (none of them are large, or even medium-sized), and one of those is “Ms. Cat’s Chronicles”. On January 3rd, they headlined linking through to one of the 5 (out of the 200+ that I submitted it to) sites that had published my December 30th article, “Censorship Prohibits Spreading Truths, And Demands Spreading Lies”, and they gave an excerpt from the full article, and they noted “Related: Eric Zuesse’s Now-Deleted Profile at Modern Diplomacy” but here is what became of that profile. It’s gone. All of my hundreds of articles which had been published at Modern Diplomacy are gone. I am now a non-person there (which had been one of the few remaining sites that the billionaires hadn’t yet gotten under their control). And here is the full article that was linked-through to, by “Ms. Cat”: it was published at Oriental Review, “Censorship Prohibits Spreading Truths, And Demands Spreading Lies”, and it explains, and fully documents, how the owner of Modern Diplomacy was forced, by ‘NewsGuard’ in Washington DC, to remove me — the author there that had drawn more page-views than any other author there. And yet, all of those articles now are gone. And you can see described there how it was done, and you can also see that truthfulness had nothing whatsoever to do with my being removed, but that my reporting the ‘wrong’ truths had everything to do with it. A censoring organization that had been funded by some billionaires’ agents, and called itself a “news guard” for the general public, did it. I report truths that all American billionaires (the people who actually control the U.S. Government) want Americans NOT to know. And now, the billionaires are going after EVEN the few (all of them very small) remaining sites, that publish SOME articles that the billionaires want the public NOT to see.

    There is no way to solve this, other than by outlawing ALL censorship, and allowing the public to see everything — regardless of whether or not some ‘news’-media owner, or billionaire-funded ‘NewsGuard’ service, doesn’t like it.

    Censorship that’s done by the agents of the billionaires who control a Government is just as vile as is censorship that’s done DIRECTLY BY that Government. ALL censorship should be outlawed, regardless of who does that censorship. Otherwise, how is an authentic democracy even possible?

    This problem can exist ONLY in a country that has enormous wealth-inequality (such as the U.S. does) and that allows by law (such as the U.S. does) agents of its very wealthiest few to coerce all but a few of the smallest news media to eliminate — not to publish — whatever those super-wealthy individuals want to be blacklisted (not published). The reality in the U.S. today is a ‘democracy’ of, by, and for, only its super-rich, none of whom want the public to know this fact. One way or another, a country that has enormous wealth-inequality will be a dictatorship; and no dictatorship can exist and be perpetuated without censorship. Censorship is the cardinal mark of any dictatorship. Only without censorship can democracy exist, at all. To censor is to mentally control another person — not to inform that person. It is mentally to enslave, not to free, that person. It is not to educate but to miseducate and manipulate that person. Any authentic democracy will do everything possible to prevent censorship.

    Julian Assange has been imprisoned by the UK on the demand by the U.S. for over a decade now, though never convicted of anything, but ONLY because he was the world’s most effective champion against censorship and for international democracy and personal accountability. To call either of these countries a democracy is to lie, and to insult the very term “democracy.” What Governments deserve to be overthrown and replaced more than those two do? However, any such revolution must be against censorship, and must itself be overthrown and replaced if it entails any censorship. To replace one dictatorship by another is no path toward freedom.

    The post The U.S. Regime Made me a Non-Person first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • George Floyd, a life

    Malik Miah reviews His Name is George Floyd, a new book that places George Perry Floyd Jnr’s life and death at the hands of police in the context of the racial history of the United States.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Pentagon doc reveals US lied about Afghan civilians killed in 2021 drone strike

    A new report reveals United States military officials knew that an August 2021 drone strike in Kabul likely killed Afghan civilians including children, but lied about it, writes Brett Wilkins.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Omali Yeshitela: ‘I was attacked by the FBI for fighting for black power’

    African People’s Socialist Party chairperson Omali Yeshitela discusses the FBI raid on his home and the continuing US government war on the movement for Black liberation and reparations.

  • United States: Two barrels aim at African People’s Socialist Party

    Members of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) in the United States are expecting to be indicted this month over spurious allegations, reports Don Fitz, prompting a grassroots solidarity defence campaign.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • 100+ Groups Push North American Leaders to Act on Guns, Climate, and Immigrant Justice



    Three days before U.S. President Joe Biden, Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are set to meet in Mexico City, more than 100 grassroots groups from all three countries called on the leaders on Thursday to take action together to help solve the climate crisis, end gun violence, and address injustices facing migrants across North America.

    Immigration is among the issues the leaders are expected to discuss at the North American Leaders’ Summit—also known as the “Tres Amigos” summit—and the groups noted that “North America is one of the deadliest regions in the world for migrants, with 2022 setting a record number of migrant deaths at the Mexico-U.S. border.”

    ” International agreements to protect migrants from violence have been ignored and undermined, leaving thousands of families stranded at borders as a result,” reads the letter, which was sent as Biden announced new U.S. immigration policies including an expansion of the Trump administration’s expulsions of migrants to Mexico under Title 42, under which Biden will expel up to 30,000 people per month unless they arrive in the U.S. via a humanitarian parole program.

    “International agreements to protect migrants from violence have been ignored and undermined, leaving thousands of families stranded at borders.”

    The groups called on Biden, Trudeau, and López Obrador—commonly known as AMLO—to “increase economic opportunities and cut violence in communities of origin” as well as respect the human rights of all migrants and asylum-seekers and end “policies that promote arbitrary and hostile action toward migrants.”

    The letter, which was spearheaded by Global Exchange and signed by groups including March for Our Lives, Amazon Watch, and Witness at the Border, also came as Global Exchange co-executive director Marco Castillo wrote about the interlocking issues of gun violence, the climate emergency, and immigration in a Newsweek opinion piece on Thursday.

    “I hope that addressing the underlying causes of immigration—including gun violence and climate change—will be discussed” at the Tres Amigos summit, Castillo wrote, adding:

    The illegal flow of guns across borders mostly lands in the hands of Mexican paramilitary, corrupt police, and cartels. Roughly 70% of the firearms involved in homicides in Mexico can be traced back to the U.S….
    The problem is so prolific, the Mexican government filed a $10 billion lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers and distributors in 2021 for damages caused by illegal gun trafficking. U.S. federal courts dismissed the lawsuit last year, thanks to America’s all but untouchable gun lobby. The immunity that American gun manufacturers have is offensive and needs to end.

    […]

    Another issue driving forced migration across North America is climate change. From Guatemala to the Artic Circle, the increasing frequency and severity of forest fires, droughts, storms, and floods are displacing entire communities, threatening livelihoods and traditional ways of life. People of color, low-income communities, women, and Indigenous peoples are impacted most severely.

    While Canada ranks far below the U.S. and Mexico in terms of gun violence and gun-related deaths, the letter sent to the three leaders noted, the country is not immune to injustices linked to the prevalence of firearms.

    “In Canada, from 2007 to 2017, First Nations (Indigenous communities) accounted for one-third of people shot to death by national police officers,” reads the letter. “Black Canadians are 20 times more likely to be shot and killed by the police than white people.”

    The Latin America Working Group called on the leaders “to work together for peace without guns.”

    The grassroots groups also pointed to recent comments made by Trudeau’s government regarding the climate crisis in its 2022-23 development plan on environmental and climate change, which stated, “We are seeing the impacts of climate change including the increased frequency and severity of forest fires, extreme heat events, storms, and flooding… causing significant consequences to Canadian and First Nations communities, economies, and way of life.”

    “We are among the first to feel the consequences of climate change in Canada,” said Melissa Iakowi:he’ne’ Oakes, a Mohawk woman and executive director of the North American Indigenous Center of New York, which signed the letter. “It affects our ancestral lands, which affects our food security, economies, culture, and identities, and worsens the health inequities we’re already experiencing.”

    The letter includes a list of several demands ahead of the talks between Biden, Trudeau, and AMLO, including:

    • Take concrete measures to end U.S. gun exports and trafficking to Mexico, including banning assault weapons across the region, increasing restrictions for sales, and canceling transfers to corrupted police and military units;
    • End immunity for gun manufacturers in the U.S. and hold them and their dealers accountable for crimes committed with their weapons;
    • Develop a regional plan to dramatically reduce fossil fuel emissions across the continent;
    • Support climate-related disaster prevention and readiness for impacted communities, and propel a new green economy to generate jobs while protecting the environment; and
    • Show deference to the practices of Indigenous peoples, who have proven to be the best protectors of the environment, and allow Indigenous communities to maintain control of ancestral territories.
    The signatories noted that many of them will also be gathering in Mexico City for a Peace Summit in February, also led by Global Exchange, where they plan to discuss the outcome of the Tres Amigos summit, “develop a multinational action agenda, and organize around the upcoming elections in each of our countries.”
    “We will do everything in our power to support you in creating the world we deserve,” they wrote.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • US, Israel Vote No as UN Approves World Court Resolution on Illegal Occupation



    The General Assembly of the United Nations on Friday approved a resolution that asks the International Court of Justice to issue an opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories.

    The resolution passed with a final vote of 87 in favor, 26 opposed, and 53 nations abstaining. Among those opposed to the measure were the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

    Specifically, the resolution asks the ICJ to provide the United Nations with an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s ongoing “occupation, settlement and annexation” of the Occupied Territories, “including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures.”

    The official request to the ICJ also asks the body, known broadly as the World Court, how specific Israeli policies and practices “affect the legal status of the occupation” and to characterize any legal consequences for all the United Nations and its member states that stem from this status.

    Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said Saturday that the vote signals that “the time has come for Israel to be a state subject to law, and to be held accountable for its ongoing crimes against our people.”

    Ahead of the vote, Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour said in an address to General Assembly members: “We trust that, regardless of your vote today, if you believe in international law and peace, you will uphold the opinion of the International Court of Justice when delivered and you will stand up to this Israeli government right now.”

    As Al-Jazeera noted, “The ICJ last weighed in on the issue of Israel’s occupation in 2004, when it ruled that Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem was illegal. Israel rejected that ruling, accusing the court of being politically motivated.”

    The Israeli government made its displeasure with the resolution known prior to the vote, with its U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan saying “[a]ny decision from a judicial body which receives its mandate from the morally bankrupt and politicized U.N. is completely illegitimate.”

    While the ICJ’s rulings have binding status, there is no legal mechanism to enforce its decisions and continued U.S. support for Israeli occupation means there is little hope for any consequences regardless of what the World Court puts forth.

    Mansour noted that Friday’s vote arrived just days following the swearing-in of the new far-right Israeli government, once again headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but now backed by a coalition even more hostile to Palestinian rights than previous iterations.

    Mansour warned that Netanyahu will now oversee an acceleration of the “colonial and racist policies” that have marked the Likud governments of the past.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Kosovo Closes Main Border With Serbia Amid Protests, Rising Tensions



    Kosovo shut down its largest border crossing with Serbia on Wednesday, underscoring the extent to which tensions between the two Balkan countries are rising.

    Albanian-majority Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 with Western support, roughly a decade after North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces intervened and carried out a bombing campaign on behalf of ethnic Albanians during a 1998-1999 civil war.

    Serbia has refused to recognize the statehood of its former province, however. Instead, according to Agence France-Presse, Belgrade has encouraged 120,000 ethnic Serbs living in Kosovo to defy Pristina’s authority—especially in northern Kosovo where Serbs constitute the majority.

    According to Al Jazeera: “About 50,000 Serbs living in ethnically divided northern Kosovo refuse to recognize the government in Pristina or the status of Kosovo as a country separate from Serbia. They have the support of many Serbs in Serbia and its government.”

    As AFP reported:

    The latest trouble erupted on December 10, when ethnic Serbs put up barricades to protest the arrest of an ex-policeman suspected of being involved in attacks against ethnic Albanian police officers—effectively sealing off traffic on two border crossings.
    After the roadblocks were erected, Kosovar police and international peacekeepers were attacked in several shooting incidents, while the Serbian armed forces were put on heightened alert this week.
    Late Tuesday, dozens of demonstrators on the Serbian side of the border used trucks and tractors to halt traffic leading to Merdare, the biggest crossing between the neighbors—a move which forced Kosovo police to close the entry point on Wednesday.

    Due to recent border blockades and closures, just three entry points between the two countries remain open. The obstructions are “preventing thousands of Kosovars who work elsewhere in Europe from returning home for holidays,” Al Jazeera noted.

    “Kosovo’s government has asked NATO’s peacekeeping force for the country, the approximately 4,000-strong KFOR, to clear the barricades” erected on its side of the border, the news outlet reported. “KFOR has no authority to act on Serbian soil.”

    KFOR commander Major General Angelo Michele Ristuccia said Wednesday in a statement that “it is paramount that all involved avoid any rhetoric or actions that can cause tensions and escalate the situation.”

    “Solutions should be sought through dialogue,” he added.

    On Tuesday, Kosovo Interior Minister Xhelal Sveçla accused Serbia, under the influence of Russia, of trying to destabilize its former province by supporting ethnic Serbs who have been demonstrating for weeks in northern Kosovo.

    According to Al Jazeera:

    Serbia denies it is trying to destabilize its neighbor and says it only wants to protect the Serbian minority living in what is now Kosovan territory… not recognized by Belgrade.
    Moscow said on Wednesday that it supported Serbia’s attempts to protect ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo but denied Pristina’s accusation that Russia was somehow stoking tensions in an attempt to sow chaos across the Balkans.

    Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called it “wrong” to blame Moscow for escalating tensions between Kosovo and Serbia.

    “Serbia is a sovereign country, and naturally, it protects the rights of Serbs who live nearby in such difficult conditions, and naturally reacts harshly when these rights are violated,” said Peskov.

    “Having very close allied relations, historical and spiritual relations with Serbia, Russia is very closely monitoring what is happening, how the rights of Serbs are respected and ensured,” he added. “And, of course, we support Belgrade in the actions that are being taken.”

    In a joint statement released Wednesday, the European Union and the United States called on all parties “to exercise maximum restraint, to take immediate action to unconditionally de-escalate the situation, and to refrain from provocations, threats, or intimidation.”

    Serbian Defense Minister Miloš Vučević on Wednesday described the barricades as a “democratic and peaceful” means of protest and said that Belgrade has “an open line of communication” with Western diplomats on resolving the issue.

    “We are all worried about the situation and where all this is going,” said Vučević. “Serbia is ready for a deal.”

    As AFP reported, “Northern Kosovo has been on edge since November when hundreds of ethnic Serb workers in the Kosovo police as well as the judicial branch, including judges and prosecutors, walked off the job.”

    “They were protesting a controversial decision to ban Serbs living in Kosovo from using Belgrade-issued vehicle license plates—a policy that was eventually scrapped by Pristina,” the news agency noted. “The mass walkouts created a security vacuum in Kosovo, which Pristina tried to fill by deploying ethnic Albanian police officers in the region.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Southwest Under Fire for Mass Flight Cancellations, ‘Despicable’ Treatment of Workers



    Southwest Airlines is facing calls for accountability from organized labor and congressional Democrats after canceling thousands of flights over the past week, leaving tens of thousands of workers and customers in limbo during the holiday season.

    Every airline has experienced disruptions during Winter Storm Elliott, the dangerous nationwide cold snap that began just days before Christmas. But while other major carriers have largely recovered, Southwest continues to struggle, canceling roughly two-thirds of its flights on Tuesday. United, Delta, American, and JetBlue, by contrast, all reported flight cancellation rates of 2% or less on Tuesday.

    While Southwest chief operating officer Andrew Watterson said in a memo sent to employees on Monday night that the company’s current systems have been “overmatched” by extreme weather, the union representing Southwest flight attendants attributes ongoing operational failures and maltreatment of workers to the corporation’s yearslong refusal to invest in much-needed technological upgrades.

    “The way Southwest Airlines has treated its flight crews can only be termed ‘despicable.’”

    “The way Southwest Airlines has treated its flight crews can only be termed ‘despicable,’” Lyn Montgomery, a Dallas-based flight attendant and president of Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 556, said Monday in a statement.

    “We know the demands of holiday travel. We know winter storms. And believe me, we know about stepping up and putting in long work hours when we are called to do so; we are flight attendants,” said Montgomery. “But at this point, the many years of failure by management, despite many unions’ demands to modernize, has left flight attendants fatigued, stranded, hungry, and cold—on Christmas! This impacts lives and threatens safety for all.”

    According to TWU Local 556, thousands of Southwest crew members have been “stranded across the country, some forced to sleep on cots in airports, some in hotels without power or water, and far too many working long hours well past acceptable duty days, and more.”

    “Trying to get home for Christmas seems like a dream to flight attendants who are struggling with the nightmare of simply trying to secure appropriate shelter, food, and rest,” the union added.

    Other Southwest employees have also been subjected to abuse. According to a leaked memo from last Wednesday, Southwest’s vice president for ground operations, Chris Johnson, told ramp agents at Denver International Airport (DIA) that they will be terminated if they refuse to work mandatory overtime or take a sick day without providing a doctor’s note immediately upon their return.

    Like other corporations, Southwest benefited from billions of dollars in federal aid during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although there have been no noticeable improvements in conditions for workers or consumers, chief executive officer Bob Jordan saw his annual compensation package increase to $9.1 million in 2022.

    Meanwhile, thousands of Southwest customers have been stranded in airports around the country in recent days, with little knowledge of where their luggage is or when they will be able to reach their destination.

    Although the company said Monday in a statement that its agents are trying to re-accommodate as many passengers as possible, it also announced that it will “continue operating a reduced schedule by flying roughly one-third of our schedule for the next several days.”

    “The plan was to get out of here by now,” Amenit Alvarez, who is trying to travel from DIA, told CBS News Colorado on Monday. “I was supposed to be home for Christmas.”

    According to the outlet: “After two canceled flights since Thursday, Alvarez decided to wait and try rebooking later in the week. While she has friends to stay with, she knows other travelers don’t have the same luxury.”

    In a Tuesday statement, Democratic Sens. Ed Markey (Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) called on Southwest to compensate customers for avoidable holiday flight cancellations.

    “Southwest Airlines is failing consumers during the most important travel week of the year,” said Markey and Blumenthal. “Instead of a holiday spent celebrating with family and friends, passengers are sleeping in airports or desperately trying to reach customer service agents.”

    “For those travelers whose holidays have been ruined, there is no real way for Southwest to make this right,” the pair continued. “But the company can start by fairly compensating passengers whose flights were canceled, including not only rebooked tickets, ticket refunds, and hotel, meal, and transportation reimbursement, but significant monetary compensation for the disruption to their holiday plans.”

    “Southwest is planning to issue a $428 million dividend next year,” the lawmakers added. “The company can afford to do right by the consumers it has harmed. Southwest should focus first on its customers stranded at airports and stuck on interminable hold.”

    As Bloomberg reported Tuesday:

    The chaos will prove costly to the airline, with Citi analysts estimating it could shave 3% to 5% from Southwest’s fourth-quarter earnings. There’s a reputational cost as well, with angry travelers stranded over the holiday season and the airline having to apologize, much as it did in a similar collapse after storms in October 2021.
    […]
    Dallas-based Southwest’s shares declined as much as 6.3% Tuesday and were down 4.8% at 12:53 pm, while United rose and American and Delta declined less than 1%.

    The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) said late Monday that it “is concerned by Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays and reports of lack of prompt customer service.” The agency announced that it “will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.”

    Without naming Southwest, U.S. President Joe Biden wrote Tuesday on Twitter that “our administration is working to ensure airlines are held accountable” and pointed consumers to a DOT dashboard where they can see if they are entitled to compensation.

    U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” Garcia (D-Ill.) welcomed the DOT’s probe of Southwest, arguing that what the company’s CEO calls a “tough day” is better understood as a manifestation of “corporate greed.”

    Southwest “hurt itself with an aggressive schedule and by underinvesting in its operations,” CNN reported Tuesday. “Stranded customers have been unable to get through to Southwest’s customer service lines to rebook flights or find lost baggage. Employees also said they have not been able to communicate with the airline.”

    Montgomery, the president of TWU Local 556, told the outlet that “the phone system the company uses is just not working.”

    “They’re just not manned with enough manpower in order to give the scheduling changes to flight attendants, and that’s created a ripple effect that is creating chaos throughout the nation,” she added.

    Southwest’s current issues have been brewing for a long time, according to captain Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association.

    “Southwest is planning to issue a $428 million dividend next year. The company can afford to do right by the consumers it has harmed.”

    “We’ve been having these issues for the past 20 months,” he told CNN. “We’ve seen these sorts of meltdowns occur on a much more regular basis and it really just has to do with outdated processes and outdated IT.”

    “It’s phones, it’s computers, it’s processing power, it’s the programs used to connect us to airplanes—that’s where the problem lies, and it’s systemic throughout the whole airline,” said Murray.

    Southwest CEO Jordan, in a memo to employees obtained by CNN, acknowledged many of Murray’s concerns and pledged to invest in better systems.

    “Part of what we’re suffering is a lack of tools,” Jordan told employees. “We’ve talked an awful lot about modernizing the operation, and the need to do that.”

    Markey and Blumenthal argued that “Southwest cannot avoid compensating passengers by claiming these flight cancellations were caused by recent winter storms.”

    “As Southwest executives have acknowledged,” the airline’s recent mass cancellations have been “largely due to the failure of its own internal systems,” said the lawmakers. “As such, those cancellations should be categorized as ‘controllable,’ and Southwest should compensate passengers accordingly.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Markey Asks Biden to Draft Plan for Ending Public Funding of Overseas Fossil Fuel Projects



    U.S. Sen Ed Markey on Wednesday led a group of upper chamber lawmakers who urged the Biden administration “to fulfill its commitment in the Glasgow Statement by publicly releasing a plan for ending public financing of unabated international fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022.”

    “To date, the United States has not made public its plan for meeting these pledges by the end of the year.”

    Last year, dozens of countries and institutions including the United States pledged at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland to end public financing of the overseas unabated fossil fuel sector by the end of this year and fully prioritize a shift to clean energy investment.

    “To date, the United States has not made public its plan for meeting these pledges by the end of the year,” wrote Markey (D-Mass.)–who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety–along with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

    “In order to assess whether the United States will succeed in meeting them, we must understand the steps the country is planning to take to achieve them,” the senators explained. “That is why we are asking you to release your plan for how the United States will fulfill its Glasgow Statement commitments.”

    “To strengthen our position as a global leader on climate change, enable effective oversight of U.S. public finance, and catalyze similar efforts from multilateral banks and other countries, the United States must demonstrate in transparent and concrete terms how it intends to fulfill this crucial climate pledge,” the lawmakers asserted.

    The letter continues:

    The public release of our plan to implement the Glasgow Statement commitments will help the United States encourage other governments and their institutions, as well as public finance institutions, to hold themselves accountable to their pledge. A clear indication of our move away from public finance for international fossil fuel projects can also spur more climate-friendly financing decisions in other international bodies such as multilateral development banks.

    A transparent, open plan will also enable the United States to apply pressure to fossil fuel-financing countries such as China and Russia, which are glaringly absent from the list of Glasgow Statement signatories.

    Markey’s request–which is not his first such ask of Biden–came weeks after a report published by Oil Change International and Friends of the Earth U.S. revealing that Group of 20 member governments and multilateral development banks spent nearly twice as much financing international fossil fuel projects as they did on clean energy alternatives during a recent two-year period.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Australia-US CLOUD Act treaty clears final roadblock

    The federal government has been given the all-clear to ratify a treaty with the United States that will expedite the sharing of data for law enforcement purposes after the cross-border agreement was found to be in the national interest. The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties released its final report on Tuesday, recommending that “binding treaty…

    The post Australia-US CLOUD Act treaty clears final roadblock appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

  • It’s the Water, Stupid! It’s the Infrastructure, Stupid!

    Stripping Uncle Sam of His Protective Lies and Taboos

    Yes, it’s difficult for people to think it’s dry in Oregon, along the coast, along the Central Coast range. But it is, and it’s wet in the winter, too. Breweries, shrimp industries, hotels, they use a lot of fresh water.

    But the reality is clear — America is so dysfunctional, that those trillions thrown at billionaires and military et al., well, not for the people, by the people, because of the people. Remember, this story about Newport, around 10,000 folk, with a swelling of 20,000 or more visitors during any fun given weekend of summer beach activity, is also your story in San Francisco or Boise or Hope, Arkansas. The very debilitating aspect of predatory capitalism is tremendous — so your flagging infrastructure should be our flagging infrastructure, and it all should be taken care of by taxing billionaires, millionaires and ending war economies and the Complex.

    Lower Big Creek Reservoir is one of two leaking reservoirs that supply water to Newport. A large earthquake would wipe them out. Even a smaller one would likely rupture the concrete supply lines. Now the City of Newport is considering building one big safer dam on the same sight so they don't have to keep pumping water out of the Siletz River.

    The earthen dam is failing, and will fail completely, with some earthquakes that will hit our coast. This is the reality anywhere in the USA — wildfires, tornadoes, dust storms, droughts, blizzards, deluges, heat waves. We have money for trillionaires, for the mercenaries of Military-Pharma-Chem-Mining-Ag-Oil-Energy-Media-Education-Medical-Legal-Prison-Education-AI-Surveillance-Mining-Finance-Banking Complex, but not $$ for a few million-dollar water tank, or a $20/$80 million dam for Newport, which will also give water security to other places around Newport for which we call this area “home.”

    We are a third world, banana republic —

    On a recent visit to the upper dam, Newport city manager Spencer Nebel pointed to a large pipe sticking out of the facility. He explained how crews just fixed one leak there and said it will need more work next year.

    “(I) hate to make this kind of investment here for a facility that we’re planning to replace,” he said. “But it is a legitimate safety concern. And the security of the system is critical for the community and for the folks that live downstream.”

    Now the city plans to build another, concrete dam halfway between the two older ones.

    “So if we can build a higher dam and build a bigger basin, that’s going to reduce our reliance on the Siletz River, which is a really important environmental consideration here,” Nebel said. “And we’ve been working closely with the Siletz Tribe.”

    Historically, Pacific Northwest tribes have often not been supportive of government-built dams, because of their propensity to block fish runs. But Robert Kentta with the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians said pumping water out of the Siletz River every summer is really bad for salmon, lampreys, crayfish and river mussels.

    “We had the lowest flows that I can remember and I’ve lived here for nearly 60 years,” Kentta said. “It was scary low and scary warm. It was like bathwater, and we’re just not used to those kinds of temperatures in our river.”

    Kentta said a new, larger dam and reservoir on Big Creek would mean more water could stay in the Siletz River and more fish would likely survive. (Source)

    In this broken land, where the coroporations have huge lobbying outfits, huge industry coalitions, have huge organized protection rackets, we the people are up shit creek since living in the USA is all about paying for it, paying for water, air, all of it, through regressive and quadruple taxation. Through taxes, fines, code violations, penalties, late fees, pre-fees, tolls, service charges, disposal charges, recycle fees, surcharges, add-ons, restrictions, eminent domain, externalities, we are left to the devices of elected officials and state agencies and this hyper-competition looking for grants, lobbying bucks, pork barrel.

    Oh, those hog blood-shit-guts-urine lagoons —

    Lagoons of Pig Waste Are Overflowing After Florence. Yes, That's as Nasty as It Sounds. - The New York Times

    Oh, those feedlots —

    Giving up beef will reduce carbon footprint more than cars, says expert | Food | The Guardian

    Oh, those thousand-plus chemicals —

    Beginning in 2019, the EPA stopped releasing crucial toxics reports. Even agency staffers have a hard time accessing them.

    Oh, those oil companies —

    Disperstants used by BP for oil spill didn't do much

    Oh, those tornados —

    Photo gallery: Tornadoes leave trail of damage through Lawrence, Linwood, Bonner Springs and Clay County | The Kansas City Star

    Oh, those wildfires —

    Most destructive California wildfires in history: Camp Fire tops the list - ABC7 San Francisco

    Oh, that Guantanamo —

    Oh, America, the Banana Republic: Nearly 40% of Americans Live in Constant Risk of Catastrophic Explosion or Poison Gas Exposure – People of Color, the Poor, Schools, and Medical Facilities at Even Greater Risk!

    So we are here, with the most broken society ever, as we have smug lockdown forced vaccine (sic) pro-incarceration people advocating all manner of illegal, unconstitutional and inhumane measures, and yet, and yet — never holding the billionaires who are war-pandemic-planned-demic profiteers accountable. It is ugly, that Biden thing, all his Neoliberal War Hawk Handlers, all the same old same old. Embarassing to see the Republicans in their racist zeal hold onto their KKK robes, and singing Dixie in their million-dollar bathrooms.

    Here’s that coronavirus map, well, the one that should be part and parcel in this bullshit manic narrative:

    Common Ways People Die Too Young Around the World - ATTN:

    Those drug overdoses, man —

    opioid-epidemic_1600 - Futurity

    It’s the war profiteering, man, and the trillions shipped to war lords, mining lords, Zionist lords, ag lords, chemical lords, all those lords of punishment-theft-disease-pollution-societal collapses

    The post It’s the Water, Stupid! It’s the Infrastructure, Stupid! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The US Imperium Garrisons Australia

    On December 6, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin hosted Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles.  It was the 32nd occasion the countries had met in this setting.

    The Australia-US Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) is really a chat fest held between Australian Ministers for Defence and Foreign Affairs along with the US Secretaries of State and Defense, accompanied by officials of touted seniority.  Advertised as an occasion for the states “to discuss and share perspectives and approaches on major global and regional political issues, and to deepen bilateral foreign security and defence cooperation,” it is more accurately an occasion for Washington to keep an eye on its satellite.

    The occasion would have been a disappointment for sceptics of the US-Australian alliance, one that has seen Australians join, with somnambulistic facility, failed distant, needless wars.  Even with a change of government in Canberra, it is clear that the US security lobby remains ascendant, tranquilising Australian politicians with the virtues of the alliance.

    The joint statement from Blinken, Austin, Wong and Marles was filled with the gruel of banality: rules-based order, as they understood it; the importance of the relationship to “regional peace and prosperity”, despite signs it is becoming increasingly dangerous to that cause; and utterances about human rights and fundamental freedoms.

    For keen watchers of encroaching militarism, the following would have stood out: “The principals also decided to evolve their defense and security cooperation to ensure they are equipped to deter aggression, counter coercion, and make space for sovereign decision making.”

    This could hardly be a reference to Australian sovereignty, given its whittling down over the years to the decisions of an increasingly more engaged US in the Indo-Pacific region.  While Canberra decries any moves by Pacific Island neighbours to exercise their own rights of sovereignty to seal security arrangements with Beijing, it ignores its own subordinate, increasingly garrisoned role in the US imperium.

    China comes in for a predictable mauling, given its actions in the South China Sea and the making of “excessive maritime claims that are inconsistent with international law.”  Wishing to enrage the Yellow Devil further, the parties also reiterate “Taiwan’s role as a leading democracy in the Indo-Pacific region, an important regional economy, and a key contributor to critical supply chains.”

    Strategic competition, as a concept, was fine in principle, but to be pursued “responsibly,” a word that has little meaning in the thuggery of international politics.  The parties also agreed to “work together to ensure competition does not escalate into conflict” and looked to the PRC “to do the same and to engage Beijing on risk reduction and transparency measures.”  More could be done on the issue of transparency and China’s nuclear arsenal, for instance.

    The statement then goes on to raise the importance of cooperation with Beijing in some areas of mutual concern followed by a sharp backhanded serve.  Cooperation with China on “issues of shared interest, including climate change, pandemic threats, non-proliferation, countering illicit and illegal narcotics, the global food crisis, and macroeconomic issues” was important, but so was “enhancing deterrence and resilience through coordinated efforts to offer Indo-Pacific nations support to resist subversion and coercion of any kind.”

    There is also more poking with the expression of “serious concerns about severe human rights violations in Xinjiang, the human rights situation in Tibet, and the systematic erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy, democratic institutions, and processes undermining commitments made by the PRC before the handover.”

    Australia’s promised submarines under the AUKUS security pact, almost as credible as the Loch Ness monster, receives an airing.  Giving nothing away, the statement “commended the significant progress AUKUS partners have made on developing the optimal pathway for Australia to acquire a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability at the earliest possible date.”  No date is provided, but a year on when that optimal pathway will be miraculously revealed is 2023.  Best not wait up.

    The joint statement does little to dissuade the idea that Australia is moving, inexorably, towards a satellite, garrison state to be disposed of and used by the US imperium.  Under the “Forced Posture Initiatives” – the wording is telling – the US will further integrate Australia into its military operations via Enhanced Land Cooperation, Enhanced Maritime Cooperation, and the Combined, Logistics, Sustainment, and Maintenance Enterprise.

    The US armed forces would continue its “rotational presence” in Australia across air, land and sea including “US Bomber Task Force rotations, fighters, and future rotations of US Navy and US Army capabilities.”  The emphasis, in other words, is entirely US-centric, with Australia’s posture being rather supine, even as it aids “US force posture with associated infrastructure, including runway improvements, parking aprons, fuel infrastructure, explosive storage infrastructure, and facilities to support the workforce.”

    What a wonderful list of targets for any future foe, and bound to become even juicier with Austin’s promise to “find ways to further integrate our defense industrial bases in the years ahead.”

    While they do not tend to make regular appearances on uncritical mainstream news outlets, Australian civil society members have been alarmed by such moves. The 280 submissions to the Independent and Peaceful Australian Network (IPAN) addressing the high cost of Australia’s relationship with the United States attest to a very different narrative.

    IPAN’s report drawn from its People’s Inquiry into “Exploring the Case for an Independent and Peaceful Australia,” informed by those submissions and released last month, should be mandatory reading for Canberra’s insular policy hacks.  In his contribution to the report covering the defence and military aspects of the alliance, Vince Scappatura took note of the most pressing concern among the submissions: “that the alliance makes Australia an unnecessary target of America’s foes.”

    The alliance has also seen Australia committed to “several needless and costly wars and is likely to do so again in the future, with especially grave consequences in the context of the great power rivalry between the US and China.”  Unfortunately for the industrious Scappatura and those honourable souls determined to force a revision of the relationship, the sleepwalkers are in charge.  And when that happens, wars are rarely far away.

    The post The US Imperium Garrisons Australia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Raider spirit: The unveiling of the B-21

    The United States has unveiled its latest deadly weapon of aggression in the Indo-Pacific, reports Binoy Kampmark.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • United States: Open carry laws spur gun violence

    The United States Supreme Court struck down a state law in June that restricted the carrying of guns in public, reports Barry Sheppard. Since then, 38 states have legislated some form of “open carry” laws, and others are preparing to do the same.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • United States: Biden, Congress deny rail workers right to strike, imposes employer-friendly contract

    The United States House of Representatives passed legislation on November 30 to block a national rail strike planned for December 9, reports Malik Miah.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Musk’s money is playing old games with new media

    For the right-wing press, Elon Musk — who backed the Republicans in the recent midterm elections — is a social media saviour, writes Ari Paul.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • “Deliberate Ambiguity”: Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Are Greatest Threat to Middle East

    As western countries are floating the theory that Russia could escalate its conflict with Ukraine to a nuclear war, many western governments continue to turn a blind eye to Israel’s own nuclear weapons capabilities. Luckily, many countries around the world do not subscribe to this endemic western hypocrisy.

    ‘The Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction’ was held between November 14-18, with the sole purpose of creating new standards of accountability that, as should have always been the case, be applied equally to all Middle Eastern countries.

    The debate regarding nuclear weapons in the Middle East could not possibly be any more pertinent or urgent. International observers rightly note that the period following the Russia-Ukraine war is likely to accelerate the quest for nuclear weapons throughout the world. Considering the seemingly perpetual state of conflict in the Middle East, the region is likely to witness nuclear rivalry as well.

    For years, Arab and other countries attempted to raise the issue that accountability regarding the development and acquisition of nuclear weapons cannot be confined to states that are perceived to be enemies of Israel and the West.

    The latest of these efforts was a United Nations resolution that called on Israel to dispose of its nuclear weapons, and to place its nuclear facilities under the monitoring of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Resolution number A/C.1/77/L.2, which was drafted by Egypt with the support of other Arab countries, passed with an initial vote of 152-5. Unsurprisingly, among the five countries that voted against the draft were the United States, Canada and, of course, Israel itself.

    US and Canadian blind support of Tel Aviv notwithstanding, what compels Washington and Ottawa to vote against a draft entitled: “The risk of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East”? Keeping in mind the successive right-wing extremist governments that have ruled over Israel for many years,Washington must understand that the risk of using nuclear weapons under the guise of fending off an ‘existential threat’ is a real possibility.

    Since its inception, Israel has resorted to and utilized the phrase ‘existential threat’ countless times. Various Arab governments, later Iran and even individual Palestinian resistance movements were accused of endangering Israel’s very existence. Even the non-violent Palestinian civil society-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement was accused by then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015 of being an existential threat to Israel. Netanyahu claimed that the boycott movement was “not connected to our actions; it is connected to our very existence.”

    This should worry everyone, not just in the Middle East, but the whole world. A country with such hyped sensitivity about imagined ‘existential threats’ should not be allowed to acquire the kind of weapons that could destroy the entire Middle East, several times over.

    Some may argue that Israel’s nuclear arsenal was intrinsically linked to real fears resulting from its historical conflict with the Arabs. However, this is not the case. As soon as Israel finalized its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their historic homeland, and long before any serious Arab or Palestinian resistance was carried out in response, Israel was already on the lookout for nuclear weapons.

    As early as 1949, the Israeli army had found uranium deposits in the Negev Desert, leading to the establishment, in 1952, of the very secretive Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC).

    In 1955, the US government sold Israel a nuclear research reactor.  But that was not enough. Eager to become a full nuclear power, Tel Aviv resorted to Paris in 1957. The latter became a major partner in Israel’s sinister nuclear activities when it helped the Israeli government construct a clandestine nuclear reactor near Dimona in the Negev Desert.

    The father of the Israeli nuclear program at the time was none other than Shimon Peres who, ironically, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. The Dimona Nuclear Reactor is now named ‘Shimon Peres Nuclear Research Center-Negev’.

    With no international monitoring whatsoever, thus with zero legal accountability, Israel’s nuclear quest continues until this day. In 1963, Israel purchased 100 tons of uranium ore from Argentina, and it is strongly believed that during the October 1973 Israel-Arab war, Israel “came close to making a nuclear preemptive strike”, according to Richard Sale, writing in United Press International (UPI).

    Currently, Israel is believed to have “enough fissionable material to fabricate 60-300 nuclear weapons,” according to former US Army Officer Edwin S. Cochran.

    Estimates vary, but the facts about Israel’s weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) are hardly contested. Israel itself practices what is known as ‘deliberate ambiguity’, as to send a message to its enemies of its lethal power, without revealing anything that may hold it accountable to international inspection.

    What we know about Israel’s nuclear weapons has been made possible partly because of the bravery of a former Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, a whistleblower who was held in solitary confinement for a decade due to his courage in exposing Israel’s darkest secrets.

    Still, Israel refuses to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), endorsed by 191 countries.

    Israeli leaders adhere to what is known as the ‘Begin Doctrine’, in reference to Menachem Begin, the right-wing Israeli prime minister who invaded Lebanon in 1982, resulting in the killing of thousands. The doctrine is formulated around the idea that, while Israel gives itself the right to own nuclear weapons, its enemies in the Middle East must not. This belief continues to direct Israeli actions to this day.

    The US support for Israel is not confined to ensuring the latter has ‘military edge’ over its neighbors in terms of traditional weapons, but to also ensure Israel remains the region’s only superpower, even if that entails escaping international accountability for the development of WMDs.

    The collective efforts by Arab and other countries at the UNGA to create a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons are welcomed initiatives. It behooves everyone, Washington included, to join the rest of the world in finally forcing Israel to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, a first but critical step towards long-delayed accountability.

    The post “Deliberate Ambiguity”: Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Are Greatest Threat to Middle East first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Gallic Rebuke: France and the US Rules-based Order

    Gérard Araud was not mincing his words.  As France’s former ambassador to Washington, he had seen enough.  At a November 14 panel hosted by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft titled “Is America Ready for a Multipolar Word?”, Araud decried the “economic warfare” being waged by the United States against China, expressing the view that Europe was concerned by the evident “containment policy” being pursued.

    Araud is very much the diplomat establishment figure, having also served as French representative to the United Nations from 2009 to 2014.  But despite his pedigree, he was most keen to fire off a few salvos against such concepts as the “rules-based order” so treasured by the Anglosphere and the “West” more broadly defined.  “To be frank, I’ve always been extremely sceptical about this idea of a ‘rules-based order’.”  Both he and the French in general loved the United Nations, “but the Americans not too much”.

    With unerring frankness, he also noted that the UN and broader international hierarchy was dominated by the US-European bloc.  The undersecretaries to the organisation reflected that fact, as did the stewardship of the World Bank and the IMF.  “So that’s the first element: this order is our order.”

    The second element was historical: the balance of power as it was in the war-ruined world of 1945.  “Really people forget that, if China and Russia are obliged to oppose [with] their veto, it is because frankly the Security Council is most of the time, 95% of the time, has a Western-oriented majority.”

    French President Emmanuel Macron has adopted elements of Araud’s thinking, notably regarding the problems and limits of US domination, while still reasserting the value of France’s own global imprint.  Such actions and sombre strategizing are taking place in the shadow of the West’s decline.  In a recent closed-door meeting with his top diplomats, Macron remarked that “the international order is being upended in a whole new way.  It is a transformation of the international order.  I must admit that Western hegemony may be coming to an end”.

    This theme of decline in Macron’s is an ongoing Spenglerian motif.  It surfaced at the end of the G-7 summit in 2019, where he reflected on the decline of Western dominance while pondering the finance-obsessed nature of the global market economy.  This was pretty rich coming from a banker, though he was certainly right on the issue of greater multipolarity.

    To his diplomats, Macron paddled in the waters of history, reflecting on French power in the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution led by Britain in the 19th century, and the brute dominance of the United States from the 20th century.  With typically Gallic, broad stroke synthesis, he suggested that “France is culture, England is industry, and America is war.”

    Then came the finger pointing, sharply directed at the biggest of culprits and the underminers of the West.  “Within Western countries, many wrong choices the United States has made in the face of crises have deeply shaken our hegemony.”  It was not something that began with the Trump administration; previous US presidents “made other wrong choices long before Trump, Clinton’s China policy, Bush’s war policy, Obama’s world financial crisis, and quantitative easing policy.”

    To this swipe at Washington could be added the role of emerging powers, which were underestimated by the West “not just two years ago, but as early as ten or twenty years ago.”  He admitted that “China and Russia have achieved great success over the years under different leadership styles.”

    Despite such rueful admissions about decline, Macron is still keen to pursue a form of geopolitical balancing, notably in the Indo-Pacific.  This is code for the pursuing French interests in a region that is increasingly looking like exploding into a folly-driven conflict between the Chinese and US camps.  But Paris is hardly going to miss out pushing the credentials of its defence industry, which took a bruising with the scuppering of the Attack Class submarine deal with the Australian government in September last year.

    In February, Macron convinced Jakarta to ink a deal worth $8.1 billion for 42 Rafale fighter jets produced by Dassault Aviation.  Two diesel-electric Scorpène-class attack submarines produced by the Naval Group have also been added to the mix, along with ammunition, making the arrangements with Jakarta some of the most lucrative for France in Southeast Asia.

    On his current visit to Washington, Macron is facing those old problems of US power.  While Australia was designated assassin in killing off the submarine contract, the ammunition came from Washington as part of the AUKUS security pact, a spear pointing at China in the Indo-Pacific.  President Joe Biden has merely described the handling of the whole matter as “clumsy”.

    Then come such issues as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which gives advantageous climate subsidies to US companies over their European counterparts, and how the Ukraine War is to be addressed.  Biden has no inclination to speak to Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, content to let the war rage as long as it bleeds Russia; Macron has been more than willing to keep the lines open, acknowledging that diplomacy, however frail, must at least be drip-fed.

    In his own reflections on what could be done regarding the US-Western parochialism of the rules-based order, Araud made the obvious point.  Any genuine international system purporting to be undergirded by rules had to integrate “all the major stakeholders into managing of the world, you know, really bringing in the Chinese, the Indians, and really other countries, and trying to build with them, on an equal basis, the world of tomorrow.”  What a daring idea, and one that is bound to avoid a global conflict.  For that reason, it won’t be embraced.

    The post Gallic Rebuke: France and the US Rules-based Order first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 73% of the World’s Population Did Not Call for Russian Reparations to Ukraine

    On November 14, 2022, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution (A/ES-11/L.6) calling for Russia to pay war reparations to Ukraine:

                [The General Assembly…]

    1. Reaffirms its commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine and its demand that the Russian Federation immediately cease its use of force against Ukraine and that the Russian Federation immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders, extending to its territorial waters;
    2. Recognizes that the Russian Federation must be held to account for any violations of international law in or against Ukraine, including its aggression in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, as well as any violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and that it must bear the legal consequences of all of its internationally wrongful acts, including making reparation for the injury, including any damage, caused by such acts…

    Here was the vote:1

    93 IN FAVOR

    14 AGAINST

    73 ABSTENTION

    12 NOT VOTING

    Western media report these results as vast international support for the resolution. But measured by world population, this resolution, as well as its predecessors, was decisively rejected by the UNGA.2

    First, a minor point: the majority of the world’s countries simply did not support this resolution:

    99 NOT VOTING IN FAVOR (AGAINST, ABSTENTION or NOT VOTING)

    93 IN FAVOR

    Something much more important to notice is that UN General Assembly votes are extremely undemocratic. The UNGA consists of 193 countries representing over eight billion people, each country having a single vote, no matter the size of its population. For example, Tuvalu (population 11,792), Iceland (pop. 341,243), India (pop. 1,380,004,385) and China (pop. 1,439,323,776) each have a one vote. So voting in the UNGA is wildly disproportionate to population.

    We can correct this disproportion by ignoring the country-by-country tally and treating the result as if it were a popular referendum. Here is the tally of percentages of world population represented in the vote:

    IN FAVOR 26.94%

    AGAINST 24.36%

    ABSTENTION 44.92%

    NOT VOTING 3.78%

    Or, simpler:

    NOT VOTING IN FAVOR OF THE RESOLUTION: 73.06%

    VOTING IN FAVOR OF THE RESOLUTION: 26.94%

    By this measure, only 27% of the world’s population supported the resolution; 73% did not. This is a resounding defeat for US/NATO “soft power.” It can only be explained by global antipathy toward the US/NATO side in this war and sympathy for Russia.

    Consider that the US has long used bribes and threats to engineer UNGA votes; it controls the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank; it imposes illegal unilateral coercive measures (“sanctions”) on a quarter of the world’s population; it is prolific and virtually alone in its constant coups and destabilization campaigns against uncooperative governments around the world. So it is not surprising that the US has mustered as many votes as it has for this and previous Ukraine/Russia resolutions. What is surprising is that it could not get more.

    The UNGA’s previous resolutions condemning Russia show similarly lopsided votes. On March 2, 2002 59% of the world’s population would not support a resolution condemning Russia’s intervention on February 24. On April 7, 2022 76% of the world’s population would not support a resolution to remove Russia from its seat on the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). On October 12, 2022 55% of the world’s population would not support a resolution rejecting the accession to Russia of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions in Ukraine. (See fn. 2.)

    To Western eyes, red with Ukraine War fever and alleged Russian atrocities, these results may surprise, but they shouldn’t. For one thing, the Western narrative about the war itself, atrocity allegations against Russia, the history of the conflict since the 2014 Maidan coup (or “revolution” in Western eyes), are not necessarily believed by the rest of the world.3 After all, Western media sources recounting Russian atrocities also report with straight faces accusations that Russia blew up the Nordstream pipelines, and that it repeatedly shelled the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant while simultaneously occupying it.

    More important, to many non-West European countries, this war is not seen in isolation from the history of North American and Western European aggression, exploitation, plunder and genocide, as shown by these quotes from opponents of the resolution speaking in the General Assembly:4

    Cuba: Will Cuba be compensated for the damage accumulated over six decades of an economic, commercial and financial blockade; the lives lost; and the illegal occupation of its national territory? What about Mexico, Viet Nam, the Pacific Islands, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria and the State of Palestine?

    Eritrea: States suffering from foreign interference, colonialism, slavery, oppression, unilateral coercive measures, illegal blockades and other internationally wrongful acts also deserve the right for remedy, reparation and justice. As national positions must be respected, the Assembly must play a positive role in ensuring the conflict in Ukraine is resolved through diplomatic efforts and means while avoiding any initiative that might further aggravate the situation on the ground and escalate tensions.

    Syria: [The draft resolution is part of a series of] unbalanced, biased and provocative resolutions pushed by the United States and its Western partners. [I]ts real objective is to pay for the increasing purchases of weapons by Ukraine. … Who will compensate my country for the destruction of the Syrian infrastructure by the so‐called international coalition?

    Nicaragua: The resolution is an example of the hypocrisy and double standards of certain countries. …. [It] ignores the painful history that imperialist countries have left behind. It does not recognize the genocide against the original peoples of countries. [Nicaragua supports its] brethren in the Caribbean and Africa that are seeking reparations for these losses…

    Rich vs. Poor/US vs. the World

    Beyond these denunciations, global rejection of the UNGA resolution has deeper implications. This war is a battle in a far older, longer war of Western European aggression against the poorer nations of the world, the vast majority of humanity. Since World War II, this global war has been largely directed by a single hegemon, the United States. Europe is only one battlefront in this larger war.

    Rich vs. Poor: Core vs. Periphery and Semi-Periphery5

    This vote falls (although imperfectly) along the global divide of “core” nations vs. nations of the “periphery” and “semi-periphery.”

    According to world-systems analysis, “core” countries are those that draw a disproportionate amount of the world’s labor surplus value through possession of monopolized and semi-monopolized high-value production processes. This production is girded by patents, copyrights, and various advantageous economic, military and political arrangements. 6 “Peripheral” and “semi-peripheral” countries, on the other hand, have many fewer of these high-value production processes and rely on the production of commodities and more generic manufactured goods.7  Samir Amin calls this absorption of the surplus value by core countries “imperialist rent” which sums it up nicely.

    In other words, the global class struggle tells in the vote on the reparations resolution: poorer countries that pay imperialist rent tended to reject the resolution, while countries that collect imperialist rent have, with near perfect discipline, supported it.8

    And by the way, Western media often give the misleading impression that China and Russia have economies comparable to the rich countries of the imperial core nations. Not so. China and Russia are peripheral or semi-peripheral countries. While the poverty of the Global South is well known, less well known is the relative poverty of both Russia and China. Nominal GDPs per capita (in US dollars) of the two countries are just fractions of that of the US: US ($69,287.5), Russia($12,172.8), China ($12,556.3). Thus the China-Russia alliance, and their alliance with the Global South generally, is an alliance of commonality.

    The global divide is also racial, since countries of the imperial core are nearly all dominated by whites while the rest are populated largely by people of color.9 This racial imbalance results from the construction of the global system over half a millenium of European colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism, accompanied by ideologies of white ethnic, nationalist, cultural and racial supremacy.

    US vs. The World: A Global Military Occupation

    The geography of the war is not confined to Ukraine. The US asserted that it is waging a war against Russia through Ukraine. Beyond this, the collective West, led entirely by the US, is on one side of the war, and large parts of the East and Global South are on the other, as shown by this UNGA vote plus the overwhelming lack of global support for the sanctions on Russia.

    If from a bird’s eye view we could see the surface of the whole world at once, this war and the global divisions it exposes would be obvious. The US would appear as the primary belligerent since its occupation forces cover the world.

    And the US is quite forthright about its military occupation of the globe. It officially maps the occupation into six zones of US military “command”: Northern (North America); Southern (South America); European; Central (West Asia, aka “Middle East”); Africa; U.S. Indo-Pacific (Asia, Australia and the Pacific).10

    Within each zone US military bases enforce this occupation against friend, vassal, and potential foe alike. 800 to 1,000 of these overseas military bases and installations dot the globe.11 Almost half of these bases are arrayed like a necklace, or garrote, around Russia and China.12

    Ukraine has long been a battlefront in this global occupation. Ukraine’s military integration into NATO began years before the Russian intervention of February 24, 2022. Indeed, Ukraine’s fusion with NATO has been part of the 14-nation, three-decade eastward march of US/NATO toward Russia ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

    Conclusion

    The war in Ukraine is a world war, dividing the world’s nations by wealth, core/periphery status, and race, as revealed in the vote on the November 12th reparations resolution. To prosecute the war the West sends troops, weapons, and money to Ukraine, and sanctions Russsia. Gas pipelines far from the battlefield are blown up to keep Europe under the sanctions regime.13 And the war and sanctions affect the Global South as well as the Global North.14

    The world’s historic failure to contain US aggression has produced the dead, wounded, displaced, and grief-stricken of Ukraine and Russia, and condemned hundreds of millions in the Global South to destitution and hunger. Little wonder that so many around the world see as a tragic necessity Russia’s determined resistance to the US eastward push in Europe.

    1. KEY: (X) = ABSTENTION; (—) = AGAINST; (0) = NOT VOTING. (The 93 countries voting IN FAVOR are not listed here.) The percentage of global population follows each country’s vote symbol. Algeria (X) .56; Angola (X) .42; Antigua-Barbuda (X) .00; Armenia (X) .04; Azerbaijan (0) .13; Bahamas (—) .01; Bahrain (X) .02; Bangladesh (X) 2.11; Barbados (X) .00; Belarus (—) .12; Belize (X) .01; Bhutan (X) .01; Bolivia (X) .15; Botswana (X) .03; Brazil (X) 2.73; Brunei Darussalam (X) .01; Burkina Faso (0) .27; Burundi (X) .15; Cambodia (X) .21; Cameroon (0) .34; Central African Republic (—) .06; China (—) 18.47; Congo (Republic of the Congo [Brazzaville]) (X) .07; Cuba (—) .15; Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea [North Korea] (—) .33; Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC (Kinshasa)] (0) 1.15; Dominica (0) .00; Egypt (X) 1.31; El Salvador (X) .08; Equatorial Guinea (X) .02; Eritrea (—) .05; Eswatini (X) .01; Ethiopia (—) 1.47; Gabon (X) .03; Gambia (X) .03; Grenada (X) .00; Guinea (X) .17; Guinea-Bissau (X) .03; Guyana (X) .01; Haiti (X) .15; Honduras (X) .13; India (X) 17.7; Indonesia (X) 3.51; Iran (—) 1.08; Iraq (X) .52; Israel (X) .11; Jamaica (X) .04; Jordan (X) .13; Kazakhstan (X) .24; Kyrgyzstan (X) .08; Lao People’s Democratic Republic (X) .09; Lebanon (X) .09; Lesotho (X) .03; Libya (X) .09; Madagascar (X) .36; Malaysia (X) .42; Mali (—) .26; Mauritania (X) .06; Mauritius (X) .02; Mongolia (X) .04; Morocco (0) .47; Mozambique (X) .40; Namibia (X) .03; Nepal (X) .37; Nicaragua (—) .08; Nigeria (X) 2.64; Oman (X) .07; Pakistan (X) 2.83; Russian Federation (—) 1.87; Rwanda (X) .17; Saint Kitts-Nevis (X) .00; Saint Lucia (X) .00; Saint Vincent-Grenadines (X) .00; Sao Tome-Principe (0) .00; Saudi Arabia (X) .45; Senegal (0) .21; Serbia (X) .11; Sierra Leone (X) .10; South Africa (X) .76; South Sudan (X) .14; Sri Lanka (X) .27; Sudan (X) .56; Suriname (X) .01; Syrian Arab Republic (—) .22; Tajikistan (X) .12; Thailand (X) .90; Timor-Leste (X) .02; Tonga (0) .00; Trinidad-Tobago (X) .02; Tunisia (X) .15; Turkmenistan (0) .08; Uganda (X) .59; United Arab Emirates (X) .13; United Republic of Tanzania (0) .77; Uzbekistan (X) .43; Venezuela (0) .36; Viet Nam (X) 1.25; Yemen (X) .38; Zimbabwe (—) .19.
    2. “The UN Condemnation of Russia is Endorsed by Countries Run by the Richest, Oldest, Whitest People on Earth But Only 41% of the World’s Population” (March 28, 2022), here, here, or here; “Global Divide: 76% of Humanity (& Nearly All Poorer Nations of Color) Did Not Vote To Kick Russia Off the UN Human Rights Council” (April 25, 2022), here, here, or here; “55% of Humanity Does Not Reject the Accession to Russia of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia” (October 21, 2022), here, here, or here.
    3. See these links on the historical background of the war, the killings in Bucha, reports of rapes and viagra, Bucha and Mariupol. On international support for Russia, even Western-aligned sources not sympathetic to Russia have reported some African support for Russia: “Why are people in West Africa waving Russian flags?“; “Why Are Protestors In Ethiopia And Mali Waving Russian Flags?“
    4. The quotes are as reported by the United Nations.
    5. “The countries of the world can be divided into two major world regions: the ‘core’ and the ‘periphery.’ The core includes major world powers and the countries that contain much of the wealth of the planet. The periphery has those countries that are not reaping the benefits of global wealth and globalization.” (Colin Stief, ThoughtCo.com, 1/21/20).
    6. According to Salvatore Babones (2005), the core countries are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong [a region of China], Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.
    7. See Immanual Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, Duke University Press, 2004.
    8. Every core country (see fn. 7) except Israel voted IN FAVOR of the November 14th resolution.
    9. 15% of the world’s population live in “white” countries; 12% of the world’s population live in core countries; all core countries are “white” except for Japan and Singapore, which together have just 1.7% of the world’s population. See “Global Divide: 76% of Humanity (and Nearly All Poorer Nations of Color) Did Not Vote To Kick Russia Off the UN Human Rights Council” (April 25, 2022), here, here, or here.
    10. The World With Commanders’ Areas of Responsibility, Library of Congress. (See attached map of the commands).
    11. “The Pentagon’s New Generation of Secret Military Bases,” David Vine, Mother Jones (7/6/12). (And see attached map of the bases).
    12. Compare, Russia has twenty-five foreign bases and China has one.
    13. “SCOTT RITTER: Pipelines v. USA” Scott Ritter, Consortium News (10/12/22); “Can Europe Afford to Turn a Blind Eye to Evidence of a US Role in Pipeline Blasts?” Jonathan Cook, MintpressNews (10/6/22).
    14. “Russia sanctions hurt ‘bystander’ countries, South African President Ramaphosa says” Reuters (5/24/22).
    The post 73% of the World’s Population Did Not Call for Russian Reparations to Ukraine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Sinodinos on Australia’s US critical minerals opportunity

    The Biden administration’s efforts to support renewables through the landmark Inflation Reduction Act presents a significant critical minerals processing and export opportunity for Australia, according to Arthur Sinodinos, Australia’s Ambassador to the United States. Legislated in August, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) introduced and expanded several tax credits to accelerate the transition to clean energy…

    The post Sinodinos on Australia’s US critical minerals opportunity appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • Liberating Africa from Poverty Requires Changing Power Relations with the West 

    Soon after arriving in Oslo, my taxi zigzagged through the city’s well-organized streets and state-of-the-art infrastructure. Large billboards advertised the world’s leading brands in fashion, cars, and perfumes. Amid all the expressions of wealth and plenty, an electronic sign by a bus stop flashed the images of poor looking African children needing help.

    Over the years, Norway has served as a relatively good model of meaningful humanitarian and medical aid. This is especially true if compared to other self-serving western countries, where aid is often linked to direct political and military interests. Still, the public humiliation of poor, hungry and diseased Africa is still disquieting.

    The same images and TV ads are omnipresent everywhere in the West. The actual tangible value of such charity aside, campaigns to help poor Africa do more than perpetuate a stereotype, they also mask the actual responsibility of why natural resource-rich Africa remains poor, and why the supposed generosity of the West over the decades has done little to achieve a paradigm shift in terms of the Continent’s economic health and prosperity.

    News from Africa is almost always grim. A recent ‘Save the Children’ report sums up Africa’s woes in alarming numbers: 150 million children in East and Southern Africa are facing the double threat of grinding poverty and the disastrous impact of climate change. The greatest harm affects the children population in South Sudan, with 87 percent, followed by Mozambique (80 percent), then Madagascar (73 percent).

    The bad news from Africa, illustrated in the Save the Children report, was released soon after another report, this time by the World Bank, indicating that the international community’s hope to end extreme poverty by 2030 will not be met.

    Consequently, by 2030, around 574 million people, estimated at 7 percent of the world’s total population, will continue to live in extreme poverty, relying on about two dollars a day.

    Sub-Saharan Africa currently serves as the epicenter of global extreme poverty. The rate of extreme poverty in that region is about 35 percent, representing 60 percent of all extreme poverty anywhere in the world.

    The World Bank suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine war are the main catalysts behind the grim estimates.

    Growing global inflation and the slow growth of large economies in Asia are also culprits.

    But what these reports don’t tell us, and what images of starving African children don’t convey is that much of Africa’s poverty is linked to the ongoing exploitation of the continent by its former – or current – colonial masters.

    This is not to suggest that African nations have no agency of their own, in contributing to their worsening situation or in challenging intervention and exploitation. Without a united front and major change in geopolitical global balances, pushing back against neocolonialism is not an easy feat.

    The Russia-Ukraine war and the global rivalry between Russia and China, on the one hand, and western countries on the other have encouraged some African leaders to speak out against the exploitation of Africa, and the use of Africa as a political fodder for global conflicts. The food crisis has been at the center of this fight.

    In the late October Dakar International Forum on Peace and Security, some African leaders resisted pressure from western diplomats to toe the West’s line on the war in Ukraine.

    Ironically, French minister of state Chrysoula Zacharopoulou sought “solidarity from Africa”, alleging that Russia poses an “existential threat” to Europe.

    Though France continues to effectively control the currencies, thus economies of 14 different African countries – mostly in West Africa – Zacharopoulou declared that “Russia is solely responsible for this economic, energy and food crisis.”

    President of Senegal, Macky Sall was one of several African leaders and top diplomats who challenged the duplicitous and polarizing language.

    “This is 2022, this is no longer the colonial period… so countries, even if they are poor, have equal dignity. Their problems have to be handled with respect,” he said.

    It is this coveted ‘respect’ by the West that Africa lacks. The US and Europe simply expect African nations to abandon their neutral approach to global conflicts and join the West’s continued campaign for global dominance.

    But why should Africa, one of the richest and most exploited continents, obey the West’s diktats?

    The West’s insincerity is glaring. Its double standard didn’t escape African leaders, including Nigeria’s former president Mahamadou Issoufou. “It’s shocking for Africans to see the billions that have rained down on Ukraine while attention has been diverted from the situation in the Sahel (region),” he said in Dakar.

    Following the elevated political discourse emanating from African leaders and intellectuals gives one hope that the supposedly ‘poor’ Continent is plotting an escape from the grip of western domination, though many variables would have to work in their favor to make this happen.

    Africa’s existent wealth alone can fuel global growth for many years to come. But the beneficiaries of this wealth should be Africa’s sons and daughters, not the deep pockets of the West’s wealthy classes. Indeed, the time has come that Africa’s children are not paraded as charity cases in Europe, a notion that only feeds into the long-distorted power relations between Africa and the West.

    The post Liberating Africa from Poverty Requires Changing Power Relations with the West  first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • Maligned in Western Media, Donbass Forces are Defending their Future from Ukrainian Shelling and Fascism

    The author with Pyatnashka commanders at outpost near Avdeevka, Donetsk People’s Republic. [ Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett]

    America is widely understood to be a key instigator behind conflict in Ukraine that has pitted brother against brother

    Smeared, stigmatized, and lied about in Western media propaganda, the mostly Russian-speaking people of the Donbass region were being slaughtered by the thousands in a brutal war of “ethnic cleansing” launched against them by the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv, which the U.S. installed after the CIA overthrew Ukraine’s legally elected president in a 2014 coup.

    Although the Donbass people had been pleading for Russian military aid to defend them against the increasingly murderous military assaults by the Ukraine government forces, which killed more than 14,000 of their people, Russian President Vladimir Putin declined to intervene. Instead, he tried to broker a peace agreement between the warring parties.

    But the U.S. and Britain secretly colluded to sabotage peace negotiations, persuading president Zelenksy to ignore the Minsk II peace agreement that the Ukraine government had previously signed, and which had been countersigned by Russia, France and Germany.

    Realizing that the U.S. and its NATO allies would never permit peace negotiations to succeed, Putin finally invaded Ukraine on February 24. Russian troops went in to support and reinforce the outnumbered and outgunned Donbass Special Forces who had been defending their land against attacks by the Kyiv government for nearly eight years.

    Voices From the Frontlines of Eastern Ukraine

    In the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in October, I went to a frontline outpost 70 meters from Ukrainian forces in Avdeevka (north and west of Donetsk), according to the Donbass commanders I spoke with there.

    To reach that position, I went with two other journalists to a meeting point with two commanders of Pyatnashka—volunteer fighters, including Abkhazi, Slovak, Russian, Ossetian and other nationalities, including locals from Donbass.

    From there, they drove us to a point as far as they could drive before walking the rest of the way, several minutes through brush and trenches, eventually coming to their sandbagged wood and cement fortified outpost.

    It has changed hands over the years, Ukrainian forces sometimes occupying it, Donbass forces now controlling it.

    One soldier, a unit commander who goes by the call sign “Vydra” (Otter), was formerly a miner from the DPR who had been living in Russia with his family. In 2014, he returned to the Donbass to defend his mother and relatives still there. He spoke of the outpost.

    We dug and built this with our hands. Several times over the years, the Ukrainians have taken these positions. We pushed them back, they stormed us…Well, we have been fighting each other for eight years.

    There, artillery fire is the biggest danger they face. “You can hide from a sniper, but not from artillery, and they’re using large caliber.”

    “Vydra,” a unit commander of the Pyatnashka fighters. [Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett]

    His living quarters is a dank, cramped, room with a tiny improvised bed, with another small room and bed for others at the outpost.

    A sign reads: “If shelling occurs, go to the shelter.” The kind of sign you see all over Donetsk and cities of the Donbass, due to Ukraine’s incessant shelling of civilian, residential areas. In a frontline outpost where incoming artillery is the norm, the sign is slightly absurd, clearly a joke.

    An Orthodox icon sits atop the sign. Ukrainian nationalists hang and spray Nazi graffiti and slogans of death; these fighters revere their faith.

    A poster, with the DPR flag, reads: “We have never known defeat, and it’s clear that this has been decided from above. Donbas has never been forced to its knees, and no one will ever be allowed to.”

    The only things decorating the space are tins of tuna and canned meat, instant noodles, and washing powder. Their existence is bare minimum, nothing glamorous about it; they volunteer because, as they told me, this is their land and they will protect it.

    Perhaps surprising to some, when Vydra was asked whether he hates Ukrainians, he replied emphatically no, he has friends and relatives in Ukraine.

    “We have no hatred for Ukraine. We hate those nationalists who came to power. But ordinary Ukrainians? Why? Many of us speak Ukrainian. We understand them, they understand us. Many of them speak Russian.

    I’ve been involved in sports a lot of time, wrestling. So, I’ve got a lot of friends in Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Kirovograd, Odessa, Lvov, Ivano-Frankivsk, Transcarpathia.

    I have relatives in western Ukraine, and we still communicate. Yes, they say one thing on the street, but when we talk to each other, they say, ‘Well, you have to, because the SBU is listening.’

    Ukraine shouts about democracy, then puts people in handcuffs for no reason. My aunt got in trouble because they found my photo on her Skype.

    And I’m on the Myrotvorets [kill list] website.” [As is the author, see this article.]

    He spoke of Ukraine’s shelling from 2014, when the people of the Donbass were unarmed and not expecting to be bombed by their own country.

    When the artillery hit the city of Yenakievo, east of Gorlovka, we were defenseless. We went with hunting rifles and torches to fight them. Most of the weapons we had later were captured from them. We had to go to the battlefield without weapons in order to get the weapons.

    When asked if he was concerned that Ukrainian forces might take Donetsk he replied no, of course not, they didn’t succeed in 2014, they won’t now.

    When asked whether he had a message for soldiers of the Ukrainian army, Vydra replied without hesitating,

    Go home! We’ve been saying that since 2014: Go home. Unequivocally, we don’t want them here, but we don’t want to kill them. I’m not speaking about nationalists, I’m speaking about Ukrainian soldiers, who are drafted or forcefully employed in the Ukrainian army. Guys, go home, either surrender or go. This is our land. We’re not leaving, we’re not going anywhere.

    I asked how he felt to be treated and described as sub-human, to be called dehumanizing names, a part of the Ukrainian nationalists’ brainwashing propaganda. As I wrote previously:

    “Ukrainian nationalists openly declare they view Russians as sub-human. School books teach this warped ideology. Videos show the extent of this mentality: Teaching children not only to also hate Russians and see them as not humans, but also brainwashing them to believe killing Donbas residents is acceptable. The Ukrainian government itself funds neo-Nazi-run indoctrination camps for youths.”

    “It’s offensive,” Vydra said, “We are saddened: There are sick people. We need to heal them, slowly.”

    I asked whether he thought friendship between Ukrainians and Russians would be possible.

    “It will take years for any friendship. Take Chechnya, one region of Russia, it was at war. But slowly, slowly…We must all live together. We are one people.” Indeed, now Chechen fighters are one of the most effective forces fighting alongside Donbass and Russian soldiers to liberate Donbass areas from Ukrainian forces.

    He opened a zippered trousers pocket and proudly brandished a small plastic sleeve containing children’s drawings, also containing icons of saints and Christ, and prayers…

    “This is very personal, it’s like my guardian angel. I put it in plastic, I don’t even keep my ID in plastic. I’ve been carrying this one in my pocket since February. I’ve been in all sorts of hot spots. A child drew this, we receive letters from children. It’s very nice to look at them when it’s hard and we are under fire.”

    He read one letter:

    “We are waiting for you. Thank you for risking your lives to defend Donbas. Yulia and Ira.”

    “I don’t even know who are Yulia and Ira,” he said smiling.

    Showing the icons, he said, “This is Saint Ushakov, our great commander. This is Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Protector. This Abkhazi icon was given to me by the guys. This is a prayer book. And here is a prayer,” he said of one page prayer.

    These words are to support when times are very hard. When there is heavy shelling, it can go on for hours. So, while you’re sitting there, you can read this.

    Especially for the younger guys, 22, 23 years old, just finished college. This is new to them.

    Commanders Speak of Geopolitical Reasons for Ukraine’s War

    Outside, sitting in front of an Orthodox banner and a collection of collected munitions—including Western ones—two platoon commanders, “Kabar” and “Kamaz,” spoke of the bigger geopolitical picture. [See video]

    “America is running the show here,” Kabar said. “It builds foreign policy on the basis of how its domestic policy is built, which is through conflicts with external countries. They are accustomed to proving their power to their people through terrorism around the world, inciting fires in Syria, in the east. They played the card of radical Islam there.

    And now they are playing the card of fascism. They do not see themselves on the other side of good. They need wars, blood, cruelty, and they signed Europe up for this.

    However, they’ve missed one point: Russia, since the days of the Soviet Union, has never retreated in large scale wars. They took Europe and pushed it to slaughter Russia, and they put Russia in such a position that it must secure its national interests. Europe needs to understand this, to pay attention to history, to stop being led by the United States.”

    “Kabar,” a commander of the Pyatnashka fighters. [Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett]

    When asked about his feeling regarding Ukrainians, “Kabar” replied similarly to Vydra.

    We don’t blame the whole Ukrainian people. Ukrainians are our friends, they are our relatives. They’ve been struck by evil, and it’s not their fault, ordinary people are not to blame for this. We will liberate them from fascism, we’ll show them brotherhood, and we’ll make friends.

    This is a good opportunity for us to defeat evil. God has honored us with this right to fight evil.

    Kamaz, when asked why he is fighting, replied that this is his homeland, he was born here, and that he has a son who he doesn’t want to inherit Ukraine’s war on the Donbass.

    I myself am Greek by nationality. Ukrainians are Slavs, they are our brothers, their grandfathers fought together shoulder to shoulder with our grandfathers against Nazism and fascism. We are here to finish it, so that our children live a normal happy life. We are fighting for the future.

    He spoke of America’s continuous need for war.

    We’ve seen it in Syria and Yugoslavia, where they destroyed everything and then set everything up their own way, so the people must submit, almost like slaves.

    I asked whether he thought peace between Ukraine and Russia is possible.

    Yes, possibly, why not? But at the moment, the President of Ukraine said there will be no negotiations.

    Negotiations are possible, but I think not with this president. When he comes to his senses, he will not be able to negotiate, because he took a lot of money.

    Before leaving the outpost, we chatted a bit with the commanders. A puppy sought the attention of a young soldier. Another puppy ran around our feet. The outpost commanders and soldiers take care of the dogs. Their presence added a somewhat surreal touch to the scene: an outpost which is routinely shelled, where life can cease to exist at any moment, and these happy, well-cared for puppies running around like dogs anywhere.

    Western Media Inverted Reality, Lauding Nazis and Demonizing Defenders

    While many in the West think that this conflict started in February 2022, those following events since 2014 are aware that, following the Maidan coup and Odessa massacre, and the rise of fascism in Ukraine against the Ukrainian people, the Donbass republics wanted to distance themselves from Ukraine’s Nazis and fascism.

    The sacrifices which the people of the Donbass republics have endured, particularly those fighting to protect their families and loved ones, have been and continue to be immense.

    Just as the heroes of the Syrian Arab Army were maligned, so too have Donbass forces have been maligned by Western media, though both are defending their homelands from terrorist forces trained and funded by the West. Terrorists given the freedom to commit endless atrocities against Donbass civilians.

    These defenders, many living in dank trench conditions didn’t choose war, they responded to it, to protect their loved ones and their future. In spite of more than eight years of being warred upon by Ukraine, they retain their humanity.

    • First published at CovertAction Magazine

    The post Maligned in Western Media, Donbass Forces are Defending their Future from Ukrainian Shelling and Fascism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Post-American Surreal

    In Bliss Montage, Ling Ma seeks to re-enchant a world whose catastrophes have grown monotonously real.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • The Polish Missile Narrative

    Wars tend to bury facts.  What comes out of them is often a furiously untidy mix of accounts that, when considered later, constitute wisps of fantasy and presumption.  Rarely accepted in the heat of battle is the concept of mistake: that a weapon was wrongly discharged or errantly hit an unintended target; a deployment that went awry; or that the general was drunk when an order was given.  Wars invite ludicrous tall tales and lies with sprinting legs.

    In the Ukraine War, where accurate information has almost ceased to be relevant (unless you believe the sludge from any one side), the latest shock and shudder came in the form of a missile that fell on Polish territory.  As a result, two farmers lost their lives in the village of Przewodów.

    The farmers, as the pencilled in victims of a broader power play, almost ceased to be relevant.  Discussions moved on to a potential violation of Polish territory and the prospect of NATO engagement.  The missile had been “Russian-made”, which tickled those keen to push a widening of the conflict.  Never mind that Ukraine has its own share of Russian and Soviet-era weapons systems.

    The Ukrainian side, ever keen to bring in more military assistance against Moscow, was clear from the outset: it could not have been from their side.  “Russia now promotes a conspiracy theory that it was allegedly a missile of Ukrainian air defense that fell on the Polish theory [sic],” raged the country’s Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba.  “Which is not true.  No one should buy Russian propaganda or amplify its messages.  This lesson should have been long learnt since the downing of #MH17.”

    The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, was also keen to capitalise.  There was little doubt, in his mind, who was responsible.  It could never be a Ukrainian missile battery; never be a deflection arising from the aerial tussle of projectiles.  “I have no doubt that this was not our missile,” he mentioned in televised remarks.  “I believe that this was a Russian missile based on our military reports.”

    Then came a slight qualification, if only one phrased in a typically non-qualified manner.  “Let’s say openly, if, God forbid, some remnant (of Ukraine’s air-defences) killed a person, these people, then we need to apologise.  But first there needs to be a probe, access – we want to get the data you have.”

    But even Ukraine’s allies and sponsors found this a bit salty and impulsive.  Yes, there was much theatre in rushed emergency meetings as the G20 summit broke into a G7 conclave, but a brake seemed to have been brought to bear.  The NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was left having to explain that the missile was unlikely to have been fired from Russian territory.  The Russian denial of direct responsibility might well be disliked, but it was probably true.  Mistake or not, however, the guilty party for all and sundry was clear: the Polish missile strike was “likely caused by Ukraine but not Ukraine’s fault”.

    Poland’s own leaders also began to release statements suggesting that this was not, in fact, a missile released from Russian territory.  Poland’s President Andrzej Duda made an unreserved observation.  “From the information that we and our allies have, it was a S-300 rocket made in the Soviet Union, an old rocket and there is no evidence that it was launched by the Russian side.”

    He also conceded that the missile may have fallen on Polish territory in the course of Ukraine “launching their missiles in various directions”.  There was “nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest that it was an intentional attack on Poland.”

    Knowing the political sensitivity of it all, especially if it might cast a poor light on Ukraine’s heroism, he preferred to rationalise the mistake.  Had Russia not attacked Ukraine and initiated the war, there would have been no reason to fire the deviant missile in the first place.  The law of causality dictated its dark tune, and things followed. Moscow bore “the ultimate responsibility, because this would not have happened hadn’t Russia waged a brutal war of aggression against Ukraine.”

    The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, went even further, happy to not bother about what she dismissively called the “facts”.  Such circumstances would “never have happened but for Russia’s needless invasion of Ukraine and its recent missile assaults against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.  The UN Charter is clear.  Ukraine has every right to defend itself against this barrage.”

    The US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson also added to the argument that, even if the lethal result had been from a Ukrainian launch, it was all in the course of self-defence. “[W]hatever the final conclusions may be, it is clear that the party ultimately responsible for this tragic incident is Russia, which launched a barrage of missiles on Ukraine specifically intended to target civilian infrastructure. Ukraine had – and has – every right to defend itself.”

    The only question now remains how the next misfiring goes.  On this occasion, the reins were pulled just before the precipice.  Facts or no fact, NATO did not want to be engaged – at least for now.  Poland, despite its past bravura to get a hack at the Russian bear, kept a sense of troubled composure.  Ukrainian officials, however, wished to push the matter further, egging on a NATO trigger for deeper, military commitment.  The grounds for a further expansion of the war are evident; the powder keg is ready.

    The post The Polish Missile Narrative first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • United States: Midterms show abortion is still the issue

    The right to abortion became a deciding factor in limiting the predicted Republican “sweep” in the United States midterm elections, writes Barry Sheppard.

  • UN again condemns Washington’s blockade of Cuba

    For the 30th year in a row, the United Nations General Assembly (GA) overwhelmingly condemned the United States’ embargo on Cuba and called on Washington to end its wide-ranging punitive sanctions, reports Ian Ellis-Jones.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Extradition Clouds: The Duggan Case and the Chinese Angle

    Soon, the US government may be making waves regarding another extradition request for a figure connected with that oft exaggerated notion of national security. While the high profile and insidious effort to extradite Julian Assange from the United Kingdom continues, the case of former US pilot, Marine Corps major and flight instructor Daniel Edmund Duggan has crossed the radar of reporters and international lawyers.

    On October 21, Duggan was arrested by Australian authorities in the New South Wales town of Orange at the request of Washington. He appeared in Orange Local Court and was refused bail.

    After his formal tenure as a military pilot, Duggan moved into the field of aviation consultancy, running AVIBIZ Limited, “a comprehensive consultancy company with a focus on the fast growing and dynamic Chinese Aviation Industry.” He moved to Australia in 2005, where he founded Top Gun Tasmania, providing customers flights in the British military jet trainer, the BAC Jet Provost, and the CJ-6A Nanchang, a Chinese propeller-driven trainer. His staff consisted of former US and UK military pilots.

    From Australia, he moved to Beijing in 2014 after selling Top Gun Tasmania, working with a Chinese businessman, Stephen Su, also known as Su Bin. Su had been convicted for hacking charges in the US, having been arrested in Canada in July 2014 regarding the theft of US military aircraft designs. Duggan’s residential address from December 2013, an apartment in Beijing’s Chaoyang district, was also of interest given that it appears on the US Entity List in August 2014 as belonging to Su and his technology company, Nuodian Technology.

    Duggan’s own expertise is being babbled about in some circles: as a former Harrier pilot, his expertise in vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) fighters such as the F-35B and AV-8B is considered of interest to some powers.

    That same week, a stir had been made of Chinese mischief regarding certain pilots keen to make some post-retirement cash. British intelligence had flagged the issue of 30 ex-RAF pilots working with the PRC military, though a South African flying school damped matters in claiming that no classified information had passed hands.

    According to a statement from the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA), “none of its trainers are in possession of legally or operationally sensitive information relating to the national security interest of any country, whether those from where its employees are drawn or in which it provides training”. Since 2013, “British tutors have been in direct contact on an individual basis with the UK MoD and other UK government agencies prior” regarding training duties, including Chinese clients. No objection had been raised.

    The whirligig of time is, however, a strange thing. UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey thought that enough smoke had risen to warrant a comment on loyalties. “It certainly doesn’t match my understanding of service of our nation – even in retirement – to then go and work with a foreign power, especially one that challenges the UK interest so keenly.”

    Much of this is stringent codswallop, given the vast array of consultancies and training connected to old military hands and a multitude of foreign powers.  Such old dogs rarely go quietly in retirement, and are, at the best of times, happy to offer their services at a consultative level. That surprise should even register at this point suggests that something more is afoot.

    Without a wisp of evidence and basis, Duggan, a former US marine and naturalised Australian citizen, is already being treated as a target for extradition.  He has been advised that he will be moved to Goulburn Supermax, described by his lawyer Dennis Miralis as “dramatic and aggressive” and “without any proper foundation”. “There is no factual material that has been provided supporting the way he was indicted secretly in the US.”

    The authorities have been disturbingly reticent.  “As the matter is before the courts, it would not be appropriate to comment further,” claim the Australian Attorney-General’s department  and police authorities. Beijing has also decided to shed little light on the matter. “I’m not aware of the situation you mentioned,” came the response of Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin to a query on the issue.

    The US Navy has also stated that it was “not aware” of the pending arrest of Duggan, while the US Marine Corps would only confirm Duggan’s service record.  In a response to Forbes, the US Air Force noted that, “At this time, we aren’t aware of any ex-Air Force pilots working with the Chinese.”

    Former USN captain Bill Hamlet was more forthcoming, noting that the issue of having former US military pilots working with Chinese authorities had never made an appearance between the sacrosanct covers of the Naval Institute’s journal Proceedings. “There’s growing concern that this is a problem and people are wondering to what extent.  How many NATO pilots have been helping the Chinese improve the proficiency of their airforce?”

    Miralis has made it clear that a complaint will be filed with the Australian Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, which should leave little room for optimism. Duggan had returned from China “a few weeks prior to his arrest and in the intervening period a number of interactions occurred with those agencies that the inspector-general of intelligence has the capacity to investigate.”

    The will is there, but the flesh is weak; the IGIS, as with many other oversight bodies in the Australian bureaucratic canon, is scandalously understaffed. The 2020-21 annual report is unreserved about the nature of the staffing problems, unable to achieve “well-developed and effective complaint and PID [Public Interest Disclosure] management processes”. As of June 30, the office has 33 working individuals, which is 22 short of what is recommended.

    The US Justice Department, for its part, has 60 days from the date of Duggan’s arrest to request extradition. Miralis is cognisant about what this case entails. Throw out the legal protocols and the jurisprudence: brute power is at stake. “This has nothing to do with law, this has everything to do with international politics and international relations.”

    The post Extradition Clouds: The Duggan Case and the Chinese Angle first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A Loud and Clear Lesson For Ethiopia and the World

    First things first: as I write, so-called peace talks are underway between the democratically elected government of Ethiopia and The Terrorist TPLF. That in itself is a bizarre sentence, and prompts an array of related questions, and issues around law and order, justice, national governance. To be clear, the TPLF have never wanted peace, and are not in South Africa (where the talks are taking place) to find a way to end the conflict that they started and perpetuated for two long and deeply painful years. They want power, they have engaged in talks because they have been defeated, but talks about what?

    Holding hands with the TPLF men at, or more likely, under the table — out of sight — are US/UN ‘observers’. The reason for their attendance is, one assumes, to ensure TPLF bosses are kept out of prison and allowed to slip away in the night and find amnesty somewhere. Canada has been mentioned as a possible destination, although why the Canadians (or anyone else, in fact) would want them is a mystery. A cell in the Hague would be my choice as they eke out their days waiting to be tried in the International Criminal Court.

    In the days and weeks leading up to the negotiations, the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) has taken control of remaining towns in Tigray, has surrounded the capital Mekelle, and, for the time being at least, fighting appears to have subsided. The only thing left to negotiate, then, is what to do with the TPLF leaders; this is not a difficult conundrum that requires hours or diplomatic chit-chat, and foreign advisers. They, the TPLF, are terrorists, and should be treated in the same way that say, ISIS commanders would be; i.e., like criminals — arrested, imprisoned and tried. Their foreign assets (they stole an estimated $30 billion when in office) frozen and seized, and the monies utilized to fund rebuilding work.

    The TPLF may have a few members of the “international community” rubbing up against them in Pretoria, but the Ethiopian government sits proud with millions and millions of Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia packed into the room, and they are roaring! Wide-ranging support for the government, and love for their countrymen and women, of all ethnic backgrounds, was displayed on 22 October, when, in cities throughout the land people, young and old, assembled, marched, sang and danced. Massive crowds demanded an end to foreign intervention in the internal affairs of the nation, and wrapped their arms around the government as it prepared for the African Union convened ‘peace talks’.

    No US support no war

    Throughout their destructive 27 year reign, the TPLF worked relentlessly to divide communities; systematically setting ethnic groups, that had for generations lived together harmoniously, against one another. But nothing unites a nation more than a shared enemy, and Ethiopia has had two since November 2020 – the TPLF and America/The West, three if we include corporate media. The people are now united, and that sense of fellowship includes the people of Tigray – all are Ethiopians, all share the pain of the nation and all long for peace. The TPLF is the enemy, the US is the enemy, corporate media is the enemy, not Tigrayans.

    Without US support — militarily and politically — the TPLF would have been unable to wage war on the Ethiopian State; no war, no death, no rape, no displacement of persons, no destruction of property burning of land, killing of livestock, no national trauma. The US is not simply complicit in the terrorism carried out by the TPLF over the last two years, and indeed during their 27 years in office, they are the enabler. The US Policy of Aggression and Derision directed against the Ethiopian government and the people, the economic sanctions, against one of the poorest nations in the world, the conspiring and duplicity, the misleading briefings and media dis/misinformation campaign emboldened the TPLF and granted them false legitimacy.

    And where the US goes her allies and puppets, follow, including corporate media, which has been integral to the mis-dis information campaign, as have, somewhat bizarrely, the US Holocaust Museum, which has recently joined the party. And as talks go on these forces of duplicity and confusion continue to treat the TPLF as if they were an equivalent party to the government, rather than the monsters they are. It is shameful, but when truth and facts become a matter of opinion to be spun according to motive and self-interest it is extremely dangerous. Groups like the TPLF can only exist in the shadows, within Caves of Deceit; throw the light of truth upon them, and like the Many Headed Hydra, they shrivel up and die.

    Looking for real friends

    The US-supported war in Ethiopia has revealed, if demonstration were needed, in the most vivid manner, the fabric of US foreign policy and where American/Western loyalties lie. Unsurprisingly it’s with their own vested interests, or what they perceive these to be; geo-political reach, regional power, no matter the cost — human, environmental and/or social.

    So, the lesson loud and clear, and perhaps this is something worth articulating in Pretoria, is the realization that, the US and ‘the West’ more broadly, including media and some institution are not to be trusted. This fact and the hurt caused by what Ethiopians rightly regard as a betrayal, will no doubt influence how Ethiopia moves forward, who it sees as ‘friends’ and allies, where it looks for support, and who it can trust and depend on.

    Outrage has been felt, not just in Ethiopia but across Africa, both at the terrorist attack on their neighbour, and the response of the US/West. This will strengthen pre-existing suspicions and further energise Pan Africanism, already strengthened in recent years, and foster greater unity across the region and continent.

    African nations have long been exploited by colonial powers, post-colonial institutions — the International Monetary Fund, World Bank etc, and imposed financial systems (the scandalous Structural Adjustment Programmes e.g.), which, while masquerading as ‘aid’ and/or ‘development programmes’, have ensured countries remain more or less poor, dependent and therefore malleable.

    Former colonial bodies of repression and violence (US, European countries, UK), are now in crisis themselves. Economic and political instability, ideological failure and cultural insecurity abound. And as the socio-economic model that has dominated policy making (including foreign affairs) for decades disintegrates in front of our eyes, politicians, lacking humility and vision, wedded to the past, have no answers and continually stack failure upon failure.

    The legacy of the global Neo-Liberal experiment is deeply divided societies of largely unhealthy people, and a man-made environmental catastrophe. Mental health illness is at epidemic proportions and climate change/ecological breakdown caused by reckless consumerism threatens the very survival of the race.

    A development model, shaped around the same socio-economic paradigm that has caused the chaos has been forced on Ethiopia and all Sub-Sharan African nations. Countries are not seen as nation states with rich individual cultures, but potential marketplaces and natural resource banks.

    The model is inherently unjust, benefitting a few at the expense of the many, and is made more so when applied to so-called developing nations (such terms, like the ideals they refer to and the divisions they strengthen should be consigned to the past). It is a corrupt model that, as Ethiopia moves forward and African nations look increasingly towards one another, needs to be closely examined, and in the light of need, not exploitation and profit, re-defined.

    Discussions around theses issues, as well as the nature of development, democracy, environmental concerns and regional/continental unity can slowly begin to be taken up, nationally and regionally. Platforms for debate and participation established throughout the country and a vibrant space created in which people from all ethnic groups can contribute. For now though, as Ethiopia gently emerges from the violent shadow of the TPLF, united but scarred, the focus must firstly be on healing and re-construction.

    Many will be traumatized and recovery will take time; the rebuilding work will be immense (construction/repair of schools, health services, housing etc), and government will require substantial support, both financial, technical and practical.

    But there is no limit to what can be achieved by a united populace, building upon a platform of peace and brotherhood. The people are resolute, weary yes, but strong, supportive of one another and deeply kind, and this is potentially (we must add that caveat), the beginning of a new chapter in the life of the country. An ancient nation with a rich diverse culture that has suffered much and for far too long; a new day, quiet and full of joy let us pray, a time free from conflict and the vile poison of the TPLF.

    The post A Loud and Clear Lesson For Ethiopia and the World first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.