Protesters again took to the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota — where George Floyd was murdered by cops in 2020 — demanding justice for a young Black man killed by the police, reports Malik Miah.
Despite promises by the Biden administration to respect the right to seek asylum, Washington has been denying migrants that right by invoking a provision that allows it to limit travel under the pretext of mitigating COVID-19, writes José Luis Granados Ceja.
War is big, loud, significant and attracts an audience; media likes it. Foreign wars (commonly Middle Eastern or African) distract from domestic chaos and reinforce a long-held prejudice of savagery and race, and the opposite, equally false notion of western superiority.
In all conflicts mainstream media plays a crucial role, often inflammatory, feeding the discord through a particular narrative. Western media claims it is independent, but this is fallacious; corporate owned or State sponsored, it is conditioned by a particular world-view, ideologically/politically, nationalistically, historically.
After war erupted in Ethiopia in November 2020 western media have played a major role in spreading mis-/disinformation and, occasionally, outright lies. Together with foreign powers led by the United States, international human rights groups and elements within United Nations Agencies, they attacked and undermined the Ethiopian government.
Statements are issued and regurgitated in various outlets: BBC, CNN, France24, Al Jazeera, etc., seemingly without verification; the more often something is repeated, the louder the drumbeat of insistence on its truth (currently Ukraine where Putin has no intention of invading), no matter how incredible it may be. In November 2021 e.g., media carried the totally untrue story that TPLF forces were “200 km, or 400 km away from the capital Addis Ababa and could take the city in weeks”. Was this story spread in all innocence by the media; why would a responsible editor publish such information without checking it?
Such stories sensationalize events, build tension and attract public attention. In Ethiopia they falsely portrayed the terrorist Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) as an ascendant force, the Ethiopian government as cruel and desperate, their forces deflated and inadequate.
The war was triggered by the TPLF’s preemptive attack on Federal Army bases on 4 November 2020; uncounted soldiers were killed, arms stolen. This fact (and the terrorist nature of the TPLF), is routinely disregarded by international media, and western governments, despite various TPLF spokespeople admitting it.
Imagine the outrage if such an assault took place against a western military base: there would be widespread fury, a sharp retaliatory response – or a protracted “war on terror” – unanimous support from allies, and wall-to-wall anger across the media. But, instead of condemning the terrorists, the US attacked the Ethiopian government, legitimized the TPLF, demanded PM Abiy Ahmed enter into negotiations with it. Again, would any western government be expected to negotiate with a terrorist gang that had carried out an act of treason? The hypocrisy, condescension and, yes, racism of the “international community” (the US and her bedmates), former or decaying imperialists, knows no limits.
Manufacturing Consent
An influential voice in the build-up to the conflict and a regular voice of media dis-/misinformation once fighting started, was the International Crisis Group (ICG). In a report published May 2021, Disinformation in Tigray – Manufacturing Consent for a Secessionist War, New Africa Institute (NAI) detail that, ICG “played a critical role in driving the world to believe that TPLF had the upper hand in any ensuing conflict”.
A week before the TPLF attacked the Northern Command ICG published, Steering Ethiopia’s Tigray Crisis Away from Conflict, stating, Tigray’s “well-armed regional paramilitary force is led by former national army generals. It also boasts a large militia full of war veterans. TPLF leaders say that many officers in the units of the Northern Command…would not be likely to support any federal intervention, and some could even break and join Tigray’s forces.” Such material, it is believed, emboldened the TPLF to launch their deadly attack, plunging Ethiopia into chaos.
NAI detail the extraordinary level of falsehoods, distortions and errors perpetrated by media; the dis-/misinformation campaign, they make clear, was an attempt “to manufacture consent for an unpopular irredentist, ethnic secessionist war that could not be justified in the eyes of the international public through honest reporting.” For Ethiopians it has been devastating, but within the halls of western power – Washington, mainly, but also London and, though less so, Brussels, it appears it was welcomed. A chance to destabilize not just Ethiopia under PM Abiy Ahmed, seen as too independent and potentially influential, but the Horn of Africa more broadly. The US and co. supported the TPLF politically, diplomatically and, many believe, militarily from the outset; mainstream news outlets obediently followed suit.
Media may refute the assertion of a conscious campaign of support for the TPLF; however, given the breadth of material published that either attacks the government, misleads the public or supports the terrorists, it is hard to deny.
Initially, a common excuse for the appalling coverage was the “communications blackout”. The Washington Post went as far as to blame the government for the dis-/misinformation, saying, “by blocking communications and access to Tigray, the [Ethiopian] government helped create conditions where disinformation and misinformation can thrive.” They only “thrive” if journalists/editors don’t do their jobs and check their material.
The menu of mis-/disinformation varies from the seemingly innocuous; e.g. describing the forced retreat of the TPLF to Tigray in December 2021, as a “withdrawal” (similar to reporting of the 2021 Gaza assault by Israel, in which BBC said X number of Palestinians had died and Y number of Israelis had been killed), to false accusations of “massacres, mass rape and sexual violence, looting, extrajudicial killings, genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes.” Savage portrayals of Ethiopian and Eritrean forces – drawn into the conflict after the TPLF bombed the capital Asmara – that NAI make clear “draw on old colonial tropes of Africans.”
The oft-repeated media claims of rape and gang rape by Ethiopian Federal Forces and Eritrean soldiers feed into this perverse notion of primitive Africans. Sexual and gender based violence was highlighted in the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC), joint report, 3 November 2021. Premature and partial, it is full of generalized accusations of criminality.
Whilst admitting it is not an “exhaustive record of all relevant incidents”, its authors asserted that violations were committed by all parties to the conflict, including rape/gang rape. Assertions disputed by the Ethiopian government (which has said it will investigate) and refuted in Eritrea, where there is no culture of rape/gang rape, among society or the military. Within the TPLF, however, rape/gang rape is part of its modus operandi.
TPLF military/para-military committed rape in the Ogaden region; e.g., over a 25 year period of suppression of the ethnic Somali population. The same abuse took place against Oromo women for decades, and long before the conflict started in Tigray rape was a serious problem throughout the region; in 2019 a leading activist, Meaza Gidey tweeted: “rape culture is ubiquitous in Tigray oftentimes stigmatizing & shaming female rape survivors into marrying their rapist.”
While Tigray was in total chaos, on 11 February, 10 prisons in the region were emptied of all inmates. EHRC report that paperwork on the prisoners was destroyed, making, “Tracking major offenders nearly impossible and that it is one of the causes for the substantial increase of … major crimes.” The increase was so pronounced that the TPLF-mouthpiece Tigrai Media House (TMH) admitted that, “TPLF itself was responsible for the rise in crimes.” NAI report the TMH statement: “When news broke out that the Ethiopian army was making its way to Mekelle, the Tigray regional police forces and the prison forces disbanded abandoning their posts. As a result of this, the prison doors were left open and all the hardcore criminals escaped into the community.”
None of this information was reported by western media; misrepresentation through omissions, like this, has been widespread throughout.
Another example is the absence of coverage or condemnation of the Mai Kadra Massacre, one of many such TPLF atrocities. In November 2020 the village of Mai Kadra was the scene of a brutal attack by TPLF militia, the Samri and Tigrayan special police forces. The EHRC found that, “Samri, …local police and militia….killed hundreds of people beating them with batons/sticks, stabbing them with knives, machetes and hatchets and strangling them with ropes.” This atrocious, ethnically motivated attack, EHRC states, “May amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes.” The massacre was largely overlooked by mainstream media and ignored by foreign governments; after all, those slaughtered were savages – poor (black) Africans, murdered by other poor (black) Africans.
Mai Kadre is included in the OHCHR/EHRC report, though estimating the deaths at 200, in contradiction to the 600+ Amnesty International say were murdered. To “balance” this appalling atrocity the report refers to a highly disputed incident by the Ethiopian Defense Force (EDF) in Axum, where it is claimed more than 100 people were killed. Despite the fact that there is no evidence of such an attack and no bodies have ever been discovered the story was all over mainstream media.
Then there is the oft-repeated claim that the Abiy government blocked humanitarian aid to Tigray. In January 2021 The Economist announced that food was being used as a weapon by the government, and quoted that the US run Famine Early Warning Systems Network, saying that, “parts of central and eastern Tigray are probably one step from famine.” There was no famine (terrible hardship as in all war zones, yes), and according to Ethiopia’s National Disaster Risk Management Commission, by May 2021 all 4.5 million Tigrayans in need of food had received assistance, 70% of it subsidized by the government.
The whole area of UN humanitarian work was polluted by TPLF moles, including within the World Food Programme (WFP). In October 2021 whistleblowers from UN Ethiopia revealed that the “TPLF……. have networks within UN system.” In an attempt to purge the organisation of TPLF infiltrators on 27 September the Ethiopian government expelled seven UN officials for, “Dissemination of misinformation and politicization of humanitarian assistance;” the “diversion of humanitarian assistance to the TPLF; Transferring communication equipment to be used by the TPLF;” and, unbelievably, “reticence in demanding the return of more than 400 trucks commandeered by the TPLF for military mobilization and for the transportation of its forces since July 2021.” None of this was reported by international media or commented upon by the US administration, or any other western government.
The spirit of unity
The examples of betrayal and western media dis-/misinformation over the course of the conflict are endless. The sources of material and the way stories evolve and become disseminated is often convoluted, facts ignored, evidence found wanting, or manufactured entirely, as with the so-called “Axum massacre”, examined in detail by NAI. Various players, including Europe External Programme with Africa (EEPA), where it apparently originated, and discredited ex-BBC Africa journalist Martin Plaut, contributed to a concocted narrative, accepted by Amnesty International and forming the basis for a human rights report.
A positive consequence of the west’s betrayal has been the heartening community spirit engendered among Ethiopians. Divided for decades by manipulative TPLF ethno-policies, Ethiopians, at home and abroad, have united against this group of self-supporting interconnected adversaries: The terrorist TPLF, “The West”, specifically the United States and the international mainstream media.
And now, as the fighting subsides and the country collectively draws breath the work of reconciliation and healing must begin.
To this end, in the hope of facilitating “national reconciliation”, PM Abiy announced the extraordinary step, which angered many Ethiopians, of granting an amnesty for some of the country’s most high-profile political prisoners and parliament has established a “Commission for National Dialogue”, “to pave the way for national consensus and keep the integrity of the country.” Despite the TPLF and their partners in crime, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), refusing so far to participate, this is encouraging.
Ethiopia has suffered terribly over the last year or so, and it will take time to recover. But, if the sense of national unity that has been created over the past year or so is maintained, healing will come more readily and this wonderful country will emerge stronger than ever.
Once again, the people of the United States are being lied into a war – this time with Russia over Ukraine. The corporate media echo chamber’s warning of an “imminent Russian invasion” is the equivalence of the “Iraq has WMD’s” lie used to justify a US invasion there in 2003.
We are in an urgent situation. To stop a war with Russia, antiwar groups from across the country are working together in a powerful way to organize actions, webinars and a national online rally this weekend.
Read the Call to Action: Stop War with Russia over Ukraine, which was convened by 12 national and international organizations, and now has been endorsed by nearly 200 groups. So far there are actions in more than 40 cities in 26 states and the list is growing. See the list of actions at the end of this email.
Over 700 people have signed the petition telling President Biden and United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres to resolve the conflict within the framework of international law through the UN Security Council. CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION.
Joe Lauria of Consortium News reported on the UN Security Council meeting early this week. The United States repeated its lies at the meeting. In response, the Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia replied, “Our Western colleagues say that de-escalation is needed, but they are the first to build up tension, enhance rhetoric and escalate the situation. Talks about an imminent war are provocative per se. It might seem you call for it, want it and wait for it to come, as if you wanted your allegations to come true.”
Indeed, it is clear the United States is provoking war. As people who live in the US, we have a responsibility to show the government and the world that we do NOT support this.
The national online rally is one way you can do that no matter where you are. It will be held on Saturday, February 5 at 12:00 noon Eastern/9:00 am Pacific. Speakers from the initial signatories of the call to action include: David Swanson of World Beyond War, Col. Ann Wright of CODEPINK, Rafiki Morris of Black Alliance for Peace, Joe Lombardo of the United National Antiwar Coalition, Leela Anand of the ANSWER Coalition, Sara Flounders of the International Action Committee, Cherrill Spencer of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Susan Schnall and Gerry Condon of Veterans for Peace, Bruce Gagnon and Lisa Savage of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Alice Loazia of Task Force on the Americas, and Henry Lowendorf of the US Peace Council. Ben Grosscup of the People’s Music Network will perform and Margaret Flowers will moderate. Register for the online rally at Bit.ly/StopWarWithRussia.
On Sunday, February 6 at 12:00 noon Eastern, the United National Antiwar Coalition will host a webinar featuring activists from the United States, Russia and Ukraine. Speakers include Ajamu Baraka, National Organizer, Black Alliance for Peace, Larissa Shessler, Chair, Union of Political Emigrants & Political prisoners of Ukraine, Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Joe Lombardo, Coordinator, United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), Vladimir Kozin, Correspondent member, Russian Academy of Military Science and Leonid Ilderkin, Coordinating Council of the Union of Political Emigrants & Political Prisoners of Ukraine. Register for that event here.
In this time of crisis of US Empire, the power structure will do whatever it can get away with to try to hold onto its position as a dominant force in the world. This includes spending unprecedented amounts of money on the US military while domestic needs for basics such as healthcare, housing, education, public infrastructure and economic security are unmet. It incudes flagrant violation of international laws. As Ajamu Baraka explains in this week’s Clearing the FOG, the United States is a rogue nation wreaking havoc globally.
It is up to us to reverse the current course. That will take a popular movement opposed to war and imperialism and demanding a political and economic system that serves people and planet over profit. We are building that movement together. Show up this weekend and be a part of turning the tide to a better world.
List of actions:
Alaska
Kodiak – Saturday from 10:00 to 11:00 am. Post Office Kodiak, AK. Hosted by CODEPINK.
Arizona
Phoenix – Saturday from 12:00 to 1:00 pm. Rep. Rueben Gallego’s Office: 1601 N 7th St, #310, Phoenix, AZ 85006. Sponsored by Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) & Phoenix Anti War Coalition.
Tucson – Saturday from 12:00 to 1:00 pm. Davis Monthan Air Force Base entrance Golf Links and Craycroft intersection
Tucson, AZ.
California
Bay Area – Saturday at 12 noon, Rally, Grand Lake Theater, Oakland – Fund Education, Healthcare/COVID Relief not War.
Berkeley – Saturday from 2:00 to 3:00 pm. Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, MLK Jr. Way & Center St., Berkeley, CA.
Los Angeles – Saturday from 3:00 to 4:30 pm. Wilshire Federal Building, 11000 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90024.
Santa Cruz – Saturday from 12:00 to 2:00 pm. The Town Clock, Santa Cruz, CA.
Florida
Wildwood – Saturday from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon. No War! World Beyond War and Veterans For Peace-Central Florida Chapters. Gold Dome Building, 7375 Powell Rd, Wildwood, FL 34785. Host Contact Info: moc.liamgnull@0591yttyma
Georgia
Atlanta – Saturday at 12:3o PM at Freedom Parkway and Moreland.
Illinois
Carbondale – Saturday from 12:00 to 2:00 pm. Town Square Pavilion corner of Main and Illinois Ave, Carbondale, IL 62901. Hosted by CODEPINK.
Chicago – Saturday from 1:00 to 2:00 pm. In front of the Art Institute: 111 S. Michigan Avenue.
Louisiana
New Orleans – Saturday at 2 pm. Speak out and leaflet distribution. Broad and Canal St. Workers Voice Socialist Movement. See Facebook event page.
Maine
Portland, ME – Saturday, Feb 5 at 3:00 pm. In response to a national call for protests on February 5 against a possible US-UK-NATO war with Russia we will be holding a vigil in the Midcoast. All are invited – please bring appropriate signs that are large enough to be read by cars at a busy intersection. Our spot will be the four corners of the big intersection in Topsham that connects Main St from Brunswick and Hwy 196 near the Topsham mall. Lee Toyota is on the corner. This protest is being supported by Maine Natural Guard, Peace Action Maine, PeaceWorks, WILPF Maine and Maine Veterans for Peace.
Maryland
Baltimore – Saturday at 12 noon at North Ave. and Charles St. with an optional car caravan. Sponsored by Peoples Power Assembly, Baltimore Peace Action , Ujima Peoples Power Party, Veterans for Peace.
Massachusetts
Boston, MA – Saturday at 1:00 pm, Park Street Station, downtown Boston.
Michigan
Ann Arbor – Saturday from 12:00 to 1:00 pm. Corner of Fourth Ave. and Catherine St. Ann Arbor, MI.
Minnesota
Minneapolis – NO War with Russia! Funds for human needs, not another war! Anti-war protest: Saturday at 11:00 am Mayday Plaza, 301 Cedar Ave South West Bank, Minneapolis. Join a visible anti-war presence to say NO to another war. Neighborhood march will include a stop at the office of U.S. Senator Amy Kobuchar. For more info see: http://antiwarcommittee.org/event/no-war-with-russia-funds-for-human-needs-not-another-war/
Montana
Missoula – Saturday from 12:00 to 1:00 pm. South end of the Higgins Street Bridge, Missoula, MT.
New York
New York City – Saturday at 3:00 pm. Gather at Father Duffy Square / intersection of 7th Ave and Broadway, W. 47th St to oppose war in Ukraine.
Setauket – Saturday from 11:00 am to 12:30 pm. Corner of Rt. 25A & Bennetts Road Setauket, NY. Hosted by CODEPINK.
Woodstock, NY – Saturday at 11:00 am at the Woodstock Town Green in opposition to war in Ukraine to make our voices, banners and signs heard and seen.
North Carolina
Asheville – Saturday from 4:00 to 5:30 pm. Pack Square, Biltmore Ave, Asheville, NC.
Raleigh, NC – Saturday at 12 noon Federal Bldg 310 New Bern Ave, Raleigh, NC.
Oregon
Portland – Saturday from 12:00 to 1:00. 911 NE 11th Ave (In front of Senator Wyden’s office) Portland, OR.
Portland – Saturday starting at 11:30 am and will join the action listed above after an hour. At the Hawthorn Fred Meyers, corner of Hawthorn and Ceasar Chavez blvd, Portland Oregon.
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia – Saturday from 4 to 6 pm. Entrance to Ben Franklin Bridge Philadelphia Side. By Peace, Justice, Sustainability NOW.
Rhode Island
Providence – Saturday from 1:00 to 2:00 pm. Rhode Island State House– Mall Side Gaspee St & Francis St, Providence, RI 02903.
Tennessee
Nashville – Saturday from 2:00 to 4:00 pm. Federal Building Broadway & 8th Ave S, Nashville, TN 37203.
Texas
Dallas – Saturday from 3:00 to 4:00 pm. Grassy Knoll, 411 Elm St Dallas, TX 75202.
San Antonio – Saturday at 4:30pm at New Braunfels Gate of Fort Sam Houston to say No to NATO and US aggression towards Russia! Endorsed by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, ANSWER Coalition, About Face Veterans Against the War South Texas, National Nurses United, Workers World Party, FIRE (Fight for Migrants Everywhere), and Veterans for Peace (San Antonio).
Vermont
Manchester Center – Saturday from 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm Eastern. large roundabout near Langway. Manchester Center, VT 05255. Hosted by CODEPINK.
Washington, DC
WDC – Saturday at 2:00 pm in Lafayette Square. Abolish NATO. No war with Russia.
Washington State
Bothell – Saturday from 1:00 to 2:00 pm. Intersection of Routes 527 & 522, Bothell, WA.
Seattle – Saturday from 1:00 to 2:00 pm. MLK & Rainier Ave. S, Seattle, WA 98144.
Wisconsin
Milwaukee, WI – No War with Russia over the Ukraine Rally. Saturday, Noon-1 PM. Capitol and Teutonia, Milwaukee, WI.
The current United States-Russia crisis has its roots in Washington’s betrayal of its well-documented promise to Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in the early 1990s to not move NATO eastward, write Malik Miah and Barry Sheppard.
It should matter little to the Chinese that American diplomats and a handful of their western allies will not be attending the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. What truly matters is that the Russians are coming.
The above is not an arbitrary statement. It is supported with facts. According to a survey conducted by China’s Global Times newspaper, the majority of the Chinese people value their country’s relations with Russia more than that of the EU and certainly more than that of the United States. The newspaper reported that such a finding makes it “the first time in 15 years that China-US ties did not top the list of the important bilateral relations in the Global Times annual survey.”
In fact, some kind of an alliance is already forming between China and Russia. The fact that the Chinese people are taking note of this and are supporting their government’s drive towards greater integration – political, economic and geostrategic – between Beijing and Moscow, indicates that the informal and potentially formal alliance is a long-term strategy for both nations.
American hostilities towards China, as seen by the Chinese, have become unbearable, and the Chinese people and government seem to have lost, not only any trust, however modest, of Washington, but of its own political system as well. 66 percent of all Chinese either disapproved of the US democratic system – or whatever remains of it – or believe that US democracy has sharply declined. Ironically, the vast majority of Americans share such a bleak view of their own country, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2019 and again by the Michigan Public Policy Survey in 2021.
This leads us to two possible conclusions: First, the Chinese people will not be pushing for an American-style democracy any time soon and, second, the Chinese trust in the US does not hinge on what political party controls the White House or Congress.
While the Chinese negative view of the US is unmistakably clear, Beijing remains hopeful that existing divisions with the European Union would allow it to expand economically in a region that is rife with financial and political opportunities, thus strategic growth. This fact offers China and Russia yet another area of potential cooperation, as Russia is also keen to expand into the European markets using its recently completed Nord Stream 2 gas project. Though Europe is already struggling with gas shortages, Europeans are divided on whether Russia should be allowed to claim a massive geostrategic influence by having such sway over the EU energy needs.
Germany, which already receives nearly a third of its gas supplies from Russia – through Nord Stream 1 – is worried that allowing Nord Stream 2 to operate would make it too dependent on Russian gas supplies. Under intense pressure from Washington, Germany is caught between a rock and a hard place: it needs Russian gas to keep its economy afloat, but is worried about American retaliation. To appease Washington, the German government threatened, on December 16, to block the new pipeline if Russia invades Ukraine. But is Germany in a position that allows it to make such demands?
Meanwhile, Washington is keeping a close watch on Russia’s and China’s strategic expansion westward, and it views the ‘threat’ posed by both countries with great alarm. In his recent visit to Scotland to take part in the COP26, US President Joe Biden accused China and Russia of “walking away” on “a gigantic issue”, referring to climate change. China has “lost the ability to influence people around the world and here in COP. The same way I would argue with Russia,” Biden said on November 3.
But will such rhetoric make any difference, or sway traditional US allies to boycott the lucrative deals and massive economic opportunities presented by the two emerging Asian giants?
According to Eurostat, in 2020, China overtook the US as Europe’s largest import and third-largest export partner. Moreover, according to Nature magazine, most European countries largely depend on Russian energy sources, with the European Union estimated to import nearly 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia.
In the face of these vastly changing realities, the US seems to be running out of options. The Summit for Democracy, orchestrated by Washington last December, seemed like a desperate cry for attention as opposed to celebrating the supposed democratic countries. 111 countries participated in the conference. The participants were handpicked by Washington and included such countries as Israel, Albania and Ukraine. China and Russia were, of course, excluded, not because of their lack of democratic credentials – such notions are often of no relevance to the politicized US definition of ‘democracy’ – but because they, along with others, were meant to be left isolated in the latest US hegemonic move.
The conference, expectedly, turned out to be an exercise in futility. Needless to say, the US is in no position to give democracy lessons to anyone. The attempted coup in Washington by tens of thousands of angry US militants on January 6, 2021 – coupled with various opinion polls attesting to Americans’ lack of faith in their elected institutions – places the US democracy brand at an all-time low.
As the US grows desperate in its tactics – aside from increasingly ineffectual sanctions, aggressive language and the relentless waving of the democracy card – China and Russia continue to draw closer to one another, on all fronts. In an essay entitled ‘Respecting People’s Democratic Rights’, written jointly by the ambassadors of Beijing and Moscow in Washington, Qin Gang and Anatoly Antonov wrote in the National Interest magazine that the democracy summit was “an evident product of (US’s) Cold-War mentality,” which “will stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world, creating new ‘dividing lines’.”
But there is more than their mutual rejection of American hostilities that is bringing China and Russia closer. The two countries are not motivated by their fear of the American military or some NATO invasion. Russia’s and China’s militaries are moving from strength to strength and neither country is experiencing the anxiety often felt by smaller, weaker and relatively isolated countries that have faced direct or indirect US military threats.
To push back against possible NATO expansion, the Russian military is actively mobilizing in various regions at its western borders. For its part, the Chinese military has made it clear that any US-led attempt aimed at altering the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait would provoke an immediate military retaliation. In a virtual meeting with the US President, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Biden on November 16 that the US was “playing with fire”. “Whoever plays with fire will get burnt,” he threatened.
The Chinese-Russian alliance aims largely at defending the two countries’ regional and international interests, which are in constant expansion. In the case of China, the country is now a member of what is considered the world’s largest economic pact. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which was officiated on January 1, covers a global market that caters to around 30 percent of the world’s population.
Russia, too, operates based on multiple regional and international alliances. One of these military alliances is the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which is currently involved in ‘peacekeeping’ operations in Kazakhstan. From Syria in the Middle East, to Venezuela in South America to Mali in West Africa and beyond, Russia’s military influence has increased to the extent that, in September 2021, Moscow signed military cooperation agreements with Africa’s two most populous nations, Nigeria and Ethiopia, challenging the traditional dominance of the US and France on the African continent.
Informally, China and Russia are already operating according to a regional and global model that can be compared to that of the now-defunct Warsaw Treaty Organization (1955-91), a political and military alliance between the Soviet Union and several Eastern European countries that aimed at counter-balancing the US-led NATO alliance. The Warsaw Pact pushed back against US-led western hegemony and labored to protect the interests of the pact’s members throughout the world. History seems to be repeating itself, though under different designations.
Historically, the two countries have had a difficult and, at times, antagonistic relationship, dating back to the 19th century. During the Nikita Khrushchev era, Beijing and Moscow even broke their ties altogether. The Sino-Soviet split of 1960 was earth-shattering to the extent that it transformed the bipolarity of the Cold War, where China operated as an entirely independent party.
Though diplomatic relations between Beijing and Moscow were restored in 1989, it was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union that cooperation between both nations intensified. For example, the decision, in 1997, to coordinate their diplomatic positions in the United Nations gave birth to the Joint Declaration on a Multipolar World and the Establishment of a New International Order. That agreement between Russia and China laid the foundations for the actively evolving multi-polar world that is currently transpiring before our eyes.
Present reality – namely US, NATO, EU pressures – has compelled Russia and China to slowly, but surely, cement their relationship, especially on the economic, diplomatic and military fronts. Writing in Carnegie Moscow Center, Alexander Gabuev explained that, according to data provided by the Russian Federal Customs Service, “China’s share in Russian foreign trade grew from 10.5 percent in 2013 (before the Ukraine crisis and sanctions) to 16.7 percent in 2019 and 18.3 percent in the pandemic-struck 2020.”
Moreover, the two countries are holding regular large-scale joint military exercises, aimed at strengthening their growing security and military cooperation.
This already close relation is likely to develop even further in the near future, especially as China finds itself compelled to diversify its energy sources. This became a pressing need following recent tensions between Australia, a NATO member, and China. Currently, Australia is the main natural gas supplier to Beijing.
On its own, Russia cannot conclusively defeat Western designs. China, too, despite its massive economic power, cannot play a geopolitical game of this caliber without solid alliances. Both countries greatly benefit from building an alternative to US-led political, economic and military alliances, starting with NATO. The need for a Russian-Chinese alliance becomes even more beneficial when seen through the various opportunities presenting themselves: growing weakness in the US’s own political system, cracks within US-EU relations and the faltering power of NATO itself. Turkey, for example, though a NATO member, has for years been exploring its own geopolitical alliances outside the NATO paradigm. Turkey is already cementing its ties with both Russia and China, and on various fronts. Other countries, for example, Iran and various South American countries, that have been targeted by the US for refusing to toe Washington’s political line, are desperately seeking non-western alliances to protect their interests, their sovereignty and their heavily sanctioned economies.
While it is still too early to claim that China and Russia are anywhere near a full-blown alliance of the Warsaw nature, there is no reason to believe that the cooperation between both countries will be halted, or even slow down anytime soon. The question is how far are Beijing and Moscow willing to go to protect their interests.
A scheme is underway to withhold or to reduce payments made by the Palestinian Authority to the families of Palestinian prisoners. According to Israeli media, the Biden Administration has requested that the PA entirely overhauls its support system of Palestinian prisoners. The Palestinian leadership had already expressed willingness to engage the US in a ‘discussion’.
According to Israel’s Channel 12, the Biden Administration has called on PA President Mahmoud Abbas to stop paying stipends to Palestinian prisoners’ families and, instead, to consider an alternative ‘welfare’ system. For example, over 60-year-old prisoners would receive payments as if ‘retired PA employees’. Those under 60, according to the report, would be paid as ‘PA employees’.
The above is meant as some kind of a compromise. Unlike previous American and Israeli attempts aimed at cutting off any kind of support to the families of Palestinian prisoners, this time around the PA seems willing to consider alternatives to the existing systems.
PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh had already expressed his willingness to consider the American concerns. Last November, Shtayyeh had stated that “if anyone has reservations about this or that section of the law, we can discuss it.”
By ‘law’, Shtayyeh was referring to the Palestinian law that allows the PA to support Palestinian prisoners and their families as a pact of solidarity. After all, these Palestinian prisoners are facing horrific circumstances due to their acts of resistance to the Israeli occupation.
Of course, Israel doesn’t see it this way. For Tel Aviv, any act of Palestinian resistance is unlawful, and every Palestinian resister is a ‘terrorist’. This should hardly be surprising, as Israel does not see itself as an occupier or the Palestinians as a people deserving of justice and freedom.
Also unsurprising is the American position. Washington, too, agrees with the Israeli depiction of Palestinian resistance as ‘terrorists’ and has, for years, attempted to block any aid from reaching families of Palestinian prisoners.
In 2018, former US President Donald Trump withheld funding from the Palestinian Authority and also from the UN refugee agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, citing the PA financial support of Palestinian prisoners and their families.
The following year, Israel followed suit, as it unlawfully withheld tax payments collected on behalf of the PA – a most unfair system instituted by the so-called Paris Protocol. The money withheld by Israel constitutes nearly half of the entire PA budget. This outright theft by Israel is carried out as a form of pressure, under various guises and with no international monitoring.
Eventually, in November 2020, Israel once more began transferring the payment to PA coffers, but while still keeping a portion of the money, which, according to Israeli estimations, was equivalent to payments made to prisoners’ families.
To cope with the crisis, the PA instituted various budget cuts that mostly affected PA employees and prisoners – many of whom belonged to PA rival groups, whether in the West Bank or the besieged Gaza Strip. The disproportionately massive spending on the PA security apparatus, especially branches that are involved in the so-called security coordination between the PA and Israel, was left untouched.
Since the start of Biden’s presidential term, the PA has promoted the unfunded notion that Biden is better for Palestinians, simply because the new administration gave partial political validation to Mahmoud Abbas – who was completely shunned by Trump – and restored US aid. Aside from that, there has been no evidence of the supposed pro-Palestinian agenda of Joe Biden and his administration.
Indeed, the Biden Administration has pledged not to reverse any of the illegal steps taken by Trump, which, among other concessions, legitimized the Israeli occupation of Palestinian East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights. Moreover, the US is yet to reopen its consulate in East Jerusalem, which served as a de facto American diplomatic representation in the occupied territories. Even the restoration of the PLO office in Washington D.C. is yet to be carried out, due to strong opposition by Israel and its allies on Capitol Hill.
Over a year has passed since the start of Biden’s presidency, yet, there is still no political horizon, no meaningful American engagement, and not even a coherent American outlook. To the contrary, all that we have seen is Israel’s insistence on entrenching its occupation, widening the circle of violence and expanding its illegal settlements, either with an American nod or disinterest.
Ordinary Palestinians, of course, have very little expectations of Washington as there is no historical evidence to demonstrate that the US has ever favored the Palestinian agenda – that of freedom and justice – over the Israeli one, of endless occupation and apartheid. While the US Congress is very quick to pass anti-Palestinian measures, pro-Palestinian inititatives, though commendable, have very little chance of ever making it into law. For example, H.R. 2407 – “Promoting Human Rights For Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act”, has, for years, attempted to remind the US government of its legal responsibility under the Foreign Assistance Act so that it may cease funding military detention of children anywhere in the world, including in Palestine.
Not only is Israel not held accountable at all for the continued detention of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children, it is actually dictating American foreign policy, compelling Washington to accept and accommodate Israeli definitions, priorities and agendas.
The issue of Palestinian prisoners is a very sensitive topic in Palestine. Palestinians consider their prisoners heroes of the resistance and their families as a collective responsibility of Palestinian communities everywhere. In fact, support for Palestinian prisoners’ families is the last hold on legitimacy in the hands of the PA. If it loses that, the consequences are sure to be dire.
Perhaps, American diplomats can consider an alternative path to fairly address the issue of financial support received by Palestinian prisoners and their families, namely freeing all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli dungeons. Maybe the discussion should also be expanded to include the freedom of all Palestinians who are experiencing their own forms of imprisonment by Israel. Such demands may seem outrageous in view of the current political balances of power but they are certainly morally and legally the proper discussion to be had.
The Israeli spy software firm NSO Group has rarely been out of the headlines over the past year.
Its spyware tool Pegasus worms its way into phones, accessing data and turning on the microphone and camera to act as round-the-clock surveillance equipment. Authoritarian states have reportedly bought the cyber weapon from NSO and put it to nefarious political uses, targeting journalists, human rights workers, civil rights lawyers and opposition parties.
Perhaps most notoriously, associates of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government who was murdered in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul in 2018, were later found to have Pegasus on their phones. And last month, it was reported that the spyware was used on the phone of Kamel Jendoubi in 2019, when he was investigating potential Saudi war crimes in Yemen on behalf of the United Nations.
US President Joe Biden’s administration placed NSO and Candiru, another Israeli surveillance software developer, on a blacklist in November, barring US firms from providing them with technology. Washington said these companies’ military-grade software tools were being used for “transnational repression” and were harming US national interests.
Poland’s opposition-led Senate joined the backlash last week, announcing plans to draft a law to regulate surveillance software such as Pegasus, after it was used to target the phones of several opposition leaders. The legislation has little chance of being passed; the Polish justice ministry reportedly bought the spyware in 2017, ostensibly as part of an anti-corruption drive.
Selective outrage
But while there has been plenty of selective international outrage at NSO for its profiting from repression and human rights violations, the real problem is being largely obscured.
This is not a matter of better regulation of a few private companies that have gone rogue. This is a battle for control of a rapidly developing cyber weapons industry that is not only highly profitable, but gives those states that can oversee the industry enormous clout over other states.
The reality is that cyber weapons, like conventional arms, are not going away. They are just going to get more sophisticated, invasive and destructive – and more profitable.
Up to this point, Israel has dominated the field. That is largely because its conventional and cyber weapons industries have been lavishly subsidised with US military aid, and because Palestinians under occupation have served as a ready laboratory for testing the new technologies.
But that may be changing as Washington begins to crack down on pioneering Israeli firms, such as NSO and Candiru, making it much harder for them to sell their wares. NSO was reported last month to be close to insolvency.
While the Biden administration has packaged its measure as a way to protect human rights from offensive software, its motives appear to be far less disinterested. An examination of Israel’s own role in the development of the cyberweapons industry points to what is really at stake.
Police operation
This month, it emerged that NSO’s Pegasus software had not only been used by malign actors abroad, but had also been covertly used by Israeli state agencies against opponents of Israel’s far-right government, both in the occupied territories and inside Israel itself.
Israeli police were recently forced to concede that they had been using Pegasus too. They reportedly bought an early version of the software in 2013, long before its use elsewhere was discovered.
The targets in Israel included the leaders of protests that took off in 2019 to oust former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from power. Netanyahu is currently on trial on corruption charges, and is widely reported to be readying for a plea deal.
The Calcalist, an Israeli business newspaper, has reported one instance in which police used Pegasus to collect details of the sex life of a social activist.
In Israel, the debate about the police spying operation has been largely limited to technicalities. Did police get court permission before using this military-grade spyware? An investigatory panel has been set up to find out. But that inquiry is intended to deflect from the main point.
Intimate ties
The latest revelations confirm a pattern that was already clear to anyone paying attention: the Israeli state is not simply failing to regulate NSO. It is working hand-in-hand with the company – and others like it.
The first direct clue about the Israeli state’s complicity with NSO emerged last November, shortly after Israel declared six prominent Palestinian human rights groups to be terrorist organisations – even though those improbable allegations have never been backed up with any evidence.
Within days, it was revealed that the phones of some of the Palestinian groups’ senior staff had been infiltrated with Pegasus software. That had a striking implication: only Israeli security services had both the motive and means to spy on these Palestinian organisations.
Now, with fresh revelations about Israeli police using Pegasus, the intimate ties between the Israeli state and firms such as NSO are impossible to deny. Indeed, according to Haaretz’s veteran military analyst, Amos Harel, NSO is “part of the very heart and soul of the Israeli establishment”. Israel cannot be treated as simply another rogue purchaser of NSO’s offensive spyware.
Blind eye
Pegasus was developed by the alumni of the Israeli state’s cyber teams and intelligence arms, drawing on military research funded by Israel and the US. Like other veterans of the Israeli army, NSO staff developed their know-how by testing surveillance tools on Palestinians.
The Israeli defence ministry licences the export of NSO’s spyware. The claim was always that the software was being sold exclusively to the security forces of democratic countries in the fight against crime and terrorism.
What soon became clear was that NSO was actually profiteering from the surveillance and abuse – and sometimes murder – of regime opponents, whether journalists, lawyers, politicians or human rights activists. It was Israel, not just NSO, that turned a blind eye to that information.
And that was for good reason. The selection of who NSO sold to never appeared random. Its clients were Israel’s closest allies, as well as those states with whom Israel wanted to cultivate deeper ties for political and diplomatic advantage.
That included repressive Gulf states, which have been developing ever closer relations with Israel, culminating in the 2020 Abraham Accords.
According to a report in the New York Times last week, then Prime Minister Netanyahu personally intervened to renew Saudi Arabia’s contract with NSO after the defence ministry rejected an export licence following bad publicity over Khashoggi’s murder in 2018.
Israel also wanted to deepen ties with ultra-nationalist governments in eastern Europe and India, countries Israel has come to rely on in international forums to side with it against the Palestinian push for statehood.
At a conference last month, Eli Pincu, the former head of the Israeli defence ministry’s team overseeing the export of Pegasus, highlighted the Israeli state’s obligations towards NSO: “If a company that helped the country’s interest in any way enters the US blacklist … isn’t the state of Israel obligated to support it, to defend it, to deal with the issue for it?”
Another Israeli analyst has termed this “espionage diplomacy”. The thinking has been: “I’ll give you the tools to repress your internal opponents, if in return you back my repression of the Palestinians.”
Rubbed the wrong way
But NSO – and by implication, Israel – has rubbed too many powerful interests the wrong way. Meta (formerly Facebook) and Apple, two of the richest transnational corporations in history, are suing NSO in the US for hacking their products. They likely worry that such infiltrations have undermined consumer confidence.
The US government, too, is unhappy that Pegasus has been found on the devices of its officials. It has already gone to great lengths to make an example of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, seeking to lock him up indefinitely after he published leaks of embarrassing diplomatic cables and exposed US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is public knowledge that NSO spyware was recently identified on the phones of US diplomats serving in Uganda. The likely suspects include Uganda and Rwanda, both NSO clients.
But given the hard-world realities of state relations, it is likely that in private, the US has found Pegasus software on the phones of many more of its officials. NSO’s client states have an incentive to eavesdrop on the world’s only superpower to understand what it plans for them.
Back in 2015, another Israeli firm, Black Cube, spied on US officials involved in negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran that Israel deeply opposed. Washington knows it cannot stop the development of spyware – and, in any case, it has no interest in undermining this burgeoning industry. After all, it wants these tools for its own spying operations, both against rival states and for internal repression of dissidents.
But what it can do is take greater control of the cyber weapons industry so that the US gets to decide who has access to the best spyware, and build in technological safeguards to prevent offensive software from being turned against the US itself.
Professions of concern about human rights violations and invasions of privacy will keep dominating headlines. But the real battle will be for who emerges as the global spymaster.
A new report exposes the drug trials and other medical experiments conducted without consent and with the backing of United States government intelligence agencies, reports Binoy Kampmark.
The diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games may go down in history as the official start of the cold war between the US, a handful of its allies and China. The American strategy, however, of using boycotts to pressure Beijing in the name of ‘human rights’, may prove costly in the future.
On December 6, Washington declared that it would not send any diplomatic representation to the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. In subsequent days, the UK, Canada and Australia followed suit.
The official American line claims that US diplomats will not participate in the event in protest of the “human rights abuses … in Xinjiang”. That claim can easily be refuted by simply recalling that the US has taken part in the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics.
Then, claims of human rights violations in China were hardly a priority for the Americans, for one single reason: the thriving Chinese economy was the last line of defense that saved the global economy from total collapse, itself a result of the gross mismanagement of the US economy and malpractices of America’s largest banking institutions.
“Since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, one country more than any other has provided the ‘heavy lifting’ to support global economic growth,” Stephen King wrote in the Financial Times in August 2015.
Things have changed significantly since then. China emerged as a global economic power, which is increasingly replacing the US and its allies on the world’s stage. Desperate to recover from their economic woes – worsened by unhindered military spending on seemingly endless wars – the US has been waging a different kind of war against China. This economic war, which began under Barack Obama’s administration in 2012, and accelerated under Donald Trump’s administration, continues under the administration of Joe Biden.
However, forcing a country the size of China to compromise on its economic growth merely to allow Washington to sustain its global dominance is easier said than done. Additionally, it is utterly unfair.
Using a sports boycott to make a point that Washington still has plenty of options has actually resulted in the opposite. Only three other countries have agreed to join the American diplomatic boycott, a negligible number if compared to the twenty African countries that refrained from participating in the 1976 Montreal Summer Games in protest of the New Zealander participation. The latter was criticized for validating the South African apartheid regime when their rugby team had toured South Africa in that same year.
Earlier, in the Mexico City Olympics of 1968, 38 countries had refused to participate in protest of the admission of South Africa into the Olympics. Despite the initial decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to allow South African participation, international pressure led by African nations succeeded in the expulsion of the apartheid country – which was excluded from the international event until its re-admission in 1992.
The US and three of its allies want us to believe that their diplomatic boycott is motivated by principles, namely, though not exclusively, in defense of China’s Uyghur Muslims. If that was the case, what is one to make of the US-led wars on Muslim countries over the last two decades? What kind of human rights standards did Washington apply when it waged war on Afghanistan in 2001 and invaded Iraq in 2003? Tellingly, and ironically, the same three countries – the UK, Canada and Australia – actively participated in America’s military misadventures that have claimed countless Muslim lives and destroyed entire countries.
The fact that only three other countries have adhered to the American call for a diplomatic boycott also illustrates the weakening grip of Washington over international affairs. It is worth mentioning that the European Union has refused to join the US in its latest foreign policy intrigue.
For its part, China criticized Washington’s position, rightly stating, in the words of its Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, that the boycott is motivated by “ideological prejudice and based on lies and rumors.”
Historically, international sports events have been politicized in two different ways: First, morally-driven boycotts based on an ethical agenda, like the boycott of South African apartheid and so on; and second, purely political boycotts that are instituted to serve a political agenda or to isolate host countries as a form of economic pressure. An example of the latter was the US-led boycott of the Moscow Summer Olympics of 1980, for which the Soviet Union and their allies retaliated by boycotting the Los Angeles Summer Olympics of 1984.
The American diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Chinese Olympics is an example of a politically-motivated boycott. The fact that it is a diplomatic boycott only, as opposed to a full boycott, is most likely compelled by Washington’s fears that a full-fledged boycott would only serve to illustrate its own isolation in the international arena.
Keeping in mind existing global divisions and the need for international unity to confront collective crises – such as that of the environment, deadly pandemics, among others – delving back into yet a new cold war will serve no purpose, aside from harming millions of people around the world for no fault of their own. What is required is dialogue, one that aims at providing equitable opportunities for all nations to grow and prosper.
That said, the age of global hegemony is coming to an end and no amount of self-serving boycotts or trade wars will alter this unavoidable fact.
My dream is to invite a reader into a room and pour a nice cup of tea . . . and then nail the door shut.
— author Charles Bowden, 2010 NPR interview
There is so much daily that expresses so much about the slippery slopes we are in globally because of predatory-penury-parasitic-pugilistic capitalism.
In the USA, on this continent, north, and south of those colonial and Manifest Destiny “borders,” the amount of both absurdity and abomination is magnified in a world of protracted panic.
It’s there, truly, the panic. Young people are offing themselves with Narcan and with opiates. There are more dreams not only deferred, but dreams turned into nightmares by a thousand cuts.
We have a world where getting into uniform, with a rifle, with a joystick for murder incorporated, is the new abnormal. Hitch up in the killing machine US Army for $50K.
If this isn’t blasphemy, then, you know we have lathered ourselves on that slippery slope of the multi-pronged Faustian Bargain.
Then, more mercenaries recruited for big bonuses: Make that the disgusting US Army,
You know how messed up the USA is, from A to Z, and the news continues to illustrate the dying empire. Paying punks to enlist in the killing machine!
FORT CAMPBELL, KY — The U.S. Army is offering its largest bonus ever for new recruits with up to $50,000 available to qualified individuals who sign on for a six-year active-duty enlistment.
The total incentive package for a new recruit is based on a combination of incentives offered for the selected career field, individual qualifications, length of the enlistment contract, and the ship date for training.
In the past, enlistment incentives for full-time soldiers could not exceed $40,000.
The Army is competing for the same talent as the other services as well as the private sector and must have the ability to generate interest in the current employment environment, according to Maj. Gen. Kevin Vereen, who leads U.S. Army Recruiting Command in its mission to fill full-time and part-time vacancies in about 150 career fields in the regular Army and the Army Reserve.
“This is an opportunity to entice folks to consider the Army,” said Brig. Gen. John Cushing, who serves as the deputy commanding general for operations under Vereen at USAREC. “We’ve taken a look at the critical (military occupational specialties) we need to fill in order to maintain the training bases, and that is where we place a lot of our emphasis.”
Now run that up against The Man who coined the term Military Industrial Complex, and a new book written by, well, shall we call that person part of the elite, part of the chosen people from Ivy League and East Coast silver spoon roots. And, in the magazine that for many is a sell-out, for sure, Jacobin: Here, the article reviewing the man and the book.
Crisscrossing the country, Butler denounced US warmaking abroad and ruling-class violence at home as two sides of the same bloody coin, telling audiences from Racine to Roanoke that America was divided into “two classes”:
On one side, a class of citizens who were raised to believe that the whole of this country was created for their sole benefit, and on the other side, the other 99 percent of us, the soldier class, the class from which all of you soldiers came.
Butler published a short book, War Is a Racket, collecting the key themes of his orations in 1935. Later, in an essay in the socialist magazine Common Sense, Butler confessed to having been a “racketeer for capitalism,” elaborating that, as “a member of our country’s most agile military force,” he had served as “a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers.” In 1936, Marine Corps informants sent to spy on the ex-general observed him speaking on a panel alongside self-identified Communists and reported that “the General appeared to us to be either insane or an out and out traitor.”
[Major General John A. Lejeune, head of the Marine Corps, calls on General Smedley Butler in camp at Frederick, Maryland in 1922. (Bettmann / Getty Images)]
And, as an aside, but a big ASIDE, we are in a time of collective cholera of the conscious, in this remote work, remote being, remote news world. Just watching the fake left, Amy Goodman, daily (M-F) with an absolute stiff arm to authority, as the Democracy Now newsroom in New York is with Goodman, solo, while her correspondents, including Juan Gonzalez, are stuck in their homes with their laptops and tiny cameras and mic delivering their fear porn.
Imagine this happening today, 2022 — Verboten, again, in the Zoom Doom of Dead Consciousness. Mask up, sit on your toilet, tune into Zoom, if you are lucky:
[Students at the University of California at Berkeley filing in to listen to Smedley Butler’s Peace Day address in 1939. (Library of Congress)]
I analyzed Juan’s book, News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media, a while back. Remember, Juan was once in the radical group, the Young Lords.
Luís Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil’s Highway, said “…in Murder CityCharles Bowden plunges in head-first, without a parachute. There are moments when the book threatens to burst into flames and burn your hands.”
We are in a time of cholera of the consciousness, of infantalized masses following the dictates of a few chosen people, men and women of those classes, those groupings, the vetted and vaunted few, the ones who have been knighted by the lords of finance insurance real estate, and, more than FIRE, but the complex: Butler, War is a Racket.
Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and “we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,” but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket — and are safely pocketed. Let’s just take a few examples:
Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people — didn’t one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn’t much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let’s look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.
Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump — or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!
Or, let’s take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad.
There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let’s look at something else. A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times.
Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year.
Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.
Let’s group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000.
A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.
Read the short book, then scale it up to today! Trillions stolen from US taxpayers, and all the apps, all the services of the private money hecklers who have gotten sweetheart contracts with every branch of the government you and I supposedly fought for. All those trillions in bribes and bailouts. Imagine that, a Trump LLC and then a CitiBank Biden BBB. And before these two scoundrels? Do the history, look at the administrations, and figure it out. Here, just one short diatribe featuring one hell of a Satan, Kissinger. Beware of the verbiage I deploy to singe this fellow and those presidents who have utilized this war criminal. I have already gotten emails threatening me for the Blog Post. And notice all those cozy photos of Henry Kissinger with all the tribes of descrutive capitalism, a la war. War on us, war on societies, war on nations, war on children, war on ecology, war on thought, war on agency, war on the human body, war on thought. “Tribalism Rules.”
So here we are, now, the kernel of this diatribe today — our faces. Oh, how we give up more and more each day, until the chip is in the back of the neck, and those bots are gathered in our organs with graphene building blocks to our souls.
Again, I harp on this one blasphemey, IRS demanding facial recognition — and that agency is for us, right? A truly representative form of democracy demands we the people have a huge say in what happens to us, and that’s not just idiotic voting, but again, “War is a Racket” is now “Banking-AI-Pharma-Med-Entertainment-Science-Education-Prisons-Law-Congress-Energy-Transportation-Chemicals-Engineering-Space-Data” ARE the Racket.” This is yet another single story that comes to us via the Net which is yet another chink in the armor of humanity plucked from our souls:
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the US will require people to submit a facial scan through a third party provider to make payments or file taxes online. The system raises obvious privacy concerns.
Currently, users only require a username and password to log into their IRS accounts. But starting the summer of 2022, users will need to verify their identity through a third-party identity verification company called ID.me. The change was first noticed by Krebs on Security.
So you dig a bit, and find out who these millionaires and hedge funders and social impact investors are behind this “third party” (gouging, sick profiteers) outfit, ID Me!
Nader’s good, but he can only go so far. Yesterrday, 1/20, on Democracy Now, a rare media visit for Ralph Nader, who has been locked out of board rooms, out of newsrooms, locked out of so much for decades, when his memory, his insight, his analyses are vital to institutional memory and his own sort of harping against the profiteers.
He has to beat those dead horses, multiple times, year after year . . . dead horses tied to the fact there are no real journalists in the legacy media, and that there are no cops working the FTC or DoJ or EPA or FDA. He is spot on, but he never gets on NPR or PBS or Fox or CBS. Nader is spot on about Republicans being fascistic and messianic. They are, of course, worse:
And the reporters didn’t take him to task there. The reporters, either they’re not doing their homework or they’re full of taboos. I mean, they never raise the corporate supremacy over our country. There isn’t a single agency in the federal government that isn’t influenced maximally by corporate lobbies. And Congress is swarmed by corporate lobbies. You have 500 drug company lobbyists full-time assigned to Congress, and there are 535 members of Congress. And these corporations are strategically commercializing every aspect of our society, commercializing childhood, strategically planning the tax system, the food system, the health system, fighting global warming remedies, the fossil fuel industry, ExxonMobil. They’re planning our genetic inheritance. Commercializing childhood should be a left-right issue, conservative issue. The press never asks about it. The self-censorship of the press is overwhelming. That’s why we have to have a more independent media.
We have to have — I mean, look at the coverage of Ukraine. As Katrina pointed out, if our country was invaded in a span of 40 years from the north, with 50 million casualties, what do you think we would do? Do you think we would just station troops on the northern border? We would have taken over the northern country and annexed it. And that’s why dictator Putin can get away with what he’s doing now, in terms of public opinion of the impoverished Russian people, is because they remember. They have their casualties in their families from the western frontiers, started with Napoleon.
And here we are, expanding a military alliance for arms sales for the military-industrial complex, because, as was pointed out, a condition of joining NATO is to buy the F-16 and other weapons in Eastern European countries. NATO is a military alliance organized against the Soviet Union. And now they’re expanding it in Eastern Europe and putting troops there. It’s, here we go again, a completely preventable conflict. What Putin really wants is Ukraine never to join NATO, no strategic offensive weapons in the Ukraine. He’s asking for ending strategic weapons in Europe — that is not going to happen.
But the press asks war-inciting questions. NPR asked it. David Sanger asked it. They asked war-inciting questions. It’s like Vietnam all over again. It’s like Iraq all over again. They don’t ask peace-inciting questions about diplomacy. And this is a dangerous situation, and the press just isn’t doing its job. It isn’t just Biden.
He can’t communicate how the GOP is opposed to everything that’s defined as human. You don’t make moral appeals to the GOP, like Senator Warnock just did. You show that they are opposed to sending $250 and $300 monthly checks to 65 million children, which has stopped now, and the GOP will not expand it. I mean, that’s a good political item to communicate to the American people. Those 65 million children come from conservative and liberal families who are both deprived. He doesn’t know how to communicate. The GOP knows what it wants. It’s messianic. It’s fascistic. It’s driven. And the communication from the Democrats, from the DNC to the White House, is weak. It’s anemic. And the public senses that. (source)
Finally, a story NOT covered in legacy media or left wing media. Ralph doesn’t get it yet. He still believes in his book title, how billionaires will save the world.
He’s dead wrong about the above statement/title of one of his books. And, here it is, again, social impact investing, and the soul of humanity, especially youth, being sucked up by the ultra rich and investment teams for their data and their compliance — The Internet of Bodies and Human Capital Futures Bets In Brazil
In the coming years, global financiers, will attempt to meld dynamic pricing and mobile payments with biometric digital identity, Internet of Body sensors, and blockchain smart contracts and then weave it all into an expansive spatial web meant to control our social and economic relations in both the material world and, through digital assets, rights and privileges, in the Metaverse, as well. Click here to listen to an interview I did with Bonnie Faulkner of Guns and Butter that goes into more detail about how impact investing connects to digital twins, and mixed reality.
Surely it is twisted to view communities as resource deposits of untapped data, but that is the logic of end-stage capitalism. The infrastructure needed to scale human capital finance profit are ICT (Individual Communication Technology) devices including phones, tablets, and inexpensive computers like chrome books; wearable technologies and biosensors; and 5-6G used in combination with data-dashboards that verify impact data against predictions and success metrics laid out in the terms of the deals. These are all things one finds in recreation centers in the United States now, and given inroads made by the Aspen Institute, Stanford, Harvard and the like, they will very likely become standard issue in the favelas, too. Not because any of it is good for children, but because the children’s data has value, and their compliance has value.
The Metaverse will be populated by compliant avatars. Beyond social impact, the conditioning of the young to cyborg life is going full throttle. Meanwhile for portfolio managers, children’s futures are just tranches of investment – data commodities. It’s only business. — Alison McDowell, Wrench in the Gears (dot) com!
Most people I talk with do not have the bandwidth or wherewithal to understand this next stage, end stage, capitalism into our very souls, which is fascism, inverted totalitarianism, all bunched up in a world of chaos, all drawn and quartered on the backs of us, vis-a-vis all these scams of Build Back Better variety, or UN’s sustainability goals and Universal Basic Income propaganda, and the 4IR and WEF — the fourth industrial revolution is part and parcel of the Great Reset.
This sort of stuff Alison writes about does get under many of our skins, but for the most part, I know so many people who have given up, who think that we all are data mined anyways, that we have all our info in the banking-IRS-DMV-insurance-medical-education superhighway of giving up all agency, anyway, so what’s the big deal we are being tracked, and what’s the big deal that our kids are being watched and what’s wrong with our ovaries and prostates and such being monitored by the Internet of Bodies and Nano-Things when we just have to lean back and enjoy this new world?
And I have harped for 17 years here at Dissident Voice, and decades before, in newsrooms, in classrooms, in homeless shelters, in programs for the disenfranchised, on stage, at conferences for sustainability, on my radio show, elsewhere. I have harped and harped about the false flags, about the overlords drilling into our very being, about more and more of our agency stripped from us daily, not as part of a huge democratically controlled system of community building, power to the people organizing, or we are the 80 Percent movements, but to mine our souls so we are ghosts in their machines.
The agency we have given up was with that passport, all those sick people who pressed my ass at various border control passings. Strip searched and body cavity groped twice. Then, all the shot records needed to go here and go there. All the proof of life in school (Iowa IQ tests), the SAT, the LSAT, all the tests (run by the chose people, millionaires) and all the records of accomplishment, of criminal involvement, all the credit scores and all the car blunders, all of that kept for THEM, the Complext, the Insurance, Real Estate, Finance, FIRE, millionaires who get legislation in THEIR favor passed through the tricks of pimping and prostituting and arm twisting and outright bribery.
Imagine, protests and cops rounding us up, and then court cases, appearances, the hassles, the humiliations. Try it out for size.
How many arguments have I had with MD’s who know squat about nutrition and each time challenged me and my vegetarianism? Me, running 6 miles a day, biking 30 and scrambling underwater and up hills?
How man dirty arguments about “that” history, versus a new and improved revisionist history vital to a population from which to rise up and take on the paymasters, the body snatchers, the mind thieves?
Until we are here, 2022, in a chamber of stupidity, all the dumb and worthless stuff out there, all the racists and white-priviledged perspectives out there pounding it in the heads of unsuspecting youth, K12, TikTok, YouTube, all of the Net and WWW. All the Ivy League and Oxford-trained scum who determine not only our futures, but write our histories, and what they write is almost always semi-dead wrong. Because without the voices of the oppressed, those on the streets, in homeless camps, those suffering poverty and the inflammatory disease of capitalism; i.e., fines-tolls-fees-surcharges-service fees-handling charges-tickets-code violations-late fees-taxes-triple taxations-levies-processing fees-mortgages-ball on payments-PayDay loan rigged systems — without their voices at the forefront, and in the newsrooms, inside schools, and in the publishing houses and the actual process of writing their own stories, then we have the tin ear writers and prognosticators and anthropologists and psychologists, the elite, the highly connected, the bias of the white man and white woman writing about us.
They get it wrong 90 percent of the time!
Now, if this graphic doesn’t run chills up and down your spine, then, you are not following the overlords’ script. Catch up please!
Dig down and listen, watch, read: And it’s not pretty, and it’s not slick, and it’s not all east coast, Ivy League, London Bridges Falling Down stuff.
The piece was written and published December 2021, even though Chuck died in 2014.
Here, a gravel-voiced Chuck talking to the California Commonwealth Club. Mostly about the lies around the war on drugs. I talked with Chuck years ago, in the 199os, in Juarez and El Paso. I was working on things for the two newspapers, and he was working the narcotraficante stories. That’s a whole other story, of my life maybe some autofiction is due, but for now, here, from the young writer who wanted to interview Chuck in Tucson, but never got the chance since Chuck died at 69 in his sleep. His piece is from the heart, and good.
It was 2011 and I was scraping by in San Francisco, spending hours at the public library, tinkering with writing projects, browsing the stacks during breaks. The name on the book’s spine—Charles Bowden—was familiar yet unfamiliar; essayist Rebecca Solnit, a neighbor with whom I’d recently taken a long walk, had referenced Bowden, telling me that “he could make your skin crawl by describing a Q-tips factory.” Uncertain what that meant, but eager to learn, I slipped Murder City from the shelf, intending to start it when I got home, sip some vodka, have myself a relaxed Friday evening.
Little did I know that Bowden, a veteran investigative reporter from the South-west, author of twenty-five-plus books about polluted rivers, crooks in silk suits, flies swarming over pooled blood, collapsing communities, contract killers, rattlesnakes, and desire, had a slightly different plan. In a 2010 NPR interview, he summarized his approach to crafting stories on the page: “My dream is to invite a reader into a room and pour a nice cup of tea . . . and then nail the door shut.”
So, I end with a dead man, his words not dead, the voice alive on YouTube, and what an interesting conversation it would be with him now, as it would be with Andre Vltchek, with Kevin Zeese, with David Graeber. So many others, long gone, or just gone. Even Gonzo Thompson.
I have been coming to this city [Ciudad Juárez] for thirteen years, and naturally, I have, like everyone here, an investment in the dead. And the living. Here is a story, and like all stories here, like Miss Sinaloa, it tantalizes and floats in the air, and then vanishes. — From Murder City
Charles Bowden (1945-2014) was the author of scores of books including A Shadow in the City: Confessions of an Undercover Drug Warrior; Down By the River: Drugs, Money, Murder and Family; Juárez: The Laboratory of our Future; and Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America. In Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields, he presented a devastating chronicle of a city in collapse where not just the police and drug cartel members die as violence infects every level of society. Luís Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil’s Highway, said “…in Murder City Bowden plunges in head-first, without a parachute. There are moments when the book threatens to burst into flames and burn your hands.” Bowden was a contributing editor for GQ and Mother Jones, and also wrote for Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, and Aperture. Winner of a 1996 Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction, he lived in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Post Script — One story is worth a thousand points of stabbing (not lights). Two here to end this missive. If you haven’t figured out how ugly the overlords and then the Eichmann’s are, then, gain, read, live, walk the streets:
The queen and her minimum wage payout, oh those billionaires! The pay for the 20-hour-per-week job is £9.50, or the equivalent of $12.96 an hour. That reflects the U.K.’s new minimum wage, which will rise from £8.91 an hour now to £9.50 an hour in April.
“I apologize to the person who appeared before me and to our entire community for having failed to meet the high standards that we expect of our judicial officers, and that I expect of myself,” Alexis Krot said in a statement posted on the court’s website.
The statement was dated Tuesday, days after she ordered Burhan Chowdhury to pay $100 for failing to get rid of weeds and other vegetation at the rear of his property. The judge’s apology followed a TV report about the case and criticism about how she treated the man.
“Shameful! The neighbors should not have to look at that. You should be ashamed of yourself,” Krot said during the online hearing. “If I could give you jail time on this, I would.”
Chowdhury, a native of Bangladesh, explained that he was weak with cancer. A son, Shibbir Chowdhury, said he helps his father with the yard but was out of the country at the time last year.
The average Australian has been enveloped by the inevitability of the US alliance as if it were a natural result of our history and “shared” values, writes Roger Davies.
The threat of war in Europe between Russia and a United States-sponsored, client-state in Ukraine is real, writes William Briggs. The security of Europe and the world is under direct threat and we receive, as always, a skewed and distorted view of what is going on.
Donald Trump is aiming to take back the majority in the Senate and the House in November, aided by voter suppression, as stage one of his 2024 presidential re-election campaign, write Barry Sheppard and Malik Miah.
According to a new UN Human Rights Council report, the worst human rights violations on Cuban soil take place at the hands of United States agents at the US Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba’s easternmost province, reports Ian Ellis-Jones.
The United States barred eight Cuban government officials from entering the country this month, accusing them of being implicated in the alleged repression of peaceful protests in July last year, reports Ian Ellis-Jones.
The first prisoners of the “War on Terror” — declared by US president George W Bush — began arriving at Camp X-Ray prison at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on January 11, 2002, writes Binoy Kampmark.
The most pressing threat to global security right now isn’t so-called “provocations” by either Russia or China. It is the United States’ misplaced obsession with its own “credibility”.
This rallying cry by Washington officials – echoed by the media and allies in London and elsewhere – is code for allowing the US to act like a global gangster while claiming to be the world’s policeman. US “credibility” was apparently thrown into question last summer – and only when President Joe Biden held firm to a pledge to pull US troops out of Afghanistan.
Prominent critics, including in the Pentagon, objected that any troop withdrawal would both suggest the US was backing off from a commitment to maintain the so-called “international order” and further embolden the West’s “enemies” – from the Taliban and Islamic State (IS) group to Russia and China.
In a postmortem in September, General Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, echoed a view common in Washington: “I think that our credibility with allies and partners around the world, and with adversaries, is being intensely reviewed by them to see which way this is going to go – and I think that damage is one word that could be used.”
At the same time, a former defence official in the George W Bush administration judged US credibility after the Afghanistan withdrawal at “rock bottom“.
The only way this understanding of US “credibility” makes sense is if one disregards the disastrous previous two decades of Washington’s role in Afghanistan. Those were the years in which the US army propped up a bunch of wildly unpopular kleptocrats in Kabul who ransacked the public coffers as the US launched an arms’ length drone war that ended up killing large numbers of Afghan civilians.
To bolster its apparently diminished “credibility” after the troop withdrawal, the US has imposed crushing sanctions on Afghanistan, deepening its current famine. There have also been reports of CIA efforts to run covert operations against the Taliban by aiding its opponents.
Cold War relic
Washington’s “credibility” was also seemingly in peril when US and Russian officials met in Geneva this week for negotiations in the midst of a diplomatic, and potential military, standoff over Ukraine.
The background are demands from Moscow that Washington stops encircling Russia with military bases and that Nato end its relentless advancement towards Russia’s borders. Nato should be a relic of a Cold War-era that officially ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991. Moscow dissolved its own version of Nato, the Warsaw Pact, more than three decades ago.
Russia had been given verbal assurances in 1990 by George HW Bush’s administration that Nato would not expand militarily beyond the borders of what was then West Germany. Seven years later, President Bill Clinton signed the Nato-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations, which committed Russia and Nato not to treat each other “as adversaries”, while Nato reiterated that there would be no “additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces” in former Eastern bloc states.
Every subsequent US administration has flagrantly broken both of these pledges, with Nato troops now stationed across eastern Europe. Perhaps not surprisingly, Moscow feels as menaced by Nato’s aggressive posturing, which serves to revive its Cold War fears, as Washington would if Russia placed military bases in Cuba and Mexico.
No one should forget that the US was prepared to bring the world to the brink of armageddon in a nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union in 1962 to prevent Moscow from stationing nuclear missiles in Cuba.
Historic alliance
Despite the current clamour about the need for the US to maintain its “credibility”, Washington was in fact only being asked at the Geneva talks to start honouring, 30 years late, commitments it made long ago and has repeatedly violated.
The latest flashpoint is Ukraine, Russia’s neighbour, which has been roiling since a coup in 2014 overthrew the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Moscow. The deeply divided country is split between those who want to prioritise their historic ties with Russia and those who want to be embraced by the European Union.
Moscow – and a proportion of Ukrainians – believe Washington and Europe are exploiting the push for an economic pact to engineer Ukraine’s subordination to Nato security policies, directed against Russia. Such fears are not misplaced. Each of what were formerly Soviet states that became an EU member has also been recruited to Nato. In fact, since 2009 it has been an official requirement, through the Treaty of Lisbon, that EU member states align their security policies with Nato.
Now US “credibility” apparently depends on its determination to bring Nato to Russia’s front door, via Ukraine.
US perfidy
Reporting on a working dinner with Russian diplomats last Sunday, before the Geneva meeting, Wendy Sherman, the US deputy secretary of state, recast that perfidy as the US stressing its commitment to “the freedom of sovereign nations to choose their own alliances”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, is being widely made out to be the aggressor after he posted tens of thousands of troops at the border with Ukraine.
One can argue whether those soldiers are massed for an invasion of Ukraine, as is being widely assumed in the western media, or as a show of force against a US-led Nato that believes it can do whatever it pleases in Russia’s backyard. Either way, a miscalculation by either side could prove disastrous.
According to the New York Times, General Milley has warned the Russians that an invasion force would face a prolonged insurgency backed by US weaponry. There are reports that Stinger anti-aircraft missiles have already been delivered to Ukraine.
Similarly, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, has threatened“confrontation and massive consequences for Russia if it renews its aggression on Ukraine”.
Drumbeat of war
This reckless way of projecting “credibility” – and thereby making confrontations and war more, not less, likely – is currently on show in relation to another nuclear-armed power, China. For many months, the Biden administration has been playing what looks like a game of chicken with Beijing over China’s continuing assertion of a right to use force against Taiwan, a self-governing island off the coast of China that Beijing claims as its territory.
Few countries formally recognise Taiwan as a state, and nothing in relations between Taipei and China is settled. That includes heated disagreements over the division of airspace, with Taiwan – backed by the US – claiming that a whole chunk of southeast mainland China falls within its “defence zone”. That means the scaremongering headlines about record numbers of Chinese warplanes flying over Taiwan need to be taken with a large pinch of salt.
The same disputes apply to China and Taiwan’s respective claims to territorial waters, with a similar potential for provocation. The pair’s conflicting views of what constitutes their security and sovereignty are a ready hair-trigger for war – and in circumstances where one party possesses a large nuclear arsenal.
Nonetheless, the Biden administration has stomped into this long-simmering feud by feeding the media with alarmist headlines and security analysts with talking points about a possible US war with China over Taiwan. Top Pentagon officials have also stoked concerns of an imminent invasion of Taiwan by China.
Diplomatically, President Biden snubbed his nose at Beijing by inviting Taiwan to attend his so-called “democracy summit” last month. The event further inflamed Chinese indignation by showing Taiwan and China in separate colours on a regional map.
The CIA has announced the establishment of a new espionage centre with an exclusive focus on China. According to CIA director William Burns, it is necessary because the US is faced with “an increasingly adversarial Chinese government”. That “adversary”, however, poses no direct threat to US security – unless Washington chooses provocatively to bring Taiwan under its security umbrella.
Washington’s drumbeat has been so constant that a recent poll showed more than half of Americans supported sending US troops to defend Taiwan.
Nuclear hard line
The picture is the same with Iran. US “credibility” is being cited as the reason why Washington needs to take a hard line against Tehran – goaded, as ever, by Israel – on its presumed ambitions to build a nuclear bomb.
Israel, of course, has had its own large arsenal of nuclear weapons for decades – entirely unmonitored and in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Both the US and Israel fear Iran wants to level the nuclear playing field in the Middle East. Israel is determined to make sure that only it has the power to make nuclear-backed threats, either against others in the region or as leverage in Washington to get its way.
President Barack Obama’s administration signed an agreement with Iran in 2015 placing strict limits on Tehran’s development of nuclear technology. In return, Washington lifted some of the most punishing sanctions on the country. Three years later, however, President Donald Trump reneged on the deal.
Now Iran suffers the worst of both worlds. The US has again intensified the sanctions regime while demanding that Tehran renew the deal on worse terms – and with no promise, according to US Secretary of State Blinken, that the next US administration won’t tear up the agreement anyway.
US “credibility” does not depend, it seems, on Washington being required to keep its word.
In the background, as ever, is the threat of joint military reprisals from Israel and the US. In October, Biden reportedly asked his national security adviser to review Pentagon plans for a military strike if this one-sided “diplomatic process” failed. A month later, Israel approved $1.5bn for precisely such an eventuality.
Drunk on power
Washington’s emphasis on its “credibility” is actually a story the US elite tells itself and western publics to obscure the truth. What is really prized is America’s ability to enforce its economic interests and military superiority unchallenged across the globe.
After the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the US overthrow of the elected government of Iran to reinstall its dictator-monarch, there is barely a corner of the planet where the US has not meddled. In Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and its so-called “backyard”, Latin America, US “credibility” has required interventions and war as an alternative to diplomacy.
In October 2019, as Trump suggested that US troops would be pulled out of Syria – where they had no authorisation from the United Nations to be in the first place – Leon Panetta, a former defence secretary and former head of the CIA, observed that the decision had “weakened the US” and “undercut our credibility in the world”.
He added: “There isn’t an ally that we’ve around the world that doesn’t now distrust us and worry about whether or not we will stand by our word.”
But this kind of credibility is built not on principle, on respecting others’ national sovereignty, or on peace-building, but on the gangsterism of a superpower drunk on its own power and its ability to intimidate and crush rivals.
Washington’s “word” is only selectively kept, as its treatment of Russia and Iran highlight. And enforcement of its “credibility” – from breaking commitments to threatening war – has had a predictable effect: they have driven Washington’s “enemies” into an opposition camp out of necessity.
The US has created a more menacing adversary, as Russia and China, two nuclear powers, have found a common purpose in asserting a countervailing pressure on Washington. Since the late summer, the two have held a series of war games and joint military exercises, each of them a first.
The world is entering what looks like a new, even more complex cold war, in which any misunderstanding, mishap or false move could rapidly escalate into nuclear confrontation. If it happens, the pursuit of US “credibility” will have played a central part in the catastrophe.
Given all the attention focused on the covid-19 pandemic, the Build Back Better bill, the January 6th attack on the Capitol and the media-hyped crises over Ukraine and Taiwan this past year, many other important issues have not received much attention. One example is the Palestinian/Israeli situation.
Views of Israel
There have been some major breakthroughs in the perception of Israel in 2021 with two major human rights organizations, B’Tselem in Israel and Human Rights Watch, concluding that Israel is an apartheid state. In addition, this past May, 93 US rabbinical students wrote a letter challenging the Zionist perception of Israel. They wrote: “As American Jews, our institutions tell stories of Israel rooted in hope for what could be, but oblivious to what is. Our tzedakah money funds a story we wish were true, but perpetuates a reality that is untenable and dangerous. Our political advocacy too often puts forth a narrative of victimization, but supports violent suppression of human rights and enables apartheid in the Palestinian territories, and the threat of annexation.”
Israel violates international law with impunity
There was also a particularly strong statement to the UN General Assembly this past October by Michael Lynk, the “Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967”. Ian Williams wrote about Lynk’s statement in the Jan-Feb 2022 issue of the Washington Report on the Middle East Affairs.
Williams quoted from Lynk’s statement:
the international community has been perplexingly unwilling to meaningfully challenge, let alone act decisively to reverse, the momentous changes that Israel has been generating on the ground. This is a political failure of the first order. This very same international community—speaking through the principal political and legal organs of the United Nations—has established the widely accepted and detailed rights-based framework for the supervision and resolution of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Accordingly, the protracted Israeli occupation must fully end.
Williams noted that Lynk also addressed the lack of action in following up on UN Security Council resolutions. Lynk said:
Regrettably, the international community’s remarkable tolerance for Israeli exceptionalism in its conduct of the occupation has allowed realpolitik to trump rights, power to supplant justice and impunity to undercut accountability. This has been the conspicuous thread throughout the Madrid-Oslo peace process, which began in 1991.
Need for the international community to act
This past December 23rd, on the 5th anniversary of the UN Security Council’s passing of Resolution 2334, Lynk said: Resolution 2334, adopted by the Security Council on 23 December 2016, stated that Israeli settlements constitute “a flagrant violation under international law” and said that all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, must “immediately and completely cease.”
If this resolution had been actually enforced by the international community, and obeyed by Israel, we would most likely be on the verge of a just and lasting peace,” the Special Rapporteur said. “Instead, Israel is in defiance of the resolution, its occupation is more entrenched than ever, the violence it employs against the Palestinians to sustain the occupation is rising, and the international community has no strategy to end the world’s longest military occupation.
Lynk added:
Without decisive international intervention to impose accountability upon an unaccountable occupation, there is no hope that the Palestinian right to self-determination and an end to the conflict will be realized anytime in the foreseeable future.
The US is a stumbling block to peace and justice
Disappointingly, US actions are a key reason that the international community has been unable to enforce international law where Israel is concerned. For example, according to a May 19, 2021 ‘Al Jazeera’ article, the US has vetoed 53 UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israeli behavior since 1972. These shameful vetoes provide political cover for continuing Israeli crimes against Palestinians. In addition, the US also gives $3.8 billion in aid each year to Israel primarily for military assistance that, among other things, supports Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and the occupation of Palestinian land.
If peace and justice are to prevail between Palestinians and Israelis, the US must join with other nations to stop Israeli crimes instead of abetting the criminality.
Julian Assange has now been in the maximum-security facilities of Belmarsh prison for over 1,000 days. On the occasion of his 1,000th day of imprisonment, campaigners, supporters and kindred spirits gathered to show their support, indignation and solidarity at this political detention most foul.
Alison Mason of the Julian Assange Defence Committee reiterated those observations long made about the imprisonment at a gathering outside the Australian High Commission in London on that day. The WikiLeaks founder was wrongfully confined “for publishing the war crimes of the US military leaked to him by whistleblower Chelsea Manning.” She, along with supporters, had gathered before the High Commission “because Julian’s country could save him with a simple phone call.” Mason’s admirably simple reasoning: that Australia had “a bargaining chip with AUKUS and trade deals.” If only that were true.
The continued detention of Assange in Belmarsh remains a scandal of kaleidoscopic cruelty. It continues to imperil his frail health, further impaired by a stroke suffered in October last year and the ongoing risks associated with COVID-19. It maintains a state of indefinite incarceration without bail, deputising the United Kingdom as committed gaolers for US interests. “Julian,” stated his fiancée Stella Moris, “is simply held at the request of the US government while they continue to abuse the US-UK extradition treaty for political ends.”
A report drawn from unannounced visits to Belmarsh by the Chief Inspector of Prisons last July and August did not shine glorious light upon the institution. “The prison has not paid sufficient attention to the growing levels of self-harm and there was not enough oversight or care taken of prisoners of risk of suicide. Urgent action needed to be taken in this area to make sure that these prisoners were kept safe.”
The next gruelling stage of Assange’s confinement is being marked by an appeal against the High Court’s unfathomable, and even gullible overturning of the lower court decision against his extradition to the United States. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) continues to seek the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder to face 18 charges, 17 based on that relic of state paranoia and vengeance, the US Espionage Act of 1917. A successful prosecution could see him face a 175-year sentence.
The original decision, shoddy as it was for the cause of journalism, accepted that the extradition would be oppressive within the meaning of the US-UK Extradition Act. District Court Justice Vanessa Baraitser accepted the defence contention that such oppression arose from Assange’s “mental condition”. Despite relentless prosecution attacks on the neuropsychiatric evidence adduced by the defence, the judge accepted that Assange was autistic and would be at serious risk of suiciding in the US prison system. The prosecutors also failed in convincing the court that Special Administrative Measures would not be applied that would restrict his access to legal counsel and family, and ensure solitary confinement. They also failed to show that he would not, on being convicted, serve his time in the vicious supermax prison, Colorado’s ADX Florence.
The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Ian Burnett, and Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde, were having none of that. In their December ruling, the High Court accepted the prosecution appeal that the US could easily make assurances for keeping Assange in better conditions despite not doing so at the original trial. The Lord Justices also proved crotchety at the fact that Baraitser had not gone out of her way to seek those assurances in the first place. Besides, Britain could trust the good diplomatic undertakings of the United States.
So it came to pass that muddle headed judicial reasoning prevailed on the bench. There was no mention of the fabricated evidence being relied upon by the prosecution, or the discomforting fact that operatives in the US Central Intelligence Agency had contemplated kidnapping and poisoning Assange. Nothing, either, about the US-sanctioned surveillance operation conducted by the Spanish security firm, UC Global, during his time in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Work on the appeal began immediately. Solicitors Birnberg Peirce, in a statement, outlined the importance of the application. “We believe serious and important issues of law and wider public importance are being raised in this application. They arise from the court’s judgment and its receipt and reliance on US assurances regarding the prison regimes and treatment of Mr Assange is likely to face if extradited.”
The wider public importance of the case is hard to measure. Authoritarian governments and sham democracies the world over are gleefully taking notes. Liberal democratic states with increasingly autocratic approaches to media outlets are also going to see promise in the way the United States is using extradition law to nab a publisher. Black letter lawyers will err in assuming that this matter is narrow and specific to the wording of a treaty between two countries.
Having already done untold damage to the cause of publishing national security information that exposes atrocities and violations of law domestic and international, the US is making the claim that the Extradition Act, in all its nastiness, has tentacled global reach. A phone call from Australia’s insipid Prime Minister Scott Morrison will hardly matter to this. He, and other members of Washington’s unofficial imperial court, will do as they are told.
W.E.B. DuBois: ‘To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.’
This documentary (see below, first one linked) is not news, and then, of course, it’s Trump in office blather, too. As if UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Portugal are havens for social and people and environmental justice.
How Poor People Survive in the USA — vapid.
The documentarian is done, really, through the auspices of Euro trash context, POV, narrative framing. Contrarily, you have to be in the mix, in the middle, from the chambers of power, schools, colleges, social work, to real journalism, and into the mess personally, with daily fear of losing the job and seeing savings go go go. That is the slippage in the death spiral of USA.
This is a Reservation/Rez Society. Boarding School Society. Celebrity Cults. Internment Camp FEMA Village (Soon). This entire unfolding of history the past 70 years has been this big time military propaganda operation embedding into all systems. Confusion creator. Mystical hatred or subservience while praying for that blue-eyed, blond hippie Jesus. Dirt poor, and loving Trump. College student loans over $100K, and loving AOC and Biden.
The enemy for me, and I’d say for 80 percent of USA, is that grouping — colonized Eichmann’s, the upper classes, the dream hoarders, the intelligence/knowledge workers, the higher ups in education-medicine-incarceration-pharma-medicine-energy-banking-data collecting-surveillance-real estate-Chamber of Commerce-AI-science-ag-retail-logistics-transportation, and then, MIC, congressional military complex. Join the mercenary forces, and lucky you, get your teeth pulled and a GI Bill.
I’ve asked why the stuff I send and publish elsewhere is no longer getting up on LA Progressive. No answer! Again, this documentary is broken (above), but that is documentary making, most times — focused, rarified, gatekeeping on steroids, with people on the projects not deep systems thinkers, and a willingness to leave out a lot.
Missing:
Tens of millions on the edge of the cliff of eviction, foreclosure, endless bad jobs, in the car or van, bunking up with family or friends, while working for middle managers who do not care, and the upper management and the billionaires and millionaires.
Inflammation — Capitalism is a complete, holistic, top-down disease, creating inflammation in the veins, brain, organs, belly. But worse — cuts the thinking process, deforms the mutual aid ethos, destroys collective action, kills the ability to squat and reappropriate wealth, land, whatever.
The rat race of those with a roof over their heads that continue to fuel prescriptions, Disneyland la-la-land thinking, buy-buy-buy, watching sports-stars-musicians, I got mine, you better fight to get yours
This country, USA, is the rotting roots and DNA of Europe, of that narrator above. These are not real people, and they are so sculpted in news speak, in priviledge.
This documentary doesn’t get to the fabric of colonization of cities, schools, the bullshit of privatization, and this wacky religious and wacky elitist country of Indian Removal, Enslavement then and now, and Nomadlands.
Americans are children, and that is thanks to the Media, the Boss, foolish k-6 education, and, well, we are here now, 355 million, and this is pre-covid crazies. Now? Complete imprisonment!
Oh, hell, the list is a thousand points long: Stan Brock, Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom. This is one fellow, and great heart, but in a world of Space Suits, Billionaires and Yachts, Lies Casted in Media-Banking-Digitalization, well, one guy. “He founded Remote Area Medical in 1985 to give people in need essential health care. Since then, RAM has provided free dental, vision and basic health care to more than 740,000 people.”
Here, the documentary on RAM above, description: During the U.S. debate about healthcare reform, the media reporters and news crews and filmmakers failed to put a human face on what it means to not have access to healthcare. Remote Area Medical fills that gap; it is a film about people, not policy. Focusing on a single three-day clinic held in the Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, Remote Area Medical affords us an insider’s perspective on the ebb and flow of the event, from the tense 3:30 a.m. ticket distribution that determines who gets seen to the routine check-ups that take dramatic turns for the worse, to the risky means to which some patients resort for pain relief. We meet a doctor who also drives an 18-wheeler, a denture maker who moonlights as a jeweler, and the organization’s founder, Stan Brock, who first imagined Remote Area Medical while living as a cowboy in the Amazon rainforest, hundreds of miles from the nearest doctor. But it is the extraordinary stories of the patients, desperate for medical attention, that create a lasting impression about the state of modern health care in America.
This can’t be ramped up, taken to the ultimate level? It’s socialism, brothers and sisters, the only way forward. Forget the hate that the right and the middle of the road have against socialism. They will ply the words of “one world government.” Or, the “government controlling us.” They will talk about Universal Basic Income. They will say it is brainwashing, and communism, and, well, that socialism means all rights are taken, managed, given to and taken away by some master groups of dictators. So we are dead in the water with capitalism by any means necessary: predatory, parasitic, casino, dog-eat-dog, shock therapy, zombie, trickle down nothingness.
That is, you know, vaccine passport, no. But, there is no Forced Healthcare for All. No, Massive Take Over the Empty Lots and Buildings for Massive Rehousing. No guerrilla farming everywhere. Nothing. Because, well, Capitalism is All about “We are all champions. We are all the New Eve and Adam. You can rest assured that the masters will NOT take care of you, but at least you have the stars and bars, god almighty, baby-land.”
This exceptionalism is what has detroyed many in the 80 percent. Many. They will work and think and do things against their own well-being. When you are a lost dog in this country, a limping stray, a hungry desperate pooch, well, you will jump to the master, run for the beasts of slapping, kicking, yelling, and hitting. Under the table, curled up, belly and organs exposed as its tail is between the legs.
Inflamed — Moreover, they point out how modern medicine has often missed these necessary connections—to our global detriment. What is needed is “deep medicine,” which, according to the authors, “requires new cosmologies, ones that can braid our lives with the planet and the web of life around us.”
Rupa Marya and Raj Patel spoke to YES! about the ravages of colonialist capitalism, the failures of modern medicine to treat them, and, most importantly, how a “deep medicine” approach can heal us all.
*This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Is the title of the book, Inflamed, a metaphor for what is happening to our planet and its living systems?
Rupa Marya: It’s not at all a metaphor. It’s a description of what’s happening inside of our bodies and around us on the planet and our societies. The inflammatory response is the body’s ancient evolutionarily conserved pathway to restoring its optimal working condition when it’s been thrown off by danger or damage or the threat of damage. (Source, Yes Magazine)
No jobs, no good jobs, decayed systems, penalties, bad credit, criminal offenses, drugs, booze, and bodies torn at a very young age with multiple chronic diseases, many many diseases.
https://youtu.be/YrEwPp2bG48
This is the system that the beautiful people in the sciences, in technology, in the Reset Star Chamber, all of those hoarding money and the opportunities have set loose, and these fascists want these people — us, we the people — on UBI, held as data pools — body snatchers, mind snatchers, attention snatchers, activity snatchers, all part of mining people, putting us, them, the 80 percent, in the cloud, in algorithms, in data banks, all mashed up for social impact — do as we say, follow what we command, eat-drink-think like we say, and you will get the tokens, man, the money, the slice of a 200-square-foot-per-person habitat. No pets allowed.
Although 2021 is now behind us, there are many issues that will linger for a while, or much longer, and will certainly dominate much of the news in 2022, as well. These are but a few of the issues.
NATO-Russian Brinkmanship
Exasperated with NATO expansion and growing ambitions in the Black Sea region, Moscow has decided to challenge the US-led Western alliance in an area of crucial geopolitical importance to Russia.
Ukraine’s quest for NATO membership, especially following the Crimea conflict in 2014, proved to be a red line for Russia. Starting in late 2021, the US and its European allies began accusing Russia of amassing its forces at the Ukrainian border, suggesting that outright military invasion would soon follow. Russia denied such accusations, insisting that a military solution can be avoided if Russia’s geopolitical interests are respected.
Some analysts argue that Russia is seeking to “coerce the west to start the new Yalta talks,” a reference to a US, UK and Russia summit at the conclusion of World War II. If Russia achieves its objectives, NATO will no longer be able to exploit Russia’s fault lines throughout its Western borders.
While NATO members, especially the US, want to send a strong message to Russia – and China – that the defeat in Afghanistan will not affect their global prestige or tarnish their power, Russia is confident that it has enough political, economic, military and strategic cards that would allow it to eventually prevail.
China’s Unhindered Rise
Another global tussle is also underway. For years, the US unleashed an open global war to curb China’s rise as a global economic power. While the 2019 ‘Trade War’, instigated by the Donald Trump administration against China delivered lukewarm results, China’s ability to withstand pressure, control with mathematical precision the spread, within China, of the Covid-19 pandemic, and continue to fuel the global economy has proved that Beijing is not easy prey.
An example of the above assertion is the anticipated revival of the Chinese tech giant, Huawei. The war on Huawei served as a microcosm of the larger war on China. British writer, Tom Fowdy, described this war as “blocking exports to (Huawei), isolating it from global chipmakers, forcing allies to ban its participation in their 5G networks, imposing criminal charges against it and kidnapping one of its senior executives”.
However, this is failing, according to Fowdy. 2022 is the year in which Huawei is expected to wage massive global investments that will allow it to overcome many of these obstacles and become self-sustaining in terms of the technologies required to fuel its operations worldwide.
Aside from Huawei, China plans to escalate its response to American pressures by expanding its manufacturing platforms, creating new markets and fortifying its alliances, especially with Moscow. A Chinese-Russian alliance is particularly important for Beijing as both countries are experiencing strong US-Western pushback.
2022 is likely to be the year in which Russia and China, in the words of Beijing’s Ambassador to Moscow, Zhang Hanhui, stage a “response to such overt (US) hegemony and power politics”, where both “continue to deepen back-to-back strategic cooperation.”
The World ‘Hanging by a Thread’
However, other conflicts exist beyond politics and economy. There is also the war unleashed on our planet by those who favor profits over the welfare of future generations. While the Glasgow Climate Pact COP26 began with lofty promises in Scotland in November, it concluded with political compromises that hardly live up to the fact that, per the words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, “we are still knocking on the door of climate catastrophe”.
True, in 2022 many tragedies will be attributed to climate change. However, it will also be a year in which millions of people around the world will continue to push for a collective, non-political response to the ‘climate catastrophe’. While Planet Earth is “hanging by a thread” – according to Guterres – political compromises that favor the rich become the obstacle, not the solution. Only a global movement of well-integrated civil societies worldwide can compel politicians to heed the wishes of the people.
Refugees, Democracy and Human Rights
The adverse effects of climate change can be felt in myriad ways that go beyond the immediate damage inflicted by erratic weather conditions. War, revolutions, endemic socio-economic inequalities, mass migration and refugee crises are a few examples of how climate change has destabilized many parts of the world and wrought pain and suffering to numerous communities worldwide.
The issue of migration and refugees will continue to pose a threat to global stability in 2022, since none of the root causes that forced millions of people to leave their homes in search of safer and better lives have been addressed. Instead of contending with the roots of the problem – climate change, military interventions, inequality, etc. – quite often the hapless refugees find themselves accused and demonized as agents of instability in Western societies.
This, in turn, has served as a political and, at times, moral justification for the rise of far-right political movements in Europe and elsewhere, which are spreading falsehoods, championing racism and undermining whatever semblance of democracy that exists in their countries.
2022 must not be allowed to be another year of pessimism. It can also be a year of hope and promise. But that is only possible if we play our role as active citizens to bring about the coveted change that we would like to see in the world.
The deaths of thousands of civilians killed in US drone strikes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria were covered up by the Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations, reports Barry Sheppard.
Author William Briggs characterises the intensifying conflict between the United States and China as a rivalry between two capitalist powers, one growing in strength, the other long dominant but now declining, writes Chris Slee.
“It’s never enough” said former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien about military spending. “They always want more.” ((Jay Hill, in the House of Commons, quoting then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien from an article by Stephanie Rubec in the Ottawa Sun, October 20, 2003.))
Canada shouldn’t spend huge sums on 88 new fighter jets incapable of protecting the population against pressing security threats. The warplanes will simply strengthen Canada’s powerful, offensive air force.
Amidst a pandemic and climate crisis the security argument for spending $19 billion – $77 billion over their life cycle – on fighter jets is extremely weak. New warplanes won’t protect against climate induced disasters or new viruses. Worse still, purchasing heavy carbon emitting fighter jets diverts resources away from dealing with these genuine security threats.
But we require these warplanes to protect Canada, say the militarists. In fact, many countries don’t have fighter jets. More than 30 nations, including Costa Rica, Iceland and Panama, don’t have an active military force at all while Ireland hasn’t had fighter jets for two decades. Nor has New Zealand, but the militarists who demand Canada follow its “Five Eyes” counterparts won’t mention that.
Nor do they discuss how Canada’s free trade partner Mexico has no operational fighter jets. Doesn’t that country face a similar menace from the Russians or Chinese? The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) is far better equipped than its counterpart in Mexico, a country with more than twice Canada’s population.
RCAF has about 90 operational CF-18s. It is one of the better warplanes and will remain a top-tier fighter jet for many years to come. RCAF is about the 16th best equipped air force in the world. But Canada is the 39th most populous state. Should Canadians spend lavishly to maintain an air force far better equipped than this country’s relative population size?
Considering the resources required to mitigate the climate crisis and pandemic why not simply maintain the CF-18s and when the RCAF’s standing approaches Canada’s share of the global population consider purchasing new fighter jets. If the RCAF were designed to defend Canada that would be the sensible approach. But that is not, in fact, its purpose. The RCAF is structured primarily to support the US war machine.
Canada’s air force says CF-18s intercept 6-7 aircraft each year in Canada’s Air Defence Identification Zone, which is 100-200 nautical miles from its coastline. (Canada’s territorial airspace is 12 nautical miles from the coastline.) By comparison, notes Brent Patterson, Canada’s CF-18s have conducted 1600 offensive bombing missions over the past 30 years in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Syria and Libya.
While the military tightly controls news during fighter jet missions, some information has trickled out about what happens when these planes drop bombs from the sky. Pentagon documents suggest CF-18s were responsible for a January 2015 air strike in Iraq that killed as many as 27 civilians. The RCAF claimed it had “no obligation”, reported the internal US documents, “to conduct an investigation” of the incident. In October 2015 the CBC also reported, “Canadian fighter planes have now been connected to a second airstrike in Iraq that has been reviewed by the Pentagon for possible civilian casualties.” In another incident, a CF-18 reportedly killed 10 and injured 20 Iraqi civilians on November 19, 2015.
In 2011 seven Canadian CF-18 fighter jets dropped at least 700 bombs on Libyan targets. Two months into the bombing United Press International reported that Ottawa “ordered 1,300 replacement laser-guided bombs to use in its NATO mission in Libya” and a month later they ordered another 1,000 bomb kits. A number of coalition members placed strict restrictions on their forces’ ability to strike ground targets. These and other countries’ militaries frequently “red carded” sorties, declaring that they would not contribute. “With a Canadian general in charge” of the NATO bombing campaign, explained the Globe and Mail, “Canada couldn’t have red-carded missions even if it wanted to, which is why Canadian CF-18 pilots often found themselves in the most dangerous skies” doing the dirtiest work.
CBC.ca reported that on March 29, 2011, two CF-18s launched strikes that directly aided the Jihadist rebels in Misrata and on May 19 Canadian jets participated in a mission that destroyed eight Libyan naval vessels. On their return to Canada, CBC.ca reported: “[pilot Maj. Yves] Leblanc’s crew carried out the final mission on the day Gaddafi was captured, and were flying 25,000 feet over when Gaddafi’s convoy was attacked.” Human Rights Watch found the remains of at least 95 people at the site where Muammar Gaddafi was captured. According to the human rights group, a sizable number “apparently died in the fighting and NATO strikes prior to Gaddafi’s capture” with multiple dozens were also executed by close range gunshot wounds. Some accused NATO forces of helping to murder Gaddafi.
In the spring of 1999 eighteen CF-18s dropped 532 bombs in 678 sorties during NATO’s bombing of Serbia. About two thousand died during NATO’s bombing. Hundreds of thousands were internally displaced and hundreds of thousands were made refugees in a war that contravened international law.
Two dozen CF-18s were deployed to Iraq in 1990. Among few other coalition members, Canadian fighter jets engaged in combat. They joined US and British counterparts in destroying most of Iraq’s hundred plus naval vessels in what was dubbed the “Bubiyan Turkey Shoot.” Coalition bombing destroyed much of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure. The country’s electricity production was largely demolished as were sewage treatment plants, telecommunications equipment, oil refineries, etc. Twenty thousand Iraqi troops and thousands of civilians were killed. The UN resolution allowed for attacks against Iraqi establishments in Kuwait while the US-led forces bombed across Iraq in what Mark Curtis described as the open “rehabilitation of colonialism and imperialism.”
Buying 88 new fighter jets has little to do with protecting Canadians. It’s about funneling public resources to arms firms and strengthening the Royal Canadian Air Force’s capacity to fight in offensive US and NATO wars. Is this really how we should be spending public resources? If the government was truly concerned about security, it would spend the money on public/co-op housing, cleaning up ecological devastation and preparing for the next pandemic.
New Zealand’s condemnation of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council elections reflects a “hardening stance” towards China, says a leading defence analyst.
Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta last week joined her Five Eyes counterparts to express “grave concern” over the erosion of democratic elements of the new electoral system.
“Actions that undermine Hong Kong’s rights, freedoms and high degree of autonomy are threatening our shared wish to see Hong Kong succeed,” the joint statement reads.
Pro-Beijing candidates swept the seats under the new “patriots-only” rules that saw a record-low voting turnout of 30.2 percent; almost half of the previous legislative poll in 2016.
New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States are now urging the People’s Republic of China to respect protected rights and fundamental freedoms of Hong Kong.
Director of 36th Parallel Assessments Dr Paul Buchanan said this reflected New Zealand’s cooling relationship with China as it increasingly aligned itself with its traditional partners.
“It’s very clear something has shifted in the logic of the security community and foreign policy community in Wellington. I tend to believe it is Chinese behaviour rather than pressure from our allies, but it may be a combination of both,” he said.
Increasing Chinese pressure
New Zealand’s relationship with China has come under increasing pressure this year after it raised concerns about Chinese state-funded hacking and the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
Mahuta has previously said New Zealand would be “uncomfortable” with the remit of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance being expanded to include diplomatic matters.
Dr Buchanan said it was not clear if last week’s joint statement on the Hong Kong elections was consistent with this stated independent foreign policy, or a sign New Zealand had abandoned this to better align itself with its traditional partners.
“That’s an open question to me, because I can see that the government can maintain independence and say, ‘simply on the issue of Hong Kong and China we side with our traditional partners, but on any range of other issues, we don’t necessarily fall in line with them’,” he said.
“On the other hand, maybe the government has made a decision that the threat from the Chinese is of such a magnitude it’s time to pick a side, get off straddling the fence and choose the side of our traditional partners because the Chinese values are inimical to the New Zealand way of life.”
Dr Buchanan said a “hardening stance” towards China was in line with the contents of a new defence report that recently identified ‘China’s rise’ and its power struggle with the United States as one of the pre-eminent security risks in the Indo-Pacific.
“This may be more reflective of the security officials’ concerns about China and that may not be shared by the entirety of the current government.
General consensus
“Although, the fact that the foreign minister signed off on this latest Five Eyes statement regarding Hong Kong would indicate that there is a general consensus within the New Zealand foreign policy and security establishment that China is a threat.”
In response to the joint Five Eyes statement on Hong Kong, the Chinese Embassy issued a statement telling the members to stop interfering with Hong Kong and China’s affairs.
Of particular concern, Dr Buchanan said, was China’s explicit assertion in this response it was led by China’s Constitution and the Basic Law, not the Sino-British Joint Declaration, in its administration of Hong Kong.
“The Chinese now have said that the joint declaration signed in 1997, no longer applies and all that applies in Hong Kong is Chinese law.
“So they’ve violated their commitment to that principle and that’s symptomatic of an increasingly-hardened approach to everything, quite frankly, of a policy matter under Xi Jinping.”
Dr Buchanan said New Zealand, whose biggest trading partner is China, was positioned as the most vulnerable of the Five Eyes partners to any potential economic retaliation from China.
“It would be pretty easy to see that if the Chinese are going to retaliate against anybody in the Anglophone world, it would more than likely be us because it’ll cost them very little, people have to change their dietary habits among the Chinese middle class, but it will have a dramatic effect on us because a third of our GDP is tied up with bilateral trade with China.
“But the government has clearly signalled that it’s seeking to diversify. It has now signalled that on the diplomatic and security front, it sees the Chinese increasingly as a malign actor, and so whatever is coming on the horizon, this government at least appears prepared to weather the storm.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
With Julian Assange now fighting the next stage of efforts to extradite him to the United States to face 18 charges, 17 of which are based on the brutal, archaic Espionage Act, some Australian politicians have found their voice. It might be said that a few have even found their conscience.
Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce was sufficiently exercised by the High Court judgment overturning the lower court ruling against extradition to demand an end to the matter. In his opinion piece for the Nine newspaper group on December 14, he argued that rights were “not created in some legal sonic boom at one undefined point of our existence nor switched off like the power to a fridge because of a fear or a confusion as to the worth of their contents.”
The deputy PM proved mature enough to admit that “whether you like him or despite him”, the importance of the case transcended his situation. “So we must hope for the British courts to do so, and we will judge its society accordingly.” (They have not and, accordingly, should be judged.)
The Nationals leader has little time for the role of whistleblowing or disclosing egregious misconduct by a State; less time for Assange as the publisher in history, the exposer of crimes by a great power. “They are a separate matter to the key issue: where was this individual when he was allegedly breaking US law for which the US is now seeking his extradition from London?”
Joyce’s reasoning, while jejune on the historical contributions of WikiLeaks, has the merit of unusual clarity. He argues that the UK “should try him there for any crime he is alleged to have committed on British soil or send him back to Australia, where he is a citizen.” Assange never pilfered any US secret files; did not breach Australian laws and was not in the US when “the event being deliberated in the court now in London occurred.” To extradite him to the US would not only be unjust but bizarre. “If he insulted the Koran, would he be extradited to Saudi Arabia?”
The move by the Nationals leader also brought a few voices of support from the woodwork. Liberal backbenchers Jason Falinski and Bridget Archer are encouraging diplomatic intervention. Falinski suggested that the Morrison government “do what it can to get an Australian citizen back to Australia as quickly as possible” though he refused to entertain “a public spat with America”. Archer believed that “he should be released and returned to Australia”.
The announcement that Caroline Kennedy would be heading Down Under as the new US ambassador to Australia was also seen as an opportunity. Former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr suggested to that Prime Minister Scott Morrison take the chance to discuss the Assange case with Kennedy. (This, from a man who once claimed that Assange “has had more consular support in a comparable time than any other Australian” while admitting that he did not “know whether this is the case.”)
Morrison might, suggests Carr, point out that Australia had its own challenges in facing war crimes allegations, notably “war crimes trials pending for Australian troops in Afghanistan who might have done the very things Assange exposed in Iraq.” Washington’s treatment of the publisher could well “turn this guy into a martyr.”
Carr sees such advice as part of the capital of trust between allies. It was a “small transaction under the architecture of what each sees as a mutually beneficial relationship.” It might even show that Australia was capable of behaving “like a sovereign nation” in “one tiny corner of our alliance partnership”. If Canberra were unable to “take up the cause of an Australian passport holder, what scope for any independent action do we allow ourselves?”
The former foreign minister shows, at stages, flashes of ignorance about aspects of the proceedings (the US prosecution, for instance, made a special point in not mentioning the Collateral Murder video in its proceedings), he is at least cognisant of the monstrous defects in the case, not least the fact that a good deal of the indictment is based on falsified accounts from former WikiLeaks volunteer, Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson.
The latest stirring of principled awareness in Australia should be treated warily. Australian governments tend to protect their citizens with a begrudging reluctance, except in the rarest of cases. They are notorious in playing the game of surrender and capitulation. In the context of the US-Australian alliance, one given an even more solid filling with the AUKUS security pact, the hope that Australia would ever be able to exercise sovereign choices on any issue that affects US security is almost inconceivable.
The lamentable behaviour from Canberra regarding Assange’s welfare has also been brought to light by the tireless exploits of lawyer Kellie Tranter. Using Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, Tranter developed a timeline revealing how Australian officials were updated on Assange’s condition (legal and physical) yet did little in the way of addressing it. Kit Klarenberg, making use of Tranter’s findings, also discusses the extent Australian officials knew about Assange’s plight.
In April 2019, for instance, the lawyer Gareth Pierce, acting for Assange, wrote to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) warning that the publisher’s possessions were being held by the Ecuadorian authorities. These included a stash of privileged legal documents. DFAT, while claiming it would chase the matter up, concluded in May 2019 that Assange’s possessions were “under the authority and jurisdiction of the Judicial System of the Republic of Ecuador”. Australian diplomats, it followed, were unable to intervene. The result: Assange’s documents, held by the Ecuadorians, were seized by the FBI.
As extradition proceedings were taking place, Peirce wrote to the Australian High Commission that consular representatives would have “undoubtedly noted what was clear for everyone present in court to observe” – that the publisher was “in shockingly poor condition … struggling not only to cope but to articulate what he wishes to articulate.” DFAT’s report of those proceedings, intentionally or otherwise, was stonily silent on the issue.
Throughout, DFAT maintained that Assange had refused consular assistance or support. This was a point the publisher took up in a meeting at Belmarsh prison with consular officials on November 1, 2019, claiming that to be misguided nonsense. He also noted concerns by the prison doctor about his state, being “so bad that his mind was shutting down”, the appalling state of isolation which made it impossible for him “to think or to prepare his defence.”
Little then, can be expected from the compliant minions in Canberra desperately keen not to soil or sour relations with Washington. But it is at least mildly heartening that a few members of the Morrison government have woken up to the fact that this grotesque act of persecution against a publisher should end.
It is no accident that Julian Assange, the digital transparency activist and journalist who founded Wikileaks to help whistleblowers tell us what western governments are really up to in the shadows, has spent 10 years being progressively disappeared into those very same shadows.
His treatment is a crime similar to those Wikileaks exposed when it published just over a decade ago hundreds of thousands of leaked materials – documents we were never supposed to see – detailing war crimes committed by the United States and Britain in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These two western countries killed non-combatants and carried out torture not, as they claimed, in the pursuit of self-defence or in the promotion of democracy, but to impose control over a strategic, resource-rich region.
It is the ultimate, ugly paradox that Assange’s legal and physical fate rests in the hands of two states that have the most to lose by allowing him to regain his freedom and publish more of the truths they want to keep concealed. By redefining his journalism as “espionage” – the basis for the US extradition claim – they are determined to keep the genie stuffed in the bottle.
Eyes off the ball
Last week, in overturning a lower court decision that should have allowed Assange to walk free, the English High Court consented to effectively keep Assange locked up indefinitely. He is a remand prisoner – found guilty of no crime – and yet he will continue rotting in solitary confinement for the foreseeable future, barely seeing daylight or other human beings, in Belmarsh high-security prison alongside Britain’s most dangerous criminals.
The High Court decision forces our eyes off the ball once again. Assange and his supposed “crime” of seeking transparency and accountability has become the story rather than the crimes he exposed that were carried out by the US to lay waste to whole regions and devastate the lives of millions.
The goal is to stop the public conducting the debate Assange wanted to initiate through his journalism: about western state crimes. Instead the public is being deflected into a debate his persecutors want: whether Assange can ever safely be allowed out of his cell.
Assange’s lawyers are being diverted from the real issues too. They will now be tied up for years fighting endless rearguard actions, caught up in the search for legal technicalities, battling to win a hearing in any court they can, to prevent his extradition to the United States to stand trial.
The process itself has taken over. And while the legal minutiae are endlessly raked over, the substance of the case – that it is US and British officials who ought to be held responsible for committing war crimes – will be glossed over.
Permanently silenced
But it is worse than the legal injustice of Assange’s case. There may be no hack-saws needed this time, but this is as visceral a crime against journalism as the dismemberment of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi officials back in 2018.
And the outcome for Assange is only slightly less preordained than it was for Khashoggi when he entered the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. The goal for US officials has always been about permanently disappearing Assange. They are indifferent about how that is achieved.
If the legal avenue is a success, he will eventually head to the US where he can be locked away for up to 175 years in severe solitary confinement in a super-max jail – that is, till long past his death from natural causes. But there is every chance he will not survive that long. Last January, a British judge rejected extraditing Julian Assange to the US over his “suicide risk“, and medical experts have warned that it will be only a matter of time before he succeeds.
That was why the district court blocked extradition – on humanitarian grounds. Those grounds were overturned by the High Court last week only because the US offered “assurances” that measures would be in place to ensure Assange did not commit suicide. But Assange’s lawyers pointed out: those assurances “were not enough to address concerns about his fragile mental health and high risk of suicide”. These concerns should have been apparent to the High Court justices.
Further, dozens of former officials in the Central Intelligence Agency and the previous US administration have confirmedthat the agency planned to execute Assange in an extrajudicial operation in 2017. That was shortly before the US was forced by circumstance to switch to the current, formal extradition route. The arguments now made for his welfare by the same officials and institutions that came close to killing him should never have been accepted as made in good faith.
In fact, there is no need to speculate about the Americans’ bad faith. It is only too apparent in the myriad get-out clauses in the “assurances” they provided. Those assurances can be dropped, for example, if US officials decide Assange is not being cooperative. The promises can and will be disregarded the moment they become an encumbrance on Washington’s ability to keep Assange permanently silenced.
‘Trapped in a cage’
But if losing the extradition battle is high stakes, so is the legal process itself. That could finish Assange off long before a decision is reached, as his fiancee Stella Moris indicated at the weekend. She confirmed that Assange suffered a small stroke during a hearing in October in the endless extradition proceedings. There are indications he suffered neurological damage, and is now on anti-stroke medication to try to stop a recurrence.
Assange and his friends believe the stroke was brought on by the constant double strain of his solitary confinement in Belmarsh and a legal process being conducted over his head, in which he is barely allowed to participate.
Nils Melzer, the United Nations expert on torture, has repeatedly warned that Assange has been subjected to prolonged psychological torture in the nine years since he fled into Ecuador’s embassy in London seeking asylum from US efforts to persecute him.
That form of torture, Melzer has pointed out, was refined by the Nazis because it was found to be far more effective at breaking people than physical torture. Moris told the Daily Mail: “[The stroke] compounds our fears about [Assange’s] ability to survive the longer this long legal battle goes on. … Look at animals trapped in cages in a zoo. It cuts their life short. That’s what’s happening to Julian.”
And that indeed looks to be the prize for US officials that wanted him assassinated anyway. Whatever happens to Assange, the lawless US security state wins: it either gets him behind bars forever, or it kills him quietly and quite lawfully, while everyone is distracted, arguing about who Assange is rather what he exposed.
Political prisoner
In fact, with each twist and turn of the proceedings against Assange we move further from the realities at the heart of the case towards narrative distractions.
Who remembers now the first extradition hearings, nearly two years ago, at which the court was reminded that the very treaty signed by Britain and the US that is the basis for Assange’s extradition explicitly excludes political cases of the kind being pursued by the US against Assange?
It is a victory for state criminality that the discussion has devolved to Assange’s mental health rather than a substantive discussion of the treaty’s misapplication to serve political ends.
And similarly the focus on US assurances regarding Assange’s wellbeing is intended to obscure the fact that a journalist’s work is being criminalised as “espionage” for the first time under a hurriedly drafted, draconian and discredited piece of First World War legislation, the 1917 Espionage Act. Because Assange is a political prisoner suffering political persecution, legal arguments are apparently powerless to save him. It is only a political campaign that can keep underscoring the sham nature of the charges he faces.
The lies of power
What Assange bequeathed us through Wikileaks was a harsh light capable of cutting through the lies of power and power of lies. He showed that western governments claiming the moral high ground were actually committing crimes in our name out of sight in far-off lands. He tore the mask off their hypocrisy.
He showed that the many millions who took to the streets in cities around the world in 2003 because they knew the US and UK would commit war crimes in Iraq were right to march. But he also confirmed something worse: that their opposition to the war was treated with utter contempt.
The US and UK did not operate more carefully, they were not more respectful of human rights, they did not tread more lightly in Iraq because of those marches, because of the criticism beforehand. The western war machine carried on regardless, crushing the lives of anyone who got caught up in its maw.
Now with Assange locked up and silenced, western foreign policy can return comfortably to the era of zero accountability that existed before Assange shook up the whole system with his revelations. No journalist will dare to repeat what Assange did – not unless they are ready to spend the rest of their days behind bars.
The message his abuse sends to others could not be clearer or more chilling: what happened to Assange could happen to you too.
The truth is journalism is already reeling from the combined assaults against Khashoggi and Assange. But the hounding of Assange strikes the bigger blow. It leaves honest journalism with no refuge, no sanctuary anywhere in the world.
The national online rally is one way you can do that no matter where you are. It will be held on Saturday, February 5 at 12:00 noon Eastern/9:00 am Pacific. Speakers from the initial signatories of the call to action include: David Swanson of World Beyond War, Col. Ann Wright of CODEPINK, Rafiki Morris of Black Alliance for Peace, Joe Lombardo of the United National Antiwar Coalition, Leela Anand of the ANSWER Coalition, Sara Flounders of the International Action Committee, Cherrill Spencer of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Susan Schnall and Gerry Condon of Veterans for Peace, Bruce Gagnon and Lisa Savage of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Alice Loazia of Task Force on the Americas, and Henry Lowendorf of the US Peace Council. Ben Grosscup of the People’s Music Network will perform and Margaret Flowers will moderate. Register for the online rally at Bit.ly/StopWarWithRussia.
On Sunday, February 6 at 12:00 noon Eastern, the United National Antiwar Coalition will host a webinar featuring activists from the United States, Russia and Ukraine. Speakers include Ajamu Baraka, National Organizer, Black Alliance for Peace, Larissa Shessler, Chair, Union of Political Emigrants & Political prisoners of Ukraine, Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Joe Lombardo, Coordinator, United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), Vladimir Kozin, Correspondent member, Russian Academy of Military Science and Leonid Ilderkin, Coordinating Council of the Union of Political Emigrants & Political Prisoners of Ukraine. Register for that event here.
Rupa Marya and Raj Patel spoke to YES! about the ravages of colonialist capitalism, the failures of modern medicine to treat them, and, most importantly, how a “deep medicine” approach can heal us all.*This interview has been edited for clarity and length.Sonali Kolhatkar: Is the title of the book, Inflamed, a metaphor for what is happening to our planet and its living systems?Rupa Marya: It’s not at all a metaphor. It’s a description of what’s happening inside of our bodies and around us on the planet and our societies. The inflammatory response is the body’s ancient evolutionarily conserved pathway to restoring its optimal working condition when it’s been thrown off by danger or damage or the threat of damage. (Source, Yes Magazine)No jobs, no good jobs, decayed systems, penalties, bad credit, criminal offenses, drugs, booze, and bodies torn at a very young age with multiple chronic diseases, many many diseases.https://youtu.be/YrEwPp2bG48This is the system that the beautiful people in the sciences, in technology, in the Reset Star Chamber, all of those hoarding money and the opportunities have set loose, and these fascists want these people — us, we the people — on UBI, held as data pools — body snatchers, mind snatchers, attention snatchers, activity snatchers, all part of mining people, putting us, them, the 80 percent, in the cloud, in algorithms, in data banks, all mashed up for social impact — do as we say, follow what we command, eat-drink-think like we say, and you will get the tokens, man, the money, the slice of a 200-square-foot-per-person habitat. No pets allowed.The post Naive Documentary (-ies) Makers Barely Scratch the Surface! first appeared on Dissident Voice.
