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Category: United States

  • Patriotic Snitch: Bob Hawke as US Informant

    Larrikin is a word often, and inaccurately used, in Australian political lingo.  Australia’s longest serving Labor Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, was known as one such figure.  He was praised as the great communicator and healer between the forces of labour and capital, enjoyed imbibing, his sports and varied female company.  He could also be vain and ruthless.

    In June, a rather unremarkable revelation was made that Hawke had been something of an errand boy for the US imperium, a spiller of the beans and something of what Australians would call a “dobber”.  Cameron Coventry, in an article published that month, makes much of embassy and diplomatic cables covering the late Hawke between 1973 and 1979.  “During this time, he divulged information [to the US] about the Whitlam government (1972-75), the Fraser government (1975-83), Labor, and the labour movement.”  What is less than flattering for the Australian establishment is that snitching and informing on colleagues and their various circles was more than an errant pastime: it was entrenched practice.

    The image of Hawke as an eager informant for US officials had already attained form in the release of US state department cables by Wikileaks.  During the turbulent times of the Labor government of Gough Whitlam, Hawke, according to embassy accounts, speaks of a party left in “bad financial shape” by their leader, one afflicted by “stupidity”.  The acrimony between Prime Minister Whitlam and Hawke also registers with some frequency.  This was of interest, given the very specific concerns from Washington that Whitlam was going wobbly on the alliance due to pressure from within his own party.  His growing weakness was particularly troubling given “his basic moderation and support of US defence facilities and other US interests”, as one embassy cable notes in August 1974.

    Hawke, for his part, was happy to pile upon Whitlam in his disclosures to the embassy, often with intense colour.  An embassy official notes, in one cable in 1973, that, “Direct quotations in this report will be difficult as Hawke used short words of emphasis not suitable for family newspaper.”  Whitlam, according to Hawke, was “egocentric” though a poor judge: having sought voting and funding support from the Jewish community, he proceeded to treat Jewish elders in a “completely unsatisfactory and humiliating way”.

    Two versions of Hawke emerge.  There is the Hawke who publicly believed that Australia could find much in the context of independent non-alignment.  (Even then, this would have been laughable, given the firm security cord binding Canberra to Washington.)  Hawke the US informant and snitch preferred deeper and closer integration into the American machine, wishing to expand the ANZUS alliance beyond its “purely defensive military” character.

    Given that Australia had become a rather nice bit of strategic realty for the US, there was much appreciation for his efforts to take the sting out of any potential threats posed by the Left in general and the trade union movement in particular.  An important component to this was the relationship with the US Labour Attaché, a position long occupied by intelligence officers.  The occupants of the position took much interest in the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), of which Hawke would become president.  With his election, things got rosy, with US diplomats keen to push the ACTU into a sympathetic political orbit with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).

    The Labour Attaché would also contact Hawke on various occasions to intervene in industrial disputes.  In 1973, Hawke was asked about a potential disagreement at the Harold E. Holt Naval Communication Station in Western Australia.  Hawke, the cable reports, “volunteered to intervene formally”, having felt “concern and surprise at the militancy” of workers on the site.

    What emerges in the cables scrutinised by Coventry is a concerted strategy from Washington to encourage Hawke to abandon Keynesian economics in favour of more neoliberal policies. By the end of the 1970s, in Coventry’s assessment, Hawke came to “believe the maintenance of full employment was secondary to controlling inflation; that wage restraint was pivotal to the inflation fight; and that tripartism [an accord between unions, employers and the government] was needed to enact macroeconomic reform.”

    It did take some time to warm up to Hawke.  Initially, as historian David McKnight writes, US officials “were unnerved by his militant aspirations and his association with communists.” When he threw his hat in the ring for ACTU leadership in 1969, Labor Attaché Emil Lindahl observed that, while he was “brilliant and effective”, detractors had taken issue with his “subjects to flights of irresponsibility, including drunkenness, playing around with women, and brawling”. Despite this, he could be counted, along with then ACTU President Harold Souter, “friends of the US”.

    In 1978, Hawke the great defender of US interests and neutraliser of threats to Washington was appraised in another cable.  “Hawke has a lively and sometimes critical interest in the United States and has been a friend of Labor attaches and US officials in Australia […]. [I]in 1973 he told a US official that Australia and the US must remain close for a long time to come.”  A few years later, the cable further notes, Hawke “said that his personal attitude on foreign policy questions was very close to the United States.”  No wonder that Hawke, on becoming prime minister in 1983, made any criticism of the Australian-US relationship an offence worthy of political stoning.

    These latest, ably compiled revelations should be damning.  But like long spells of selective amnesia, heroes in the pantheon of politics will be spared public scrutiny.  Hawke hagiographers will simply find, in their hero, a straight thinking fellow keen to stay in the good books of a great power in order to protect Australian interests.  That this seemed almost treasonous will never be countenanced.

    The post Patriotic Snitch: Bob Hawke as US Informant first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Blinken Says No to Greenland Real Estate

    In May, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a visit to Greenland.  In a rather unedifying way, he was called ‘Tony’ by his hosts, a disarming point that was bound to open the floodgates of insincerity.  For all the convivial stuffing, there was a certain sting to the occasion: the previous Trump administration had revisited a fantasy long nurtured in the corridors of Washington and power crazed pundits.  Greenland, went the dreamers, might someday become a part of the US imperium.

    President Donald Trump, in reigniting the issue with a businessman’s bumbling delight, noted in 2019 that Denmark “essentially” owned it. “We’re very good allies with Denmark, we protect Denmark like we protect large portions of the world.  So the concept came up and I said, ‘Certainly I’d be [interested in purchasing Greenland].’  Strategically it’s interesting and we’d be interested but we’ll talk to them a little bit.”  The Danish response to his appraisal – that Greenland was potentially part of “a large real estate deal”, was dismissive. Trump harrumphed.

    So what has happened to Trump’s ideas regarding this icy territory?  The press conference began cordially enough. Blinken was welcomed by the autonomous territory’s premier Mute Egede who reminded him that celebrations would be held commemorating Kangerlussuaq’s 80-years anniversary, built by the US Air Force in 1941. “What began as a military base is now an important civilian airport for Greenland.” From a world at war, the relationship with the US had “evolved to a cooperation in science and mutual interest and understanding the health of our planet.”

    This was laying it on a bit thick, but Blinken obliged with due soppiness. “I’m in Greenland because the United States deeply values our partnership and wants to make it even stronger.”  The consulate in Nuuk, after a seven decade hiatus, had been reopened for that reason.

    To the press members gathered, he explained how the US was willing to part with cash in developing the island (“about $12 million in programming in the first year, and plans for additional funding.”)  This covered sustainable tourism, fishing, land management, and cooperation between universities. But then came the question: “Can you definitely say that the United States does not seek to buy Greenland?” To this question posed by John Hudson of the Washington Post, Blinken could only assert its accuracy.

    Greenland’s Minister for Trade, Foreign Affairs and Climate, Pele Broberg, was also clear that Greenland, while significant in terms of “geo-location” and of “utmost importance for the defence of the United States”, was not part of any “real estate deal” with Washington.  But Broberg’s interpretation as to what constituted real estate was curious enough.  “Real estate means land with nothing on it, nobody on it.”  This observation was a prelude to something less than convincing.  “Secretary Blinken has made it clear that he is here for the people living in the Arctic, for the people living in Greenland.”

    Over various periods of history, that grand cold expanse of Greenland has interested US prospectors of political realty.  The US imperium had grown rich through a combination of purchases and predatory conquest, repudiating those warnings made by George Washington about the perils of an enlarged empire.

    During the administration of Andrew Jackson, the territorially-minded expansionist William Seward went on a bidding spree, pursuing that old coveted goal of acquiring Canada from the British Empire and naval assets in the Caribbean.  Returns followed for the US Secretary of State.  The Alaska purchase, with the Russians imprudently parting with land they thought was of little value, was truly something of a steal.  In the summer of 1867, Seward also commissioned former treasury secretary Robert J. Walker to look into the issue of whether Denmark might be willing to part with both Greenland and Iceland.  Walker had already made good progress in acquiring the Danish possessions of St. Thomas and St. John through treaty.

    In his introduction to a report for the State Department, compiled by the superintendent of the United States Coast Survey, Benjamin Peirce, Walker is eye-popping with praise for this “largest island in the world.”  (The Trump vernacular is all too present.)  You can sense the aggrandising inner voice: “Its area, thus elongated, would be about 1,800,000 square miles, or largely more than half the size of all Europe, but with a far greater shoreline.”  He acknowledges those “vast fisheries and extensive coasts and numerous harbors, especially with abundant good coal there [which] must greatly antedate the period when the United States will command the commerce of the World.”  Acquire Greenland today, and a rich tomorrow is assured.

    The Truman administration, eyeing strategic advantages in its Cold War standoff with the Soviet Union, was another bidder, offering $100 million for the island territory in 1946.  As John Hickerson of the State Department noted in a memo, “practically every member” of the planning and strategy committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed that a purchase should take place.  It was also “indispensable to the safety of the United States” while being “completely worthless to Denmark”.  The Danish Foreign Minister Gustav Rasmussen was less than impressed with this imperial imposition when approached by Secretary of State James Byrnes in December 1946.

    Happily for Copenhagen, the advent of NATO alleviated any pressing need to show the Danes the money.  US military planners got what they wanted: a defence treaty in 1951 permitting the building of the Thule Air Base.  To facilitate this agreement, the Danish government relocated the indigenous Inughuit community with assured callousness.  It was all a crude demonstration of empire by concealment and obfuscation, a point made with some force by Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States.

    With the Biden administration looking inwards, expressions of interest for Greenland, at least from the US, have closed.  This is unlikely to be a permanent state of affairs.  The ice is melting; global warming is a terror for the environment but a delicious commercial boon for strategists hoping for easier access to the Arctic.  Russia is proving a more than formidable player.  China, along with Russia, dream of the Ice Silk Road.  US officials fret that Beijing might get a military foothold on the island.  This real estate story is far from over.

    The post Blinken Says No to Greenland Real Estate first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • On Propaganda and Failed Narratives: New Understanding of Afghanistan is a Must

    For twenty years, two dominant narratives have shaped our view of the illegal US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, and neither one of these narratives would readily accept the use of such terms as ‘illegal’, ‘invasion’ and ‘occupation.’

    The framing of the US ‘military intervention’ in Afghanistan, starting on October 7, 2001, as the official start of what was dubbed as a global ‘war on terror’ was left almost entirely to US government strategists. Former President, George W. Bush, his Vice President, Dick Cheney, his Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld and an army of spokespersons, neoconservative ‘intellectuals’, journalists and so on, championed the military option as a way to rid Afghanistan of its terrorists, make the world a safe place and, as a bonus, bring democracy to Afghanistan and free its oppressed women.

    For that crowd, the US war in an already war-torn and extremely impoverished country was a just cause, maybe violent at times, but ultimately humanistic.

    Another narrative, also a western one, challenged the gung-ho approach used by the Bush administration, argued that democracy cannot be imposed by force, reminded Washington of Bill Clinton’s multilateral approach to international politics, warned against the ‘cut and run’ style of foreign policymaking, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere.

    Although both narratives may have seemed at odds at times, in actuality they accepted the basic premise that the United States is capable of being a moral force in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Whether those who may refer to themselves as ‘antiwar’ realize this or not, they, too, subscribe to the same notion of American exceptionalism and ‘Manifest Destiny’ that Washington continues to assign to itself.

    The main difference between both of these narratives is that of methodology and approach and not whether the US has the right to ‘intervene’ in the affairs of another country, whether to ‘eradicate terrorism’ or to supposedly help a victim population, incapable of helping themselves and desperate for a western savior.

    However, the humiliating defeat suffered by the US in Afghanistan should inspire a whole new way of thinking, one that challenges all Western narratives, without exception, in Afghanistan and throughout the world.

    Obviously, the US has failed in Afghanistan, not only militarily and politically – let alone in terms of ‘state-building’ and every other way – the US-Western narratives on Afghanistan were, themselves, a failure. Mainstream media, which for two decades have reported on the country with a palpable sense of moral urgency, now seem befuddled. US ‘experts’ are as confused as ordinary people regarding the hasty retreat from Kabul, the bloody mayhem at the airport or why the US was in Afghanistan in the first place.

    Meanwhile, the ‘humanistic interventionists’ are more concerned with Washington’s ‘betrayal’ of the Afghan people, ‘leaving them to their fate’, as if the Afghans are irrational beings with no agency of their own, or as if the Afghan people have called on the Americans to invade their country or have ‘elected’ American generals as their democratic representatives.

    The US-Western propaganda, which has afflicted our collective understanding of Afghanistan for twenty years and counting, has been so overpowering to the point that we are left without the slightest understanding of the dynamics that led to the Taliban’s swift takeover of the country. The latter group is presented in the media as if entirely alien to the socio-economic fabric of Afghanistan. This is why the Taliban’s ultimate victory seemed, not only shocking but extremely confusing as well.

    For twenty years, the very little we knew about the Taliban has been communicated to us through Western media analyses and military intelligence assessments. With the Taliban’s viewpoint completely removed from any political discourse pertaining to Afghanistan, an alternative Afghan national narrative was carefully constructed by the US and its NATO partners. These were the ‘good Afghans’, we were told, ones who dress up in Western-style clothes, speak English, attend international conferences and, supposedly, respect women. These were also the Afghans who welcomed the US occupation of their country, as they benefited greatly from Washington’s generosity.

    If those ‘good Afghans’ truly represented Afghan society, why did their army of 300,000 men drop their weapons and flee the country, along with their President, without a serious fight? And if the 75,000 poorly-armed and, at times, malnourished Taliban seemed to merely represent themselves, why then did they manage to defeat formidable enemies in a matter of days?

    There can be no argument that an inferior military power, like that of the Taliban, could have possibly persisted, and ultimately won, such a brutal war over the course of many years, without substantial grassroots support pouring in from the Afghan people in large swathes of the country. The majority of the Taliban recruits who have entered Kabul on August 15 were either children, or were not even born, when the US invaded their country, all those years ago. What compelled them to carry arms? To fight a seemingly unwinnable war? To kill and be killed? And why did they not join the more lucrative business of working for the Americans, like many others have?

    We are just beginning to understand the Taliban narrative, as their spokespersons are slowly communicating a political discourse that is almost entirely unfamiliar to most of us. A discourse that we were not allowed to hear, interact with or understand.

    Now that the US and its NATO allies are leaving Afghanistan, unable to justify or even explain why their supposed humanitarian mission led to such an embarrassing defeat, the Afghan people are left with the challenge of weaving their own national narrative, one that must transcend the Taliban and their enemies to include all Afghans, regardless of their politics or ideology.

    Afghanistan is now in urgent need of a government that truly represents the people of that country. It must grant rights to education, to minorities and to political dissidents, not to acquire a Western nod of approval, but because the Afghan people deserve to be respected, cared for and treated as equals. This is the true national narrative of Afghanistan that must be nurtured outside the confines of the self-serving Western mischaracterization of Afghanistan and her people.

    The post On Propaganda and Failed Narratives: New Understanding of Afghanistan is a Must first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Little Deaths . . . Finding Solace Inside One’s Heart

    The consensus is in — no choice, no life, no job, no nothing, without a passport. That medical, DNA scan, the retina scan, all biological systems covered, that all-encompassing passport that lists every move, every moment, every job, every purchase, every fine, penalty, tax, rental, home, significant or insignificant emotional and economic and familial event, captured in a chip. Americans are spoiled, for sure, as are Europeans, and Canadians. That mostly encompasses the Great White Hopes of those respective “countries.” The rest of us, in these “first world” environs are struggling, even with debit and credit and La-La Land accoutrements ad infinitum.

    These new times in the west are old times, bubbling up, really, from the early conquest days of razing Indian families, destroying and taking over and plowing through villages, lands, territories. Entire rooms at elite Ivy League universities and museums with drawers and boxes of Native American skulls, bones, skins, eyes, belongings, sacred objects. It is the way of the Egyptologists, and it is the way of the Crusades. Pillage, set villages on fire, and now, set states and countries on fire with fear and terror campaigns in order to exact total compliancy. Services, labor, debt, future payments, extracted from us, capitalism’s marks. Victims. Useless eaters-breeders-breathers-squatters.

    Here, from David Rovics, musician and protestor, with some great stuff on Dissident Voice over the years, just coming back from Denmark (and other countries in his gig line). He embraces progressivism and the forced jabs. He is a good fellow, who interviewed me, and we talked about other things tied to the ugly side of leftists and their canceling culture, censorship, etc., but this conversation about jab/mask/remote lockup mandates has not happened yet. I still have room in my brain to listen to what he says, though he misses so many points here:

    Despite the prevalence of disinformation platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube being as popular in Denmark as anywhere else that doesn’t have the good sense to ban them, the anti-vaccine movement and anti-lockdown movement in Denmark never grew to the proportions of such movements in the US, Germany, France and elsewhere. But unlike those aforementioned countries, in Denmark most people have a well-founded reason to trust the government on matters of public health and safety.

    In Denmark, if anyone jaywalks, they’re usually either a foreigner or an antisocial type. The overwhelming majority of Danes would never do that. This is also true in Germany and some other countries. Americans and Brits and others visiting from abroad tend to make typically American and British individualistic, antisocial assumptions about this conformist behavior. They see a crowd of Germans or Danes standing at a crosswalk, waiting for the “walk” signal, even if there’s no traffic in any direction, and they see something scary, from Children of the Corn or some other horror movie, a bunch of zombies who can’t think for themselves, or are afraid of getting a ticket. (source — David Rovics)

    That’s a whole other set of discussion points from this tour he had in Denmark about what democratic socialism is, what society is, how science and government should be trusted (really?). Jaywalking and shoot, tossing banana peels on the side of the road. How dare us lazy, supercilious and egotistical North Americans! Yankees!

    The unfolding global hysteria is congealing into even more lovely by-products of Big Pharma as Dictatorship. It comes in many forms and offshoots, for sure. The main functions of Western society are broken — neoliberal and conservative values (sic) have gutted infrastructure, have thrown trillions of bucks-euros to the few, have propped up this society into a very effective kleptocracy, have imbued a dog eat dog set of beliefs into a slew of folks.

    We are at the point where billionaires and their lackeys in high places set the narrative, tone, and write the legislation, laws and force zero delimits on corporations and government in this “we the people” system we supposedly “fought” for. There is collapse, after collapse, after collapse, and it is apparent in the lack of governance over decades, and the adventures of imperial overreach, too.

    In daily lives, professional managerial class actors are hitting the middle/upper middle class stratum, economically, through the systems of pain, fines, fees, tolls, penalties, regressive taxation, permits and litigation that eat at us, the 80 percent, from the soul and the brain and the body. We are in a time of most people not being able to navigate “the system,” and that can be any system — school, medical, social security, DMV, courts, and any number of systems of oppression and subjugation. So it is a time of chaos, now Covid Chaos, moving into more Chaos.

    Teachers should be a priority for Covid vaccines, unions and others say - POLITICO

    “People are fed up,” says Winni Paul, a management consultant whose clients have included campuses and higher-education groups. “The graciousness, the compassion, the ‘we do it for the students, we do it for the work’ — that’s gone.”

    And I am with a group of teachers from many states, who are now scrambling to figure out what to do with the forced jabs, the forced proof of jabs, the forced masking, all of that, and many will not submit to the experimental mRNA, many have looked into these DNA-alternating medical devices, and they feel alone, big time. Their AFT (American Federation of Teachers) union has caved, and they see in big cities and small, all venues requiring, soon, a passport, CDC-approved vaccination card.

    Delta airlines is forcing non-vaccinated employees to pay an additional $200 a month premium, AKA fine for not being jabbed. Oh, that was yesterday (August 25), and that will not be the end of it. Fools like Thom Hartman advocate ER physicians having the right to refuse treatment to anyone coming in — motorcycle accident, heart attack, broken leg, stroke — who are not vaccinated.

    This is the Brave New World already outlined by the eugenicists of the 1920s, of the Modest Proposal of Swift’s time, of the middle passage days of tossing overboard hundreds of sick shackled slaves in one one-way crossing. Multiply that by hundreds of ships, tossing human beings for the sharks, alive, shackled in chains. It is the genocidal policies of empires and their corporate thugs (overlords) in despoiling cultures, murdering millions, and enslaving regions for their rubber, silver, gold, lithium, any number of things the capitalists call loot and booty. Pirates compared to the thieves from history and today seem like Fred McFeely Rogers in comparison.

    See the source image

    Even a saint, Fauci, he is a titan of terror in his old man’s way — “over his 50-year career with the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to address the cause, to prevent or cure the exploding epidemics of allergies and chronic disease that Congress charged him with curtailing. The chronic disease pandemic is his enduring legacy. Those ailments now debilitate 54% of American children compared to 6% when he joined NIAD.” (source — RFK Jr.)

    See the source image

    In this group of teachers, daily there are emails announcing more and more statewide jab mandates, and the teachers that have to pay twice-a-week tests, if not jabbed, well, it is filling up those school districts; and many now in this group want out, since their email boxes are filling up. Teachers, youngish and not, with no money in the bank, really, and no place to go, since I predict all new rental agreements throughout the land (except in some Breaking Bad locales) will require proof of jab x, jab y, jab z, jab infinity.

    The playing field shifts hourly, and while I have a literary reading manana, in Portland, for this hour, at least, the restaurant and community room demands all to be masked. There is no shot record demand, YET, but that’s on the horizon, since Oregon is the first state to reinstate mandatory outside masking policies. But the venue’s other locations, well, the rock and roll and progressives, they want to see vax cards or proof of SARS-CoV2 free tests. The Crystal Ballroom

    It doesn’t matter how many millions of people worldwide are not happy with mRNA experimental chemicals forced into the bloodstream and across the blood-brain barrier;  not happy with the bioweaponry aspect of Operation Warp Speed; not happy with the therapeutics that have been disavowed and censored, which could have saved millions of lives, possibly. One size fits all, baby. This news aggregator and news maker site, well, it is almost scrubbed from all search engines:

    These stories above and below are verboten in the minds of tens of millions, hundreds of millions Westerners — even though there are robust stories on other topics, besides Fauci, jabs and mRNA, and fascism in this places.

    I am finding people fighting, for sure, against mandates. Hell, my one time with the doctor recently points to this: “While I did get the vaccination, I am against mandates. I am against forcing people against their will to get this. I am of the mind that people have the right to make up their own minds.” He’s older, maybe 70, is a DO, and I know the university where he adjunct taught and matriculated from, Touro University Nevada (TUN) (a private university in Henderson, Nevada. It is part of the Touro College and University System. Touro University Nevada is a branch campus of its sister campus Touro University California.)

    My niece is there, in her second year, and my DO stated, his one word of advice for her is, Cash. “Tell her to write notes to family and friends, and state: ‘please send cash.’” The doctor likes me, and he’s a jokester. He told me reads a lot, and that he did work in Amazonian for years, “saving one life at a time.” He is looking at my recent stress test, and alas, getting a cardiologist on board to maybe do more investigation on some electrical anomalies when I got up to 160 beats per minute, that is another example of the failed capitalist system: there are none here on Highway 101 on the central coast, and getting one to see me could take weeks, out of the cities of Salem or Corvallis. This is the state of medicine, after decades of gutting taxation of the rich and the corporations (who are getting us sick) and years turning medicine into a bizarre insurance scam, where doctors spend more time on the computer screen than with the patient.

    So, this next reset is all about pushing more and more people into fewer and fewer public spheres, pushing people away from outliers or those defiant and dissident like me and millions. It is about controlling the masses, setting forth sophisticated bandwagon forms of propaganda, and setting afire all forms of community gatherings and robust discussions of the millions of topics of the day.

    With this teachers’ group, the messages are coming in:

    • Governor Pritzker just announced mandatory vax for all IL teachers
    • Here is Dr. Peter McCullough talking about the dangers of vaccines, among other things: Basically, the vaxxed are projecting all the havoc they themselves are wreaking even as “life is pretty much back to normal among the vaccinated,” as many are bragging onto the unvaxxed. Many op-eds in publications like WaPo and the NYT are filling their pages with doctors martyring themselves and declaring they won’t treat unvaxxed anymore (to cheers from bots and humans alike in the comments section) and normalizing ending friendships based on vaccination status. But they are the super spreaders. They are the ones making children and Grandma sick. This is scapegoating at its finest.
    • Some great work is being done by Mike Williams @ Sage of Quay. Also, great Common Law shows being done by Crrow777 Radio Alfonso Faggiola and Lena Pu.
    • Want to see a man stand up to the controllers? Check out Paul Unslaved . You can also gain a little insight from some of the good First Amendment auditors like Long Island Audit.
    • California AB455 – this bill, if passed, will mandate the C19 vaccine for all CA employees and for CA citizens to enter any establishment except church and grocery stores:
    Doctor McCullough video.
    • Rally against this action set for September 8th
    • Some good news: a touching video of resistance to vaccine mandates in France (i cant verify the authenticity but hope it is real)
    • Lastly, ICYMI – Illinois’ Vax Verify – vaccination verification is tied to Experian – meaning residents will have to go through a one-time verification process through Experian to access their vaccination records. So stating the obvious – this is opening the door increasingly towards a social credit system.
    Vaccine Verification Portal.

    Then this from one of the people on this list wanting the mandates and the draconian measures stopped:

    Just a quick note: This Sunday will mark 58 years of me being active in the political sphere. Back in ’64, it was as a Goldwater volunteer. Some 6 years later, i switched sides, a consequence of the Vietnam War, the counterculture, ecological crisis,…  And became much more of an activist. I have no love whatsoever for the right.  But I’ve also seen the “left” act at critical points as a defender of the capitalist status quo, particularly as a consequence of the dominant tendency within the left to accept the state as if it were an institution acting on behalf of society as a whole, rather than the instrument of class power it has been since it emerged in history thousands of years ago. Both left and right (and “center”) are fully on board with the onrushing police state, while each proclaims itself to be defending the interests of humanity against the others. People need to look to themselves for solutions, and learn from historical movements, including anarchists and anti-statist socialists.

    Connecting the dots is easy on one hand, but to get people to see this entire terror theater as planned is another can of GMO worms. Here, this is certainly a global, or EU, story worth a million lines of digital ink: Why do the experts on Science Advice for Policy by European Academies fight for higher pesticide exposure by Rosemary Mason

    I heartily accept the motto,—”That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—”That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men and women are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

    — Henry David Thoreau, Resistance to Civil Government, 1849

    Succinctly, Communist approaches to anti-statism center on the relationship between political rule and class struggle. Karl Marx defined the state as the institution used by the ruling class of a country to maintain the conditions of its rule. To this extent, the ultimate goal of communist society was theorized as both stateless and classless.

    We are at 8 billion, and the planet is run by Blackstone and BlackRock and around 30 financial organizations, and around 140 corporations. The bottleneck is what the planned pandemic was all about — getting people to run away from sanity, common sense, and running into the various insane asylums. For anyone to question why some of us — who are way beyond just coming out from under the Capitalist-Media-Education rock — might doubt the purveyors of capital, scientism, control, policing, finance and corrupt drug companies, well, that is where I am now — “since the majority of people are in line for the jab, what’s your fucking lunatic problem?”

    Here, Chris Williams, and, yes, on ecosocialism — hmm:

    The distortions that go on under capitalism are so obscene it’s hard to wrap your head around it sometimes, on a micro level as well as a macro level. I was riding on the subway and I took a couple of trains and I was looking at the ads. The average American sees about 3,000 ads a day. One ad was for a credit card, and this is the slogan for the credit card—“Less plastic, more human—Discover it is human.” Discover is the card that they were advertising. In other words, you can actually be more human by having this type of credit card. Another ad, and this gets to the quality of life, that I pass by was about online delivery of food—how you can order online instead of having to phone somebody—and the ad read, “You’ve perfected the odds of getting to third base faster. Food delivery date night.” The obscenity and depravity of capitalism knows no depths to which it will not plumb.

    This is something that Karl Marx talked about quite a bit. He was speaking at the anniversary of the People’s Paper in 1856, and I think this resonates far more with us now than it did even in his time.

    On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces, which no epoch of the former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman Empire.

    That kind of sense of decay pervades our world as it is currently structured. He goes on:

    In our days, everything seems pregnant with its contrary: Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying human labor, we behold starving and overworking it; The newfangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want; The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character.

    At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.

    John Bellamy Foster on ecosocialism:  “Ecological resistance in the twenty-first century has more and more been informed by the development of Marxian ecology and ecosocialism more generally. However, as ecosocialist analysis has grown, various divergent branches of thought have emerged, often in conflict with each other. Based on the conviction that clarity about capitalism’s relation to the environment is indispensable for the strategic understanding of present-day struggles, this talk will present some of the new research within Marxian ecology, bringing together the core issues of the expropriation of nature and the metabolic rift, and seeking to unite the ecosocialist movements of our time.”

    Another set of notes from another teacher on this V is for Vendetta Vaccines email group — I’m calling it that as a joke:

    • I just attended a workshop for religious exemptions, and will forward the email for any of those who wish to attend. I am also happy to share insights and notes I took to help out anyone who wishes to take this route. However, I would like to share some notes and important information discussed in this workshop.
    • First, if you are part a union or teachers union, Collective Bargaining needs to take place. Many unions did not have a seat at the table and have sent cease and desist letters that could delay the mandates. Remember the unions represent both the majority and the minority of their union members and even if there is only 15 percent against the mandates, those individuals should be represented. It was recommended to call your Labor Relations Representative or Union Rep to see  if they have sent a cease and desist letter or are planning on it. Key word is the Collective Bargaining aspect of the unions and you may be able to ask them to do so.
    • Additionally, I think if you are able to file for a religious exemption it is a good way to buy time. The common law approach may be a good option for those who do not have an option. Realistically, for Californians we are a Right to Work state, and employers have the right to fire and hire at will.  With either method there is a possibility of job termination which has to be considered, and I do not know exactly how the outcome has been going for individuals who have filed religious vs. common law approaches. That said I do know there have been many religious exemptions accepted and there is an appeals process if denied. If you are on a timetable and need to be vaccinated by a date that is closely approaching, the religious exemption is probably more likely to be one way to hold onto employment a little longer.  My understanding of the common law approach is that it can be more time consuming because legal notices have times frames for notices, responses, and actions to take place and may not work with your deadline which again can lead to termination. Because California is an At Will Work state there may be risk to filing for any unemployment as well, so all these things should be considered before deciding which route to take.
    • I am not saying one option is better than the other, I am just presenting them as Option A or  Option B, because I think we all have differences in our personal situations. One may work better for you personally than the other. That said, we should also have our plan B  in place if neither work. Helping each other is essential and it will be good to share with one another what has worked and what hasn’t, and I do not want to argue either method, just help out in any way possible. Our differences in ideology are unimportant to me at this time. I believe there is a good portion of us, who are strong personalities, opinionated and intelligence — and these may be the wonderful unifying qualities that have brought us together at this critical time to fight for our humanity.

    GoFundMe for a new novel, or old one, I am fixing up to get published!

    Take up the White Man’s Burden, send for the best ye breed,
    Go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives need –
    new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child…
    Take up the White Man’s burden, the savage wars of peace.

    — Rudyard Kipling (1899)

    The post Little Deaths . . . Finding Solace Inside One’s Heart first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US Leads the World in 7-Day Average of New Daily COVID Cases, Death Count

    The United States leads the world in coronavirus deaths per day, as well as daily new cases. Because of these troubling trends, the European Union (EU) determined this week that it would formally remove the U.S. from its safe travel list.

    Around 1,504 deaths from coronavirus are being reported daily in the country, according to a seven-day average calculated by the Reuters COVID-19 Global Tracker. The U.S. is also identifying more than 156,000 new cases on a daily basis.

    The U.S. leads on both measures, the tracker notes, by wide margins. On deaths per day, Russia comes in second, reporting over 800 deaths daily, around half the number the United States is presently seeing. For new COVID cases, India is in second place, and is reporting just over 41,000 new cases on the average day.

    The increases in coronavirus cases in the United States prompted the EU to remove the country from its safe travel list on Monday, and is recommending its member nations to create restrictions for U.S. travelers (Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro, and North Macedonia were also removed from EU’s safe travel list).

    The recommendation reverses a previous decision that placed the U.S. on the safe travel list back in June. The recommendation is nonbinding, as the EU doesn’t have unified rules for tourism, but it highlights how the pandemic is significantly worse in the U.S. than in other parts of the world that have taken a proactive approach to controlling the spread of the virus.

    Much of the high COVID numbers in the U.S. may be attributable to the fact that the country has a low vaccination rate (52 percent) when compared to other nations. The U.S. ranks 38th in the number of doses administered per capita, and is 36th in terms of how many of the country’s residents are fully vaccinated.

    The spike in higher hospitalizations and cases is likely driven by many in the U.S. who refuse to get vaccinated, as well as the more contagious Delta variant of the virus becoming the dominant strain. Those who are unvaccinated are 29 times more likely to need hospitalization versus those who are fully vaccinated, and there’s new evidence to suggest that, while those who are vaccinated can still contract coronavirus, they’re less likely to spread it or have it for as long as those who didn’t get the vaccine.

    Results from a recent Economist/YouGov poll suggest that there will remain a higher-than-desired number of Americans who will not get the vaccine, with 18 percent saying they are currently not interested in getting the vaccine and 9 percent saying they’re still unsure about getting it. And while 72 percent say they’ve either been vaccinated, received at least one shot or plan to get vaccinated soon, some health experts say that that number is on the very low end of what’s needed to reduce the spread of coronavirus, with other advocates stating that a higher vaccination rate, closer to 80-90 percent, is probably necessary.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Abandoned and Alone: Lamenting the US-Australian Alliance

    Listening to Australian pundits talk about the relationship of their country with the US – at least from a strategic perspective – can be a trying exercise.  It is filled with angst, Freudian fears of abandonment, the strident megalomania of Australian self-importance.  Critics of this complex are shouted down as Sinophiles or in the pay of some foreign power.

    This unequal and distinctly unhealthy relationship has been marked by a certain outsourcing tendency.  Australian foreign policy is a model example of expectation: that other powers will carry its weight: processing refugees; aiding Australians stranded or persecuted overseas; reliance on that fiction known as the extended nuclear deterrent.  Self-reliance is discouraged in favour of what Barry Posen calls a “cheap ride”.

    In recent years, the Australian security-military apparatus has been more than ingratiating regarding its alliance with Washington, despite such sombre warnings as those from the late Malcom Fraser.  In 2014, the former prime minister argued that Australia, at the end of the Cold War, was presented with an opportunity to pursue a policy of “peace, cooperation, and trust” in the region.  Instead, Canberra opted to cling on to a foreign war machine that found itself bloodied and bruised in the Middle East.  Now, Australia risked needlessly going to war against China on the side of the US.  Best to, he suggested, shut down US training bases in the Northern Territory and close the Pine Gap signals centre as soon as feasible.

    During the Trump administration, a more than usually cringe worthy effort was made to be Washington’s stalking horse in the Asia-Pacific region.  Poking China on such matters as COVID-19 was seen as very sensible fare, as it might invite a more solid commitment of the United States to the region.  But the momentum for an easing of some US global commitments was impossible to reverse.  The country was looking inward (the ravages of the COVID contagion, a country riven by protest and the toxic and intoxicating drug of identity politics).  Those in Canberra were left worried.

    This state of affairs has prompted the glum lament from the veteran strategist Hugh White that Australia’s politicians lack imagination in the face of the most significant change in its foreign relations since British settlement.  They refuse to accept that China is there, not to be contained but to be accommodated in some form. The Pacific pond will have to accept two hegemons rather than one, a point the Washington-hugging types in Canberra find not only impermissible but terrifying.

    The fall of Kabul offered further stimulus for panic.  The Western war adventurers had been defeated and instead of asking why Australians were ever in Afghanistan, the focus shifted to the umbilical cord with Washington.  In conducting interviews with four former Australian Prime Ministers, Paul Kelly of The Australian, being more woolly-headed than usual, saw Biden’s withdrawal as “so devoid of judgment and courage that it raises a fog of doubt about Biden himself and about America’s democratic sustenance as a reliable great power.”

    Of the former prime ministers interviewed, the undying pugilist Tony Abbott wondered what “fight” was left in “Biden’s America”.  There might well be some in the reserves, he speculated, but US allies had to adjust.  Australia had to show “more spine” in the alliance.

    Kevin Rudd, himself an old China hand, wanted to impress upon the Australian public and body politic that “we are in the midst of a profound paradigm shift in global and regional geopolitics.”  The US continued to question itself about what strategic role it would play in the Asia-Pacific region in the face of China’s inexorable rise.  Australia had to plan for the “best” and the “worst”: the former entailing “a robust regionally and globally engaged America”; the latter, “an America that begins to retreat.”  On August 14, Rudd had urged the Biden administration to “reverse the course of its final military withdrawal”.

    Malcolm Turnbull opted for the small troop thesis: “America should have retained a garrison force in Afghanistan.”  Doing so might have provided sufficient assurance for Afghan national forces and prevented a Taliban victory.  “It was not palatable to have kept forces there, but what we have seen now is even less palatable.”  The US, he noted, had retained forces across European states, Japan and South Korea “for decades”.  (Turnbull misses a beat here on such shaky comparisons, given that the Taliban would have never tolerated the presence of such a garrison.)

    Trump comes in for a lecturing: “The [US-Taliban] talks should never have occurred in the absence of the Afghan government and their effect was to delegitimise that government.”  In all fairness to the Trump administration, there was little by way of legitimacy in the Afghan national government to begin with.  Negotiating with the Taliban was simply an admission as to where the bullets and bombs were actually coming from, not to mention how untenable the existence of the Kabul regime had become.

    As for John Howard, the man who sent Australian forces to Afghanistan to begin with, the garrison thesis held even greater merit.  Again, the false analogy of other US imperial footprints was drawn: if Washington can station 30,000 troops in South Korea for seven decades after the end of hostilities, why not Afghanistan?  Hopefully, this “bungle” would remain confined to the handling of Afghanistan and not affect the US-Australian alliance.  “I believe if it were put to the test, the Americans would honour the ANZUS treaty.”

    Such reflections, part moaning, part regret, should provide brickwork for a more independent foreign policy.  Alison Broinowski, former diplomat and Vice-President of Australians for War Powers Reform, offers some level-headed advice.  “If Australians ignore the change in the global power balance that is happening before our eyes,” she writes, “we will suffer the consequences.  If we can’t defeat the Taliban, how will we prevail in a war against China?”  Such a question, given the terrifying answer that follows, is not even worth asking.

    The post Abandoned and Alone: Lamenting the US-Australian Alliance first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • New covid book exposes global media bias, racism and stigmatisation

    REVIEW: By Krishan Dutta

    While the covid-19 pandemic’s relentless cyclone continues across the globe wreaking havoc on economies and social systems, this book sheds light on the adversarial reporting culture of the media, and how it impacts on racism and politicisation driving the coverage.

    It explores the global response to the covid-19 pandemic, and the role of national and international media, and governments, in the initial coverage of the developing crisis.

    With specific chapters written mostly by scholars living in these countries, Covid-19, Racism and Politicization: Media in the Midst of a Pandemic examines how the media in Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, New Zealand, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and the United States have responded to the pandemic, and highlights issues specific to these countries, such as racism, Sinophobia, media bias, stigmatisation of victims and conspiracy theories.

    This book explores how the covid-19 coverage developed over the year 2020, with special focus given to the first six months of the year when the reporting trends were established.

    The introductory chapter points out that the media deserve scrutiny for their role in the day-to-day coverage that often focused on adversarial issues and not on solutions to help address the biggest global health crisis the world has seen for more than a century.

    In chapter 2, co-editor Dr Kalinga Seneviratne, former head of research at the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) takes a comprehensive look at how the blame game developed in the international media with a heavy dose of Sinophobia, and how between March and June 2020 a global propaganda war developed.

    He documents how conspiracy theories from both the US and China developed after the virus started spreading in the US and points out some interesting episodes that happened in the US in 2019 that may have vital relevance for the investigation of the origins of the virus.

    Attacks on WHO
    The attacks on the World Health Organisation (WHO), particularly by the former Trump administration, are well documented with a timeline of how WHO worked on investigating the virus in its early stages with information provided from China.

    The chapter also discusses the racism that underpinned the propaganda war, especially from the West, which led to the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s controversial call for an “independent” inquiry into the origins of the pandemic that riled China.

    Researcher Kalinga Seneviratne
    Co-author Kalinga Seneviratne … the book highlights pandemic issues such as racism, Sinophobia, media bias, stigmatisation of victims and conspiracy theories. Image: IDN-News

    “The covid-19 pandemic has exposed the inadequacies and inequalities of the globalised world. In an information-saturated society, it has also laid bare many political economy issues especially credibility of news, dangers of misinformation, problems of politicisation, lack of media literacy, and misdirected government policy priorities,” argues co-editor Sundeep Muppidi, professor of communications at the University of Hartford in the US.

    “This book explores the implications of some of these issues, and the government response, in different societies around the world in the initial periods of the pandemic.”

    In chapter 3, Muppidi examines specifically the US media coverage of covid-19 and he explores the “othering” of the blame related to failures and non-performances from politicians, governments and media networks themselves.

    Yun Xiao and Radika Mittal, writing about a study they have done on the coverage in The New York Times during the early months of the covid-19 pandemic, argue that unsubstantiated criticism of governance measures, lack of nuance and absence of alternative narratives is indicative of a media ideology that strengthens and embeds the process of “othering”.

    Ankuran Dutta and Anupa Goswani from Gauhati University in Assam, India, analyse the coverage of the covid-19 crisis in five Indian newspapers using 10 key words. They argue that the Indian media coverage could be seen as what constitutes “Sinophobia” with some mainstream media even calling it the “Wuhan Virus”.

    Historical background
    They trace the historical background to India’s anti-China nationalism, and show how it has been reflected in the covid-19 coverage, especially after India became one of the world’s hotspots.

    “This Sinophobia hasn’t much impacted on the government policy; rather it has tightened its nationalist sentiments promoting Indian vaccines over the Chinese.” They say the Indian media’s Sinophobia has abated after the delta variant hit India.

    “The narrative concerning covid-19 has taken a sharp turn bringing out the loopholes of the government’s inability to sustain its vigilance against the virus,” he notes, adding, ‘considering the global phobia concerning the delta variant put India in a tight spot and India has to defend itself from its newfound identity of being the primary source of this seemingly untameable variant.”

    Zhang Xiaoying from the Beijing Foreign Studies University and Martin Albrow from the University of Wales explain what they call the “Moral Foundation of the Cooperative Spirit” in chapter 4.

    Drawing on Chinese philosophical traditions—Confucianism, Daoism and Mohism—they argue that the “cooperative spirit” enshrined in these philosophies is reflected in the Chinese media’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in its early stages. Taking examples from the Chinese media—Xinhua, China Daily, Global Times and CGTN—they emphasise that the Chinese media has promoted international cooperation rather than indulge in blame games or politicising the issue.

    This chapter provides a good insight into Chinese thinking when it comes to journalism.

    Chapters on Sri Lanka and New Zealand examine how positive coverage in the local media of the governments’ initially successful handling of the covid-19 pandemic has contributed to emphatic election victories for the ruling parties.

    Hit on NZ media industry
    David Robie, founding director of Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre, explains in his chapter how New Zealand’s magazine sector was devastated by the pandemic lockdowns and economic downturn, although enterprising buy-outs and start-ups contributed to a recovery.

    He points out that a year later, in April 2021, Media Minister Kris Faafoi, himself a former journalist, announced a NZ$50 million plan to help the media industry deal with its huge drop in income, because, as he says, Facebook and Google were instrumental in drawing advertising revenue away from local media players.

    The chapter from Bangladesh offers a depressing picture of the social issues that came up as the virus spread, such as the stigmatisation and rejection of returning migrant worker who have for years provided for families back home, and how old people were abandoned by their families when they were suspected of having contacted the virus.

    The chapter gives a clear illustration of how the adversarial reporting culture of the media impacts negatively on the community and its social fabrics.

    But, the chapter’s author, Shameem Reza, communications lecturer at Dhaka University, says that when the second outbreak started in March 2021, he observed a shift in the media coverage of covid-19 pandemic.

    Now, the stories are more about harassment and discrimination, such as migrant workers facing hurdles to access vaccine; uncertainty over confirming air tickets and flights for their return; and facing risk of losing jobs and becoming unemployed. Thus, now the media coverage particularly includes ordinary peoples’ suffering.

    Reza believes that the initial stigmatisation of victims, had influenced social media coverage of harassment, and “changed agendas in the public sphere”.

    Lack of skills, knowledge
    The authors argue in the chapter on the Philippines that the covid-19 coverage exposed the “lack of skills and knowledge in reporting on health issues”. Said a senior newspaper editor, “in the past, whenever there were training opportunities on science or health reporting, we’d send the young reporters to give them the chance to go out of the newsroom. Now we know we should have sent editors and senior reporters.”

    In the concluding chapter, Seneviratne and Muppidi discuss various social and economic issues that should be the focus of the coverage as the world recovers from the covid-19 pandemic that reflects the inequalities around the world. These include not only vaccine rollouts, but also the vulnerability of migrant labour and their rights, the plight of casual labour in the so-called “gig economy”, priority for investments on health services, the power of Big Tech and many others.

    This book is an attempt to raise the voices of the “Global South” in discussing the media’s role in the coverage of the covid-19 crisis, explain Seneviratne and Muppidi, pointing out that there cannot be a return to the “normal” when that is full of inequalities that have been exposed by the pandemic.

    “There are many issues that the media should be mindful of in reporting the inevitable recovery from the covid-19 pandemic in 2021 and beyond.”

    Krishan Dutta is a freelance journalist writing for IDN – News (In-Depth News). An earlier version of this review was first published by IDN-News under the title “New book explores how adversarial reporting culture drives politicised covid-19 coverage and this version is republished from Pacific Journalism Review.

     

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Fight them on the beaches

    Dominic Raab, the British foreign secretary, gives new and shameful meaning to Winston Churchill’s rousing speech about fighting an enemy on the beaches.

    While the Taliban were sweeping to victory in Afghanistan at the weekend, Raab was reportedly lounging on a sun-splashed beach on the Greek island of Crete.

    The arrogant Raab – who is prone to lecture Russia and China over alleged misconduct – tried to make out he was being fully briefed by intelligence agencies on the unfolding chaos in Afghanistan, no doubt while he was topping up his piña coladas and sunscreen.

    His boss, prime minister Boris Johnson, has also come under fire for being on holiday at a time when the British-backed regime in Afghanistan imploded.

    Raab claims he, like many other world leaders, was caught by surprise with the rapid takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban insurgents. Since the United States, Britain and other NATO members announced their military withdrawal from the Central Asian country several months ago, the Taliban have made dramatic gains culminating in the collapse of the Western-backed regime in Kabul on Sunday.

    After 20 years of waging war in Afghanistan and hundreds of thousands of lives lost, the Americans and British are fleeing the country like rats of a sinking ship – and with the Taliban back in power.

    This is an ignominious debacle of epic proportions. The virtuous and nauseating pretensions of the United States and Britain are laid bare for the criminal lies that they are. President Joe Biden and his British lackeys are trying to spin the fiasco as a failure by the Afghan security forces.

    But even the dutiful US and British news media cannot conceal the hideous reality. After trillions of dollars of taxpayers’ money and public services slashed to pay for that, the reality is the Western military-industrial complexes made a rip-off fortune from weapons that are now in the hands of the supposed sworn enemy of the Taliban.

    As CNN candidly editorialised: “The imagery from Afghanistan is deeply damaging to Biden politically and paints a disastrous picture of a nation that has long seen itself as a global leader and guardian of democracy, human rights and humanitarianism”.

    Indeed the imagery is devastating for the hypocritical posturing by the US and Britain. Henceforth, those two culprit nations should never be able to lecture other nations about “rules-based order”, international law and human rights.

    Desperate scenes of Afghans clinging on to US military cargo planes as they take off from Kabul airport – and subsequently falling to their deaths – speaks of the horrific, callous debacle for American imperialism. After two decades of destroying a country along with Britain and other NATO powers, in the end, it’s a heartless, cowardly, hurried retreat in which Afghans are abandoned to a miserable fate.

    Comparisons are being made with the Fall of Saigon when the United States fled in a hurry from South Vietnam in 1975 at the end of a war in which millions of Vietnamese were killed by American carpet bombing and scorched-earth raids. Incredibly, Biden and his aides are in abject denial, saying there is no such comparison with Afghanistan.

    Not only Vietnam but comparisons can also be made with many other nations that the US and its allies have destroyed over the decades with their military machinations only to be finally forced to quit in defeat. Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and others.

    Afghanistan is perhaps the clearest, most damning demonstration of the criminal conduct of US imperialism along with its lapdogs in NATO. The United States is a warmongering tyranny and scourge on the planet.

    And complicit in the war crimes is the corporate news media. For 20 years, the Western mainstream media have whitewashed and laundered the ludicrous, cynical lies of the US government and accomplices about what they were doing in Afghanistan. Fighting terrorism? Nation-building? Supporting democracy? Sickening sycophancy is the only fit description for such media.

    How absurd and grotesque that Western media spun such narratives in the face of all the evidence of criminal military occupation. The proof of that is the fiasco of American, British and NATO now scurrying away from their 20-year disaster.

    And nothing is more fitting than Biden trying to blame Afghans for the mess and British politicians lounging on Greek island beaches.

    The post Fight them on the beaches first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Children’s Teeth, Collected Decades Ago, Can Show the Damage of Nuclear Testing

    Nuclear Weapon Test, Bikini Atoll, 1954

    In 2020, Harvard University’s T. C. Chan School of Public Health began a five-year study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, that will examine the connection between early life exposure to toxic metals and later-life risk of neurological disease. A collaborator with Harvard, the Radiation and Public Health Project, will analyze the relationship of strontium-90 (a radioactive element in nuclear weapons explosions) and disease risk in later life.

    The centerpiece of the study is a collection of nearly 100,000 baby teeth, gathered in the late 1950s and early 1960s by the St. Louis Committee for Nuclear Information.

    The collection of these teeth occurred during a time of intense public agitation over the escalating nuclear arms race between the U.S. and Soviet governments that featured the new hydrogen bomb (H-bomb), a weapon more than a thousand times as powerful as the bomb that had annihilated Hiroshima.  To prepare themselves for nuclear war, the two Cold War rivals conducted well-publicized, sometimes televised nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere—434 of them between 1945 and 1963.  These tests sent vast clouds of radioactive debris aloft where, carried along by the winds, it often traveled substantial distances before it fell to earth and was absorbed by the soil, plants, animals, and human beings.

    The hazards of nuclear testing were underscored by the U.S. government’s March 1, 1954 explosion of an H-bomb on Bikini Atoll, located in the Marshall Islands.  Although an area the size of New England had been staked out as a danger zone around the test site, a heavy dose of nuclear fallout descended on four inhabited islands of the Marshall grouping and on a Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon—all substantially outside the danger zone—with disastrous results.

    Criticism of the nuclear arms race, and especially nuclear testing, quickly escalated.  Prominent individuals, including Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, and Benjamin Spock, issued spirited warnings.  New mass membership organizations arose, among them the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) in the United States, the National Council for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Tests (which morphed into the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) in Britain, and the Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs.

    The public grew alarmed, particularly by the fact that strontium-90 from nuclear tests was transmitted from the grass, to cattle, to milk, and finally to human bodies—with special concern as it built up in children’s bones and teeth.  By the late 1950s, polls found that most Americans considered fallout a “real danger.”

    Linus Pauling, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist, emerged as one of the most trenchant and effective American critics, circulating anti-testing petitions signed by thousands of U.S. scientists and even larger numbers of scientists abroad.  Pauling charged that the nuclear bomb tests through 1958 would ultimately produce about 1 million seriously defective children and some 2 million embryonic and neonatal deaths.

    Determined to maintain its nuclear weapons program, the U.S. government was horrified by the popular uproar and anxious to suppress it.  U.S. intelligence agencies and congressional investigations were unleashed against groups like SANE and antinuclear leaders like Pauling, while U.S. information agencies and government officials publicly minimized the dangers of nuclear testing.  In a Life magazine article, Edward Teller, often called “the father of the H-bomb,” insisted that nuclear test radiation “need not necessarily be harmful,” but “may conceivably be helpful.”

    Even so, public concern grew.  In August 1958, Herman Kalckar, a biologist at the National Institutes of Health, published an article in the journal Nature, calling on public health agencies in multiple nations to engage in large-scale collection of baby teeth. Kalckar proposed testing teeth for strontium-90 from bomb fallout, as children are most vulnerable to the toxic effects of radioactivity.

    Washington University scientists recognized that a tooth study could change public policy. In December 1958, they joined with leaders of the Committee for Nuclear Information, a citizen group opposed to nuclear war and above-ground bomb tests, and adopted a proposal to collect and test teeth for strontium-90 concentrations.

    For the next 12 years, the Committee worked furiously, soliciting tooth donations through community-based institutions like schools, churches, scout groups, libraries, and dental offices. A total of 320,000 teeth were collected, and a Washington University lab measured strontium-90.

    Results clearly showed a massive increase in strontium-90 as testing continued. Children born in 1963 (the height of bomb tests) had an average of 50 times more than those born in 1951 (when large-scale tests began). Medical journal articles detailed results.  Information on the tooth study was sent to Jerome Wiesner, science advisor to President John F. Kennedy.

    Kennedy, already seeking a test ban treaty, was clearly influenced by the uproar over the fate of children.  In his July 1963 speech announcing the successful conclusion of test ban negotiations by the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom, he argued that governments could not be indifferent to the catastrophe of nuclear war or to “children and grandchildren with cancer in their bones, with leukemia in their blood, or with poison in their lungs.”  The outcome was the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which banned nuclear testing in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water.

    According to the ongoing tooth study, the average strontium-90 in baby teeth dropped by half in just four years after the test ban. With their goal apparently accomplished, the Committee on Nuclear Information and the University halted tooth collection and testing.  Soon thereafter, the Committee dissolved.

    Three decades later, Washington University staff discovered thousands of abandoned baby teeth that had gone untested. The school donated the teeth to the Radiation and Public Health Project, which was conducting a study of strontium-90 in teeth of U.S. children near nuclear reactors.

    Now, using strontium-90 still present in teeth, the Radiation and Public Health Project will conduct an analysis of health risk, which was not addressed in the original tooth study, and minimally addressed by government agencies.  Based on actual radiation exposure in bodies, the issue of how many Americans suffered from cancer and other diseases from nuclear testing fallout will be clarified.

    The post Children’s Teeth, Collected Decades Ago, Can Show the Damage of Nuclear Testing first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Lawrence Wittner and Joseph Mangano.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Quiet Rebellion: Why US Jews Turning against Israel is Good for Palestinians    

    A unique but critical conversation on Israel and Palestine is taking place outside the traditional discourse of Israeli colonialism and the Palestinian quest for liberation. It is an awkward and difficult – but overdue – discussion concerning American Jews’ relation to Israel and their commitment to its Zionist ideology.

    For many years, Israel has conveniently dubbed Jews who do not support Israel, or worse, advocate Palestinian freedom, as ‘self-hating Jews’. This term, designated to describe dissident anti-Zionist Jews, is similar to the accusation of ‘antisemitism’ made against non-Jews, which includes Semitic Arabs, for daring to criticize Israel. This approach, however, is no longer as effective as it once was.

    Recent years have unequivocally demonstrated that there is a quiet anti-Israel rebellion within the American Jewish community. This rebellion has been brewing for long, but only fairly recently did numbers begin reflecting the rise of a new phenomenon where US Jews, especially younger generations, are openly dissenting from the typical Jewish conformity on Israel and supposedly undying love for Zionism.

    In the last decade or so, this new reality has sounded the alarm within various Zionist institutions, whether in the US or in Israel itself.

    Several opinion polls and surveys are all pointing to an inescapable conclusion that the emotional and political rapport between Israel and US Jews is rapidly weakening. A poll published by the Laszlo Strategies for Jerusalem U in August 2013, for example, concluded that 87 percent of American Jews over the age of 50 strongly agreed that “caring about Israel is a very important part of my being Jewish,” while only 66 percent of young Jews between the ages of 18 to 29 felt the same.

    Other polls reached similar conclusions, where the number of young Jews strongly supportive of Israel continues to decline. A particularly telling and important survey was that of the American Jewish Committee in June 2018. That was the time when the US-Israeli alliance reached its zenith under the administrations of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Though 77 percent of all Israelis approved of the US government’s handling of US-Israeli relations, only 34 percent of American Jews did. In fact, 57 percent of US Jews outright disapproved of Trump’s policies, which practically granted Israel all of its demands and wishes.

    The downward trajectory continued unabated. A May 2021 Pew research indicated that one in five US Jews believes that the US is “too supportive of Israel”. Those who hold such a belief, 22 percent of the US Jewish population, have doubled in number since an earlier poll released in 2013.

    Data gathering for the above poll, though released during the deadly Israeli onslaught on Gaza (May 10-21), was, in fact, conducted in 2019 and 2020. The numbers of unsupportive US Jews must have risen since then, as if there is a clear correlation between Israeli wars resulting in massive civilian casualties, and the ongoing split between US Jews and Israel.

    Libby Lenkinski, Vice President for public engagement at the New Israel Fund, told Rolling Stone magazine that she sees a “noticeable shift in American perception” on Palestine and Israel since the deadly Israeli war on Gaza in 2014, a war that killed over 2,200 Palestinians. For Lenkinski, US Jewish perception should follow an ethical paradigm. “It’s a moral issue. It’s right or wrong,” she said.

    Similar sentiments emerged after the May 2021 war, where over 260 Palestinians were killed. In a recent article, American Jewish writer, Marisa Kabas, explains the dilemma felt by many in the US Jewish community regarding Israel. “Because the conflict has so often been boiled down to a binary – you either support Israel or you support its destruction – for many of us it felt like a betrayal to even consider the other side.”  Because of the likes of Kabas and Lenkinski and numerous others, the ‘other side’ is finally visible, resulting in the obvious shift in American Jewish perception of and relations to Israel.

    While more space for dissenting US Jews is opening up, the discussion in Israel remains confined and is hardly concerned with ethics and morality.

    Recently, the understanding that Israel is losing the support of US Jews has been accepted by the country’s main political parties, with disagreement largely focused on who is to blame for this seismic shift. Netanyahu was often held responsible for making Israel a partisan American political issue through his alliance with Trump and the Republican Party, at the expense of Israel’s relation with the Democrats.

    However, the Netanyahu-Trump love affair was not as uncomplicated as Netanyahu’s critics would like to believe. Indeed, the idea of Israel has changed in American society. The notion that Israel is a supposedly vulnerable little state, facing existential threats by Arab enemies, which flourished in the past, has become almost entirely irrelevant. The new concept of Israel, which is Tel Aviv’s main selling point in America, is that of a biblical Israel, a place of prophecies and spiritual salvation, which appeals mostly to right-wing Evangelical Christian groups. Young US Jews, many of whom support the Black Lives Matter and even the Palestinian boycott movements, have little in common with Israel’s zealot American backers.

    Israel is now at a crossroads. It can only win back the support of US Jews if it behaves in such a way that is consistent with their moral frame of reference. Hence, it would have to end its military occupation, dismantle its apartheid regime and reverse its racist laws. Specifically, abandon Zionism altogether, or abandon US Jews in favor of complete reliance on the Evangelicals. In fact, some top Israeli officials are already advocating the latter.

    On May 9, former Israeli ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, argued that, since Evangelical Christians are the “backbone of Israel’s support in the United States”, Israel should prioritize their “passionate and unequivocal” backing of Israel over American Jews who are “disproportionately among our critics.”

    If Israel officially opts for this choice, perhaps with no other viable option, then a breakdown between Israel and US Jews becomes inevitable. As far as justice and freedom for the Palestinian people are concerned, that would be a good thing.

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  • ​Afghanistan: So What Do the Filthy Commie Peaceniks Say Now?

    Afghan villagers stand over bodies of civilians during a protest in the city of Ghazni, west of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 29, 2019. An airstrike by U.S.-led forces in eastern Afghanistan killed at least five civilians. (AP Photo/Rahmatullah Nikzad)

    So, people get hurt when you stop waging wars, and peace is dangerous, and . . . and . . . well, women’s rights!

    What do the stupid peace lovers say now?

    Well, here’s what this one says:

    On September 11, 2001, I said, “Well, that proves all the weapons and wars are useless or counterproductive. Prosecute crimes as crimes, and start disarming.”

    When the U.S. government launched an illegal, immoral, sure to be catastrophic war on Afghanistan, I said, “That’s illegal and immoral and sure to be catastrophic! End it now!”

    When they didn’t end it, I said, “According to the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, there’s going to be hell when they end this, and it’s going to be a worse hell the longer it takes them to end it. So, end it now!”

    When they didn’t end it, I went to Kabul and met with all kinds of people and saw that they clearly had a lousy, corrupt, foreign-backed puppet government, with the looming threat of the Taliban, and neither choice was any good. “Support nonviolent civil-society,” I said. “Provide actual aid. Try democracy at home to lead by example. And (redundantly, since democracy at home would have done this) get the U.S. military the @%!%# out!”

    When they still didn’t end it, and when a Congressional investigation found the top two sources of income for the Taliban to be the revived drug trade and the U.S. military, I said “If you wait additional years or decades to get the !^%& out, there’s going to be no hope left. Get the hell out now!”

    When Amnesty International put ads up on bus stops in Chicago thanking NATO for the lovely war for women’s rights, I pointed out that bombs blow up women the same as men, and marched to protest NATO.

    I asked people in Afghanistan, and they said the same thing.

    When Obama pretended to get out, I said, “Really get out, you lying scheming fraud!”

    When Trump got elected promising to get out and then didn’t, I said, “Really get out, you lying scheming fraud!”

    (When Hillary Clinton failed to get elected, and evidence suggested that she’d have won had she credibly promised to end the wars, I said, “Do us all a favor and retire for godsake!”)

    When they STILL didn’t end it, I said, again, “According to the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, there’s going to be hell when they end this, and it’s going to be a worse hell the longer it takes them to end it. So, end it now!”

    When Biden pretended to get out while promising to keep troops there and to increase the bombings, I said, “Really get out, you lying scheming fraud!”

    I encouraged all the insiderish groups that said the same thing super gently and politely. I encouraged all the fed-up groups blocking doors and streets and weapons trains. I supported efforts in every country involved to get their token troops out and stop legitimizing a U.S. crime. Year after year after year.

    When Biden claimed the war was some sort of success, I pointed out how it had spread anti-U.S. terrorism across half the globe, spawned more wars, murdered countless people, devastated the natural environment, eroded the rule of law and civil liberties and self-governance, and cost trillions of dollars.

    When the U.S. government refused to abide by agreements, refused to stop bombing, refused to give credible negotiation or compromise a chance, refused to support the rule of law around the world or lead by example, refused to stop shipping weapons into the region, refused to even acknowledge that the Taliban is using U.S.-made weapons, but finally claimed it would get its troops out, I expected that U.S. media outlets would develop anew a strong interest in the rights of Afghan women. I was right.

    But the U.S. government, according to its own reporting, accounts for 66% of all the weapons exported to the least democratic quintile of nations on earth. Of the 50 most oppressive governments identified by a U.S.-government-funded study, the U.S. arms 82% of them. Here they are: Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa), Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Ethiopia, Gabon, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Mauritania, Nicaragua, Oman, Qatar, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen. Israel’s government, notorious for its violent oppression of Palestinian people, is not on that list (it’s a U.S.-funded list) but is the top recipient of “aid” funding for U.S. weapons from the U.S. government. Some women live in Palestine.

    The Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act (H.R.4718) would prevent U.S. weapons sales to other nations that are in violation of international human rights law or international humanitarian law. During the last Congress, the same bill, introduced by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, gathered a grand total of zero cosponsors.

    What do you notice about that list of nations? One of them, Afghanistan, was on the list of oppressive governments before the Taliban threatened to take it over. And the other 40 are of truly minimal interest to the U.S. corporate media, much less to any of the “BUT THE WOMEN!” crowd out there moaning in agony that a war might end.

    The same crowd seems to have no objection to the proposal moving through the U.S. Congress to force U.S. women at age 18 to register for a military draft that would force them against their will to kill and die in more of these wars.

    So, what would I propose that the U.S. government do for the women and men and children of Afghanistan now, regardless of horrible decisions in the past that it’s obviously too late to undo and just silly and offensive to rehash like this?

    1. Until it can reform itself into an entity capable of benevolent action, not a goddamned thing.

    2. Stop encouraging the Taliban to think that it can become a model U.S. client state in a few years if it’s mean and nasty enough, by ceasing to arm and train and fund brutal dictatorships all over the globe.

    3. Cease eroding the idea of the rule of law around the world by dropping opposition to the International Criminal Court and the World Court, by joining the International Criminal Court, and by eliminating the veto and democratizing the United Nations Security Council.

    4. Catch up with the world and cease being the leading holdout globally on the most major human rights treaties including the Convention on the Rights of the Child (every nation on Earth has ratified except the United States) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (every nation on Earth has ratified except the United States, Iran, Sudan, and Somalia).

    5. Move 20% of the U.S. military budget into useful things each year for five years.

    6. Move 10% of that rededicated funding into providing no-strings-attached aid and encouragement to the most law-abiding and honest-to-god small-d democratic poor nations on the planet.

    7. Take a hard look at the U.S. government itself, understand the powerful case that the U.S. government could make for bombing itself were it not itself, and take serious steps to remove the bribery from the election system, establish fair public funding and media coverage for elections, and remove gerrymandering, the filibuster, and as soon as possible the United States Senate.

    8. Free, apologize to, and thank every whistleblower who’s told us what the U.S. government was doing in Afghanistan for the past 20 years. Consider why we needed whistleblowers to tell us.

    9. Prosecute or free and apologize to every prisoner at Guantanamo, close the base, and get out of Cuba.

    10. Get out of the way of the International Criminal Court’s prosecution of Taliban crimes in Afghanistan, as well as its prosecution of crimes committed there by the Afghan government, and by the militaries of the United States and its junior partners.

    11. Swiftly become an entity that can credibly comment on horrors being committed by the Taliban, by — among other things — caring enough about the horrors coming to all of humanity to invest heavily in ending the destruction of the Earth’s climate and ending the existence of nuclear weapons.

    • First published at World Beyond War.org

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  • Covid End of US Empire?

    The United States is facing perfect storm conditions for the grueling continuation of the Covid-19 pandemic. The long-term economic impact could hasten the end of its global power as we know it.

    Infections, hospitalizations and deaths are on the rise again – as they are in other capitalist states. But the outlook for the U.S. is uniquely bleak.

    Already, the US has the shameful title of having the world’s biggest death toll from the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and its disease Covid-19. At over 630,000 deaths, that represents nearly 15 percent of the world’s total. Despite a relatively high level of vaccination (50 percent of the population), the disease appears to be resurgent.

    The problem for the United States is the dominance of capitalist imperatives over social policy which prevents a coherent, effective public health strategy. The imperative of private profit is also present in European nations, but to a lesser extent compared with the US. Britain is probably closer to the US than any other European country in its compliance with capitalist interests, and it is no coincidence that Britain has the worst Covid-19 mortality in Europe, despite having a high rate of vaccination.

    Compliance with capitalist interests prevents a proven policy of containing and eradicating the Covid-19 virus. That policy is best seen in practice in China where the government implements strict lockdowns, travel restrictions, widespread testing, rapid tracing of infections, masking-wearing in public, and mass vaccination. However, that policy is made feasible because China’s socialist system provides the public resources to enable compliance. Public health is the priority, not commercial interests.

    By contrast, in the United States, the public is largely expected to bear the costs of lockdowns, long-term unemployment and general living costs. With an over-reliance on vaccination alone, the Biden administration is declaring the end of lockdowns, social distancing and wearing of masks. Government aid for the unemployed and rental assistance for families is being terminated.

    Workers are being forced back to workplaces and schools are being reopened in total denial of the epidemiological scientific advice to maintain isolation. Why? Because of the imperative for capitalist businesses to resume profit-making. And, of course, without adequate government support to laid-off workers, many millions of citizens are frustrated by the need to get back to work.

    One can easily understand anti-lockdown protests when people are not given financial support to cope with lockdown. The problem is not the practice of public health policy, per se, it is the practice of public health policy in a capitalist society where there is little support for furloughed workers.

    Another distinctive problem for the United States – and to lesser extent European states – is the inordinate level of misinformation. Millions of Americans believe that there is no pandemic. Despite the death toll and prevalent sickness, it is incredible that so many people are convinced that the pandemic phenomenon is all a hoax. Such a view is particularly popular among Trump supporters and US Republicans who hold the outlandish conspiratorial belief that it’s all a giant ruse to take away individual liberty, impose a “Grand Reset” and a “fascist liberal tyranny” (what a discombobulation!).

    This kind of unscientific conspiracy delusion feeds into other irrational convictions that are opposed to wearing face masks in public or against the administering of vaccines. Irresponsible pundits and media commentators especially on the right-wing Murdoch outlets Fox and Sky promulgate anti-vaccination theories that are deterring large sections of the population from taking up inoculation. Some of the wilder fringes actually believe that vaccines will turn us into zombies as in the horror film, I Am Legend. Then these same pundits talk about the danger of “Covid civil war” breaking out. Well, they have helped create an atmosphere of confusion, fear, ignorance and distrust.

    The United States is doomed. In its private-profit-driving society, all basic measures of public health management are confounded. On top of this, the level of misinformation and misdirection also further thwarts a rational plan to contain the pandemic. That is why we are seeing a grave resurgence in the pandemic across the United States. By failing to contain the disease, the perfect storm conditions in the US make for the emergence of new deadlier variants of Covid-19. The biggest worry is that the existing vaccines will no longer be effective against a newer virulent strain of the virus.

    Millennia of history attest that deadly plagues have altered the course of history and have even wiped out civilizations.

    For most of the past century, many observers have pondered on whether the United States and its global imperial power would be taken down through war with a geopolitical rival such as the Soviet Union or more recently Russia and China.

    Then along comes an invisible danger, a virus, that is ripping through the United States in a way not foreseen. And the vulnerability of the US is all down to its own internal failings as a capitalist society saturated with misinformation.

    • First published in Sputnik

    The post Covid End of US Empire? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Red alert on global warming

    The IPCC’s latest report should be a wake-up call to governments everywhere, but it’s going to take more than science to force action by the biggest global emitters, writes Barry Sheppard.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Greed and Consumption: Why the World is Burning

    Rome is scorching hot. This beautiful city is becoming unbearable for other reasons, too. Though every corner of the beaming metropolis is a monument to historical grandeur, from the Colosseum in Rione Monti to the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in San Giovanni, it is now struggling under the weight of its own contradictions.

    In Via Appia, bins are overflowing with garbage, often spilling over into the streets. The smell, especially during Italy’s increasingly sweltering summers, is suffocating.

    Meanwhile, many parts of the country are literally on fire. Since June 15, firefighters have reportedly responded to 37,000 fire-related emergencies, 1,500 of them on July 18 alone. A week later, I drove between Campania, in southern Italy, and Abruzzo, in the center. Throughout the journey, I was accompanied by fire and smoke. On that day, many towns were evacuated, and thousands of acres of forests were destroyed. It will take months to assess the cost of the ongoing destruction, but it will certainly be measured in hundreds of millions of euros.

    Additionally, the entire southern Europe is ablaze, as the region is experiencing its worst heat waves in many years. Greece, Spain, Turkey, and the Balkans are fighting fires that continue to rage on.

    Across the Atlantic, the US and Canada, too, are desperately trying to battle their own wildfires, mostly direct outcomes of unprecedented heat waves that struck North America from Vancouver to California, along with the whole of the American northwest region. In June, Vancouver, Portland and Seattle all set new heat records, 118, 116 and 108 Fahrenheit, respectively.

    While it is true that not all fires are a direct result of global warming — many in Italy, for example, are man-made — unprecedented increases in temperature, coupled with changes in weather patterns, are the main culprits of these unmitigated disasters.

    The solution is more complex than simply having the resources and proper equipment to contain these fires. The impact of the crises continues to be felt for years, even if temperatures somehow stabilize. In California, for example, which is bracing for another horrific season, the devastation of the previous years can still be felt.

    “After two years of drought, the soil moisture is depleted, drying out vegetation and making it more prone to combustion,” The New York Times reported on July 16. The problem, then, is neither temporary nor can be dealt with through easy fixes.

    As I sat with my large bottle of water outside Caffettiamo Cafe, struggling with heat, humidity and the pungent smell of garbage, I thought about who is truly responsible for what seems to be our new, irreversible reality. Here in Italy, the conversation is often streamlined through the same, predictable and polarized political discourse. Each party points finger at the others, in the hope of gaining some capital prior to the upcoming October municipal elections.

    Again, Italy is not the exception. Political polarization in Europe and the US constantly steers the conversation somewhere else entirely. Rarely is the problem addressed at a macro-level, independent from political calculations. The impact of global warming cannot and must not be held hostage to the ambitions of politicians. Millions of people are suffering, livelihoods are destroyed, the fate of future generations is at risk. In the grand scheme of things, whether the current mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, is elected for another term or not, is insignificant.

    Writing in the Columbia Climate School website, Renee Cho highlights the obvious, the relationship between our insatiable appetite for consumption and climate change. “Did you know that Americans produce 25 percent more waste than usual between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, sending an additional one million tons a week to landfills?” Cho asks.

    This leads us to think about the existential relationship between our insatiable consumption habits and the irreparable damage we have inflicted upon mother earth.

    Here in Via Appia, the contradictions are unmistakable. This is the summer sales season in Italy. Signs reading “Saldi” – or “Sale” – are everywhere. For many shoppers, it is impossible to fight the temptation. This unhinged consumerism – the backbone and the fault line of capitalism – comes at a high price. People are encouraged to consume more, as if such consumption has no repercussions for the environment whatsoever. Indeed, Via Appia is the perfect microcosm of this global schizophrenia: people complaining about the heat and the garbage, while simultaneously consuming beyond their need, thus creating yet more garbage and, eventually, worsening the plight of the environment.

    Collective problems require collective solutions. Italy’s heat cannot be pinned down on a few arsonists and California’s wildfires are not simply the fault of an ineffectual mayor. Global warming is, in large part, the outcome of a destructive pattern instigated and sustained by capitalism. The latter can only survive through unhindered consumption, inequality, greed and, when necessary, war. If we continue to talk about global warming without confronting the capitalist menace that generated much of the crisis in the first place, the conversation will continue to amount to nil.

    In the final analysis, all the conferences, pledges and politicking will not put out a single fire, neither in Italy nor anywhere else in the world.

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    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Bible vs the Eagle: Why Christian Nationalism is un-American

    The bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed.

    — Thomas Paine, Letter to Mr. Erskine, Paine’s Complete Works, Vol. 3, p. 179.

    Those men, whom Jewish and Christian idolaters have abusively called heathens, had much better and clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be found in the Old Testament, so far as it is Jewish; or in the New.

    — Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Footnote 28

    All that man has accomplished for the benefit of man since the close of the dark ages – has been done in spite of the Old Testament

    — Robert Green Ingersoll, About the Holy Bible, (May 19, 2017)  Part III. The Ten Commandments

    Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it for religious conviction.

    — Blaise Pascal

    Orientation

    According to Andrew Seidel, 32% of Americans think it is very important to be Christian to be truly American. But what does it mean to be an “American”? Well, if being an American has anything to do with the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, many Americans are in serious trouble. For example, Seidel writes:

    On the first 4th of July of Trump’s presidency, National Public Radio tweeted the Declaration and Trump supporters lost their minds. They were sure NPR was calling for a rebellion against Trump. (80)

    But the problem is even deeper because Americans really don’t know the bible very well either:

    The bible has been edited rewritten, supplemented, translated, retranslated and mistranslated so many times that claims of immutability are laughable. Yet about 30 percent of Americans, many of them Christian nationalists, believe in the bible literally …word of their god. (115)

    In fact, according to Seidel:

    research shows that atheists know the Bible better than Christians. (115)

    In 1951, 53% of Americans could not name even one of the gospel. In 2010, 49% couldn’t.

    Claim

    My article is a review of a very powerful book written by Andrew Seidel called The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American. As Seidel says, the purpose of the book is to utterly destroy the myth that the founders of the Constitution were committed to founding a Judeo-Christian nation. The contrast between the Bible on the one hand and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on the other is so great that, as Seidel says, one is almost forced to choose: are you a Christian or an American?

    Part of the book is dedicated to exposing the notion that the founders themselves had any sympathy for Christianity. Secondly, it is to show how both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution directly contradict both the Old and the New Testaments. Thirdly, within the Bible the Ten Commandments are shown to be anti-Constitutional. Lastly, the book shows how it was only through a propaganda campaign during times of national fear such as The Civil War and the anti-communist scare that right-wing preachers smuggled in Christian propaganda onto coins and paper money (In God We trust); and into the Pledge of Allegiance (One nation Under God).

    Qualifications

    This book does not argue that religion should be absent from our culture. It only says that religion should be absent from  our constitutional identity. In fact, research shows that in societies that have a separation of church and state, people are more religious than when there is no separation. Seidel argues that when there is no separation, people take religion for granted.

    Secondly, there is no simple relationship between separation of church and state and whether someone is religious or not. Someone can be religious and endorse the separation of church and state. Thirdly, while some founders were deists and others were theists, even though some were theists does not prove they used their religion to found the nation. People can make a distinction between their private and public political commitments. Fourthly, founders who were Christian were only supportive of the teachings of Jesus. There was no implication of support for any Catholic or Protestant institutions or teaching.

    Qualifications about my being an American and supporting the Constitution.

    It would be natural to think that in attacking Christian nationalism as being un-American, I identify with being an American. I don’t. My purpose in using the term “un-American” is to offer an immanent criticism of Christian nationalism. Immanent criticism means criticism from within the principles of my adversary. What I am saying is you don’t even live up to your own principles of being an American by failing to abide by the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. An externalist criticism would be to criticize Christian nationalism from a Buddhist, Muslim or socialist perspective.

    Also, in defending the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence against the Bible, it doesn’t mean I am uncritical of the of either of these American documents. As a result of reading Seidel’s book, I do have a newfound respect for the importance of separating Church from the State. There are clear limits set on religion’s invasion of science or politics. While secular laws could be much tighter, the justification for insisting on the separation is very well thought-out and it is still very important over 200 years later. 

    Were the Founders Christian?

    Seidel uses many sources to show that the painting of Washington praying in the snow was a piece of artistic Christian propaganda. Washington was not a good Christian. He attended religious services irregularly, he didn’t kneel during prayer and often skipped out of Church early. He refused to have a priest at his deathbed.  Jefferson took a more militant stand against Christianity. He attempted to rewrite the Bible cutting out the references to supernaturalism, miracles and slaughter in the hopes of salvaging something. Jefferson said later that his efforts were like “pick out diamonds from a dunghill.” Jefferson and Madison were very critical and suspicious of organized religion and the “priestcraft” that accompany them. Some founders treated the Trinity with contempt, calling it Abracadabra.

    When the founders mention “The Creator” the Christian nationalists break out in celebration, declaring victory. Hold your horses and bugles! Nowhere is Jesus or Yahweh specifically mentioned. Virtually all cultures have a creator god who are more or less involved in his creation. The same is true with the Golden Rule. Christian nationalists act is if this rule was unique to Christianity.  Most cultures in the world have their own version of the Golden Rule often dating to thousands of years before Christianity. Furthermore, when god was named it was “nature’s” god. Seidel rightly points this is more likely to resemble the god of the wind or the trees than the description of a biblical god. Nature’s god is a pagan god, not the Judeo-Christian monotheistic god.

    The founders engaged in what Seidel calls “strategic piety”:

    Writers were wise to choose language that would take advantage of the majority religiosity but still remain wholly nonsectarian. It was designed to be acceptable to deists and orthodox alike. (88)

    In psychological terms the founders were playing to people’s confirmation bias- our innate selection and interaction of evidence to support our existing beliefs. (90)

    Do You Need God to be Good?

    For themselves, the founders thought their morality was sufficient to guide them and religion was unnecessary. However, some of the founder thought religion was necessary to keep the masses moral. For many founders, religion was not the source of morality, but a substitute for it. Without religion, the masses could not be moral. But the founders were not fussy about which religion filled the bill. Washington and Adams suggested that any religion, not only Christianity, can replace morality.

    So the Founding Fathers were elitists. But were they were right about the capacity of large populations to prosper and live morally without religion?

    Do Secularists Produce Worse Societies than the Religious?

    The short answer is – no. Seidel points out:

    Social science now unequivocally shows that the less religious a society, is the better off it is. We now know that religion is not necessary for society to succeed. (49)

    Within America the states with the highest murder rates tend to be highly religious – Louisiana and Alabama. States with the lowest rates are the least religious the country, like Vermont and Oregon.

    Of the top 50 safest cities in the world, nearly all are in relatively non-religious countries. During the Holocaust, the more secular the people were, the more likely they were to rescue and help persecuted Jews.

    The least religious countries:

    Have lowest rates of violent crime and homicide

    Are the best places to raise children

    Have lowest levels of intolerance vs race

    Have the highest in women’s rights

    Are the most prosperous

    Within the US, those states that are the most religious have societal ills:

    Highest rates of poverty

    Highest rates of obesity

    Highest rates of infant mortality

    Highest rates of teen pregnancy

    Lowest level of educated adults

    Highest rates of murder and violent crime (49-50)

    There were Christian Colonies but no Christian Nation    

    Christian nationalists are right to point out that during the colonial period most of the colonies were religious, whether they were Puritans, Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, or Quakers. However, when the founders wrote the Constitution, they kept these religious beliefs outside the politics of founding a nation. The religions of the colonists did not help them to overthrow the British. Every colony was part of the British Empire, which was subjected to a Christian king. Colonial history also precedes the separation of Church and state which was part of the Constitution. The colonies were a British outpost, subject to a divine king. This is exactly the political theology the founders were fighting against. Table A is a contrast between the structure of life during colonial history vs after the declaration of independence. Please take a look at Table A.

    The Bible as a Piece of Literature

    The Bible is unlike other literature. Seidel points out that unlike like Shakespeare’s plays and poetry, Aesop’s fables and the legends of Greek and Roman mythology, which stood on their own merits, the Bible’s reputation was imposed and propagated over thousands of years with fire and brimstone. It was then reinforced regularly through weekly ceremonies. It is an authoritarian document which doesn’t have rhetorical appeal based on reason. Instead, the Bible is a document people must live by and bow down to, no matter what.

    The un-American, Authoritarian Nature of the bible

    Exclusivity and obedience

    Right out of the gate the bible is exclusionary, rather than inclusive. Yahweh picks the Jews as his “chosen” people, whereas in the Constitution, at least theoretically, all are welcome. Whereas in one of Paul’s letters Christians are told to obey the authorities, in fact, they are servants of God. For example, Abraham is commanded by God to murder his son Isaac as an offering. God turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt for looking back to see the destruction. God demands the killing of first-born children unless there is lamb’s blood on the family door frame. This contrasts with the Declaration’s note to rebel against the authorities when they are tyrannical. Why? Because “we the people” rule.

    Monarchies and divine dictatorships

    In the Bible God does not rule by consent of the governed. Neither is there a separation of powers for governing, God rules by decree. God loves monarchies. Seidel points out that the first two books of the bible are titled “Kings”. Many of the heroes in the bible are kings, specifically, Saul, David and Solomon. Whatever rights people have been given by God. Likewise, God can take away those rights. Following the Enlightenment people have human rights which no political or religious authority can take away. In terms of following rules, the Judeo-Christian God of Christian propaganda says that God lays down the laws once and for all. In fact, with different versions of the Bible the laws change.  Under the American Constitution laws can be changed by amendments. Objectively, the origin of the laws was from an Early Iron Ages society 1200 BCE years ago. The Constitution is close to 250 years old, while drawing from Greek and pre-Christian Roman law.

    Faith and reason: how do we know?

    If faith is defined as believing in something in spite of evidence, the Founding Fathers had no room for faith and that is how they came to understand the Constitution. They went through an evolving process of dialectical reasoning internally and debating, compromising and tinkering over months. Most of the founders tinkered with inventions, kept up with the sciences and saw politics, itself, as a science.

    For those who followed the Bible, the Bible was given to them completed. God did not encourage any input from humanity. You simply had faith. You believed in the Bible in spite of evidence. Belief in miracles is just one instance. So too, when it comes to Christian nationalists in politics, there is no room for compromise or tinkering. Since they believe they are acting in the name of God, compromising with non-believers is not being true to God. On the whole, Seidel says:

    what a Christian government looks like: exclusive, exclusionary, divisive, hateful, severe and lethal. (106)

    Crime and punishment

    When it comes to punishment the Bible paints with broad brush strokes. The punishments are inflexible and extremely violent. God destroys Canaan as well destroying all those believing in other gods. Disobedient children are stoned; so are wizards and women having premarital sex. Heretics and witches are tortured and followers are told that disobedience will be dealt with fire for eternity. The Constitution, on the other hand, simply strives to make punishment be proportionate to the crime, and punishments are limited to this lifetime.

    Guilt and innocence are handled in opposite ways. In the Bible, whole groups are condemned as guilty and the guilt is inherited across generations. In the Constitution, there is no collective guilt. Individuals are found guilty and that guilt is not inherited by their sons and daughters. Finally, in the Bible it is not very important that innocents suffer and are killed, provided the guilty party does not get away with anything. In the Constitution the situation is the reverse. It is better that the guilty get away than for the innocent to be punished unjustifiably.

    Origin and destiny

    For the Bible, life on earth is a reform school. Why do people need to be reformed? Because in the mythological Garden of Eden, Eve ate the fruit the devil offered her even though God forbade it. Humanity was condemned from that time forward. While self-improvement is possible, ultimate redemption can only come from the sacrifice of Christ for humanity. In terms of future generations of humans, that is not the concern of Christian nationalists. The idea is you earn a ticket to the Promised Land and the Devil take the hindmost.

    I’m afraid that the Constitution is far less dramatic. Individuals, according to Locke, are blank slates. Locke said parental socialization does matter, but in the end, it is the individual’s responsibility for what they make of themselves. There is no need for redemption either in this life or the next. However, the Constitution, unlike the Bible, was written for future generations of humanity on Earth.  Please see Table B for a summary.The Authoritarian Nature of the Ten Commandments

    Strange gods and idolatrous images

    The Ten Commandments is only a small part of the Bible, but they allow us to contrast in a very concentrated form extreme differences between this sacred document and the Constitution. The first commandment is a direct attack on religious freedom. “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” The Constitution guarantees the freedom to worship any God, not just the Judeo-Christian one. The second commandment forbids making images. This iconoclastic mania on the part of the Protestants resulted in the destruction of centuries of magnificent artwork. The Constitution, on the other hand, allows for making pubic images to honor its heroes. Any trip to the Lincoln memorial or a trip to Mount Rushmore will reveal that the non-superstitious use of images is possible and can bring great inspiration.

    Blasphemy and coercive church attendance

    The third commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy god in vain”, is really about controlling language. There is a double standard about blasphemy. Jews can blaspheme heathen deities, but it is a capital crime to blaspheme Yahweh. In contrast, the Constitution makes a distinction between words and deeds. It says in effect “sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me”. The Constitution says criticism of all religion is legal. The fourth commandment to “Keep holy the Lord’s Day” is more sinister than it seems. Seidel says this is not about rest for the weary. It is really about shepherding the population to churches on days when most people are not working. Priests complain about poor attendance at church. What better way to herd people into church then by first saying even the Lord needs to rest, and so do you. But no sooner do people discover they are entitled to a day off than they find themselves in church listening to sermons. While there is nothing in the Constitution which tells people not to work, there is also nothing in the Constitution that forbids workers from taking matters into their own hands. They can legally join unions, and strike in order to have some time off. As the saying goes, it was labor that gave Yankees the weekend.

    Honor your parents no matter how authoritarian or abusive they are

    The fifth commandment says honor thy father and mother. Sounds pretty good except that the foundation of it is to honor your biological parents, no matter what they do. No matter what the parents do they should be honored. Though this has happened all too late in Yankee history, there are now child-protective services to allow children to get away from abusive and violent parents. Not all parents are worthy of respect. Furthermore, the Bible is talking out of both sides of its mouth when they talk about this because Jesus also makes a big deal about leaving your parents to come follow him.

    Clannish, parochial rules towards murder, stealing and lying

    Seidel chunks together the sixth, eight and ninth commandments and attacks them for their clannish, exclusive nature. Whether it is killing, stealing or perjury, the Bible only forbids these things when it is done to fellow Jews and Christians. With non-Jews or Christians, all bets are off. You can kill, steal or lie in dealing with people from other religions. In the case of the Constitution, killing, stealing or lying is punishable no matter what religion one is as well including people who have no religion at all.

    Patriarchal repression of sexuality

    The seventh commandment about committing adultery has an even narrower interpretation than the previous three commandments. In this, even within the Judeo-Christian tradition, the laws of adultery do not apply to married men, but only to married women. Seidel says fathers can sell their daughter into sexual slavery but only to another Israelite. Men can get away with rape, if they pay the victim’s family 50 shekels and then marry the victim.

    The Christian Bible tries to halt and repress their flock’s interest in sex by promoting celibacy. We only have to look at the record of the Catholic Church and its priests to reel in disgust over such a monstrous policy. Seidel points out Judeo-Christianity tries to kill the sex instinct, distort it and vilify it to ensure loyalty to the leader, not to one another. This is a common tactic that male cult leaders use with their followers. It builds up spiritual debt. Lusty, guilty sinners are bound more tightly to the person who can expiate their sin, Jesus, and later, priests. In the Constitution there are laws against adultery, but they apply to men as well as women and there are laws that apply to rape and sexual slavery that are punishable.

    The tenth commandment is not about actually fooling around with your neighbor’s wife. Rather, it’s about lusting after your neighbor’s wife even if you do nothing. This is where the 10 Commandments crosses the line into Orwell’s thought crime. Evil thoughts are the same thing as evil actions. Being angry is the same as being violent. As Jefferson said, the powers of government apply to action not opinion. You cannot be thrown in jail for having an opinion. Please see Table C for a summary.Smuggling in Christianity via Theological Propaganda

    In God We Trust on coins during the Civil War

    “In God We Trust” was smuggled onto coins in 1863 in the middle of the Civil War and was pushed through between 1861 and 1864.

    “Evangelical Christianity” invaded and polarized the political debate in the cases leading up to the Civil War. It turned the democratic process which relies on compromise into a battle over sacrosanct issues of faith.” (262).

    “One nation indivisible” became “one nation, under God, indivisible”. As Seidel says this change places religion, one of the most divisive and murderous forces in history, right in the middle of a badly needed unifying sentiment.

    To choose something so divisive to replace a unifying sentiment in the middle of a war that actually hindered the nation shows hubris typical of religious privilege. (272)

    Christianity promotes slavery

    Appeals to the Bible justified revivals in the slave trade and slave prisons. The pulpit and the auctioneers’ block stand in the same neighborhood. (267)

    Christian resistance to slavery was nowhere to be found when the colonies instituted slavery in the 1600s. (268)

    It was used at a time of national peril and danger when people were too busy dying for the Constitution to protect it from a rear-guard assault, to promote their personal religion. (272)

    Bible thumping anti-Communists

    In 1954 the Pledge of Allegiance was changed. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all” became “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Since the communists were atheists, it was hoped that the communists would get the message that they were not welcome.

    A year later “In God We Trust” was added to paper currency in 1955.

    What better way to spread the missionary spirit within Yankeedom than by putting it on currency everyone has to use? US currency would effectively become a Christian missionary. (271)

    In his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America  Kevin Kruse exposes the following coordinated Christian attacks on the secular world:

    • 1953 National Day of Prayer – Congress agrees
    • 1953 National prayer breakfast
    • 1953 Congressmen propose 18 separate resolutions to add “under God” to the pledge
    • 1954 “In God We Trust is placed on a US postage stamp
    • 1954 Prayer room in US capital is added. It added a stained-glass window depicting the lie that Washington prayed in the snow at Valley Forge
    • Congress added “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance
    • 1955 Eisenhower signs a bill placing “In God We Trust” on US paper currency
    • 1956 Cecil B. Demille’s movie The Ten Commandments is released
    • 10 commandments monuments made of granite are gradually erected on government property around the country

    Soon the words “American and Christian” became synonymous.

    Billy Graham wedded evangelism and anticommunism in the Christian anti-communist  crusade. Religious stars such as Fulton Sheen, Oral Roberts, Billy James Hargis and Norman Vincent Peale all achieved new prominence in the early and mid 1950s. They bombarded TV, making people sick with fear. ‘To be an American is to be Christian. All atheists are communists’. (284)

    Circulating coins, paper money and flag-waving pledges weren’t enough for nervous anti-communists. Soon time off from a secular education was granted for religious instruction.

    In 1952 the court decided that releasing children from public schools classes to receive religious education did not violate  the Constitution. Religious release time allows churches to piggyback the machinery of the state and mandatory attendance to inculcate religion. It was meant to help religious sects get attendants presumably too unenthusiastic to go to religious class unless moved to do so by the pressure of this state machinery. (286-287)

    Conclusion

    Seidel’s work challenges Christian nationalists to face the fact that the founding documents of the United States as a nation directly contradict the Ten Commandments and, more generally, the Bible. These Christians would have to trade their fundamentalism for a far more liberal theory of religion to square with the Constitution. On the other hand, secularists can be somewhat assured that while they are under attack by the right-wing religious forces, the Constitution with all its class biases, lack of limits on capitalism, its racism and sexism, is still an important support document, mostly for its clear separation between Church and State.

    • First published at Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

    The post The Bible vs the Eagle: Why Christian Nationalism is un-American first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Learn From the East:  A Major Lesson of the Pandemic.

    The world is now in the throes of another wave of Covid-19, with another surge in infections, sickness and deaths, this time due to the more infectious and apparently more lethal Delta variant.

    Are there lessons to be learned from the previous waves of Covid-19 that might help us now?

    There are, and they were evident long ago, but in the West, they have been largely ignored.  Up to now, for example, the US has suffered over 617,000 deaths; China in contrast has suffered fewer than 5,000 deaths in a population four times as large as the US.  Could there not be some lessons that might serve us in the West now and in the future?

    In the US and throughout the West, the response to China’s success has all too often been to ignore or deny it.  As an especially egregious early example, in April 2020 Donald Trump and his assistant Dr. Deborah Birx called into question China’s mortality data with a none too clever lie of  omission; they were caught in this embarrassing ploy by Asia Times.  The denial of these fatality figures persists in much of the media.  Certainly, there are many reports from those in China, foreigner and native alike, on the largely Covid-19 free environment there.  But the many who regard China as a vast, impenetrable Potemkin Village are refractory to such accounts.

    China tells the truth about Covid-19 Deaths

    Is there any way in which the truth can be established about China’s death tally?  One method is to examine excess deaths, that is, deaths during the pandemic compared to the same period in the previous five years, a measure used in many countries.  Fortunately, a study of excess deaths in China has now been published in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal (BMJ) by a team of scientists and physicians at Oxford in the UK and at China’s CDC.

    The study was massive.  EurekAlert!, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, recognizing the importance of the study, captured its magnitude as follows: “The researchers used official records from China CDC’s nationally-representative Disease Surveillance Point (DSP) system. It covered more than 300 million people from 605 urban districts and rural counties, representing more than 20% of the entire population in China.”  The DSP gathers deaths that are reported by local doctors, hospitals, funeral directors, police and others. The study covered the period from January 1, 2020 to March 31, 2020, a period when most all reported deaths occurred.  The lockdown in Wuhan, the most stringent, was begun on January 23 and lifted on April 8, 2020, a total of 74 days.

    The two main findings of the BMJ study are simple and straightforward.

    First, the number of deaths due to Covid-19 pneumonia in Wuhan was very much the same as the Chinese government reported.  The BMJ study states:

    In Wuhan city, the most recent official figures released on 17 April 2020 suggested that 3869 deaths were directly attributable to covid-19, including 3653 deaths from covid-19 related pneumonia and 920 excess deaths from other types of pneumonia, primarily unspecified viral pneumonia.

    The tally based on the study of excess deaths that can be attributed with confidence to Covid-19 was 3653, somewhat lower than the 3869 given by the official count at the time.   The demographics of the excess deaths attributable to Covid-19 matched deaths elsewhere from Covid-19 (more male than female, more old than young).  And the time course of the official and excess death fatalities matched.

    What about the 920 deaths from pneumonia of uncertain etiology due to absence of Covid-19 tests during the early days?  If we include them in the total to get a worst-case number there is only a 20% difference in the estimates given by excess mortality and those given by the official count at the time.  Later China included these unconfirmed cases in its official tally, making the two tallies almost exactly equal.  No matter how one slices it, the round number of less than 5000 is correct.  It turns out China’s official account is remarkably accurate.

    Second, the number of excess deaths in the rest of China decreased!  As a result, overall deaths in China during the pandemic compared to the previous five years actually declined.  In the words of the report:

    Except in Wuhan, no increase in overall mortality was found during the three months of the Covid-19 outbreak in other parts of China. The lower death rates from certain non-Covid-19 related diseases might be attributable to the associated behaviour changes during lockdown.

    They suggest that the reduced number of deaths outside Wuhan was due to behavior changes like masking and social distancing which would reduce other respiratory diseases like the common flu and to less road traffic.

    The Lessons From China’s Handling of the Pandemic.

    The authors of the BJM study state the immediate lessons succinctly:

    Furthermore, the findings highlight the need for rapid and coordinated actions during major outbreaks of infectious diseases to contain, suppress, and eradicate transmission and minimize detrimental effects on human health and societal and economic activities.

    Such actions in China have included rapid and massive testing followed by tracing to find contacts of those who test positive and then quarantining when necessary, whenever even a small outbreak was detected.  An example is the response in October, 2020, in Qingdao a coastal city in Shandong Province. As reported in the New England Journal of Medicine three cases of Covid-19 were detected and this triggered testing of almost 11 million people in less than a week with appropriate quarantining when necessary.  Nine additional cases were quickly found and the limited lockdowns were quickly terminated.   China has responded in the same way to every outbreak, in the process learning how to restrict lockdowns to subpopulations of one area, such as a single neighborhood, and for a shorter time.

    When the lockdown began in Wuhan on January 23, 2020, there was only one death due to Covid-19 in the U.S.  The second U.S. death occurred on February 28. By April 8 when the lockdown in all Chinese cities ended there were 19,000 deaths in the US, still a small fraction of the more than 617,000 we have today.  It was apparent that China’s actions were a success by April 8, 2020, and yet the U.S. took no similar action.  The U.S. had a warning from China on January 1, 2020, and on January 11 Chinese scientists published the viral genome sequence which made immediate testing possible worldwide.

    At the time of this writing China is coping with the new scourge of the delta variant of SARS-Cov-2, that began in July.  There are now as many as 100 cases reported in a day, still miniscule by Western standards (The U.S. reported over 100,000 new cases recently, August 8, 2021.) but a genuine surge by China’s.  Today, we learn that Wuhan has completed citywide Covid-19 testing in six days and found 37 cases plus 41 asymptomatic carriers among 12 million residents.  A rapid vaccination campaign had already begun months earlier, added on to the containment measures.  By August 4, over 1.7 billion jabs have been administered, 127 doses per 100 population; for comparison the US has 105 per 100 population.  And the total death toll for the pandemic as of August 9 remains at 4629, the same as February 1, 2021 before the recent July surge.  In the event of the need for a booster, China stands ready with capacity to produce more of various sorts, including the BioNTech mRNA vaccine, which Fosun Pharma has contracted to produce in China up to 1 billion doses a year.  Clearly China is willing to learn from the West.  China’s measures seem to be holding the line at the moment, still a success story.   What happens next is anyone’s guess, but for the first year-and-a-half of the pandemic China’s measures were exemplary.

    One lesson for us here in the U.S. is to put in place public health containment measures for the next wave of Covid-19 and for the next pandemic.  These are certainly necessary before a vaccine arrives and the population can be vaccinated.  We might also do well to generalize this lesson.  Proceeding from reason, not blindness, exceptionalism, arrogance or condescension, might serve us well in all areas of US-China relations.  If not, far more than 600,000 deaths may be the price to pay.

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  • United States: Biden panders to right-wing Cuban Americans

    United States president Joe Biden has imposed further sanctions on Cuba — targetting two leaders of the Cuban national police as well as the organisation as a whole, reports Ian Ellis-Jones.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • US Foreign Policy Adrift: Why Washington is No Longer Calling the Shots

    Jonah Goldberg and Michael Ledeen have much in common. They are both writers and also cheerleaders for military interventions and, often, for frivolous wars. Writing in the conservative rag, The National Review, months before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Goldberg paraphrased a statement which he attributed to Ledeen with reference to the interventionist US foreign policy.

    “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business,” Goldberg wrote, quoting Ledeen.

    Those like Ledeen, the neoconservative intellectual henchman type, often get away with this kind of provocative rhetoric for various reasons. American intelligentsias, especially those who are close to the center of power in Washington DC, perceive war and military intervention as the foundation and baseline of their foreign policy analysis. The utterances of such statements are usually conveyed within friendly media and intellectual platforms, where equally hawkish, belligerent audiences cheer and laugh at the war-mongering muses. In the case of Ledeen, the receptive audience was the hardline, neoconservative, pro-Israel American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

    Predictably, AEI was one of the loudest voices urging for a war and invasion of Iraq prior to that calamitous decision by the George W. Bush Administration, which was enacted in March 2003.

    Neoconservatism, unlike what the etymology of the name may suggest, was not necessarily confined to conservative political circles. Think tanks, newspapers and media networks that purport – or are perceived – to express liberal and even progressive thought today, like The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, have dedicated much time and space to promoting an American invasion of Iraq as the first step of a complete US geostrategic military hegemony in the Middle East.

    Like the National Review, these media networks also provided unhindered space to so-called neoconservative intellectuals who molded American foreign policy based on some strange mix between their twisted take on ethics and morality and the need for the US to ensure its global dominance throughout the 21st century. Of course, the neocons’ love affair with Israel has served as the common denominator among all individuals affiliated with this intellectual cult.

    The main – and inconsequential – difference between Ledeen, for example, and those like Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, is that the former is brazen and blunt, while the latter is delusional and manipulative. For his part, Friedman also supported the Iraq war, but only to bring ‘democracy’ to the Middle East and to fight ‘terrorism’. The pretense ‘war on terror’, though misleading if not outright fabricated, was the overriding American motto in its invasion of Iraq and, earlier, Afghanistan. This mantra was readily utilized whenever Washington needed to ‘pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall’.

    Even those who genuinely supported the war based on concocted intelligence – that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction, or the equally fallacious notion that Saddam and Al-Qaeda cooperated in any way – must, by now, realize that the entire American discourse prior to the war had no basis in reality. Unfortunately, war enthusiasts are not a rational bunch. Therefore, neither they, nor their ‘intellectuals’, should be expected to possess the moral integrity in shouldering the responsibility for the Iraq invasion and its horrific consequences.

    If, indeed, the US wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan were meant to fight and uproot terror, how is it possible that, in June 2014, an erstwhile unknown group calling itself the ‘Islamic State’ (IS), managed to flourish, occupy and usurp massive swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territories and resource under the watchful eye of the US military? If the other war objective was bringing stability and democracy to the Middle East, why did many years of US ‘state-building’ efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, leave behind nothing but weak, shattered armies and festering corruption?

    Two important events have summoned up these thoughts: US President Joe Biden’s ‘historic’ trip to Cornwall, UK, in June, to attend the 47th G7 summit and, two weeks later, the death of Donald Rumsfeld, who is widely depicted as “the architect of the Iraq war”. The tone struck by Biden throughout his G7 meetings is that ‘America is back’, another American coinage similar to the earlier phrase, the ‘great reset’ – meaning that Washington is ready to reclaim its global role that had been betrayed by the chaotic policies of former President Donald Trump.

    The newest phrase – ‘America is back’ – appears to suggest that the decision to restore the US’ uncontested global leadership is, more or less, an exclusively American decision. Moreover, the term is not entirely new. In his first speech to a global audience at the Munich Security Conference on February 19, Biden repeated the phrase several times with obvious emphasis.

    “America is back. I speak today as President of the United States, at the very start of my administration and I am sending a clear message to the world: America is back,” Biden said, adding that “the transatlantic alliance is back and we are not looking backward, we are looking forward together.”

    Platitudes and wishful thinking aside, the US cannot possibly return to a previous geopolitical standing, simply because Biden has made an executive decision to ‘reset’ his country’s traditional relationships with Europe – or anywhere else, either.  Biden’s actual mission is to merely whitewash and restore his country’s tarnished reputation, marred not only by Trump, but also by years of fruitless wars, a crisis of democracy at home and abroad and an impending financial crisis resulting from the US’ mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately for Washington, while it hopes to ‘look forward’ to the future, other countries have already staked claims to parts of the world where the US has been forced to retreat, following two decades of a rudderless strategy that is fueled by the belief that firepower alone is sufficient to keep America aloft forever.

    Though Biden was received warmly by his European hosts, Europe is likely to proceed cautiously. The continent’s geostrategic interests do not fall entirely in the American camp, as was once the case. Other new factors and power players have emerged in recent years. China is now the European bloc’s largest trade partner and Biden’s scare tactics warning of Chinese global dominance have not, seemingly, impressed the Europeans as the Americans had hoped. Following Britain’s unceremonious exit from the EU bloc, the latter urgently needs to keep its share of the global economy as large as possible. The limping US economy will hardly make the substantial deficit felt in Europe. Namely, the China-EU relationship is here to stay – and grow.

    There is something else that makes the Europeans wary of whatever murky political doctrine Biden is promoting: dangerous American military adventurism.

    The US and Europe are the foundation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which, since its inception in 1949, was almost exclusively used by the US to assert its global dominance, first in the Korean Peninsula in 1950, then everywhere else.

    Following the September 11 attacks, Washington used its hegemony over NATO to invoke Article 5 of its Charter, that of collective defense. The consequences were dire, as NATO members, along with the US, were embroiled in their longest wars ever, military conflicts that had no consistent strategy, let alone measurable goals. Now, as the US licks its wounds as it leaves Afghanistan, NATO members, too, are leaving the devastated country without a single achievement worth celebrating. Similar scenarios are transpiring in Iraq and Syria, too.

    Rumsfeld’s death on June 29, at the age of 88, should serve as a wake-up call to American allies if they truly wish to avoid the pitfalls and recklessness of the past. While much of the US corporate media commemorated the death of a brutish war criminal with amiable non-committal language, some blamed him almost entirely for the Iraq fiasco. It is as if a single man had bent the will of the West-dominated international community to invade, pillage, torture and destroy entire countries. If so, then Rumsfeld’s death should usher in an exciting new dawn of collective peace, prosperity and security. This is not the case.

    Rationalizing his decision to leave Afghanistan in a speech to the nation in April 2021, Biden did not accept, on behalf of his country, responsibility over that horrific war. Instead, he spoke of the need to fight the ‘terror threat’ in ‘many places’, instead of keeping ‘thousands of troops grounded and concentrated in just one country’.

    Indeed, a close reading of Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan – a process which began under Trump – suggests that the difference between US foreign policy under Biden is only tactically different from the policies of George W. Bush when he launched his ‘preemptive wars’ under the command of Rumsfeld. Namely, though the geopolitical map may have shifted, the US appetite for war remains insatiable.

    Shackled with a legacy of unnecessary, fruitless and immoral wars, yet with no actual ‘forward’ strategy, the US, arguably for the first time since the inception of NATO in the aftermath of World War II, has no decipherable foreign policy doctrine. Even if such a doctrine exists, it can only be materialized through alliances whose relationships are constructed on trust and confidence. Despite the EU’s courteous reception of Biden in Cornwall, trust in Washington is at an all-time low.

    Even if it is accepted, without any argument, that America is, indeed, back, considering the vastly changing geopolitical spheres in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, Biden’s assertion should, ultimately, make no difference.

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  • United States: Protests continue against voter suppression

    Not content to wait for US President Joe Biden’s government to act, more marches and rallies are planned to defend the right to vote, reports Malik Miah.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Divided We Stand: Eleven Regional Rivalries from Mountain People to the Swamps of Dixie

    Orientation

    The reason Yankee fans and Red Sox fans hate each other goes a lot deeper than sports. In his book American Nations, Colin Woodard identifies eleven regional cultures in the United States. He compares the conditions of the home country, settler conditions, climate, geography, religious history, population density and international loyalties. He points out the parallels between how settlers’ regional locations in England impacted the type of regional culture they developed in the United States. My purpose in this article is to:

    • reveal the political bankruptcy of trying to fit eleven different regions into two political parties; and,
    • reveal the economic bankruptcy of industrial capitalists in forming a single nation-state by attempting to pulverize the differences between these regions.

    There are good reasons why the United States has rarely, if ever, unified, whether in war or peace. The notion that we were and are united  is pure political and economic propaganda.

    Questions about regional rivalries

    • How might the time of settlement affect the culture of the region and how might the region feel about other regions?
    • How might the country of origin and its politics (feudal, capitalist) affect the politics of the region and how might that region feel about different regions?
    • How might the geography (rivers, rainfall, flat-mountainous, valleys, plains) and means of subsistence (hunting, fishing, farming, herding, trading, industry) affect the culture of the region and how might that region feel about different regions?
    • How might the religion of the region affect the culture and how might that region feel about different regions?
    • How might the size of the population of the region (dense or sparse) affect the culture of the region and how might that region feel about different regions?
    • How might the history of the region’s relationship with immigrants or native Americans affect the culture of the region and how might that region feel about other regions?
    • Given the answer to the first six questions, which regions will have the greatest tensions? Why might they have these tensions?
    • The author of the book implies that the United States is too big for a single nation-state. Whether you agree or not, are there any regions that might have enough in common to join together? Or would it be better to be broken into regions that become nation-states like European states?

    I cannot address all these questions in this article. I intend to answer most of them and leave the rest to stimulate your thinking.

    Issues that Divided the Regions of the United States

    The federal government of the United States only began to try to unify the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific after the Civil War with massive architecture, street names, and flags in every classroom. it is questionable how successful they have been. To talk about a common national experience over such a large territory confronts many problems.

    David Hackett Fischer in his book, Albion’s Seed, identified four major regions in the United States with significant differences in their means of subsistence, their religion, the conditions of settlement and the parts of England these first settlers were from. In his book American Nations, Colin Woodard has expanded these settlements from four to eleven regions. Please see Table A to understand which country of Europe settled the region, the time of settlement and the region of the U.S. it occupied.

    For this section I will be following Woodard’s description. According to him, Americans have been divided since the days of Jamestown and Plymouth. Colonists saw each other as competitors for people to settle their land, for the land itself, as well their ability to draw capital to their settlement. Here are some of the issues that divided the colonies:

    • Loyalty to England: Royalist Virginia (Tidewater) vs Yankee Massachusetts
    • Individualism: Yankees and New Netherlands were for individualism vs social reform orientation of New France
    • Religion: Puritanism (Yankees, New England) vs Quakers’ freedom of conscience (Midlanders). In addition, there was a tension between the liberal and evangelical spectrum about how to practice their religion.
    • Politics:  The importance of politics for the Deep South and the Yankees as opposed to apathy to politics of the Quakers (Midlanders)
    • Use of force: Active use of force by Tidewater, the Deep South and Appalachia vs Midlanders, (Quakers) non-violence.
    • Secession: Not only Tidewater and the Deep South, but Appalachia and New England also considered secession.

    These regions had differences in religion between Catholics, Puritans, Anglicans, Quakers and Mormons. Each region differed in the kind of work people did, from cattle rearing, hunting, fishing, fur trapping, agricultural capitalism (producing tobacco, sugar and cotton), subsistence farming, herding, and industrial production (mining, railroad work and smelting). These regions were formed with different intentions including for religious purposes, commercial purposes, political independence or as a home for refugees. The politics of the regions differed drastically, from authoritarian (Deep South) to egalitarian (New France) to liberal (New England town-hall and the Left Coast) to classical republican (Tidewater) to libertarian (Far West).

    Regionalists in the U.S. respected neither state nor international boundaries. It was only when England began to treat these colonies as a single unit and implemented policies that threatened them all, that they formed a united force. It is important to realize the uniting against an enemy does not create unification after the confrontation is over. After all, the greatest regional battle in US history occurred almost a hundred years after Independence Day.

    Woodard points out that Americans are one of the only countries in the world who do not make a distinction between a statehood and nationhood. A state is a sovereign political body that monopolizes the means of violence. A nation is a group who share a common culture, ethnic origin, language, historical experience, artifacts and symbols. Some nations are stateless like the Kurdish, Palestinians and Quebecers. Most agricultural states such as Egypt, China, Mesopotamia and India had states without being a single nation (Anthony D. Smith’s work is great for these distinctions). Using these criteria, the regions of the country are like the “nations” of America. Americans may have a federal state, but not a single nation. Before turning to the predominant struggle between regions, Table B contains a close-up of the differences between all eleven regions.

    Neither the American Revolution Nor the Civil War United the Regions

    It is tempting to think that the revolutionary war against England united the regions. This is far from true. Native Americans fought on both sides of the revolutionary war. It was the New England Yankees that were the backbone of the revolution. New Netherlands was the stronghold of the loyalists after England drove out the Dutch. In the Midlands:

    The region would not have rebelled at all, if a majority of the states attending the Second Continental Congress hadn’t voted to suppress Pennsylvania’s government (132)

    Until the battle of Lexington, the Deep South was torn as to who to join until it was rumored that the British were smuggling arms to the slaves. It was the prospect of freed slaves that made them fight the English. Southern Appalachia fought on the side of the English and lost.

    Neither did the Civil War pulverize the regions into two. Woodard says that the Civil War was a conflict between two coalitions of the Deep South and Tidewater against the Yankees. The other regions wanted to remain neutral and were considering breaking off into their own confederations

    The Conflict Between the South and the East Prior to the 19th Century

    Slave aristocracy of the Deep South

    To begin with, there was an aristocracy in the thirteen colonies  but this aristocracy did not rule over peasants who did subsistence farming. The plantation owners of the South ruled over slaves who produced commercial goods of sugar, tobacco and cotton for a world market. In the East, there were university educated professionals of lawyers and clergy(“Brahmins”) who joined with merchants attempting to develop home industry (rather than trade with England, as the plantation owners did.)

    All regions are not economically equal

    While all eleven regions had their conflicts with each other, some regions were settled longer and they concentrated more economic wealth at their disposal. For example, the mountain people Appalachia herded sheep, pigs and goats. They were in no position to compete for cultural dominance with the planters of Tidewater or the Deep South. The settlers of what became known as New France made their home in Canada and in Louisiana. They were fisherman, fur-trappers, and hunters. They could not compete with the Yankees of the Northeast or the fur traders of New York. Even those with capital who settled late, as in the Far West, did not have centuries to build up a culture the way those in Tidewater, the Deep South, Yankeedom and New Netherlands did. These regions had over a 200-year head start.

    What does it mean to be an American?

    When we compare the civilizational processes of the United States, we are really talking about the differences between the New Englanders, New Netherlands and Midlands and to a lesser extent, Appalachia. It is from these regions that the concept of an American grew. In the case of the other regions, El Norte was long abandoned by the Spanish and New France by the French. Both these regions were inhabited by people who never accumulated capital. Native American tribes were decimated. Tidewater and the Deep South are not cultures which are  termed “American”. While the Far West and the Left Coast certainly had wealth, they were settled too late to have civilizational impact.

    There is a reason I am focused on the initial time of first settlement and not discussing these regions all the way to the present. It has to do with Wilbur Zelinsky’s “first effective settlement law”which says:

    Whenever an empty territory undergoes settlement, or an earlier population is dislodged by invaders, the specific characteristics of the first group able to affect a viable self- perpetuating society are of crucial significance for the later social and cultural geography of the area, no matter how tiny the initial band of settler may have been. (American Nations, 16)

    The fundamental arena in which American civilization played itself out, is between Tidewater and the Deep South on the one hand, and the Yankees and New Netherlands on the other. Civil War historians might call this the battle between the “North and the South”, but this crudely lumps the eleven regions we discussed into two. The people of Appalachia might technically be in the South but they always had animosity to the planters. The Midlanders of the North might have sided with Yankees and New Netherlands against the slave traders, but they were not industrial capitalists who had a material interest in luring poor farmers into their factories. Therefore, there are two processes of being civilized in the United States, one southern and the other East and Central parts of the United States.

    Culture of honor in Colonial South

    Roger Lane, in his book Murder in America: A History, traced the major differences between the North and the South to a southern “culture of honor” that did not exist in the North. But where does this culture of honor come from? Lane argues that the process begins when we examine the differences in the kinds of work people did in the regions of England that they came from before settling in America. The inhabitants of Tidewater came from the Scotch-Irish borderlands of Britain where they engaged in herding. With moveable property, herders always had to be on guard, otherwise their animals might be stolen. Because herding was a difficult life, herders were not competing with many other herders for grazing ground. The sparseness of the settlement pattern makes it difficult for herders to rely on others to protect their land.

    Lastly, in both the borderlands of Britain or the areas of Virginia in which they settled, there was no centralized state to act as law enforcement. Under these conditions, herders develop very rigid protective mechanisms, being suspicious quickly, while reading body language for potential thievery. The culture of honor occurs when people cultivate a trust among equals. A culture of violence is the result of what happens when the culture of honor is violated. Someone who does not stand up for themselves has a sense of deep shame among herders. He has a reputation to defend. If insulted, the insult is addressed publicly in a duel or family feud.

    Culture of Dignity in the Colonial North

    On the other hand, the New England farmers came from East Anglia in England where farming was practiced.  Farming lends itself to living in close quarters, thus providing a social protection against theft. In addition, once they settled in New England, they lived near large cities and under the rule of law. This meant there was some legal ground for recovering stolen property. These conditions meant that farmers did not cultivate suspicion and a code of honor. Consequently, they were less likely to kill as a result of stolen property. Rather, the farmer cultivated a sense of “dignity” based on universal rights. These farmers were more likely to be self-constrained and feel guilty over imagined violations over God’s law. Violations are less likely to be settled publicly. Farmers do not engage in duels. Though farmers have been known to engage in family feuds, farmers are just as likely to bring their case to the law, depending on the region of the country and the social class of the farmer.

    The South and the East in the 19th Century

    By the 19th century, the capitalist interests in New England and New York area had crystalized into an investment in industry, building factories for textiles and railroads for transport. This form of capitalism was irreconcilable with the plantation economy of the South. As mass commodity production spread and geographical mobility of workers increased, it became more and more important that consumers were able to get along with strangers as they bought and sold goods. What being “civilized” in the East meant to treat strangers with an even-handed polite indifference or “tolerance”. It was also civilized for industrial capitalists to have same values as the Puritans: hard work, punctuality, planning and investing. In the East, the industrial capitalists were liberal politically.  To be conservative in the North in the 19th century had more to do with holding on to rural, Puritan traditions.

    The plantation owners in the South had very different notions of what was civilized. In plantation life, most everyone knew everyone else and among other plantation owners there was a culture of honor which carried over from their south English heritage. Between plantation owners and slaves there was a deep expectation of deference. Encounters with strangers were much more loaded. While the Eastern cities cultivated a cool indifference to strangers, in the South what was civilized was “southern hospitality”, which meant bringing hospitality to a stranger. This meant being generous with time, food and culture. But strangers who, for whatever reason, were not candidates for southern hospitality were not ignored. They were driven out or killed.

    Southern gentleman planters, like their aristocratic brothers in Europe, had a contempt for hard work and Puritanical values. What was civilized to them was the cultivation of taste in the arts, in manners and in clothing. For them, being civilized meant to enjoy life and display wealth. Politically, the Southern planters justified their existence as classical republicans who believed that liberty was only for the upper classes. They were contemptuous of the Enlightenment value of science and technology and saw themselves as the inheritors of Roman values. Please see Table C for a summary of these regions.

    Manners in the East, the Midlands and Appalachia

    Tocqueville famously commented that on one hand, Jacksonian America was far more egalitarian than anywhere in Europe, and less deferential. However, there was more bragging. His explanation was because of a lack of clear class boundaries, people bragged as a way to establish a status of which they remained unsure. According to  Stephen Mennell, (The American Civilizing Process) both Hegel and De Maistre commented on the lack of manners in America. Baudelaire described America in the 1850s as “a great hunk of barbarism illuminated by gas… a construction of hardened chewing gum and idiotic folklore.” Complaints about Americans chewing tobacco were common by Europeans. By the mid-19th century, Europeans also commented on what they saw as a general American obsession with cleanliness. But Yankees weren’t always like this.

    Those who washed daily did so at the kitchen sink. Soap was mainly used for laundering clothes. By the 1830s, the bathtub and daily bath were beginning to spread beyond the very rich. Immigrants new to cities were taught by social workers, educators and employers how, where and how often to bathe with soap and warm water (66). In 1840, only a tiny minority of the wealthy city-dwellers had running water and flushing water closets in their homes (65). (The American Civilizing Process)

    According to Mennell, books about American manners penetrated deeper into the class structure, in part because of the lack of the English social elite in the colonies to draw inspiration from and because a higher number of lower-class people could read.

    How Did Frontiersmen See Eastern and Midlands Civilization?   

    Mennell says that the following stereotypes were common among frontiersman about people in eastern cities. The East was seen as decadent, whereas the frontier was pristine. The East was mired in interdependent social ties such as proletarians linked to wage labor and factories in cities. The frontier, on the other hand, was the home of independent hunters, fur-trappers, ranchers or miners who called their own shots. While the East was the home of elite bankers and industrialists, there was a rough social equality on the frontier.

    But what does living in a country with a frontier do to the civilizational process? Turner, in his book The Frontier in American History, traced the steady penetration of the frontier westward from the eastern seaboard in the 17th century all the way to the Rocky Mountains in the 19th. century. He distinguishes three phases:

    • the traders’ frontier—characteristic of French colonization and fur trade
    • the miners’ and ranchers’ frontier of the West
    • farmers’ frontier—which left the trademark of the English in the Midlands

    Turner argued that the constant availability of free land meant that Americans would be less in danger of creating elite hierarchies because these hierarchies would be broken up since there was a constant return to more primitive conditions.

    The Uncivilized Nature of the Frontier

    According to Mennell, when people who have been socialized in more settled conditions are cast out into the margins of society, their behavior will change. The behavior will become more blatantly self-interested if they can get away with things that they couldn’t get away with under more settled conditions. This behavior will become even more confrontative if, because of the rough balance of power, calculations of what will happen are less predictable. These higher levels of danger will produce emotions that are more impulsive and more violent, just as Huizinga claimed occurred during the European Middle Ages.

    According to historian Patricia Limerick, the image of the self-reliant and individually responsible pioneer was not supported by her research account that outside of every farm in the 1880’s stood a great mound of empty food cans. She further pointed out these “self-reliant” pioneers often blamed the federal government for their problems along with everyone else.

    The consequences of the frontier process, according to Turner, were that:

    • The westward move diluted the predominantly English character of the eastern seaboard.
    • The advance of the frontier decreased America’s dependence on England for supplies.
    • It helped to develop the central government. The very fact that the unsettled lands had been vested in the federal government was vital to the federal government’s battle to control recalcitrant regions of the country.

    The Western Frontier as Yankee romanticism

    As Richard Slotkin warns us, we must distinguish between the people who actually lived on the frontier—hunters, trappers, miners, gold prospectors – and how the frontier was portrayed in American literature, as in dime-store novels and the work of Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales. We are interested in how the frontier romance in literature was a way for readers to:

    • escape the dark side of the industrialization process;
    • escape the increasingly militant class struggle taking place between New England, Yankeedom on the one hand and the southern plantation owners on the other;
    • muffle the class struggle in industrialized cities in hopes that the frontier stories could provide an outlet.

    In the United States, the rebellion against civilization was directed not at an aristocratic class but at lawyers, merchants, industrialists and bankers of the East. Whatever their dissatisfactions were with relentlessness of the industrialization of the cities, it did not result in a romantic, organic view of nature as in Europe. In Europe, during the romantic period, many nation-states claimed their roots in more primitive peoples, whether they are Anglo-Saxons or Celts. But for Puritans, the heathen Native Americans were out of bounds as people to go back to nature with. To return to the pristine way of life was to adapt the way of the savages, which for them would be “hell on earth”. Puritans bitterly condemned those who “went native” and lost their souls.

    While aristocratic romantics of Europe used tame country scenes to trigger collective memories of by-gone days, in the New World, what was romantic was pristine, wild and like the subtle paintings of the West by Remington and Thomas Moran. While romantics in Europe took the occasion to delve into the pre-modern world of the peasantry through the study of language and folklore, writers on American romanticism did not do this. In America, there was a deep anti-historical sense, and what appealed to romantics was the exotic world of mountains, rivers and forests that have not been seen before. In addition, the frontier was about trappers, hunters and miners who were half-way between Eastern decadent civilization and the “savagery” of the native Americans. Stories about the frontier were about Puritan’s “errand into the wilderness”. Puritans were terrified of the savagery of native Americans. Their roots were in Puritanism, not in knowing more about native culture that was from a non-Christian world.

    In the New World, the sources of romanticism were men of action, men who fought Indians, gambled and blazed trails. Different frontiersman represented different regions of the country and utilized different means of subsistence. For example, stories about Daniel Boone took place in Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri. The stories of Kit Carsen were those of a fur trapper of the mountains. Stories about Davy Crockett were more about the frontier in the Southwest.

    What romantics on both sides of the Atlantic had in common was a refusal to play roles. This was certainly true of the frontiersman attitude towards the ways of the East. Additionally, both kinds of romantics refused to act in ways that demonstrated they were civilized. While in the United States there was a championing of what was wild, unpredictable and dangerous, this did not lead to identification with mental illness as the romantics did in Europe. However, the romanticism of outcasts in the wild west, such as gun fighters like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and Buffalo Bill was taken way beyond Europe. The glorification of the frontier, the west and the cowboy hasn’t let up even in the 21st century!

    Conclusion

    The purpose of this article is to show the deep political and economic fault-lines of the eleven regions of the United States. We began with eight questions about how the time of settlement, the country of origin, geography, religion, population density, attitudes to immigrants and natives might affect how these regions felt about each other. Where in the country would the greatest tensions between the regions be? What regions had the most in common where alliances could be formed? We then named six topics which were the deepest tension point in the regions. These tensions are hardly cosmetic. They remained throughout both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

    We then turned to the conflict between Tidewater, the Deep South, Appalachia and Yankees as the central struggle in the United States. Being an “American” was forged between four regions—Yankeedom, New Netherlands, Midlands and Appalachia. I closed my article with our focus on the West. This included how frontiersman themselves viewed the East as decadent and how writers of the East romanticized the West in dime store novels and paintings.

    The United States of America is hardly united, nor has it ever been. The real physical economy today is hammered by lack of investment and lack of work due to COVID. Meanwhile finance capital continues to destabilize the economy with the mania of printing free money. As extreme weather pounds the regions from Florida to California and from Texas to North Dakota, it would be hardly surprising that as Anglo-American capitalism sinks into the bog, that part of the sinking will involve a fracturing of the regions in a good ole American style, with each region for itself, and the Devil taking the hindmost.

    • First published in Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

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  • In Foreign Policy Australia Proves to be a Slow Learner

    Quod deus vult perdere prius dementat. (Whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad).

    One of the more enduring mysteries of Australian foreign policy is its continued adherence to the American way of war. One has only to look at the history of the post-World War II period to be presented with a host of examples of where Australia has followed the United States into one war after another where a compelling Australian national interest is impossible to identify.

    This history of adherence began in Korea in the war that raged in that country between 1950 and 1953. It will be recalled that for years following World War II both the North and the South of Korea waged a guerrilla campaign against each other. The war commenced when the North invaded the South and made major moves on the Southern capital of Seoul and were on the verge of capturing it.

    The United States, already alarmed at the Communists taking over China the previous year, reacted to the North’s invasion of the South.  Taking advantage of the temporary non-presence of the Russians in the Security Council, and with China’s seat still held by the defeated Nationalists (a disgrace that lasted a further 22 years) the United States pushed through a resolution in the Security Council authorising military intervention.

    Australia was one of the countries that willingly joined this ostensible United Nations action to restore the status quo in Korea. An expeditionary force was rapidly gathered and succeeded in expelling the North from the South of Korea. The United States commander Douglas MacArthur was not content with restoring the status quo. He invaded the North and moved all the way to the Chinese border. We now know that his intention was to invade China and endeavour to restore the Nationalist government. That, of course, was never mentioned at the time.

    The United States presence on their border brought the Chinese into the war and they rapidly succeeded in pushing the United States and its allies, including Australia, back south of the border. Stalemate then ensued for the next two years until an uneasy peace deal was reached. This has never been ratified and the North and South of Korea are still technically at war.

    Australia’s next involvement in United States aggression was to take part in the war on Vietnam which was precipitated by the South of the country refusing to allow a national election that would undoubtedly have been won by the North’s Ho Chi Minh.

    Australia’s involvement in that fiasco lasted more than a decade before the election of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972 saw that government withdrawing Australian troops. That action earned the animosity of the Americans, who together with their agent, the Governor General John Kerr,worked tirelessly for the defeat of the Whitlam government which they achieved in November 1975. Since that time no Labor government has dared to cross the United States. Australia’s foreign policy is an unbroken chain of adherence to United States aggression ever since.

    This manifested itself in 2001 when Australia joined the attack on Afghanistan. That commitment ended only two weeks ago when Australian troops were unilaterally and suddenly withdrawn from Afghanistan. The fate of the hundreds of Afghanis who worked with Australian troops during that 20 years is still undecided. They appear to have been abandoned, although public pressure may force a change of heart by the government.

    One of the least mentioned features of that conflict was that the Labor Party, although opposing the initial engagement, did nothing to withdraw Australian troops during the six years they were in government during that 20 year involvement.

    Similarly, Australia was among the first of the western nations to join the entirely illegal invasion of Iraq. Again, the Labor Party retained that commitment when they were in power, although they initially opposed it. The Australian troops still occupy that country despite a unanimous resolution of the Iraqi parliament demanding that they leave. The Australian government does not bother to justify its position to the Australian parliament and in that they are unchallenged by the Labor opposition. That commitment is also rapidly approaching the 20th anniversary.

    Australia’s most recent show of support for United States aggression has been to join the so-called “freedom of navigation” exercises in the South China Sea. It is in Australia’s willingness to join in blatantly anti China exercises that the gap between self-interest and adherence to United States aggression is most marked. China is Australia’s largest trading partner by a considerable margin, although the future of that relationship is now seriously in doubt. There can be no clearer example of a country pursuing a foreign policy that is manifestly at odds with its national interest than the Australian government conflict vis-à-vis China.

    The United States alliance goes beyond joining a succession of wars of minimal national interest to Australia. The United States has a number of military bases in Australia, of which arguably the most important is the electronic spying facility at Pine Gap in the Northern Territory. This base had also been targeted by the Whitlam Labor government. It is absolutely no coincidence that the sacking of the Whitlam government by the attorney general John Kerr occurred the day before Whitlam was to announce to the Australian parliament his government’s intention of closing the Pine Gap facility.

    That also is a policy that has been abandoned by the Labor opposition. Their foreign policy is not indistinguishable from that of the Liberal government. The fate of the Whitlam government, the last to demonstrate even an inkling of foreign policy independence, is a lesson has been well absorbed by the president Labor leadership.

    Even the ignominious United States withdrawal from Afghanistan has been insufficient to encourage even a modicum of rethinking Australia’s foreign defence stances. It can only be a matter of time before Australia follows the United States into yet another war of aggression somewhere in the world. There is no reason to believe that the eventual outcome of that conflict will differ in any way from the experience of the past 70 years: vast expense, huge loss of human life and eventual humiliating retreat.

    China may eventually demonstrate to the Australians that there is a price to pay for this endless adherence to the violence of a fading empire. It is a price that Australia will not bear lightly.

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  • Defend the Cuba Revolution and Struggle for More Socialism, Not Less!

    Hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, an economic crisis, broken supply chains, killer cops, mass incarceration, government surveillance, nuclear weapons, irrational anti-social mass shootings, normalized racism, homelessness, crumbling schools, depression, fear, suicides, and obscene disparities in incomes and wealth—all the features of a moribund, brutal, anti-human global colonial-capitalist system in the United States—and we are supposed to be defensive about socialism! Give me a break.

    Yet, the propagandists of death never sleep. Even as their system is being exposed as the generator of global warming (climate change), nuclear madness, cultural degeneration, and strange, violent societies and people, the ideological dirty workers are busy diverting attention away from the failures of their system to the internal contradictions found within the few examples of societies struggling to remake themselves in ways that center the needs and aspirations of the people.

    If the social and economic conditions in Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela are supposed to be the result of the inherent flaws of socialism, why the sanctions, subversions, and outright attacks on those projects? If socialism is such an inherently unproductive and unnatural system, just let them implode based on their own supposed internal contradictions.

    But this is where the joke comes in. The propagandists will say these societies would indeed implode if it was not for some dictator or repressive system that keeps the population in check. This is where the trope of the brutal dictator and the suffering fearful people is deployed ready for liberal—and even radical—white saviorism. The social gains under an emerging socialist project like the reduction of poverty, literacy, and inequality, as well as the provision of free healthcare, education, and free or affordable housing are not mentioned or are dismissed as irrelevant because these policies supposedly come at the cost of freedom!

    But people in the United States who are still able to think for themselves and have experienced the structural violence of capitalism have gained a new clarity. Sharpened by the revelations of the COVID-19 pandemic—which ripped away the carefully cultivated veneer of social mobility and civilization that hid the ugly inner workings of capitalism—they have discovered their individual experiences of exploitation and fear are shared by millions of people confined by capitalism to a life of toil, stunted humanity, and early death. That is why so many today have turned away from the illusions and corruption of capitalism toward the possibility of organizing a society informed by the values of cooperation, equality, community, peace, and life.

    And that is the fear of the denizens of death. Joe Biden can caution Cuba not to “crack down” on protesters with a straight face. The same Joe Biden whose failure to defend democracy in Haiti created the crisis in that country. The same Joe Biden who claimed it was permissible for the Israelis to lob artillery shells into residential neighborhoods in Gaza because the Israeli colonialists had a right to defend themselves against the colonized Palestinians they were oppressing. And the same Joe Biden who has been silent on the over 70 deaths during the recent national strike at the hands of Colombian security forces, who have been armed and trained by the United States.

    The Cuban revolution has survived 62 years of consistent subversion and outright attacks from the United States and its white-supremacist colonial allies. The revolution has nothing to be ashamed of. It has been a beacon of hope and a model for millions around the world. That Cuba needs to defend itself against capitalism and against the billions of people around the world living in abject poverty is absurd.

    It is capitalism that degrades and destroys Mother Earth. It is capitalism that transforms water into a commodity, food into a luxury, education into an impossibility and basic healthcare into a distant dream. The colonial-capitalist system is responsible for millions dying in genocidal wars. It created race and perpetuates white supremacy. It is U.S. and European state policies in the form of sanctions that deny peoples and nations medicines in the midst of a pandemic. It is the rapacious greed of capitalists and the warmongering states they control that have imposed inhumane conditions on poor states, which has made it impossible to pay back the odious loans they often had been forced to assume. This situation creates devastating consequences for their people. Resources cannot be devoted to providing healthcare, education, housing, a clean environment, food, and a means to a living because the people’s resources must be used to pay bankers in the West.

    This is not theoretical, but a fact. This is the reality of a capitalist world.

    But across this capitalist world, the people are fighting back. They are taking their histories into their own hands. That is the threat of nations like Venezuela and Cuba. That is why Western capitalist nations slander China and attempt to mobilize their populations for the possibility of war. China has exposed what can be accomplished with central planning and a rational allocation of the people’s resources to address human needs.

    To confuse the populations and mobilize them against their own interests, the capitalists deploy not only their traditional liberal and conservative ideologues. They let loose the social-imperialist intelligentsia—who are fundamentally anti-communist and Bernsteinian social democratic, at best—to provide a left cover to imperialist intrigue. This intrigue is framed as being in opposition to “authoritarianism,” a term and idea that bourgeois propagandists discovered through focus groups can be used to undermine left projects by mobilizing the sensibilities of the soft, materially corrupted and NGOed latte-left in the United States and Western Europe.

    However, among millions of people in the global South and among the colonized and exploited working classes in global North countries, Cuba and its project will be defended and the call and struggle for socialism will continue. We see the choice. It has always been between the barbarism of the colonial-capitalist North and human freedom and transformation emerging from the South.

    For nationally oppressed and exploited African peoples in the United States, we stand with the people of the South, where revolution is emerging. We will defend Cuba, support Venezuela, demand that North Korea’s sovereignty be respected, struggle against global militarization, and oppose U.S. and Western imperialism without equivocation, apology, or hesitation. We are clear on the enemy because we have seen it up close and personal since 1492.

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    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • “Stop Interfering”: Ethiopia’s Opportunity After the Election

    Despite ongoing violence in the northern region of Tigray, persistent attempts to de-rail the process and cries of catastrophe by western powers (most notably the US) and mainstream media, on the 21 June Ethiopia conducted its first ever democratic elections.

    The mechanics of the election were not perfect, but crucially there were no reports of violence and the (independent) National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) claims that turnout was good. Although some opposition parties complained about the voting process (which the NEBE is investigating), African Union observers found that, the elections were “conducted in an orderly, peaceful and credible manner”.

    Due to conflict or logistical issues around 20% of the country (100 of 547 constituencies) did not take part, with the exception of Tigray these areas will vote in September. The election is a major milestone in the recent history of the country and the movement towards a more democratic form of governance.

    To the surprise of nobody the government (The Prosperity Party), under the leadership of PM Abiy Ahmed, won an overwhelming victory. The full results are yet to be released, but signs suggest the incumbent may have taken all 547 parliamentary seats; however, in a positive move, PM Abiy has said he will invite members of opposition parties to participate in forming a new government. While total dominance is regrettable and unhealthy, it does place responsibility and opportunity firmly with the government, as well as unavoidable accountability.

    Meddling Allies

    The country is beset with a range of serious problems, the task before the government is daunting, the priorities clear. Firstly and essentially, establishing peace – nothing can be achieved unless the ongoing conflict in Tigray between TPLF forces and the military, and ethnic violence in other areas is brought to an end. The humanitarian fall-out of the Tigray war must be urgently addressed: over 131,000 (according to IOM UN Migration) have been displaced in the region, taking the total number of internally displaced persons to over two million, and millions require food aid.

    Overall numbers and intensity of need are disputed; the UN estimates that up to five million people in Tigray are facing starvation, but the Ethiopian government has dismissed such numbers as “alarmist”. Contrary to reports in western media, that federal forces have sabotaged aid convoys, deliveries of food aid made by the World Food Programme (WFO) have been disrupted by TPLF forces inside the region. The deputy prime minister and minister for foreign affairs, Demeke Mekonen, has said that in the first round of humanitarian response “effort was made to reach out to 4.5 million people in the Tigray region through the delivery of food and non-food items. In the second and third rounds, the relief efforts were able to reach out to 5.2 million people.”

    Establishing verifiable, reliable information in a war zone, where access is restricted, is difficult, nigh impossible; it is a mystery how western media and assertive commentators routinely make statements (that circulate and are repeated from one outlet to another until taken as fact) about the situation inside Tigray and other parts of the country without having been there, or in many cases, spoken to people inside the country. A point that is not lost on many Ethiopians.

    The African Union (AU) has launched a commission of inquiry into the conflict, and a joint investigation by Ethiopia’s Human Rights Commission and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) is also underway. Currently an agreed ceasefire is in place in Tigray and TPLF forces are in control of the regional capital Mekelle. If the people of Tigray want to be governed by the TPLF, as it appears they do, then as PM Abiy has suggested, they will soon see if that is a wise decision.

    The welcome lull in fighting may create potential for discussions between the two sides, however distasteful this may be to both government and populace. To the fury of Ethiopians, home and abroad, in addition to sanctions and withholding aid (the US and EU), ‘talks’ are something western powers, most notably the US, have been calling for over past months: In March 2021 Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the House Foreign Relations Committee that “we need to get an independent investigation into what took place there, and we need some kind of…. reconciliation process.” “Reconciliation”  with the TPLF, who terrorized the country for 27 years and are rightly despised throughout Ethiopia?

    In response to US sanctions and lectures the Ethiopian government said, “if such a resolve to meddle in our internal affairs and undermining the century-old bilateral ties continues unabated, the government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia will be forced to reassess its relations with the U.S., which might have implications beyond our bilateral relationship.” The level of condescension and interference displayed by the US and others has angered many Ethiopians.

    The TPLF, regarded by the Ethiopian government and much of the populace as terrorists, were, and apparently remain the favored force of western powers. They ruled Ethiopia from 1992 to 2018 under the guise of a coalition, before collapsing under the weight of sustained protests in 2018. A totalitarian, unforgiving regime the TPLF ruled through fear and ethnic division. Corrupt to the core they syphoned off federal funds, divided communities along ethnic lines, committed state terrorism and Crimes against Humanity in a number of regions to a variety of ethnic groups.

    Western powers supported the TPLF throughout their violent reign, notably the USA and the UK (with money and political legitimacy), and seem intent on levering them back into office and curtailing Ethiopia’s rise as a regional independent power. ‘Stop interfering in a sovereign state’ is the message loud and clear from Ethiopians of all regions, except Tigrayans; a message delivered at protests in Washington DC and at the recent G7 gathering in Britain that went unreported by mainstream media, who focused their coverage solely on the ‘humanitarian situation’ in Tigray (of which they appear to know little), ignoring the passionate cries against interference.

    Mainstream media (including the BBC, CNN, The Guardian – which recently published a widely inaccurate piece about Tigray – Al Jazeera, VOA etc) is rightly regarded as a propaganda tool of western governments. The coverage of the election was broadly negative, slanted to echo the western/US agenda of delay. A key voice in this subversive  effort is well known to Ethiopians; Susan Rice was US ambassador to the UN (2009-2013) and Obama’s national security adviser from 2013-2017. She has been ‘advising’, i.e., lobbying the Biden administration on behalf of the TPLF mafia, who she, and Obama, supported. The US (the worlds biggest arms dealer) appears to now be arming the ‘rebels’, via the military dictatorship of Egypt – the primary western voice-piece in the region.

    Ethiopia’s potential

    Ethiopia is going through a difficult, but potentially exciting time of transition, from serial dictatorship to some form of democracy. A system that observes human rights and allows universal freedoms including freedom of speech, unlike under the TPLF. However, there are a range of disruptive, subversive elements intent on derailing any democratic development, some of which sit firmly within the government and need to be purged. There are also malicious external forces that would see Ethiopia split, and ethnic division run wild: Egypt and Sudan are anxious and, one suspects, shocked by, and envious of, the construction of the Grand Renaissance Dam (the largest in Africa), and of Ethiopia’s potential strength and influence within the region and continent. And, angered by the country’s historic independence – it was never colonized, ejecting the Italians twice, 1896 and 1941 – jealous of its rich, ancient culture (dating to at least 3000BC), and nervous about China’s involvement in the country (and continent), the old European colonial powers and the decaying force of the US, apparently do not want Ethiopia to flourish, and would be happy to keep the country enslaved to western aid, as it was under the TPLF.

    As the country attempts to move forward it needs friends, not nominal allies whose actions are corrupted by self-interest, arrogance and resentment; nations (USA, UK and EU chiefly) that stood by for decades watching the TPLF murder, torture and steal, and declared corrupt elections legitimate. Such voices have little credibility in Ethiopia.

    The Ethiopian people are desperate for change, for peace and stability; they have given The Prosperity Party under the leadership of Abiy Ahmed a huge mandate to govern: as their term in office begins they will be closely watched, by Ethiopians at home and abroad. To unite a country that has been systematically divided over decades will take time, skill and patience. Mistakes will inevitably be made, but if the intent is sound and honesty is demonstrated, trust can be built and divisions will gradually begin to collapse.

    The post “Stop Interfering”: Ethiopia’s Opportunity After the Election first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Fascist Plots: Contemporary Lessons From The 1934 ‘Business Plot’

    Six months ago, on January 6, 2021, a racist mob, incited by outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump, stormed the U.S. Capitol in a chaotic attempt to prevent the congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election results, a necessary step before the inauguration of Joe Biden.

    The assault on the Capitol was led by militarized fascist groups composed of many current or former military and police.[1] Some of the leaders of the organizations involved, such as Enrique Tarrio and Joseph Biggs of the Proud Boys, had direct ties to U.S. intelligence agencies, having served as FBI informants.[2] Only one fifth of Capitol Police were on duty that day, and they were unprepared and under-equipped, even though the U.S. national security state had advance knowledge of the plot.

    The post Fascist Plots: Contemporary Lessons From The 1934 ‘Business Plot’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • United States: Biden continues Trump’s refugee cruelty

    Despite promises made during his election campaign, US President Joe Biden has continued Donald Trump’s inhumane policies towards refugees fleeing horrific conditions south of the border, writes Barry Sheppard

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • The People vs. Mahmoud Abbas: Are the Palestinian Authority’s Days Numbered?

    “The Palestinian Authority’s days are numbered”. This assertion has been oft repeated recently, especially after the torture to death on June 24 of a popular Palestinian activist, Nizar Banat, 42, at the hands of PA security goons in Hebron (Al-Khalil).

    The killing – or ‘assassination’ as some Palestinian rights groups describe it – of Banat, however, is commonplace. Torture in PA prisons is the modus operandi, through which Palestinian interrogators exact ‘confessions’. Palestinian political prisoners in PA custody are usually divided into two main groups: activists who are suspected by Israel of being involved in anti-Israeli occupation activities and others who have been detained for voicing criticism of the PA’s corruption or subservience to Israel.

    In a 2018 report by Human Rights Watch, the group spoke of “dozens of arrests”, carried out by the PA “for critical posts on social media platforms.” Banat fits perfectly into this category, as he was one of the most persistent and outspoken activists, whose many videos and social media posts exposed and embarrassed the PA leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and his ruling Fatah party. Unlike others, Banat named names and called for severe measures against those who squander Palestinian public funds and betray the causes of the Palestinian people.

    Banat has been arrested by PA police several times in the past. In May, gunmen attacked his home, using live bullets, stun grenades and tear gas. He blamed the attacks on Abbas’ Fatah party.

    His last social media campaign was concerned with the almost-expired Covid-19 vaccinations which the PA received from Israel on June 18. Because of public pressure by activists like Banat, the PA was forced to return the Israeli vaccines which, before then, were touted as a positive gesture by Israel’s new Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett.

    When the PA men descended on Banat’s house on June 24, the ferocity of their violence was unprecedented. His cousin, Ammar, spoke of how nearly 25 PA security personnel raided Banat’s house, pepper-sprayed him while in bed and “began beating him with iron bars and wooden batons.” After stripping him naked, they dragged him into a vehicle. An hour and a half later, the family learned the fate of their son through a WhatsApp group.

    Despite initial denial, under pressure from thousands of protesters throughout the West Bank, the PA was forced to admit that Banat’s death was “unnatural.” The PA’s Justice Minister, Mohammed al-Shalaldeh, told Palestine TV that an initial medical report indicated that Banat was subjected to physical violence.

    This supposed explosive revelation was meant to demonstrate that the PA is willing to examine and take responsibility for its action. However, this is simply untrue as, one, the PA has never taken responsibility for its past violence and, two, violence is the cornerstone of the PA’s very existence. Arbitrary arrests, torture and suppression of peaceful protests are synonymous with PA security as numerous reports by rights groups, whether in Palestine or internationally, have indicated.

    So, is it true that “the Palestinian Authority’s days are numbered?” To consider this question, it is important to examine the rationale behind the PA’s very existence, and also to compare that initial purpose to what has transpired in the following years.

    The PA was founded in 1994 as a transitional national authority with the purpose of guiding the Palestinian people through the process of, ultimately, national liberation, following the ‘final status negotiations’, set to conclude by the end of 1999. Many years have elapsed, since, without a single political achievement to the PA’s name. This does not mean that the PA, from the viewpoint of its leadership and Israel, has been a total failure, as the PA security continued to fulfill the most important role entrusted to it: security coordination with the Israeli occupation; i.e., protecting illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank and doing Israel’s dirty bidding in PA-run autonomous Palestinian areas. In exchange, the PA received billions of dollars from US-led ‘donor countries’ and from Palestinian taxes collected on its behalf by Israel.

    That same paradigm is still at work, but for how much longer? Following the Palestinian revolt in May, the Palestinian people have exhibited unprecedented national unity and resolve that have transcended factional lines, and have daringly called for the removal of Abbas from power, rightly linking the Israeli occupation with the PA’s corruption.

    Since the mass protests in May, the PA’s official discourse has been marred by confusion, desperation and panic. PA leaders, including Abbas, tried to position themselves as revolutionary leaders. They spoke of ‘resistance’, ‘martyrs’, and even ‘revolution’, while simultaneously renewing their commitment to the ‘peace process’ and the American agenda in Palestine.

    As Washington resumed its financial support of Abbas’ Authority after it was disrupted by former US President Donald Trump, the PA hoped to return to the status quo, that of relative stability, financial abundance and political relevance. The Palestinian people, however, seem to have moved on, as demonstrated in the mass protests – always met with violent response by PA security throughout the West Bank, including Ramallah, the seat of the PA’s power.

    Even the slogans have changed. Following Banat’s murder, thousands of protesters in Ramallah, representing all strands of Palestinian society, called on Abbas, 85, to leave, referring to his security goons as ‘baltajieh’ and ‘shabeha’ – or thugs – terms borrowed from Arab protesters during the early years of various Middle Eastern revolts.

    This change in discourse points to a critical shift in the relationship between ordinary Palestinians – emboldened and ready to stage a mass revolt against Israeli occupation and colonialism – and their quisling, corrupt and self-serving so-called leadership. It is important to note that no aspect of this Palestinian Authority enjoys an iota of democratic credentials. Indeed, on April 30, Abbas canceled the general election that was scheduled to be held in Palestine in May, based on flimsy excuses.

    The PA has proven to be an obstacle in the face of Palestinian freedom, with no credibility among Palestinians. It clings on to power only because of US and Israeli support. Whether this Authority’s days are numbered or not, depends on whether the Palestinian people prove that their collective will is stronger than the PA and its benefactors. Historical experience has taught us that the Palestinian people will eventually prevail.

    The post The People vs. Mahmoud Abbas: Are the Palestinian Authority’s Days Numbered? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Separatist or radically inclusive? What NZ’s He Puapua report really says about the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

    ANALYSIS: By Dominic O’Sullivan, Charles Sturt University

    For many New Zealanders, He Puapua came shrouded in controversy from the moment it became public knowledge earlier this year.

    Released only when opposition parties learned of its existence, the report on “realising” the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was labelled a “separatist” plan by National Party leader Judith Collins.

    “Quite clearly there is a plan,” Collins said, “it is being implemented, and we are going to call it out.”

    But He Puapua is not a plan and it’s not government policy. It’s a collection of ideas drafted by people who are not members of the government. To understand its real significance we need to examine how and why it was commissioned in the first place.

    Self-determination for all
    He Puapua’s origins can be traced back to 2007 when the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, confirming the human rights affirmed in all previous international declarations, covenants and agreements belonged to Indigenous peoples as much as anybody else.

    It confirmed the right to self-determination belongs to everybody. Thus, in Aotearoa New Zealand, Pakeha have the right to self-determination, and so do Māori.

    At the time, 143 UN member states voted for the declaration, including the major European colonial powers of Britain, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands.

    There were 11 abstentions, but four states voted against — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. They were especially concerned about the scope of Article 28(2) which deals with compensation for confiscated or other dishonestly acquired land:

    Unless otherwise freely agreed upon by the peoples concerned, compensation shall take the form of lands, territories and resources equal in quality, size and legal status or of monetary compensation or other appropriate redress.

    The He Puapua report
    The He Puapua report. Image: OIA

    New Zealand was worried this article would justify returning much more Māori land than was already occurring under te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi) settlements.

    Future aspirations
    However, the phrase “other appropriate redress” is open to less restrictive interpretation. In 2010, the National-led government decided the declaration did not threaten freehold private property rights. Then Prime Minister John Key argued:

    While the declaration is non-binding, it both affirms accepted rights and establishes future aspirations. My objective is to build better relationships between Māori and the Crown, and I believe that supporting the declaration is a small but significant step in that direction.

    Australia, Canada and the United States also changed their positions. In 2019, New Zealand’s Labour-led government established a working group to advise on developing a plan for achieving the aims of the UN declaration. These aims are not just concerned with land rights, but also with things like health, education, economic growth, broadcasting, criminal justice and political participation.

    Not government policy
    He Puapua, the group’s report, was provided to the government in 2019. However, the government didn’t accept a recommendation that the report be promptly released for public discussion.

    According to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, this was due to the risk it could be “misconstrued” as government policy.

    Nevertheless, it has now been released and the government appears to have accepted the recommendation that Māori should be actively involved in drafting a plan.

    Collins also objected to the report’s description of this involvement as “co-design”. What she can’t say, however, is that including people in policy making is separatist. Inclusion is an essential democratic practice.

    He Puapua also uses co-design to describe Māori involvement in the delivery of social services and the protection of the natural environment. This involvement isn’t new, but He Puapua says it should be strengthened.

    And while there may be arguments against this kind of inclusivity (for example, co-design is a weaker authority than the rangatiratanga affirmed in te Tiriti), calling it separatist is an error of fact.

    Securing rangatiratanga
    Rangatiratanga describes an independent political authority and is consistent with international human rights norms. It has gradually influenced public administration in New Zealand under successive governments over more than 40 years.

    He Puapua says there are human rights arguments for strengthening and securing rangatiratanga.

    In fact, the UN declaration may help clarify how independent authority might work in practice, especially in the context of the Crown’s right to govern — which the declaration also affirms.

    Separatism versus sameness
    He Puapua’s potentially most controversial idea involves creating “a senate or upper house in Parliament that could scrutinise legislation for compliance with te Tiriti and/or the Declaration”.

    There are reasons to think this won’t get far. The government has already rejected it, and the idea was raised in just one paragraph of a 106-page report. But its inclusive intent shows why “separatism versus sameness” is the wrong way to frame the debate.

    What it means to ensure all, and not just some, people may exercise the right to self-determination requires deeper thought. In that sense, He Puapua might usefully be read in conjunction with British Columbia’s draft action plan on the UN declaration.

    Released only last month for public consultation, the plan coincided with the Canadian federal parliament passing legislation committing to implement the declaration. The British Columbian plan addressed four themes:

    • self-determination and inherent right of self-government
    • title and rights of Indigenous peoples
    • ending Indigenous-specific racism and discrimination
    • social, cultural and economic well-being.

    He Puapua in practice
    Some of the plan’s specific measures are not relevant to New Zealand and some may be contested. But its important general principles draw out some of the basic attributes of liberal inclusivity.

    Those include ensuring people can live according to their own values, manage their own resources, participate in public life free of racism and discrimination, and define for themselves what it means to enjoy social, cultural and economic well-being.

    British Columbia’s far-reaching proposals can inform New Zealand’s debate about what He Puapua’s proposals might mean in practice.

    'We Are All Here To Stay' cover,'
    ‘We Are All Here To Stay,’ by Dominic O’Sullivan. Image: APR

    As I try to show in my book ‘We Are All Here to Stay’: citizenship, sovereignty and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, there are ways state authority can be arranged to reject the colonial assumption that some people are less worthy of the right to self-determination than others.

    This requires radical inclusivity.The Conversation

    Dr Dominic O’Sullivan, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The G7 and the Orwellian Twin Tropes Propagandising US Global Domination

    During the recent G7 summit the corporate media went into pro-US propaganda overdrive.  The BBC’s Global News channel – or UK global propaganda outlet – has spent the years since the Iraq War spinning the US Military’s assault on the Black and Brown homelands of the world as ‘America spreading democracy’.  Media Lens has responded to the brutal consequences, condemning BBC Paul Wood’s misrepresentation “The coalition came to Iraq in the first place to bring democracy and human rights” (22 December 2005).  Previously, BBC defence Correspondent Jonathan Marcus also historically spun American Military aggression as “the promotion of democracy throughout the Muslim world” (5 December 2002).   In the near two decades since Iraq, consecutive BBC Political Editors Andrew Marr and Nick Robinson have also regularly spouted this propaganda position.  And this ongoing orthodoxy was parroted ad-infinitum during the summit by the rest of the corporate media.  The other trope repeatedly invoked was that of a supposed transatlantic ‘special relationship’.

    Even leaving aside the death toll and victims of torture resulting from historically recent US militarism, for America to actually spread democracy it would have to be one itself.  Reflecting the genealogical critique of Philosopher-Historian Michel Foucault – that the mechanisms of power rarely disappear but instead evolve – the US reality is that much of its slavery-era anti-democratic oppressions are still intact, albeit in mutated form.

    In the aftermath of the Civil War, African-Americans were driven out of the public sphere by a violent campaign of lynching, torture and intimidation known as ‘disenfranchisement’.  This deliberate political exclusion persisted into the 1960s in the practice of murdering voter registration activists, some of which was fictionalised in the pro-federal establishment film Mississippi Burning (1988).  Currently, this agenda manifests itself in ‘Voter Suppression’ tactics.   Poll Stations are closed down in Black and Latino areas, resulting in reports of 6+ hour waits, to cast a ballot – as exampled in the infamous experience of 102 years-old Desline Victor.  Impediments to voting are also created by new regulations which refuse to recognise forms of ID common among Black and Latino groups, therefore blocking their attempts at voting.

    In the academic publication The New Jim Crow (2010), Michele Alexander documents a similar oppressive continuity, recording that there are more Black Americans in the US penal apparatus than were held in slavery in the 1850s.  Given the privatisation of US Prisons, much of this captivity is for profit, and can also similarly involve prisoners being used as cheap labour.  In most US states prisoners lose the right to vote, so once again they can’t take democratic action, even against their own caged exploitation.

    There is also the issue of taking Black lives with impunity of which the Black Lives Matter movement rightly complains.  Much of this begins with the historic lynching tradition.  Given often the complicity of authority figures – sheriffs, police officers, local judges, handing victims over to lynch mobs – this practice has historically been relabelled as supposedly respectable ‘extra-judicial killing’.  Building on this, in recent years many states have passed ‘Stand Your Ground, Shoot First Laws’.  There have been attempts to excuse current killings of many Black youths such as, Trayvon Martin and Jordon Davis on just this legal provision.

    Those wondering about the relevance of these practices for foreign policy need only reflect on why examples of the US historic lynching postcard resemble so closely the human trophy photography to come out of Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay.  One of Guantanamo’s interrogators was “Lieutenant Richard Zuley, a Chicago police detective in the Navy Reserve… During his career with the Chicago Police Department, Zuley conducted police interrogations primarily on Black Chicagoans. These interrogations involved the use of torture techniques similar to those he would later use at Guantánamo Bay.”  Again echoing the issue of institutional continuity, the  American Military’s practice of assassinating those globally, whose arguments of US racist-imperialism it finds too inconvenient to put on trial, is similarly once again spun as merely ‘extra judicial killing’.

    Neither claims of ‘America spreading democracy’ or the ‘special relationship’ stand much scrutiny, given that for generations Britain has been welcoming those seeking refuge from US racial and political oppression.   Therefore the real predominant special relationship that the British general public actually embraced has been with Americans, who were the US establishment’s victims.

    The singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson enjoyed his time in the UK in the early 20th C, whereas in his own country he was subjected to racial and political persecution, predominantly by Federal authorities.

    Post-war footage of African-American Rhythm-&-Blues performers freely plying their trade in Britain, shows the artists in occasional off-stage anxiety as this was the first time they’d been in un-segregated spaces, sharing train carriages and the like with white citizens.  Some of this footage can be found in the first episode of a previous BBC arts documentary Blues Britannia (2011), which demonstrates the ongoing self-conscious lengths the BBC’s Global News channel attempts in re-branding American establishment traditions as ‘democratic’.

    Also, many American artists objecting to working-class exploitation and oppression came to Britain fleeing the political persecution of US McCarthyism.  The composer and harmonica player Larry Adler was one of these.  While here he produced the score for the popular UK film Genevieve (1953).  Two decades later he told the New York Times how even his foreign work was treated under McCarthyism.

    Remember the film ‘Genevieve?’ I composed and played the music for that. Six weeks before it opened at the Sutton in New York a print was requested without my name. My music was nominated for an Oscar. As no composer’s name was on the credits they nominated Muir Mathieson, who conducted the orchestra. I made the fact known to the Academy but no correction was made and my name never restored.

    The Adventures of Robin Hood was one of UK television’s most successful exports of the late 50’s and early 60’s.  However, its producer Hannah Weinstein and previously successful Hollywood writing team including Ring Lardner Jr. (a joint Oscar recipient), Ian Hunter, Robert Lees, Waldo Salt, Adrian Scott and Editor Howard Koch (another joint Oscar recipient), were fleeing the McCarthyite Black List.  In 1990 a fiction film – Fellow Traveller (1990) director Philip Saville, starring Ron Silver, Daniel J Travanti – was made largely inspired by their situation.  The production company back then was ‘Screen Two’ a division of the BBC.

    While largely hated by large parts of America, in the 1960s and 70’s Muhammad Ali, similar to Robeson, enjoyed respite in the UK.  Part of Ali’s fondness for Britain was that when stripped of his World title by US authorities, a little known Oxfordshire based Irish former bareknuckle fighter Paddy Monaghan, put together a petition demanding his reinstatement.  Even though only publicised by a working-class, unknown, un-resourced figure, this petition got 22,224 signatures in the UK.  You’d hope given Ali’s relationship to Britain, and that images of the resulting friendship that occurred between the two men can be found in the BBC’s photo-archive, that this alongside the history of McCarthyism, would inform BBC News/Current-Affairs spin on US democracy.  Sadly not!

    Significantly the UK has now gone from the country that used to welcome those seeking refuge and relief from American oppression, to one that on US government insistence imprisons and – according the UN’s Special Rapporteur Nils Melzer and medical journal The Lancet – tortures Julian Assange (Assange is now an absented non-person in corporate media coverage).  This turnaround has occurred due to the elitist subversion of Party democracy in the UK, and because the corporate news media – as demonstrated by BBC News output – is willing in the Orwellian manner of Winston Smith at the Ministry of Truth, to absent and rewrite, its own Arts, Historical, and Archive material.

    The origins of the constructed ‘special relationship’ narrative, owes much to the correspondence and occasional friendship between a retired Winston Churchill and President Kennedy.  And also to the fact, that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher launched their attacks on the post-war consensus in their countries, from largely shared agendas and at around the same time.  Actually UK Labour was historically to the Left of even US Democrats.   Labour’s 1960s Prime Minister Harold Wilson could not expect his Party to accept following America into Vietnam – so there was no all across the political spectrum ‘special relationship,’ and very few instances where Britain has ever been able to say to the US ‘don’t do x…”

    The notion of a ‘special relationship’ was infamously remanufactured when Neoliberal New Labour Foreign Secretary Jack Straw tried to market the war on the Iraqi people on the basis of the heady days of world war alliances.  This was quite a reboot.   America aided Britain’s fight against the eugenicist Nazis by providing racially segregated regiments.  Historian Graham Smith (When Jim Crow met John Bull – 1987), notes than when American forces arrived in Britain they attempted – thankfully unsuccessfully in some cases – to impose segregation on the UK social spaces that GIs might visit.  Owners/landlords of pubs, dance halls and cafes were often appalled both by the racism and the threat of being posted off-limits to service personnel, at a time of great economic hardship, if they refused.  This was not new.  Smith cites similar diktats in WWI given to French Authorities about not ‘Spoiling the negroes” (Ibid., page 10).

    Race issues also threatened the judicial independence of British sovereignty.  During the Second World War, 11 African-American GIs were executed for rape on UK soil. And rape was not a death penalty crime under British law.  It’s questionable how many – if any – of these soldiers committed this crime because American authorities of the time viewed relations between black men and white women as a sex crime in itself.  The case of Leroy Henry particularly incensed the British public. He’d been having a relationship with a local white woman before being arrested for rape and having a confession beaten out of him, resulting in a death sentence. Indicative of the British low opinion of American justice and the solidarity later to be shown Muhammad Ali decades later, the people of the city of Bath put together a 30,000-strong petition, which got his sentence commuted.

    White Americans also brought racial violence and lynching practices to UK shores.  The wartime memory of many British Tommies is fighting in UK dance halls and elsewhere alongside Black GIs against White American racists.  Victims of violence also included British Colonial Servicemen and volunteer Colonial Technicians (recognition of this in some BBC archives does not impact on its ‘US spreading democracy’ news narrative).  West Indies cricketing legend Learie Constantine was in charge of the Caribbean technical volunteers, and was subsequently given a peerage for his war service and sporting achievements.  He wrote the following letter of complaint to the British government.

    I cannot lay sufficient emphasis on the bitterness being created amongst the technicians by these attacks on coloured British subjects by white Americans … I am … loth to believe that coloured subjects of the Empire who are here on vital work could be attacked at random and at will and pleasure of these white American soldiers without the means of redress … I have lived in this country for a long time and claim many friends among the white population and I shiver to think that I am liable to attack by these men if I am seen in the company of my friends. I suggest something be done urgently, as I can foresee a crisis.

    Corporate media apologists might question how much this experience was part of public consciousness.  However, the middle section of the film Yanks (1979, director John Schlesinger) features an attempted dance hall lynching of a Black GI who’d been seen dancing with a white woman.  And this film is primarily a wartime set romantic vehicle for Richard Gere, not a piece of political agit-prop.  There were also similar phenomena internationality, including the Battle of Manners Street, in New Zealand where white American servicemen attempted to violently segregate a Services Club to the exclusion of local Maoris.  Race and the US wartime presence were also believed to be contributing factors to the two days of rioting in Australia known as the Battle of Brisbane.

    Post-war even in America it was impossible to sell in the cultural market place, the US establishment as a credible site of authority.  The Black figure offered as an idealised son-in-law of a middle-class white family in the film, Guess who’s coming to dinner (1967) is not a member of the US establishment but a doctor working for a UN based organisation.  Marvel Comics when starting the title Nick Fury, Agent of Shield, originally made Shield a UN based organisation, rather than US.  The central protagonist of The President’s Analyst (1967) is on the run from the world’s intelligence agencies, the worst of which are the CIA and FBI.  Indicative of the fear of oppression of US authorities the producers did not even feel safe in using the actual acronyms of US intelligence agencies.

    When Tony Blair threw his weight behind America’s foreign wars, he did so flying in the face of this history and the cultural sensibilities it generated.  He also threw into reverse Britain’s position as a post-war decolonising power.  He subverted the Labour Party’s historical identity as a pro-workers organisation with a socialist agenda by aligning it with the right wing US Republican Party. He also subverted Labours’ historic anti-imperialist sensibility, which kept Britain under Harold Wilson’s Labour out of Vietnam.  Perhaps most shocking for older Labour traditionalists and Black Britons, he took the UK’s intelligence and military sectors and forced them into relations with the US security services, that had historically tried to break the Civil Rights Movement, drive Martin Luther King to suicide, fed details of his sex life to the right wing press, and which had an assassination programme of American Black Liberationists entitled COINTELPRO.

    Blair chose to support America’s Iraq War 5 years after arguably the worst lynching in US history –  in 1998, James Byrd, “a Black man in Jasper, Texas was ‘lynched by dragging‘,” behind a pick-up truck until his body disintegrated.  Three years after the start of the Iraq War, in Jenna, Louisiana “whites responded to black students sitting under the ‘white tree’ at their school by hanging three nooses from the tree.”  And America’s post-war civil war Black Lives Matter crisis has still continued to manifest itself.  As for Presidential and federal authority, this was also 5 years since Bill Clinton bombed a medical manufacturer in Sudan.  9/11 resulted in 3000 American deaths and many more injured.  Clinton’s bombing is credited with “several tens of thousands of deaths” of Sudanese civilians caused by a medicine shortage” by German Ambassador Werner Daum and others.

    Just as no one in the corporate media questions the death toll and torture of current US-led imperialism, no one also scrutinises the nature of just what has been unleashed on the world, or the massive ideological reboot needed to sustain it.  Instead, we get ‘America spreading democracy’ and the ‘special relationship.

    The post The G7 and the Orwellian Twin Tropes Propagandising US Global Domination first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A Remarkable Silence: Media Blackout After Key Witness Against Assange Admits Lying

    As we have pointed out since Media Lens began in 2001, a fundamental feature of corporate media is propaganda by omission. Over the past week, a stunning example has highlighted this core property once again.

    A major witness in the US case against Julian Assange has just admitted fabricat­ing key accusati­ons in the indictment against the Wikileaks founder. These dramatic revelations emerged in an extensive article published on 26 June in Stundin, an Icelandic newspaper. The paper interviewed the witness, Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, a former WikiLeaks volunteer, who admitted that he had made false allegations against Assange after being recruited by US authorities. Thordarson, who has several convictions for sexual abuse of minors and financial fraud, began working with the US Department of Justice and the FBI after receiving a promise of immunity from prosecution. He even admitted to continuing his crime spree while working with the US authorities.

    Last summer, US officials had presented an updated version of their indictment against Assange to Magistrate Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser at the Old Bailey in London. Key to this update was the assertion that Assange had instructed Thordarson to commit computer intrusions or hacking in Iceland.

    As the Stundin article reported:

    ‘The aim of this addition to the indictment was apparently to shore up and support the conspiracy charge against Assange in relation to his interactions with Chelsea Manning. Those occurred around the same time he resided in Iceland and the authors of the indictment felt they could strengthen their case by alleging he was involved in illegal activity there as well. This activity was said to include attempts to hack into the computers of members of [the Icelandic] parliament and record their conversations.

    ‘In fact, Thordarson now admits to Stundin that Assange never asked him to hack or access phone recordings of MPs.’

    Judge Baraitser’s ruling on 4 January, 2021 was against extradition to the US. But she did so purely on humanitarian grounds concerning Assange’s health, suicide risk and the extreme conditions he would face in confinement in US prisons.

    The Stundin article continued:

    ‘With regards to the actual accusations made in the indictment Baraitser sided with the arguments of the American legal team, including citing the specific samples from Iceland which are now seriously called into question.

    ‘Other misleading elements can be found in the indictment, and later reflected in the Magistrate’s judgement, based on Thordarson’s now admitted lies.’

    The Stundin article further details Thordarson’s lies and deceptions, including mispresenting himself as an official representative of WikiLeaks while a volunteer in 2010-2011, even impersonating Assange, and embezzling more than $50,000 from the organisation.

    By August 2011, Thordarson was being pursued by WikiLeaks staff trying to locate the missing funds. In fact, Thordarson had arranged for the money to be sent to his private bank account by forging an email in Assange’s name. That month, Thordarson sought a way out by contacting the US Embassy in Iceland, offering to be an informant in the case against Assange.

    Stundin noted:

    ‘within 48 hrs a private jet landed in Reykjavik with around eight [US] agents who quickly set up meetings with Thordarson and with people from the Icelandic State Prosecutors office and the State Police Commissioner.’

    But it turned out that the US officers did not have permission from the Icelandic government to operate in the country and Ögmundur Jónasson, then Iceland’s minister of interior, ordered them to leave. Meanwhile, the FBI were allegedly complicit in DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks on the websites of several Iceland government institutions. The FBI had then approached Icelandic authorities, promising to assist them in preventing any future such attacks. In reality, the approach was a ruse to fool Iceland into cooperation in an attempt to entrap Assange.

    Jónasson said that the Americans:

    ‘were trying to use things here [in Iceland] and use people in our country to spin a web, a cobweb that would catch Julian Assange.’

    The US officials left Iceland, flying to Denmark, but taking with them their new informant and ‘star witness’, Thordarson.

    Stundin reported:

    ‘The meeting in Denmark was the first of a few where the FBI enthusiastically embraced the idea of co-operation with Thordarson. He says they wanted to know everything about WikiLeaks, including physical security of staff. They took material he had gathered, including data he had stolen from WikiLeaks employees and even planned to send him to England with a wire. Thordarson claimed in interviews he had refused that particular request. It was probably because he was not welcomed anymore as he knew WikiLeaks people had found out, or were about to firmly establish, that he had embezzled funds from the organization.’

    However:

    ‘After months of collaboration the FBI seem to have lost interest. At about the same time charges were piling up against Thordarson with the Icelandic authorities for massive fraud, forgeries and theft on the one hand and for sexual violations against underage boys he had tricked or forced into sexual acts on the other.

    ‘After long investigations Thordarson was sentenced in 2013 and 2014 and received relatively lenient sentences as the judge took into account that he changed his plea at court and pleaded guilty to all counts.’

    The article continued:

    ‘Incarceration did not seem to have an intended effect of stopping Thordarson from continuing his life of crime. It actually took off and expanded in extent and scope in 2019 when the Trump-era DoJ [Department of Justice] decided to revisit him, giving him a formal status as witness in the prosecution against Julian Assange and granting him immunity in return from any prosecution.’

    A ‘Sociopath’ Who ‘Lied To Get Immunity’

    Under President Obama, the US Department of Justice had decided against indicting Assange, despite devoting huge resources to building a case against him. The stumbling block was ‘The New York Times Problem’: the difficulty in distinguishing between WikiLeaks publications and NYT publications of the same material. In other words, prosecuting WikiLeaks would pose grave First Amendment risks for even ‘respectable’ media such as the NYT.

    But this changed after Trump took office. Stundin explained:

    ‘President Donald Trump’s appointed Attorney general William Barr did not share these concerns, and neither did his Trump-appointed deputy Kellen S. Dwyer. Barr, who faced severe criticism for politicizing the DoJ on behalf of the president, got the ball rolling on the Assange case once again. Their argument was that if they could prove he was a criminal rather than a journalist the charges would stick, and that was where Thordarson’s testimony would be key.

    ‘In May 2019 Thordarson was offered an immunity deal, signed by Dwyer, that granted him immunity from prosecution based on any information on wrong doing they had on him. The deal, seen in writing by Stundin, also guarantees that the DoJ would not share any such information to other prosecutorial or law enforcement agencies. That would include Icelandic ones, meaning that the Americans will not share information on crimes he might have committed threatening Icelandic security interests – and the Americans apparently had plenty of those but had over the years failed to share them with their Icelandic counterparts.’

    Thordarson’s offer of an immunity deal came the month following Assange’s forced removal from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, most likely with US connivance, and subsequent incarceration in the high-security Belmarsh prison.

    It is not clear from the Stundin article why Thordarson has now decided to come clean. But the Stundin journalists noted that a psychiatric assessment that had been submitted to an Icelandic court before he was sentenced diagnosed him as a sociopath:

    ‘incapable of remorse but still criminally culpable for his actions. He was assessed to be able to understand the basic difference between right and wrong. He just did not seem to care.’

    In a new blog piece discussing these revelations, Craig Murray, who had reported from the Old Bailey during the Assange extradition hearing, referred back to the final day of proceedings. Magistrate Baraitser had refused to accept an affidavit from Assange’s solicitor Gareth Peirce addressing the updated indictment on the grounds it was out of time:

    ‘The affidavit explained that the defence had been unable to respond to the new accusations in the United States government’s second superseding indictment, because these wholly new matters had been sprung on them just six weeks before the hearing resumed on 8 September 2020.

    ‘The defence had not only to gather evidence from Iceland, but had virtually no access to Assange to take his evidence and instructions, as he was effectively in solitary confinement in Belmarsh. The defence had requested an adjournment to give them time to address the new accusations, but this adjournment had been refused by Baraitser.

    ‘She now refused to accept Gareth Peirce’s affidavit setting out these facts.’

    Even before the Stundin article was published five days ago, Thordarson’s testimony should have already been recognised as suspect, to say the least. As WikiLeaks noted last year:

    ‘The “Star Witness” of the new superseding indictment is a diagnosed sociopath/ convicted conman/ child abuser/ FBI informant who was found guilty in Iceland of impersonating #Assange’

    The recent Stundin revelations that the updated US indictment against Assange rests on now-admitted lies means that the FBI case is demonstrably a travesty.

    US policy analyst Gareth Porter noted:

    ‘It’s now clearer than ever before that the U.S. indictment of #Assange is based on fraud. A key accuser admits he lied to the help set up Assange. How much evidence does the Justice Department need stop this criminal abuse of power?’

    As the famous US whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted:

    ‘This is the end of the case against Julian Assange.’

    Or, as journalist Glenn Greenwald followed up, more realistically:

    ‘It should be.’

    Jennifer Robinson, a human rights attorney who has been advising Assange and WikiLeaks since 2010, told Democracy Now:

    ‘The factual basis for this case has completely fallen apart.’

    Robinson pointed out:

    ‘the evidence from Thordarson that was given to the United States and formed the basis of the second, superseding indictment, including allegations of hacking, has now been, on his own admission, demonstrated to have been fabricated [our emphasis]. Not only did he misrepresent his access to Julian Assange and to WikiLeaks and his association with Julian Assange, he has now admitted that he made up and falsely misrepresented to the United States that there was any association with WikiLeaks and any association with hacking.

    ‘So, this is just the latest revelation to demonstrate why the U.S. case should be dropped.’

    Robinson expanded:

    ‘it’s significant that the initial indictment for Julian Assange related only to the publications back in 2010, 2011, the Chelsea Manning publications. It was a second, superseding indictment, introduced by the Trump administration, which was based upon Thordarson’s evidence [our emphasis]. Now, any lawyer and even any layperson would be looking at evidence from a convicted felon, who had been convicted of forgery, fraud and sexual abuse allegations associated with minors. That is a problematic source. Now we have him admitting that he lied to the FBI about that evidence. This raises serious concerns about the integrity of this investigation and the integrity of this criminal prosecution, and serious questions ought to be being asked within the Department of Justice about this prosecution and the fact that it is continuing at all.’

    The headline of the article accompanying Robinson’s interview put it succinctly:

    ‘U.S. Case Against Julian Assange Falls Apart, as Key Witness Says He Lied to Get Immunity’

    Tumbleweed In The ‘MSM’

    But all of this is seemingly of no interest to the ‘mainstream’ media. We have not found a single report by any ‘serious’ UK broadcaster or newspaper. Journalist Matt Kennard, head of investigations at Declassified UK, observed fully two days after the story broke:

    ‘I don’t think one US or UK newspaper has reported this. The free press is incredible.’

    Several days on, the ‘mainstream’ media silence is truly remarkable. As we remarked via Twitter:

    ‘The discipline, or blindness, to ignore awkward facts is a reliable feature of corporate “journalism”’

    Of course, it is possible that we have missed something, somewhere in the ‘MSM’; perhaps a brief item at 3am on the BBC World Service. But in a sane world, Stundin’s revelations about a key Assange witness – that Thordarson lied in exchange for immunity from prosecution – would have been headline news everywhere, with extensive media coverage on BBC News at Six and Ten, ITV News, Channel 4 News, front-page stories in the Times, Telegraph, the Guardian and more. The silence is quite extraordinary; and disturbing. Caitlin Johnstone described it as a ‘weird, creepy media blackout’:

    ‘not one major western media outlet outside of Iceland has reported on this massive and entirely legitimate news story. A search brings up coverage by Icelandic media, by Russian media, and by smaller western outlets like Democracy Now, World Socialist Website, Consortium News, Zero Hedge and some others, but as of this writing this story has been completely ignored by all major outlets who are ostensibly responsible for informing the public in the western world.’

    Johnstone continued:

    ‘It’s not that those outlets have been ignoring Assange altogether these last few days either. Reuters recently published an interview with Assange’s fiance Stella Moris. Evening Standard has a recent article out on Assange’s plans to marry Moris in Belmarsh, as does Deutsche Welle. It’s just this one story in particular that they’ve been blacking out completely.’

    She offered an explanation for the silence across the media:

    ‘they’re all generally following the lead of just a handful of top-tier publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian. If just those few outlets decide to ignore a major news story that’s inconvenient for the powerful (either by persuasion, infiltration or by their own initiative), then no one else will either. As far as the media-consuming public is concerned, it’s like the major news story never happened at all.’

    More fundamentally:

    ‘Western mass media outlets are propaganda. They are owned and controlled by wealthy people in coordination with the secretive government agencies tasked with preserving the world order upon which the media-owning plutocrats have built their kingdoms, and their purpose is to manipulate the way the mainstream public thinks, acts and votes into alignment with the agendas of the ruling class.

    ‘You see this propaganda in the way things are reported, but you also see it in the way things are not reported. Entire news stories can be completely redacted from mainstream attention if they are sufficiently inconvenient for the mechanisms of empire, or only allowed in via platforms like Tucker Carlson Tonight and thereby tainted and spun as ridiculous right-wing conspiracy theories.’

    Our polite challenges to Paul Royall, editor of BBC News at Six and Ten, and Katharine Viner, editor of the Guardian, went unanswered, despite multiple retweets and follow-up queries by other Twitter users. Of course, this is the standard non-response of even the ‘best’ state-corporate media to uncomfortable questions.

    As we have often observed, the establishment media relentlessly warn of the insidious nature of ‘fake news’: a claim that does have a seed of validity. But it is the state-corporate media themselves who are the primary purveyors of fake news. As Tim Coles, author of ‘Real Fake News’, commented:

    ‘Whenever people in power tell you that fake news is undermining democracy, they really mean that alternative sources of information are challenging their grip on power.’

    In fact, the most dangerous component of ‘MSM’ fake news is arguably propaganda by omission. In ostensible ‘democracies’, the public cannot make informed decisions, and take appropriate action, when the crimes of ruling elites are kept hidden by a complicit media.

    The post A Remarkable Silence: Media Blackout After Key Witness Against Assange Admits Lying first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Afghanistan Evacuation

    The Biden administration announced that it will accelerate plans to relocate Afghans who worked with the U.S. military. Their situation demands the most urgent response possible.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.