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Category: United States

  • Seize the Moment: End the War in Ukraine!

    The Peace In Ukraine Coalition is cautiously optimistic about emerging possibilities for ending the war in Ukraine. It is a good thing that the U.S. and Russia are talking. An end to the hostility between the two nuclear superpowers would bring a sigh of relief to people all over the world.

    We do not know if the Trump administration, Russia and Ukraine will be able to achieve a lasting peace in Ukraine. We encourage diplomacy, however, rather than fear it. We want the killing to stop as soon as possible. For three years we have been calling for a ceasefire, negotiations and an end to US weapons shipments that fuel the war. We are encouraged that in this moment there is a possibility of real progress towards peace.

    Successive U.S. administrations insisted on expanding NATO – an anti-Russia military alliance – to Russia’s very borders, despite warnings by senior U.S. diplomats, academics, and secretaries of defense that NATO expansion was unnecessary and would likely provoke a war.  President Biden shares particular responsibility, because he was President Obama’s point man on Ukraine in 2014, and because the Biden administration rejected multiple chances for peace, both before and after Russia’s invasion. A less aggressive U.S. foreign policy would have prevented the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young soldiers and saved hundreds of billions of dollars.

    Misinformation about the Ukraine war is rampant. There is no evidence whatsoever to support the oft-repeated contention that Russia intends to invade other European countries. Even now the word “unprovoked” is dutifully repeated throughout the U.S. media sphere.

    By hitching itself to the tragically flawed policy of the Biden administration, the Democratic Party is now seen by many as “the war party.” This does not mean that the Republican Party has morphed into the party of peace. One need look no further than U.S. facilitation of Israel’s blatant genocide in Gaza to see that both major political parties have blood on their hands.

    According to recent polls, a majority of the Ukrainian people want a ceasefire and negotiations to end the war. They have suffered far too much already. Continuing the war will only result in further death and destruction.

    NO MORE KILLING IN OUR NAME!!
    Diplomacy to End the War In Ukraine
    End U.S.-Israeli Genocide in Palestine


    We Call for:

    Good faith negotiations for a lasting peace in Ukraine and Europe
    An end to U.S. military involvement in Ukraine, with weapons, intelligence and advisers
    An end to the expansion of NATO

    The Peace In Ukraine Coalition is comprised of many national and local peace groups, including CODEPINK, DSA – International Cttee., Massachusetts Peace Action, World Beyond War and Veterans For Peace.

    The post Seize the Moment: End the War in Ukraine! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • USA Is #1 Arms Dealer, Exporting 43% Of World’s Weapons

    The United States is by far the biggest arms dealer on Earth, responsible for 43% of all weapons exports from 2020 to 2024.

    The US transferred 7.3 times more weapons than China, and 5.5 times more than Russia.

    In fact, Russia’s global arms exports declined by 64% from 2020 to 2024, and China’s fell by 5.4%, whereas those of the US grew by 21%.

    There were also large increases in weapons exports during this five-year period in Italy (+138%), Spain (+29%), France (+11%), and South Korea (+4.9%).

    This is according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

    The post USA Is #1 Arms Dealer, Exporting 43% Of World’s Weapons appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Movements Worldwide Call For End To US Military Exercises In Koreas

    Pressure continues to grow against the ongoing Freedom Shield 25, a joint military exercise between the US and South Korea.

    The International People’s Assembly (IPA) and International League of Peoples Struggle (ILPS) joined Nodutdol, an anti-imperialist Korean diaspora group, in launching a joint statement calling for the Freedom Shield military exercises to be cancelled, claiming it is drumming up threats of war on the Korean peninsula. The anti-imperialist and anti-war platforms bring together hundreds of people’s movements and organizations across the world.

    The post Movements Worldwide Call For End To US Military Exercises In Koreas appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • What to Do When Faced with Tariffs? Diversify


    The New York Times yesterday (11 March 2025) headlined: “Trump Intensifies Statehood Threats in Attack on Canada.” What particularly stood out was the sub headline: “The U.S. president on Tuesday reiterated his claims on Canada’s territory as he increased tariffs, threatening to bring the country’s economy to its knees.”

    How are Canadians supposed to feel about being threatened? How are Canadians to feel about the indignity of being brought economically to their knees? It calls to mind the invocation of Mexican revolutionary Emilio Zapatista who stated: “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!”

    The article opens:

    The fresh attacks President Donald Trump aimed at Canada on Tuesday extended beyond imposing more tariffs on America’s neighbor and NATO ally, and laid out in the clearest terms yet his vision for annexing Canada and making it part of the United States.

    Trump is a selfish, narcissistic, vain person (e.g., here and here), and that plays well to a certain audience. It is obvious from his pandering to the public, his name calling of others (e.g., referring to Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau as a governor of the 51st state), his preening with bold sharpie-signed documents held up for cameras, his declarations affecting others without first speaking to the others.

    It is about Trump’s vision for Canada. It’s an all stick and no carrot approach. That is what annexation is: “possession taken of a piece of land or a country, usually by force or without permission: The country’s annexation of its neighbor caused an outcry.”

    Past and present Canadian governments (and the Canadians who elect so-called representatives to the parliament) are responsible for Canada’s exports being so reliant on the US market rather than diversifying its trade into other world markets.

    It doesn’t have to stay that way. In fact, it is a rude wake-up call that Canada must not rely on the US to be a faithful and steadfast partner. Canada’s dignity and sovereignty1 demand a change in the status quo.

    Unlike China, Canada is unprepared for round two of a Trump administration.

    The US economy is forecast by many commentators to be heading for a recession, something that Trump does not deny. China, on the other hand, has set its 2025 GDP growth target at around 5%. It seems futile to tie one’s ship-of-state to another sinking ship.

    Canada says it will fight fire with fire, that it will reciprocate the US tariffs. This is a lose-lose proposition. Canada needs to get off its knees and seek a win-win, respectful relationship — something that China always promotes. No need to completely disengage with the US, but apply to BRICS and the BRI and develop relations with the Global South. Pursue a path that is best for Canadians.

    ENDNOTE:

    The post What to Do When Faced with Tariffs? Diversify first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    Canada’s dignity and sovereignty will always be morally challenged given that it exists on the dispossession of its Indigenous peoples — a lamentable criminality that Canada shares with the US.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • When Dissent Becomes a Crime: The War on Political Speech Begins

    Once the principle is established that the government can arrest and jail protesters… officials will use it to silence opposition broadly.

    — Heather Cox Richardson, historian

    You can’t have it both ways.

    You can’t live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state.

    You can’t claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship.

    You can’t expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law.

    There’s always a boomerang effect.

    Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now—whether it’s in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America great again—rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

    Arresting political activists engaged in lawful, nonviolent protest activities is merely the shot across the bow.

    The chilling of political speech and suppression of dissident voices are usually among the first signs that you’re in the midst of a hostile takeover by forces that are not friendly to freedom.

    This is how it begins.

    Consider that Mahmoud Khalil, an anti-war protester and recent graduate of Columbia University, was arrested on a Saturday night by ICE agents who appeared ignorant of his status as a legal U.S. resident and his rights thereof. That these very same ICE agents also threatened to arrest Mahmoud’s eight-months-pregnant wife, an American citizen, is also telling.

    This does not seem to be a regime that respects the rights of the people.

    Indeed, these ICE agents, who were “just following orders” from on high, showed no concern that the orders they had been given were trumped up, politically motivated and unconstitutional.

    If this is indeed the first of many arrests to come, what’s next? Or more to the point, who’s next?

    We are all at risk.

    History shows that when governments claim the power to silence dissent—whether in the name of national security, border protection, or law and order—that power rarely remains limited. What starts as a crackdown on so-called “threats” quickly expands to include anyone who challenges those in power.

    President Trump has made it clear that Mahmoud’s arrest is just “the first arrest of many to come.” He has openly stated his intent to target noncitizens who engage in activities he deems contrary to U.S. interests—an alarmingly vague standard that seems to change at his whim, the First Amendment be damned.

    If history is any guide, the next targets will not just be immigrants or foreign-born activists. They will be American citizens who dare to speak out.

    If you need further proof of Trump’s disregard for constitutional rights, look no further than his recent declaration that boycotting Tesla is illegal—a chilling statement that reveals his fundamental misunderstanding of both free speech and the rule of law.

    For the record, there is nothing illegal about exercising one’s First Amendment right of speech, assembly, and protest in a nonviolent way to bring about social change by boycotting private businesses. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-0 in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. (1982) that nonviolent boycotts are a form of political speech which are entitled to First Amendment protection.

    The problem, unfortunately, when you’re dealing with a president who believes that he can do whatever he wants because he is the law is that anyone and anything can become a target.

    Mahmoud is the test case.

    As journalists Gabe Kaminsky, Madeleine Rowley, and Maya Sulkin point out, Mahmoud’s arrest for being a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States” (note: he is not actually accused of breaking any laws) is being used as a blueprint for other arrests to come.

    What this means is that anyone who dares to disagree with the government and its foreign policy and express that disagreement could be considered a threat to the country’s “national security interests.”

    Yet the right to speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom.

    Indeed, the First Amendment does more than give us a right to criticize our country: it makes it a civic duty. Certainly, if there is one freedom among the many spelled out in the Bill of Rights that is especially patriotic, it is the right to criticize the government.

    Unfortunately, the Deep State doesn’t take kindly to individuals who speak truth to power.

    This is nothing new, nor is it unique to any particular presidential administration.

    Throughout history, U.S. presidents have used their power to suppress dissent. The Biden administration equated the spread of “misinformation” with terrorism. Trump called the press “the enemy of the people” and suggested protesting should be illegal. Obama expanded anti-protest laws and cracked down on whistleblowers. Bush’s Patriot Act made it a crime to support organizations the government deemed terrorist, even in lawful ways. This pattern stretches back centuries—FDR censored news after Pearl Harbor, Woodrow Wilson outlawed criticism of war efforts, and John Adams criminalized speaking against the government.

    Regardless of party, those in power have repeatedly sought to limit free speech. What’s new is the growing willingness to criminalize political dissent under the guise of national security.

    Clearly, the government has been undermining our free speech rights for quite a while now, but Trump’s antagonism towards free speech is taking this hostility to new heights.

    The government has a history of using crises—real or manufactured—to expand its power.

    Once dissent is labeled a threat, it’s only a matter of time before laws meant for so-called extremists are used against ordinary citizens. Criticizing policy, protesting, or even refusing to conform could be enough to put someone on a watchlist.

    We’ve seen this before.

    The government has a long list of “suspicious” ideologies and behaviors it uses to justify surveillance and suppression. Today’s justification may be immigration; tomorrow, it could be any form of opposition.

    This is what we know: the government has the means, the muscle and the motivation to detain individuals who resist its orders and do not comply with its mandates in a vast array of prisons, detention centers, and concentration camps paid for with taxpayer dollars.

    It’s just a matter of time.

    It no longer matters what the hot-button issue might be (vaccine mandates, immigration, gun rights, abortion, same-sex marriage, healthcare, criticizing the government, protesting election results, etc.) or which party is wielding its power like a hammer.

    The groundwork has already been laid.

    Under the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the President and the military can detain and imprison American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a terrorist.

    So it should come as no surprise that merely criticizing the government could get you labeled as a terrorist.

    After all, it doesn’t take much to be considered a terrorist anymore, especially given that the government likes to use the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.

    This is what happens when you not only put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police but also give those agencies liberal authority to lock individuals up for perceived wrongs.

    It’s a system just begging to be abused by power-hungry bureaucrats desperate to retain their power at all costs.

    Having allowed the government to expand and exceed our reach, we find ourselves on the losing end of a tug-of-war over control of our country and our lives. And for as long as we let them, government officials will continue to trample on our rights, always justifying their actions as being for the good of the people.

    Yet the government can only go as far as “we the people” allow. Therein lies the problem.

    This is not just about one administration or one set of policies. This is a broader pattern of governmental overreach that has been allowed to unfold, unchecked and unchallenged. And at the heart of this loss of freedom is a fundamental misunderstanding—or even a deliberate abandonment—of what sovereignty really means in America.

    Sovereignty is a dusty, antiquated term that harkens back to an age when kings and emperors ruled with absolute power over a populace that had no rights. Americans turned the idea of sovereignty on its head when they declared their independence from Great Britain and rejected the absolute authority of King George III. In doing so, Americans claimed for themselves the right to self-government and established themselves as the ultimate authority and power.

    In other words, as the preamble to the Constitution states, in America, “we the people”—sovereign citizens—call the shots.

    So, when the government acts, it is supposed to do so at our bidding and on our behalf, because we are the rulers.

    That’s not exactly how it turned out, though, is it?

    In the 200-plus years since we boldly embarked on this experiment in self-government, we have been steadily losing ground to the government’s brazen power grabs, foisted upon us in the so-called name of national security.

    The government has knocked us off our rightful throne. It has usurped our rightful authority. It has staged the ultimate coup. Its agents no longer even pretend that they answer to “we the people.”

    This is how far our republic has fallen and how desensitized “we the people” have become to this constant undermining of our freedoms.

    If we are to put an end to this steady slide into totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and “we the people” have none, we must begin by refusing to allow the politics of fear to shackle us to a dictatorship.

    President Trump wants us to believe that the menace we face (imaginary or not) is so sinister, so overwhelming, so fearsome that the only way to surmount the danger is by empowering the government to take all necessary steps to quash it, even if that means allowing government jackboots to trample all over the Constitution.

    Don’t believe it. That argument has been tried before.

    The government’s overblown, extended wars on terrorism, drugs, violence and illegal immigration have all been convenient ruses used to terrorize the populace into relinquishing more of their freedoms in exchange for elusive promises of security.

    We are walking a dangerous path right now.

    Political arrests. Harassment. Suppression of dissident voices. Retaliation. Detention centers for political prisoners.

    These are a harbinger of what’s to come if the Trump administration carries through on its threats to crack down on any and all who exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech and protest.

    We are being acclimated to bolder power grabs, acts of lawlessness, and a pattern of intimidation, harassment, and human rights violations by government officials. And yet, in the midst of this relentless erosion of our freedoms, the very concept of sovereignty—the foundational idea that the people, not the government, hold ultimate power—has been all but forgotten.

    “Sovereignty” used to mean something fundamental in America: the idea that the government serves at the will of the people, that “we the people” are the rightful rulers of this land, and that no one, not even the president, is above the law. But today, that notion is scarcely discussed, as the government continues its unchecked expansion.

    We have lost sight of the fact that our power is meant to restrain the government, not the other way around.

    Don’t allow yourselves to be distracted, derailed or desensitized.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the moment these acts of aggression becomes the new normal, authoritarianism won’t be a distant threat; it will be reality.

    The post When Dissent Becomes a Crime: The War on Political Speech Begins first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • On Stupidity

    Stupidity, stupidity everywhere – and not a word to witness.

    “Stupid” is a commonplace term casually used in everyday conversation. Much less so in writing – especially when the subject is political personalities. It is heavily weighted with inhibition. Why this hesitation? Why at a time when manifest stupidity in speech and action is rampant?

    “Stupid” is both blunt and conclusive. Straight-forward. It does not welcome qualification or discussion. It implies: matter settled, closed. Moreover, it suggests a character flaw as well as low intelligence. That somehow makes us uncomfortable. So we prefer: dense, slow, thick, dim or dim-witted; or pithy euphemisms, e.g. “not the sharpest tool in the kit” or “none too swift” or “slow on the uptake” or “not playing with a full deck” or “in so far over his head that the bubbles don’t reach the surface.” In addition, there are those words that refer directly to intelligence: moron, imbecile, idiot. They, too, are in currency but suffer from the disability of taking in vain a descriptive word that refers to the poor souls who are born with mental deficiencies.

    “Stupid” is used as an epithet 95% of the time. Not as a depiction of someone’s Intelligence Quotient (IQ). To do so in the latter sense is to complicate matters. Intelligence, as we now are aware, is a broad concept that covers 5 or 6 or 7 mental attributes whose correlations are quite low. So, almost no one thinks that through before throwing the word around. To the degree that one might consider meanings, it implies lack of logic – the core characteristic of conventional IQ intelligence.

    Squirt kerosene on a simmering barbecue – that’s stupid. Sending more troops to Afghanistan in 2017 when you’ve failed miserably to achieve your (undefined) objective over the past 15 years with much larger contingents is stupid, i.e., illogical. Denouncing China as America’s enemy on whom it plans to impose severe economic sanctions while senior officials publicly predict war within 10 years, and then beseeching Beijing for assistance in keeping the dollar the global currency by ending its sale of U.S. securities; and then demanding that China slow its economic growth because 1) it causes balance-of-trade imbalances, and 2) that would reduce its oil imports thereby minimizing Russian revenue from its sales on a softer world market (as did Janet Yellin on two separate visits) – that’s stupid. Silently letting Turkey provide crucial material support to ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria while decrying terrorist acts by jihadis in the US and Europe is stupid, i.e., illogical. (The Obama administration soon joined in supplying arms indirectly those same groups, then helped secure their control of the Idlib enclave which was their base for the eventual breakout a few months ago; now in power they are massacring Alawites and Christians). Bestowing praise and honors on the Saudi leaders as declared brothers in the “war on terror” when in fact these very persons have done more to propagate the fanatical creed that inspires and justifies acts of terror is stupid, i.e., “illogical.”

    These instances of stupid behavior draw our attention to the connections between intelligence and knowledge – between “stupidity” and “ignorance.” Stupid (illogical) behavior is more likely when you don’t know what you’re doing because important information is missing. In the examples cited, though, the information that is the foundation for logical thinking was known to the parties taking those actions. Not just accessible – it is lodged (somewhere) in the brain of the actor. “Dumb”1 in popular usage is the word that combines “stupid” and “ignorant” – with the connotation that the ignorance is willful. That is a pertinent notion to which we’ll return.

    Assuming that the “stupid’ actors are not mentally deficient, why do they act as if they are? That is the persistent question that crops us as we see and read the antics of public officials, commentators, and a host of celebrity personalities. Several explanations, not excuses, come to mind.

    One is that there exists an implicit logic that is not acknowledged but salient for the person(s) involved. The Pentagon brass may well have been less concerned about “winning” in Afghanistan, whatever that means, than they were living with the intolerable perception that they “lost.” No general cum security policy-maker wants to be saddled with the label of “loser.” That sensitivity can become institutionally generalized; Generals Mattis and McMaster were in little danger of being blamed personally for failure in Afghanistan. What seems to count is that they did not want the U.S. military to be stigmatized as a failure. They were acutely aware of how much the image of the uniformed military suffered as a result of America losing its first war in Vietnam. It follows that they might hope against hope that the outcome can be fudged enough so as to escape that fate. There is a practical side to this concern, too. Failure, as perceived in the public eye, could tarnish the resplendent image so successfully cultivated during the “war on terror” era. That could translate into less support for bigger budgets, less lucrative consultancies after retirement, and less acclaim. And a weaker voice in policy debates.

    If one were to postulate that these are cardinal objectives, then campaigning to send several thousand more troops on a strategically pointless mission is logical – and the plan’s promoters not as stupid as they appear. What of senior policymakers in and around the White House who did not share those particular interests? They, indeed, were stupid.

    Another instructive example is Barack Obama’s announcing the conclusion of an historic, arduously negotiated nuclear treaty with Iran (JPOA) in a speech that vilifies the Tehran regime as a tyranny that sponsors terrorism, aims to dominate the Persian Gulf, and endangers Israel. Thereby, he emboldened opponents of the accord to attack it – clearing the way for its abrogation by Trump a few years later. The net result: we now are on the brink of war with Iran because of its nuclear activities. Stupidly illogical? Perhaps not. Obama, on narrow political grounds, was trying to insulate himself from a barrage of criticism from Washington hard-liners and the Zionist lobby. Only two years earlier, he had infuriated them by scotching plans for American military strikes against government forces in response to chemical attacks blamed on the Assad regime (in fact, a false flag operation by MI-6 and their White Hats in collaboration with the jihadi rebels); hence, the perceived need to mollify them. So, it can be seen as logical given his weighting of interests and priorities. Not stupid – just self-centered and unresponsive to the public good, vintage Obama.

    A second reality to keep in mind is that governments are plural nouns – or, pronouns with multiple antecedent nouns. The numerous organizations, bureaucracies and individuals involved in decision-making typically lead to a convoluted process wherein it is easy to lose track of purposes, priorities and coordination. Where little discipline is imposed by the chief, the greater the chances that the result will be contradictory, disjointed, sub-optimal and often poorly executed policies. At the present moment, we are witnessing a disjointed Trump administration, that in regard to Ukraine/Russia, 6 individuals are pursuing 7 different lines as indicated by their public remarks – an octopus trying to put on a pair of mismatched socks. All exacerbated by a scatterbrained Chief Executive who contradicts himself – as well his senior deputies – on a nightly basis.

    Another kind of impediment to coherent, reality-based policymaking arises when the opposite condition prevails: an elaborate process involving several parties with divergent perspectives and parochial interests concludes with an agreement on a lowest common denominator basis. Arduously reached, that decision becomes frozen, insulated from new information or changes in the environment due to the fear that any revision would unravel the consensus – a form of groupthink. An extreme example of this phenomenon is provided by the EU where 27 sovereign states must agree before any policy can be enunciated. In Brussels, success is proclaimed when they reach accord as if negotiating among themselves is tantamount to negotiating an accord with other governments. A similar example is presented by the current campaign of the Trump administration to press Ukraine into negotiations with Russia. The tussle between Washington and Kiev is taken to be the crucial step toward resolution of the conflict. In fact, the ideas being bandied about as key ingredients of a settlement already have been absolutely rejected by Moscow – in particular, the much ballyhooed ceasefire that is a Western pipedream. As yet, they have not even been formally conveyed to the Russians. Stupid – or pathological?

    Finally, we should recognize that rigorous thinking is far from the norm – at the highest levels of government as well as in everyday life. It takes a combination of education/training, experience, intellectual integrity, a cultivated sense of responsibility, discomfort with deciding on the basis of skimpy or suspect information, and an ingrained preference for knowing why you’re doing something instead of flying by the seat of your pants. True, when practiced and reinforced, rigorous thinking can become habitual – just like other modes of human behavior. There are multiple influences, though, that militate against that habit taking root and being sustained. They include the lure of celebrity, time pressures due to an excess of travel and/or summonses to mind-numbing TV interviews, long-tedious-inconclusive meetings (such as those presided over by Susan Rice which drove Chuck Hagel out of government), endless bureaucratic games-playing, distracted Chief Executives who demand ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers to complex issues. Altogether, the tumult can soften the toughest mind. Weaker minds simply latch onto whatever conventional wisdom and catch phrases are floating around in order to remain relevant and minimally functional in the kaleidoscopic setting of most administrations.

    All of these patterns with attendant adverse consequences are more likely to crystallize into stupid acts when the man nominally in charge lacks the intelligence, emotional stability, self-awareness and/or advisors to recognize either the requirements for sound policymaking or for implementation. A lack of capacity to accept responsibility and to be held accountable exacerbates matters.

    A business career such as Trump’s is not the desired preparation. Not only is that world fundamentally different from the world of public affairs (and especially foreign policy) Further, Trump partially compensated for his flaws through coercion, cheating, and duplicity. And at the end of the day, he could rig the books. That modus operandi doesn’t fly in the Middle East or in dealing with the likes of Vladimir Putin or Xia Jinping. It could, and does, win elections in a country where ignorance and “obtuseness”, in its many inglorious forms, are commonplace.

    “Willful ignorance,” or “studied ignorance,” is an increasingly familiar phenomenon. Not just in Washington but among heads of large organizations of all stripes (e.g. universities). The inclination to avoid acquiring knowledge about a matter either at hand or looming is not necessarily a sign of stupidity. Here, too, there may be hidden considerations at play. American foreign policymakers may have wish to mask the Kabul government’s faltering popular support because doing so means a fundamental rethink of aims- an agonizing reappraisal for which they are unprepared intellectually, politically, and diplomatically. (MB: substitute Ukraine)

    Making no effort to uncover the facts only becomes “stupid” where the responsible official then does things, as a consequence, that harm his interests. That has been the case in Syria where Barack Obama refused to come to terms with the uncomfortable truth that the “rebels” were overwhelmingly Salafist jihadis. In this case, an admission of that cardinal truth would pose the stark choice between continuing to back an al-Qaeda2-led cause or reversing course in tilting toward the Assad regime. The President lacked the courage to deal with the wide-ranging ramifications of that; so, he deluded himself into pursuing a will-o’wisp that existed only in the imaginings of those who were keen on an American military intervention. By surrounding himself with a rogue Secretary of Defense, a strategically disoriented Secretary of State, a self-absorbed, unpracticed National Security Advisor, and an obstreperous UN Ambassador, Obama fostered an environment that enabled his escapist behavior. So, too, did his ritual deference to the warped liturgy of the foreign policy Establishment that they represented.

    For a President to avoid acting “stupidly,” he need not have an exceptional IQ – or score remarkably high on other dimensions of intelligence. Two things are most important: he must be honest with himself; and he must put in place a policy system that is both logical in process and self-aware as to why decisions are taken with what end in mind. To borrow an analogy from the football terminology favored in the corridors of Washington power: you can win a championship with a simply competent quarterback if the other pieces are in place and he follows a disciplined script. (Bart Starr of the old Green Bay Packers). An emotionally handicapped or narcissistic quarterback – however talented – will cripple a team sooner or later. One who suffers from the latter condition(s), along with a lack of athletic talent, is a guarantor of disaster. “Stupidity” will be the least of the derogatory terms applied to the ensuing performance; that word should be reserved for those who chose him.

    Moral: we should not hesitate to call things as they are. Feigned politeness in situations marked by systematic deceit, ill-will and harm to the nation serves no good purpose. Concerned about the proverbial “dignity of the office?” Take your shoes off before entering the Oval Office. If “stupidity” displayed by stupid people is what we observe, virtue lies in calling it by its name.

    The foregoing discussion pertains directly to government leaders. What of those non-official members of the “foreign affairs community” – the think tank pundits, the media personalities, the op ed columnists? These days, the thinking of most mirrors that of those in government positions. The unstated or unconfirmed premises, the partial or selective information, the logical flaws. The main differences are that they write/speak at far greater length, compose longer sentences, and use polysyllabic words. The level of intellectual rigor, though, is pretty much the same.

    ENDNOTES:

    The post On Stupidity first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    “Dumb” as a pejorative has been out of favor for some time. It sounds stale to the post-modern ear. Only be adding the suffix “SOB” or “bastard” does it make any impact. That may be changing, though. The comeback of “dumb” could well have something to do with the fact that it rhymes with “Trump.” The German spelling “Drump” has even truer resonance.
    2    Abu Mohammad al-Julani, nom de guerre of Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, and Abu Bakra al-Baghdadi of ISIS notoriety were confederates in the al-Qaeda subsidiary al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia that had been active in Iraq after the 2003 American invasion and occupation. Soon after the civil war in Syria broke out in 2011, they went their more or less separate ways: al-Baghdadi leading the Islamic State and Julani controlling al-Nusra as it came to be known. Over time, al-Nusra became the dominant force in the opposition coalition. It used its non-jihadi allies as convenient cover. American aid, along with that of European supporters, was laundered through those other groups. In effect, they served as a postal drop box. Over the eight years when al-Nusra ran the Idlib pocket under Turkish protection, they set up a repressive Islamic autocracy. They also assembled a multiethnic force including ISIS remnants, Uigurs, Uzbeks, Afghans, Chechens that acted as Turkish mercenaries in Libya, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Now, they enjoy a measure of independence as militias in the new-found regime of Jalani’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – its latest organizational incarnation. However, they could not commit the massacres against the Alawites without Jolani’s tacit approval, and HTS security forces, too, were involved.

    For the record: among Syria’s 4.5 million Alawites, few supported Assad to the end and active opposition to the HTS takeover was very limited.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Michael Brenner.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Trump Denies Student Loan Relief To Nonprofit Workers

    Trump signed an executive order on Friday, March 7, which directs the Education Department to exclude student loan forgiveness for workers at certain organizations which “engage in activities that have a substantial illegal purpose,” appearing to target some nonprofit groups at odds with his political agenda.

    Under the new order, workers would be disqualified from the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program if the Trump administration deems that their employers violated federal immigration laws, supported “terrorism”, or engaged in so-called “child abuse,” which includes “the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children or the trafficking of children to so-called transgender sanctuary States for purposes of emancipation from their lawful parents” – a clear attack on organizations that may support transgender rights.

    The post Trump Denies Student Loan Relief To Nonprofit Workers appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • European Leaders Plan Massive Increase in Defense Spending

    European leaders meeting in an “Emergency War Summit” in Brussels have agreed on huge increases in arms spending. On entering the meeting, Denmark’s Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, declared “Spend, spend, spend on defense and deterrence.” And in response to an interviewer’s question, French Prime Minster Francois Bayrou dismissed the idea that the French public should have any say in this decision, adding “We can’t let the country be disarmed.” (CNews and Europe 1). French President Macron asserts that peace will come only when Russia is “pacified” and Zelensky, Macron and Starmer will try to meet with Trump once again to hear him reiterate, “No, Non, Hi (Ukrainian) and Nyet.

    European leaders have been junior partners, via NATO, with US imperialism (think Libya and Iraq) but now the section of the US ruling class that’s behind Trump is openly severing the partnership. These leaders are bobbing and scrambling to hang on to their old role or find a new one for themselves. Reputations and institutions are at stake and it’s not clear that they can finesse their way out because they’ve always counted on an official narrative about Russia that will be put to the test.

    As Alexander Mercouris has noted, the real fear among European leaders is if the US and Russia achieve peaceful relations and a Great Power reset, the fictional “Russia threat” that’s been perpetrated on ordinary Europeans will gradually diminish and people will realize they’ve been lied to all along. For now, we can hope that ordinary Europeans will resist how Europe’s ruling elite try to create hysteria, double down on stupidity (“going batshit crazy” in Mark Sleboba’s words) and eviscerate social programs.

    Europeans, as well as their US counterparts, who are unwilling to swallow the official propaganda are subjected to unrelenting Putin-baiting — including from liberals and even self-identified leftists — but we refuse to be silenced. We need to do a better job of using our access to social media to show people that the “Ukraine project” was a proxy war as a prelude to attacking Russia. Finally, we can hope that this will lead to an actual left rising in Europe and the United States.

    The post European Leaders Plan Massive Increase in Defense Spending first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trump’s Main Targets to be Cut

    Trump’s Presidency thus far exhibits the most extreme example that I have ever found of a national leader who not only represents ONLY the extremely rich but who especially despises the poor — it’s a value-system that a person’s moral value is his/her net worth: a person’s value is his/her wealth, neither more nor less than that. The four main federal expenditures that Trump and Musk are investigating for “waste, fraud, and abuse” are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Assistance to the poor. Whereas Social Security and Medicare are relatively safe against being cut, since those are not annually appropriated by Congress, Medicare and assistance to the poor (both of which serve ONLY the poor) ARE appropriated annually by Congress, and signed into law by the President; and, so, those two will likely be cut the most. (They are in what our Government calls “discretionary spending.” You know: they’re things such as yachts.)

    The federal Department that the Trump Administration is the least seeking for cuts is the by-far costliest federal Department (at roughly $900 billion per year), which is the only federal Department that has never been audited and that consequently is the most corrupt and wasteful, the Defense Department (Pentagon), which Department is the basic or even only market for the products of firms such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrup Grumman, etc., which firms (except for Boeing) don’t even have any significant consumer markets — their profits depend totally or almost totally on sales to the U.S. Government itself and to its allied Governments; and, so, they need to control the U.S. Government in order to control their markets, which they consequently do, by means of America’s furiously revolving-door between the public sector and the private sector, so that becoming a part of this “military-industrial complex” is the surest way to become and remain a billionaire in today’s America, regardless of whether or not the U.S. economy is doing well from the standpoint of consumers (the general public — which includes lots of ‘worthless’ people, individuals who owe more than they own).

    Trump’s first major achievement as America’s President was to arrange the largest single armaments sale in all of history, which was $404 billion to the Saud family in 2017 (“Made In America” of course, by companies that are in his debt.)

    All other federal Departments (the ones that serve the public instead of serve mainly the billionaires who own controlling interests in ‘defense’-related corporations) are being subjected by the Trump Administration to heavy pressure to cut all other Departments, this pressure coming from President Trump and from America’s wealthiest individual Elon Musk (Trump’s biggest-of-all campaign contibutor at over $270 million (“SpaceX”), whose fortune was built upon $38 billion in investments from the Pentagon but also from some other (‘defense’-related) federal agencies. You know, he is one of America’s ‘self-made billionaires’. (Trump, who is himself a billionaire, was born to Fred Trump, the NYC real-estate tycoon.)

    As I headlined and explained on March 5, “Only the US Defense Department’s Budget Will NOT be Cut.” That is exactly the opposite of what the American people want, as I shall now document:

    On February 14, the AP had headlined “Where US adults think the government is spending too much, according to AP-NORC polling,” and listed in rank-order according to the opposite (“spending too little”) the following 8 Government functions: 1. Social Security; 2. Medicare; 3. Education; 4. Assistance to the poor; 5. Medicaid; 6. Border security; 7. Federal law enforcement; 8. The Military. That’s right: the American public (and by an overwhelming margin) are THE LEAST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on the military, and the MOST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on Social Security, Medicare, Education, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid (the five functions the Republican Party has always been the most vocal to call “waste, fraud, and abuse” and try to cut). Meanwhile, The Military, which actually receives 53% (and in the latest year far more than that) of the money that the Congress allocates each year and gets signed into law by the President, keeps getting, each year, over 50% of the annually appropriated federal funds.

    On March 5, the Jeff-Bezos-owned Washington Post headlined “GOP must cut Medicaid or Medicare to achieve budget goals, CBO finds: The nonpartisan bookkeeper said there’s no other way to cut $1.5 trillion from the budget over the next decade.” Though the CBO is ‘nonpartisan’ as between the Democratic and Republican Parties, it is (since both are) entirely beholden to America’s billionaires; and, so, that term there is deceptive. What that ‘news’-report is reporting is that the sense of Congress (even including Democrats there) is that a way needs to be found to cut $1.5T from ‘Medicare or Medicaid” (which, since only Medicare, health care to the poor, is ‘discretionary’, Medicare is not) over the next ten years.

    On March 8, ABC News and Yahoo News headlined “DOGE is searching through Social Security payments looking for fraud,” and reported that “The Department of Government Efficiency is sifting through $1.6 trillion worth of Social Security payments — records that include a person’s name, birth date and how much they earn — in an anti-fraud effort that has advocates worried the Trump administration could start denying payments to vulnerable older Americans.” It reported the lies by the Trump Administration to ‘justify’ what they are doing, but the matter will be settled in court, by politically-appointed judges; and, so, mere truth and falsity won’t necessarily deterrrmine the ruling, especially not if a billionaire is worth a thousand mere millionaires (and paupers are worth nothing).

    Heck, the U.S. Government spends around $1.6 trillion per year on its military ($900 billion of it paid by the Pentagon, and $700 billion of it out of other federal Departments), and yet still has only the world’s second-best military (Russia’s, costing a tenth of that, being #1); and the amount of corrution there is astronomical; so, if Trump/Musk REALLY wanted to cut what’s euphemistically called “waste, fraud, and abuse” (but is overwhelmingly corruption) ALL of the cuts would be coming from there.

    What is supposed to happen when a Government represents ONLY an aristocracy? In 1776, the answer was Revolution. We are there again — or else we never will be again, and will instead continue to accept the continued systematic looting of the American people, this time by DOMESTIC (instead of English) billionaires. It’s not a conflict between Democrats versus Republicans; that’s merely the method to distract us. It is a conflict between the billionaires versus the public.

    As the liberal (Democratic Party) wing of America’s aristocracy said, in the person of its Warren Buffett, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” (He told this to the conservative Ben Stein reporting in the aristocracy’s New York Times, under the headline “In Class Warfare, Guess Which Class Is Winning,” on 26 November 2006, but that newspaper won’t let readers access the article online, and instead prefer to charge anyone who seeks to see whether or not the quotation is authentic — it is. And the statement is true. But the 31 March 2019 issue of Forbes headlined “Reimagining Capitalism: How The Greatest System Ever Conceived (And Its Billionaires) Need To Change,” and reported: “‘America works, and it works now better than it ever worked,’ Buffett says.” Better for himself and other billionaires, that is. But not for the bottom 90%, and it worked lousy for the bottom 50%, and still worse — economic decline — for the bottom 25%. But to the liberal Buffett, that’s still “better than it ever worked.”

    Liberal versus conservative makes little real difference nowadays, but is more of a difference in style, so as to distract the public from the REAL conflict. They do it all the time.

    The post Trump’s Main Targets to be Cut first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Is This the Beginning or the End of a New Cold War?

    Woman at rally supporting peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Berlin, Germany.  (Photo: Reuters)

    When European Union leaders met in Brussels on February 6 to discuss the war in Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron called this time “a turning point in history.” Western leaders agree that this is an historic moment when decisive action is needed, but what kind of action depends on their interpretation of the nature of this moment.

    Is this the beginning of a new Cold War between the U.S., NATO and Russia or the end of one? Will Russia and the West remain implacable enemies for the foreseeable future, with a new iron curtain between them through what was once the heart of Ukraine? Or can the United States and Russia resolve the disputes and hostility that led to this war in the first place, so as to leave Ukraine with a stable and lasting peace?

    Some European leaders see this moment as the beginning of a long struggle with Russia, akin to the beginning of the Cold War in 1946, when Winston Churchill warned that “an iron curtain has descended” across Europe.

    On March 2, echoing Churchill, European Council President Ursula von der Leyen declared that Europe must turn Ukraine into a “steel porcupine.” President Zelenskyy has said he wants up to 200,000 European troops on the eventual ceasefire line between Russia and Ukraine to “guarantee” any peace agreement, and insists that the United States must provide a “backstop,” meaning a commitment to send U.S. forces to fight in Ukraine if war breaks out again.

    Russia has repeatedly said it won’t agree to NATO forces being based in Ukraine under any guise. “We explained today that the appearance of armed forces from the same NATO countries, but under a false flag, under the flag of the European Union or under national flags, does not change anything in this regard,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on February 18. “Of course this is unacceptable to us.”

    But the U.K. is persisting in a campaign to recruit a “coalition of the willing,” the same term the U.S. and U.K. coined for the list of countries they persuaded to support the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. In that case, only Australia, Denmark and Poland took small parts in the invasion, Costa Rica publicly insisted on being removed from the list, and the term was widely lampooned as the “coalition of the billing” because the U.S. recruited so many countries to join it by promising them lucrative foreign aid deals.

    Far from the start of a new Cold War, President Trump and other leaders see this moment as more akin to the end of the original Cold War, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik in Iceland in 1986 and began to bridge the divisions caused by 40 years of Cold War hostility.

    Like Trump and Putin today, Reagan and Gorbachev were unlikely peacemakers. Gorbachev had risen through the ranks of the Soviet Communist Party to become its General Secretary and Soviet Premier in March 1985, in the midst of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and he didn’t begin to withdraw Soviet forces from Afghanistan until 1988. Reagan oversaw an unprecedented Cold War arms build-up, a U.S.-backed genocide in Guatemala and covert and proxy wars throughout Central America. And yet Gorbachev and Reagan are now widely remembered as peacemakers.

    While Democrats deride Trump as a Putin stooge, in his first term in office Trump was actually responsible for escalating the Cold War with Russia. After the Pentagon had milked its absurd, self-fulfilling “War on Terror” for trillions of dollars, it was Trump and his psychopathic Defense Secretary, General “Mad Dog” Mattis, who declared the shift back to strategic competition with Russia and China as the Pentagon’s new gravy train in their 2018 National Defense Strategy. It was also Trump who lifted President Obama’s restrictions on sending offensive weapons to Ukraine.

    Trump’s head-spinning about-turn in U.S. policy has left its European allies with whiplash and reversed the roles they each have played for generations. France and Germany have traditionally been the diplomats and peacemakers in the Western alliance, while the U.S. and U.K. have been infected with a chronic case of war fever that has proven resistant to a long string of military defeats and catastrophic impacts on every country that has fallen prey to their warmongering.

    In 2003, France’s Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin led the opposition to the invasion of Iraq in the UN Security Council. France, Germany and Russia issued a joint statement to say that they would “not let a proposed resolution pass that would authorize the use of force. Russia and France, as permanent members of the Security Council, will assume all their responsibilities on this point.”

    At a press conference in Paris with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, French President Jacques Chirac said, “Everything must be done to avoid war… As far as we’re concerned, war always means failure.”

    As recently as 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, it was once again the U.S. and U.K. that rejected and blocked peace negotiations in favor of a long war, while France, Germany and Italy continued to call for new negotiations, even as they gradually fell in line with the U.S. long war policy.

    Former German Chancellor Schröder took part in the peace negotiations in Turkey in March and April 2022, and flew to Moscow at Ukraine’s request to meet with Putin. In an interview with Berliner Zeitung in 2023, Schröder confirmed that the peace talks only failed “because everything was decided in Washington.”

    With Biden still blocking new negotiations in 2023, one of the interviewers asked Schröder “Do you think you can resume your peace plan?”

    Schröder replied, “Yes, and the only ones who can initiate this are France and Germany… Macron and Scholz are the only ones who can talk to Putin. Chirac and I did the same in the Iraq war. Why can’t support for Ukraine be combined with an offer of talks to Russia? The arms deliveries are not a solution for eternity. But no one wants to talk. Everyone sits in trenches. How many more people have to die?”

    Since 2022, President Macron and a Thatcherite team of iron ladies – European Council President von der Leyen; former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock; and Estonia’s former prime minister Kaja Kallas, now the EU’s foreign policy chief – have promoted a new militarization of Europe, egged on from behind the scenes by European and U.S. arms manufacturers.

    Has the passage of time, the passing of the World War II generation and the distortion of history washed away the historical memory of two world wars from a continent that was destroyed by war only 80 years ago? Where is the next generation of French and German diplomats in the tradition of de Villepin and Schröder today? How can sending German tanks to fight in Ukraine, and now in Russia itself, fail to remind Russians of previous German invasions and solidify support for the war? And won’t the call for Europe to confront Russia by moving from a “welfare state to a warfare state” only feed the rise of the European hard right?

    So are the new European militarists reading the historical moment correctly? Or are they jumping on the bandwagon of a disastrous Cold War that could, as Biden and Trump have warned, lead to World War III?

    When Trump’s foreign policy team met with their Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia on February 18, ending the war in Ukraine was the second part of the three-part plan they agreed on. The first was to restore full diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia, and the third was to work on a series of other problems in U.S.-Russian relations.

    The order of these three stages is interesting, because, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted, it means that the negotiations over Ukraine will be the first test of restored relations between the U.S. and Russia.

    If the negotiations for peace in Ukraine are successful, they can lead to further negotiations over restoring arms control treaties, nuclear disarmament and cooperation on other global problems that have been impossible to resolve in a world stuck in a zombie-like Cold War that powerful interests would not allow to die.

    It was a welcome change to hear Secretary Rubio say that the post-Cold War unipolar world was an anomaly and that now we have to adjust to the reality of a multipolar world. But if Trump and his hawkish advisers are just trying to restore U.S. relations with Russia as part of a “reverse Kissinger” scheme to isolate China, as some analysts have suggested, that would perpetuate America’s debilitating geopolitical crisis instead of solving it.

    The United States and our friends in Europe have a new chance to make a clean break from the three-way geopolitical power struggle between the United States, Russia and China that has hamstrung the world since the 1970s, and to find new roles and priorities for our countries in the emerging multipolar world of the 21st Century.

    We hope that Trump and European leaders can recognize the crossroads at which they are standing, and the chance history is giving them to choose the path of peace. France and Germany in particular should remember the wisdom of Dominique de Villepin, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder in the face of U.S. and British plans for aggression against Iraq in 2003.

    This could be the beginning of the end of the permanent state of war and Cold War that has held the world in its grip for more than a century. Ending it would allow us to finally prioritize the progress and cooperation we so desperately need to solve the other critical problems the whole world is facing in the 21st Century. As General Milley said back in November 2022 when he called for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, we must “seize the moment.”

    The post Is This the Beginning or the End of a New Cold War? first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • New BBC Documentary “The Road to 7th October” is an Utter Travesty

    There has been a prolonged furore over the BBC’s craven decision to ban a documentary on life in Gaza under Israel’s bombs after it incensed Israel and its lobbyists by, uniquely, humanising the enclave’s children.

    The English-speaking child narrator, 13-year-old Abdullah, who became the all-too-visible pretext for pulling the film Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone because his father is a technocrat in the enclave’s Hamas government, hit back last week.

    He warned that the BBC had betrayed him and Gaza’s other children, and that the state broadcaster would be responsible were anything to happen to him

    His fears are well-founded, given that Israel has a long track record of executing those with the most tenuous of connections to Hamas – as well as the enclave’s children, often with small, armed drones that swarm through its airspace.

    The noisy clamour over How to Survive a Warzone has dominated headlines, overshadowing another new BBC documentary on Gaza – this one a three-part, blockbuster series on the history of Israel and Palestine – that has received none of the controversy.

    And for good reason.

    Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October, whose final episode airs this Monday, is such a travesty, so discredited by the very historical events it promises to explain, that it earns a glowing, five-star review from the Guardian.

    It “speaks to everyone that matters”, the liberal daily gushes. And that’s precisely the problem.

    What we get, as a result, is the very worst in BBC establishment TV: talking heads reading from the same implausibly simplistic script, edited and curated to present western officials and their allies in the most sympathetic light possible.

    Which is no mean feat, given the subject matter: nearly eight decades of Israel’s ethnic cleansing, dispossession, military occupation and siege of the Palestinian people, supported by the United States.

    But this documentary series on the region’s history should be far more controversial than the film about Gaza’s children. Because this one breathes life back into a racist western narrative – one that made the genocide in Gaza possible, and justifies Israel’s return this month to using mass starvation as a weapon of war against the Palestinian people.

    ‘Honest broker’ fiction

    The Road to 7th October presents an all-too-familiar story.

    The Palestinians are divided geographically and ideologically – how or why is never properly grappled with – between the incompetent, corrupt leadership of Fatah under Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, and the militant, terrorist leadership of Hamas in Gaza.

    Israel tries various peace initiatives under leaders Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. These failures propel the more hardline Benjamin Netanyahu to power.

    The United States is the star of the show, of course. Its officials tell a story of Washington desperately trying to bring together the two parties, Israel and Fatah (the third party, Hamas, is intentionally sidelined), but finds itself constantly hamstrung by bad luck and the intransigence of those involved.

    Yes, you read that right. This documentary really does resurrect the Washington as “honest broker” fiction – a myth that was supposed to have been laid to rest a quarter of a century ago, after the Oslo accords collapsed.

    The film-makers are so lost to the reality in Israel and Palestine that they imagine they can credibly keep Washington perched on a pedestal even after we have all spent the past 16 months watching, first, President Biden arm Israel’s “plausible” genocide in Gaza, killing many tens of thousands of Palestinians, and then President Trump formulate an illegal plan to ethnically cleanse the enclave of its surviving Palestinian population to develop it as a luxury “waterfront property”.

    A viewing of a short, Trump-endorsed, AI-generated promo video for a glitzy, Palestinian-free “Trump Gaza”, built on the crushed bodies of the enclave’s children, should be enough to dispel any remaining illusions about Washington’s neutrality on the matter.

    Enduring mystery

    This documentary, like its BBC predecessors – most notably on Russia and Ukraine, and the implosion of Yugoslavia – excels at offering a detailed examination of tree bark without ever stepping back far enough to see the shape of the forest.

    The words “apartheid”, “siege” and “colonialism” – the main lenses through which one can explain what has been happening to the Palestinian people for a century or more – do not figure at all.

    There is a single allusion to the events of 1948, when a self-declared Jewish state was violently founded as a colonial project on the ruins of the Palestinians’ homeland.

    Or as the documentary delicately puts it: “Millions of their people [the Palestinians] had been made refugees by decades of conflict.”

    As ever, when the plight of the Palestinians is discussed, the passive voice is put to sterling use. Millions of Palestinians were accidentally ethnically cleansed, it seems. Who was responsible is a mystery.

    In fact, most of Gaza’s population are descended from Palestinian families expelled by the newly declared state of Israel from their homes in 1948. They were penned up in a tiny piece of land by European colonisers in the same manner as earlier generations of European colonisers confined the Native Americans to reservations.

    Even when the term “occupation” appears, as it does on the odd occasion, it is presented as some vague, unexamined, security-related problem the US, Israel and the Fatah leadership are engaged in trying to fix.

    The settlements are mentioned too, but only as the backdrop to land-for-peace calculations that never come to fruition as the basis for an elusive “peace”.

    In other words, this is the reheating of a phoney tale that Israel and the US have been trying to sell to western publics for many decades.

    It was holed well below the water line last year by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest court in the world. It ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem was illegal, that Israeli rule over the Palestinians was a form of apartheid, and that its illegal settlements needed to be dismantled immediately.

    That is the forest all the documentary’s furious bark-studying is designed to avoid.

    Path to genocide

    The makers of Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October choose to begin their time line on an obscure date: 19 August 2003, when a Palestinian suicide bomber blows up a bus in Jerusalem, killing 23 Israelis.

    Why then?

    The programme, despite its title, is not really about the “Palestinians”. Note that the BBC dares not refer to “Palestine”.

    The true focus is on Hamas and its rise to power in Gaza, as viewed chiefly by the other parties: the US, Israel and Fatah.

    Starting the story in 2003 with a bus bombing, the programme can navigate “The Road to 7thOctober” in ways that assist the self-serving narratives those other parties wish to tell.

    On the Palestinian side, the story opens with a terror attack. On Israel’s side, it opens with Sharon deciding, in response, to dismantle the illegal settlements in Gaza and withdraw Israeli troops from the enclave.

    This entirely arbitrary date allows the programme makers to create an entirely misleading narrative arc: of Israel supposedly ending the occupation and trying to make peace, while being met with ever greater terrorism from Hamas, culminating in the 7 October attack.

    In short, it perpetuates the long-standing colonial narrative – contrary to all evidence – of Israel as the good guys, and the Palestinians as the bad guys.

    In an alternate universe, the BBC might have offered us a far more informative, relevant documentary called Israel and Palestine: The Path to Genocide.

    Don’t hold your breath waiting for that one to air.

    Dystopian movie

    In fact, Sharon’s so-called Disengagement Plan of 2005 had nothing to do with ending the occupation or peace-making. It was a trap laid for the Palestinians.

    The disengagement did not end the occupation of Gaza, as the ICJ noted in its ruling last year. It simply reformulated it.

    Israeli soldiers pulled back to the perimeter of the enclave – what Israeli and US officials like to falsely term its “borders” – where Israel had previously established a highly fortified wall with armed watchtowers.

    Stationed along this perimeter, the Israeli army instituted an oppressive Medieval-style siege, blockading access to Gaza by land, sea and air. The enclave was monitored 24/7 with drones patrolling the skies.

    Even before Hamas won legislative elections in 2006 and came to power in Gaza, the tiny coastal strip of land looked like it was the backdrop for a dystopian Hollywood movie.

    But after Hamas’ victory, as the talking heads cheerily explain, the gloves really came off. What that meant in practice is not spelled out – and for good reason.

    The Israeli army put Gaza on “rations”, carefully counting the calories entering the enclave to create widespread hunger and malnutrition, especially among Gaza’s children.

    The Israeli official behind the scheme explained the reasoning at the time: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

    That official – Dov Weisglass, Olmert’s main adviser – is one of the central talking heads in episode one. And yet strangely, he is never asked about Gaza’s “diet”.

    ‘Die more quietly’

    Stephen Hadley, George W Bush’s deputy national security adviser, claims – unchallenged – that Sharon’s disengagement was “a downpayment on a Palestinian state. … They [the Palestinians] would have an opportunity to build and show the world that they were ready to live side by side in peace with Israel”.

    Israel’s real goal, all too evident then and impossible to ignore now, was something else entirely.

    Yes, withdrawing from Gaza allowed Israel to falsely claim the occupation in Gaza had ended and focus instead on the colonisation of the West Bank, as the documentary briefly grants.

    Yes, it split geographically the main territories forming the basis of a future Palestinian state and encouraged irreconciliable leaderships in each – divide and rule on steroids.

    But even more importantly, by making Gaza effectively a giant concentration camp, blockaded on all sides, Israel ensured that the accommodationists of Fatah would lose credibility in the enclave and militant resistance movements led by Hamas would gain ascendancy.

    That was the trap.

    Hamas, and the people of Gaza, were denied any legitimacy so long as they insisted on a right – enshrined in international law – to resist their occupation and besiegement by Israel.

    It was a message – a warning – directed at Fatah and the West Bank too. Resistance is futile. Keep your heads down or you’ll be next.

    Which is exactly the lesson Abbas learnt, soon characterising his security forces’ collusion with the Israeli occupation as “sacred”.

    For Gaza, the US notion of living in “peace alongside Israel” meant surviving just barely and quietly, inside their cage, accepting the diet Olmert and Weisglass had put them on.

    Making any noise – such as by firing rockets out of the concentration camp, or massing at the heavily armed walls of their cage in protest – was terrorism. Die more quietly, Israel and the international community demanded.

    Perversely, much of episiode one is dedicated to US officals spinning their conspiracy to foil the results of the 2006 Palestinian election, won by Hamas, as democracy promotion.

    They demanded Hamas give up armed resistance or the 2 million people of Gaza, half of them children, would face a continuing blockade and starvation diet – that is, illegal collective punishment.

    Or as Robert Danin, a US State Department official, puts it, the plan was “either Hamas would reform and become a legitimate political party or it would remain isolated”. Not just Hamas isolated, but all of Gaza. Die more quietly.

    The hope, he adds, was that by immiserating the population “Gazans would throw off the yoke of Hamas” – that is, accept their fate to live as little more than “human animals” in an Israeli-run zoo.

    ‘Mowing the lawn’

    Hamas, both its proto-army and its proto-government, learnt ways to adapt.

    It built tunnels under the enclave’s one, short border with Egypt to resist Israel’s siege by trading with the neighbouring population in Sinai and keeping the local economy just barely afloat.

    It fired primitive rockets, which rarely killed anyone in Israel, but achieved other goals.

    The rocket fire created a sense of fear in Israeli communities near Gaza, which Hamas occasionally managed to leverage for minor concessions from Israel, such as an easing of the blockade – but only when Israel didn’t prefer, as it usually did, to respond with more violence.

    The rockets also prevented Gaza and its suffering from disappearing completely from international news coverage – the “Die more quietly” agenda pursued by Israel – even if the price was that the western media could denounce Hamas even more noisily as terrorists.

    And the rockets offered a strategic alternative – armed resistance, its nature shaped by Hamas’ confinement in the Gaza concentration camp – to Fatah’s quietist, behind-the-scenes diplomacy seeking negotiations that were never forthcoming.

    Finally, confronted with the permanent illegitimacy trap set for it by Israel and the US, Hamas approved in 2018 mass, civil disobedience protests at the perimeter fence of the concentration camp it was supposedly “ruling”.

    Israel, backed by the US, responded with increased structural violence to all these forms of resistance.

    In the last two programmes, Israeli and US officials set out the challenges and technical solutions they came up with to prevent their victims from breaking out of their “isolation” – the concentration camp that Gaza had been turned into.

    Underground barriers were installed to make tunnelling more difficult.

    Rocket fire was met with bouts of “mowing the lawn” – that is, carpet-bombing Gaza, indifferent to the Palestinian death toll.

    And thousands of the ordinary Palestinians who massed for months on end at the perimeter fence in protest were either executed or shot in the knee by Israeli snipers.

    Or as the documentary’s narrator characterises it: “At the border with Israel, protesters clashed with Israeli forces, and dozens of Palestinians were killed.”

    Blink, and you might miss it.

    Nothing learnt

    Only by looking beneath the surface of this facile documentary can be found a meaningful answer to the question of what led to the attack on 7 October.

    Israel’s strategy of “isolation” – the blockade and diet – compounded by intermittent episodes of “mowing the lawn” was always doomed to failure. Predictably, the Palestinians’ desire to end their imprisonment in a concentration camp could not be so easily subdued.

    The human impulse for freedom and for the right to live with dignity kept surfacing.

    Ultimately, it would culminate in the 7 October attack. Like most breakouts from barbaric systems of oppression, including slave revolts in the pre-civil rights US, Hamas’ operation ended up mirroring many of the crimes and atrocities inflicted by the oppressor.

    Israel and the US, of course, learnt nothing. They have responded since with intensified, even more obscene levels of violence – so grave that the world’s highest court has put Israel on trial for genocide.

    Obscured by The Road to 7th October is the reality that Israel has always viewed the Palestinians as “human animals”. It just needed the right moment to sell that script to western publics, so that genocide could be recast as self-defence.

    The 7th October attack offered the cover story Israel needed. And the western media, most especially the BBC, played a vital part in amplifying that genocide-justifying narrative through its dehumanisation of the Palestinian people.

    Its one break with that policy – its humanising portrait of Gaza’s children in How to Survive a Warzone – caused an uproar that has echoed for weeks and seen the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, dragged before a parliamentary committee.

    But in truth, we ought to be appalled that this is the only attempt the BBC has made, after 17 months of genocide, to present an intimate view of life for the people of Gaza, especially its children, under Israel’s bombs. The state broadcaster only dared doing so after stripping away the politics of Gaza’s story, reducing decades of the Palestinian people’s oppression by Israel to a largely author-less “humanitarian crisis”.

    Not only is the programme never likely to see the light of day again on the BBC but, after all this commotion, the corporation is unlikely ever again to commission a similarly humanising programme about the Palestinian people.

    There is a good reason why there has been no comparable clamour for the BBC to pull Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October.

    The historical and political context offered by the documentary does nothing to challenge a decades-old, bogus narrative on Israel and Palestine – one that has long helped conceal Israel’s turning of Gaza into a concentration camp, one that made something like the 7 October breakout almost inevitable, and one that legitimised months of genocide.

    The Road to 7th October seeks to rehabilitate a narrative that should be entirely discredited by now.

    In doing so, the BBC is assisting Israel in reviving a political climate in which the genocide in Gaza can resume, with Netanyahu re-instituting mass starvation as a weapon of war and spreading Israel’s ethnic cleansing operations to the West Bank.

    We don’t need more official narratives about the most misrepresented “conflict” in history. We need journalistic courage and integrity. Don’t look to the BBC for either.

    The post New BBC Documentary “The Road to 7th October” is an Utter Travesty first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Trump Threatens Russia with New Sanctions

    Trump threatens Russia with new sanctions

    FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump ©  Global Look Press / CNP / Al Drago

    US President Donald Trump has threatened Moscow with a new round of “large-scale” sanctions until a Ukraine ceasefire is reached. The restrictions would target the Russian banking sector and include tariffs on the country’s foreign trade, he announced in a post on Truth Social on Friday.

    According to Trump, the Russian military “is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now.” Based on that, he said he was “strongly considering” slapping Moscow with another round of sanctions until “a cease fire and final settlement agreement on peace is reached” in the Ukraine conflict. The US president demanded that both Moscow and Kiev “get to the [negotiating] table right now, before it is too late.”

    This comes after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the sanctions imposed under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, “egregiously weak.” Washington is prepared to tighten them, the official told the Economic Club of New York on Thursday. The Trump administration “will not hesitate to go ‘all in’ should it provide leverage in peace negotiations,” Bessent said.

    In February, Trump extended certain sanctions against Moscow for another year. He then suggested that they could be lifted “at some point” during peace talks. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that Western nations might need to reconsider the restrictions imposed against Russia to secure an “enduring, sustainable” resolution to the Ukraine conflict.

    On Friday, the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia called on Washington to ease sanctions on Russia, particularly in the fields of aviation, investment, and banking, claiming that they have been harming both Russian and American businesses.

    The Kremlin also said this week that Western sanctions against Moscow would have to be lifted to mend relations between the US and Russia. Both nations agreed to work on restoring ties following a high-level meeting in Saudi Arabia last month.

    Russia has repeatedly stated that it was open for peace talks, but has opposed a temporary ceasefire with Kiev, arguing that a true settlement of the conflict requires a permanent long-term solution addressing its root causes.

    Russia demands that Ukraine demilitarize, denazify, adhere to a position of neutrality, and recognize the territorial “realities on the ground.” It also opposes any NATO presence on Ukrainian soil.

    The post Trump Threatens Russia with New Sanctions first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ukrainian Commando vs US Business-Being

    Commando Zelenskyy

    One thing that instantly struck me watching the White House press conference February 28, 2025 with US President Donald Trump, Vice President J. D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was that the grand welcome accorded to Zelenskyy by the previous US government of Joe Biden and some Western European governments had gone to Zelenskyy’s head. He expected that as he was like an idol to warmongers like Biden and to reporters itching to see Russia defeated, that he would be so to Trump, too.

    (Watch Biden/Zelenskyy bonhomie at a press conference with reporters from the dominant/major/traditional/legacy media, the war media, to whom Russia is the “evil empire,” per President Ronald Reagan’s label.)

    Zelenskyy was told to put on a suit when visiting the White House. He showed up wearing a commando like stylish black sweatshirt with the logo of Ukrainian tryzub or trident and black pants, both from Ukrainian fashion designer Elvira Gasanova’s menswear label Damirli.

    One should have the freedom to wear whatever one wants, however, Zelenskyy has not always worn such casual clothes. He used to wear suits till Russia attacked1 Ukraine, since then his attire has been military/commando style clothes which he says he’ll wear till the war ends. Zelenskyy is not always on the war front, but his clothing creates an impression that he is just coming from the war front, this in turn deludes him into believing that he is kind of a commando. This commando mentality proved almost fatal for the United States-Ukraine relations when he acted as one during the meeting. On March 3, Trump ordered a pause to all military aid to Ukraine — the first wise step to stop the war. Intelligence sharing is also on pause. Zelenskyy needs to come out of this commando mentality.

    If Zelenskyy was more powerful than Trump, he could do, wear, say, whatever he wanted to. But he is not. He met Trump for Ukraine, not for himself. If the meeting was a personal one, no one will give a damn even if he blew it up. No. This interaction was for Ukraine and he should have remembered that. As the saying goes: Beggars can’t be choosers. Or as Trump put it: “You don’t have the cards. With us, you have the cards. Without us, you don’t have any cards.”

    Zelenskyy badly needs a class in 101 diplomacy. You don’t cut off the branch you’re sitting on; Zelenskyy almost cut off the branch (of the US aid tree) on which Ukraine depends. During the meeting, he constantly argued rather than try and take the conversation towards a more agreeable path.

    Despite the fact that US Senator Lindsey Graham, a strong Trump supporter, had warned Zelenskyy beforehand: “Don’t take the bait. Don’t let the media or anyone else get you into an argument with President Trump.”

    Zelenskyy’s arguments wouldn’t have mattered if he was arguing with the Biden team, because it was the Biden regime’s war.

    Another thing one can deduce from Zelenskyy’s behavior is that he’s not smart like Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu or India’s Narendra Modi (both have big egos and cruel mentality, and wouldn’t hesitate to unleash violence to achieve the desired goals). But neither argue or show any displeasure when they meet Trump because they know they are weak partners vis-a-vis the US which is very strong — I would say too strong for our world, not a very good thing. Israeli leaders are famous for insulting, bypassing, or ordering US leaders but they can’t do that with Trump — of course, instead, they get things done with flattery.

    Invited for lunch, but humiliated and shown the door without lunch from the White House, Zelenskyy flew into London in the warm and comforting embrace (albeit, a momentary one) of Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the UK. (Britain, once the greatest empire in the world, now has not much power except, every now and then, it makes some noise to draw attention.)

    A conference of 18 leaders: Europeans and Canada’s Justin Trudeau, were called to support Ukraine which Starmer called “coalition of the willing.” The unwilling ones will be crushed or maligned. But the leaders were aware that without the US not much can be accomplished.

    Donald Tusk of Poland: “Dear [Zelenskyy], dear Ukrainian friends, you are not standing alone.”

    Tusk should have added: We are all together but still alone unless the Globo Cop US joins in.

    It seems like Zelenskyy came his senses. On March 4, he said:

    “None of us wants an endless war. Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians.” “My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.”

    Zelenskyy must be feeling very humiliated: first for being dressed down by Trump, and, then for accepting “Trump’s strong leadership.”

    Advice for Zelenskyy, if he’s allowed to stay in power, or any other leader who takes over: Try to stay neutral, avoid joining NATO, be friendly, as much as possible, with your neighbors, including Russia, and prevent being a proxy in the hands of US/European warmongers. The devastating result in the form of death and destruction for both Ukraine and Russia is in front of you, due to your prolongation of the war.

    Ukrainians must watch the following video of a speech given by Jeffrey Sachs to the European Parliament.

    Business-being Trump

    The effective rate for many anti-bacterial, disinfectant, and other products is advertised as 99.99% effective. In other words, it’s not absolutely effective and not totally potent.

    The same analogy can also be applied to Trump. One could say Trump is 99.99% nasty, greedy, cruel, or whatever. That, however, leaves room for some uprightness in Trump.

    Trump’s figure for US support of $350 billion dollars to Ukraine was, as usual, exaggerated, the actual amount is about $183 billion — huge sum of money for the war, for which major support comes only from the Democratic Party’s “affluent upper-middle class base.” However, the total amount Ukraine received from the US, European Union institutes, several countries, and groups amounts to $380 billion.

    For Trump, Zelenskyy is not a hero. Trump is a different entity with a diverse agenda; he has been talking about ending the Russia/Ukraine war for a long time and so it was counterproductive to argue and throw tantrums rather than listening to Trump and then requesting a favor here and a favor there. Of course, Trump has his own interest in facilitating a ceasefire, he is eyeing Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.

    After all, Trump is business-being and like most businesspersons, his motive is always a financial one.

    Trump is right when he points out the danger of the Russian Ukraine war:

    “You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War Three2.”

    Trump attacked

    The war news media and many European leaders instead of thanking Trump for his efforts in working for a ceasefire, which would not only prevent loss of life and destruction in Ukraine and Russia but would also save US and European taxpayers’ money, lambasted him for being a “bully” and termed discussion with Zelenskyy an “ambush.”

    Financial Times’ Europe editor Ben Hall said Trump and Vance “were spoiling for a fight” with Zelenskyy. Marc Polymeropoulus, MSNBC’s National Security & Intelligence Analyst noted that Trump and Vance “have humiliated the United States” when they shouted at Zelenskyy.

    German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier: “The scene in the White House yesterday took my breath away. I would never have believed that we would one day have to protect Ukraine from the U.S.A.”

    Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) accused Trump and Vance of “doing Putin’s dirty work.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) described Trump’s berating of Zelenskyy “utter embarrassment” for the US.

    Trump is wrong on a huge number of issues but not on this one. All those criticizing him are foes of Ukrainian people; it’s they who are paying the price for this meaningless war.

    ENDNOTES:

    The post Ukrainian Commando vs US Business-Being first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    The former USSR’s (now Russia) request for NATO membership in mid 1950s was rejected. Why? two logical reasons: one, if Russia is in NATO then you have no enemy to fight with. That is a no, no. Also, there wouldn’t be a war lobby and no arms-related corruption; not a good thing for lobbyists, Congresspersons, weapons producers who always get their cuts, profit, and so on. The other reason was a united Europe wouldn’t be as vulnerable to US dictates as it is now.
    2    The World War I and the World War II started by Europeans and the world was dragged in because most countries were under European colonial rule. (The name World War is a misnomer — actually it should be called European World War.) How wise are these idiot European leaders whose insanity could drive Europe towards the European World War III.

    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will introduce 27 European Union members with her “ReArm Europe” costing $840 billion.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Reflections on the Life of a Cuban-American Exile Hardliner

    “One should never speak ill of the dead,” so the old cliché goes about the recently deceased. Those with less inclination toward sentimentality, however, hold that this rule applies only to those who have lived a life exclusively in private and whose actions have had an effect only among their close-knit circle of family, friends, coworkers and neighbors. For those who have lived a public life and who have wielded power over others in a political capacity, their decision to live such a life exempts them from this freedom-from-criticism even, or perhaps especially, in death. For it is in the aftermath of a public figure’s passing that they will receive the greatest adulation, and the temptation to minimize their misdeeds will be most pronounced.

    In the case of Lincoln Diaz-Balart, the former Florida congressmember who passed away on March 3, 2025, aged 70, there are two further factors at play. First, there is the fact that he died at a time in which the great majority of his obituaries, because of the power structure of the media industry and its overwhelming deference to the US’s two duopoly parties, will be long on lionizing and short on criticism. Second, there is the fact that Diaz-Balart evidently did not himself buy into this notion, at least if his reactions to the deaths of his political adversaries such as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez are anything to go by. Indeed, he said shortly after the death of Fidel Castro: “The brain of evil, of that tyranny, and of, really, the movement throughout this hemisphere against democracy, against the rule of law, in favor of terrorism, in support of narco-trafficking… that brain and coordinator has died.” Following the death of Hugo Chavez, he said: “Hugo Chavez was a puppet of Fidel Castro.”

    And so it falls to an independent journalist writing in alternative media to provide some balance and critical analysis of Diaz-Balart’s political career. But I do have some special insight into the man’s life and politics. Diaz-Balart’s family knew my mother’s family in Cuba and then in Miami after both left the island following the 1959 overthrow of Fulgencio Batista. I interned for a short time at his office in Washington, which ironically had the effect of turning me into an anti-imperialist, so disgusted I was with the hypocrisy, double-standards and shameless self-interestedness of his foreign policy stances.

    It was when I asked one of his staffers why Diaz-Balart didn’t advocate for an “embargo” against Saudi Arabia, on the same grounds on which he advocates one against Cuba and with the same condition that it be lifted only when its ruler (an absolute monarch, no less) agrees to hold “free and fair” elections, that I had an epiphany that has stayed with me and influenced my political trajectory ever since. Hearing his dissembling and derisory answer (that “the alternative would be worse”) made me realize the most central truth about US foreign policy: that Washington’s sole criterion for its treatment of other countries is not their democratic credentials, their human rights record, their good governance or lack thereof, or the integrity of their institutions, but rather the extent to which they are obedient to US geostrategic and, especially, US economic interests. What else could explain Washington’s obsequious treatment of the Saudi Wahhabiist state? And how could it be a coincidence that the US had privileged access to its oil reserves and made money for its military industrial complex via lucrative arms contracts?

    Following travels through Latin America, graduate studies in international affairs, immersion in the work of figures such as Saul Landau and Greg Grandin, and growing involvement in activism and writing about the region, this realization evolved into a deeper understanding of the US’s role on the world stage. Far from Diaz-Balart’s notion of a benevolent United States standing up for the “American values” of democracy, the rule of law, and so on, the so-called ‘shining city on the hill’ is, in fact, a ruthless rogue state that constantly intervenes in other countries’ affairs and constantly flouts international law. And it not only sides with and actively props up, but sometimes even installs, some of the worst governments throughout the globe. Indeed, far from supporting democracy, the US has overthrown countless democratically-elected governments not to its liking. This has been especially pronounced in the US’s so-called “backyard,” which Grandin has described in his book of the same name as “Empire’s Workshop.”

    The fact that Diaz-Balart made a career out of collaborating with this rogue state in waging a decades-long economic war against his own country and, by extension, his own people will stand as the most salient thing about his political life and legacy. Shortly after the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the US administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower imposed a number of punitive measures on Cuba. These have been progressively increased by subsequent US administrations of both parties ever since. Together they have come to be known as the “embargo” against Cuba though are more accurately described as an economic blockade because they penalize third countries. Though President Barack Obama reestablished diplomatic relations with Cuba in 2016, the blockade has nonetheless remained in place. His successors to the White House, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, rolled back many of his reforms and, in the case of Trump, strengthened the blockade by enacting further coercive measures.

    Diaz-Balart was elected to congress in 1989 and is best known for serving as the author of much of the legislation that codified the blockade into law. The fact that he did this while making out that it was all done for the good of the Cuban people makes it all the more despicable. After all, the Cuban-American exile brigade frequently invokes the suffering of the Cubans left in Cuba as justification for the blockade. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, another Cuban-American exile hardliner who also served as a congressmember representing a district in South Florida, spelled it out in her statement about Diaz-Balart’s death: “The oppressed people of Cuba had no greater advocate for their freedom than Lincoln [Diaz-Balart].”

    Yet it is the blockade itself that has been the primary cause of their suffering. According to UN figures, it has caused over $160 billion of damage to the Cuban economy. The Center for International Policy, meanwhile, has stated that the blockade has “created a situation of scarcity and uncertainty that has affected all aspects of Cuban society.” Though no hard data exists on the number of deaths caused by the blockade, a 1997 study by the American Association for World Health concluded, as The Los Angeles Times put it, that it “has significantly increased suffering and deaths in the Caribbean nation.” Needless to say, Diaz-Balart also supported the same kind of measures against Nicaragua and Venezuela, which have imposed on those countries’ people similar levels of suffering and hardship.

    Because the blockade is based on unilateral coercive measures rather than multilateral sanctions, it is illegal under international law. It also violates international law because it is a form of collective punishment that harms Cuba’s civilian population rather than ostensible targets in the government. As a result, the blockade stands in the opprobrium of the international community, with practically every country in the world other than the US and its proxy state, Israel, voting in favor of a UN resolution condemning it. The measure has passed with the vast majority of UN General Assembly members’ support every year since the vote was first held in 1992.

    The blockade outlaws almost all direct trade between Cuba and the US with minor exemptions for medicine, some foodstuffs, and humanitarian goods. Diaz-Balart not only opposed these exemptions but advocated for what he termed a “secondary boycott,” which would have meant that any company that invested in Cuba would have been disallowed from doing business in the US as well. Of course, the Cuban-American exile brigade propaganda response to this is the notion that “Cuba can trade with the rest of the world.” Left unsaid is the fact that the blockade penalizes third countries for trading with Cuba. The State Department has prosecuted and fined several European banks for violating the terms of the embargo. The French bank Société Générale was fined a whopping $1.3 billion in 2018!

    This practice massively disincentivizes other countries and their companies from doing any type of business with Cuba. Diaz-Balart openly stated during his time in congress that another major purpose of the blockade is to keep hard currency out of the hands of the Cuban government. This difficulty in accessing the four currencies accepted for international trade on the global market (the US dollar, the Pound sterling, the euro and the Japanese yen) also makes it very difficult for the Cuban government to trade with other nations.

    If the blockade isn’t meant to alleviate the suffering of the Cuban people, then what is its purpose? For Diaz-Balart, its purpose was twofold. First, it formed part of the vendetta that he held against the revolution and its leaders. Diaz-Balart, like so many leaders of South Florida’s Cuban-American exile community, came from a family that was close to the US-backed Batista government and formed part of Cuba’s internal quisling class who served as proxies of US economic imperialism. Diaz-Balart’s father was deputy minister of the interior in Batista’s government and was later elected to the Cuban Senate in 1958 on a pro-Batista platform but was unable to take his seat due to the revolution the following year.

    Though a central part of Cuban-American exile folklore is the idea that “Free Cuba” “fell” to Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement, the reality is that Batista was himself a dictator who had come to power via a coup in 1952. His fascist government operated a secret police force that tortured and murdered political opponents. The estimate of 20,000 dead is the figure often touted as the total number of his victims but even CIA documents say this is likely a massive undercount as it, according to a 1963 CIA memorandum declassified in 2005, “includes only a relatively small number killed in actual military encounters.” The document adds: “The [Batista] regime’s campaign of terror got out of control and the government in Havana probably had no clear idea of how many killings the police and army forces were committing.”

    Batista also allowed the mafia to control large swaths of the economy in exchange for bribes. When the 26th of July Movement toppled his government in 1959, he was so unpopular that an opinion poll held at the time showed that 86 percent of Cubans supported the revolution. The above cited CIA memorandum likewise states that “the anti-Batista forces… by mid-1958 had the support of 80 to 90 percent of the population.” So Diaz-Balart’s support for the blockade was motivated by a wish for revenge not just against the revolutionary leaders themselves but against the people who remained in Cuba for the crime of supporting the overthrow of the US-backed dictator to which his family owed its power and privilege and their support for Fidel Castro and the revolution he led.

    Support for the revolution has remained substantial throughout the decades and Castro remained a popular figure until his death in 2016. Even documents published by the State Department’s Office of the Historian have conceded that “substantial numbers still support [the revolution] with enthusiasm” and that before his death Castro retained “widespread support among the poorer classes, particularly in the countryside.” Though it is purely speculation, I suspect that Diaz-Balart knew this full well all along, as do his brother and Ros-Lehtinen.

    The second reason Diaz-Balart supported the blockade was because it creates leverage for the US to impose its will on the island. In the case that the Cuban government falls, so goes the logic, the US would be able to dictate how Cuba should be organized both politically and economically. Diaz-Balart made no secret of this, stating openly that his vision of a “free” Cuba would mean both “free elections” and “free markets.” Of course, for a small Caribbean country like Cuba with a history of US domination, so-called “free markets” would translate into a surrender of its economic sovereignty to an imperial hegemon. Indeed, before the revolution Cuba’s economy had been divvied up to US corporations with much of the profit leaving the country to line the pockets of US-based shareholders. This was one of the major grievances against the Batista dictatorship held by the majority of the Cuban population at the time and articulated by the revolutionary leaders.

    In terms of “free elections,” if the Cuban Communist Party or some other socialist party ran in the election and won in spite of Washington trying to rig it (as it most certainly would), does anyone seriously think that the Cuban-American exile hardliners or the US government would accept the result? And how could an election in Cuba be “free and fair” if the US continues to channel millions of dollars per year (so far over $200 million overall) into opposition groups intent on destroying the social gains of the revolution and handing Cuba’s economy back to the US and its domestic quislings? Indeed, what the Cuban-American exile brigade want is not a return to democracy but rather a return to their position of power, whether it be under a US-backed dictatorship or a US-rigged sham liberal democratic system.

    Like the Diaz-Balart family, many of the South Florida-based Cuban-American exiles themselves come from this collaborationist bourgeoisie that served as the US’s proxy administrators of empire and wish to reestablish their class privilege in a “liberated,” that is to say, capitalist and US-dominated, Cuba. And though such people claim that they were persecuted and driven out of the country by the revolutionary government, the reality is that many left voluntarily because they were despised by the great majority of Cuban people for their association with the US-backed Batista and would be again if they returned.

    In addition to his vindictiveness, Diaz-Balart’s support for the blockade was also deeply hypocritical. At the very same time he sanctimoniously bloviated about Cuba’s supposed deservingness of this treatment, he was not only turning a blind eye but actively working to enable some of the world’s worst human rights violators. For example, he not only never once introduced any measure condemning Israel’s occupation, displacement, denial of rights, and humiliation of the Palestinian people, but shamelessly took campaign contributions from the hardline Zionist special interest group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and staunchly supported its agenda in his congressional votes.

    AIPAC posted on X shortly following his death: “We mourn the passing of former Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart who was a stalwart supporter of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Rep. Diaz-Balart was a strong ally of the pro-Israel community and we extend our condolences to his family.” Diaz-Balart’s supporters would surely respond that Israel is a “democracy.” But Israel can hardly be considered a “democracy” when it is practicing ethnic apartheid not just according to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the late Jimmy Carter but even according to its former attorney-general and the former head of Mossad.

    Diaz-Balart also never signed any resolution condemning human rights violations in Colombia during the presidency of Alvaro Uribe. On the contrary, in 2008 Diaz-Balart said in a statement: “The United States Congress must stand in solidarity with President Alvaro Uribe… Colombia is our strongest ally in the region.” His brother Mario Diaz-Balart, also a congress member representing a South Florida district, was present at a ceremony where Uribe was awarded with a Presidential Medal of Freedom. During Uribe’s presidency, Colombia had what many including NACLA have described as “the worst human rights record in the Western Hemisphere.”

    Uribe’s so-called “counter-narcotics” campaigns, for example, saw government-allied paramilitary death squads displace rural populations and murder union activists, social leaders, or whoever else stood in the way of powerful multinational corporations and wealthy landowners. For several years during Uribe’s presidency and for some years afterwards, Colombia held the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists. Colombia’s population of internally displaced persons, meanwhile, currently stands at about 7 million people. The number surged during Uribe’s presidency as a direct result of this paramilitary activity. Human Rights Watch stated in 2005: “In the last three years alone, nearly 5 percent of Colombia’s 43 million people has been forcibly displaced.” (Uribe’s time in office began in 2002.)

    Diaz-Balart’s relationship with Uribe, in fact, perfectly demonstrates his extreme hypocrisy regarding two accusations he hurled at the Cuban government: support for narco-trafficking and terrorism. In the case of narco-trafficking, declassified US intelligence documents say that Uribe collaborated with the Medellin Cartel and that the organization financed his campaign for the Colombian Senate. In terms of terrorism, the Parapolitics scandal revealed ties between dozens of Uribe’s political allies (including his cousin Mario Uribe) and right-wing paramilitary organizations such as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which the US government itself designates as a terrorist organization.

    This was at the very time that Diaz-Balart was one of the major advocates of the US listing Cuba as a state-sponsor of terrorism. The basis for this included dubious claims about ties to Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) along with vague allusions to Cuban cooperation with Iran, another supposed state-sponsor of terrorism. Leaving aside the credibility of these assertions, in addition to his association with Uribe, Diaz-Balart himself frequently associated with and advocated for people who easily meet the US’s own definition of the word ‘terrorist’.

    Along with the aforementioned fellow Cuban-American exile hardline congressmember Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Diaz-Balart condemned efforts of the FBI to work cooperatively with Cuban authorities to bring the mastermind of the Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 bombing and the 1997 Havana hotel bombings, Luis Posada-Carriles, to justice.  In the early 2000s, they even tried to get Panama’s then-President Mireya Moscoso to release Posada-Carriles after he was captured by Cuban intelligence. Diaz-Balart also lobbied for the release of Orlando Bosch, Posada-Carriles’ co-conspirator in the airline bombing. Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen can hardly credibly present themselves as champions of the Cuban people when a total of 3,478 Cubans have been killed in US-sponsored terrorist attacks, with a further 2,099 wounded.

    The duo has also had extensive links to the Nicaraguan “Contra” paramilitary organization, which waged a dirty war against the Sandinista government (that ousted the US-backed Samoza dictatorship in 1979) and perceived sympathizers. Ros-Lehtinen hosted a number of former Contra members at her Miami office in 2008. Diaz-Balart, meanwhile, led efforts to get Otto Reich appointed as the George W. Bush administration’s assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere. Reich reported to Oliver North when he was in charge of funding the Contras (later exposed in the Iran-Contra scandal) and, according to The New York Times, “was in charge of a covert program during the Reagan administration to generate public support in the United States for the anti-Sandinista rebels, known as the contras.”

    Of course, Diaz-Balart’s supporters will surely claim that he had a democratic mandate to do all of the things I have enumerated above since he was elected many times to represent his constituents. But this argument has a number of problems. Leaving aside the US’s own dubious democratic credentials and status as a dollarocracy, there is the issue that the Cubans who left Cuba to live in the US are not representative of the Cuban people who remain in Cuba – that is, those who are actually affected by the blockade. For reasons enumerated above, many of the émigrés bear the same grudge against the revolutionary government and, in turn, the Cubans in Cuba who support it. And obviously, those who left the island are likely to be those who are most critical of the government.

    But there is another, more subtle factor at play. Cuban exiles imported to South Florida not just their language and customs but also their clientelistic political culture. Batistaites such as Diaz-Balart hold many positions of political power in South Florida, not just in congress but even more so at the local level, as well as many positions of economic power. Failing to toe the line by pronouncing one’s fidelity to the political stances of this Batistaite political and economic elite can mean social ostracization, retaliatory repercussions, job loss, or other economic consequences.

    Since I have criticized other obituaries for being too one-sided, perhaps I should add some balance to my own. Diaz-Balart admittedly did have some redeeming qualities. He appeared by all accounts to have been a dutiful public servant to his constituents, making sure that he had many staff devoted to case work from residents of his congressional district. He also declined to side with his party’s hardline nativist wing and remained a champion of immigrants after his defection from the Democratic Party in 1985 and throughout his time in congress.

    Whether he would have cozied up to the xenophobic MAGA movement that currently dominates his party remains an open question. But if the actions of his brother Mario and his political protégé Marco Rubio are anything to go by, it doesn’t look good. Rubio ultimately accepted a position in Trump’s cabinet as secretary of state (where he will, no doubt, push for ever greater coercive measures against Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela). His brother, meanwhile, reportedly brushed off suggestions that a second Trump administration would lead to deportations of some of his constituents – which, needless to say, is exactly what has happened.

    Either way, these mitigating factors will never be able to mask the stench of his role working with the government of a hostile foreign state to immiserate the very people whose wellbeing he claimed to be motivated by. Though I extend my condolences to his family and friends, I personally will shed more tears for the victims of the illegal economic warfare he made a career of supporting and the victims of the terrorists who he spent that career defending.

    The post Reflections on the Life of a Cuban-American Exile Hardliner first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trump’s Trade War Escalates, Canada Responds With Retaliatory Tariffs

    Trump’s trade war against the US’s neighbors Mexico and Canada, as well as China, continues with sweeping tariffs on the three countries going into effect just after midnight on Tuesday, March 4. A 25% tariff was added on all imports from Canada and Mexico, and an additional 10% tariff on imports from China.

    On March 5, Trump granted a one-month exemption on imports from Mexico and Canada for US automakers, following a conversation with the three largest auto manufacturers in the country: Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, according to an announcement by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Other levies remain in place.

    The post Trump’s Trade War Escalates, Canada Responds With Retaliatory Tariffs appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • “Biased” UN Report on Nicaragua Ignores Victims of US-backed Opposition Violence

    tranque barricade Nicaragua 2018 Matagalpa
    One of scores of violent barricades, or tranques, created around Nicaragua during the 2018 coup attempt

    MASAYA, NICARAGUA – Reynaldo Urbina rides his motorbike around the streets of Masaya, Nicaragua, with agility, despite having only one arm. Nearly seven years ago, at the height of a US- supported coup attempt against Nicaragua’s left-wing Sandinista government, Urbina was one of those guarding the city’s municipal warehouse when it was attacked by around 200 armed protestors. Warned of the impending attack, the guards had been ordered to hide their weapons and not resist capture, to minimize casualties.

    But Urbina was suspected of knowing the whereabouts of the city’s mayor, whom the hooligans sought to assassinate, so they threw him to the ground and smashed his left arm with a rifle butt until it was practically destroyed. Urbina escaped, but his arm could not be saved, and was later amputated.

    Reynaldo Urbina el chele

    Reynaldo Urbina (left) lost his left arm after being tortured by US-backed opposition gangs

    When a team was sent by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to Nicaragua to collect evidence on human rights abuses a few weeks later, Urbina was among those offered by the government as a witness. But the team refused to meet him.

    The UN’s 40-page report, issued in August 2018, devotes just five paragraphs to violence by anti-government factions; the rest blames the government and its supporters for practically every other violent incident, including many (like an arson attack on a pro-Sandinista radio station) that were clearly part of the coup attempt.

    Some time after the coup attempt, Nicaragua’s then vice-minister for foreign affairs, Valdrack Jaentschke, described an exchange with Paulo Abrão, who was the Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The IACHR was another of the bodies which had launched investigations of human rights abuses in 2018. Valdrack had asked Abrão why visiting investigators were not collecting evidence of the severe opposition violence which had taken place. Abrão gave two reasons: that human rights abuses can only be carried out by the state, and that violence by civil society groups is just “common criminality” and therefore not within the investigators’ mandate.

    Israeli regime cutout hosts Nicaraguan regime change operative Maradiaga at UNHRC

    This February 28 this year, when the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) held a session on human rights in Nicaragua, a key witness who played a leading role in the coup against Nicaragua’s elected Sandinista government appeared by video to deliver a denunciation of his enemies in Managua.

    He was Felix Maradiaga, a US government-sponsored regime change operative who was one of the main organizers of the coup attempt. As The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal reported, Maradiaga’s IEEPP think tank had been funded with hundreds of thousands of dollars in support from the National Endowment for Democracy, the regime change arm of the US government.

    In June 2018, the Nicaraguan police charged Maradiaga with overseeing an organized criminal network that murdered several people. Relieved of this charge in a post-coup amnesty in 2019, he was arrested again, this time for treason, in 2021. Released again – this time into exile in the United States – Maradiaga was awarded a major prize from the UNHRC in 2023 as a “human rights defender.”

    Maradiaga’s most recent UNHRC appearance was hosted by by UN Watch, an Israeli regime cutout which maintains a constant presence in Geneva, relentlessly attacking the UN to shield Israel’s system of apartheid. But what interest would an Israel lobby outfit have in backing Nicaragua’s opposition? The motive clearly relates to the Sandinista government’s longstanding support for Palestinian self-determination, a stance which led it to sever diplomatic ties with Israel and bring legal action against Germany in 2024 for assisting Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. (All of Nicaragua’s top opposition figures are vehemently pro-Israel).

    A day before Maradiaga’s appearance, Nicaragua’s government issued a statement accusing the UNHRC of being “a platform for those who are attempting to destabilize Nicaragua and are the perpetrators of numerous murders, abductions, and violations of human rights of the Nicaraguan people.” It went on to announce its “irrevocable” withdrawal from the multilateral body.

    Nicaragua’s patience had run out. Not only was the UNHRC platforming Maradiaga, but they had published a new report on alleged “human rights violations.” The report comes from the so-called “Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaraguan” (GHREN) set up by the UNHRC in 2022. It supposedly describes human rights in Nicaragua in the period from 2018 onwards, but to anyone who lives in the country (as I do) and witnessed the violent coup attempt that took place in April-July that year, it is an extraordinarily partial and biased document.

    The most egregious bias is the report’s treatment of opposition figures like Maradiaga as victims, not perpetrators. It is true that there have been arrests, imprisonments and the expulsion from the country (with US agreement and facilitation) of many of those arrested. But the GHREN appears never to have asked if they might be guilty of criminal acts. The new report refers disparagingly to government statements “alleging” that 2018’s events were an attempted coup. Instead, according to the GHREN, “legitimate protests” took place and were subject to a “violent and disproportionate crackdown.”

    Yet as The Grayzone reported back in 2019, the real story was very different. Of the official death toll of 253, just 31 were known supporters of the opposition, 48 were probable or actual Sandinista supporters, 22 were police and the majority (152) were members of the public, many of them attacked at armed opposition roadblocks. Simply by omitting the facts that 22 police officers were killed, some after being tortured, and that over 400 police were injured, the GHREN reveals an extraordinary bias which invalidates its report.

    The GHREN members are fully aware of the real story, but they simply choose to ignore it. They quite deliberately feed Washington’s narrative, repeated by its allies and by the corporate media, that what happened in 2018 was a series of peaceful protests, not a violent coup attempt that endangered thousands of Nicaraguans and hit the livelihoods of millions.

    Their first, 300-page report in March 2023 also made little reference to opposition violence, and as result it was strongly criticized in a letter to the UNHRC, organized by the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition and signed by many prominent human rights experts and by 119 organizations and 573 individuals, and accompanied by a detailed critique of the report. A separate document analyzed their error-strewn case study of Masaya, where I live, referring them to overlooked crimes such as the torture of Reynaldo Urbina. Neither the letter nor the accompanying evidence received any response, but it can be assumed that the “experts” are at least aware of that they were sent.

    When the GHREN produced a second report, in March 2024, another letter of protest was submitted, again receiving no response. This was also signed by human rights experts and a large number of organizations and individuals. It was sent personally to the president of the UNHRC by Alfred de Zayas, Professor of International Law in Geneva and a former UN Independent Expert. According to de Zayas, the report was “methodologically flawed, biased and should never have been published.”

    When there was again no response, a third letter was sent in September 2024, urging the UNHRC to close down the GHREN on the grounds that its reports are incompatible with UN and UNHRC resolutions, do not meet the assignment they were given, and ignored legitimate and detailed evidence submitted. Not surprisingly, there was no reply.

    The intention to ignore these criticisms could hardly be more obvious, despite the GHREN’s claim to exercise “independence, impartiality, objectivity, transparency, integrity.” Or, as the letter from Nicaragua’s foreign minister puts it, the UNHRC (in publishing the GHREN’s work) “violates its own regulations.”

    This is part of a well-established pattern, referred to by Cuban and Venezuelan officials at the UNHRC’s recent session as well as those from Nicaragua, in which the council listens to and records only one side of the story when investigating human rights “violations” by Washington’s enemies. In his book on “the human rights industry,” de Zayas specifically accuses the GHREN of being set up for the purpose of “naming and shaming” the Nicaraguan government, not for objective investigation.

    Instead of answering criticisms, the GHREN cynically repeats an accusation made in its previous reports, that Nicaraguan authorities were given the chance to respond to its allegations but failed to do so. Had they investigated Nicaragua’s reticence, they might have uncovered the Urbina case and several others where the government tried and failed to engage with such exercises.

    Notable among these was the visit in 2018 by an earlier “interdisciplinary group of independent experts” whose similarly error-strewn report, about that year’s violent “Mothers’ Day march,” also showed overwhelming partiality and anti-government bias. Soon after this visit the government made the understandable decision to refuse cooperation with future investigations by multilateral bodies, and later to deny them permission even to enter the country. Its recent withdrawal from the UNHRC itself was a logical last step.

    From Washington’s viewpoint, the GHREN’s new report could hardly have been better timed. Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio had already branded Nicaragua’s government (along with those of Cuba and Venezuela) as “enemies of humanity.” Not only does the report bolster this view, but it even advocates the tightening of sanctions on Nicaragua that Rubio is known to be contemplating.

    The GHREN specifically calls for Nicaragua to be penalized under the regional trade treaty, known as CAFTA, which enables Nicaragua to trade with its Central American neighbors and the US on favorable terms, and is of massive importance for the country’s economy and hence for Nicaraguan livelihoods. The GHREN’s recommendation is in direct conflict with one of the UNHRC’s own resolutions: UNHRC Resolution 48/5 in 2021 states that such sanctions (“unilateral coercive measures”) violate international law and human rights. Rubio said in Costa Rica on February 4 that the trade treaty’s purpose was to “reward democracy.” Visiting Central America’s right-wing governments to drum up support for tightened sanctions, he claimed that Nicaragua “…is not a democracy. It does not function as a democracy.”

    The GHREN’s report, issued just three weeks after Rubio’s visit, suggests that penalties could be applied under CAFTA’s “democratic clause.” Yet the trade treaty does not have such a clause; it only has a passing reference, in its preamble, to “sustaining the rule of law and democracy.” An impartial group of “experts” in international law, such as the GHREN, ought to be aware of the need for precision in their recommendations, and certainly should avoid calling for actions that would be in breach of international law.

    Clearly the GHREN has no such inhibitions. It has provided Rubio with a recommendation that he can use to damage Nicaragua’s economy and harm its working people. Members of Nicaragua’s elite classes, like Felix Maradiaga, will continue to have a voice at international forums; ordinary Nicaraguans whose human rights were permanently damaged in 2018, like Reynaldo Urbina, remain invisible.

    The post “Biased” UN Report on Nicaragua Ignores Victims of US-backed Opposition Violence first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Deep State’s War on Truth

    The Deep State’s war on truth is being waged with doubletalk, delusion and propaganda.

    Through deliberate manipulation of language—what George Orwell called “doublespeak”—Donald Trump has provided cover for the Deep State’s continued grip on power.

    While promising to drain the swamp, his administration has instead relied on contradictory policies, misinformation, and propaganda to further entrench the very system he claims to oppose. Although the Trump administration is merely the latest frontman for the Deep State’s efforts to maintain its stranglehold on power, we are approaching a tipping point beyond which there may be no turning back to freedom as we have known it.

    This is how “we the people” remain on the losing end of this devil’s bargain that is life in the American police state.

    What we desperately need is a reality check, and that starts by disconnecting from the Deep State’s propaganda-riddled, manipulated alternative reality about the state of our nation.

    While President Trump, well versed in the “art of the deal,” appears to be saying all the right things about peace, corruption, graft, wasteful spending, free speech, equality, bloated bureaucracy, national security, etc., his administration’s actions tell a far different story about his priorities and his loyalties, which remain self-serving, imperial, flagrantly unconstitutional and intended to keep the Deep State in power.

    As always, actions speak louder than words.

    When the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are still missing from the White House’s website, that oversight—or deliberate omission—speaks volumes.

    Any government that can’t be bothered to include the Constitution among its priorities, or include it anywhere on its administration’s website, is not a government that can be trusted to abide by the Constitution.

    Then again, trust has little to do with it.

    The Constitution is a contract between the people and the government. What we have been experiencing over the course of both Republican and Democratic presidencies, is a breach of contract. Where the Trump administration differs from those that have come before it is in its willingness to go rogue in defiance of Congress, the courts and the rule of law.

    You don’t wage a “common sense” revolution by discarding the Constitution. That way lies dictatorship.

    Remember, how you do something is just as important as why you do it.

    So, what’s really going on?

    As a populace, we have become so desensitized to political lies, especially Trump’s barrage of lies, that we shrug them off and move on. But in doing so, we act as enablers for what hides beneath those lies.

    Make no mistake: the Deep State—the real Deep State, not the decoy version of it that Trump trots out to justify dismantling our constitutional republic—hides behind that rhetoric.

    As journalist Shawn McCreesh explains, “In order to remake the government, President Trump and his administration are remaking the language used to describe the government... It is a vocabulary containing many curious uses of doublespeak.”

    Doublespeak, as media scholar Edward S. Herman defines it, is characterized by “the ability to lie, whether knowingly or unconsciously, and to get away with it; and the ability to use lies and choose and shape facts selectively, blocking out those that don’t fit an agenda or program.”

    The term is derived from George Orwell’s 1984, in which “doublethink” and “Newspeak” are used to manipulate the masses into going along with the government’s agenda.

    In true Orwellian fashion, Trump has mastered the art of doublespeak.

    Consider some of Trump’s uses of alternative facts, misdirection and misnomers to advance the Deep State’s agenda.

    In true doublespeak fashion, Trump’s path to peace leads to more war.

    Trump’s path to nationalism by way of isolationism is in fact empire building.

    Trump’s path to saving money is spending money.

    Trump’s path to law and order is allowing the police to act lawlessly.

    Trump’s path to efficiency is giving rise to even greater inefficiency.

    Trump’s path to economic triumph is spelling economic disaster.

    Trump’s path to draining the swamp is letting the swamp run the show.

    Trump’s path to free speech is censorship.

    Trump’s path to transparency is replacing watchdogs with yes-men and loyalists.

    Trump’s path to ending cancel culture is more cancel culture.

    When you set aside the mountain of contradictory policies and propaganda that have become hallmarks of Trump’s time in office, a grim picture emerges: Trump’s efforts to make America great again are really just a variation on one theme, which is keeping the Deep State in power at the expense of our freedoms.

    Indeed, George Orwell’s fictional 1984 could increasingly be mistaken for the Trump Administration’s instruction manual on how to remake the government in the dystopian image of Oceania, the authoritarian regime run by Big Brother.

    The key to maintaining the Deep State’s chokehold on power is what Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels referred to as the “big lie.”

    “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” stated Goebbels.

    This is how that slippery slope to authoritarianism begins, with lies that masquerade as truths and a populace disinclined to think for themselves.

    Which brings us back to the tactics being deployed by the Trump administration.

    Conformity, compliance and group think are necessary ingredients for tyrants to succeed.

    Yet as historian Anne Applebaum writes in The Atlantic, “We are not a theocracy or a monarchy that accepts the word of the leader or the priesthood as law. We are a democracy that debates facts, seeks to understand problems, and then legislates solutions, all in accordance with a set of rules.”

    The answer, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, is that we must re-learn what it means to think for ourselves.

    Pay attention. Question everything. Dare to be different. Don’t follow the mob. Don’t let yourself become numb to the world around you. Be compassionate. Be humane. Most of all, don’t allow yourselves to become so desensitized to Trump’s brand of politics that you tolerate behavior in government officials that you would never tolerate from your own children (lying, bullying, name-calling, greed, etc.).

    When all is said and done, Trump’s path to putting America First is really about putting Trump first and leaving Americans in bondage to the Deep State.

    In Orwell’s world, the state maintained power through deception.

    In Trump’s America, doublespeak remains the Deep State’s most powerful weapon—one that thrives as long as the public fails to recognize it for what it is—and Trump is proving to be its most effective mouthpiece.

    The post The Deep State’s War on Truth first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Why America, the EU, and Ukraine, Should Lose to Russia in Ukraine’s War

    The war in Ukraine is, but in reverse, the same situation that America’s President JFK had faced with regard to the Soviet Union in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the U.S. would have invaded Cuba if Khrushchev wouldn’t agree to a mutually acceptable settlement — which he did, and so WW3 was averted on that occasion. But whereas Khrushchev was reasonable; Obama, Biden, and Trump, are not; and, so, we again stand at the brink of a WW3, but this time with a truly evil head-of-state (Obama, then Biden, and now Trump), who might even be willing to go beyond that brink — into WW3 — in order to become able to achieve world-conquest. This is as-if Khrushchev had said no to JFK’s proposal in 1962 — but, thankfully, he didn’t; so, WW3 was averted, on that occasion.

    How often have you heard or seen the situation in the matter of Cuba being near to the White House (near to America’s central command) being analogized to Ukraine’s being near  — far nearer, in fact — to The Kremlin (Russia’s central command)? No, you probably haven’t encountered this historical context before, because it’s not being published — at least not in America and its allied countries. It’s being hidden.

    The Ukrainian war actually started after the democratically elected President of Ukraine (an infamously corrupt country), who was committed to keeping his country internationally neutral (not allied with either Russia or the United States), met privately with both the U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2010, shortly following that Ukrainian President’s election earlier in 2010; and, on both occasions, he rejected their urgings for Ukraine to become allied with the United States against his adjoining country Russia. This was being urged upon him so that America could position its nuclear missiles at the Russian border with Ukraine, less than a five-minute striking-distance away from hitting the Kremlin in Moscow.

    The war in Ukraine started in 2014, as both NATO’s Stoltenberg and Ukraine’s Zelensky have said (NOT in 2022 as is alleged in the U.S.-controlled nations). This war was started in February 2014 by a U.S. coup which replaced the democratically elected and neutralist Ukrainian President, with a U.S. selected and rabidly anti-Russian leader, who immediately imposed an ethnic-cleansing program to get rid of the residents in the regions that had voted overwhelmingly for the overthrown President. Russia responded militarily on 24 February 2022, in order to prevent Ukraine from allowing the U.S. to place a missile there a mere 317 miles or five minutes of missile-flying-time away from The Kremlin and thus too brief for Russia to respond before its central command would already be beheaded by America’s nuclear strike. (As I headlined on 28 October 2022, “NATO Wants To Place Nuclear Missiles On Finland’s Russian Border — Finland Says Yes”. The U.S. had demanded this, especially because it will place American nuclear missiles far nearer to The Kremlin than at present, only 507 miles away — not as close as Ukraine, but the closest yet.)

    Ukraine was neutral between Russia and America until Obama’s brilliantly executed Ukrainian coup, which his Administration started planning by no later than June 2011, culminated successfully in February 2014 and promptly appointed a anti-Russian to impose in regions that rejected the new anti-Russian U.S.-controlled goverment an “Anti-Terrorist Operation” to kill protesters, and, ultimately, to terrorize the residents in those regions in order to kill as many of them as possible and to force the others to flee into Russia so that when elections would be held, pro-Russian voters would no longer be in the electorate.

    The U.S. Government had engaged the Gallup polling organization, both  before  and  after  the  coup,  in order to poll Ukrainians, and especially ones who lived in its Crimean independent republic (where Russia has had its main naval base ever since 1783), regarding their views on U.S., Russia, NATO, and the EU; and, generally, Ukrainians were far more pro-Russia than pro-U.S., pro-NATO, or pro-EU, but this was especially the case in Crimea; so, America’s Government knew that Crimeans would be especially resistant. However, this was not really new information. During 2003-2009, only around 20% of Ukrainians had wanted NATO membership, while around 55% opposed it. In 2010, Gallup found that whereas 17% of Ukrainians considered NATO to mean “protection of your country,” 40% said it’s “a threat to your country.” Ukrainians predominantly saw NATO as an enemy, not a friend. But after Obama’s February 2014 Ukrainian coup, “Ukraine’s NATO membership would get 53.4% of the votes, one third of Ukrainians (33.6%) would oppose it.” However, afterward, the support averaged around 45% — still over twice as high as had been the case prior to the coup.

    In other words: what Obama did was generally successful: it grabbed Ukraine, or most of it, and it changed Ukrainians’ minds regarding America and Russia. But only after the subsequent passage of time did the American billionaires’ neoconservative heart become successfully grafted into the Ukrainian nation so as to make Ukraine a viable place to position U.S. nuclear missiles against Moscow (which is the U.S. Government’s goal there). Furthermore: America’s rulers also needed to do some work upon U.S. public opinion. Not until February of 2014 — the time of Obama’s coup — did more than 15% of the American public have a “very unfavorable” view of Russia. (Right before Russia invaded Ukraine, that figure had already risen to 42%. America’s press — and academia or public-policy ‘experts’ — have been very effective at managing public opinion, for the benefit of America’s billionaires.)

    Then came the Minsk Agreements (#1 & #2, with #2 being the final version, which is shown here, as a U.N. Security Council Resolution), between Ukraine and the separatist region in its far east, and which the U.S. Government refused to participate in, but the U.S.-installed Ukrainian government (then under the oligarch Petro Poroshenko) signed it in order to have a chance of Ukraine’s gaining EU membership, but never complied with any of it; and, so, the war continued); and, then, finally, as the Ukrainian government (now under Volodmyr Zelensky) was greatly intensifying its shelling of the break-away far-eastern region, Russia presented, to both the U.S. Government and its NATO military alliance against Russia, two proposed agreements for negotiation (one to U.S., the other to NATO), but neither the U.S. nor its NATO agreed to negotiate. The key portions of the two 17 December 2021 proposed Agreements, with both the U.S. and with its NATO, were, in regards to NATO:

    Article 1

    The Parties shall guide in their relations by the principles of cooperation, equal and indivisible security. They shall not strengthen their security individually, within international organizations, military alliances or coalitions at the expense of the security of other Parties. …

    Article 4

    The Russian Federation and all the Parties that were member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as of 27 May 1997, respectively, shall not deploy military forces and weaponry on the territory of any of the other States in Europe in addition to the forces stationed on that territory as of 27 May 1997. With the consent of all the Parties such deployments can take place in exceptional cases to eliminate a threat to security of one or more Parties.

    Article 5

    The Parties shall not deploy land-based intermediate- and short-range missiles in areas allowing them to reach the territory of the other Parties.

    Article 6

    All member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commit themselves to refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine as well as other States.

    And, in regards to the U.S.:

    Article 2

    The Parties shall seek to ensure that all international organizations, military alliances and coalitions in which at least one of the Parties is taking part adhere to the principles contained in the Charter of the United Nations.

    Article 3

    The Parties shall not use the territories of other States with a view to preparing or carrying out an armed attack against the other Party or other actions affecting core security interests of the other Party.

    Article 4

    The United States of America shall undertake to prevent further eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and deny accession to the Alliance to the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

    The United States of America shall not establish military bases in the territory of the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that are not members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, use their infrastructure for any military activities or develop bilateral military cooperation with them.

    Any reader here can easily click onto the respective link to either proposed Agreement, in order to read that entire document, so as to evaluate whether or not all of its proposed provisions are acceptable and reasonable. What was proposed by Russia in each of the two was only a proposal, and the other side (the U.S. side) in each of the two instances, was therefore able to pick and choose amongst those proposed provisions, which ones were accepted, and to negotiate regarding any of the others; but, instead, the U.S. side simply rejected all of them.

    On 7 January 2022, the Associated Press (AP) headlined “US, NATO rule out halt to expansion, reject Russian demands”, and reported:

    Washington and NATO have formally rejected Russia’s key demands for assurances that the US-led military bloc will not expand closer towards its borders, leaked correspondence reportedly shows.

    According to documents seen by Spanish daily El Pais and published on Wednesday morning, Moscow’s calls for a written guarantee that Ukraine will not be admitted as a member of NATO were dismissed following several rounds of talks between Russian and Western diplomats. …

    The US-led bloc denied that it posed a threat to Russia. …

    The US similarly rejected the demand that NATO does not expand even closer to Russia’s borders. “The United States continues to firmly support NATO’s Open Door Policy.”

    NATO-U.S. was by now clearly determined to get Ukraine into NATO and to place its nukes so near to The Kremlin as to constitute, like a checkmate in chess, a forced defeat of Russia, a capture of its central command. This was, but in reverse, the situation that America’s President JFK had faced with regard to the Soviet Union in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the U.S. would have invaded Cuba if Khrushchev wouldn’t agree to a mutually acceptable settlement — which he did agree to, and so WW3 was averted on that occasion. But whereas Khrushchev was reasonable, America’s recent Presidents are not; and, so, we again stand at the brink of WW3, but this time with a truly evil head-of-state (America’s recent Presidents), who might even be willing to go beyond that brink in order to become able to achieve world-conquest.

    Russia did what it had to do: it invaded Ukraine, on 24 February 2022. If Khrushchev had said no to JFK’s proposal in 1962, then the U.S. would have invaded and taken over Cuba, because the only other alternative would have been to skip that step and go directly to invade the Soviet Union itself — directly to WW3. Under existing international law, either response — against Cuba, or against the U.S.S.R. — would have been undecidable, because Truman’s U.N. Charter refused to allow “aggression” to be defined (Truman, even at the time of the San Francisco Conference, 25 April to 26 June 1945, that drew up the U.N. Charter, was considering for the U.S. to maybe take over the entire world). Would the aggression in such an instance have been by Khrushchev (and by Eisenhower for having similarly placed U.S. missiles too close to Moscow in 1959), or instead by JFK for responding to that threat? International law needs to be revised so as to prohibit ANY nation that is “too near” to a superpower’s central command, from allying itself with a different superpower so as to enable that other superpower to place its strategic forces so close to that adjoining or nearby superpower as to present a mortal threat against its national security. But, in any case, 317 miles from The Kremlin would easily be far “too close”; and, so, Russia must do everything possible to prevent that from becoming possible. America and its colonies (‘allies’) are CLEARLY in the wrong on this one. (And I think that JFK was likewise correct in the 1962 case — though to a lesser extent because the distance was four times larger in that case — America was the defender and NOT the aggressor in that matter.)

    If this finding appears to you to be too contradictory to what you have read and heard in the past for you to be able to believe it, then my article earlier today (March 4), “The Extent of Lying in the U.S. Press” presents also five other widespread-in-The-West lies, so that you will be able to see that there is nothing particularly unusual about this one, other than that this case could very possibly produce a world-ending nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. People in the mainstream news-business are beholden to the billionaires who control the people who control (hire and fire) themselves, and owe their jobs to that — NOT really to the audience. This is the basic reality. To ignore it is to remain deceived. But you can consider yourself fortunate to be reading this, because none of the mainstream news-sites is allowed to publish articles such as this. None of the mainstream will. They instead deceived you. It’s what they are hired (by their owners and advertisers) to do, so as to continue ruling the Government (by getting you to vote for their candidates).

    Furthermore, I received today from the great investigative journalist Lucy Komisar, who has done many breakthrough news-reports exposing the con-man whom U.S. billionaires have assisted — back even before Obama started imposing sanctions against Russia in 2012 (Bill Browder) — to provide the ‘evidence’ on the basis of which Obama started imposing anti-Russian sanctions, in 2012 (the Magnitsky Act sanctions), recent articles from her, regarding how intentional the press’s refusals to allow the truth to be reported, actually are: on 28 February 2025, her “20 fake US media articles on the Browder Magnitsky hoax and one honest reporter from Cyprus”, and on 4 December 2024, her “MSNBC killed reporter Ken Dilanian’s exposé of the Wm Browder-Magnitsky hoax. State Department knew about it.”

    This isn’t to say, however, that ALL mainstream news-reports in the U.S. empire are false. For example, the Democratic Party site Common Dreams, headlined authentic news against the Republican Party, on March 4, “Trump Threatens Campus Protesters With Imprisonment: ‘Trump here is referring to pro-Palestine protests so you won’t hear a peep from conservatives or even pro-Israel liberals,’ said one journalist”, by Julia Conley; and so did the Republican site N.Y. Post, headlining on 15 October 2020, against the Democratic Party (which Democratic Party media similarly ignored), “Emails reveal how Hunter Biden tried to cash in big on behalf of family with Chinese firm.” However, NONE of the empire’s mainstream media publish reports against the U.S. Government or against its empire; so, the lies that have been covered here are virtually universal — go unchallenged — throughout the empire.

    The post Why America, the EU, and Ukraine, Should Lose to Russia in Ukraine’s War first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Donald Trump and Depression Economics

    Somewhere in the universe is a man known as Donald Trump. He has residences in New York, Palm Beach, Florida, and a white columned house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. From these well-furnished bungalows, where supplicants meet to greet, monarch butterfly Trump governs his territory ─ planet earth. When the monarch desires a change in scenery and craves another mansion, he sends his henchman to the selected area, has them arrange an offer that cannot be refused, and gives the area the glitz his personality favors. Donald Trump imagines he is everywhere. He does not realize he is nowhere. Donald Trump is a walking manic- depressive, bringing America to international isolation and national depression — economic and public.

    Trump professes a smooth and clever operator, a master of the art of the deal, which is a business term for international diplomacy. He is a frenetic wheeler-dealer, which is a business term for gunboat diplomacy. Before Ukraine’s rare earth minerals begged to be mined by U.S. corporations, there was nothing Donald Trump relished from Ukraine President Zelensky; nice to end the war, but the war is not harming the United States. The war is harming Russia, and there is much the United States can gain from Russia, including rare earth minerals, by having Putin believe the U.S. is not siding with the Kremlin, which includes a truce. Trump has done nothing for the United States and all for Putin by siding with the Russian leader. He could have done much for the United States by pretending to side with Zelensky and eschewing his art of the deal for legitimate international diplomacy

    Entrance of the rare earth minerals to the discussion is baffling and contradictory. An agreement by Zelensky to having American construction crews drilling close to the Russian border and American industrialists investing in a nation that Putin wanted neutral would end “peace negotiations.” Russian troops would press on to capture the cherished rocks and align so that citizens from a NATO nation do not operate close to its territory. If Trump coveted the materials, why did he antagonize its owner?Doubts exist of the extent of Ukraine’s possession of the minerals within its non-occupied territory, and if it is physically and economically viable to access and use them. What is this all about? Was Trump setting a trap for Zelensky?

    Trump’s response to Zelensky’s statement that “a deal to end the war with Russia was very far away and the war may not end soon, “is strange and alarming. Trump said, “He better not be right about that.” This is not advice from a sympathetic soul. Sounds as if America is in the war and he wants Ukraine to surrender. Trump’s overzealous support of Russia will harvest more than a truce. It allows a sterner position and more severe demands from Russia ─ a Russian proposal that requests Odessa, Kharkiv, and Kyiv incorporated into Bear country. Zelensky wants guarantees that his nation will be protected. That makes sense. Once there is a peace treaty, Ukraine territory is lost, never to be regained. What stops a superior Russia from restarting the conflict and seeing more territory? Not complying with Zelensky’s request is not being sincere about an agreeable peace. The militant charge for peace has no relation with the war, with Putin, and with making America great again. Donald Trump is eager to win the Nobel peace prize and scoundrel, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky, is preventing it.

    International Isolation

    War, as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy, is the U.S. preferred method to advance its hegemony ─ economic warfare against those who can contend the U.S., and military warfare against weaker foes. It is welcoming to learn that war will no longer be the vanguard of U.S. foreign policy. Is it true? Will Trump learn that the U.S military-industrial complex only knows war, that it is a permanent feature of the U.S. psyche? Without war, the constituted U.S. is not a global leader.

    Europeans won’t readily invite nation executives who do not listen to others and demand everyone listen to them. The inexperience of those who occupy Trump’s cabinet is anathema to the mostly well-groomed European counterparts. The executives and legislators operate at different levels and correspond at no level. Future communications and relations between the disUnited States and semi-unitedEuropean nations will be difficult.

    Trump believes he has sympathetic recognition from Putin and Xi. He has that posture toward them; doubtful he has that posture from them. These leaders are professional statespersons. They exercise care in their relations with leaders who behave erratically, are petulant, not diplomatic, have inconsistent policies, and uncertain direction. They want to be sure they understand with whom they are dealing. The Russian and Chinese leaders may pay lip service to Trump, but will act with caution.

    Economic depression

    Some of the rash moves by Trump and his official “bull in the China shop,” the Musk ox, have merit and national support. America’s president failed to learn how and why we got here from there before he started making here no more. His knowledge of issues is nil and those advising him reinforce his nilness. Decisions from whims and meager knowledge are coin tossing and not careful decisions. His policies date back to the 1920’s and the result will be same as occurred in the 1920’s ─ depression.

    Trump adores private debt and abhors government debt.
    Government debt is not the problem. A system that exists by debt is the problem. Government deficit is one of several methods to increase the money supply (debt) and create demand. In times of economic stress, government borrowing exhibits advantages.

    (1) Government borrows at lower interest rates than consumers and its debt is easily rolled over.

    (2) The government can always pay its debt and cannot go bankrupt. Artful debtors (such as Trump), receiving funds from careless creditors, have gone bankrupt and spiraled the economy into declines.

    During the seven years between 1924 and 1930, federal government debt slowly decreased from $395B to $304B. Herbert Hoover eschewed debt and coveted balanced budgets. In 1930, the low debt U.S. began its Great Depression.

    Trump wants low taxes

    Taxes transfer money between the government and the taxpayers; neither method adds or subtracts money in the economy nor allows more or less available spending to the economy; the purchasing power stays the same; the total purchases of goods and services remain the same; and the GDP remains the same.

    Lowering taxes assists the already employed, and that is not the major priority. Who pays taxes ─ the employed. Who receives tax breaks ─ those who pay taxes. In effect, lowering taxes redistributes federal assistance from needy persons to the employed. Which is preferable, redistributing income so the employed have more to spend or redistributing the income so the underemployed have something to spend?

    Stimulating the economy by tax breaks is a psychological phenomenon. The talk, exaggerations, promises, and general optimism of tax breaks fashion a more optimistic public, which supposedly stimulates spending, investment, and courage to carry more debt. Creeping in to the debate is another assumption ─ those who have excess funds will invest and stimulate growth. Not considered is they invest in speculative ventures that only churn money or they might purchase imports, which decreases purchasing power in the domestic economy.

    GDP has steadily grown, with a few bumps, in the last 70 years, and no relation to lowering of taxes is proven. A government report: Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945, Thomas L. Hungerford Specialist in Public Finance, September 14, 2012, concludes:

    … results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.

    Trump‘s economic plans are guided by “achieving increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.”

    Tax rates fell from 60 percent for top earners in 1920 to 25 percent in 1924 and slightly lower to 23 percent in 1929. Did the lower taxes help the economy? The Hungerford report indicates otherwise. For sure, the lower taxes did not prevent the Depression and might have contributed to its extension.

    Trump craves low interest rates

    Optimum interest rates are not arbitrary, they are a calculated tool for the Federal Reserve to delicately regulate the money supply and the economy; lowering rates (increasing money supply) when the economy is heading downward and raising rates (limiting increases in money supply) when the economy is overheated, inflation is rising, and speculation is rampant. Several economists offer a leading factor in the Great Depression as “differences of opinion contributed to the Federal Reserve’s most serious sin of omission: failure to stem the decline in the supply of money. From the fall of 1930 through the winter of 1933, the money supply fell by nearly 30 percent. The declining supply of funds reduced average prices by an equivalent amount. This deflation increased debt burdens; distorted economic decision-making; reduced consumption; increased unemployment; and forced banks, firms, and individuals into bankruptcy.”

    Trump wants low interest rates to achieve a short-term gain in the economy and make his record look good; after him, the deluge. He will have speculation, more uncertain private debt, and money leaving the country to seek higher interest rates; all followed by potential economic collapse.

    Immigration

    The word immigrant irks the pure white American, Donald Trump. A highly industrialized nation with upward mobility requires an increasing work force and consuming population to grow. When encountering a low population growth, immigration is the avenue for revitalizing the economy. Arguing past immigration and not preparing for future immigration is setting the doomsday clock on a capitalist system. Trump is headed for a pyrrhic victory.

    Tariffs

    In the Trump world, tariffs obtain revenue for the government, which might enable a decrease in income taxes, and give an added opportunity for American industry to compete. The first proposition is obviously false; tariffs raise the price of imported goods and shift the relief of the income tax burden to an equal import tax burden. It is a wash. Stimulating production facilities to discard their mothballs and become alive again is speculation. Tax the imports of one nation and another nation steps in with low price goods.

    Canadian and Mexican exports to the United States are highly valued added products. The U.S. ships unfinished products to those nations. They add their labor and resources and ship finished products to the United States. Keeping Canadian and Mexican added value to a minimum is mandatory for U.S. manufacturers. Tariffs augment prices of the imported goods, which, from producer perspective, is equivalent to augmenting the added value. American producers cannot look inward for relief. They must look outward and find labor from other nations that can fabricate the finished products.

    And there is always retaliation. Looming in the tariff debate is the spectra of the1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff, “that raised tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to protect American businesses and farmers during the Great Depression. However, it led to retaliatory tariffs from other countries and significantly decreased international trade, worsening the economic situation.”

    Government downsizing

    Another bugaboo, from those who rail against inefficiency and free riders, is the swollen government bureaucracy. Government and bureaucracy are one word; always swollen, the government absorbs unemployed whose paychecks circulate in the economy. Their lack of productive activities does little harm. Yes, there are workers who get a free ride. This is bothersome and not resolved by the stampede of a Musk ox.

    The government is not a business with a profit and loss sheet. It can downsize but not without consideration that inefficiency it is not an employee fault; at the day of hire, the government owed the hire person proper training, proper supervision, and proper tasks. The correct way to downsize is for departments to submit and defend budgets. After that, attrition and incentives are used to streamline the departments so that all seats are warm and office temperature rises from the heat of the more energetic civil servants.

    Depressing and Depression

    Depressing to observe the disUnited States thump its chest, while trending into a thinning of its constitution. The heralded phrase of U.S. foreign policy experts, “We had to destroy them in order to save them is mirrored, “We had to destroy ourselves to save ourselves.” Might be just what Americans and the world needs. The Trump era has sputtered before Tesla is able to pass Nissan in U.S. automobile market share. Antagonizing the entire world, especially those who share borders, is the ultimate constraint to a successful America. Replaying 1930 brings back the events of 1930. Trump’s mania, expressed in his outbursts, has been visited upon the American public. Bring back the Prozac, manic depression is now a standard U.S. disease. Trump will soon be seen as another Nicolae Ceausescu, integrated into the disintegrating American dream.

    The post Donald Trump and Depression Economics first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Sovereignty

    With Trump’s recent tongue-lashing of Zelensky at their meeting in Washington DC, social media is now flooded with anguished cries about Ukraine’s sovereignty and how the U.S. must stand up to Russia’s empire-building invasion. The “consensus” claims Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty cannot be tolerated and must be punished.

    Respect for sovereignty? Are these well-intentioned but completely misguided folks incapable of remembering the not so distant past?

    Did America respect Korea’s sovereignty when it canceled free and open elections there in 1950, instigating an unnecessary, brutal war? Over 2 million Koreans were killed.

    Did America respect Vietnam’s sovereignty when it decided Vietnam could not have a Communist government there and slaughtered 3 million people? Vietnam is communist now. I’ve lived there. It does just fine.

    Did America respect Serbia’s sovereignty when it bombed Belgrade for 79 days and finally carved out Kosovo so it could build what was for years the largest NATO base in Eastern Europe?

    Did America respect Afghanistan’s sovereignty when it refused to work with the Taliban when they offered to hand over Osama bin Laden, but chose instead to invade and launch a 22-year war? We killed tens of thousands of Afghanis, lost the war. The Taliban is still in power.

    Did America respect Iraq’s sovereignty when it lied about weapons of mass destruction and invaded, killing, and displacing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens?

    Did America respect Libya’s sovereignty when it and its NATO puppets destroyed the richest country in Africa and killed its revered leader, Muammar Gaddafi? Libya is a broken country now with a dysfunctional economy and open slave markets.

    Did America respect Syria’s sovereignty when it funded terrorists to topple the government of Assad and eventually built bases in the country to choke off the food supply of the Syrian people and “steal their oil”?

    Did America itself respect Ukraine’s sovereignty when it engineered the Maidan coup in 2014, toppled the democratically elected president, and installed a US puppet regime in power?

    I could go on. But I’ll mention one last one, keeping in mind the Russiagate hoax where Russia was falsely accused of meddling in US elections …

    Did America respect RUSSIA’S SOVEREIGNTY when it funded the re-election campaign of Boris Yeltsin in 1996, because we knew he would do our bidding?

    Sovereignty, eh? If any of our leaders can even spell ‘sovereignty’, they sure as hell have no idea what it means.

    The post Sovereignty first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Five Excuses for Genocide

    On Monday I interviewed a member of the Executive Committee of AIPAC. I asked him how he could defend and promote apartheid and genocide. He was not a legal witness; I could not order him not to change the subject. Still, he provided pretty clear (if very weak) excuses for genocide, which I think can be broken up into five types.

    1. Others have done it.

    The U.S. killed Native Americans, he pointed out. The U.S. starved Germans and Japanese. Israel labels half the people it kills as Hamas, and a ratio of 1 proper person killed to 1 improper person killed is well within the norms of recent wars and massacres.

    Of course, horrific outrages committed by the U.S. government or anyone else do not justify or legalize them from Israel. Murdering tens of thousands of people “accidentally” but in proper proportion to murdering tends of thousands of other people “intentionally” isn’t legal or moral. Neither half of that sick calculation is legal or moral.

    1. Israel isn’t doing it.

    Hamas is causing Israel’s actions, over which Israel has no power or responsibility, and any non-Hamas people could survive just fine by living underground.

    Others will claim that Israel causes Hamas’s actions, but in fact everyone causes their own actions. Israel’s atrocities in the West Bank where there is no Hamas are no more or less Israel’s responsibility than Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Blaming a population for not living underground while you bomb their homes flat won’t convince people who haven’t been paid to be convinced.

    1. Those aren’t people.

    They’re savages.

    Dehumanizing, labeling certain people “savages,” is the oldest propagandistic nonsense in the book.

    1. You are an anti-Semite.

    If you haven’t objected exactly as strongly to every other murderous outrage in world history as you do to this one, you’re an anti-Semite.

    My interviewee may have actually believed that the only war I’ve ever objected to is the one he’s currently shilling for. But correcting him couldn’t sway his belief that the world in general, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and various human rights groups — including Israeli ones — are all simply prejudiced against Jews / Israel (the two being the same apparently). And yet, what if the entire world including me were actually anti-Semitic and for that reason objecting only to this particular incident of mass murder? Wouldn’t it still be mass murder? Wouldn’t we be right, not wrong, to object at least this one time?

    1. Israel kills people for the benefit of the United States.

    It doesn’t even ask for U.S. troops to die.

    And yet the people of the United States do not benefit from the killing and ought to object to anyone dying.

    There are variations on these five themes, but I think you’ll find that supporters of the genocide in Gaza generally switch from one of them to a different one when challenged, rather than producing any actually substantive or convincing case for the horrific destruction, torture, and murder.

    I asked this AIPAC Executive Committee member other questions too, such as why AIPAC spends so many millions of dollars on the U.S. electoral bribery system. He replied by claiming that the money doesn’t impact the elections. I’m sure AIPAC’s donors will be delighted to hear that.

    I asked him whether he supported the denial of freedom of speech and assembly on college campuses — he being on boards at Yale and Columbia — and he replied that he pays for the education of one Palestinian student (presumably a good savage). You can probably tell (without even getting an education from Yale or Columbia) that this response does not even attempt to answer the question.

  • First published at World Beyond War.
    • The post The Five Excuses for Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Why Class Matters

    After the last election, Democratic Party functionaries were puzzled that voters — usually attuned closely to the economy — failed to show proper appreciation for the Biden economic miracle. They cited the billions in federal money flowing toward economic growth; they repeated aggregate growth figures more robust than other advanced economies; they showed that consumer spending continued to show surprising vigor; they noted that aggregate incomes grew faster than inflation; and they reminded us of the often-mentioned markers of rising stock market and housing values.

    Baffled by the voters who shunned Bidenomics and complained about the economy, Democratic Party pundits are convinced that voters are simply ignorant of the facts.

    Today, perhaps more than ever, the failure to recognize social-class divisions produces ill-informed, arrogant judgments like those prominent within Democratic Party circles. While aggregate numbers may tell one story, they fail to tell the story of the economic well-being of the classes and strata that make up the aggregate, even the by-far-largest segment of that aggregate. Could it be that Biden’s economic victory was a victory for the wealthiest, the most generously compensated among the US population, while leaving the majority of US citizens (and voters) in the rear-view mirror?

    The answer is an unequivocal ‘yes.’

    And the answer comes, not from a left-leaning think tank, but from Federal Reserve data by way of Moody’s Analytics and summarized in the Wall Street Journal.

    As reported in the WSJ, the top 10% of “earners” — those households reporting $250,000 in income or more — are responsible for 49.7% of consumer spending. In other words, nearly half of all consumer spending is accounted for by those in the top 10% of all those reporting their incomes. This is the largest share for this elite segment since the Federal Reserve began tracking in 1989. In just three decades, the top 10%’s portion has increased from over a third to nearly half of all consumer spending.

    According to the WSJ:

    Taken together, well-off people have increased their spending far beyond inflation, while everyone else hasn’t. The bottom 80% of earners spent 25% more than they did four years earlier, barely outpacing price increases of 21% over that period. The top 10% spent 58% more…

    Between September 2023 and September 2024, the high earners increased their spending by 12%. Spending by working-class and middle-class households, meanwhile, dropped over the same period.

    Democratic Party consultant James Carville likes to say “it’s the economy, stupid!” that decides US elections. If he is right, the celebration of Bidenomics was widely off the mark. During the Biden years, for 80% of US voters, their economy was stagnant, at best. In that light, the election results are far more understandable as reflective of pocketbook issues.

    US economic growth is often portrayed by the major media as driven by household consumption (around two-thirds of gross US economic activity comes from household consumption). However, these reports are deceptive if they fail to acknowledge that nearly all of the consumption growth impacting GDP growth comes from the wealthiest 10% of the population. Arguably, so-called luxury spending is the driving force behind economic growth in the US in our time.

    Thus, the widely heralded mantra of capitalist apologists that “a rising tide lifts all boats” has it backwards. In fact, the privileged 10% of all boats that rise constitute the tide.

    Economy 101 preaches that working people spend nearly all that they make (or need to borrow more to make ends meet). That same conventional wisdom tells us that the rich reinvest or save most of their earnings. Both may be and are true, though inequality of income has grown so much that the richest 10% can save and reinvest while spending lavishly and conspicuously.

    Since late 2021, the excess savings of the bottom 90% has dropped from about $1.1 trillion dollars to $300 billion at the end of 2024. In roughly the same period, the uppermost 10% has maintained an excess savings of about $1.3-1.4 trillion, according to Moody’s Analytics. Clearly, the bottom 90% was forced to draw down savings over the last four years in order to get by. It is important to notice that the concept of the “bottom 90%” masks the reality that each successive lower decile of household income below the top 10% has fewer means and lesser savings to meet a reasonably adequate standard of living. In short, the pain induced by a system maintaining such vast income inequality grows more acute as the level of income declines.

    While not a proper class analysis of US society (not to be expected from official government statistics), the Federal Reserve data, as interpreted by Moody’s Analytics, provides a material basis for understanding the most recent US election.1 As opposed to dire conclusions of a fascist mentality sweeping the country or wild celebrations of the revival of a mythical conservative past, the economic unraveling of the last period fed the electorate’s profound thirst for change, any change.

    In the wake of a deep economic collapse in the first decade of a new century — a crisis unlike any seen for generations — US voters turned, at that time, to a fresh-faced Democrat promising change. He won voters with his earnest, unbounded hope. He produced little change, but more of the same blindness to inequality.

    Now, in the wake of the economic stagnation and hardship for the majority 90% struggling through the Biden years, another snake oil salesman returns, capturing one of the two decadent parties with another message of change  — Make America Great Again.

    And again, voters act out of desperation.

    Don’t blame the voters, blame the bankrupt two-party system and the economic system dominated by and for the rich and powerful.

    ENDNOTE:

    The post Why Class Matters first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    A proper economic class analysis will not evoke income or wealth– simply contingent, quantified signifiers of inequality– but qualitative indicators of socio-economic position or status. For Marxists, class is defined by an agent’s function within a particular mode of production with regard to the economic relation of exploitation. Thus, under capitalism, class is a division between exploiters — capitalists — and the exploited — workers. One class commands the means of production, the other class sells the former its labor power.

    Of course, there are strata within and outside of the two classes: the haute and petit bourgeoisie, the ‘labor aristocracy,’ industrial workers, lumpen-proletariat, etc.

    In general, income and wealth inequality are a result of class division and exploitation under capitalism and not its cause.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Only the US Defense Department’s Budget Will NOT be Cut

    All U.S. federal Departments except the Defense Department will have their budgets reduced this year.

    60% of U.S. military expenses get paid out from the Defense Department (the Pentagon), which is the only U.S. federal Department that has never passed an audit — never been audited — and is also the only federal Department that pays America’s military-weapons manufacturers, such as Lockheed Martin — the companies that depend mainly or even entirely on purchases by the federal Government. The Trump Administration has decided not to cut that Department’s budget, and might even increase it. The details, so far as they are yet known, were first published, on February 28, by In These Times magazine, in an article by Stephen Semler and Sarah Lazare, titled “As Trump and Musk slash social spending, military spending is set to soar.” An excellent article explaining this in a broader context than merely that Department’s budget was then published on March 2nd by the Naked Capitalism site, and headlined “The Empire Rebrands,” by Conor Gallagher.

    Already, U.S. military expenses (including from all federal Departments) amount to 65% of the entire world’s military expenses; and yet, as-of 24 October 2024, the most-respected international ranking of nations’ militaries, the one in U.S. News & World Report, rated the top three in order, as: #1. Russia, #2. U.S., and #3. China. A lower-regarded ranking, by  “Global Firepower,” ranked: #1. U.S., #2. Russia, and #3. China. The site “Military Empires: A Visual Guide to Foreign Bases,” as-of 30 October 2024, showed the nations with the largest number of foreign military bases, as being #1. U.S., with 917 foreign military bases; #2. Turkiye, with 128; #3. UK, with 117; and #4. Russia, with 58. China was #10, with 6. (Numbers 5-9 were: India, Iran, France, and UAE.) However, the U.S. is overwhelmingly the most powerful empire, because right after FDR’s death on 12 April 1945, when Truman took over, the U.S. — which had entered WW2 the last of the major world powers and therefore suffered the lowest casualties and least destruction from it — was the only nation that had the assets by which to establish the post-WW2 international order, and did that for his imperialistic purposes, exactly contrary to FDR’s plan, as a consequence of which, the U.S. Government still controls the IMF, World Bank, and many other international institutions, and dominates even the U.N. (which FDR invented and was developing his plan for, but Truman mainly controled the writing of the U.N.’s Charter). So, most of America’s power doesn’t come from its military — which is America’s most-corrupt federal Department. The main purpose of the U.S. Government today is to boost its stock-markets, which are overwhelmingly controlled by its billionaires, and “93% of U.S. households’ stock market wealth (not 93% of the stock market) is held by the wealthiest 10% of those households.” So, this Government’s top concern is to pay-off the political high-donors and especially the mega-donors (all of whom are billionaires). It is a sophisticated type of bribery-operation. And by far the most lucrative segement of the U.S. stock markets is its “Defense and Aerospace” segment (that being the segment which sells to the Government instead of to the public — so, the U.S. Government is the main benefctor to America’s billionaires, and they know this). (For example: Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post headlined on February 26, “Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding: Government infusions at key moments helped Tesla and SpaceX flourish, boosting Musk’s wealth.” And on 25 March 2018, I reported that “since 2014, Amazon Web Services has supplied to the U.S. Government (CIA, Pentagon, NSA, etc.) its cloud-computing services, which has since produced virtually all of Amazon’s profits (also see “Cloud Business Drives Amazon’s Profits”), though Amazon doesn’t even so much as show up on that list of 100 top contractors to the U.S. Government; so, this extremely profitable business is more important to Jeff Bezos (the owner also of the Washington Post) than all the rest of his investments put together are.” This is called “neo-liberalism” or “libertarianism” but by any name means “Let the wealth rule, NOT the people rule.” It is the reigning principle in the U.S. empire.

    On February 25, I reported that:

    On February 14th, the AP headlined “Where US adults think the government is spending too much, according to AP-NORC polling”, and listed in rank-order according to the opposite (“spending too little”) the following 8 Government functions: 1. Social Security; 2. Medicare; 3. Education; 4. Assistance to the poor; 5. Medicaid; 6. Border security; 7. Federal law enforcement; 8. The Military. That’s right: the American public (and by an overwhelming margin) are THE LEAST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on the military, and the MOST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on Social Security, Medicare, Education, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid (the five functions the Republican Party has always been the most vocal to call “waste, fraud, and abuse” and try to cut). Meanwhile, The Military, which actually receives 53% (and in the latest year far more than that) of the money that the Congress allocates each year and gets signed into law by the President, keeps getting, each year, over 50% of the annually appropriated federal funds.

    An important point to be made here is that both #s 4&5, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid, are “discretionary federal spending” (i.e., controlled by the annual appropriations that get voted into law each year), whereas #s 1&2 (Social Security and Medicare) are “mandatory federal spending” (i.e., NOT controlled by Congress and the President). So, Trump and the Republicans are going after the poor because they CAN; they can’t (at least as-of YET) reduce or eliminate Social Security and Medicare. However, by now, it is crystal clear that Trump’s Presidency will be an enormous boon to America’s billionaires, and an enormous bane to the nation’s poor. The aristocratic ideology has always been: to get rid of poverty, we must get rid of the poor — work them so hard they will go away (let them seek ‘refugee’ status SOMEWHERE ELSE).

    This is an excellent example of a libertarian (or neo-liberal) Government.

    The post Only the US Defense Department’s Budget Will NOT be Cut first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Only the US Defense Department’s Budget Will NOT be Cut

    All U.S. federal Departments except the Defense Department will have their budgets reduced this year.

    60% of U.S. military expenses get paid out from the Defense Department (the Pentagon), which is the only U.S. federal Department that has never passed an audit — never been audited — and is also the only federal Department that pays America’s military-weapons manufacturers, such as Lockheed Martin — the companies that depend mainly or even entirely on purchases by the federal Government. The Trump Administration has decided not to cut that Department’s budget, and might even increase it. The details, so far as they are yet known, were first published, on February 28, by In These Times magazine, in an article by Stephen Semler and Sarah Lazare, titled “As Trump and Musk slash social spending, military spending is set to soar.” An excellent article explaining this in a broader context than merely that Department’s budget was then published on March 2nd by the Naked Capitalism site, and headlined “The Empire Rebrands,” by Conor Gallagher.

    Already, U.S. military expenses (including from all federal Departments) amount to 65% of the entire world’s military expenses; and yet, as-of 24 October 2024, the most-respected international ranking of nations’ militaries, the one in U.S. News & World Report, rated the top three in order, as: #1. Russia, #2. U.S., and #3. China. A lower-regarded ranking, by  “Global Firepower,” ranked: #1. U.S., #2. Russia, and #3. China. The site “Military Empires: A Visual Guide to Foreign Bases,” as-of 30 October 2024, showed the nations with the largest number of foreign military bases, as being #1. U.S., with 917 foreign military bases; #2. Turkiye, with 128; #3. UK, with 117; and #4. Russia, with 58. China was #10, with 6. (Numbers 5-9 were: India, Iran, France, and UAE.) However, the U.S. is overwhelmingly the most powerful empire, because right after FDR’s death on 12 April 1945, when Truman took over, the U.S. — which had entered WW2 the last of the major world powers and therefore suffered the lowest casualties and least destruction from it — was the only nation that had the assets by which to establish the post-WW2 international order, and did that for his imperialistic purposes, exactly contrary to FDR’s plan, as a consequence of which, the U.S. Government still controls the IMF, World Bank, and many other international institutions, and dominates even the U.N. (which FDR invented and was developing his plan for, but Truman mainly controled the writing of the U.N.’s Charter). So, most of America’s power doesn’t come from its military — which is America’s most-corrupt federal Department. The main purpose of the U.S. Government today is to boost its stock-markets, which are overwhelmingly controlled by its billionaires, and “93% of U.S. households’ stock market wealth (not 93% of the stock market) is held by the wealthiest 10% of those households.” So, this Government’s top concern is to pay-off the political high-donors and especially the mega-donors (all of whom are billionaires). It is a sophisticated type of bribery-operation. And by far the most lucrative segement of the U.S. stock markets is its “Defense and Aerospace” segment (that being the segment which sells to the Government instead of to the public — so, the U.S. Government is the main benefctor to America’s billionaires, and they know this). (For example: Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post headlined on February 26, “Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding: Government infusions at key moments helped Tesla and SpaceX flourish, boosting Musk’s wealth.” And on 25 March 2018, I reported that “since 2014, Amazon Web Services has supplied to the U.S. Government (CIA, Pentagon, NSA, etc.) its cloud-computing services, which has since produced virtually all of Amazon’s profits (also see “Cloud Business Drives Amazon’s Profits”), though Amazon doesn’t even so much as show up on that list of 100 top contractors to the U.S. Government; so, this extremely profitable business is more important to Jeff Bezos (the owner also of the Washington Post) than all the rest of his investments put together are.” This is called “neo-liberalism” or “libertarianism” but by any name means “Let the wealth rule, NOT the people rule.” It is the reigning principle in the U.S. empire.

    On February 25, I reported that:

    On February 14th, the AP headlined “Where US adults think the government is spending too much, according to AP-NORC polling”, and listed in rank-order according to the opposite (“spending too little”) the following 8 Government functions: 1. Social Security; 2. Medicare; 3. Education; 4. Assistance to the poor; 5. Medicaid; 6. Border security; 7. Federal law enforcement; 8. The Military. That’s right: the American public (and by an overwhelming margin) are THE LEAST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on the military, and the MOST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on Social Security, Medicare, Education, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid (the five functions the Republican Party has always been the most vocal to call “waste, fraud, and abuse” and try to cut). Meanwhile, The Military, which actually receives 53% (and in the latest year far more than that) of the money that the Congress allocates each year and gets signed into law by the President, keeps getting, each year, over 50% of the annually appropriated federal funds.

    An important point to be made here is that both #s 4&5, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid, are “discretionary federal spending” (i.e., controlled by the annual appropriations that get voted into law each year), whereas #s 1&2 (Social Security and Medicare) are “mandatory federal spending” (i.e., NOT controlled by Congress and the President). So, Trump and the Republicans are going after the poor because they CAN; they can’t (at least as-of YET) reduce or eliminate Social Security and Medicare. However, by now, it is crystal clear that Trump’s Presidency will be an enormous boon to America’s billionaires, and an enormous bane to the nation’s poor. The aristocratic ideology has always been: to get rid of poverty, we must get rid of the poor — work them so hard they will go away (let them seek ‘refugee’ status SOMEWHERE ELSE).

    This is an excellent example of a libertarian (or neo-liberal) Government.

    The post Only the US Defense Department’s Budget Will NOT be Cut first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • How about the US Becoming the 11th Province?

    While living in the Middle East, a Palestinian friend taught me about Arabic culture, which he said was still preserved in Yemen. Arabic etiquette, he told me, was that a guest was to be protected, housed, and otherwise looked after.

    White House etiquette is something else. I was quite taken aback by viewing how Donald Trump and JD Vance ganged up on their Ukrainian guest Volodymyr Zelenskyy. This is not to side with Zelenskyy who is a disagreeable personage to me; by refusing a security agreement, he set the stage for an unwinnable war against Russia which has condemned hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men to death.

    Zelenskyy made some bizarre and distorted utterances during the videoed meeting. Nonetheless, there is a proper way for Trump and Vance to express disagreement. But diplomacy, etiquette, and niceties are often rare in the bullyverse of Trump.

    Moreover, an often heard complaint from Trump is that things are not fair. Was it fair to have two native English speakers against one non-native English speaker?

    Fairness

    A common saying tells us that bees are more attracted to honey than vinegar. Maybe the Trump-led administration doesn’t give credence to this saying, or it believes it can bully others into submission — probably the latter. Trump believes he can use tariffs as a big stick to gain an upper hand in trade. Given the size of the US economy and its willingness to resort to violence to back its demands, smaller countries find themselves in a precarious situation. Without another big country’s backing, smaller countries are susceptible to regime change operations. Witness was happened to the Syrian government in late 2024.

    Fortunately, China is willing to engage in win-win trade with other nations. The Chinese honey appears to be preferable for much of the Global South to the American vinegar. China is also a military power, and it can readily defend itself against any US military provocations. China is unlikely to let the US physically interfere in its trade arrangements with willing partners. Neither is Russia about to do this. This has led to a global realignment, one feature of which is the deepening relationships of China and Russia with African countries.

    But the record shows that Donald Trump does not limit himself to smaller countries. During his first administration, Trump began a trade war with China, and he does not look to be letting up this time. Trump, however, considers the world as his oyster, to deal with as he pleases. Even the US’s erstwhile allies are targeted, including its northern neighbor, Canada.

    Will Canada Supplicate Trump?

    United States President Donald Trump sounded off during the first cabinet meeting of his second term, among other topics was that of Canadian sovereignty:

    I say Canada should be our 51st state. There’s no tariffs, no nothing. And I say that we give them military protection. They have a very small military; they spend very little money on military. On NATO they are just about last in terms of payment because it’s not fair. It’s not fair that they’re not paying their way. And if they had to pay their way, they couldn’t exist.

    Upon what basis does Trump claim that the US is protecting Canada? Because Canada is a member of NATO and NORAD? The latter allows the US military access into Canada, the junior partner in the relationship. And just who are these enemies that the US is purportedly protecting Canada from? Is there any country posing a credible military threat to Canada? If so, it seems that the US would come first to mind. If Canada is a willing and uncoerced member of certain military organizations, then Canada should abide by its agreed upon commitments. Canada does come up short of the 2% minimum of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to defence spending in NATO, but that 2% minimum is a guideline and not a hard-and-fast obligation. Trump speaks about fairness, but how fair is it that one NATO member gripes about what it determines another member’s contribution should be?

    And why is Trump demanding 5% of each NATO member’s GDP as a contribution? This is alluded to by NATO:

    To carry out its missions and tasks, NATO needs Allies to invest in interoperable, cutting-edge and cost-effective equipment. To that end, NATO plays an important role in helping countries decide how and where to invest in their defence.

    Which country is best situated to reap the financial benefits of demanding interoperability among NATO members? According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the world’s leading seller of arms, the US, increased its arms sales from 34% in the period of 2014 to 2018 to 42% in the period of 2019 t0 2023. Adhering to the Trumpian definition of economic fairness, is it fair that the US with 4% of the world’s population should dominate arms sales, especially considering that interoperability is expected among NATO members?

    The National Post listed Trump’s fickle justifications for engulfing Canada:

    The rationale, at various points, have included: building up domestic American industry, preventing the illegal importation of fentanyl, stopping illegal border crossings, and reducing the United States’ modest trade deficit with Canada. Trump has also complained about the access of U.S. banks to Canadian markets and the amount of money the U.S. spends on continental defence.

    The National Post questioned Trump’s facts: “he often says the United States subsidizes Canada between $100 billion and $200 billion. The trade deficit, in fact, is more like $32 billion, while America’s global trade deficit [is] around $1 trillion.”

    Trump is unrestrained vis-à-vis the US’s biggest trade partner: “We don’t need them for the cars, we don’t need them for lumber. We don’t need them for anything. We don’t need them for energy, we have more energy than they do.”

    Although Trump has claimed the US doesn’t need Canadian oil, economics analyst Sean Foo makes the case that the threat of tariffs is about getting more Canadian cheap oil.

    A Snowball’s Chance in Hell

    Among the many reasons, there is one area of deep importance that suffices to emphatically underline why Canadians will never allow themselves to become Americans under present conditions. Canadians are very fond of their medical-care-for-all system. The system is not perfect, and Canadians will complain about when the governments (health is a provincial jurisdiction) curtail funding; long waiting times; and the shortages of doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers. However, many Canadians have heard about the financial horrors that can be visited upon susceptible Americans who are without medical coverage. That is something the vast majority of Canadians would never countenance in their country.

    Given the desire of most Americans for medical care for all (62% according to a Gallup poll conducted 6-20 November 2024) maybe they ought to clamor to become Canada’s 11th province.

    The post How about the US Becoming the 11th Province? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trump’s Détente with Venezuela

    Trump’s corollary to the Monroe Doctrine – “speak loudly AND carry a big stick” – has not been applied full force on Venezuela… as of yet. Instead, the new administration appears to be testing a more nuanced approach. In his first administration, he succeeded in crashing the Venezuelan economy and creating misery among the populace but not in the goal of changing the “regime.”

    Back in 2019, the Bolivarian Revolution, initiated by Hugo Chávez and carried forward by his successor, current Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, was teetering on collapse under Trump’s “maximum pressure” offensive. The economy had tanked, inflation was out of control, and the GDP was in freefall. Over 50 countries recognized Washington-anointed “interim president” Juan Guaidó’s parallel government.

    In the interregnum between Trump administrations, Biden embraced his predecessor’s unilateral coercive economic measures, euphemistically called sanctions, but with minimal or temporary relief. He certified the incredulous charge that Venezuela posed an immediate and extraordinary threat to US national security, as Trump and Obama had before him. Biden also continued to recognize the inept and corrupt Guaidó as head-of-state, until Guaidó’s own opposition group booted him out.

    Despite enormous challenges, Venezuela resisted and did so with some remarkable success, bringing us to the present.

    Run-up to the second Trump administration

    In the run-up to Trump’s inauguration, speculation on future US-Venezuela relations ran from cutting a peaceful-coexistence deal, to imposing even harsher sanctions, to even military intervention.

    Reuters predicted that Trump’s choice of hardliner Marco Rubio at secretary of state augured an intensification of the regime-change campaign. Another right-wing Floridian of Cuban descent, Mauricio Claver-Carone was tapped as the special envoy for Latin America. He had been Trump’s senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs and credited with shaping Trump’s earlier aggressive stance toward Venezuela. Furthermore, on the campaign trail, Trump himself commented: “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over; we would have gotten to all that oil.”

    At his Senate confirmation hearing on January 15, Rubio described Venezuela as a “narco-trafficking organization that has empowered itself of a nation state.” He was unanimously confirmed the very first day of the new administration.

    The supposedly opposition Democrats all stampeded in his support, although Rubio severely criticized the previous Biden administration for being too soft on Venezuela. Rubio’s criticism was largely unwarranted because, except for minor tweaks, Biden had seamlessly continued the hybrid war against Venezuela.

     Grenell Trumps Rubio

     The first visit abroad by a Trump administration official was made by Ric Grenell, presidential envoy for special missions. Grenell briefly served in Trump’s first administration as acting director of national intelligence, becoming the first openly gay person in a Cabinet-level position.

    Grenell flew to Caracas and posed for a photo-op, shaking hands with President Maduro on January 31. This was a noteworthy step away from hostility and towards rapprochement between two countries that have not had formal diplomatic relations since 2019.

    The day after the Grenell visit, Rubio embarked on an uninspiring tour of right-wing Latin American countries. That same day, General License 41 allowing Chevron to operate in Venezuela automatically renewed, which was a development that Rubio had advocated against.

    Diplomacy of dignity

    Maduro entered negotiations with Grenell with a blend of strategic engagement and assertive resistance, aiming to navigate Venezuela’s economic challenges while maintaining sovereignty. The approach had win-win outcomes, although the spin in the respective countries was quite different.

    Grenell claimed a “win” from the meeting with the release of six “American hostages” without giving anything in return. Venezuela, for its part, got rid of a half dozen “mercenaries.” Neither country has released the names of all the former detainees.

    Grenell took a victory lap for getting Venezuela to accept back migrants who had left the country, a key Trump priority. Maduro welcomed them as part of his Misión Vuelta a la Patria (Return to the Homeland Program), which has repatriated tens of thousands since its inception in 2018.

    Trump’s special envoy boasted that Venezuela picked up the migrants and flew them back home for free. Maduro was pleased that the US-sanctioned national airline Conviasa was allowed to land in the US and transport the citizens back in dignity. Congratulating the pilots and other workers, Maduro said: “The US tried to finish off Conviasa, yet here it is, strong.”

    Evolution of imperialist strategy

    Trump’s special representative for Venezuela in his first administration, Elliot Abrams, believes his former boss sold out the shop. He criticized Grenell’s visit as functioning to help legitimize Maduro as Venezuela’s rightful president, which it did.

    In contrast, Robert O’Brien believes, “Grenell scored a significant diplomatic victory.” What is noteworthy is that O’Brien replaced John Bolton as Trump’s national security advisor in 2019 and had worked with Abrams as co-architect of the “maximum pressure” campaign against Venezuela, yet now acknowledges it is time for a shift.

    Speaking from experience, O’Brien commented: “Maximum economic sanctions have not changed the regime in Venezuela.” He now advocates: “Keeping sanctions against Venezuela in place, while at the same time, granting American and partner nation companies licenses.”

     According to Grenell, Trump no longer seeks regime change in Venezuela, but wants to focus on advancing US interests, namely facilitating deportations of migrants, while halting irregular migration to the US and preventing inflation of gas prices.

    Ricardo Vaz of Venezuelanalysis suggests that Trump’s strategy is to adroitly use sanctions. Rather than driving Venezuela into the arms of China and Russia, Trump wants to incrementally erode sovereignty, compel sweetheart deals with foreign corporations such as Chevron, and eventually capture control of its oil industry.

    Venezuela’s successes force imperial accommodation

     Not only did “maximum pressure” fail to achieve imperial goals in the past, but the Bolivarian Revolution’s accomplishments today have necessitated a more “pragmatic” approach by the US.

    Venezuela has resolutely developed resilience against sanctions, achieving an extraordinary economic turnaround with one of the highest GDP growth rates in the hemisphere. Venezuelan oil production is at its highest level since 2019. The oil export market has been diversified with China as the primary customer, although the US is still prominent in second place.

    However, if Chevron operations in Venezuela get completely shuttered, that would take a bite out of the recovery. The announced withdrawal of the company’s license departed from the initial engagement approach. But at the same time, it might be a short-term concession to foreign policy hardliners in exchange for domestic support. The license’s six-month wind-down period offers plenty of room for the two governments to negotiate their future oil relationship.

    The government is incrementally mitigating the economic dominance by the oil sector. It has also made major strides towards food self-sufficiency, which is an under-reported victory that no other petrostate has ever accomplished.

    It has reformed the currency exchange system reducing rate volatility, although a recent devaluation is worrisome. Tax policy too has become more efficient.

    Further, the collapse of the US-backed opposition leaves Washington with a less effective bench to carry its water. The opposition coalition is divided over whether to boycott or participate in the upcoming May 25 elections. The USAID debacle has now left the squabbling insurrectionists destitute. (Venezuela never received any humanitarian aid.).

    Washington still officially recognizes the long defunct 2015 National Assembly as the “legitimate government” of Venezuela. At the same time, Trump inherited the baggage of González Urrutia as the “lawful president-elect” (but not as “the president”), leaving the US with two parallel faux governments to juggle along with the actual one. Lacking a popular base in Venezuela,  González Urrutia abjectly whimpered: “As I recently told Secretary of State Marco Rubio: We are counting on you to help us solve our problems.”

     Although US sanctions will undoubtedly continue, Venezuela’s adaptations blunt their effectiveness. Venezuela’s resistance, bolstered by its natural oil and other reserves, have allowed that Latin American country to force some accommodation from the US. In contrast, the imperialists are going for the jugular with resistance-strong but natural resource-poor Cuba.

     The future of détente

    Shifting political forces can endanger the fragile détente. Indeed, on February 26, Trump announced that oil licenses would be revoked, supposedly because Venezuela was not accepting migrants back fast enough. The Florida Congressional delegation, it is rumored, threatened to withhold approval of his prized Reconciliation Bill, if Trump did not cancel.

    Clearly there is opposition from his party, both at the official and grassroots levels, against détente with Venezuela. As for the Democrats, elements have distinguished themselves from Trump by outflanking him from the right. The empire’s newspaper of record, the New York Times, recently ran a piece calling for military intervention in Venezuela.

    According to Carlos Ron, former Venezuelan deputy foreign minister, the issue of détente between Washington and Caracas goes beyond this particular historical moment and even beyond the specifics of Venezuela to a fundamental contradiction: the empire seeks domination while the majority of the world’s peoples and nations seek self-determination. Until that is resolved, the struggle continues.

    The post Trump’s Détente with Venezuela first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Normalizing the Abnormal

    From day one, we humans have reacted to the extraordinary with awe and dread. Unprecedented phenomena evoke acute anxiety – even when not immediately threatening – because they are inexplicable. They sow fear because their nature, and whatever mysterious realm they emerge from, are beyond our comprehension. Thus, the compulsion to fit them into some ordered frame of reference. That entailed populating the earth and the sky with spirits, demons, gods and a host of related forces. In the imagination of more literate societies, they were composed into entire families of the supernatural – endowed with human attributes so as to make their persona and machinations more accessible to our mortal minds. The previously unknown becomes not knowable in any overt sense but it can be referenced. Calamities and boons alike can be ascribed to them – either as divine whim or provocation by human actions: (failure to propitiate the divine powers or consorting with malign spirits) Or, we might be victimized by the plotting by the juju men deploy witchcraft in the service of enemies and blasphemers.

    These days, we do the exact opposite: we reduce the extraordinary to the banal ordinary. We normalize it. We neutralize by confining it to the mundane categories we rely on in order to understand how the world works and to navigate it. In this way, we alleviate stress – emotional or mental.  That allows us to avoid the need to contend with the challenging, with what disturbs our comfort and convenience. This response is recognizable even when the phenomena encountered are of consequence, even among responsible leaders. At this moment, we are witnessing a remarkable example of this phenomenon.  America is experiencing an imminent threat to its very essence as a Constitutional Republic – to its foundational values, to its principles of collective life. Yet, the reaction is decidedly undramatic. There is no general sense of crisis or desperate efforts to counter it. No urgency. The numerous assaults on the body politic by Trump and his henchmen are judged as serious, but each is addressed as if it were self-contained rather than part of a comprehensive, revolutionary – if erratic – plan to remake the country in MAGA’s perverse vision.

    The harsh reality is that the country is under the brutal rule of a mentally unhinged autocrat with strong Fascist instincts. He, and his Rasputin Elon Musk, share the mentality of juvenile delinquents driven by the impulse to destroy and to coercive use of power. They are dismantling the federal government and subverting our political system. In textbook coup fashion, they have decapitated the senior ranks of every federal administrative unit, supplanting incumbents with loyalists who will do the bidding of their master in the White House.1 They command the blind loyalty of tens of millions of cultists. They control cyberspace. They have intimidated the formal opposition into passive acquiescence. Massive success in these twin projects has been achieved within just six weeks. In four years’ time, little will be left of the political system in place for the past 250 years; our society will be prey to pillage and oppression. The system’s reconstitution would be a Herculean project – even under the most favorable circumstances. At the moment, there is no evidence of such circumstances emerging.

    The sine qua non for improving the odds, however slightly, on building some measure of countervailing force, is to cease-and-desist from the deleterious practice of normalizing Trump’s depredations. That includes casting him and his machinations in a positive light whenever a particular action of his conforms to our own views.  The outstanding case in point is the termination of the open-ended Ukraine project of exploiting that benighted country as a weapon for subordinating Russia. That catastrophic failure should be recognized as such, and reversion from it is called for. Let us bear in mind, though, that the campaign that was launched by Barack Obama in 2014 was deepened by Trump I and turbocharged by Joe Biden. It reflected an overwhelming consensus by the country’s political class that the plan served major national interests. Several of Trump’s appointees have been vocal promoters of the campaign. Trump is anything but a natural conciliator and humanitarian – as evinced by his plan for extirpating the Palestinians, but his bullying of every country fend or foe in sight, and by his full dedication to confrontation with China. The expediency of calming relations with Russia has much to do with the girding of loins for the priority given aggressive campaigns in the Middle East and East Asia rather than earnest concern for European peace.

    At the more practical level, the White House notion as to what should be the basis for an agreement with Russia bears no relation to the realities on the ground or to the Kremlin’s oft-repeated statement of its unnegotiable core objectives. Trump will not be happy with terms, however dressed up, that constitute a clear humiliation of the U.S. Similar ignorance, and fantasy, attaches to the proposal of a ceasefire which makes zero sense from a Moscow perspective. Simply put, the White House has no viable plan to end the war in Ukraine.

    Instead of a sober appreciation of these truths, we find many critics of the Ukraine venture tossing bouquets of praise at Trump for his takedown of Zelensky in the White House. This disgraceful display of arrogance backed by mendacity is now being justified and often praised. We are told that Trump “schooled” him, “took him to the woodshed,” “taught him a lesson.” Whatever one thinks of Zelensky, the entire episode was an acute embarrassment for the United States. Our President behaving like a mafia capo engaging in an extortionate shakedown of a fellow gangster registers worldwide in a manner damaging to America’s image and interests. There is widespread backing for the White House claim that Zelensky ‘insulted’ the President and, thereby, the United States – a sin for which he should publicly apologize. This from a man who called Zelensky a “dictator,’ accused him of stealing tens of billions of dollars, lies about his alleged failure to thank Americans for all the wonderful things they have done for Ukrainians, and blames him for starting a war which Washington forced on Kiev. The last is carried to the extreme of coercing Zelensky to back away from the agreement with Russia, initialed in Istanbul at the end of March 2022, which would have spared hundreds of thousands of lives – and America’s (the West’s) ignominious defeat. Who owes whom an apology?

    Trump sees Ukraine as a financial investment that went sour. So, you blame your agents for the failure and grab whatever tangible assets are lying around. He never will admit that our aid in fact was spent to make possible the spilling of Ukrainian blood for American purposes. Mea Culpa is not in his vocabulary.  How will he react when his simple-minded ideas for ending the war prove to be fanciful? Find a scapegoat – Biden, Zelensky, the Europeans? Concoct another fictional narrative eagerly spread by credulous mass media? Create a noisy distraction? Or, fall on his face as occurred repeatedly in a career as real estate mogul featuring serial bankruptcies?

    The blunt truth is that the United States no longer is capable of conducting normal diplomacy. Evident under Biden, it is even more alien to the Trump team. The man is a malignant narcissist, borderline psychotic whose only methods for dealing with the world are bullying, intimidation, and domination. We have seen that in living color for 9 years. He thinks in slogans and indulges any whim that passes through an addled mind. Still, there remain distinguished analysts who put forth the thesis that the displays such as we saw with Zelensky are just calculated showmanship, that in private Trump engages with colleagues in sober, disciplined, informed exercises in policy formation., and the careful weighing of tactical options. Picture Churchill’s war cabinet in May 1940 – substituting Trump, Vance, Rubio, Hegseth, Waltz and Musk for Churchill, Halifax, Attlee, Greenwood, Bevin and Chamberlain.

    Even the best of us are not entirely free of the instinct to tint reality to match our wishes.

    ENDNOTES:

    The post Normalizing the Abnormal first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    In key departments, the purge is being carried out well into the organization chart. At State, a special unit led by a fresh MAGA appointee is tasked with reviewing all 13,000 treaties and agreements that the U.S. has internationally. The aim of the sifting is to abrogate some considerable number. That number as well as the criteria to be applied in identifying disposable agreements is a mystery to those working on the project. When one staff official inquired of the non-entity in charge what methodology would be employed, his foggy response was to ask what is meant by “methodology.”

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Zelensky: Victim of Colosseum Politics

    There was a revolting tabloid quality to the Oval Office reception given to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 28, but then again, President Donald Trump is a tabloid brute, a man incarnated from the nastiest, shallowest precepts of yellow press clippings and, ultimately, the reality television empire that gave him a crown and forever enshrined him in the culture of brash Americana.  From the foamy cable television rot of the republic, Trump’s progress was inexorable.

    With such ingredients, the White House has become a studio, with the statesmanship of the bullying show paramount.  The electors are to be entertained by what might be called colosseum politics.  They want bread, but are very keen on the circuses.  They want season tickets to the MAGA tent where they can witness muscular events.  They want to know that the US will recoup what it gives, with interest.

    When the satirically gifted Hugh Hector Munro (“Saki”) warned that being a pioneer was never wise, seeing as the Early Christian tended to get the fattest lion, it would be better to say that the lions here – Trump and his shock troop deputy J.D. Vance – seemed to have been on lettuce offerings and stale water for a week.  The lean, mean duo were remorselessly and disgracefully hungry, making sure the Ukrainian leader was subject to a battering that proved unusually long.  (These Oval office briefings before the press are usually short, snappy matters: a few anodyne questions; a few general remarks that barely ripple.)

    It was also evident that Zelensky had not gotten the brief about Trump, prompting Marek Magierowski in the National Interest to describe him as “a worse psychologist than [French President] Emmanuel Macron and [UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer], who had paid a visit to the White House just before him and, to some extent, ‘charmed’ the US president.”

    Unlike the two leaders who had come before him, Zelensky thought it wise to engage in a squabble about Russian intentions and the character of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the factual record (always dangerous in dealing with Trump, who regards facts as, as best, malleable), a duel that saw shock trooper Vance weigh in.  According to the Veep, Zelensky was not there to “litigate” the matter before the American public, which is precisely what he and Trump seemed to be doing.  This was the language of prefects and school masters, with the student reluctant to play along.

    It was a salient reminder that support for Ukraine has iced over, that it is no longer the blue-eyed boy of US politics, Western civilisation’s consecrated prop against Russian savagery.  Republican Senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham even went so far as to demand that the Ukrainian leader “either … resign and send somebody over and we can do business with, or he needs to change.”

    Trump’s opponents have fumed at the president for having laid an ambush for the Ukrainian leader and promoting Russian talking points, naturally exonerating previous administrations for their contributory role (former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s intervention comes to mind) in feeding the conflict.  “Zelenskyy flew to Washington,” quipped Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Jake Auchincloss, “but he walked into the Kremlin.”

    What remains crudely apparent is that Zelensky had been given ample warning about what awaited but seemingly failed to see the billowing smoke signals.  At a Saudi-sponsored investment meeting in Florida, Trump had declared that the Ukrainian leader was only “really good” at one thing: “playing Joe Biden like a fiddle.”  He was also a “dictator” who had refused to have elections.  “He’s low in the Ukrainian polls.  How can you be high with every city being demolished?”

    Zelensky had also done little for his own cause last year by injudiciously involving himself in the US elections, speaking at a Kamala Harris campaign rally and paying a visit to a munitions plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania last September.  “It is in places like this where you can truly feel that the democratic world can prevail,” Zelensky stated at the time.

    That the visit was also conveniently located in a battleground state that the presidential contenders had to win hardly helped his case in the Oval Office skirmish.  Vance could not resist unsheathing his sword.  “You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October,” he snapped.  “Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who is trying to save your country.”

    As a result of colosseum politics, no deals were reached, and certainly not one regarding US access to Ukrainian rare earth minerals, leaving Zelensky to seek solace in the bosom of weak European powers unhinged by the values of Trumpland.  The lustre of the cause, at least across the pond, has not entirely vanished, though European support is hardly likely to swing matters on or off the battlefield for Kyiv.

    The post Zelensky: Victim of Colosseum Politics first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Zelensky: Victim of Colosseum Politics

    There was a revolting tabloid quality to the Oval Office reception given to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 28, but then again, President Donald Trump is a tabloid brute, a man incarnated from the nastiest, shallowest precepts of yellow press clippings and, ultimately, the reality television empire that gave him a crown and forever enshrined him in the culture of brash Americana.  From the foamy cable television rot of the republic, Trump’s progress was inexorable.

    With such ingredients, the White House has become a studio, with the statesmanship of the bullying show paramount.  The electors are to be entertained by what might be called colosseum politics.  They want bread, but are very keen on the circuses.  They want season tickets to the MAGA tent where they can witness muscular events.  They want to know that the US will recoup what it gives, with interest.

    When the satirically gifted Hugh Hector Munro (“Saki”) warned that being a pioneer was never wise, seeing as the Early Christian tended to get the fattest lion, it would be better to say that the lions here – Trump and his shock troop deputy J.D. Vance – seemed to have been on lettuce offerings and stale water for a week.  The lean, mean duo were remorselessly and disgracefully hungry, making sure the Ukrainian leader was subject to a battering that proved unusually long.  (These Oval office briefings before the press are usually short, snappy matters: a few anodyne questions; a few general remarks that barely ripple.)

    It was also evident that Zelensky had not gotten the brief about Trump, prompting Marek Magierowski in the National Interest to describe him as “a worse psychologist than [French President] Emmanuel Macron and [UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer], who had paid a visit to the White House just before him and, to some extent, ‘charmed’ the US president.”

    Unlike the two leaders who had come before him, Zelensky thought it wise to engage in a squabble about Russian intentions and the character of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the factual record (always dangerous in dealing with Trump, who regards facts as, as best, malleable), a duel that saw shock trooper Vance weigh in.  According to the Veep, Zelensky was not there to “litigate” the matter before the American public, which is precisely what he and Trump seemed to be doing.  This was the language of prefects and school masters, with the student reluctant to play along.

    It was a salient reminder that support for Ukraine has iced over, that it is no longer the blue-eyed boy of US politics, Western civilisation’s consecrated prop against Russian savagery.  Republican Senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham even went so far as to demand that the Ukrainian leader “either … resign and send somebody over and we can do business with, or he needs to change.”

    Trump’s opponents have fumed at the president for having laid an ambush for the Ukrainian leader and promoting Russian talking points, naturally exonerating previous administrations for their contributory role (former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s intervention comes to mind) in feeding the conflict.  “Zelenskyy flew to Washington,” quipped Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Jake Auchincloss, “but he walked into the Kremlin.”

    What remains crudely apparent is that Zelensky had been given ample warning about what awaited but seemingly failed to see the billowing smoke signals.  At a Saudi-sponsored investment meeting in Florida, Trump had declared that the Ukrainian leader was only “really good” at one thing: “playing Joe Biden like a fiddle.”  He was also a “dictator” who had refused to have elections.  “He’s low in the Ukrainian polls.  How can you be high with every city being demolished?”

    Zelensky had also done little for his own cause last year by injudiciously involving himself in the US elections, speaking at a Kamala Harris campaign rally and paying a visit to a munitions plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania last September.  “It is in places like this where you can truly feel that the democratic world can prevail,” Zelensky stated at the time.

    That the visit was also conveniently located in a battleground state that the presidential contenders had to win hardly helped his case in the Oval Office skirmish.  Vance could not resist unsheathing his sword.  “You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October,” he snapped.  “Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who is trying to save your country.”

    As a result of colosseum politics, no deals were reached, and certainly not one regarding US access to Ukrainian rare earth minerals, leaving Zelensky to seek solace in the bosom of weak European powers unhinged by the values of Trumpland.  The lustre of the cause, at least across the pond, has not entirely vanished, though European support is hardly likely to swing matters on or off the battlefield for Kyiv.

    The post Zelensky: Victim of Colosseum Politics first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Modern Times and Ancient Truths

    Eighty-nine years ago this month, the film Modern Times, starring Charlie Chaplin, was released. Considered one of the greatest movies ever, it was a comedic but savage critique of industrial capitalism and a prescient indictment of the alienated modern life to come, as Chaplin’s character, the Little Tramp, worked on an assembly line where he suffered a nervous breakdown from the stress and repetitive nature of the work.

    But the film ends on a hopeful note, as the Little Tramp and his beloved Ellen hit the road and walk away from the mechanized life. It is a poetic call to replace the iron discipline of the machine life with rebellious spontaneity.

    In All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (Basic Books, 1988), Stuart Ewen writes:

    In Modern Times we confront a factory world which increasingly usurps human initiative. Within the scope of the film, people are trapped beneath the thumb of productivity, their bodies and souls shaped and overwhelmed by the assembly line. The priorities of such a world submerge human needs; misery and homelessness abound. People are seen as useful only if they can be plugged into the productive apparatus. Otherwise they are tossed aside like garbage.

    Today, the Little Tramp, has been replaced by big Trump and his sidekick, Elon Musk, owners and operators of the new AI Digital factory Internet system, posing as saviors of the Little Tramp.

    Just the other day, Musk, with an imagined twinkle in his eye and little boy grin, tweeted out on his bullhorn X (Twitter): “We are on the event horizon of the singularity.”

    By the “Singularity” is meant the time when the machines – computers and artificial intelligence – exceed human control and dominate society. For technologists like Musk and his ilk in and out of government and in Silicon Valley, the idea of a machine run world is heaven on earth. A place where death will be defeated by synthetic means and love reduced to a passionless technique. This is the myth of the machine that has grown from a superstitious cult to a world-wide religion with the cell phone its cult object.

    *****

    Up in the lake and down in the river the ice is breaking up. In the house a few little black bugs have appeared. The maple sap is running. And we have seen flocks of robins and cedar waxwings eating leftover berries that have clung to the bare ruined choirs of the trees and bushes. Even the turkey vultures have returned to perch everywhere, looking down like caring teachers over students’ desks, as if to say – wake up, look around, these are resurrection days.

    *****

    By the late 1980s, the “Little Tramp” was pitching computers for IBM in a series of advertisements. His problems were again portrayed as caused by industrial chaos, but as Ewen writes:

    But this time the solution is different. Beleaguered Charlie is saved by the computer, the quintessential modern instrument of order, control, surveillance. Here the frenetic conditions of modern life are solved by modern technology. The 1936 film had pointed an idealistic way out. The ad points the way back in. The critique has been turned on its head, packaged and used against itself.

    Now the “smart phone” is sold as the way out and the way in, as resurrection battles singularity.

    *****

    Even the bears are waking up around here. A guy I know said that on his way home the other night he saw one walking down Main Street. Now this is a nice little tourist town in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, not a town in northern Canada, so I was a bit surprised by his sighting. It became somewhat clearer after I asked him where he was coming from and he said he had been down in The Well, a local bar, having a few drinks with an old girlfriend who had told him he had always been her true love but she had to marry the local police chief for protection. Confused, he asked her what did she need protection from. When she said – life, and got up and said good night, he ordered another round. Soon after that the bear appeared.

    *****

    Now we have crossed over to a country led by a man and his sidekick so sick that no words are needed. Their use of artificial intelligence is fulfilling the dream of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the Italian fascist, friend of Mussolini, and founder of the art movement called futurism, whose claim was that “the entire human drama revolves around the machine.” It was a ruse for power cached within an artistic manifesto based on the belief that the machine was the new god with supernatural powers beyond human control – very similar to AI and the alleged final coming of the singularity. “War,” said Marinetti, “is the father of all things … the culminating and perfecting synthesis of progress.”

    Anyone who thinks this is what it means to Make America Great Again had better think quick – you have been deluded. This video is a shocking, psychopathic, and fitting result of years of U.S. supported genocide in Gaza.

    *****

    I look forward to Ash Wednesday on March 5, the day on which as a young man I went to church to have the priest rub ashes on my forehead and say, “Remember, Ed, that you are dust and back to dust you will return.”

    I no longer go to the priests, but I will still feel the ashes and those sacred words. I will do so on a little tramp up by the lake and into the woods, where perhaps I will detect the tracks of that bear my friend saw walking through town. He exists in us all.

    And the night before that walk, I will drink deeply from the well – what my father learned to call “the smiles” from his Irish Uncle Tim, a blacksmith for the NY Fire Department, who so called the Irish whiskey he drank – and I will smile, knowing I will die with the winter and be resurrected in the spring as the sap rises.

    It is Resurrection time, and despite the machine people, God rises in us all as we resist their machine dreams, and rejoice.

    The post Modern Times and Ancient Truths first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.