Tag: Donald Trump

  • by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies / April 22nd, 2021

    Biden with NATO’s Stoltenberg (Photo credit: haramjedder.blogspot.com)

    President Biden took office promising a new era of American international leadership and diplomacy. But with a few exceptions, he has so far allowed self-serving foreign allies, hawkish U.S. interest groups and his own imperial delusions to undermine diplomacy and stoke the fires of war.

    Biden’s failure to quickly recommit to the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA, as Senator Sanders promised to do on his first day as president, provided a critical delay that has been used by opponents to undermine the difficult shuttle diplomacy taking place in Vienna to restore the agreement.

    The attempts to derail talks range from the introduction of the Maximum Pressure Act on April 21 to codify the Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran to Israel’s cyberattack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. Biden’s procrastination has only strengthened the influence of the hawkish Washington foreign policy “blob,” Republicans and Democratic hawks in Congress and foreign allies like Netanyahu in Israel.

    In Afghanistan, Biden has won praise for his decision to withdraw U.S. troops by September 11, but his refusal to abide by the May 1 deadline for withdrawal as negotiated under the Trump administration has led the Taliban to back out of the planned UN-led peace conference in Istanbul. A member of the Taliban military commission told the Daily Beast that “the U.S. has shattered the Taliban’s trust.”

    Now active and retired Pentagon officials are regaling the New York Times with accounts of how they plan to prolong the U.S. war without “boots on the ground” after September, undoubtedly further infuriating the Taliban and making a ceasefire and peace talks all the more difficult.

    In Ukraine, the government has launched a new offensive in its civil war against the ethnically Russian provinces in the eastern Donbass region, which declared unilateral independence after the U.S.-backed coup in 2014. On April 1, Ukraine’s military chief of staff said publicly that “the participation of NATO allies is envisaged” in the government offensive, prompting warnings from Moscow that Russia could intervene to protect Russians in Donbass.

    Sticking to their usual tired script, U.S. and NATO officials are pretending that Russia is the aggressor for conducting military exercises and troop movements within its own borders in response to Kiev’s escalation. But even the BBC is challenging this false narrative, explaining that Russia is acting competently and effectively to deter an escalation of the Ukrainian offensive and U.S. and NATO threats. The U.S has turned around two U.S. guided-missile destroyers that were steaming toward the Black Sea, where they would only have been sitting ducks for Russia’s advanced missile defenses.

    Tensions have escalated with China, as the U.S. Navy and Marines stalk Chinese ships in the South China Sea, well inside the island chains China uses for self defense. The Pentagon is hoping to drag NATO allies into participating in these operations, and the U.S. Air Force plans to shift more bombers to new bases in Asia and the Pacific, supported by existing larger bases in Guam, Japan, Australia and South Korea.

    Meanwhile, despite a promising initial pause and policy review, Biden has decided to keep selling tens of billion dollars worth of weapons to authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Persian Gulf sheikdoms, even as they keep bombing and blockading famine-stricken Yemen. Biden’s unconditional support for the most brutal authoritarian dictators on Earth lays bare the bankruptcy of the Democrats’ attempts to frame America’s regurgitated Cold War on Russia and China as a struggle between “democracy” and “authoritarianism.”

    In all these international crises (along with Cuba, Haiti, Iraq, North Korea, Palestine, Syria and Venezuela, which are bedevilled by the same U.S. unilateralism), President Biden and the hawks egging him on are pursuing unilateral policies that ignore solemn commitments in international agreements and treaties, riding roughshod over the good faith of America’s allies and negotiating partners.

    As the Russian foreign ministry bluntly put it when it announced its countermeasures to the latest round of U.S. sanctions, “Washington is unwilling to accept that there is no room for unilateral dictates in the new geopolitical reality.”

    Chinese President Xi Jinping echoed the same multipolar perspective on April 20th at the annual Boao Asian international business forum. “The destiny and future of the world should be decided by all nations, and rules set up just by one or several countries should not be imposed on others,” Xi said. “The whole world should not be led by unilateralism of individual countries.”

    The near-universal failure of Biden’s diplomacy in his first months in office reflects how badly he and those who have his ear are failing to accurately read the limits of American power and predict the consequences of his unilateral decisions.

    Unilateral, irresponsible decision-making has been endemic in U.S. foreign policy for decades, but America’s economic and military dominance created an international environment that was extraordinarily forgiving of American “mistakes,” even as they ruined the lives of millions of people in the countries directly affected. Now America no longer dominates the world, and it is critical for U.S. officials to more accurately assess the relative power and positions of the United States and the countries and people it is confronting or negotiating with.

    Under Trump, Defense Secretary Mattis launched negotiations to persuade Vietnam to host U.S. missiles aimed at China. The negotiations went on for three years, but they were based entirely on wishful thinking and misreadings of Vietnam’s responses by U.S. officials and Rand Corp contractors. Experts agree that Vietnam would never violate a formal, declared policy of neutrality it has held and repeatedly reiterated since 1998.

    As Gareth Porter summarized this silly saga:

    The story of the Pentagon’s pursuit of Vietnam as a potential military partner against China reveals an extraordinary degree of self-deception surrounding the entire endeavor. And it adds further detail to the already well-established picture of a muddled and desperate bureaucracy seizing on any vehicle possible to enable it to claim that U.S. power in the Pacific can still prevail in a war with China.

    Unlike Trump, Biden has been at the heart of American politics and foreign policy since the 1970s. So the degree to which he too is out of touch with today’s international reality is a measure of how much and how quickly that reality has changed and continues to change. But the habits of empire die hard. The tragic irony of Biden’s ascent to power in 2020 is that his lifetime of service to a triumphalist American empire has left him ill-equipped to craft a more constructive and cooperative brand of American diplomacy for today’s multipolar world

    Amid the American triumphalism that followed the end of the Cold War, the neocons developed a simplistic ideology to persuade America’s leaders that they need no longer be constrained in their use of military power by domestic opposition, peer competitors or international law. They claimed that America had virtually unlimited military freedom of action and a responsibility to use it aggressively, because, as Biden parroted them recently, “the world doesn’t organize itself.”

    The international violence and chaos Biden has inherited in 2021 is a measure of the failure of the neocons’ ambitions. But there is one place that they conquered, occupied and still rule to this day, and that is Washington D.C.

    The dangerous disconnect at the heart of Biden’s foreign policy is the result of this dichotomy between the neocons’ conquest of Washington and their abject failure to conquer the rest of the world.

    For most of Biden’s career, the politically safe path on foreign policy for corporate Democrats has been to talk a good game about human rights and diplomacy, but not to deviate too far from hawkish, neoconservative policies on war, military spending, and support for often repressive and corrupt allies throughout America’s neocolonial empire.

    The tragedy of such compromises by Democratic Party leaders is that they perpetuate the suffering of millions of people affected by the real-world problems they fail to fix. But the Democrats’ subservience to simplistic neoconservative ideas also fails to satisfy the hawks they are trying to appease, who only smell more political blood in the water at every display of moral weakness by the Democrats.

    In his first three months in office, Biden’s weakness in resisting the bullying of hawks and neocons has led him to betray the most significant diplomatic achievements of each of his predecessors, Obama and Trump, in the JCPOA with Iran and the May 1 withdrawal agreement with the Taliban respectively, while perpetuating the violence and chaos the neocons unleashed on the world.

    For a president who promised a new era of American diplomacy, this has been a dreadful start. We hope he and his advisers are not too blinded by anachronistic imperial thinking or too intimidated by the neocons to make a fresh start and engage with the world as it actually exists in 2021.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Australia’s Labor Party’s recognition of Palestine as a State on March 30 is a welcomed position, though it comes with many caveats.

    Pro-Palestinian activists are justified to question the sincerity of the ALP’s stance and whether Australia’s Labor is genuinely prepared to fully adopt this position should they form a government following the 2022 elections.

    The language of the amendment regarding the recognition of Palestine is quite indecisive. While it commits the ALP to recognize Palestine as a State, it “expects that this issue will be an important priority for the next Labor government”. ‘Expecting’ that the issue would be made an ‘important priority’ is not the same as confirming that the recognition of Palestine is resolved, should Labor take office.

    Moreover, the matter has been an ‘important priority’ for the ALP for years. In fact, similar language was adopted in the closing session of the Labor conference in December 2018, which supported “the recognition and right of Israel and Palestine to exist as two states within secure and recognized borders,” while adding this important clause: The ALP “calls on the next Labor government to recognize Palestine as a State”.

    Unfortunately for Labor, they lost the May 2019 elections, where the Liberal Party maintained the majority, again forming a government under the leadership of Scott Morrison.

    Morrison was the Prime Minister of Australia when, in 2018, the ALP adopted what was clearly a policy shift on Palestine. In fact, it was Morrison’s regressive position on Israel that supposedly compelled Labor to develop a seemingly progressive position on Palestine. Nine days after former US President, Donald Trump, defied international law by officially recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – and subsequently relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – Morrison flirted with the idea as well, hoping to enlist the support of the pro-Israel lobbies in Australia prior to the elections.

    However, Morrison did not go as far as Trump, by refraining from moving his country’s embassy to the occupied city. Instead, he developed a precarious – albeit still illegal – position where he recognized West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, promising to move his country’s “embassy to West Jerusalem when practical, in support of, and after, final-status determination.”

    Canberra, however, did take ‘practical’ steps, including a decision to establish a defense and trade office in Jerusalem and proceeded to look for a site for its future embassy.

    Morrison’s self-serving strategy remains a political embarrassment for Australia, as it drew the country closer to Trump’s illegal, anti-Palestinian stance. While the vast majority of United Nations member states maintained a unified position regarding the illegality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, asserting that the status of Jerusalem can only be determined based on a negotiated agreement, the Australian government thought otherwise.

    As Palestinians, Arabs and other nations mobilized against Australia’s new position, the ALP came under pressure to balance out the Liberal party’s agenda, seen as blindly supportive of military occupation and apartheid.

    Since the ALP lost the elections, their new policy on Palestine could not be evaluated. Now, according to their latest policy conference conclusion, this same position has been reiterated, although with some leeway, that could potentially allow Labor to reverse or delay that position, once they are in power.

    Nonetheless, the Labor position is an important step for Palestinians in their ‘legitimacy war’ against the Israeli occupation.

    In a recent interview with Professor Richard Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, the international law expert explained the need to “distinguish symbolic politics from substantive politics”.

    “In the colonial wars that were fought after 1945, the side that won usually was the side that won what I call the legitimacy war, which is the ‘symbolic battlefield’, so to speak, and maintain the principled position that was in accord with the anti-colonial flow of history,” Falk said.

    Practically, this means that, often, the militarily weaker side which may lose numerous military battles could ultimately win the war. This was as true in the case of Vietnam in 1975 as it was in South Africa in 1994. It should also be true in the case of Palestine.

    This is precisely why pro-Israeli politicians, media pundits and organizations are fuming in response to the ALP’s recognition of Palestine. Among the numerous angry responses, the most expressive is the position of Michael Danby. He was quoted by Australian Jewish News website as saying that ALP leaders, Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles, have done more than adopting the pro-Palestinian position of former British Labor leader, Jeremy Corbyn, by also adopting “his Stalinist methods by suppressing debate on the foreign policy motions”.

    Israel and its supporters fully understand the significance of Falk’s ‘legitimacy war’. Indeed, Israel’s military superiority and complete dominance over occupied Palestinians may allow it to sustain its military occupation on the ground a while longer, but it does very little to advance its moral position, reputation and legitimacy.

    The fact that ALP’s position advocates a two-state solution – which is neither just nor practical – should not detract from the fact that the recognition of Palestine is still a stance that can be utilized in the Palestinian quest for legitimizing their struggle and delegitimizing Israel’s apartheid.

    Falk’s theory on ‘substantive politics’ and ‘symbolic politics’ applies here, too. While calling for defunct two-states is part of the substantive politics that is necessitated by international consensus, the symbolism of recognizing Palestine is a crucial step in dismantling Israel’s monopoly over the agenda of the West’s political elites. It is an outright defeat of the efforts of pro-Israeli lobbies.

    Politicians, anywhere, cannot possibly win the legitimacy war for Palestinians, or any other oppressed nation. It is the responsibility of the Palestinians and their supporters to impose their moral agenda on the often self-serving politicians so that the symbolic politics may someday become substantive. The ALP recognition of Palestine is, for now, mere symbolism. If utilized correctly, through pressure, advocacy and mobilization, it could turn into something meaningful in the future.  This is not the responsibility of Labor, but of Palestinians themselves.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.
    — Gore Vidal, Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia, 2004

    As Americans drown in debt and atomization, the liberal class applauds the arrival of a post-nation-state neo-feudal order which is devoid of checks and balances, integration, national cohesion, or collective memory, rendering any working class resistance to fascism a Herculean task. This has been made possible because of the demise of traditional American liberalism, rooted in the values of the civil rights movement and the New Deal, and its usurpation by the cult of neoliberalism which is anchored in unrestricted immigration, multiculturalism, identity politics, and the nakedly imperialistic policies embraced by the Democratic Party since Bill Clinton. This growing collaboration between neoliberals and the oligarchy has fomented an unprecedented degree of both tribalism and unfettered capitalism, and placed us on a runaway train racing to authoritarianism.

    Identity politics, supported by a cornucopia of faux-left elements since the ‘90s with a cult-like zealotry, has unleashed an apocalyptic counter-revolution that is disintegrating our national identity. The anti-working class has been created to facilitate this dissolution. Children are being indoctrinated in the multicultural curriculum, which is predicated on the idea that white people are the oppressor and people of color are the oppressed. This has made both class consciousness and any understanding of history impossible, while depriving Americans of color and immigrant youth with a proper grounding in American letters and classics of Western Civilization. Such a curriculum constitutes the quintessence of racism, yet has been sold to the masses as “fighting racism.”

    The multicultural society, essentially a Tower of Babel, has transformed the US into a hellscape of ghettoized enclaves which break down along lines of ethnicity, religion, and language. It has also facilitated the rise of the vocational community and the phenomenon of hyper-careerism. This, in turn, poses yet another threat to civil society, as fanatical careerists are generally indifferent to everything outside of their field.

    Indeed, it has become commonplace for Americans who are ensconced in excellent jobs to be so indifferent to life outside of their specialty that they would shrug apathetically if informed that US and Chinese warships had opened fire on one another in the South China Sea. As long as Weill Cornell, Sloan Kettering, Columbia University, or the Metropolitan Opera House don’t get incinerated, they would only feel a vague and abstract connection to such an event. This obsessive single-minded devotion to one’s career, an identity which has come to envelop one’s very soul, is inextricably linked to the multicultural society, as many Americans increasingly feel that no life exists outside of work. As our society disintegrates, the ability of our countrymen to think rationally unravels along with it.

    Since the inauguration of Bill Clinton on January 20, 1993, liberals have collaborated with every reactionary policy that has been promoted by the establishment: illegal wars of aggression, the privatization of the prisons, deindustrialization and offshoring, the oligarchy’s importation of tens of millions of undocumented workers and guest workers to depress wages and foment deunionization, the destruction of the public schools, the Patriot Act (which revoked habeas corpus), the Military Commissions Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, the return of Russophobia, the monopolization of the media into just a handful of corporations, the use of academia to generate student loan debt (now in excess of $1.5 trillion), the privatization of health care, the fomenting of unprecedented forms of tribalism and atomization; and more recently, the lockdown. Hitler, Franco, and Pinochet unleashed the dogs of war on the left. In the West today this is unnecessary, for the left has destroyed itself.

    The more liberals sell their souls to the forces of reaction, the more they delude themselves into thinking that they are on the left. This has led to a kind of political schizophrenia, as those who betray the legacies of FDR and Martin Luther King are pulled inexorably into a vortex of ignorance, dogmatism, and superstition. Neoliberals, who should really be called “illiberals,” fail to see the preposterousness of their claiming to combat “the far right,” even as deep state operatives like John Brennan are regurgitating the exact same identity politics language that multiculturalists have been churning out for decades. Furthermore, we have political commentators such as General Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of American forces in Afghanistan, comparing Trump supporters (i.e., the scourge of “white privilege”), to Al-Qaeda. Now replete with its own Green Zone, the Capitol is under martial law.

    Recall that “humanitarian interventions” resulted in civil wars in Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, Syria (granted, many jihadis have been foreigners), and Afghanistan. This pitting of identity politics acolytes against what remains of American society is reminiscent of the way in which Washington pitted Sunnis and Shiites against one another in Iraq.

    The anti-white jihadi is the offspring of ghettoization, the multicultural curriculum, and identity studies, and harbors a deep-seated hostility to Western Civilization. This anti-working class is being used by the establishment not unlike jihadis have been used by the Western elites in Syria: as a battering ram to degrade, destabilize, fragment, and if left unchecked, ultimately obliterate our national identity, thereby granting the oligarchy illimitable powers. Our jihadis are undoubtedly less violent than Syria’s (or even Sweden’s for that matter); and yet the two crusades are not dissimilar, as both are fanatically committed to the destruction of a particular civilization.

    Siccing a majority on a minority is irrefutably reactionary, but doing the inversion is no less so, especially when there are powerful forces at work attempting to transform the minority into a new majority. A significant swath of leftists in the West have been hoodwinked into believing that multiculturalism is diametrically opposed to Nazism, when they are, in fact, two sides to the same coin. The relentless demonization of Trump, coupled with the dubious nature of his removal, mirrors the demonization and removal of Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Noriega, and Milošević, where the vilification of a head of state served as a pretext for launching wars on the citizenry of these countries.

    The loathing of liberals for the Orange One, which they petulantly cling to despite his ouster, is tied to the fact that he made a mockery of the idea that liberals represent the lesser of two evils. While indubitably crass and bombastic at times, Trump had the temerity to take a principled stand on a number of key issues, such as pursuing detente with Russia, questioning the need for NATO following the breakup of the USSR, tirelessly ridiculing the lies of the presstitutes, condemning critical race theory, and denouncing the catastrophic offshoring of jobs. Trump’s support for hydroxychloroquine, and his warnings that the lockdowns were destroying New York City, have likewise proved prophetic. Meanwhile, liberals haven’t taken a principled stand on anything in thirty years.

    Don’t misconstrue my intentions: I am not attempting to equate Trump supporters with the supporters of Allende. Undoubtedly, some of his supporters hold certain reactionary beliefs. Yet unlike liberals, whose solution for every domestic problem is to carry out more witch hunts and outsource more jobs, millions of Trump voters have legitimate grievances, as their lives have been upended by deindustrialization and offshoring, the lockdown, the opioid epidemic, inadequate health care, and the systematic dismantling of public education.

    Liberal complicity in sustaining our unconscionable for-profit health care system, as evidenced by their enthusiastic support for Obamacare, has resulted in a demise of medical scientific integrity. Vioxx, the opioid epidemic, the psychotropic drug epidemic, and the anthrax vaccine constitute four of the most catastrophic drug regulatory failures in the history of medicine. The problem is that for the pharmaceutical industry, these aren’t failures at all, but successes, as these drugs have yielded staggering profits. The greatest danger posed by privatized health care is that medicines and procedures which represent the greatest threat to patient health are often extremely lucrative. This medical profiteering is so rampant that it is instigating a weaponization of health care and a restoration of Nazi bioethics, where informed consent and respect for patient dignity are completely jettisoned. Should Covid vaccines become mandatory – and keep in mind that drug companies are shielded from liability in the US should their vaccines cause harm – this would constitute an unequivocal violation of the Nuremberg Code. (A code, incidentally, written by white guys, hence ripe for burning). The SS physician credo, that any medical atrocity is justified as long as it is done “for the greater good,” is thriving under the lockdown.

    A considerable amount of evidence exists that effective and inexpensive Covid treatment options involving hydroxychloroquine, budesonide, and ivermectin were suppressed (see here, here, here, here and here), which could have negated the need for lockdowns altogether and saved many thousands of lives. Granted, these drugs would have torpedoed the pharmaceutical industry’s desire to profit off of the crisis with Remdesivir and mRNA vaccines, the latter of particularly dubious safety and efficacy. (The authorities have explicitly stated that the vaccines, which are experimental and have only been granted an Emergency Use Authorization, will not end social distancing and the mandatory wearing of masks). We have been told that half a million Americans have died from Covid, but how many of these patients were under the age of 70 and had no significant comorbidities?  PCR tests have churned out vast numbers of false positives which has also helped maintain the hysteria and relentless fearmongering, while the notion of asymptomatic spread remains mired in conjecture. According to Reuters, the US lost over 20 million jobs in April of 2020 alone. Nevertheless, the lockdown did what it was designed to do: further erode civil liberties, while exacerbating atomization and economic inequality.

    It is important to note that powerful tycoons that are not ensconced in the medical industrial complex, such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, have profited off of the pandemic, adding even more wealth to their already bloated fortunes. Consequently, lockdown profiteering is not confined to the robber barons within the health care oligarchy.

    Commenting on the draconian lockdown measures, Daniel Jeanmonod, MD, writes in “Lockdowns are a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:”

    The following two examples confirm these results: a country with low lockdown stringency like Sweden has at the moment the same fatality rate per million inhabitants as France, but lower than Spain, Italy and UK, where severe lockdown measures were applied.

    In addition, Sweden has had for the second wave a much smaller excess mortality than France, Italy or Spain, an observation which allows one to suspect that lockdown measures are delaying the establishment of herd immunity. This is not desirable, as the time during which the old, sick and frail can be exposed to the virus gets longer.

    In “The Covid Pandemic Is the Result of Public Health Authorities Blocking Effective Treatment,” Paul Craig Roberts questions the motives behind the lockdown:

    Why are authorities enforcing ineffective measures while ignoring proven successful measures that greatly reduce the Covid threat and perhaps eliminate it altogether? Is it because the proven measures are inexpensive and offer no opportunity for large profits from vaccines?  Is it because the ‘Covid pandemic’ is useful for mandating control measures that curtail civil liberties?  Is it because the lockdowns decimate family businesses and enable further economic concentration?  The answer is ‘yes’ to all three questions.

    Dr. Simone Gold, founder of America’s Frontline Doctors (and recently arrested to the delight of MedPage), has reiterated these concerns, tweeting on February 3rd:

    What do lockdowns, masks, and panic all have in common?
    Their positive impact on hospitalization rates is ZERO.
    But their negative impact on life and liberty is severe and totally unnecessary.
    The science doesn’t lie. The ‘scientists’ do.

    Yet liberals continue to support the lockdowns, and in Germany Antifa have marched against their countrymen who have protested against the coercive measures, equating them with “the far right.” The degree to which Western societies have been tribalized by identity politics has made it very easy for the elites to impose what is essentially a collective house arrest on the entire Western world.

    Democracy fell into grave jeopardy when liberals abandoned liberty of thought in favor of genuflecting at the altar of the presstitute priesthood. Indeed, when The New York Times tells liberals to jump they jump, when The New York Times tells liberals to be indifferent they are indifferent, when The New York Times tells liberals to be outraged they are outraged, and when “The Newspaper of Record” tells liberals to be ecstatic they are ecstatic. Can a democracy survive if a vast swath of its inhabitants can no longer differentiate between right and left, journalism and propaganda, psychological operations and intellectual analysis, even day and night? No less worrisome, the majority of American doctors are blindly accepting whatever they are told by the mullahs of FDA, CDC, NIH, The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. This is the inevitable result of physicians becoming increasingly specialized while often possessing the humanities education of a junior high school student. In many ways, we have become a nation of Adolf Eichmanns and Albert Speers.

    Those who stray from ideological “norms,” regardless of whether it be the lockdown or identity politics, are increasingly portrayed as either unhinged or guilty of incitement, and this language has become particularly vitriolic following “the riot” on January 6th. As Dmitry Babich pointed out on the January 11th Russia Today Cross Talk episode, the precise details of what transpired during the “storming of the United States Capitol” (to quote Wikipedia) are not of paramount importance. What matters is that the incident is being exploited by the establishment as a neoliberal Reichstag fire.

    When identity politics youth brigades were assaulting people and inflicting billions of dollars in property damage over a period of many months, in an orgy of violence that was clearly designed to pressure the Trump administration to resign, the media applauded enthusiastically, even referring to the rioters as “peaceful demonstrators.” Calls for revenge against Trump administration officials are likewise unprecedented. As the Democratic Party has thrown away the rule book and turned the country into a banana republic, what is to prevent leaders in the Christian Right from meeting with some like-minded generals and doing the same? The peculiar events of January 6th conveniently scuttled an ongoing congressional investigation into serious allegations of voter fraud, and succeeded in transforming the anti-constitutionalists into the constitutionalists in the minds of millions of people, both at home and around the world.

    Those who once sang “Kumbaya My Lord” and “We Shall Overcome” are now calling for dissenting voices to be silenced, either through deplatforming on social media, placing dissidents on a blacklist, or with the iron heel. Writing for The Atlantic, Graeme Wood, in addressing the problem of Americans who object to the dissolution of their national identity, prefers a more refined approach to CIA hit squads: “The proper response to these extremists isn’t counterterrorism. It is mental hygiene.” Having burned their own books, and sworn allegiance to the god of unreason, neoliberals have no other option than to relinquish ties to this death cult or pick up the truncheon of authoritarianism.

    The mindless faux-left support for the most barbaric foreign policies could only lead to their support for lawlessness, violence, and barbarism at home. Indeed, those who kill and torture abroad, if not held accountable, will inevitably seek to do so domestically. This fine line is embodied by the story of Sister Dianna Ortiz, an American nun who was brutally tortured by US-backed Guatemalan security forces in 1989, and who recently passed away, another soul lost to the cancer wards. That this totalitarianization is being supported in the name of protecting the country from imaginary neo-Nazis signifies the complete moral and intellectual collapse of the liberal class, a pitiable gaggle that will support any domestic policy, provided it is officially carried out in the name of fighting intolerance and bigotry. Such a tactic was glaringly on display when Biden, in condemning violence against women a couple of years ago, remarked that “This is English jurisprudential culture, a white man’s culture. It’s got to change.” Translation: let’s burn the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the name of fighting racism and sexism.

    What are we to make of this strange country where lawyers are indifferent to the rule of law, doctors are contemptuous of informed consent, journalists regurgitate whatever they are told by establishment spokespersons, and leftists speak of the working class as “deplorables?” As conservatives typically associate privatization with democratization, and nationalization with tyranny, there are no longer any significant firewalls in place to protect the people from despotism. Moreover, due to multiculturalism’s antipathy to all things white and Western, the WASP right in turn has rejected all things foreign, even as this leads them to untenable and patently erroneous conclusions, such as the idea that Americans have the best health care system in the world, a canard parroted ad nauseam in online medical blogs.

    The multicultural society is an anarchic and atomized zone where solidarity, reason, morality, empathy, and any sense of a collective memory cease to exist. Unsurprisingly, this has turned workers into nothing more than plastic cutlery, to be used once and then discarded. Civilization is in grave danger due to the rise of the woke book burners who have declared classics of Western Civilization to be the quintessence of “white supremacy.” Thanks to their implementation of the anti-humanities, the overwhelming majority of New York City public high school graduates have never even heard of Ernest Hemingway, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, John Hersey, Theodore Dreiser, Norman Thomas, Carl Sandburg, John Dos Passos, Dalton Trumbo, Gore Vidal, Clarence Darrow and William Kunstler. (I could go on for an entire page, at least). For all their incessant whining about racism, American liberals, who enjoy total ideological hegemony over most urban public schools, look at children of color as less than animals, and take better care of their poodles and dachshunds. Inculcated with the song of anti-whiteness, the post-American, simultaneously ghettoized prisoner and settler, unleashes its rage on America, but in so doing, puts on the shackles of the oligarchy.

    The messianic crusade to eradicate whiteness is destabilizing the country and fomenting an inverted Manifest Destiny. Writing in “Whiteness Is a Pandemic,” Damon Young posits that “Whiteness is a public health crisis.” Continuing, he informs us that “White supremacy is a virus that, like other viruses, will not die until there are no bodies left for it to infect.” (Note how the author uses “whiteness” and “white supremacy” interchangeably). Indeed, this article epitomizes the pathological, anti-Western, and deeply divisive and sectarian dogma being pushed on impressionable young people, both by the media and by the multicultural curriculum.

    The Taliban recently came for Dr. Seuss, who we are now told is “offensive.” Teachers that challenge these pieties and attempt to introduce children of color and immigrant youth to the dreaded “dead white men” incur the wrath of the anti-literacy overseers, and if they continue to flout neoliberal pathologies, invariably face termination. Perhaps we can take comfort in knowing that instead of “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” the oligarchy has been kind enough to give us a snappy slogan for the counter-revolution: “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Just bear in mind that the anti-white jihadi isn’t interested in sending the aristocracy to the guillotine but the working class itself.

    Historically significant black writers and orators such as Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Paul Robeson, all of whom were unwavering in their support for integration, are dismissed as Uncle Toms and Oreos (black on the outside, white on the inside). To quote Captain Beatty, the anti-intellectual pyromaniac of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: “If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood.”

    As transpires in Orwell’s 1984, the burning of the humanities has turned much of the population into automatons, who are not only illiterate, but who are also stripped of any sense of a cultural identity. Unlike many countries in the global south that have a history of weak democratic institutions, the oligarchy understands that in order to destroy democracy at home they have to sever the link between the American people and their past. Hence, if one were to show a World War II film such as Au Revoir les Enfants to a group of teenagers in an identity politics madrassa, it would be incomprehensible to them, as they aren’t taught anything about fascism, and they wouldn’t understand why on earth white people would be hunting down and murdering other white people. In many ways, both our civilization and our democracy were lost in the classroom.

    Liberal cultists (who are, in fact, doubly enslaved, both to the cult of identity politics and to the lockdown cult), rejoice in the dismantling of the nation-state which has ensued following offshoring, unrestricted immigration, and the rise of the multicultural curriculum and identity studies. What they fail to acknowledge are the devastating consequences, as these policies are inextricably linked with the annihilation of the middle class, the public schools, checks and balances, and any semblance of national cohesion. One could make the argument that in this post-nation-state neo-feudal America, the plutocracy has ceased to be a capitalist class in the Marxist sense and taken on the characteristics of a new baronage. Irregardless of whether the establishment’s endgame is tyranny under identity politics or tyranny under the Christian Right, once freedom of speech lies gelid and lifeless on the bloodstained ground it will be lost forever.

    There is a chilling passage in John Hersey’s epistolary novel The Conspiracy, which opens a window into life in imperial Rome under Nero, where Tigellinus sends a confidential letter to Faenus Rufus, both of whom are co-commanders of the Praetorian Guard. Addressing his fellow totalitarian, he writes, “We believe we are now on the threshold of uncovering certain crimes of opinion, the punishment of which, I am confident, will provide ample propitiation.”

    Aren’t Simone Gold and Julian Assange being prosecuted for “crimes of opinion?” The cruel treatment meted out to Julian serves as a particularly harrowing warning regarding the ongoing implosion of democracy in the West. What a pity that the righteous campaigners who once fought so valiantly for the New Deal and the civil rights movement now look upon those very ideals with sneering, ridicule, and contempt.

    David Penner has taught English and ESL within the City University of New York and at Fordham. His articles on politics and health care have appeared in CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Dr. Linda and KevinMD; while his poetry has been published with Dissident Voice. Also a photographer, he is the author of three books: Faces of Manhattan Island, Faces of The New Economy, and Manhattan Pairs.
    He can be reached at: 321davidadam@gmail. Read other articles by David.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Neoliberalism, at its heart, is class war waged from above under the guise of rational, technocratic management of an economy that must — as neoliberals claim —be shielded from the corrosive influence of democratic politics.
    — Chris Maisano, “Liberalism, Austerity, and the Global Crisis of Legitimacy,” The Activist, 7/19/2011.

    [W]hat’s becoming increasingly clear to many scholars and intellectuals is that there is a new morphology of fascism that is taking place in the United States, one that is integrated into, and supportive of, the political logic of neoliberalism.
    — Eric J. Wiener, “Neo-Fascism, Or The Political Logic of Neoliberalism3 Quarks Daily, November 9, 2020.

    The ideology of neoliberal capitalism was the promise of growth. But with neoliberal capitalism reaching a dead end, this promise disappears and so does this ideological prop. To sustain itself, neoliberalism starts looking for some other ideological prop and finds fascism.
    — Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, “Neoliberal Capitalism at a Dead End,” Monthly Review, July 1, 2019.

    In a recent, exceedingly instructive piece entitled,”This Crisis Has Exposed the Absurdities of Neoliberalism. That Doesn’t Mean It’ll Destroy It,” Greek political economist Costas Lapavitsus asserts that  state intervention in response to the COVID-19 public health crisis was both breathtaking in its magnitude and also in revealing the glaring hypocrisy of neoliberal ideology of “The market rules,”  as previously scorned Keynesian policies were temporarily rushed into service.

    Some of these measures included massive liquidity injections, lowering interest rates to zero, credit and loan guarantees, Federal Reserve purchase of government bonds and as pitifully small and delayed one-time direct payment to most Americans.  The fiscal stimulus packages already enacted are a quarter larger than those put in place during the Great Recession of 2008 and Biden recently proposed an additional $1.9 trillion coronavirus package in new federal spending.This episodic intervention in a crisis can be seen as another selective intervention by the state to ensure class rule. But the larger context includes the countless, irrefutable examples of the state’s welcome intervention to redistribute wealth upward and in prescribing critical market state functions in terms of policing, incarceration, surveillance, militarization and a host of other supportive services. U.S. interventions around the globe in support of the empire are so transparently obvious as to not warrant further elaboration.  Lapavitsus speculates on whether this massive state intervention in the economy could result “…in a more authoritarian form of controlled capitalism in which the interests of the corporate and the financial elite would remain paramount.” Unless there’s a mass mobilization from below there is no evidence suggesting that whatever is done will address the needs of working people.  Although Lapavitsus never explicitly suggests that neoliberalism will be transfigured into fascism, it’s not implausible to draw that conclusion.

    Neoliberalism (“neo” is a Greek prefix for new) is the ideology of modern capitalism that was resurrected from the original laissez-faire liberalism that had been thoroughly discredited by the Great Depression and a spurred mass movement intent on abolishing capitalism. Neoliberalism has now held sway for over four decades and is the state religion in the United States, the common sense belief that this is simply the only way to organize society.

    Neoliberalism was a repudiation of Keynesian economics under which the government intervenes to stabilize the economy, a theory that had a fundamental influence on the New Deal. It’s sometimes forgotten that both Keynesianism and neoliberalism are ideologies, flexible adjustments that capitalists made when a structural and political crisis undermined “enough” profitability. If Keynesian policy was an attempt to put a human face on capitalism on behalf of class survival, neoliberalism is, as economist Sam Gindlin has noted “capitalism with no face at all.”

    The celebrated social theorist and geographer David Harvey explains that neoliberal ideology serves the following principle:

    There shall be no serious challenge to the absolute power of money to rule absolutely. And that power is to be exercised with one objective:

    Those possessed of money shall not only be privileged to accumulate wealth endlessly at will, but they shall have the right to inherit the earth, taking either direct or indirect dominion, not only of the land and all the resources and productive capacities that reside therein, but also assume absolute command, directly or indirectly, over the labor and creative capacities of all those others it needs. The rest of humanity shall be deemed disposable.

    Neoliberalism was incubated in the thinking of neoliberal intellectuals like Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman. They, along with 35 other individuals, formed the Mont Pelerin Society at a gathering in Switzerland in 1947 and began the slow process of gaining public acceptance of their ideas. Fulsomely funded by wealthy individuals and corporations, neoliberalism was first imposed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1975-1990) and by Ronald Reagan (1981-1989). Untold numbers of opportunistic politicians, academics, celebrities, journalists, public intellectuals and even artists, served as enthusiastic midwives.

    The disastrous economic effects of 40 years of neoliberalism on American workers have been repeatedly catalogued and are irrefutable. Perhaps less well known, is that neoliberalism has largely succeeded in destroying working class values like solidarity and collective aspirations and replaced them with dog-eat-dog rugged individualism. A deliberate goal of neoliberalism is to eradicate the notion from people’s heads that collective action can improve their lives. One astute critic identifies the resulting pathological culture as the political economy of narcissism where a perverse “rational calculus of self-interest,” where everything is commodified, including morals.  Empathic motives come to be seen as irrational, self-defeating, and existing beyond neutral, immutable market logic. Predictably, there has been a measurable diminution of empathy in U.S. society.

    Whither Fascism?

    Neoliberalism periodically creates its own crises, contradictions and tension-producing conditions. We know that the devastating effect of the pandemic further exacerbated already extreme social and economic inequality. Between 1975 and 2018, $47 trillion was transferred from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1%.  In addition, neoliberalism faced a host of seemingly insoluble problems of its own self-serving creation, including:   more low-wage workers falling behind, deindustrialization, endless wars, no single-payer health insurance, increased off-shoring, the “gig” economy, a militarized police state, massive underemployment, global overproduction, under-used capacity, a falling rate of profit, the looming threat of ecocide, a refugee crisis, glaring racial disparities across the board and the debilitating drain of 800+ military bases in 70 countries.

    Neoliberalism became ascendant in the 1980s and gained strength under Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. As their policies began to produce stress and public dissatisfaction, Trump’s campaign promised voters that his “America First” project would respond to their grievances. Abetted by race-baiting, xenophobia and religious chauvinism, he prevailed over the traditional neoliberal, Hillary Clinton.

    Whether Trump, a symbol of neoliberalism’s disease and not its cause, possessed any convictions behind his promises or, more likely, was simply hoodwinking the voters with his right-wing populist pandering is immaterial because he could never have succeeded in solving the system’s deep structural problems. After his narrow defeat in the electoral college in 2020, when he still garnered 74 million votes, the other party in the capitalist duopoly assumed control but it also has nothing to offer. Part of the reason is that state intervention under neoliberalism has built-in limitations relating to legitimacy issues that portend potential danger for the ruling class.  That is, if the state is directly involved, for instance, in creating employment, it prompts the question, “If the state can do the job here and on other pressing matters, why do we need capitalism at all?”

    Ironically, one unexpected consequences of neoliberalism was the January 6, at times, cartoonish spectacle of  a few hundred of Trump’s clueless, costumed and cult-like followers invading the “citadel of democracy” for a few hours, smashing stuff, taking selfies with cops and grabbing mementos. Whatever their motives, and surely they were mixed, if any of these intruders believed they were overthrowing the U.S. government, they were delusional. When the event fell risibly short of their hyperbolic Doomsday predictions, establishment narrators doubled down on them in the apparent belief that the public will believe anything if they hear it enough times. In retrospect, the riot proved to be a serendipitous gift to the establishment who then set about 24/7 scaremongering about an “insurrection” and “attempted coup.”

    While pontificating about the security threat posed by “white supremacist, violent extremists,” the  Kabuki theater of seemingly endless official investigations and serious prosecutions (a few which are warranted) proceeds apace. They are meant to scapegoat Trump, deflect blame from failed Democratic policies and soften up a frighted public for accepting necessary, “fighting fascism” national security measures. Stepping up censorship is one of the first.

    What follows won’t be Trump’s mendacious, crude and jingoistic neofascist rhetoric and tactics but a sophisticated, insidious, below the radar and hence infinitely more dangerous variant of fascism,  a “reset” promulgated from the top down by the Bidenadmin/nationalsecuritystate/MSM and their enablers. Although fascism follows when neoliberalism reaches a terminal point, this will be a hybrid, less apparent and hence more “acceptable,” crafted for American sensibilities.

    It will appeal to those who still believe that voting matters and who retain reverence for the country’s governing institutions. In other words, procedural democracy minus substance.  Further, as Eric Weiner’s adroitly explains, “North American fascism requires a degree of individual freedoms and rights in combination with the the perception that these rights and freedoms are inalienable by the state.”  This variant can even co-exist with a modicum of dissent, provided that it remains ineffectual.  Robert Urie labels this version, “fascism with better manners.” Given their track record of controlling the unfolding narrative, one hesitates to underestimate the state’s ability to shepherd this fascist hybrid into existence.  Whether the marginalized left makes use of the remaining but vanishing interstices of limited freedom to resist this outcome remains an open question.

    Where  neoliberalism becomes potentially vulnerable and open to scrutiny is when it becomes trapped in its own inevitable contradictions and linked to unvarnished political and economic realities, when its fraudulence as the means to attaining the vaunted American Dream becomes more apparent and the gross inequities of the system reveal themselves in ever starker terms. When this happened in the 1930s, some of capitalism’s most ingenious defenders found the means to stave off fundamental structural change by making the sufficient  temporary adjustments to save the capitalist system.  But, as noted earlier, after these stopgap measures neutered organized resistance, neoliberals proceeded to methodically undo them. The absence of resistance from below, makes this all the easier.

    The question is whether, if the second iteration of liberalism also becomes a discredited doctrinaire ideology and as many critics contend, has indeed reached a dead end, what’s next? The answer is uncertain and depends on several variables: whether the public concludes that society’s problems are intractable, permanent features of the capitalist economy; on the political savvy of elites and their two corporate parties;  on the willingness of the ruling class to employ the state’s punishment function and finally, whether the new iteration can be sold to people already irreparably harmed by neoliberal policies.

    When seen from this perspective, it’s a mistake — one that even some on the left are making — to view Biden’s election with a sigh of relief, a welcome breathing space. Rather, the  U.S state is using the so-called insurrection at the Capitol to distract the public while proceeding to further consolidate big capital and the state on behalf of the neoliberal project. In the aftermath of January 6, far-right groups are rapidly splintering, many adherents are leaving the movement and far-right disorganization prevails. In short, this  threat pales in significance when compared to the neoliberal fascists already in power. For now, Biden, the oligarch’s tool, is the front man, behind which the ruling class will decide how to proceed.

    We know the inexorable, capitalist imperative of exploitation and accumulation will continue and both parties are committed to maintaining and expanding U.S. global hegemony. Further, while neoliberalism in the United States and fascism are not yet identical, the former now has sufficient affinities with the latter to assert that an “immoral” equivalency exists and the distinction becomes an academic one.

    Ultimately, the answer doesn’t lie in voting or trying to pressure the Democratic Party but in new forms of collective agency from below, a movement  prepared to engage in sustained, nonviolent, massive civil disobedience. Given the foregoing analysis, one might be resigned to restating  Gramsci’s pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will and heart.  However, upon further consideration, knowing that the ruling class is unwilling to solve our problems tends to leaven the pessimism and lend cautious support to optimism.

    Not surprisingly, Macfarquhar concludes that this makes them “even more dangerous” and without evidence, claims that Russia is assisting them.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Democrats’ second trial of Trump ends like the first: the outcome known in advance, the entire process designed to sell to the anti-Trump masses that the Democrats were leading some progressive counter-attack. Both impeachments enabled these politicians to present a national diversion to avoid addressing real issues the US people suffer from: the pandemic, lack of vaccines, no national health care program, increasing homelessness, closed schools.

    The Democrats’ first impeachment over Trump’s phone call to Ukraine aimed to sully his name for the benefit of the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign.  They purposely did not address Trump’s actual crimes: his cruelty to Latino immigrants on the border, his indifference to  police abuse of Blacks and Latinos, his racist attacks on non-white US citizens and residents, his neglect of the threat of global warming, funding the genocidal war against Yemen, bombing other countries, such as Syria, illegal and cruel sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela.

    The second impeachment, for the vague charge of “incitement of insurrection” sought to permanently ban Trump from “holding any office,” removing him as an election opponent in 2024. The Democrats reduced themselves to presenting as “evidence” of inciting insurrection Trump’s statement “’if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.” However, this insubstantial statement could easily be used to indict any progressive social change movement, much as the Smith Act of 1940 had been used against leftists. The Democrats conveniently avoided mention that Trump in his January 6 speech explicitly told protesters to “peacefully march to the Capitol.”

    The second impeachment also charged Trump with refusing to accept the November 2020 election results. However, the Constitution states Congress must officially certify the Electoral College votes and the presidential victor, giving Trump the constitutional right to challenge these votes in Congress. The articles of impeachment concluded “Donald John Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution”. Whatever our opinion of the man, this only continues the Democratic Party-national security state McCarthyite campaign against Trump begun in earnest in 2016. Trump’s second acquittal marked a setback for this McCarthyism the Democrats have been pushing.

    Trump’s “coup” and the Democrats’ “coup”

    Trump’s attempt on January 6 pales in comparison to the Democrats’ well-orchestrated lawfare coup operation set in motion in 2016. As Consortium News, The Grayzone, Stephen Cohen, Glenn Greenwald have documented,  by late 2015 the Democrats were working with national security state officials to paint Trump as beholden to Putin – including stories of Putin’s alleged ownership of “pee tapes” of Trump with prostitutes in Moscow hotels. The Democrats funded the Steele Dossier fabrication, beginning a years-long fact-free story of Trump collusion with Russia to steal the election.

    While Democrats charge Trump with propagating his Stop the Steal story, they have not renounced their own fake Trump-Putin collusion story. In fact, it set the stage for their first impeachment. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even tweeted – after Congress certified the 2016 Electoral College vote “Our election was hijacked. There is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy & #FollowTheFacts.”

    The continuous Democratic Party double standard and hypocrisy in relation to Trump explains a great deal of his supporters’ anger. As Scott Ritter noted, “For the supporters of Donald Trump, the events of Jan. 6 did not occur in a vacuum but were rather the culmination of what they believed to be a four-year campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the president they voted for and, by doing so, disenfranchising not only their vote, but by extension their role as citizens.”

    The second impeachment show intended to divert the 81 million Biden voters from their expectations and demands for progressive change, given the Democrats have won the presidency and both houses of Congress. It stifled any budding movement demanding the Democrats take action for a national health care program, a bailout for the people, a jobs program, a Green New Deal, etc. Their impeachment spectacle sought to vilify Trump and his supporters, as well as solidify what Glenn Greenwald describes as the new alliance of the national security state, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Bush era neo-cons, and mainstream corporate media with the neoliberal Democratic Party.

    Who were the Trump voters

    Central to the Democratic Party – and even leftist – spin is that Trump supporters are racist, sexist white men, the “deplorables.” This prejudiced stereotype hardly explains why 9 million Obama voters switched to Trump in 2016. Nor explain why, after four years of hostile mainstream media coverage, he won 10.5 million more votes in 2020.  A look at the 2020 election voter breakdown contradicts their condescending stereotype.

    In 2016, Trump won the white women vote by a margin of 9%, even though his opponent would have been the first woman president. In 2020 this vote margin increased to an 11% margin. In 2016, Trump won 28% of the Latina vote; in 2020, 31%. In 2016, Trump won 5% of the Black women vote; in 2020, 9%, despite Kamala Harris being on the Democratic ticket.  In 2016, he won 13% of the Black male vote; in 2020 it rose to 19%. Overall, comparing 2016 and 2020, Trump’s vote share rose 4% with Blacks, 3% with Latinos, and 5% with Asian Americans. Of the LGBT community, Trump was said to have won 28% of the vote, double his 2016 percent. In sum, people of color, LGBTs  the very ones said to be central to the Democratic coalition, shifted toward Trump.

    The group where Trump lost vote share involved white men, even though he won 35% more of the white working class vote than Biden. In 2016, Trump won 65% of the white men vote; in 2020 it fell to 61%. This hardly squares with liberal and pro-Democrat mythology that a Trump supporter is a racist white man.

    The US leftist movement co-opted by the Democratic Party

    Despite the November election choice coming down to two corporate neoliberals disliked by the great majority of the US population, more than 159.6 million Americans turned out to vote. The corporate rulers’ effort to neutralize popular opposition to their two parties and lure in social movements was so successful that the election turnout marked the highest percent of  voter population in 120 years, 66.7%. Even leftist groups capitulated, dressing this up as “fighting fascism” as they climbed aboard the two corporate party bandwagon.

    Typically, every four years the liberal-left, in order to justify a vote for the corporate Democrat presidential candidate, tries to paint the Republican candidate as a herald of fascism. In Fascism? First Two Months in Power: Hitler vs. Trump, I wrote:

    Leftists recognize corporate America owns the two parties, yet many still vote Democrat. Every four years, we must first defeat the fascist, then build our movement. So is the story we are told. This has been an effective strategy to trap us in the Democratic Party. It has worked for generations. Not only does it reinforce our domination by corporate America, but it seriously miseducates people about fascism.

    Needless to say, so long as corporate America has the liberal-left tied to their two party system, they have no need for fascism. They need fascism only when their customary method of rule breaks down and they face a very direct threat of losing control to revolutionary forces. The historic function of fascism is to smash the radicalized working class and its allies, destroy their organizations, and shut down political liberties when the corporate rulers find themselves unable to govern through their charade of democracy.  No such problem here.

    This capitulation to the corporate Democrats, including by self-described leftist groups, was hard to imagine just earlier in 2020, with the massive Black Lives Matter protests and the anti-neoliberal Bernie Sanders movement.

    While the vast majority of voters for both parties voted for their version of the “lesser evil,” the record election turnout for this charade was a great victory for corporate America irrespective of who won.

    A successful Trump coup would be a worse outcome for the corporate rulers

    The Democratic Party, liberals and leftists claimed Trump was planning a coup, a fascist coup even, on January 6. We are supposed to be grateful this alleged fascist insurrection was put down. But to play along with this coup story, if it were successful, the result would ignite massive nationwide protests by anti-Trump voters. After Trump’s election in November 2016, there were large “Not My President” protests in over 20 cities and many universities around the country. In 2020 between 15-26 million are said to have mobilized in Black Lives Matter rallies. Between 3-5 million participated in the anti-Trump Women’s Marches in 2017. Trump and his supporters have also shown they can turn out their base not only in large rallies but in armed protests.

    Murders by individuals in both camps have already occurred in Charlottesville, Portland and Kenosha. Both anti-Trump and pro-Trump protesters firmly believe they are the ones defending US democracy and freedom against their opponents, that their own candidate legitimately won the presidential election. Right wing Trumpers fear socialists will take over the US, while the anti-Trump left fear fascists will.

    Nationwide confrontations and mobilizations by these opposing forces following a successful Trump coup could seriously damage the overall political stability of the US system for some time. This would weaken the US empire’s ability to sell its “freedom and democracy” image and political leadership role abroad. It would undermine US capacity to assert its military and world cop ideological power around the world.

    Consequently, the best result for the US empire would be for Trump to lose the election, his “coup” to fail, and he be banned from running for political office. The US rulers achieved almost all that agenda. US leftists, declared opponents of the empire, must ask themselves why this very agenda was also their own agenda.

    Stansfield Smith, Chicago ALBA Solidarity, is a long time Latin America solidarity activist, and presently puts out the AFGJ Venezuela Weekly. He is also the Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. Read other articles by Stansfield.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Few could have been slack-jawed at the first significant foreign policy speech of US President Joe Biden.  It can easily be filed under the “America is back” label.  Back as well, as if the previous administration had been incapable of it, was a promise for that practice unflatteringly called jaw-jaw.  “Diplomacy,” the President states from the outset, “is back at the centre of our foreign policy.”

    Doing so naturally meant much cap doffing to the US State Department, that long time enunciator of Washington’s imperial policies.  President Donald Trump had held a rather different view of the department he generally saw as fustian and obstructive.  Biden tried reassuring department staff that he valued their expertise, respected them and would have their back.  “This administration is going to empower you to do your jobs, not target or politicize you.”

    The effort of the new administration, outlined Biden, will focus on repairing and restoring.  Paint and scaffolding will be provided.  Alliances will be revisited, the world engaged with.  He strikes a collaborative note: cooperation with other states will be needed to fight the pandemic, climate change and nuclear proliferation.

    The speech has the usual sprinklings of concern and fear that other powers are posing challenges to US power, but is odd in not mentioning such states as Iran, at least explicitly, or North Korea.  “American leadership,” he urges, “must meet this new moment of advancing authoritarianism, including the growing ambitions of China to rival the United States and the determination of Russia to damage and disrupt our democracy.”  Beijing remained “our most serious competitor” and needed to be pushed back “on human rights, intellectual property, and global governance.”  He asserts that the US will not roll over “in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions” and will be more “effective in dealing” with Moscow “in coalition and coordination with other like-minded partners.”

    This leaves the impression that the Trump administration was in the business of playing amiable golf with the Putin regime, a point that Democrats in Congress were always keen to push.  But whatever Trump’s strong man admiration might have been for President Vladimir Putin, the US record during his time in office was far from accommodating.  An overview of the various retaliatory sanctions is provided by the Brookings Institute.  They are many and include, among others, the imposition of sanctions in response to Russia’s alleged use of a nerve agent in the British town of Salisbury in 2018; the sanctioning of Russian and a Chechen group for human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings and torture; and sanctions for alleged Russian electoral interference in 2018.

    The speech also pays a mandatory pound of cant masquerading as homage to the misunderstood idea of democracy.  He spoke of defending “America’s most cherished democratic values: defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal human rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity.”

    Democracy is always a conceptual problem for presidents, largely because the US executive and the country’s political system is a creation of a distinctly non-democratic mindset.  The framers of the US Constitution pooh-poohed democracy and purposely crafted a document and political system that would protect property, stifle the emancipation of slaves, and neutralise factionalism.

    Historians such as Charles Beard developed these ideas in An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913), noting how that celebrated document was ratified by fewer than one-sixth of adult males and excluding the un-propertied franchise.  “The Constitution was not created by the ‘whole people’, as the jurists said … but was the work of a consolidated group whose interests knew no state boundaries and were truly national in scope.”  Drafters of the Constitution “with a few exceptions, immediately, directly and personally interested in, and derived economic advantages from, the establishment of a new system.”  Things were off to a cracking start.

    A recent smattering of critique of that problematic notion that is American democracy can also be found, if one cares to look.  Political scientist Yascha Mounk, looking at the foiled efforts of residents in Oxford, Massachusetts to secure the local water supply by buying out the company in question, Aquarion, furnishes us a gloomy example.  Despite securing enough funding to achieve their goal, the lobbyists and a generous effort at sabotage ensured that the water company would remain the supplier.  “The preferences of the average American appear,” rues Mounk, “to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

    The Trump era, while channelling the concerns of the powerless, left it at that.  Elites were still in rampant play, if only those elites preferred by the president.  The US republic moved ever more deeply into a terrain crawling with billionaires and lobbyists.  It was left for those against Trump and the Democrats to simply identify how best to retake old, unequitable terrain with their substitutes.  The participating voter could well sod off.

    Problematically, we return to democracy as an exportable commodity, an effort that has been, for the most part, a disastrous platform of US foreign policy.  Previous sages warned that democracy grown in indigenous climes, like certain wines, travel poorly.  Not acknowledging this fact has led to quagmires, the destruction of states and the crippling of regional and in some cases global security.

    Despite the US being sketchy about democratic ideals (he does allude to the Capitol riots), Biden is optimistic that “the American people are going to emerge from this moment stronger, more determined, and better equipped to unite the world in fighting to defend democracy, because we have fought for it ourselves.”  He also announced “additional steps to course-correct our foreign policy and better unite democratic values with our diplomatic leadership.”  A Global Posture Review of US forces would be conducted, which could only mean one thing: putting the brake on withdrawing US troops and reversing Trump’s policy in various theatres.

    He suggests an example of democracy promotion in action: marshalling cooperative support to address the military coup in Burma; reaching out to the Republicans to test the waters (Senator Mitch McConnell also “shared concerns about the situation in Burma”).  Force, he proclaimed “should never seek to overrule the will of the people or attempt to erase the outcome of a credible election.”  The ghosts of Chile’s Salvador Allende and Iran’s Mohammad Mosaddegh, along with many other casualties of US efforts to overrule the will of the people, would beg to differ.

    A more positive note is made on the issue of US support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen, where an effort will be made to support UN-led initiatives “to impose a ceasefire, open humanitarian channels, and restore long-dormant peace talks.”  US support for offensive operations in the war, including arms sales, will also cease.

    What we can expect for a good deal of the Biden administration will be the resuscitation of the hackneyed and weary.  Even such an ordinary speech had Fred Kaplan claiming that Biden’s cliché’s, after Trump, sounded “revolutionary”.  Trump’s four years had been characterised by “diplomatic decline and atrophy”; Biden’s views, in light of that, “seemed fresh, even bracing.”  But Kaplan is not immune to the substance here.  Talk about stiffening democracy’s sinews, shoring up alliances when allies are doing their own deals with opponents, can come across as rather weak.  The pudding, and the proof that will come with it, is still being made.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Despite the long-awaited political change in Washington as Democratic President, Joe Biden, has officially become the 46th President of the United States, Europe is unlikely to resume its previously unhindered reliance on its trans-Atlantic partner.

    The four years of Donald Trump were rife with tension and strife between the US and Europe – in fact, between the US and its traditional allies, including Mexico and Canada. However, the strain in the US-EU relationship long preceded Trump’s presidency.

    Trump’s eccentric personal style – and often blunt rhetoric and action – was an indicator to Europe that the continent urgently needed to create its own leadership alternatives to Washington. Following World War II, the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 and the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact in 1991, the US became the uncontested leader of the West and, eventually, the globe’s only superpower. These dynamics are now experiencing an unparalleled influx.

    The US commitment to the post-war paradigm was clearly faltering. Consequently, statements from Europe’s political elites in recent years suggest a massive rethink among European governments regarding their definition of the relationship with Washington, an alliance that ran the world for decades.

    In an unprecedented statement in May 2017, German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, articulated the massive shift in Europe’s new political outlook when she said, “The times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over.” In that momentous speech in Munich, Germany’s strong leader signaled the beginning of the end of the disproportionate reliance on the US and the UK.

    The reason behind the distrust in Washington and London was obvious. On the one hand, President Trump has labored to disrupt and reverse traditional US policies towards Europe, including a scathing attack on the integrity and the mission of NATO, and the latter’s usefulness to the US in terms of global security.

    The UK, no longer a member of the European Union, on the other hand, has confronted the EU with its greatest challenges, as it rejected not only EU’s fiscal, migration and other policies but also the very notion of the ‘European Community’. Coupled with Washington’s global retreat, ‘Brexit’ decisively ended any illusion that a post-WWII political scenario can still be possible.

    Attesting to this seismic change in the attitude of Europe’s mainstream politicians, were the remarks by French President, Emmanuel Macron, in November 2018 when he called for a “true European army” to protect the continent from outside threats. “We must have a Europe that can defend itself on its own without relying only on the United States,” Macron said.

    While there is some truth to media assertions that “the EU sighs with relief as Biden readies to enter White House,” this should not be confused with hyped European expectations that the new American President is able to fully reset EU-US ties of yesteryears, nor should it indicate European eagerness to engage the US with unfiltered trust and enthusiasm.

    Actual data from a large pan-European survey commissioned by the European Council on Foreign Relations confirm Europe’s fundamentally changing attitude toward the US. The survey included more than 15,000 people in 11 EU countries and was held after it became clear that Biden had won the US elections.

    According to the survey, the majority in leading EU countries believe that “the US political system is broken,” that “China will be more powerful than the US within a decade” and, finally, that “the Europeans cannot rely on the US to defend them.” Particularly interesting, the ECFR’s commissioned poll signaled a massive geopolitical shift in Europeans’ view towards global alliances, viewing “Berlin, rather than Washington, as the most important partner”.

    On the issue of trust, only 27% of polled Europeans believe that ‘Americans can be trusted’ after they voted for Trump in 2016. With Germany currently being Europe’s de facto leader, the views of Germans towards their American counterparts are particularly critical. Hence, the US must take note that 53% of German respondents have lost trust in a country that once was a close partner.

    ECFR chose the eve of Biden’s inauguration to release the findings of the report, itself a message to the new administration to tread very carefully while attempting to repair broken ties on both sides of the Atlantic.

    The ball is no longer in Washington’s court alone. The fact that the majority of Europeans believe in China’s impending global leadership in a matter of a few years means that the EU will have no patience for any American ultimatum to choose between Washington and Beijing. The latter is no longer a fleeting economic phenomenon but an irreversible force on the global stage that cannot be easily dismissed, effectively ‘sanctioned’ or simply wished away.

    The next few years should be enough for Europe to determine its new identity, without Britain and without relying on American guidance and leadership. Considering Europe’s brewing political crises, with Italy being the latest example, and the unavoidably dire economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, Europe’s journey to a revamped version of itself is likely to be a painful one and, like all difficult choices, rife with challenges and much introspection.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Credit: CODEPINK

    Under Donald Trump’s presidency, Egypt, as well as Saudi Arabia, Israel, the UAE, and other repressive regimes, had virtually free reign to commit unchecked human rights abuses without worry that they might be chastised or lose U.S. diplomatic and financial support. But when Joe Biden won the 2020 election, President Sisi of Egypt started to worry. That’s when he contracted lobbying powerhouse Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck for $65,000 a month.

    The pro-Cairo lobby team includes a number of former politicians, including former Republican congressman Ed Royce, who chaired the influential Foreign Affairs Committee from 2013-2018. The most shocking PR agent for the Egyptian regime, however, is Nadeam Elshami, former chief of staff for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. “It’s inconceivable that a man who spent his younger years in Egypt, comes from a Muslim family that supported the 2011 Arab Spring and was a key Democratic staffer in the U.S. Congress would end up lobbying for a regime that jails, tortures and murders tens of thousands of Egyptians,” says Mohamed Ismail of  Egyptians Abroad for Democracy Worldwide.

    Brownstein boasts many accomplishments, including pushing Congress to obtain compensation on behalf of the hostages held in Iran in 1979, recovering artifacts plundered during the Armenian Genocide, securing compensation for housing developers who had to mitigate asbestos from former U.S. military sites, and securing increased funding for cancer research. Representing Egypt under President Sisi is unlikely to be something Browstein Hyatt Schreck will brag about.

    In July 2013, Sisi seized control of Egypt in a military coup that removed Mohammed Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected leader. The following month, on August 14, his military massacred approximately 1,000 civilians engaging in peaceful protest at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square. Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth called the Rabaa massacre, “one of the worst killing of demonstrators in a single day in recent history,” pointing out that the violence was “intentionally planned at the highest levels of Egyptian society.” Between July 2013 and May 2014, Egyptian authorities detained, charged, or sentenced over 40,000 people. Many of the detainees — demonstrators, dissenters, and journalists — were held without trial. Others were tried without due process and sentenced to death.

    In 2015, President Sisi governed without an elected parliament, giving himself almost total impunity for the attacks he carried out against civil and political rights. Effectively, all of the human rights gains that had been achieved during the 2011 Arab Spring that ousted longtime Egyption ruler Hosni Mubarak were lost when Sisi took over. Sisi’s reign of power has continued in this fashion with Egyptians experiencing surging human rights abuses and a large-scale breakdown of civil society.

    In April 2019, Sisi’s government passed constitutional amendments allowing the leader to remain in power until 2030. In the fall of 2019, Egyptian authorities launched their biggest crackdown since Sisi seized power in 2013. According to Amnesty International, over 2,300 people, including more than 111 children, were taken into custody in sweeping and targeted arrests of peaceful protesters, journalists, human rights attorneys, politicians, and political activists. On January 13, 2020, Egyptian-born American citizen Mustafa Kassem died following more than six years of incarceration in Egypt. Kassem had been arrested in August 2013 in Cairo on claims that he had participated in protests against Sisi’s military regime. He suffered from beatings and was held in pretrial detention for over five years before finally, without due process, receiving a sentence of 15 years.

    The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the already abysmal prison conditions in Egypt and Sisi’s government has used the crisis as pretext to even further silence critics and make use of pretrial detention without judicial review.

    Egypt’s North Sinai, a sparsely populated area bordering Israel and the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip, is a particularly egregious example of the country’s human rights abuses. Attacks by armed groups, including ISIS affiliates, on Egyptian government installations began to rise after the 2011 Arab Spring uprising but increased dramatically following Sisi’s 2013 coup. Instead of protecting Sinai residents in their fight against militants, the Egyption military has “shown utter contempt for residents’ lives, turning their daily life into a nonstop nightmare of abuses,” said Michael Page, Human Rights Watch’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

    The Egyptian military in the Sinai has been engaging in torture, dissapearances (including of children as young as 12), mass arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings, home demolitions, severe curfews resulting in food shortages, and air and ground attacks against civilians. According to Human Rights Watch, these actions amount to war crimes and, according to a 2020 report by the U.S. Department of State, Egypt has repeatedly refused U.S. requests to observe how its military equipment is being used in the Sinai.

    The history of U.S. financial support for Egypt dates back to the 1978 Camp David Accords and 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, when the U.S. began to provide Egypt with aid in a 2:3 ratio in accordance with U.S. aid to Israel. According to the U.S. Department of State, since 1978, Egypt has received over $50 billion in military and $30 billion in economic assistance. Currently, the U.S. gives Egypt $1.3 billion per year ($3.56 million per day) in military aid, making Egypt the second largest recipient of U.S. military assistance after Israel.

    This largesse flowed during the reign of Hosni Mubarak and continues today, despite Sisi’s massive human rights abuses. Following the horrific 2014 Rabaa Square massacre, President Obama halted the delivery of U.S. tanks, missiles, fighter jets, and attack helicopters to Egypt. However, by 2015, he relented and lifted the arms hold, citing the need “to address the shared challenges to U.S. and Egyptian interests in an unstable region.” President Trump famously referred to Sisi as his “favorite dictator,” and praised Sisi for doing a  “fantastic job.” In August of 2017 the Trump administration did cut $96 million and delayed $195 million in military assistance to Egypt over the country’s failure to reduce its human rights abuses, a new law Sisi approved to restrict the activities of nongovernmental organizations, and Egypt’s relationship with North Korea. But these actions were not as tough on Egypt as they appeared to be. According to The New York Times: “by pausing the provision of $195 million in military funding, the Trump administration saved the money from expiring entirely on Sept. 30. This way, Egypt could eventually get the money if its record on human rights improves.” Indeed, the funding was later released without any change in Egypt’s policies.

    Some members of Congress have tried to take action. In October 2020, 56 representatives — 55 Democrats and one independent — released a letter urging Sisi to release prisoners “unjustly detained for exercising their fundamental human rights.” The call was echoed by over 220 European lawmakers. In 2014, Congress began implementing the Leahy Laws on a portion of aid money to Egypt. The law prevents U.S. security assistance to a foreign security force unit when there is credible information that the unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.

    In December 2020, Congress made $75 million (a small portion of the total $1.3 billion) conditional on human rights improvements, without the U.S. State Department being able to waive the conditions by citing U.S. national security interests.

    Unlike Trump, Joe Biden has been quite critical of Sisi. Commenting on the release of an Egypt-American medical student, then-candidate Biden wrote on Twitter: “Mohamed Amasha is finally at home, after 486 days in an Egyptian prison, for raising a protest banner. The arrest, torture, and exile of activists like Sarah Hegazy and Mohamed Soltan or threatening their families is unacceptable. No more blank cheques for Trump’s favorite dictator.”

    Shortly after it became apparent that Biden had won the 2020 U.S. election, Egypt began releasing some political prisoners, including three directors of the well-respected Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights — Gasser Abdel-Razek, Kareem Ennarah and Mohamed Basheer. On February 6, 2021, they released Al Jazeera journalist Mahmoud Hussein, who had been in prison since December 2016 for  “publishing false information and belonging to a banned group.” After Hussein was arrested, Sisi banned Al Jazeera and other news outlets critical of his rule. Reporters Without Borders has called Egypt one of the world’s biggest and worst jailers of journalists.

    Certainly President al-Sisi is afraid that his days of free rein to commit human rights abuses are over now that Trump is out of office. That’s why he is so desperate for the help of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck to whitewash his image and keep U.S. military assistance flowing. But the Biden administration and Congress must not be swayed by Egypt’s release of a few select prisoners or the lobbying efforts of well-compensated Brownstein employees such as Pelosi’s former chief of staff Nadeam Elshami. They should put a “stop payment” on the U.S. taxpayer-funded check that has enabled Sisi to operate with impunity.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • On February 4, in his first major foreign policy address, President Joe Biden announced “we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.” Speaking of the Saudi-led coalition that has been at war in Yemen since 2015, creating what he called “a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe,” Biden declared: “This war has to end.”

    Stating an intention is not fulfilling it and considering Biden’s further pledge, “to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity and its people,” his use of the word “relevant” to modify “arms sales” could indicate a convenient loophole. Still, it is refreshing to hear a U.S. president at least recognize that the Yemeni people are suffering an “unendurable devastation” and this is due to the hard work of grassroots peace activists around the world.

    Whether Biden’s proclamation will mean much in the real world beyond a temporary hold on the weapons deals Trump made just before leaving office is yet to be seen. The Saudi kingdom welcomes Biden’s announcement and the U.S. arms sellers who have profited from the war seem unruffled by the news. “Look,” Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes reassured investors anticipating this move, “peace is not going to break out in the Middle East anytime soon. I think it remains an area where we’ll continue to see solid growth.” The prospects for peace in Yemen probably depend more on sustained international pressure than on a kinder and gentler administration in the White House.

    The Congressional Research Service in a report updated on December 8, 2020, “Yemen: Civil War and Regional Intervention,” references a major factor in U.S. policy planning regarding Yemen that the president did not mention. Roughly five million barrels of oil passes through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait off Yemen’s western coast on a daily basis, eventually making their way to Asia, Europe, and the United States.

    In case the president gave the false impression that the U.S. was getting out of the business of killing Yemenis completely, the next day the State Department issued a clarifying statement: “Importantly, this does not apply to offensive operations against either ISIS or AQAP.” In other words, whatever happens in regard to weapons sales to the Saudis, the war that has been waged for 21 years under the guise of the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by congress authorizing the use of the US Armed Forces against those responsible for the September 11 attacks, will continue indefinitely, despite the fact that neither ISIS nor Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula existed in 2001.

    The “offensive operations” in Yemen that will continue under Biden include drone (UAV) strikes, cruise missile attacks and U.S. Special Forces raids and are a part of the larger “war on terror” that began in the administration of George W. Bush and was expanded under Obama. Despite his campaign promises to end the “forever wars,” a report from Airwars suggests that Trump has bombed Yemen more times than his two predecessors combined.

    In January 2017, just days after taking office, Trump ordered Navy Seal commandos supported by Reaper drone air cover to raid a compound suspected of harboring officials of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. While the raid’s targets escaped, one Navy Seal died in the raid, and eventually it came out that 30 Yemenis were also killed, including 10 women and children. The Navy Seal was not the only US citizen killed in that raid: the other was an 8-year-old girl, Nawar Awlaki. In September, 2011, Nawar’s father, Yemeni-American imam Anwar Awlaki, was assassinated in a drone strike in Yemen that was ordered by President Obama, on secret intelligence that he was an al Qaeda operative. A few days after her father was killed, Nawar’s 16 year old Denver born brother Abdulrahman was killed in another drone strike.

    Many other Yemeni families have suffered in these attacks. On January 26, 2021, relatives of at least 34 Yemenis alleged to have been killed in American military actions asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, to determine whether the deaths were unlawful. The petition asserts that six drone strikes and one Special Operations raid during the Obama and Trump administrations inflicted catastrophic damage on two families.

    The statistics around the U.S. war in Yemen are difficult to come by, in part because many of the attacks are carried out secretly by the CIA and not by the military, but the Airwars and other studies count the number of drone strikes and their victims conservatively in the hundreds. The casualties of Saudi led war, in contrast, are more than 100,000 dead with almost as many killed by hunger and disease caused by the Saudi blockade and millions of Yemenis being deprived of food and other needs.

    While its death toll is much smaller, the U.S. drone attacks have a disproportional effect on Yemeni society. A 2014 screening study of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms among civilians by the Alkarama Foundation found that “for a large swath of population in Yemen, living under a sky that has become a constant source of trauma is an everyday reality” and that under drone attack and surveillance, Yemen is “a precarious time and a peculiar place, where the skies are becoming traumatic and a generation is being lost to constant fear and suffering.”

    If the Special Forces and air strikes are intended to defeat terrorism in Yemen as in the other countries under attack, they are having the opposite effect. As the young, late, Yemeni writer Ibrahim Mothana told Congress in 2013: “Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants. … Unfortunately, liberal voices in the United States are largely ignoring, if not condoning, civilian deaths and extrajudicial killings in Yemen.”

    Mothana’s observation about liberal voices in the US “largely ignoring, if not condoning, civilian deaths and extrajudicial killings in Yemen” was affirmed in Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign for president. While Sanders has become outspoken in his opposition to the Saudi led war, as a presidential candidate he repeatedly voiced his support of Obama’s drone wars. “All of that and more,” he replied when asked if, as president, drones and Special Forces would play a role in his counter-terror plans. Again, in the 2019 resolution “To direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen” offered by Sanders, passed in both houses of Congress and vetoed by Trump, U.S. participation in this other war was given a pass: “Congress hereby directs the President to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities in or affecting the Republic of Yemen, except United States Armed Forces engaged in operations directed at al Qaeda or associated forces.”

    In Biden’s foreign policy address, he left open the possibility of arms sales as he pledged his commitment “to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity and its people.” The threats Saudi Arabia faces include, he said, missile attacks and UAV (drone) strikes from weapons he says are supplied by Iran. In fact, Yemeni Houthi Ansar Allah rebels have launched drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, most notably a September 14, 2019 attack on Saudi Aramco refineries that disrupted world crude oil supplies. It is a strange irony, that after the U.S. assaults Yemen with thousands of Hellfire missiles launched from Predator drones for over 20 years, the U.S. now must arm Saudi Arabia to defend itself (and our oil supply) from Yemeni drones and missiles.

    The global proliferation of weaponized drones is no surprise and Biden’s plea for peace in Yemen that allows for their continued use is a hollow one. Giving a pass, continuing  to ignore, if not condone, civilian deaths and extrajudicial killings in Yemen and elsewhere will not bring peace but will ensure that for generations to come, profiteers like Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Atomics, will “continue to see solid growth.” Peace in Yemen, peace in the world, demands no less than an end to the production, trade and use of weaponized drones.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / February 9th, 2021

    All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.

    — George Orwell, 1984

    Let’s be clear about one thing: the impeachment of Donald Trump is a waste of time and money.

    Impeaching Trump will accomplish very little, and it will not in any way improve the plight of the average American. It will only reinforce the spectacle and farce that have come to be synonymous with politics today.

    While the nation allows itself to be distracted by yet more bread-and-circus politics, the American kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians and corporate thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of the people) continues to suck the American people into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry are powerless to defend themselves against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.

    So here’s what I propose: let’s impeach the Deep State and its cabal of government operatives from every point along the political spectrum (right, left and center) for conspiring to expand the federal government’s powers at the expense of the citizenry.

    We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’re certainly on that downward trajectory now, and things are moving fast.

    Even now, we are being pushed and prodded towards a civil war, not because the American people are so divided but because that’s how corrupt governments control a populace (i.e., divide and conquer).

    These are dangerous times.

    These are indeed dangerous times but not because of violent crime, which remains at an all-time low, or because of terrorism, which is statistically rare, or because the borders are being invaded by foreign armies, which data reports from the Department of Homeland Security refute, or because a pandemic is spreading like a contagion, or even because raging mobs of so-called domestic terrorists are trying to overthrow elections.

    No, the real danger that we face comes from none other than the U.S. government and the powers it has granted to its standing armies to rob, steal, cheat, harass, detain, brutalize, terrorize, torture and kill American citizens with immunity.

    The danger “we the people” face comes from masked invaders on the government payroll who crash through our doors in the dark of night, shoot our dogs, and terrorize our families.

    This danger comes from militarized henchmen on the government payroll who demand absolute obedience, instill abject fear, and shoot first and ask questions later.

    This danger comes from greedy, power-hungry bureaucrats on the government payroll who have little to no understanding of their constitutional limits.

    This danger comes from greedy politicians and corporations for whom profit trumps principle.

    This danger comes from a surveillance state that grows more and more ominous.

    Consider, if you will, all of the dastardly, devious, diabolical, dangerous, debilitating, deceitful, dehumanizing, demonic, depraved, dishonorable, disillusioning, discriminatory, dictatorial schemes inflicted on “we the people” by a bureaucratic, totalitarian regime that has long since ceased to be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

    Americans have no protection against police abuse. It is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later. What remains all-too-usual, however, is the news that the officers involved in these incidents get off with little more than a slap on the hands.

    Americans are little more than pocketbooks to fund the police state. If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether you’re talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, bloated government agencies such as the National Security Agency with its secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities.

    Americans are no longer innocent until proven guilty. We once operated under the assumption that you were innocent until proven guilty. Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects. This is exemplified by police practices of stopping and frisking people who are merely walking down the street and where there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Likewise, by subjecting Americans to full-body scans and license-plate readers without their knowledge or compliance and then storing the scans for later use, the government—in cahoots with the corporate state—has erected the ultimate suspect society. In such an environment, we are all potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.

    Americans no longer have a right to self-defense. In the wake of various shootings in recent years, “gun control” has become a resounding theme. Those advocating gun reform see the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms as applying only to government officials. As a result, even Americans who legally own firearms are being treated with suspicion and, in some cases, undue violence. In one case, a Texas man had his home subjected to a no-knock raid and was shot in his bed after police, attempting to deliver a routine search warrant, learned that he was in legal possession of a firearm. In another incident, a Florida man who was licensed to carry a concealed firearm found himself detained for two hours during a routine traffic stop in Maryland while the arresting officer searched his vehicle in vain for the man’s gun, which he had left at home.

    Americans no longer have a right to private property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property.

    Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police. In early America, citizens were considered equals with law enforcement officials. Authorities were rarely permitted to enter one’s home without permission or in a deceitful manner. And it was not uncommon for police officers to be held personally liable for trespass when they wrongfully invaded a citizen’s home. Unlike today, early Americans could resist arrest when a police officer tried to restrain them without proper justification or a warrant—which the police had to allow citizens to read before arresting them. (Daring to dispute a warrant with a police official today who is armed with high-tech military weapons and tasers would be nothing short of suicidal.) As police forces across the country continue to be transformed into outposts of the military, with police agencies acquiring military-grade hardware in droves, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts, complete with tanks, weaponry, and other equipment designed for the battlefield.

    Americans no longer have a right to bodily integrity. Court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, strip search us, and probe us intimately. It’s no longer unusual to hear accounts of men and women being subjected to what is essentially government-sanctioned rape by police in the course of “routine” traffic stops. What remains to be seen is how the emerging hypervigilance over COVID-19 vaccines will impact that right to bodily integrity.

    Americans no longer have a right to the expectation of privacy. Despite the staggering number of revelations about government spying on Americans’ phone calls, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, Google searches, emails, bookstore and grocery purchases, bank statements, commuter toll records, etc., little to nothing has been done to counteract these abuses. Instead, we are daily being accustomed to life in this electronic concentration camp.

    Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. The U.S. Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the justices of the Supreme Court have become the architects of the American police state in which we now live, while the lower courts have appointed themselves courts of order, concerned primarily with advancing the government’s agenda, no matter how unjust or illegal.

    Americans no longer have a representative government. We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age, let’s call it the age of authoritarianism. In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.

    It is not overstating matters to say that Congress, which has done its best to keep their unhappy constituents at a distance, may well be the most self-serving, semi-corrupt institution in America.

    In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism: a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.

    Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.

    Sound familiar?

    Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests. We have moved into “corporatism” (favored by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism. Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests—not elected by the citizenry—rule over the many.

    History may show that from this point forward, we will have left behind any semblance of constitutional government and entered into a totalitarian state where all citizens are suspects and security trumps freedom.

    Even with its constantly shifting terrain, this topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America’s new normal.

    From Clinton to Bush, Obama to Trump, and now Biden, it’s as if we’ve been caught in a time loop, forced to re-live the same thing over and over again: the same assaults on our freedoms, the same disregard for the rule of law, the same subservience to the Deep State, and the same corrupt, self-serving government that exists only to amass power, enrich its shareholders and ensure its continued domination.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the powers-that-be want us to remain distracted, divided, alienated from each other based on our politics, our bank accounts, our religion, our race and our value systems.

    Yet as George Orwell observed, “The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.”

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Pakistani government should never, under any circumstances and no matter the pressure, normalize with Israel. Doing so is not only dangerous – as it will embolden an already vile, racist, violent apartheid Israel – but it would also be considered a betrayal of a historic legacy of mutual solidarity, collective affinity and brotherhood that have bonded Palestinians and Pakistanis for many generations.

    The bond between Palestine and Pakistan is not one that is based on rhetoric. Rather, it is cemented through blood and sacrifice, as Pakistani fighters have taken part in the desperate Palestinian-Arab attempt at pushing back Zionist colonization of the Palestinian homeland in 1948. Whenever Palestinians think back of those who stood by their side during their times of hardship and collective pain, Pakistan always features prominently on the list.

    But it is not just this. The Pakistani Air Force also took part in the war of 1967 when Israel occupied the rest of historic Palestine and, more importantly, in the pivotal war of 1973, when Arabs and Muslims fought back. It was no surprise to learn that the Pakistani government recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the ‘sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people before the Arab League had done so at the Rabat Conference in Morocco in 1974.

    It is terribly sad to see that Morocco, despite the collective love shared between the Moroccan and the Palestinian people, has succumbed to Jared Kushner’s political designs to normalize with Israel. Trump’s son-in-law had launched a decided campaign to normalize Israel in the eyes of Arabs and Muslims, without forcing Tel Aviv to make a single political concession to the occupied and oppressed Palestinians. Countries like Morocco, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan sold Palestine so cheaply, in exchange for limited, selfish and, worse, unguaranteed gains.

    Pakistan cannot join this misled club. A country of Pakistan’s size, of its large and vibrant population and of the kind of moral authority it possesses is not meant to be an American lackey, dancing to the drumbeats of the US administration, of Kushner-like politicians, who are unable to decipher the long-term consequences of their actions.

    If Pakistan normalizes with Israel through any kind of diplomatic, cultural or trade exchanges, it will send an unprecedented message to the rest of the Muslim Umma; in fact, to the whole world that Muslims are now willing to coexist in a reality in which injustice, in all of its manifestations is, simply, normal and acceptable.

    What kind of moral authority would that make Pakistan, especially as it is leading the fight against the occupation of Kashmir and the perpetual injustices and violence that is experienced daily by millions of Kashmiris?

    From a very young age, all Palestinians are reminded that the struggle for Palestine is part and parcel of the larger struggle against the evils of military occupation anywhere in the world, starting with Kashmir. Every Palestinian mosque often ends its Friday sermons with a heartfelt prayer to Allah, to bring to an end the woes of mankind, from Palestine to Kashmir, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Syria and so on. At times, this camaraderie is all that Palestinians are left with, as the so-called international community has long-turned its back on the Palestinian people and their seemingly endless tragedy.

    But what would Pakistan gain from normalization with Israel, anyway, aside from lofty promises that are likely to be forgotten as soon as the Joe Biden Administration takes over the White House? What did Egypt and Jordan gain from their normalization and diplomatic ties with Israel, over the course of 40 and 26 years, respectively? They are certainly not better off in any way. Since then, the Egyptian pound has been devalued numerous times against the US dollar; it is almost worthless. Jordan, on the other hand, has been reeling under a prolonged economic crisis, one that seems to worsen with time.

    Additionally, the geopolitics of the Middle East is in an unprecedented state of flux. Since the seismic American decision to ‘pivot to Asia’ in 2012, its ‘leadership from behind’ in the NATO-led war in Libya and every other major regional event since, it is crystal clear that the US is no longer the dominant party in the greater Middle East region. With its Asian domain evidently shrinking due to China’s growing economic and political might and outreach and its ‘scramble for Africa’ facing numerous obstacles, the US is no longer in a position to dictate, neither to Pakistan nor any other country, on how to conduct its foreign policy. The upcoming US administration is likely to be busy for years in a desperate attempt to stave off some of the damage inflicted by the Donald Trump Administration, starting with amending some of its ties with its European and NATO allies.

    This is not the time to join yet more American political gambles, lining up Arabs and Muslims on the side of Israel to fight some imagined Iranian threat. On the contrary, this is the time for influential and well-regarded countries like Pakistan to champion their own initiatives, with the help of other peace and justice loving countries, to force Israel to respect international law, to end its military occupation of Palestine and to dismantle its system of racist apartheid. This will certainly garner Pakistan the respect and leadership it deserves as a global Asian and Muslim power.

    The Palestinian and Pakistani peoples need each other as vanguards against racism, military occupation and injustice. They must remain united at the forefront of this defining fight, no matter the sacrifices and the pressures. If Pakistan abandons this noble fight, the pain of this loss will be felt most deeply in the heart of every Palestinian, for generations to come.

    Pakistan, please do not validate apartheid; do not make military occupation normal.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Americans were shocked to witness the assault on the capitol building on January 6, the day Congress was scheduled to ratify the presidential election.  Washington DC and the nation’s state capitals remained on high alert through the inauguration as right wing groups promised more violent attacks.

    It’s easy to trace the proximate cause of this assault, a president who has long cultivated the lie that the 2020 election was somehow stolen.  Prior to the capitol assault, he exhorted his “Save America” rally on the Mall to “stop the steal” and “fight much harder,” asserting “You have to show strength, you have to be strong.”

    Much has been made of the fascist overtones of Trump’s efforts, but it is important to understand how we got to such a place.  It goes well past Trump to forty years of dysfunctional, neoliberal American politics, and beyond that to the racism deeply embedded in this nation’s history.  Both political parties share responsibility for our current condition.

    Republicans

    The Republican Party role is the most obvious.

    In 1968, President Nixon rode a law and order campaign into the White House, appealing to a so-called “silent majority” frightened, if not alienated, by the images of antiwar protesters, inner-city “rioters,” and counterculture “freaks” during the 1960s.

    The corporate mass media, of course, fed this dynamic by refusing to take seriously the actual claims of black, antiwar, New Left and feminist activists, instead, making sure the public saw the most inflammatory examples of their behaviors and appearances.  In mass mediaspeak, “radical” was used to describe militancy, whereas any system-challenging argument vanished from mainstream discourse – sound familiar?  That’s a story I have documented elsewhere.

    Nixon’s racist “southern strategy” set in stone the future of the Republican Party, although it remained for Ronald Reagan to seal the deal.  Reagan’s rhetoric about basic “decency” and “family values,” effectively played on the feelings of those disaffected by the 60s.

    Yet Reagan’s actual policies focused on eliminating ways the government addresses public needs, cutting taxes on the wealthy, rebuilding a huge military complex, regenerating an aggressive foreign policy, and deregulating the economy.

    However, the people drawn to Reagan’s so-called “conservative” rhetoric and his tax-cut pitch – whether religious traditionalists, rural folks, or members of the white working class — actually lost more and more ground, economically, under Reagan’s and the Republicans’ neoliberalism.  They got symbolic gratification while their attention was diverted to the Democrats, liberals, and “Eastern elites” who allegedly caused their problems.

    That’s the Republican path that leads directly to Trump and his True Believers.  It also echoes the post-Reconstruction Democrats’ austerity pitch that reinforced white supremacy in the South.

    What, then, of the Democratic Party?

    Democrats

    Smarting from Reagan’s landslide victory in 1984, Democratic centrists – names like Dick Gephardt, Sam Nunn, and Bill Clinton — took steps to move the Party away from its more liberal wing, into the corporate-dependent center.  In its more liberal moments the Party voiced hopeful rhetoric about defending the rights of minorities, women, and LGBTQ people, defending the environment, etc.  The reality has consistently fallen far short of the rhetoric.

    Indeed, the two “liberal” Democratic presidents of the neoliberal era – Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — were responsible for a host of repressive and “free market” (e.g., neoliberal) policies.  Clinton’s contributions are perhaps better known: the “end of welfare as we know it,” NAFTA, financial and telecommunications deregulation, and the 1994 Crime Bill that accelerated mass incarceration, among others.

    Riding a campaign of “hope” and “change” into the White House, none of Obama’s “liberal” accomplishments – the Affordable Care Act, Supreme Court appointments, the negotiated settlement with Iran, and initial steps on climate — diverged from the neoliberal playbook.  At the same time, Obama pushed the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other so-called ‘free trade” agreements, escalated both domestic surveillance and drone killings abroad, supported the anti-democratic coup in Honduras, and withdrew the public option for health insurance, among others.

    The right-wing Republican attack machine kept its rank-and-file in line with attacks on Clinton’s “60s-style” licentiousness and Obama’s being of African descent.  For their part, the corporate media repeatedly turned the 60s era into a “good sixties” of a romanticized civil rights movement and a hopeful John Kennedy administration, and a “bad sixties” of violence and narcissistic rebelliousness  — the latter a useful hook for selling entertainment and commodities to younger generations.

    Dysfunctional Neoliberal Politics

    Republicans, in short, have been all about giveaways to the rich while manipulating the emotions of less well-off white Americans.  Democrats have ignored the latter populations, becoming increasingly dependent on corporate money while effectively manipulating the aspirations of marginalized communities.

    In their more liberal moments, what Nancy Fraser has called “progressive neoliberalism,” Democrats embrace what is often called “identity politics” – race, gender, and sexuality in particular.  Republicans use Democrats’ rhetoric to cement the emotional attachment of their rank and file supporters.  As Republican “reactionary neoliberalism” becomes more and more outrageous, Democrats gain popular support.  The corporate center, with all its sanctimonious rhetoric, is reinforced when something like the Capitol assault occurs.

    As Fraser has observed in The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born, “To reinstate progressive neoliberalism [e.g., Joe Biden and the Democratic mainstream] … is to recreate –indeed to exacerbate—the very conditions that created Trump.  And that means preparing the ground for future Trumps –ever more vicious and dangerous.”

    Thus the country remains stuck in a see-saw battle that utterly fails to address the deep crises we face.  Neither party speaks a word against a capitalist system that feeds inequality, threatens the planet’s ability to sustain life, and generates a foreign policy marked by militarism and war.  The “problem” is always the “other party.”  Such are the boundaries of what Noam Chomsky called “legitimate discourse.”

    And neither party dares to confront class inequality.  Unlike identity concerns about white supremacy, hate speech, harassment and abuse, and the like – all profound problems — class analysis reveals the systemic forces that keep both parties’ rank-and-file in their place at the margins of American politics.

    Ultimately, the only way out of this will occur when enough people become aware, not only of the seriousness of the crises facing us, but of the need to come together in a well-mobilized mass movement addressing systemic concerns.  We already can see where we’re heading if we don’t do this.

    Ted (Edward) Morgan is emeritus professor of Political Science at Lehigh University and the author of What Really Happened to the 1960: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy.  He can be reached at epm2@lehigh.edu. Read other articles by Ted.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Back in 2017, before WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange was silenced by Twitter, he used the platform to highlight an immutable truth:

    ‘The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security not national security.’

    Power hates being exposed. It hates having its inner machinations, its selfish priorities and ugly operations opened up to public scrutiny.

    The omission of inconvenient facts, and the silencing of inadmissible viewpoints, are core features of the so-called ‘mainstream’ news media. Thus, it should be obvious by now why we always put ‘mainstream’ in quotation marks. Because, as increasing numbers of the public surely now recognise, the major news media are not impartial, or fair, or balanced. Nor do they truly represent and reflect the concerns and priorities of the vast majority of the population. Instead, the major newspapers and broadcasters represent, defend and project the interests of powerful state and corporate elites. The state-corporate media will not, and cannot, undertake consistent and reliable public scrutiny of these elites. That would make no sense since the mass media is the propaganda operation of state-corporate power.

    Since we began Media Lens twenty years ago in 2001, we have amassed over 5,000 pages of media alerts detailing numerous examples of dangerous, power-friendly omissions, distortions and imbalances in UK state-corporate media. Rather than go for easy and obvious targets like the Sun, Express and Mail, we have focused on those media outlets the public is supposed to regard as the most fair, balanced, probing and challenging of governments and Big Business. ‘Thus far and no further’, as Noam Chomsky has described the most open or most liberal end of the narrow spectrum of establishment media.

    BBC News deserves particular scrutiny, not least because it regularly declares itself  ‘the world’s most trusted international news broadcaster’. That is not much of an accolade given that public trust in the media is crumbling; particularly in a country which has some of the worst ‘news’ media anywhere on the planet. The UK has an overwhelmingly right-wing and establishment press dominated by rich owners, and edited by compliant editors with the required ideologically-aligned views. As for the Guardian, which has always been a ‘liberal’ gatekeeper on behalf of power, investigative journalists Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis reported in 2019 that the paper has been:

    ‘successfully targeted by security agencies to neutralise its adversarial reporting of the “security state”, according to newly released documents and evidence from former and current Guardian journalists.’

    Moreover, other than a recent belated and mealy-mouthed defence, for many years the Guardian essentially abandoned and abused Julian Assange, along with the rest of the ‘mainstream’ media, after exploiting him and WikiLeaks.

    Couple all that with the fact that BBC News regularly follows the skewed, power-serving agenda set by UK press coverage, and it is no surprise that overall British public trust in the media is so low. As we noted last year, the extensive annual Eurobarometer survey across 33 countries revealed that the UK public’s trust in the press is rock bottom. Indeed, 2020 was the ninth year out of the past ten that the UK had come last.

    BBC Silence Over Israel As An Apartheid State

    One of the most egregious recent omissions by BBC News was last week’s groundbreaking report by leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem naming Israel as ‘an apartheid state’ and ‘a regime of Jewish supremacy’:

    ‘In the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Israeli regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.’

    Apartheid in the Palestinian Territories has long been recognised. For example, in 2004, a prominent South African professor of international law, John Dugard, then UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, wrote that there is ‘an apartheid regime’ in the territories ‘worse than the one that existed in South Africa.’

    Noam Chomsky concurred:

    ‘In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by “apartheid” you mean South African-style apartheid.

    ‘What is happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse. There is a crucial difference. The South African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their workforce…

    ‘The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is totally different. They just do not want them. They want them out, or at least in prison.’

    All this was damning enough. But the publication of the new B’Tselem report was the first time that Israeli human rights and legal experts had publicly stated that apartheid exists not just in the Occupied Territories, but throughout the whole region that Israel claims for itself.

    As the Israel-based British journalist Jonathan Cook observed:

    ‘By calling Israel an apartheid state and a “regime of Jewish supremacy”, B’Tselem has given the lie to the Israel lobby’s claim – bolstered by a new definition promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance – that it is antisemitic to suggest Israel is a “racist endeavour”.

    ‘B’Tselem, a veteran Israeli Jewish organisation with deep expertise in human rights and international law, has now explicitly declared that Israel is a racist state. Israel’s apologists will now face the much harder task of showing that B’Tselem is antisemitic, along with the Palestinian solidarity activists who cite its work.’

    As far as we are aware, there was no mention of the report on any of the flagship BBC News at 6 or 10 television programmes. Nor was there anything to be found on the BBC News website. Presumably, the BBC deemed it unworthy of the public’s attention. We challenged BBC foreign editor Andrew Roy, BBC world affairs editor John Simpson, BBC chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet and BBC digital news editor Stuart Millar for a response. Not one of them replied. It is perhaps significant that Millar moved to the BBC from the Guardian where, as deputy editor of Guardian US, he had scoffed at Julian Assange:

    ‘I like to think that #Assange chose the Ecuadorean embassy because it’s so convenient for Harrods’

    This is the archetypal sneering ‘mainstream’ journalist’s view of anyone who seriously exposes the truth and challenges power.

    As for B’Tselem’s landmark report detailing the reality of the Israeli state as an apartheid regime, it is possible that there were sporadic brief mentions in some outlying parts of the BBC. Longtime readers will recall that the BBC infamously buried revelations by Scott Ritter, a former chief UN weapons inspector, that Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed of any weapons of mass destruction, at 3am on the BBC World Service.

    In response to the B’Tselem report, John Pilger pointed out via Twitter:

    ‘Israel is top of the league for vaccinating its own people [against coronavirus]. The accolades say Israel is the “example”. False. Israel is denying the vaccine to Palestinians whose land and lives it controls. WHO has pleaded with Israel: to no avail. Apartheid in action.’

    Glossing Over Brutal Imperialism

    Here in the UK, the Tory government’s criminally incompetent response to the coronavirus pandemic has led to an appalling death toll – now the highest death rate of any country in the world – while ministers robotically repeat the mantra of ‘following the science’, with one U-turn after another. Meanwhile, many people are suffering tremendous hardship, losing their jobs or struggling to earn a living, or even unable to feed their children adequately.

    As Phil Miller, a staff writer for the excellent investigative journalism website Declassified UK, noted:

    ‘The UK now has over 100,000 covid deaths. That’s a result of government failure on a grand scale. The lack of calls for Johnson and ministers to resign is extraordinary’

    It is extraordinary. But, tragically, it is a natural consequence of how the state-corporate media represents and defends elite power, of which it is a key component. Any real dissent is smeared, swept to the margins or simply blanked. With the power of corporate media manifest in the demolition of Jeremy Corbyn’s prospects of becoming Prime Minister in 2019, it is entirely predictable that there is now no substantive political opposition to a destructive, elite-serving Tory government.

    Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s lame Blairite successor, is a stalwart establishment figure who, at best, would only ever paper over a few cracks in the edifice of neoliberal economics. This is the corporate- and finance-driven system that is crushing the vast majority of the world’s population, destroying the natural environment and species at an alarming rate, and driving us all towards the precipice of climate breakdown. As we have noted before, and as we will see again below, no world leader anywhere is doing anything remotely sufficient to address this disaster.

    Starmer has actually called for the Labour party to emulate incoming US President Joe Biden’s ‘broad coalition’ to ‘see progressive values triumph over the forces of division and despair’. The stone-cold reality that Biden, set to be inaugurated today (20 January), represents huge financial interests and corporate power, and has an appalling record in supporting US imperialism and wars, appears to have escaped Starmer’s attention. But then, Starmer is also seemingly oblivious to the UK’s own imperial past and blood-soaked complicity in war crimes. How else could a Labour leader write:

    ‘We are at our best when the world knows we have the courage of our convictions and a clear moral purpose.’

    Wiping away the blood of countless US/UK atrocities across the globe, he continued:

    ‘For the United States of America and for Britain, this is the time to return to the world stage. This is the time for us to lead.’

    To gloss over Britain’s brutal past and present – to ignore the grievous crimes committed against Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, to name a few – is an insult to the UK’s many victims. For a supposed ‘progressive’ to do so is surely absurd. It can only result from being blind to the propaganda system so cogently explained by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in ‘Manufacturing Consent’ (Vintage, 1988). In this system, we are immersed in a brainwashing environment of mass media in which even the more ‘reputable’ news outlets such as Associated Press regurgitate doctrinal statements such as:

    ‘For decades, the U.S. has been an advocate for democracy abroad, using diplomatic pressure and even direct military intervention in the name of spreading the principles of a pluralistic system with a free and fair vote for political leaders. These tactics have generated both allies and enemies, and this year’s presidential vote perhaps more than any other is testing the strength of the values it promotes around the world.’

    A safe pair of hands like Sir Keir would never recognise, far less, criticise such assertions for the dangerous, ideological and ahistorical nonsense that they are. Instead, Starmer is locked into an elite-friendly mindset apparent whenever he proclaims his establishment credentials, as here via Twitter:

    ‘This is also an important moment for the world. It is a chance to reassert America’s place as a force for good on the world stage. A nation that will work with Britain and other allies to defeat this pandemic and fight climate change.’

    The reply from Media Lens reader Ryan Moon was apt:

    ‘When, specifically, has the US (& UK) been a “force for good in the world”? Supporting Suharto & Pinochet maybe? In Yemen & Libya? In the Chagos Islands? Nicaragua might have a few choice words about that description, too. Grow a spine.’

    Biologist and science writer Richard Dawkins, like so many other prominent members of the liberal commentariat, once again revealed his deep ignorance of history and world affairs:

    ‘With few exceptions like Putin & Farage, the entire world welcomes President Biden and Vice-President Harris. After four years of lies, venal hypocrisy and vicious hostility to decency and humane values, America has taken a major step towards making America great again.’

    Historian Mark Curtis, co-founder of Declassified UK, responded:

    ‘The thing is, @RichardDawkins, while you’re right to welcome the demise of the contemptible Trump, as I do, the “lies, venal hypocrisy and vicious hostility to decency and humane values” are just routine features of every US presidency, especially in foreign policy.’

    Meanwhile, it was no surprise to see a senior Guardian journalist unleashing purple prose in praise of Biden. David Smith, the Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief, declared that ‘with empathy and humility, Biden sets out to make America sane again’. The ideological rhetoric continued to gush out across Guardian column inches:

    ‘After the mental and moral exhaustion of the past four years, Biden made America sane again in 15 minutes. It was an exorcism of sorts, from American carnage to American renewal.’

    Readers with long memories will recall similar Guardian effusions of liberal ordure when Barack Obama was elected in 2008 to ‘rebrand America’ and serve as the eloquent ‘cool’ figurehead of US corporate and imperial might. That is the Guardian worldview in a nutshell.

    The harsh truth is that the corporate media, including BBC News and the Guardian, has a stranglehold on any prospect for changing society. The transfer of US power from Trump to Biden provided the briefest permissible glimpse of mild scepticism being broadcast from corporate newsrooms. This was most notable with Trump vociferously contesting the US presidential elections results, claiming election fraud on a grand scale. The repeated buzz phrase from journalists reporting Trump’s claims was ‘without offering evidence’. Thus, BBC news presenter Mishal Husain told the nation’s television audience on 8 November last year:

    ‘President Trump has been out on the golf course and made further claims of election fraud without offering evidence.’

    The point was emphasised in a news piece by BBC North America correspondent Nick Bryant:

    ‘the president took to the golf course this morning continuing to make unsubstantiated claims that the election was rigged.’

    This narrative was repeated across the ‘mainstream’ media.

    But those important caveats – ‘without further evidence’ and ‘unsubstantiated claims’ – are routinely missing when propaganda declarations are, or were, made by the US/UK about Iraq’s mythical ‘WMD’; or when the public is told that the West’s ‘security’ and military forces need to counter the ‘threat’ from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea or whoever the latest ‘enemy’ happens to be;  or that ‘we’ need to keep Saudi Arabia as an ‘ally’; that Israel only ever ‘retaliates’ in the face of Palestinian ‘provocation’, that the US is a neutral ‘peace broker’ in the Middle East; or that the US/UK defend freedom and human rights around the world. On and on flow the propaganda assertions, without serious challenge from a compliant media. Suddenly, when it really matters, the media’s supposed enthusiasm for ‘fact checking’ dries up.

    Julian Assange And Guardian Hypocrisy

    We have seen the ugly truth in the brutal, inhumane treatment of Julian Assange, arguably the most important Western dissident, journalist and publisher in recent years, by western ‘democracies’, the major news media, and a cruel system of court ‘justice’ operating in London. During a recent online conversation, acclaimed film director Ken Loach nailed the despicable role of the Guardian, in particular, in persecuting and undermining Assange:

    ‘It’s one of those cases that clarifies the role of the media […] there’s a collusion of silence. There doesn’t need to be an active conspiracy; they all understand the steps of the dance. “We’re going to keep quiet about this”. The Guardian did publish some [WikiLeaks] material, but then turned on Julian. And typical with the liberal press, there’s a degree of hypocrisy. They want to have a foot in both camps. They want to be both seen as part of the responsible establishment; they also want to speak truth to power. But they’re compromised on both fronts. And their attacks on Julian Assange were critical in undermining his presence as a journalist, and being seen as a journalist. And the scurrilous attacks on him, for year after year; [and their] failure to really campaign against the torture for ten years.’

    He added:

    ‘There could not be a clearer case of shoot the messenger, and let the scoundrel go free. I mean, here you have people – Bush, Blair, propagandists like Alastair Campbell – wheeled out on the BBC, like Newsnight. They have season tickets to the current affairs programmes that tell us what to think. They are responsible for – what – up to a million deaths, four, five, million people made homeless, destruction of Iraq; the most atrocious war crimes, in an illegal war – an illegal war, so every activity is illegal on account of that, war crimes – they should be indicted. The man who told us about those crimes is condemned to rot, at the very least, and is in danger of never seeing the light of day again, or of being executed, and we know some politicians in the States have called for precisely that. There could not be a more outrageous, a more egregious example of the messenger being crucified and the scoundrels, the villains, the criminals getting away with this.’

    As musician Brian Eno said during the discussion:

    ‘Julian is a threat [to power] because he exposes an illusion that we are generally being told to support. And that illusion is that we live in a democracy. So, the fundamental concept of democracy is that people make decisions about their future, and about the state they live in. And the fundamental assumption of democracy is that people have the information on which to make those decisions. So, clearly, for democracy to work we have to have good information, otherwise we’ll make bad decisions.’

    ‘The Gravity Of The Situation Requires Fundamental Changes To Global Capitalism’

    The most compelling evidence that there is no functioning democracy in capitalist societies is all around us: global environmental collapse and climate breakdown.

    A new scientific report this month warns that the planet is facing a ‘ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health and climate-disruption upheavals’ that threaten human survival. The study, published in ‘Frontiers in Conservation Science’ by a group of 17 experts, observes that:

    ‘The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms – including humanity – is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts.’

    Somewhat couched in academic language, the urgency and starkness of the warning are nevertheless clear:

    ‘The gravity of the situation requires fundamental changes to global capitalism, education, and equality, which include inter alia the abolition of perpetual economic growth, properly pricing externalities, a rapid exit from fossil-fuel use, strict regulation of markets and property acquisition, reigning in corporate lobbying, and the empowerment of women.’

    They added:

    ‘the mainstream [sic] is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilization.’

    Meanwhile, the climate crisis has been worsening, with 2020 declared by scientists as the joint hottest year ever recorded, despite the pandemic lockdowns. There were record Arctic wildfires and Atlantic tropical storms.

    The European Commission’s Matthias Petschke said:

    ‘The extraordinary climate events of 2020 […] show us that we have no time to lose. We must come together as a global community, to ensure a just transition to a net zero future. It will be difficult, but the cost of inaction is too great…’

    In the wake of the US presidential election last November, the BBC’s John Simpson had tweeted:

    ‘According to the New York Times, exit polls showed that 84% of people who voted for Trump thought that global warming wasn’t an important issue.’

    But, of course, if political leaders everywhere believed that climate breakdown is an important issue – the overriding issue facing humanity – they would be tackling it with the urgency that it requires now.

    As climate campaigner Greta Thunberg pointed out last week:

    ‘In 2010 our leaders signed “ambitious goals to protect wildlife and ecosystems”. By 2021 they’d failed on every single one. Each day they choose not to act. Instead they sign more “ambitious” non-binding future goals while passing policy locking in destructive business as usual.’

    This was her acerbic summary of political discussions at the One Planet Summit in Paris on 11 January:

    LIVE from #OnePlanetSummit in Paris:

    Bla bla nature

    Bla bla important

    Bla bla ambitious

    Bla bla green investments

    Bla bla great opportunity

    Bla bla green growth

    Bla bla net zero

    Bla bla step up our game

    Bla bla hope

    Bla bla bla…*

    *locking in decades of further destruction

    We have arrived at this terminal stage of capitalism because we are being held in a death-grip by a system of economics and exploitation that is coated with a veneer of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘progress’ and other convenient ideological myths. The corporate media has sold the public those myths, perpetuating and deepening the various interlocking crises that threaten to wipe out homo sapiens, along with countless other species.

    We can still escape the worst if we face up to reality. As Gail Bradbrook and Jem Bendell, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and founder of Deep Adaptation respectively, explain:

    ‘Our power comes from acting without escape from our pain.’

    They continue:

    ‘Paying attention fully to what is around us and in front of us, even though it hurts, is to be fully alive. […] Once we accept that anxiety and grief will be constant companions in this struggle, we can stay fully present to what is happening and respond accordingly. It means we do not grasp desperately at the latest idea of what might fix the climate and ecological emergency. Instead, we can help each other stay fully present to the difficult mess, so that we can try to reduce harm, save what we can and plant some seeds for what might come next.’

    A good start would be to reject the corporate media.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • After the US Capitol was attacked by his supporters, Donald Trump has become the first president of America to be impeached twice. Regardless of how he leaves the White House – the Senate won’t act on the impeachment before Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021 – the neo-fascist seeds he has sown won’t stop germinating.

    Even after the brazen attempt to overturn election results, there is ambiguity among Americans on Trump’s impeachment – 38% oppose his impeachment and 15% have no opinion. These percentages are in line with the support enjoyed by him for false claims regarding rigged elections.  Polls carried out December 2020 showed that almost 40% of Americans, including 72% of Republicans believed that the November election was rigged against Trump. The acceptance of these allegations came in the backdrop of overtly anti-democratic efforts to overturn the results of a contested election.

    Trump put 234 federal judges into office, hand-picked according to ideological leanings. He appointed three Supreme Court justices, with his party taking unparalleled measures to push them through against popular mandate and in violation of certain procedures.

    Republican Realignments

    After the spectacle at the Capitol, the Republican Party has split into True Trumpists and Back-to-Businessers. Mike Pence, Tom Cotton, Chuck Grassley, Mike Lee, Ben Sasse, Jim Lankford and even Kelly Loeffler have sided against Trump. According to Mike Davis, this split reflects “a realignment of power within the Party with more traditional capitalist interest groups like NAM [National Association of Manufactures] and the Business Roundtable as well as with the Koch family, long uncomfortable with Trump. There should be no illusion that ‘moderate Republicans’ have suddenly been raised from the grave; the emerging project will preserve the core alliance between Christian evangelicals and economic conservatives and presumably defend most of the Trump-era legislation.”

    For Post-Trump Republicans, the lucrative potentials of Trumpism have been exhausted: they’ve already extracted their justices, their tax cuts, and their anti-immigration credentials. Now, they have got the perfect excuse to step off from the Trumpist bandwagon. True Trumpists, led by Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, find themselves in another political space – captains of a de facto third party that is mostly concentrated in the House of Representatives and state legislatures. Already, Trump lackeys are trying to redirect the frenzy of the fascist mob into a crusade against Big Tech which – to their chagrin – has banned Trump from almost all platforms. For instance, Rep. Jim Jordan defended Trump with the farcical claim that impeaching him was simply an expression of “cancel culture” and a further attempt to silence conservatives.

    The Spread of Neo-fascism

    As is evident from the Republican split, an alt-right political faction will ensure that Trumpism does not wither away. At this point, it is necessary to ask how neo-fascism percolated through the pores of American society. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies reported that far-Right and White supremacist terrorist attacks in the US increased dramatically in 2017 (one year after Trump’s Election win) to 53 attacks and another 44 in 2019 – an evidence of the cultural rootedness of neo-fascism.

    In the Terror of the Unforeseen, Henry Giroux neatly lists all the elements comprising Trumpism: “the cult of the leader, the discourse of the savior, white nationalism, a narrative of decline, unchecked casino capitalism, systemic racism, silence in the face of a growing police state, the encouragement of state endorsed violence, the hallowing out of democracy by corporate power, a grotesque celebration of greed, a massive growth in the inequality of wealth, power and resources, a brutal politics of disposability, an expanding culture of cruelty, and a disdain for public virtues”. From this compendium, we can observe that it was neoliberalism combined with violent xenophobia and anti-intellectualism which created a fertile ground for Trump’s political hegemony.

    In the age of Trump, Giroux sees the emergence of neo-fascism in “an unceasing stream of racism, demonizing insults, lies, and militarized rhetoric, serving as emotional appeals that are endlessly circulated and reproduced at the highest levels of government and the media.”  “The United States has a long history of racist language leading to cruel and harmful practices and, in some cases, violence aimed at groups targeted by such language.” Giroux says that “the language of white nationalism and racial resentment” creates “a discourse that annihilates social codes and restrains political behavior and undermines the rule of law.”

    Trump’s public pedagogy does not operate just through his tweets or statements but also through his performative silences. This was clear in the case of the 2017 Charlottesville rally where White supremacists gathered in opposition to the removal of a US Civil War statue. During the rally, a White supremacist killed the anti-fascist activist Heather Heyer. This act was heavily condemned across a broad political spectrum within the US. However, the Charlottesville rally and the killing of Heyer were initially met with silence from Trump, who otherwise is quick to tweet his opinions on similar situations. When he broke the silence with a press conference, he said that “there are two sides to a story” and asked “what about the alt left?” Even though he later condemned the racist elements in the Charlottesville rally, the initial silence and the narrative of “both sides” had already impacted the public discourse.

    Ultimately, Trump’s entire political project rests on irrationality. Only in this way can he simultaneously further the capitalist class’ agenda. “The bourgeoisie,” Henry Lefebvre says in Mystified Consciousness, “doesn’t need ideas too refined and metaphysical. Carefully instigated banalities are usually more useful than metaphysics. It needs only to utilize old everyday sentiments, sentiments whose fragrance is ‘all natural’ and ‘simply itself’: faith, hearth, race, heroism, purity, duty – banalities inscribed in all our hearts.” These emotionally powerful banalities serve to craft a false sense of collective identity in a neoliberal environment of hyper-individualization. As Hannah Arendt writes in Origins of Totalitarianism, “men in the midst of social disintegration and atomization will do anything to belong”.

    A Socialist Response

    Neo-fascism in USA can be eliminated only through socialism. As long as neoliberal capitalism reigns supreme, potentialities for a project like Trumpism will continue to abound. Therefore, a socialist response needs to be carefully constructed. Socialist political praxis needs to emphasize protecting the population in the immediate present while working toward the long-run revolutionary reconstitution of society at large. Such a multi-temporal dynamic will allow the Left to ideologically defeat the Right on the terrain of hegemony.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • In an interview with the British newspaper, The Times, in 2015, former US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, vehemently denied that exporting democracy to Iraq was the main motive behind the US invasion of that Arab country 12 years earlier.

    Rumsfeld further alleged that “the idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic.” But the US’ top military chief was being dishonest. Writing in Mother Jones, Miles E. Johnson responded to Rumsfeld’s claim by quoting some of his previous statements where he, repeatedly, cited democracy as the main reason behind the US invasion, a war that was one of the most destructive since Vietnam.

    Certainly, it was not Rumsfeld alone who brazenly promoted the democracy pretense. Indeed, ‘democracy’ was the buzzword, parroted by thousands of Americans: in government, the military, mainstream media, and the numerous think-tanks that dotted the intellectual and political landscape of Washington.

    One could not help but reflect on the subject when, on January 6, thousands of Americans stormed the Washington Plaza, climbing the walls of Capitol Hill and taking over the US Congress. A country that has assigned itself the role of the defender of democracy worldwide, now stands unable to defend its own democracy at home.

    In the case of Iraq, as soon as US soldiers stormed into Baghdad, they hurriedly occupied all government buildings and every symbol of Iraqi sovereignty. Triumphant soldiers were filmed rampaging through the offices of former Iraqi ministers, smoking their cigars, while placing their dirty boots on top of their desks. Bizarrely, similar scenes were repeated in Washington 17 years later, this time in the offices of top US legislators, including the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.

    In Iraq, from March 2003, ministers were hunted down, as their photos and names were circulated through what the US military referred to as Iraq’s ‘most wanted deck of cards’. In the American scenario, US Congressmen and women were forced to cower under their desks or to run for their lives.

    The violent events in Washington have been depicted by US mainstream media as if a temporary crisis, instigated by a president who refuses to concede power peacefully and democratically. The truth, however, is far more complex. There is nothing transitory about any of this and, while Donald Trump is largely to blame for the bloody events of this day, the man is a symptom of America’s rooted democracy crisis, which is likely to worsen in the future.

    Famed American linguist and historian, Noam Chomsky, has long argued that the US is not a democracy but a plutocracy, a country that is governed by the interests of the powerful few. He also argued that, while the US does operate based on formal democratic structures, these are largely dysfunctional. In an interview with Global Policy Journal in 2019, Chomsky further asserted that the “US Constitution was framed to thwart the democratic aspirations of most of the public.”

    This has been evident for many years. Long before Trump became President, the dichotomy of American democracy has expressed itself in the way that the American people interact with their supposedly democratic institutions. For example, merely 20% of US adults trust their government, according to a Pew Research Center poll published last September. This number has remained relatively unchanged under previous administrations.

    With the US economy rapidly sinking due to various factors, including the government’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the people’s distrust in government is now manifesting itself in new ways, including mass violence. The fact that 77% of those who voted for Trump in the November elections believe that Joe Biden’s win was due to fraud, suggests that a sizable percentage of Americans have little faith in their country’s democracy. The consequences of this realization will surely be dire.

    America’s constitutional crisis, which is unlikely to be resolved in the current atmosphere of polarization, is compounded by an external political crisis. Historically, the US has defined and redefined its mission in the world based on lofty spiritual, moral and political maxims, starting with ‘Manifest Destiny’, to fighting communism, to eventually serving as the defender of human rights and democracy around the world. The latter was merely a pretense used to provide a moral cover that would allow the US to reorder the world for the sake of expanding its market and ensuring its economic dominance.

    Thomas Paine, whose influence on US ideals of liberty and democracy is arguably unmatched, warned, in “Common Sense” in 1776, against the potential tyranny of those who “attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools.”

    Alas, Paine’s warning went unheeded. Indeed, the democracy ‘fraud’ that Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, et al carried out in Iraq in 2003, was a mere repetition of numerous other fraudulent military campaigns carried out around the world. The ‘protectors of democracy’ became the very men responsible for its undoing.

    Unquestionably, the storming of US Congress will have global repercussions, not least among them the weakening of US hegemonic and self-serving definition of what constitutes a democracy. Is it possible that the US democracy doctrine could soon cease to be relevant in the lexicon of US foreign policy conduct, one that is predicated, per Paine’s logic, on “force and fraud”?

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • (Photo credit:  Yander Zamora/EFE)

    On January 11, in his final days before leaving office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added one parting blow to the series of bludgeons his administration has inflicted on Cuba for four years: putting the island on the list of “state sponsors of terror” that includes only Iran, North Korea and Syria. The designation drew swift condemnation from policymakers and humanitarian groups as a decision widely characterized as “politically motivated.” It comes six years after the Obama administration had removed Cuba from the same list as part of his policy of rapprochement.

    In the six years since, Trump’s State Department could not point to a single act of terror sponsored by Cuba. Instead, Secretary Pompeo based his decision on Cuba’s alleged support for the ELN (National Liberation Army – Colombia’s second-largest guerilla group) and the harboring of a handful of U.S. fugitives wanted for crimes committed in the 1970s, including renowned Black revolutionary Assata Shakur. Lacking more specific accusations, the State Department criticized Cuba for its supposed “malign interference in Venezuela and the rest of the Western Hemisphere.”

    These claims don’t stand up to scrutiny. Regarding the ELN, the gist of the story is that the Trump administration is punishing Cuba for its role in attempting to bring peace to the long-simmering conflict in Colombia. ELN negotiators arrived in Cuba in 2018 for peace talks with the Colombian government. As part of the protocols for these meetings, ELN negotiators were allowed entry into Cuba and promised safe passage back into Colombia after their conclusion. Guarantor countries, including Cuba and Norway, assumed responsibility for their safe return. The talks collapsed in January 2019 following an ELN car bombing in Bogotá that killed 22 people. Colombia requested the extradition of the negotiators, but Cuba refused because the Colombia government will not honor the previous government’s commitment to guaranteeing the negotiators’ freedom upon returning home.

    Regarding Secretary Pompeo’s other arguments, Cuba’s main influence in the Western Hemisphere has been the opposite of “malign”: it has deployed its doctors throughout the region and the world, saving thousands of lives during the Covid-19 pandemic. And when it comes to harboring terrorists, it’s worth noting that for decades the United States harbored Luis Posada Carriles, mastermind of a 1973 bombing that killed 73 people on a Cuban commercial airliner.

    Cuba’s placement on the state sponsors of terror list is meant to be a thorn in any plan by the Biden administration for rapprochement. Taking Cuba off the list will require a review process that could take months, delaying any new initiatives to roll back Trump-era policies. It will also cause further pain to Cuba’s economy, already battered by tightened sanctions and the pandemic that has devastated the island’s tourism industry. The new terrorism label will likely scare off many businesses that import to Cuba, banks that finance transactions with Cuba and foreign investors.

    A week before the designation, nine U.S. Senators wrote to Secretary Pompeo and warned that such a step “will politicize our national security.” It has drawn strong condemnation from Senator Patrick Leahy, who said it made a “mockery of what had been a credible, objective measure,” and House Foreign Affairs Chairman, Representative Gregory Meeks who said the hypocrisy from President Trump less than a week after he incited a domestic terror attack was “stunning but not surprising.”

    Faith group Pastors For Peace was one of many organizations to condemn the designation: “We know that this latest act, in the waning days of the Trump administration, is not only an aggressive act against Cuba, but aggression against the incoming administration who have pledged to return to a policy leading to peace and civilized relations with our island neighbor.”

    Policy group ACERE (which CODEPINK is a part of) drew a connection between the designation and recent events at home: “Perpetuating the myth that Cuba is a threat to the American people – while minimizing the threat posed by far-right extremists at home – is an embarrassment to our country on the world stage.”

    The real motive behind this move is to offer a parting gift to the Cuban exile community and its allies that have been loyal supporters of the Trump administration and helped oust several Democratic members of Congress in the last election. This is par for the course for an administration that has repeatedly used sanctions for political gain with no regard for the Cuban people who, for four years, have borne the brunt of sanctions affecting everything from energy, tourism, medicines, remittances and flights. Just like millions of U.S. citizens, Cubans are counting the days until the Trump administration becomes history and hoping the next administration will offer some relief.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • by Roger D. Harris / January 12th, 2021

    The right-wing demonstration turned violent riot at the US Capitol on January 6 was a spectacle, complete with Confederate flags and a QAnon shaman in red-white-and-blue face paint. The Venezuelan government stated: “With this unfortunate episode, the United States is experiencing what it has generated in other countries with its policies of aggression.”

    Some half of the active electorate voted for Trump, who believed the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. The other half of the active electorate was abhorrent about what happened in Washington on January 6, speaking with semi-religious reverence about the desecration of sacred institutions. They believed, in contrast, that it was the 2016 presidential election that was stolen. The Russians were the culprits then and, for the last four years, they supported politicians ever vigilant against détente breaking out with the second most powerful nuclear state.

    The meme, “Due to travel restrictions this year, the US had to organize the coup at home,” went viral. Rather than a coup, as claimed by many in mainstream media, what happened in DC was a riot. “There is a huge difference,” observes Glenn Greenwald, “between, on the one hand, thousands of people shooting their way into the Capitol after a long-planned, coordinated plot with the goal of seizing permanent power, and, on the other, an impulsive and grievance-driven crowd more or less waltzing into the Capitol as the result of strength in numbers and then leaving a few hours later.”

    Whether Trump intended to stage a coup was secondary to whether he could do so. The institutions of state power were aligned against him, as indicated by the last ten secretaries of defense who admonished no go. Too much attention has been wasted obsessing about what was, at best, a delusion.

    The myriad maladies of the American body politic did not originate with Mr. Trump and will not terminate with his departure. He was unique, but not exceptional. His style was all his own, but the substance of the reign of 45 revealed a dreary continuity with his predecessors. And when Trump made feeble attempts to deviate, as with ending endless wars, the Democrats and the permanent state slapped him back into line.

    In fact, Trump may not go away. And for that he will have the liberals to thank. Just like some Trotskyists have made a career of exorcising the specter of Stalin, who died in 1953, liberals will be doing the same with Trump.

    Even if Trump wanted to gracefully bow out of public life – an unlikely outcome – liberals would keep on flogging his dead horse, for Trump has been their greatest asset. And well the liberals need to hold on to the ghost of Trump, as being “not-Trump” is their defining character now that liberalism is dead. Their agenda consists of simply carrying forward the same basic program of neoliberalism at home (but with diversity) and imperialism abroad (but with responsibility to protect) as Trump, only with more finesse.

    How unfathomable it is that a blowhard, paunchy, septuagenarian with a dyed hair combover could lead a right-wing cult movement. Far more bizarre is that person is also the president of the US, who in the 2020 election received more votes than any candidate in history except for his successful challenger. Arguably a white supremist, he garnered 58% of the white voters but also 18% of the black male voters and 36% of the Latino men. That 83% of those who felt the economy was a prime issue chose Trump is an insight into why someone so repugnant could attract so many votes.

    In short, the system has not been meeting the needs of its people, its naked dysfunctionality is bare for all to see, and the ruling circles are experiencing a crisis of legitimacy. The response of the rulers to mass discontent is not to address the root causes but to step up suppression as the trajectory of neoliberalism lurches toward fascism. The aftermath of the events of January 6 has precipitated blowbacks by the ruling elites, such as proposed anti-domestic terrorism measures, in anticipation of popular resistance to the intensifying contradictions of the US imperial project.

    The drama played out on January 6 reflected the distress generated by historical developments in late-stage capitalism: globalization and automation-induced job losses, accelerating wealth and income inequality, reduced access to educational opportunities and health care, food insecurity and hunger, and the threat of becoming homeless.

    The system’s unresolved contradictions are increasingly visible to its victims in both progressive (e.g., Black Lives Matter movement) and reactionary forms (e.g., the Trump phenomenon). Neither of these tendencies are likely to fade away because the conditions that precipitated them will only be exacerbated. Nativist and white-supremist elements – long an undercurrent in the American polity – have been given oxygen by Trump. The Democrats dismiss the right-wing insurgency as a “basket of deplorables.” The left needs to both resist the growing right-wing presence and neutralize them, if not win them over to understand the true source of their discontent.

    The Capitol building riot is being spun to distract from the failure of the neoliberal state to meet the needs of its citizens. Suddenly forgotten are urgently needed reforms like Medicare for All and a stimulus that benefits working people. Instead, the incoming administration of Joe Biden is pushing extensions of the authoritarian state under the guise of combatting domestic terrorism. But thanks to the Patriot Act, for which Biden takes credit as its prime writer, and other such repressive legislation already on the books, the state has already too much power over its citizens.

    These extensions of the coercive power of the state have been and will be used to suppress popular movements and need to be resisted. Beware, the mania for censoring so-called hate speech is a tool for silencing any dissent to the ruling powers. The price of cutting off Trump’s rants on Twitter and Facebook is the ascendence of monopoly corporations that are so powerful that they can even muzzle an elected president. Commonplace is the new normal of unchecked private corporations collecting data 24/7 on our most intimate activities.

    Because the ruling class cannot solve the maturing contradictions of global capitalism, their response to their crisis of legitimacy is to increasingly rely on repression. We cannot rely on the Democrats, who are now backed by the so-called moderate Republicans and underwritten by finance capital, because they are the ones cheerleading the descent into accelerating authoritarianism, as they champion censorship and the oppressive security state measures.

    Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad warn of three world existential crises: nuclear annihilation, climate catastrophe, and neoliberal destruction of the social contract. The ruling class is preparing for a real insurrection and, given the alternative, the people may not disappoint them.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • How strange it must have seemed for US lawmakers to be suddenly facing what was described as a “mob”, not so much storming as striding into the Capitol with angry purpose.  A terrified security force proved understaffed and overwhelmed.  Members of Congress hid.  Five people lost their lives.

    With the US imperium responsible for fostering numerous revolutions and coups across the globe during its history, spikes of schadenfreude could be found.  China’s state paper Global Times found it irresistible to use the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong as a point of comparison.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s remark that the Hong Kong protests were “a beautiful sight to behold” was rubbed in the face of US lawmakers.  Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying, remarking on the gloating reaction of Chinese netizens, also referred to remarks by US lawmakers on the Hong Kong protests.

    It did not take long for carelessly chosen words such as “coup” to find their way into the political stuttering, as if President Donald Trump had somehow been having beer hall meetings in an atmosphere thick with plotting.  Presidential historian Michael Beschloss was one.  “This is a coup d’état attempted by the president of the United States.”

    Many members of Congress concurred. “What happened at the US Capitol yesterday was an insurrection against the United States, incited by the president,” concluded Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer in a statement.  “This president should not hold office one day longer.” Republican Senator Mitt Romney also stated that “an insurrection, incited by the president of the United States,” had taken place.  Republican Rep. John Curtis went further, calling the move on the Capitol “an act of domestic terrorism inspired and encouraged by our president.”

    Meaty words for scenes more nastily absurd than politically planned or devised, despite assertions by Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming that “the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob.”

    This summation is all too tidy.  It would have been far better to see the rioters much as the commander-and-chief himself: disposed to chaos, unrepentant in petulance.  There was the QAnon conspiracy theorist Jake Angeli, sans shirt but donning a fur hat with Viking horns and spear, treating the occasion like a Christmas panto.  There was Richard “Bigo” Barnett, who occupied, for a moment, the chair of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, leaving a note reading: “Nancy, Bigo was here, you bitch.”

    There is no denying that such protestors had been offered rich encouragement by the president to protest the certification of the election results by Congress.  “You’ll never take back our country with weakness,” he said coaxingly.  Preoccupied with his own version of the stab-in-the-back theory involving a “stolen” election, Trump is crafting a version of history that, should it stick, will propel him for a future campaign to retake the White House.

    The Capitol incident had tickled and teased out the prospects of a real coup, currently being hatched by a rerun of the impeachment narrative and suggestions that the 25th Amendment of the US constitution be invoked.  Section 4 of the amendment establishes a process by which the president can be declared “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” provided the vice president and a majority of “the principal officers of the executive departments” think so.  The prospect of a hazardous use of that amendment is in the offing.

    The wording of the amendment is broad and undefined, even though the original intent of it remains one of removing an executive who suffers true incapacity.  The idea of medical emergency lies at its core.  Even then, a letter has to be signed to the speakers of the House of Representatives and the Senate.  The president is also given a chance to offer a written response contesting the finding, leaving it to Congress to decide.  A supermajority of two-thirds in both congressional chambers would then be required.

    Press outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post, and organisations such as the National Association of Manufacturers have not bothered themselves too much about the original nature of the provision and its purpose.  President and CEO of the latter, Jay Timmons, took the broadest interpretation for the sake of urgency.  “Vice President Pence, who was evacuated from the Capitol, should seriously consider working with the Cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment to preserve democracy.”

    Various lawmakers have also adopted an expansive, if cursory interpretation.  In the view of Vermont’s Republican Governor Phil Scott, “President Trump should resign or be removed from office by his Cabinet, or by the Congress.”

    Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee, in their note to Pence, urge him along with a majority of Cabinet secretaries, to find Trump unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.  They even go for a layman’s diagnosis of his mental wellbeing.  “Even his video announcement this afternoon, President Trump revealed that he was not mentally sound and is still unable to process and accept the results of the 2020 election.”

    When the Democrats refused to believe the results of the 2016 elections, showing a persistent inability to process and accept it, they could never be said to be mentally unwell.  Unhinged and delusional, maybe, but hardly a case of mental corrosion.

    Law academic Brian Kalt, a keen student of the 25th amendment, advances two scenarios where section 4 might be used.  The first involves “a president whose impairment is severe enough that the helm is, effectively, unmanned, even if he is still somehow able to claim that he is able to discharge his powers and duties.”  Examples might entail severe strokes, a psychotic break or moderate dementia.

    The second instance, which still suggests psychotic behaviour, would involve impairment “to the point of teeing up a disaster,” much like General Jack D. Ripper’s flight of murderous fancy in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove.  “Consider, for example, an unhinged president who orders a capricious nuclear strike against another county – the problem here is not that the president is ‘unable’ so much as all too able to wipe out millions of lives.”

    While Kalt was writing this in 2019, his views convinced Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law School and David Priess, chief operating officer at Lawfare, that Trump had met the standard of removal set by the 25th Amendment.  He had shown an “inability or unwillingness for weeks to distinguish reality from fiction about the results of the election” and had shown a “detachment from exercising the basic responsibilities of the office”.

    Andrew C. McCarthy in the National Review prefers, with much justification, that this is simply pushing things too far, confusing delusion and character flaws with incapacity and inability.  He has pointed out, with some accuracy, that the amendment was “not applicable to a situation in which the president is alleged to be unfit for reasons of character, or due to the commission of political offences that may arise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanours.”  Trump might be delusional and self-interested, but these were not “competent diagnoses of mental instability.”

    Within the various disturbed readings of the 25th Amendment lie the same rages that caused Caliban to despair at seeing his own face.  Trump is the symptom, the agent of chaos, the disrupter making much of a bedridden Republic, a good deal of it the making of his opponents.  To use the language of constitutionalism masquerading as an insurrection is intended to finally entomb Trumpism.  What this risks doing is politically martyring a man who will leave office on January 20.

    So far, Pence is resolutely opposed to using the measure and has the support of various Trump cabinet officials.  According to the New York Times, “Those officials, a senior Republican said, viewed the effort as likely to add to the current chaos in Washington rather than deter it.”  Utilising it would add the most combustible fuel to the argument Trump has been making all along: that establishment forces, always keen to box him during his administration, are now intent on removing him.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • A flurry of them has been expected, and just prior to Christmas, US President Donald Trump waved his wand of pardon with vigour.  On December 22, the president issued fifteen pardons and five commutations.  The choices so far have been, to put it mildly, problematic.

    The power to pardon can be found in Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the US Constitution, a provision which states, in part, that the President “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”  That most eminent of judicial heads Chief Justice Marshall described a pardon as “an act of grace, proceeding from the power entrusted with the execution of the laws, which exempts the individual, on whom it is bestowed, from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed.”

    Those of curious legal mind will detect the residue of the monarchical prerogative in all of this.  The great synthesising authority of English law, William Blackstone, praised the monarchy for having a distinct advantage: “there is a magistrate, who has it in his power to extend mercy, wherever he thinks it is deserved: holding a court of equity in his own breast, to soften the rigour of the general law, in such criminal cases as merit an exemption from punishment.”  Justifying the mirroring of this power in the US Constitution, Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist 74 argues that, “Humanity and good policy conspire to dictate, that the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed.”

    The Supreme Court has not been blind to the potential abuse of the power, noting in the prohibition case of Ex Parte Grossman that exercising it “to the extent of destroying the deterrent effect of judicial punishment would be to pervert it.”  But Chief Justice William Howard Taft, having himself been a president, thought it unseemly to limit the presidential prerogative.  “Our Constitution confers this discretion on the highest officer in the Nation in confidence that he will not abuse it.”

    The quality of mercy in Trump’s decisions has been peculiar and personal.  Jack Goldsmith and Matt Gluck go so far as to claim that “no president in American history comes close to matching Trump’s systematically self-serving use of the pardon power.”  In doing so, the president has also managed to circumvent the 125-year-old Justice Department office of the Pardon Attorney. The pardon attorney acts as sage and counsel in preparing a recommendation on the particular pardon or commutation, conveyed through the Deputy Attorney General.  By July 2020, Trump had made 29 of his 34 pardons without the tempering involvement of the pardon attorney.

    Consistent to form, his latest round is heavy with the personal.  There is Alex van der Zwaan, who was charged with one count of making false statements in connection with the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller on possible Russian interference in the 2016 election.  There is George Papadopoulos, also of false statement fame in connection to the Mueller investigation.  “Notably,” goes the White House statement, “Mueller stated in his report that he found no evidence of collusion in connection with Russia’s attempts to interfere in the election.  Nonetheless, the Special Counsel’s team still charged Mr Papadopoulos with the process-related crime.”

    Former Republican lawmakers Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter could also count themselves fortunate.  Collins, a firm backer of Trump, pleaded guilty in 2019 to insider trading and was serving a 26-month prison sentence.  Such an offence was never going to trouble Trump too much.  More interesting was his “particular focus on the wellbeing of small businesses, agriculture, and sciences.”  For his part, Hunter was found guilty of one count of misusing campaign funds.  This “could have been handled as a civil case via the Federal Election Commission, according to former FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith.”

    By any moral or ethical stretch of the imagination, the most execrable use of the pardon power would have to be those issued for the four security guards of the private military firm Blackwater, convicted for the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007.  The butchering took place at Baghdad’s Nisour Square, when the contractors deployed sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers at a busy traffic circle.  The justification by Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard was crudely predictable: they opened fire only after being ambushed by Iraqi insurgents.  The slain and injured women and children, some with hands in the air as they fled the scene, suggested a different account.

    Rather banally, the White House statement praises their record: they were inspired to serve their country; they did so in various capacities in Iraq.  As security contractors tasked with protecting US personnel, they were merely responsible for “the unfortunate deaths and injuries of Iraqi civilians.”  The reputation of the lead Iraqi investigator is also impugned, as he “may have had ties to insurgent groups himself.”

    The murderous feats of the four did much to point a finger at how the military security complex had been outsourced to private security firms more concerned with pay packages than the enfeebling irritations of international law.   Their convictions were considered by Paul Dickinson, a legal representative for the Nisour Square families “significant” for showing “that paramilitary contractors who commit crimes abroad can be held accountable for their criminal actions.”

    But the lobbyists had been busy bringing out the white wash, making the point that the four were sacrificial lambs for appeasement.  A website dedicated to defending their cause dubbed them “The Biden Four,” who “were sacrificed for politics and convicted by lies.”  Brian Heberlig, lawyer for Slough, was convinced by his brief.  “Paul Slough and his colleagues didn’t deserve to spend one minute in prison.”  Heard’s attorney, David Schertler, babbled on about honour and his client’s “well-deserved freedom.”

    Such softening in the rigour of the general law seemed like a grand reversal in jurisprudence.  Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union was quick off the mark in condemning the pardons.  The actions of these men had  “caused devastation in Iraq, shame and horror in the United States, and a worldwide scandal.”  As if it were possible, the office of the president had been further degraded.

    Marta Hurtado, spokeswoman for the UN Human Rights Office, was more extensive in her criticism.  “Pardoning them contributes to impunity and has the effect of emboldening others to commit such crimes in the future.”  The victims of such egregious human rights violations and violations of humanitarian law also had “the right to a remedy. This includes the right to see perpetrators serve punishments proportionate to the seriousness of their conduct.”  Taft’s confidence in the probity of executive restraint seems comically quaint.

    Consideration for the victims was conspicuously absent in Trump’s reasoning.  The Blackwater Pardons are yet another effort on his part to look good with gun toting personnel who served the United States and erred.  In the gesture, a faint electoral message could be detected.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Since signing the Abraham Accords, the UAE and Bahrain have been actively colluding with Israel’s settler movement and military authorities

    The professed rationale for the recent Abraham Accords, so-called “peace deals” signed with Israel by the UAE and Bahrain, was to stymie Israeli efforts to annex swaths of the West Bank.

    The aim was supposedly to neutralise another “peace” plan – one issued early this year by US President Donald Trump’s administration – that approved Israel’s annexation of large areas of the West Bank dominated by illegal Jewish settlements.

    The two Gulf states trumpeted the fact that, in signing the accords in September, they had effectively scotched that move, thereby salvaging hopes of a future Palestinian state. Few observers entirely bought the official story – not least because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that annexation had only been put on temporary hold.

    The real purpose of the Abraham Accords appeared less about saving Palestinians than allowing Gulf states to go public with, and expand, their existing ties to Israel. Regional intelligence could now be shared more easily, especially on Iran, and the Gulf would gain access to Israeli hi-tech and US military technology and weapons systems.

    Separately, Sudan was induced to sign the accords after promises it would be removed from Washington’s list of “terror-supporting” states, opening the door to debt relief and aid. And last week, Morocco became the fourth Arab state to initiate formal relations with Israel after the Trump administration agreed to recognise its occupation of Western Sahara.

    Twisting more arms

    Israel, in return, has been able to begin “normalising” with an important bloc of Arab states – all without offering any meaningful concessions on the Palestinian issue.

    Qatar and Saudi Arabia are also reported to have been considering doing their own deals with Israel. Jared Kushner, Trump’s Middle East adviser, visited the region this month in what was widely assumed to be a bid to twist arms.

    Riyadh’s hesitation, however, appears to have increased after Trump lost last month’s US presidential election to Joe Biden.

    Last week, during an online conference held in Bahrain and attended by Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, a former senior Saudi government official, Turki al-Faisal al-Saud, launched a blistering verbal attack on Israel, saying it jailed Palestinians in “concentration camps” and had built an “apartheid wall”. It was unclear whether he was speaking in more than a personal capacity.

    While the covert purpose of the Abraham Accords was difficult to obscure, the stated aim – of aiding Palestinians by preventing Israel’s annexation of the West Bank – was still seen as a vital tool for the UAE and Bahrian to sell these agreements back home.

    But in practice, both have quickly jettisoned any pretence that Palestinians will benefit from these deals. Not only that, but already they barely bother to conceal the fact that they are actively and tangibly colluding with Israel to harm Palestinians – by bolstering Israel’s illegal settlements and subsidising its military regime of occupation.

    Trade with settlements

    Bahrain demonstrated this month how indifferent it is to the negative impacts on Palestinians. On a visit to Israel, the country’s trade minister, Zayed bin Rashid al-Zayani, said Bahrain was open to importing products from Israel wherever they were manufactured. “We have no issue with labelling or origin,” he said.

    The comment suggested that Manama was ready to become a gateway for Israel to export settlement products to the rest of the Arab world, helping to bolster the settlements’ legitimacy and economic viability. Bahrain’s trade policy with Israel would then be even laxer than that of the European Union, Israel’s top trade partner. The EU’s feeble guidelines recommend the labelling of settlement products.

    After wide reporting of Zayani’s comments, Bahrain’s state news agency issued a statement shortly afterwards saying he had been “misinterpreted”, and that there would be no import of settlement goods. But it is hard not to interpret the remarks as indicating that behind the scenes, Bahrain is only too willing to collude in Israel’s refusal to distinguish between products from Israel and those made in the settlements.

    That this is the trading basis of the Abraham Accords is further highlighted by reports that the UAE is already welcoming business with Israel’s illegal settlements. An Israeli winery, using grapes grown on the Golan Heights, a large plateau of Syrian territory seized by Israel in 1967 and illegally annexed in 1981, has reportedly started exporting to the UAE, which has liberalised its alcohol laws for non-citizens.

    This is a fruitful turn of events for Israel’s 500,000 settlers in the occupied West Bank. They have lost no time touting for business, with the first delegation arriving in Dubai last month hoping to tap new markets in the Arab world via the UAE. Last week a settler delegation reportedly returned to Dubai to sign an agreement with a UAE company to import settlement goods, including alcohol, honey, olive oil, and sesame paste.

    New low-point

    This marks a new low-point in the shift by Arab states away from their original position that Israel was a colonial implant in the region, sponsored by the West, and that there could be no “normalisation” – or normal relations – with it.

    In 2002, Saudi Arabia launched the Arab Peace Initiative, which offered Israel full diplomatic relations in return for ending the occupation. But Gulf states are now not only normalising with Israel when the occupation is actually intensifying; they are normalising with the occupation itself – as well as its bastard progeny, the settlements.

    Israel has built more than 250 settlements across a vast expanse of occupied Palestinian territory – 62 percent of the West Bank, referred to as Area C under the Oslo Accords. This area was supposed to be gradually transferred to the Palestinian Authority (PA), the government-in-waiting under Mahmoud Abbas, to become the territorial backbone of a Palestinian state.

    Instead, over the past quarter of a century, Israel has used its supposedly temporary control over Area C to rapidly expand the settlements, stealing vital land and resources. These colonies have been highly integrated into Israel, with settler roads criss-crossing the occupied West Bank and tightly limiting Palestinian movement.

    The peace deals with the UAE and Bahrain will help the settlements entrench further, assisting Israel’s longstanding policy of annexing the West Bank in all but name, through the creation of facts on the ground – the very outcome the Abraham Accords were ostensibly meant to prevent.

    Yossi Dagan, head of the West Bank regional council that visited Dubai last month, declared that there was “no contradiction between our demand to impose sovereignty [annex large parts of the West Bank] and the strengthening of commercial and industrial ties” with the Gulf.

    Al-Aqsa dividend

    In other words, settlers see the Abraham Accords as a business opportunity to expand their footprint in the occupied West Bank, not an obstacle. The likely gains for the settlers will include tourism, too, as visitors from the Gulf are expected to flock to al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem.

    The irony is that, because of Israel’s physical seizure of areas around the Islamic holy site and its control over access, Gulf Arabs will have far greater rights at al-Aqsa than the majority of Palestinians, who cannot reach it.

    Jordan, which has long been the custodian of al-Aqsa, justifiably fears that Saudi Arabia may use a future accord with Israel to muscle its way into taking charge of the Jerusalem holy site, adding it to its guardianship of Mecca and Medina.

    In occupied Jerusalem, Palestinians are deprived of the chance to develop their own housing, let alone infrastructure to cope with the business opportunities provided by the arrival of wealthy Gulf Arabs. That should leave Israel and its settler population – rather than Palestinians – well-placed to reap the dividends from any new tourism ventures.

    In a supreme irony, a member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family has bought a major stake in the Beitar Jerusalem football team, whose supporters are fiercely anti-Arab and back the takeover of East Jerusalem by settlers.

    Palestinian laboratories

    During his visit, Bahrain’s Zayani observed that, as his country geared up for flights to and from Israel next month: “We are fascinated by how integrated IT and the innovation sector in Israel has been embedded in every facet of life.”

    But Israel’s technology sector is “embedded in every facet of life” only because Israel treats the occupied Palestinian territories as a laboratory. Tests are conducted there on how best to surveil Palestinians, physically limit their movement and freedoms, and collect their biometric data.

    The hi-tech firms carrying out these experiments may be formally headquartered inside Israel, but they work and profit from their activities in the occupied territories. They are a vast complex of settlement businesses in their own right.

    This is why Nabil Shaath, an aide to Abbas, observed of the Gulf’s burgeoning ties with Israel that it was “painful to witness Arab cooperation with one of the worst manifestations of aggression against the Palestinian people, which is the Israeli settlements on our land”.

    Settler ally

    How enthusiastically the UAE and Bahrain are getting into the occupation business, and preparing to subsidise its worst features, is highlighted by the Abraham Fund, set up by the US in October. It is a vehicle for Gulf states and Israel to secure billions of dollars in private investment to underpin their new diplomatic relations.

    Again, the official story has glossed over the reality. According to statements from the main parties, the fund is intended to raise at least $3billion to bolster regional economic cooperation and development initiatives.

    The UAE’s minister of state, Ahmed Ali Al Sayegh, has said: “The initiative can be a source of economic and technological strength for the region, while simultaneously improving the lives of those who need the most support.”

    The fund is supposed to help Palestinians, as one of those groups most in need of support. But again, the main parties are not playing straight. Their deception is revealed by the Trump administration’s selection of who is to head the Abraham Fund, one of its last appointments before the handover to Biden.

    According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the fund will be overseen by Aryeh Lightstone, a fervently right-wing rabbi and ally of Israel’s settler community. Lightstone is a senior adviser to David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel who has his own strong ties to the settlements. Friedman pushed aggressively for the US to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem. Trump finally did so in May 2018, breaking an international consensus against locating diplomatic missions in Jerusalem.

    Checkpoint upgrade

    The political priorities of Lightstone are evident in one of the Abraham Fund’s first declared projects: to “modernise” Israeli checkpoints across the occupied West Bank.

    The checkpoint upgrade is being hailed by US officials as benefiting Palestinians. It will speed up their passage as they try to move around the occupied West Bank, and as those with permits enter Israel or the settlements to work. One senior Trump administration official promised checkpoint delays that currently keep Palestinians waiting for many hours could be dramatically cut: “If I can upgrade that, which doesn’t cost a lot of money, and have it take 30 seconds, I am blowing up [freeing up] 400,000 work hours a day.”

    There are many glaring problems with this approach – not least that under international law, belligerent military occupations such as Israel’s must be temporary in nature. Israel’s occupation has endured for more than five decades already.

    Efforts to make the occupation even more permanent – by improving and refining its infrastructure, such as through upgrades to create airport-style checkpoints – is in clear breach of international law. Now the Gulf will be intimately involved in subsidising these violations.

    Further, the idea that the Abraham Fund’s checkpoint upgrade is assisting Palestinians – “those who most need support” – or developing their economy is patently ridiculous. The fund is exclusively helping Israel, a robust first-world economy, which is supposed to shoulder the costs of its military rule over Palestinians.

    The economic costs of occupation are one of the few tangible pressures on Israel to withdraw from the territories and allow Palestinians sovereignty. If the oil-rich Gulf states help pick up the tab, they will incentivise Israel to stay put and steal yet more Palestinian land and resources.

    Indeed, the hours being freed up, even assuming that is what actually happens, are unlikely to help the Palestinian economy or bring financial benefits to the Palestinian labourers Israel has made dependent on its economy through the lengthy occupation. To develop their own economy, Palestinians need their land and resources stolen by Israel restored to them.

    Herding Palestinians

    Seen another way, the Abraham Fund’s planned checkpoint upgrade is actually a subsidy by the Gulf to the settlements. That is because the very purpose of the checkpoints is to enforce Israeli control over where and when Palestinians can travel in their homeland.

    Israel uses the checkpoints as a way to herd Palestinians into particular areas of the occupied West Bank, especially the third under nominal PA control, while blocking their entry to the rest. That includes a denial of access to the West Bank’s most fertile land and its best water sources. Those areas are exactly where Israel has been building and expanding the settlements.

    Palestinians are in a zero-sum battle against the settlers for control over land in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Any help Israel receives in restricting their movement through checkpoints is a loss to Palestinians and a victory for the settlers. Modernised checkpoints will simply be far more efficient at herding Palestinians where Israel and the settlers want them to be.

    In partnering with Israel on upgrading checkpoints, the Gulf will be aiding Israel in making its technology of confinement and control of the Palestinian population even more sophisticated, benefiting once again the settlers.

    This is the real story of the Gulf’s Abraham Accords – not simply of turning a blind eye to Israel’s decades-long oppression of Palestinians, but of actively becoming partners with Israel and the settlers in carrying out that oppression.

    • First published in Middle East Eye

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The mosquitoes were getting bothersome.

    —  Opening line of the last paragraph of Chapter 5 in Pnin, a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, 1953

    Well, the weather report is in, as we transition from Trump’s Titanic to Joe Biden’s Adventure, and it looks like we’re all in for a “dark winter” of the long knives;  so, hopefully, there are no Towering Infernos in the forecast as well!  In the journo-world, certainly, the knives are already out…

    Today, swarms of Corporate Media “self-limiting mosquitoes” are rejoicing — in their small buzzing ways — over the self-banishment of that notorious gadfly Glenn Greenwald from the Kingdom of Left-Liberal-“Woke!” orthodoxical rectitude.  Many of that Kingdom’s practitioners took note of Greenwald’s departure from The Intercept, like The Daily Beast.  As an example of that liberal on-line publication’s high journalistic standards, the Beast’s initial report referred to The Intercept’s editor, Betsy Reed, as “Betsy Klein” throughout.  Perhaps that mistake has been corrected by now.  Clearly, the writer had mistakenly conflated Naomi Klein, also a contributor to The Intercept, with Reed; or, maybe “Kamala Biden’s” the President-elect, and it was really “Glenn Taibbi” who stormed out of The Intercept in a huff? Such a Kingdom!

    Of course, King-elect Biden’s now the soon-to-be Mayor of Crazy Town, but — “No Worries!” — he’ll be mainly in the basement, Nosferatu-ing around, or even Strangeloving it up in the deepest White House bunker, depending upon what the girls and boys, upstairs in the Royal Cabinet, decide.  Word has it that Biden’s assured the Big Oil Boys that there’ll never be a “fracking-shaft gap” under his administration…

    Question:  Can a “self-limiting mosquito” survive a nuclear blast?  There are certainly some questions concerning this incoming Biden administration, but Betsy Reed, the aforementioned editor of The “intercepted” Intercept, won’t be asking any of them.  Instead, she can now almost certainly certify, to the Right-Liberal echo-system, that her Newsroom is very nearly gadfly-free because:  “Glenn Greenwald is gone!  Flew out of the room on a broom, a witch to be burned!”

    Ironically, of course, Greenwald co-founded The Intercept in 2014, after playing a leading role in breaking the Snowden story which, in retrospect, was really a poor way to make friends with the NSA, and all the other D.C. spooks for which they stand.  This was a pardonable offense, in respectable Liberal circles, however much these circles would prefer to see Snowden hung.  Yet, the tenacious Greenwald persisted in his heresies, and wandered into unforgivable sin territory by relentlessly exposing the baselessness — and sheer absurdity — of the “Russiagate” conspiracy theory, a construct of the National Security State which used its Liberal Media assets to spin this intelligence agency hoax 24/7 during the entirety of the obviously weird Trump presidency; for this, Greenwald earned a Siberian cold shoulder.

    Before leaving that subject, it should be noted that Trumpy the Clown played along:  after all, he was the Star of the Show!  Trump also managed to put Israel First for 4 years, with a couple of “MbS” patches sewn in to his silky Red ties, for good measure: or, it’s not “Russia” that’s been calling the shots from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue the last 4 years, from a strictly “foreign influence” point of view.  Now, 80 million “historic” votes later, Joe “Don” Biden’s got the helm, and Betsy Reed must be so ecstatic!  She did her job, and delivered the goods from her small but well-padded perch in the Liberal echo-sphere…

    To digress just a moment, but this is one weird hand-off, from one crookedly connected old white guy to another crookedly connected old white guy, which reminds me of a scene from Roger Corman’s 1975 film Death Race: 2000; which is to say, to summarize the scene:  “It’s a hand grenade.”  Small fun note:  in Corman’s Death Race, the capital of China is still “Peking,” from which “Mr President” presides over the eponymous, dystopian competition — the action of the film — just like a Game Show Host:  Surprise!  Haven’t we seen this movie before?

    Now, back to:  “Who’s Afraid of Glenn Greenwald?”

    Nevertheless, Mr Greenwald’s been pilloried before this latest incident, and in officially subtle — or not-so-subtle — character-assassination fashion.  Ian Parker of The New Yorker:  “Take a bow and come on down!  The Price is Right!”  Parker’s piece on Greenwald appeared in The New Yorker in the August 27, 2018 edition of that esteemed cartoon publication, which also features random texts strewn about its high-glossy pages.  The sheer tactile experience of leafing through the soft-pliant pages of The New Yorker — or even pausing long enough to get lectured by one of its “articles” — is almost ineffable.  Unfortunately, I did not have the light pleasure of holding this stylish rag-azine in my own two crude hands, but rather came across this particular article courtesy of a Matt Taibbi link in his Substack piece on Greenwald’s resignation from The Intercept.

    What struck me first — as it was intended to — about Parker’s Greenwald hit-piece, was the iconographic photograph of Greenwald klieg-lit from below at a podium, as if he were a Nazi apparatchik from 1932 — or even Richard Spencer, today.  Typically, for this style of propaganda, the photo’s in black-and-white.  It’s a kind of Leni Riefenstahl thing, as everyone in the New York fascist — or fashion — industry understands.  The tenor and tone of Parker’s report is entirely pharmaceuticalized, because this New Yorker writer knows the rules, and thus goes on to paint Greenwald as an angry, conspiracy-minded, white-supremacy type man with Daddy issues.  Perhaps this is merely “professional jealousy?”

    Parker writes, in defense of his thesis framed but not spoken, that “Greenwald writes aggressively about perceived aggression,” and that he’s a “bully and a troll.” Nice words — are the gloves off yet? — and way to set the Glenn Greenwald story straight!  “Hey, somebody get this guy a Pulitzer!”  Reading between these lines, it is easy to see that aggression against Palestinians, for example, by the IDF, or Israeli Defense Force, is merely “perceived”; at the mighty New Yorker, they don’t receive this perception.  Glenn Greenwald, to the contrary, does, so he needs to be “properly framed,” lest anyone on the ever-so-invested Left think that his critique is anything but a Far Right-Wing fraud.

    Evidently, the evil that Mr Greenwald represents has disturbed some icy, pristine waters:  “One feels so scored by such skates on the ice!”  Still, the conservatively liberal New Yorker is not the only publication to weigh in on the “danger” of Greenwald’s journalism; the less-than-more mighty CounterPunch has also published a piece, by one Will Solomon, strenuously critical of Greenwald’s supremacist whiteringedness.

    Mr Solomon’s article appears in the 10/30/2020 on-line version of CounterPunch, or the day after Mr Greenwald announced his Intercept departure, so it’s a seemingly “fresh take” on that, mysteriously entitled:  “What Happened to Glenn Greenwald?”, as if the proudly right-wing Bolsonaro regime had gotten its wish and whisked Greenwald away to one of its illiberal rendition gulags, and we’ve not heard a word or Tweet from the feisty gadfly since.  Thankfully, this is not the case.

    Instead, Solomon is distressed that Greenwald has morphed into a “kind of fanatic” who is “effectively running cover for the American fascist right.”  Quite a bold statement there, but, one wonders:  Could writers like Mr Solomon be running cover for an American fascist left?  Fascism’s certainly “in the air” — at least one hears the word spoken frequently enough these COVID-days; moreover, it’s rather obvious by now — if it wasn’t already then — that Mr Trump didn’t really measure up, so maybe Mr Biden will do a better job of it?  From his “Built Back Better” basement, of course!

    Solomon’s not-poorly-written rant against Greenwald’s “reflexive contrarianism” reads like another sign of the mainstream Lefty-liberal-land times, which is hard right-trending, curiously enough.  “No time for Socrates, folks!”  Glenn Greenwald clearly stands accused of stinging the Athenians of the Liberal Corporate establishment in their pieties — and they’re pissed!  Also the intelligence agencies, for whom these Athenians are standing and speaking, more and more — louder!

    It appears that the gavel which will be soon slammed down on the Desk of the American People — and other People of the World, mostly Brown, in keeping with the “normal” custom — by the incoming Biden administration will have a Donald Trump decal on it; meanwhile, minor functionaries of the Total Propaganda Network, like The Intercept’s editor, Betsy Reed, will also be wielding that same gavel, to help clear the air of any objections, or — Gasp! — normal, rationally human, questions…Currently, the clever folks who brought us the Trump phenomenon as “President of the United States of America!” are re-branding this Clown as a real American “folk hero.”  Hereafter, all who resist the so-called “Great Reset” will be labeled “Trumpers” when, in most cases, nothing could be further from the truth.

    However, this is — “Don’t ya know?” — a “post-truth” moment of History, and anyone who says otherwise is just repeating “fake news,” or “misinformation,” and will be appropriately de-platformed, or detained indefinitely, according to the severity of the heresy, based kangaroo-courtedly on their particular criticism — just a Thought? — crime  “Individuality of Criminality shall not be abolished!  All rise. and Praise the Individual!  And, furthermore, Lock it up!”

    In a recent interview with Jimmy Dore (“Spellcheck” just tried to turn “Dore” into “Gore,” so maybe Al Jr. really did have something to do with the Internet?), Greenwald noted that the pushback he received from Betsy Reed at The Intercept over his Hunter Biden story stemmed from bad blood over the 2016 election, as if sites like The Intercept had skewered her Highness Hillary’s seemingly pre-ordained Uber into the Oval Office; and also that mainstream Liberal powerhouses blamed the tooLeft for that loss — as if the majority of Americans were even reading things like The Intercept for their “News” to guide them concerning whom to vote for…”When in doubt, always punch the Left!” — wasn’t that the lesson of 2016?  The real reason that Glenn Greenwald has been pilloried for flakking for the “far right” is that he is, in fact, too-far-left for comfort for those who prefer their good standing with the National Security State and its many minions.  So:  Who’s afraid of Glenn Greenwald?  The short answer is:  the New Athenians, and they are COVIDly sick and tired of hearing critical voices from their “all-too-human” Slaves!

    “Hear ye, hear ye:  All rise and condemn the Gadfly, in all its Gadflyly forms!”

    Further:  “Hail the reign of your New Master, the Self-Limiting Mosquito!”

    Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Before the January 4 ruling of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in the extradition case of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher will continue to endure the ordeal of cold prison facilities while being menaced by a COVID-19 outbreak.  From November 18, Assange, along with inmates in House Block 1 at Belmarsh prison in south-east London, were placed in lockdown conditions.  The measure was imposed after three COVID-19 cases were discovered.

    The response was even more draconian than usual.  Exercise was halted; showers prohibited.  Meals were to be provided directly to the prisoner’s cell.  Prison officials described the approach as a safety precaution.  “We’ve introduced further safety measures following a number of positive cases,” stated a Prison Service spokesperson.

    Assange’s time at Belmarsh is emblematic of a broadly grotesque approach which has been legitimised by the national security establishment.  The pandemic has presented another opportunity to knock him off, if only by less obvious means.  The refusal of Judge Baraitser to grant him bail, enabling him to prepare his case in conditions of guarded, if relative safety, typifies this approach.  “Every day that passes is a serious risk to Julian,” explains his partner, Stella Moris.  “Belmarsh is an extremely dangerous environment where murders and suicides are commonplace.”

    Belmarsh already presented itself as a risk to one’s mental bearings prior to the heralding of the novel coronavirus.  But galloping COVID-19 infections through Britain’s penal system have added another, potentially lethal consideration.  On November 24, Moris revealed that some 54 people in Assange’s house block had been infected with COVID-19.  These included inmates and prison staff.  “If my son dies from COVID-19,” concluded a distressed Christine Assange, “it will be murder.”

    The increasing number of COVID-19 cases in Belmarsh has angered the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer.  On December 7, ten years from the day of Assange’s first arrest, he spoke of concerns that 65 out of approximately 160 inmates had tested positive.  “The British authorities initially detained Mr. Assange on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by Sweden in connection with allegations of sexual misconduct that have since been formally dropped due to lack of evidence.” He was currently being “detained for exclusively preventive purposes, to ensure his presence during the ongoing US extradition trial, a proceeding which may well last several years.”

    The picture for the rapporteur is unmistakable, ominous and unspeakable.  The prolonged suffering of the Australian national, who already nurses pre-existing health conditions, amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.  Imprisoning Assange was needlessly brutal.  “Mr. Assange is not a criminal convict and poses no threat to anyone, so his prolonged solitary confinement in a high security prison is neither necessary nor proportionate and clearly lacks any legal basis.”  Melzer suggested immediate decongestion measures for “all inmates whose imprisonment is not absolutely necessary” especially those, “such as Mr Assange, who suffers from a pre-existing respiratory health condition.”

    Free speech advocates are also stoking the fire of interest ahead of Baraitser’s judgment.  In Salon, Roger Waters, co-founder of Pink Floyd, penned a heartfelt piece wondering what had happened to the fourth estate.  “Where is the honest reporting that we all so desperately need, and upon which the very survival of democracy depends?”  Never one to beat about the bush, Waters suggested that it was “languishing in Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh.”  To extradite Assange would “set the dangerous precedent that journalists can be prosecuted merely for working with inside sources, or for publishing information the government deems harmful.”  The better alternative: to dismiss the charges against Assange “and cancel the extradition proceedings in the kangaroo court in London.”

    In the meantime, a vigorous campaign is being advanced from the barricades of Twitter to encourage President Donald Trump to pardon Assange.  Moris stole the lead with her appeal on Thanksgiving.  Pictures of sons Max and Gabriel were posted to tingle the commander-in-chief’s tear ducts.  “I beg you, please bring him home for Christmas.”

    Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has added her name to the Free Assange campaign, directing her pointed wishes to the White House.  “Since you’re giving pardons to people,” she declared, “please consider pardoning those who, at great personal sacrifice, exposed the deception and criminality in the deep state.”

    Pamela Anderson’s approach was somewhat different and, it should be said, raunchily attuned to her audience.  She made no qualms donning a bikini in trying to get the president’s attention.  “Bring Julian Assange Home Australia,” went her carried sign, tweeted with a message to Trump to pardon him.  Glenn Greenwald, formerly of The Intercept, proved more conventional, niggling Trump about matters of posterity.  “By far the most important blow Trump could strike against the abuse of power by CIA, FBI & the Deep State – as well as to impose transparency on them to prevent future abuses – is a pardon of @Snowden & Julian Assange, punished by those corrupt factions for exposing their abuses.”  Alan Rusbridger, formerly editor of The Guardian, agrees.

    While often coupled with Assange in the pardoning stakes, Edward Snowden has been clear about his wish to see the publisher freed.  “Mr. President, if you grant only one act of clemency during your time in office, please: free Julian Assange.  You alone can save his life.”  As well meant as this is, Trump’s treasury of pardons is bound to be stocked by other options, not least for himself.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • No one seemed as excited about the election of Joe Biden being the next President of the United States as Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas. When all hope seemed lost, where Abbas found himself desperate for political validation and funds, Biden arrived like a conquering knight on a white horse and swept the Palestinian leader away to safety.

    Abbas was one of the first world leaders to congratulate the Democratic President-elect on his victory. While Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, delayed his congratulatory statement in the hope that Donald Trump would eventually be able to reverse the results, Abbas suffered no such illusions. Considering the humiliation that the Palestinian Authority experienced at the hands of the Trump Administration, Abbas had nothing to lose. For him, Biden, despite his long love affair with Israel, still represented a ray of hope.

    But can the wheel of history be turned back? Despite the fact that the Biden Administration has made it clear that it will not be reversing any of the pro-Israel steps taken by the departing Trump Administration, Abbas remains confident that, at least, the ‘peace process’ can be restored.

    This may seem to be an impossible dichotomy, for how can a ‘peace process’ deliver peace if all the components of a just peace have already been eradicated?

    It is obvious that there can be no real peace if the US government insists on recognizing all of Jerusalem as Israel’s ‘eternal’ capital. There can be no peace if the US continues to fund illegal Jewish settlements, bankroll Israeli apartheid, deny the rights of Palestinian refugees, turn a blind eye to de facto annexation under way in Occupied Palestine and recognize the illegally-occupied Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel, all of which is likely to remain the same, even under the Biden Administration.

    The ‘peace process’ is unlikely to deliver any kind of a just, sustainable peace in the future, when it has already failed to do so in the past 30 years.

    Yet, despite the ample lessons of the past, Abbas has decided, again, to gamble with the fate of his people and jeopardize their struggle for freedom and a just peace. Not only is Abbas building a campaign involving Arab countries, namely Jordan and Egypt, to revive the ‘peace process’, he is also walking back on all his promises and decisions to cancel the Oslo Accords, and end ‘security coordination’ with Israel. By doing so, Abbas has betrayed national unity talks between his party, Fatah, and Hamas.

    Unity talks between rival Palestinian groups seemed to take a serious turn last July, when Palestine’s main political parties issued a joint statement declaring their intent to defeat Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’. The language used in that statement was reminiscent of the revolutionary discourse used by these groups during the First and Second Intifadas (uprisings), itself a message that Fatah was finally re-orienting itself around national priorities and away from the ‘moderate’ political discourse wrought by the US-sponsored ‘peace process’.

    Even those who grew tired and cynical about the shenanigans of Abbas and Palestinian groups wondered if this time would be different; that Palestinians would finally agree on a set of principles through which they could express and channel their struggle for freedom.

    Oddly, Trump’s four-year term in the White House was the best thing that happened to the Palestinian national struggle. His administration was a jarring and indisputable reminder that the US is not – and has never been – ‘an honest peace broker’ and that Palestinians cannot steer their political agenda to satisfy US-Israeli demands in order for them to obtain political validation and financial support.

    By cutting off US funding of the Palestinian Authority in August 2018, followed by the shutting down of the Palestinian mission in Washington DC, Trump has liberated Palestinians from the throes of an impossible political equation. Without the proverbial American carrot, the Palestinian leadership has had the rare opportunity to rearrange the Palestinian home for the benefit of the Palestinian people.

    Alas, those efforts were short-lived. After multiple meetings and video conferences between Fatah, Hamas and other delegations representing Palestinian groups, Abbas declared, on November 17, the resumption of ‘security coordination’ between his Authority and Israel. This was followed by the Israeli announcement on December 2 to release over a billion dollars of Palestinian funds that were unlawfully held by Israel as a form of political pressure.

    This takes Palestinian unity back to square one. At this point, Abbas finds unity talks with his Palestinian rivals quite useless. Since Fatah dominates the Palestinian Authority, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestine National Council (PNC), conceding any ground or sharing leadership with other Palestinian factions seems self-defeating. Now that Abbas is reassured that the Biden Administration will bequeath him, once again, with the title of ‘peace partner’, a US ally and a moderate, the Palestinian leader no longer finds it necessary to seek approval from the Palestinians. Since there can be no middle ground between catering to a US-Israeli agenda and elevating a Palestinian national agenda, the Palestinian leader opted for the former and, without hesitation, ditched the latter.

    While it is true that Biden will neither satisfy any of the Palestinian people’s demands or reverse any of his predecessor’s missteps, Abbas can still benefit from what he sees as a seismic shift in US foreign policy – not in favor of the Palestinian cause but of Abbas personally, an unelected leader whose biggest accomplishment has been sustaining the US-imposed status quo and keeping the Palestinian people pacified for as long as possible.

    Although the ‘peace process’ has been declared ‘dead’ on multiple occasions, Abbas is now desperately trying to revive it, not because he – or any rational Palestinian – believes that peace is at hand, but because of the existential relationship between the PA and this US-sponsored political scheme. While most Palestinians gained nothing from all of this, a few Palestinians accumulated massive wealth, power and prestige. For this clique, that alone is a cause worth fighting for.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • by C.J. Hopkins / December 9th, 2020

    All right, that’s it. I’ve run out of patience. No more excuses. Where’s the Hitler?

    Yes, you heard me. I’m talking to you. You respectable journalists and political pundits. You Intelligence officials and politicians. You fanatical liberals. You pseudo anti-fascists. All you members of the GloboCap “Resistance” who have been hysterically shrieking that “Trump is Hitler!” since he won the nomination back in 2016.

    Well, OK, it’s November 2020. The show is almost over. When do we get Hitler?

    No, do not tell me “any day now.” You’ve been telling us that for four straight years. Do we look like a bunch of gullible idiots that you can whip up into a four-year frenzy of mindless hatred and paranoia by screaming “Hitler!” over and over, and then not produce an actual Hitler?

    Well, we’re not. We remember what you said. You promised us Hitler, and we want Hitler, or at least a decent facsimile of Hitler.

    And don’t even think of trying to pretend that you didn’t actually promise us Hitler. You did. You want me to prove it? OK.

    Remember back in 2016, when The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Guardian, the Washington Post, The Inquirer, and other such “leading respectable broadsheets,” and online magazines like Mother Jones, Forward, Slate, Salon, Vox, Alternet, and countless others, warned that Trump was sending secret anti-Semitic “dog whistle” signals to his underground army of Nazi terrorists by talking about “international banks,” “global elites,” the “political establishment,” and even “corporations” and “lobbyists” … all of which was supposedly code for “the Jews,” who he was going to exterminate if won the election?

    I do. I remember that, distinctly.

    How about after he won the election, when The Guardian reported that “white supremacy ha[d] triumphed!,” and The New York Times, NPR, Keith Olberman, and other verified news sources warned that America had descended into “racial Orwellianism” or Zionist Anti-Semitism, or the “bottomless pit of fascism” or whatever? Or when Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post confirmed that “Donald Trump is actually a fascist”?

    Do you remember all that? Because I certainly do.

    Remember Aaron Sorkin’s letter to his daughter warning her that millions of “Muslim-Americans, Mexican-Americans and African-Americans [were] shaking in their shoes” as they waited for Trump to round them all up and send them to the camps, along with the “Jewish Coastal Elites”?

    And how about when Stern Magazine depicted Trump wrapped in the flag and heiling Hitler? Or when the Philadelphia Daily News also portayed him as Hitler on its cover?

    What about when the corporate media reported that Trump had called those tiki torch Nazis in Charlottesville “very fine people” (despite the fact that he demonstrably did not)? Or when they caught Trump calling somebody a “globalist”? (That episode was particularly disturbing to me, personally, as I had no idea that I was literally a Nazi until the corporate media and the ADL explained that talking about “global capitalism,” or “neoliberalism,” or, God help me, “banks,” was just Nazi codespeak for “Kill the Jews!”)

    Oh, and speaking of Nazi “dog whistles,” remember when the Department of Homeland Security embedded secret Nazi code in one of its official press releases? Or when that Jewish-Mexican-American law clerk signaled to Trump’s underground Nazi army that they had infiltrated the US Supreme Court, and thus the dreaded “Boogaloo” was probably imminent?

    And who could forget when The New York Times published a full-blown dystopian fantasy in which Trump, Putin, Marine Le Pen, the AfD, and other notorious “globalist”-hating Hitler-alikes secretly formed an Evil Axis (the “Alliance of Authoritarian and Reactionary States”), dissolved the European Union and NATO, declared international martial law, and ethnically cleansed the world of immigrants? Or when they ran this propaganda film, “If You’re Not Scared About Fascism in the U.S., You Should Be!

    And the “emboldening”! I almost left out the “emboldening.” Surely, you remember when the corporate media reported that Trump was emboldening white-supremacist terrorism with his Hitlerian Tweets … as if homicidal racist psychopaths had been sitting around in their mother’s basements, semi-automatic rifles in one hand, smartphones tuned to Twitter in the other, just waiting to be “emboldened” by the president.

    Oh, and the “concentration camps.” You know, the ones that Biden and Harris personally flew down and liberated the morning after they won the election. The ones where they put the kids in cages and forced all the prisoners to drink out of toilets. I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t mention them.

    And those are just a few of the highlights.

    Look, the point is, you “Resistance” people promised us Hitler for four years straight, and now you’re acting like you just defeated Hitler, and, I’m sorry, but that is not going to cut it. We’re going to need some actual Hitler before we transition to the Brave New Normal, or we might start to … you know, doubt your credibility.

    I mean, come on. Lawsuits? Recounts? Audits? Angry tweets? Golf, for Christ sakes? This is not remotely Hitlerian behavior. You people promised us an attempted coup, a Reichstag fire, Nazi militias occupying the halls of Congress, stadiums full of Sieg-heiling rednecks, white-supremacist terrorists terrorizing everyone … and now all we get is Rudy Giuliani sweating rivulets of hair dye, or something, on TV? All right, granted, that was pretty scary, but it’s not exactly Joseph Goebbels fanatically barking about “total war,” or legions of Hawaiian-shirt-wearing fascists goose-stepping up Pennsylvania Avenue.

    The way I see it, you people have got another four or five weeks to goad Donald Trump into going full-Hitler and staging a coup, or gratuitously mass-murdering the Jews, or somebody, or the public is going to feel … well, bamboozled, and insulted, and even a little angry. They are going to feel like you “Resistance” people regard them as a bunch of total morons that you can manipulate, over and over again, with blatantly ridiculous propaganda that anyone with half a brain could see through … some of which, frankly, has been downright offensive.

    Seriously, fascism, Hitler, the Holocaust … these are solemn, sensitive subjects. They’re not just convenient emotional buttons that you can press to whip folks into a frenzy of mindless paranoia and murderous hatred whenever you feel like demonizing some foreign leader or unauthorized president. The same goes for racism and anti-Semitism. These are real issues, which people care about. They’re not just glorified marketing buzz words that you can pull out of your bag of cheap tricks and slap onto your enemies like they don’t mean anything. If you spend four years accusing someone of literally being Adolf Hitler, or the resurrection of Adolf Hitler, and brainwash millions of credulous liberals into believing that America is on the brink of fascism, you can’t just suddenly say, “We were only kidding. We didn’t mean that he was actually Hitler, or that fascism was really on the rise.” People won’t stand for it. They’ll go ballistic. You’ll have some sort of revolt on your hands.

    Or, all right, on second thought, maybe not. Maybe you can get away with pointing at some billionaire ass clown and howling “Hitler!” over and over, on a daily basis, for years and years, without ever providing any actual evidence that the ass clown in question resembles Hitler, or has done anything comparable to Hitler, or is in any way remotely similar to Hitler. Why not? You successfully Hitlerized Corbyn, not to mention Saddam, Gaddafi, and Milošević, and a long list of other “threats to democracy.” You’ll probably get away with Hitlerizing Trump.

    After all, it appears you’ve convinced the public (or at least the vast majority of the public) that they are being attacked by an apocalyptic plague that causes mild to moderate flu-like symptoms (or, more commonly, no symptoms at all) in 95% of those infected and that over 99.7% survive, and thus we have to cancel constitutional rights, let government officials rule by decree, devastate the economy (or at least small businesses), have global corporations censor all dissent, force everyone to wear medical-looking masks, put whole societies under house arrest, psychologically terrorize children, and otherwise transform the planet into one big paranoid, totalitarian theme park.

    If you can get people to go along with that … well, they’ll probably go along with anything.

    C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing and Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. His dystopian novel, Zone 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. Volume I of his Consent Factory Essays is published by Consent Factory Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amalgamated Content, Inc. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org. Read other articles by C.J..

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint;
    And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.
    And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profits shall this birthright do me?
    And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.”

    — Genesis 25: 30-33

    Despite the bizarre fantasy by Trump supporters that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, there was, in fact, genuine electoral fraud in the US. This fraud was more intense and blatant than any unproven claims of election meddling by Russians, Chinese, Syrians or Iranians. It was an all-out attack on political rights not seen since Joseph McCarthy era. Yet, this time, it was inspired not by Republicans but by Democrats and their liberal allies.

    Despite the bizarre fantasy by Trump supporters that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, there was, in fact, genuine electoral fraud in the US.  This fraud was more intense and blatant than any unproven claims of election meddling by Russians, Chinese, Syrians or Iranians.  It was an all-out attack on political rights not seen since Joseph McCarthy era.  Yet, this time, it was inspired not by Republicans but by Democrats and their liberal allies.

    If manipulation of information from Russia via social networking is “vote tampering”, then how much more vote tampering is elimination of an entire party from news stories and even from the ballot so that many voters are not aware of its existence?  In all likelihood, efforts by the Democratic Party (DP) affected the mind-set of more voters than all the right-wing howls put together.

    Ballot Manipulation: Imagined and Real

    Attempts by the DP to destroy the Green Party (GP) date back to at least 2000 when it screamed that Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the election.  There are too many reasons that this was false to list, but clearly the DP created its own demise by losing massive numbers of black voters via the Clinton-Gore-Biden scheme of “mass incarceration.”  Rather telling is the fact that then vice-president Gore gaveled down House of Representative Democrats who raised objections to the supposed win of George W. Bush.

    The DP is infamous for the way it has openly collaborated with the Republican Party (RP) to eliminate small parties from nationally publicized debates.  Along with reports in the corporate press which only covers parties made “viable” by big money, the debates unambiguously manipulate elections by shielding voters from hearing candidates who often reflect their views more closely.

    Presidential debates demonstrate one of the many ways big money controls US elections. Critical for putting John Kennedy in the White House, the first televised debate in 1960 was followed by refusals of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to participate in debates.  Debates did not reappear until 1976 when the League of Women Voters (LWV) sponsored debates which Jimmy Carter used to oust president Gerald Ford.

    In 1980, the LWV announced that the debates would include independent candidate John Anderson along with Carter and Ronald Reagan.  Carter demanded LWV eliminate Anderson.  But the League held firm; the debates were between Reagan and Anderson; and Reagan won the election.

    The LWV hosted its last debate in 1984, between Reagan and Walter Mondale.  In 1987 the DP and RP created the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), with Democratic and Republican chairmen serving as the organization’s co-chairs.  Apparently, “the Democratic and Republican parties decided that the group [LWV] was a little too independent for their tastes.”

    The CPD next decided that the 1988 debates would be restricted to Republican George Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis.  It threw a sop to LWV, offering it the opportunity to host the debates, but its president Nancy M. Neuman said that “the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter … The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.”  CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite. added that the resulting debates were “phony, part of an unconscionable fraud,”  With the LWV out of the picture, that fraud has existed through 2020.  Though the LWV had stood its ground against the Democrats in 1980, it would reverse its own principles and participate in the hoodwinking that it scorned in 1987.  During the 2020 elections, the LWV Voters Guide which appeared on page V1 of the October 15, 2020 St. Louis Post-Dispatch refused to print the brief platforms of either the Green Party or Libertarian Party, falsely claiming that neither had satisfied its guidelines.

    Missouri Green Party treasurer and candidate for Missouri State Treasurer Joe Civettini called the local LWV, asking why it excluded the platform of Howie Hawkins from its listing.  Receiving a confused answer  from its St. Louis branch, he sent an email to the national LWV office, quoting their criteria for inclusion, explaining how Hawkins/Walker met the criteria, and requesting an explanation, apology and reprinting of the Voters Guide. The only possible bone of contention was the League’s requirement regarding qualification in sufficient states.

    So Civettini wrote “The candidate must qualify for the ballot in enough states to win a majority of electoral votes. Howie Hawkins/Angela Walker are on the ballot in 30 states or territories, and qualified as write-in on 17 others. Only LA, NV, OK, and SD will not be able to vote for, or write-in, Hawkins/Walker.”  Apparently contemptuous of small parties that it once defended, the LWV sent no reply.

    Green Party candidate for St. Louis County Executive Betsey Mitchell was similarly ignored in the Voters’ Guide of KSDK radio.  An interesting thing happened in the middle of writing this article.  I was clearing out old emails and ran across an exchange I had with KSDK radio during my 2016 campaign as Green Party candidate for the Governor of Missouri.  KSDK requested that I respond to questions for posting on their web.  Apparently, between 2016 and 2020 KSDK changed its policy from soliciting statements from all candidates who would appear on the ballot to focusing on only the corporate parties.  It makes one wonder: Did the Democratic Party have its finger in that pie?

    One of the most egregious omissions was in the website of St. Louis Public Radio (SLPR) where it featured candidates for Missouri state offices.  It provided names and statements of all Democrat and Republican candidates and excluded Missouri Green Party candidates whose names were on all election ballots: Jerome Bauer for Governor, Kelly Dragoo for Lieutenant Governor, Joe Civettini for Treasurer, and Paul Lehmann for Secretary of State.  It also excluded Libertarian Party candidates.

    On October 25, I wrote to SLPR that “It appears that SLPR is attempting to interfere in elections in ways that would have worse outcomes than efforts by the Republican Party to disenfranchise voters due to ethnicity, income or age.  The SLPR 2020 Voters Guide misrepresents and distorts choices to the St. Louis area which appear on ballots by intentionally presenting the only candidates as those of the Democratic Party and Republican Party.  This creates a bias among those who view the Voters Guide that they must chose between the two big-money parties.  By doing so, SLPR creates a predisposition among voters prior to casting their ballots and thereby distorts electoral outcomes.”

    It was not enough for allies of the Democrats to block information from appearing in print or on websites.  While allies of the RP went on a physical rampage to attack Black Lives Matter protesters, DP allies went on a legal rampage to wipe the Greens off the ballot.  The attack on the Green Party was not limited to presidential nominees in “swing” states where the race between Biden and Trump would be close.  As explained in Krystal Ball’s YouTube video Dem WAR On Green Party Exposes Voter Suppression Hypocrisy, “in Montana they successfully got five Green Party candidates kicked off the ballot. The GP got a sufficient number of signatures… but the DP actually went and contacted voters who had signed the GP petition and bullied them into recanting their signature … The Texas Democratic Party is suing to keep GP candidates off the ballot…At issue is requirement that third party candidates must pay a $5000 filing fee.”

    The Wisconsin Supreme Court decided that the Greens should be taken off the ballot because its Vice-Presidential candidate Angela Walker committed the horrendous crime of moving during the petitioning process.  In Pennsylvania, it was not Trump forces but the DP that delayed mail-in balloting with a court challenge against the Greens.  They justified this by whining that in 2016 Hillary Clinton lost by 44,000 votes and Jill Stein received 49,000 votes.  Aside from the absurd implication that everyone voting for Jill would have gone for Hillary if the GP was not there, there is a wee fact which Democrats skip over in their quest for obfuscation: the LibertarianParty (LP) got three times as many votes as did the Greens.  Thus, with the equally absurd fantasy that all LP votes would have gone to Trump if that party disappeared, then Trump would have won by over 100,000 votes had the DP been successful in purifying ballot choices to only corporate parties.

    It has been the goal of both corporate parties, but fanatically so for the DP, to totally annihilate the possibility of any independent party gaining widespread support not just for their appearance on the ballot, but any opportunity to present their perspectives.

    How Can Parties Affect Politics without Winning Elections? 

    Since the clear attempt of the two parties is to crowd every other party out of debates, out of the news and out of existence, it becomes important to ask if there is any value whatsoever in voting for candidates who do not have any chance of getting into office.  Although Missouri is not known for diverse and radical opinions, in addition to the two monied parties, between 1908 and 1928 its ballot included the following: Prohibition, Progressive, Socialist, Socialist Labor, Farm Workers and National Commonwealth Land.  Other states such as New York could probably find dozens or even hundreds of small parties that have appeared on the ballot during the last couple of centuries.

    The story of how small parties have affected US politics could fill an encyclopedia; but a few examples illustrate how they have altered political reality.  Perhaps the best-known small party was Free Soil, which was critically important for ending slavery.  “At a convention in Buffalo, New York on August 9, 1848, more than 10,000 men from all the northern states and three border states met in a huge tent in a city park. The resulting Free Soil Party was built on a coalition of four elements: the previous Liberty Party, Free-Soil Democrats, Barnburners, and Conscience Whigs.”

    Though the first plank in its platform was “opposition to the extension of slavery into the territories,” it also backed tariff reform and a homestead law.   Frustrated at not winning sufficient votes, many or most of its members switched to the Republican Party which nominated Abe Lincoln.  Had Free Soil not existed, there is no way of knowing how long slavery would have persisted in the US.

    The same year that Free Soil came into existence saw the birth of the Prohibition Party, which, though changing names multiple times, has run candidates through 2020.  The party stemmed from the “perfectionist” religious revivalism of the 1820s and 1830s which called for fundamental social changes such as abolishing slavery and alcohol sales.  By the end of the nineteenth century it embraced “women’s suffrage, equal racial and gender rights, bimetallism, equal pay, and an income tax” and was the first US party to accept women as members.

    Its enormous influence resulted in the eighteenth amendment prohibiting alcohol sales which was ratified by sufficient states in January 1919.  It was repealed in December 1933, showing conclusively that criminalizing drugs is an unworkable solution to a problem, no matter how serious that problems is.  Though the prohibitionists had a very bad idea, they brought many good ones to light.

    Union organizer Eugene Debs ran as the Socialist Party candidate for president in 1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920. Striking at the very heart of capitalism, Debs brought working people the opportunity to vote for a new society. The powerful threat of Debs’ socialist ideas were shown as the Democrat’s Woodrow Wilson threw him in prison for speaking out against the slaughter of World War I.

    Twelve years after Republican president Warren Harding let Debs out of jail Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced the New Deal during his 1933 inaugural address.  US history books often skip over the historical core of the New Deal, which was outlooks and organizing by the Socialist and Communist Parties.  Like later civil rights legislation and the end to the Viet Nam war, Roosevelt’s New Deal victories grew out of mass movements of the day.

    Skip forward almost half a century to the election of 1980.  Though conservative on most issues, Independent John Anderson introduced his signature campaign proposal of raising the gas tax while cutting social security taxes.  Anderson had strongly criticized the Viet Nam War as well as President Richard Nixon’s actions during the Watergate scandal.  Later, he endorsed instant run-off voting, backed Nader in 2000, and helped found the Justice Party in 2012.

    One of few small party efforts that seemed like it might hit the big time was the Reform Party of Ross Perot that brought him 18.9% of votes as an Independent in 1992 and 8.2% 1996.  When Perot first ran in 1992, George Bush was floundering in his efforts to ram the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through congress.  The upstart Democrat Bill Clinton convinced US corporate bosses that he could usher in the trade deal and won the election.  Perot actually did a great service by pushing to the forefront of public awareness how awful NAFTA would be.

    Those who participated in anti-NAFTA actions should remember that congressman Dick Gephardt from St. Louis supposedly led efforts to block the trade deal.  Following a tip from a friend, I researched Gephardt’s traipsing through Mexico until I found the story in the Mexican newspaper Excelsior documenting the congressman’s promise that he would get NAFTA through the US congress.  The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published my op-ed piece on June 1, 1993 exposing him as a con artist.  Virtually all of the left liberals at the time ignored that Gephardt was merely telling them what they wanted to hear.  Even after Gephardt left congress for a lucrative position lobbying for Goldman Sachs, Boeing, Visa Inc and Waste Management Inc., liberal Democrats refused to acknowledge that their party had secured NAFTA while allowing anti-NAFTA votes by congresspeople from districts needing union financial support.

    Despite the virtue of the Reform Party in focusing on the vile nature of NAFTA, it imploded during the 2000 campaign over disagreements between wrestler Jesse Ventura, ultra-conservative Pat Buchanan and godfather-wannabe Ross Perot.  Less involved in the fray was a newcomer who began political life as a Democrat, switched to being a Republican and then changed again to offer himself as a moderately conservative Reform Party presidential candidate.

    The moderate of the day was Donald Trump, who denounced Buchanan for being “enamored” with Adolf Hitler, supported universal health care, proposed a “net worth” tax that would only apply to the richest 1%, advocated a tax cut for the 99%, praised Muhammad Ali, enjoyed dinner with Woody Harrelson, and declared that his ideal running mate would be the “wonderful woman” Oprah Winfrey.  One explanation for Trump’s transformation between 2000 and 2016 would be that he experienced an epiphany upon rebirth as a divine being.  Another explanation would be that he was not so different than Dick Gephardt and other corporate Democrats eternally searching for an audience gullible enough to believe them.

    For over 200 years, small parties have combined, split, recombined, dropped old perspectives and added new ones.  The theme that runs through the history of small parties is that they are consistently the origin of concepts that change the political trajectory.  Established parties are where worn out programs go to die.  The long sought for destruction of small parties would suck the life out of political discussion, leaving the US with ossified Siamese twins joined at their financial organs.

    Liberal Democrats are much like Trump when they proclaim that the “winner” of an election is the one who gets the most votes.  Another view, held vehemently by Free Soilers, Prohibitionists and Debs, is that the winners of elections are those who most successfully use them to inspire mass movements.  Many latter day leftists laud the life of Debs while omitting these words from praises of him: “It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.”

    One of the most absurd yet widely held liberal claims is that if Greens were not on ballot then all of its supporters would vote for DP.  They know that this is not true, yet repeat it as if one tells a lie enough times then it becomes true.  As Howie Hawkins explains, “The 2016 exit poll showed that 61% of Stein voters would have stayed home if she was not on the ballot.”  The DP denies these exit poll results as vigorously as the RP denies climate change.

    How Do We Know that Democrats Were Not Interested in Preventing a Trump Power Grab?

    The corporate parties are determined that there will never again be a Free Soil Party, a Eugene Debs campaign, a John Anderson campaign, a Ross Perot campaign, or a Ralph Nader campaign.  Though the DP and RP share this commitment, it has been the Democrats that have been obsessed with gobbling up Hansel and Gretel’s last crumb leading to a path of voter liberation.  They have repeatedly prioritized destruction of the GP over prevention of a power grab by the Republicans.

    Recall the election of 2000, when George W. Bush got a minority of the votes and Al Gore refused to challenge the finagling of Florida returns.  For years, the Dems had been encouraged to support Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), which would have prevented a manipulated election.  But the Dems have always hated IRV.  Why?  Because in every election it would show that millions, if not tens of millions, of their “supporters” would chose the GP first and the DP second.  Vast numbers of people vote for a candidate they find somewhere between boring and despicable.  The DP is committed to ensuring that election returns never reveal the clothes the Emperor is wearing (or not wearing).  This is what caused the 2000 election of George W. Bush.  And what did the DP do during the subsequent 20 years to prevent it from happening again?  Absolutely nothing.

    There is another way the Dems could prevent a second-place Repub (like Trump in 2016) from entering the White House: Proportional Representation rather than Winner-Take-All of Electoral College votes.  This system would assign Electoral College votes in the proportion to the popular vote of each state.  For example, if a state with 7 electoral votes had Candidate A winning 52% of the popular vote and Candidate B winning 45% of the vote, then 4 electoral votes would go to A and 3 to B.  The Dems have no interest in either reform, even though they would increase the likelihood of a DP victory.

    During the time period after the 2020 election, many were worried that RP-dominated legislatures could select RP presidential electors even if their state voted for Biden.  We can safely predict that Dems will do nothing during the next 4, 8 or 12 years to prevent this from happening in future.  Why?  Because this would mean if there were a future unexpected surge in votes for Greens or Libertarians, a legislature dominated by the corporate parties would not be able to pull the same stunt to keep those parties out.

    The DP and RP could look internationally for ways to prevent the manipulation of elections.  According to Venezuelanalysis.com, “electronic voting machines are activated only when a fingerprint that corresponds to the voter’s ID number in the database is registered.  Additionally, the machines print a paper receipt that can be checked by the individual voter and allows for a full manual count to be made if any results are contested. A manual count of more than half of the votes automatically takes place to ensure that the results tally.”  Why would the DP prefer to lose elections to RP candidates over having fair elections that increased the number of Democrats put into office?  Because the DP stands solidly with the RP in applauding corrupt puppets like Juan Guaidó.

    Has the memory of senate Republicans manipulating the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court already passed from the memory of the DP?  What about memory that Joe Biden promised that before the election he would announce if he would ask senate Democrats to exert their constitutional right to increase the number of Supreme Court justices by 3 or 4 members?  If the DP has a majority in the senate at any time during Joe Biden’s presidency, please do not hold your breath waiting for them to add court justices – you might pass out doing so.

    It is not as if no party has pushed to change the constitution.  Franklin Roosevelt angered many when he violated the long-standing tradition of a president running for only two terms.  After he was gone, those upset that he won a third and fourth term amended the constitution to limit a president to two terms.  It is tempting to explain this discrepancy as due to lack of backbone by the Dems.  This is not a likely reason, since they have abundant venom for Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and the Green Party.  The DP does not want to have a family feud with its RP twin because they share so much in common.

    State Department Liberals Support Suppression

    The evidence shows that (a) the Democratic Party has headed a relentless conspiracy to destroy small parties, (b) small parties are critical for introducing new outlooks into US politics, and (c) the DP has zero interest in preventing Republicans from stealing elections.  These cohere into a pattern of depriving the electorate of choosing any ideas outside those approved by corporate interests.

    The issue remains, however, if this destruction of left independence was justifiable as a tactic to replace the depraved Trump by a more reasonable Biden who, at least, offers some chance of being edged to the left.  Please keep in mind that a version of this refrain is re-sung every four years in the US.     The refrain always has the assumption that the Dem cannot possibly be as bad as the Repub.

    The unspoken faith is that political direction is determined solely by elections and mass movements can accomplish little without victory at the polls.  Conveniently left out is the fact that the longest string of progressive accomplishments won during the last half century was not when a Dem was in the White House but during the reign of the arch-degenerate Richard Nixon.  His presidency saw the formal end to the war against Viet Nam, beginning of the food stamp program, creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, recognition of China, passage of the Freedom of Information Act, dismantling of the secret police’s COINTEL program, decriminalization of abortion, creation of Earned Income Tax Credits, a ban on biological weapons and passage of the Clean Water Act.

    We can be certain that Biden’s election will embolden the DP to intensify its attack on independent parties.  Once the DP establishment is finished using the liberals to eliminate electoral opposition, it will expel them like a duck with diarrhea.  There is a serious concern that they will soon begin “focusing their crosshairs on” the left within their own party, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

    The flip side of purging of the left is telling those who remain in the DP that they can only influence it by proving their loyalty.  If they want to become more effective they will need to rise higher in the DP ranks, which means quacking more of the party line.

    More than one American leftist has entered the DP in hopes of creating a “left presence” within it.  During the Kennedy-Johnson presidential years, the DP was full of former leftists who sought to “change the system from within.”  In actually existing liberalism, the system changed them and they supported the US adventure into Viet Nam and turned on their former comrades.  They were called “State Department Liberals” and no one captured their essence better than Phil Ochs in the closing stanza of his most famous song:

    Once i was young and impulsive
    I wore every conceivable pin
    Even went to the socialist meetings
    Learned all the old union hymns
    But i’ve grown older and wiser
    And that’s why i’m turning you in
    So love me, love me, love me, i’m a liberal

    – Phil Ochs, Love Me, I’m a Liberal, 1966

    After DP aristocrats have denounced the anti-imperialism of their left opponents and gone on a legal rampage to remove the names of thought criminals from the ballot, it is only a hop, skip and jump to point them out to the secret police.  Lest this be judged as too harsh, please remember that the DP in power collaborates with secret police across the world and helps teach them their tactics.

    At some point in the march of unconditional surrender to corporate politics, many will say, “Can’t take this no more.  We must break with the Dems.  We must build a new party!”  They will then discover the grave that was dug in 2020.  It will be the grave of shutting off criticism, the grave of “unifying” to defeat Trump.  They will discover that the DP, with which many snuggled so sweetly, sought to unify with them much as the lion sought “unity” with the lamb.

    The great delusion of the left liberals has been that they could “first Dump Trump and then hold Biden accountable.”  How can anyone possibly “push Biden to the left” or “hold his feet to the fire” if they have already told him that they will cave in and support him during the next election if the RP nominates a horrible candidate?

    The DP is basically a vote-hustling corporation which seeks massive donations from bigger corporations in return for serving their financial interests upon election.  The only possible way the left can “influence” the DP is to NOT vote for it.  Once the left gives in and votes for it en masse, the left has gone far beyond accepting a mess of pottage for selling its birthright to bring forth a new world.  It has abandoned that birthright for a vague hint that it might get a tiny whiff of pottage decades after capitalism has made the Earth unlivable for humans.

    To be crassly honest, the liberals have already outlined to the Biden machine their best strategy to elect a DP president in 2024: Send a secret convoy to the RP puppet masters and beg them to renominate Trump.  After all, liberal leaders have promised the DP that that it NEVER has to keep any promise of progressive action because no matter how many wars, international coups, racist exterminations, destruction of medical systems and attacks on working people, they will always crawl back to it during the next election.

    The birthright of the left is to inspire people with our dreams – just as progressive visions have motivated mass movements for two centuries.  It is our birthright to bring people the right to vote for giving birth to a new world – and not merely to chose between the two repulsive nightmares of a dying world.  It is our birthright to gaze through the eyes of Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and countless others and say at the ballot box what we have seen.  It is our birthright to hear the cries of those in poor countries whose lives are ground down by the incessant urge of capital to accumulate more, more, more.  And, yes, though the corporate liberal may find it incomprehensible, it is our birthright to put these truths on the ballot so that others have the right to vote for what so many of us feel.

    Stalwarts of the DPs’ right wing manipulated whatever rules they could find to block the great hope of campaigns for Bernie Sanders known as “Our Revolution.”  Seeing themselves outmaneuvered, Bernie’s leaders refused to mount an independent campaign and shepherded their flock, feeding them to the Joe Biden Blob.  “Our Revolution” was thereby transformed into the “Esau Revolution.”

    So, exactly what does the Esau Revolution despise?  The answer appeared in the book of Genesis thousands of years ago:

    “Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.”

    — Genesis 25: 34

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Newspeak, Trumpism and conspiracy theories

    News Junkie Post has a policy of zero tolerance for conspiracy theories. With a story as big and global as the COVID-19 pandemic, alternative narratives from conspiracy theorists were bound to happen. Like most news outlets, big or small, News Junkie Post‘s main focus in 2020 was the pandemic. Our Co-Editor-in-Chief, Haitian born microbiologist Dr. Dady Chery, superbly focused on and explained the science; our Indian Editor Imtiaz Akhtar gave us a heart felt testimony from Calcutta under lockdown. For my part, I handled the sociological, political and economical implications of a grossly mismanaged global crisis. As opposed to many, we covered the pandemic in a clinical and analytical way, without falling into the macabre body counts or the assumption that vaccines would be perfect silver bullets. We tried, with humility, to keep our eyes on the unpredictable shifts of a constantly moving target.

    In the Trump era, soon to fade away in our rear view mirror, catering to border line conspiracy theory narratives has become rampant. This phenomenon has deeply impacted people’s perception of reality, not only in the United States, but worldwide. Dismissal of information, valid or not, as fake news is commonplace. This notion has become so insidious that it has even entered, ad verbatim in English, France’s news outlets lexicons. Needless to say, and in accordance with Orwell newspeak, depending on the location or ideological orientation, the fake news for some are the real news for others.

    In our Orwellian kaleidoscope, figments of the imagination’s fictional mirages claim to be anchored in reality. In brief, the soon to be defunct Trump era has taught us that reality is a lot stranger than fiction; that propagandists of all stripes can be duly amplified to the dubious status of global influencers; and the scattered thought processes they promote through social media are a lot more contagious that the nastiest Influenza.

    In the surreal context of the US election aftermath circus, the startup network NewsMax has become Trumpism’s Newspeak vehicle of choice: a Trump propaganda echo chamber where Trump’s die hard supporters, independently of any rationality or moral decency, are told exactly what they want to hear, and therefore are given talking points and ammunition to fuel their simmering anger even more. Needless to say, this crescendo in the realm of the imaginary from their leader, where the elections were rigged and stolen, put into jeopardy the legitimacy of the entire US electoral process. It will be extremely tricky to ensure that the baseless grievances of Trump-hypnotized followers do, in time, heal rather than become festering maggot-infested open social wounds. In a time when the dark forces of the imaginary tromp rationality, the upcoming Biden-Harris administration faces this as its hardest challenge.

    Conspiracy theories such as “the 2020 elections were stolen from Trump by the US Deep State in cahoots with a globalist elite cabal” are a paranoid version of a narrative that contains factual elements. Like any mythology, religion, of course, included, some of the far-fetched assumptions are anchored in the cultural reality of a group’s collective psyche. For example, the toxic notions of purity of blood and Aryan master race were the foundations of the Nazi dogma. In the religious realm, the same can be said of the concept of being the chosen people, invented by the Jewish faith. In both cases, we are dealing with mythologies based on exclusion: the racist and elitist notion that a specific group of humans are above all others, as if humanity has an explicit pecking order, not based on personal merit but linked to almost tribal origins.

    In most conspiracy theories, the imaginary is perceived, almost through some sort of epiphany, as a hard unquestionable truth. Once rationality has ceased to be sociologically and psychologically relevant to enough members of a group, then propaganda, disinformation or religious fundamentalism can convince them that magical thinking is reality. Therefore, the Earth can be flat, a circle can be square, and the love of Jesus can be the best shield against COVID-19. Deep in the QAnon paranoia, a Chinese plague was created by the globalist elite, which is composed of blood sucking elderly pedophiles who might secretly be communists, to depopulate the planet, enslave everyone, and last but not least, make sure the proud patriot crusader against this new world order, Donald Trump, loses his reelection bid.


    A Trumpism myth, which curiously has some international appeal, is that Donald Trump was the champion of sovereign nations fighting against an evil globalist world order. But, as matter of fact, this is completely fabricated, as Trump is, and always was, entirely at the service of global corporate imperialism. Donald Trump attempted to run the United States not as a nationalist, like he claimed in his empty slogans with US citizens’ interests in mind, but as the CEO of America Empire Inc., a subdivision of capitalism global empire. Trumpism, and other brands of populism/neo-fascism are, in essence, disingenuous as they mislead their supporters into believing they are anti-globalist. How could they be when such politicians are, in reality, the obedient servants of mega-corporate interests?

    COVID-19: bonanza for disaster capitalism

    Capitalism, either using the bogus cover of populism or the pseudo humanitarian narrative of neoliberalism of someone like President Macron in France, always operates the same way. The beast is ruthless and has no mercy for the people it exploits, breaks and ultimately destroys. Capitalism‘s gargantuan appetite feeds on people’s miseries. For its engine to stay lubricated and fueled, it needs a colossal amount of human sacrifices. The COVID-19 crisis is no exception. If wars always end up translating into a financial boom, the same can be said about natural disasters like a nice little global pandemic. When you are morally depraved enough to put profit over people, your mindset is always: how could I and my investors make huge benefits from this crisis?

    For COVID, the financial bonanza that has driven world wide stock markets to record highs, while the real economy experiences a depression, has the following factors. Firstly, huge injections of cash were made using a mechanism known as quantitative easing, a euphemism for printing money. This practice, to mitigate an initial crash of the markets, was applied world wide, but considerably more in the US and the EU. Secondly, because of various lockdown measures established in almost all countries since March 2020, there has been a huge boost for online one-stop shopping providers such as Amazon, as well as corporations such as Zoom that facilitate teleconference work. Thirdly, and this is the most important one as it is becoming Wall Street’s Holy Grail, we have, of course, the vaccines!

    Who knows if the vaccine candidates in question will be efficient or have any side effects, but Wall Street and all the financial markets could care less. Moderna might not be a pandemic panacea, but one thing is obvious: it is the new El Dorado! How can you possibly go wrong with a stock that traded at around $20 in January and now trades at more than $130! Now, this is the shot in the arm that global capitalism has longed for. While millions starve, the vaccine boon is a great Christmas bonus for Wall Street!

    While capitalist junkies are getting their fix, and the likes of Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos are becoming trillionaires, millions of ordinary people have died and are dying, millions more have lost their jobs, millions of small businesses worldwide are in dire straights. Countless people all over the world, included in the rich nations, rely on food banks to eat. The obscenity of it all is in our faces, defiantly staring at us. In brief, the COVID-19 crisis has been used by global capitalism and its political surrogates as a giant wealth-concentration machine. One of the stupid empty slogans of the pandemic was “We’re all in this together.” With the unbearable mismanagement of COVID from the get go, what an insult to people’s basic intelligence. No. There is no “together” at all in all this, but just a dog-eat-dog social construct.

    COVID and social inequality fatigue: dissent against police states?

    As more people are becoming aware, at least intuitively, that their governments have failed them or are trying to impose on them drastic measures such as lock-downs, curfews and other arbitrary behavioral rules that have varied throughout the pandemic, a general sense of fear, a collective depression triggered by anxiety and isolation seems to be turning into anger for many. Fear and anger are powerful primal emotions. Unlike fear, which paralyzes, properly channeled anger can be a positive force. Especially collective anger towards incompetent governments that are either not making decisions at all, like Trump did in the US, or are dictating authoritarian measures, like Macron in France, which seem to be based on medical science, but are, in fact, a form of political navigation in a stormy sea, without a compass.

    To add insult to injury, Macron thought it was a good idea to give a little more muscle to his repressive tool kit by passing an extremely police friendly law in France called Loi de Securite Globale. Fortunately, dissent and protest in France are not dead yet, and 10 days after the infamous police-state friendly law was passed, 500,000 people took to the streets despite the pandemic rules curtailing freedom of movements and assembly.

    The COVID-19 crisis will give many governments an opportunity to push some authoritarian policing strategies. After about 20 years under the cover of supposed terrorist threats, the police have become meaner and more omnipresent in most countries’ social landscapes. As most countries ruling classes largely use their police forces as a tool of repression against their own citizens, police brutalities have blossomed almost universally. In fact, the Robocops of global corporate imperialism wear pretty much the same gear and adopt the same brutal techniques. Police forces are in the advance process to become the Praetorian Guard of the global capitalist empire and its billionaire ruling class as well as political surrogates.

    This must be stopped at any cost, the Loi de Securite Globale is a prime example. If the world citizenry do not forcefully and diligently oppose it, hybrid police states could be maintained in place for the much bigger challenges humanity will face once the climate crisis builds its unstoppable momentum. Only a global movement can tackle the enormity of the task at hand, collectively make a stand “by any means necessary,” to quote Malcom X, and get from governments drastic systemic changes, to avoid humanity’s looming collapse.

    Photographs two, three, five, seven and eight by Gilbert Mercier; photograph six from the archives of Backbone Campaign; photograph nine by Daily Chalkupy; and photograph eleven by Johnny Silvercloud.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • These are things that might have been done earlier.  During the last, flickering days of the Trump administration, activity is being witnessed across countries which have a US troop presence.  Numbers are being reduced.  Security wonks are getting the jitters.  Is the imperium shrinking?  Will President elect Joe Biden wake up and reverse the trend?  With the Beltway foreign policy Blob advising him, most likely.

    In November, acting defence secretary Christopher Miller announced that the number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq would fall from 4,500 to 2,500 and 3,500 to 2,500 respectively.  Somalia has been added to the list of countries which will see US withdrawals in some number.  The current troop presence stands at 700, tasked with assisting an African Union-backed peacekeeping force combat the al-Shabaab insurgency.  A good number are also there to train and support Danab, the Somali special forces with eyes on capturing and killing leaders of the insurgent movement.  The ultimate objective of US Africa Command in East Africa, then, “is one in which terrorist organizations are not able to threaten the US homeland, US persons, international allies or destabilize the region.”

    This is a conflict that has a relentless air of eternity to it.  Al-Shabaab counts itself as yet another, albeit more formidable, militant group that has thrived in Somalia’s unruly environment.  Its claim to radicalised fame came with Ethiopia’s December 2006 invasion of the country.  It was encouraged by the Somalian transitional government, with the intention of ousting al-Shabaab and the Islamic Courts Union from Mogadishu, captured by the fundamentalist alliance that June.

    According to Robert Wise, the Ethiopian occupation transformed al-Shabaab “from a small relatively unimportant part of a more moderate Islamic movement into the most powerful and radical armed faction in the country.”  Yet another salient lesson in the perils of foreign intervention.

    US administrations might have feared the messiness of the Somali scene.  The death of 18 US soldiers in October 1993 in a failed effort to capture the warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid in Mogadishu stung.  Cruise-missile humanitarians and interventionists would have to wait for the republic to find its feet again.  The attacks of September 11, 2001 on the United States furnished the moment, incarnating the global terrorist phenomenon and the pretext for an international deployment of US forces, officially and covertly.  On March 19, 2003, the capture and interrogation of Suleiman Abdallah heralded the return of US troops to Somalia.

    During the Obama administration, US drone strikes, with all the accompanying problems of legality and accountability, were the favoured weapon of choice against the group.  These were also accompanied by ground raids.  Killings, such as those of its leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, in September 2014, were celebrated as triggers for an eventual collapse that never came.  “Godane’s removal is a major symbolic and operational loss to the largest al-Qaida affiliate in Africa,” came the confident assessment from the White House, “and reflects years of painstaking work by our intelligence, military and law enforcement officials.”

    Godane’s slaying was a spur, rather than a deterrent, for the organisation.  Attacks on African peacekeeping forces increased; suicide bombings were used liberally, culminating in the slaughter of October 2017 in Mogadishu leaving almost 600 civilians dead.

    In the earlier stage of his administration, President Donald Trump showed a marked interest in deepening US involvement in Somalia.  The rhetoric of disentanglement was nowhere to be found.  In March 2017, he approved a proposal from the Pentagon to expand operations against militants in the country.  Commanders were no longer required to obtain high-level vetting of al-Shabaab targets in designated “areas of active hostilities”.  As General Thomas Waldhauser of US Africa Command described it, “It allows [us] to prosecute targets in a more rapid fashion.” In 2018, 47 US drone strikes were executed.  Last year, the number climbed to 63.

    This was not to last. Trump began to cool to the US involvement.  Earlier this year, the US pulled out from the cities of Bosaso and Galkayo.  The now departed defence secretary Mark Esper was not enthused by the change of heart, and preferred continued engagement.  Trump, for his part, preferred Kenyan security forces to have a greater role.

    The statement from the Pentagon was packed with those reassurances that will affect audiences differently.  The overall theme of the exit is change without difference.  “The US is not withdrawing or disengaging from Africa.  We remain committed to our African partners and enduring support through a whole-of-government approach.”

    This is not the case of US soldiers returning home to celebratory fanfare for a disentangling republic.  Many will find themselves in neighbouring Kenya, which has had its fair share of problems with al-Shabaab.  “As a result of this decision, some forces may be reassigned outside of East Africa.  However, the remaining forces will be repositioned from Somalia into neighbouring countries in order to allow cross-border operations by both US and partner forces.”

    Somali President Mohamed Abdullah Mohamed is none too keen on the move, suggesting that his brittle government has gotten used to a particular diet of assistance.  In October, he took to Twitter to claim that US “military support to Somalia has enabled us to effectively combat Al-Shabaab and secure the Horn of Africa.  A victory through this journey and for Somali-US partnership can only be achieved through continuous security partnership and capacity building support.”

    Senator Ayub Ismail Yusuf called the decision to remove US forces “untimely.”  Well attuned to the language that has kept Washington engaged in foreign theatres since 2001, the true enemy was terrorism.  “The fight against global terrorism is still ongoing and we must still win this battle for peace and security to prevail.”  Colonel Ahmed Abdullahi Sheikh, Danab’s commander for three years till 2019, is convinced that making such a withdrawal permanent “will have a huge toll on counterterrorism efforts”.

    Such comments suggest a far rosier picture of US involvement and Somali government successes.  The US Defence Department Inspector General is far more measured in the July-September 2020 report.  “Despite many years of sustained Somali, US, and international counterterrorism pressure, the terrorist threat in East Africa is not degraded: al-Shabaab retains freedom of movement in many parts of southern Somalia and has demonstrated an ability and intent to attack outside of the country, including targeting US interests.”

    For the devotees of the imperial footprint, there is no way around it.  The decision to exit is poor; the imperium’s interests will be harmed.  William Lawrence from the American University in Washington, D.C. does not even shy away from a pseudo-colonial message.  “The blow from the US operations standpoint is that over time, it will lose its ability to Americanise on the ground and to have more interaction with Somali troops.”  Somalia would suffer a “real blow” with the departure of US personnel.  “There is no good military or strategic reason for this move.”

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has nothing to worry about as the man who will directly handle America’s foreign policy in the Middle East is a loyal friend of Israel. Crisis averted.

    President-elect, Joe Biden’s appointment of Antony J. Blinken as his Secretary of State was a master stroke, according to the Biden Administration. Blinken is a State Department veteran, a strong believer in a US-led Western alliance and a true friend of Israel.

    The immediate message that Biden wished to communicate through this particular appointment – and also the appointment of Jake Sullivan as the US’ new National Security Adviser – is that the United States will edge back to its default position as a global leader, and away from Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy agenda.

    While the Europeans are excited to have their American benefactors back, Blinken’s appointment was geared mostly to appease Israel.

    The defeat of Trump in the November elections led to much anxiety in Washington and Tel Aviv. The Israelis were nervous that Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’, which was essentially American acquiescence to all of Israel’s demands, would come to a halt. The Biden Administration, on the other hand, remains wary of the contentious relationship that Netanyahu had with the last Democratic administration under Barack Obama.

    The selection of Blinken to fill the role of America’s top diplomat must have been considered within several political contexts: one, that Israel needed an immediate American reassurance that Biden will carry on with Trump’s legacy; two, that the new Secretary of State needed to match the love of Israel expressed by departing Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and three, that the Iran nuclear program file has to be handled with the utmost sensitivity.

    Not only did Biden succeed in making the most opportune selection, but the Israelis are also absolutely delighted. Comments made by Israeli leaders from all main political parties have welcomed Biden’s gesture, declaring unanimously that Blinken is ‘good for Israel’.

    Pro-Netanyahu politicians are particularly happy and eager to engage with a Blinken-led US foreign policy. Dore Gold, a close Netanyahu associate who also served as Israel’s Foreign Ministry director-general, told the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, that he was “impressed” with Blinken and “found him to be very professional and a good listener”.

    Unlike the “simply difficult” attitudes of other officials in the Obama Administration, Gold found Blinken to be “very open”, without any “any kind of anti-Israel undertone”.

    The meeting that Gold was referring to took place in the US State Department in 2016, when the top Israeli official concluded that Blinken “was a really good guy,” leading to the current opinion that Blinken “can be a very positive influence”.

    Blinken left the meeting with similar amity. “In the face of unprecedented regional threats, affirmed ironclad support for (Israeli) security with Israel Foreign Ministry Director-General, Dore Gold,” Blinken tweeted at the time.

    Other Israelis share the same sentiment as Gold, reflecting a collective understanding that Biden will not reverse any of the steps taken by his predecessor. Former Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, also expressed her optimism regarding the direction of US-Israeli relations. Like most Israelis, she had no qualms with the Trump-Pompeo generosity, and is now certain that the Biden-Blinken duo will be equally benevolent with Israel.

    According to Haaretz, Livni believes that “Biden and Blinken will embrace and build on the steps taken by Trump that were ‘in accordance with Israel’s interests’.”

    Since all pro-Israel measures taken by the Trump Administration were classified under the ‘Deal of the Century’, and remembering that Biden will unlikely reverse any of these measures, it follows that Trump’s political agenda will also be championed by the upcoming administration. While Israelis are reassured by this realization, the Palestinian leadership seems oblivious to it.

    After speaking to Palestinian officials, TIME magazine summed up the Palestinian Authority’s expectations as merely technical and diplomatic gestures, such as the reopening of the Palestinian mission in Washington, the establishment of the US Consulate for Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the restoration of funding.

    The Palestinian inability to appreciate the nature of the challenge was also reflected in the political discourse of Arab-Israeli politicians. Ayman Odeh, the leader of Israel’s large Arab political coalition, arrived at the conclusion that “Biden will take off the table the Deal of the Century,” although Odeh rightly points out that Biden will not put any pressure on Israel.

    While it is true that Biden will unlikely borrow any of Trump’s divisive terminology, he will, most certainly, keep the spirit of the ‘Deal of the Century’ alive. The ‘Deal’ consisted of specific US measures aimed at validating Israel’s illegal claims over Occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and the delinking of Arab normalization with Israel from the subject of the Israeli occupation. None of this is likely to change even if the term ‘Deal of the Century’ is scrapped altogether.

    This conclusion should not completely dismiss the possibility of a future clash between Tel Aviv and Washington. If a disagreement does take place, it will not be over Israel’s illegal actions in Palestine but over the likelihood that the US will restart talks with Iran regarding its nuclear program.

    Regarding Iran, Netanyahu’s message to Biden is decisive and undiplomatic. “There can be no going back to the previous nuclear agreement,” the Israeli Prime Minister warned on November 22. That warning in mind, Blinken will find it extremely difficult to quell Israeli fears that, by diplomatically engaging Iran, the US will not be abandoning Israel. The American assurances to Israel are likely to come at the expense of Palestinians: a free Israeli hand in expanding illegal settlements, yet more cutting edge American weapons and unconditional US support at the United Nations.

    Biden’s foreign policy is likely to be a continuation of Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’, though under a different designation. It is baffling that the Palestinian leadership is unable to see this, focusing instead, on steering the US back to a failed status quo, where Washington blindly supported Israel while paying Palestinians off for their silence.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • All too often, events occur that make me feel that I am living in ‘Bizarro World’. The recent talk and extensive US corporate media coverage about whether or not the US and/or Israel will soon attack Iran is one of these occasions. The alleged rationale for such an attack is the possibility that Iran might pursue the development of a nuclear weapon. This rationale ignores the religious ruling or fatwa issued by the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei against the acquisition, development and use of nuclear weapons.

    In its reporting on the possibility of the US or Israel attacking Iran, the US corporate-controlled media usually fails to mention that these threats are illegal under international law. Of course, illegality is not an issue for the media when these two countries are involved.

    In addition, also seldom mentioned is the fact that the US is the only nation that has dropped atomic bombs on another country. The US is also a country that many nations claim has not complied with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Moreover, Israel is a country that has not even accepted the NPT and also has nuclear weapons. Also generally ignored is the fact that the US and Israel routinely violate international law with their unprovoked attacks on other nations. These are the two nations threatening Iran over the possibility that it might develop nuclear weapons. Such incredible hypocrisy and the media fails to call it out!

    Note that Iran has gone the extra mile to demonstrate its willingness to reach a diplomatic resolution, but that is not enough for the US under President Trump and Israel under Prime Minister Netanyahu. For example, in 2015 Iran agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, an agreement with China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the US. This deal, also endorsed by the UN Security Council, restricted the development of Iran’s nuclear program. During the next few years, Iran was in full compliance with the agreement.

    Even more bizarre, despite Iranian compliance, in 2018 the US pulled out of the agreement. The US then reimposed sanctions and imposed new sanctions on Iran. In an attempt to destroy the Iranian economy, the US also threatened nations that traded with Iran. These illegal and barbaric US sanctions, still in effect during the covid-19 pandemic, have tremendously harmed the Iranian people and the US image. Despite all of this, Iran continued to honor the agreement for a full year after the US withdrawal.

    Note the US National Intelligence Estimate has repeatedly concluded Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program. Many former high-ranking Israeli intelligence and military officials agree that Iran is not an existential threat to Israel. Thus, in a sane world, wouldn’t there be international pressure being placed on the US and Israel over their nuclear weapons and over their war crimes? Instead, in this ‘Bizarro World’, because the US and Israel demand it, the focus is on Iran and its attempted development of a nuclear energy option.

    In addition, given this background of no credible evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program nor of an existential threat to Israel, maybe the real motivation for the US and Israel is not about an Iranian nuclear weapon. Perhaps the goal is for a change in leadership in Iran to someone more compliant with US and Israeli plans. The US has used its illegal unilateral sanctions to cause suffering among the Iranian people in a misguided effort to get them to reject the current Iranian leadership. Despite overwhelming evidence that this approach doesn’t work, the US continues to use this barbaric, illegal and flawed tactic.

    Why do the US and Israel continue to play the risky game of needlessly provoking Iran? One possible reason is that Netanyahu would like to see Iran respond in order to draw in the US into a military conflict with Iran. His thinking may be that the US would so weaken Iran, something that Israel cannot do without using its nuclear weapons, that Iran could no longer prevent Israel from achieving hegemony in the Middle East. Perhaps the revenge motive drives Trump and the US neocons. They cannot forgive Iran for overthrowing the Shah and humiliating the US in 1979 as well as for Iran following its own interests.

    The recent provocations may also serve domestic considerations for Trump and Netanyahu even if they don’t lead to a military conflict. For Netanyahu, this focus would distract from his criminal trial for fraud, bribery and breach of trust. For Trump, the provocations would make it more difficult for President-Elect Biden to rejoin the JCPOA. Who knows for sure in ‘Bizarro World’?

    One crucial concern for the US and Israel is the relationship among Iran, Russia and China. How would Russia and China react if the US and Israel were to attack Iran? Might such an attack lead to a much larger conflict that could escalate to a nuclear war? Thus these needless US and Israeli provocations may be more risky than the dangerous duo of Netanyahu and Trump want to admit.

    Ron Forthofer is a retired professor of biostatistics from the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston and was a Green Party candidate for Congress and also for governor of Colorado. Read other articles by Ron.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Protesters burn U.S. and Israeli flags flags in Tehran after the killing of Fakhrizadeh. (Credit: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA, via Shutterstock)

    Israel used all four years of Trump’s presidency to entrench its systems of occupation and apartheid. Now that Joe Biden has won the U.S. election, the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, likely by Israel with the go-ahead from the US administration, is a desperate attempt to use Trump’s last days in office to sabotage Biden’s chances of successful diplomacy with Iran. Biden, Congress and the world community can’t let that happen.

    On Friday November 27, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated in the Iranian city of Absard outside of Tehran. First, a truck with explosives blew up near the car carrying Fakhrizadeh. Then, gunmen started firing on Fakhrizadeh’s car. The immediate speculation was that Israel had carried out the attack, perhaps with the support of the Iranian terrorist group the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (MEK). Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted that there were “serious indications of [an] Israeli role” in the assassination.

    All indications indeed point to Israel. In 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu identified this scientist, Fakhrizadeh, as a target of his administration during a presentation in which he claimed that Israel had obtained secret Iranian files that alleged the country was not actually abiding by the Iran Nuclear Deal. “Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh. So here’s his directive, right here,” Netanyahu said.

    Fakhrizadeh was far from the first assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist. Between 2010 and 2012, four Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinatedMasoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan. Though Israel never took official credit for the extrajudicial executions, reports were fairly conclusive that Israel, working with the MEK, were behind the killings. The Israeli government never denied the allegations.

    The assassination of Fakhrizadeh also follows reports that the Israeli government recently instructed its senior military officials to prepare for a possible U.S. strike on Iran, likely referring to a narrowly averted plan by President Trump to bomb Iran’s Natanz nuclear site. Furthermore, there was a clandestine meeting between Netanyahu and Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman. Among the topics of conversation were normalization between the two countries and their shared antagonism towards Iran.

    Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear activities are particularly galling given that Israel, not Iran, is the only country in the Middle East in possession of nuclear weapons, and Israel refuses to sign the International Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Iran, on the other hand, doesn’t have nuclear weapons and it has opened itself up to the most intrusive international inspections ever implemented. Adding to this absurd double standard is the intense pressure on Iran from the United States—a nation that has more nuclear weapons than any country on earth.

    Given the close relationship between Netanyahu and Trump, and the seriousness of this attack, it is very likely that this assassination was carried out with the green light from Trump himself. Trump has spent his time in the White House destroying the progress the Obama administration made in easing the conflict with Iran. He withdrew from the nuclear deal and imposed an unending stream of crippling sanctions that have affected everything from the price of food and housing, to Iran’s ability to obtain life-saving medicines during the pandemic. He has blocked Iran from getting an IMF $5 billion emergency loan to deal with the pandemic. In January, Trump brought the US to the brink of war by assassinating Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, and in an early November meeting with his top security advisors, and right before the assassination of Fakhrizadeh, Trump himself reportedly raised the possibility of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

    After the news broke of the assassination, Trump expressed implicit approval of the attack by retweeting Israeli journalist and expert on the Israeli Mossad intelligence service, Yossi Melman, who described the killing of Fahkrizadeh as a “major psychological and professional blow for Iran.”

    Iran has responded to these intense provocations with extreme patience and reserve. The government was hoping for a change in the White House and Biden’s victory signaled the possibility of both the U.S. and Iran going back into compliance with the nuclear deal. This recent assassination, however, further strengthens the hands of Iranian hardliners who say it was a mistake to negotiate with the United States, and that Iran should just leave the nuclear deal and build a nuclear weapon for its own defense.

    Iranian-American analyst Negar Mortazavi bemoaned the chilling effect the assassination will have on Iran’s political space. “The atmosphere will be even more securitized, civil society and political opposition will be pressured even more, and the anti-West discourse will be strengthened in Iran’s upcoming presidential election,” she tweeted.

    The hardliners already won the majority of seats in the February parliamentary elections and are predicted to win the presidential elections scheduled for June. So the window for negotiations is a narrow one of four months immediately after Biden’s inauguration.  What happens between now and January 20 could derail negotiations before they even start.

    Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said that US and Israeli efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program “have now morphed into Trump & Netanyahu sabotaging the next US President. They are trying to goad Iran into provocations & accelerating nuclear work—exactly what they claim to oppose. Their real fear is US & Iran talking.”

    That’s why U.S. members of Congress, and President-elect Joe Biden himself, must vigorously condemn this act and affirm their commitment to the US rejoining the nuclear deal. When Israel assassinated other nuclear scientists during the Obama administration, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced the murders, understanding that such illegal actions made negotiations infinitely more difficult.

    The European Union, as well as some important US figures have already condemned the attack. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy pointed out the risks involved in normalizing assassinations, how the killing will make it harder to restart the Iran Nuclear agreement, and how the assassination of General Soleimani backfired from a security standpoint. Former Obama advisor Ben Rhodes tweeted that it was an “outrageous action aimed at undermining diplomacy,” and former CIA head John Brennan called the assassination “criminal” and “highly reckless,” risking “lethal retaliation and a new round of regional conflict,” but rather than putting the responsibility on the U.S. and Israel to stop the provocations, he called on Iran to “be wise” and “resist the urge to respond.”

    Many on Twitter have raised the question of what the world response would be if the roles were reversed and Iran assassinated an Israeli nuclear scientist. Without a doubt, the U.S. administration, whether Democrat or Republican, would be outraged and supportive of a swift military response. But if we want to avoid escalation, then we must hope that Iran will not retaliate, at least not during Trump’s last days in office.

    The only way to stop this crisis from spiraling out of control is for the world community to condemn the act, and demand a UN investigation and accountability for the perpetrators. The countries that joined Iran and the United States in signing  the 2015 nuclear agreement —Russia, China, Germany, the UK and France—must not only oppose the assassination but publicly recommit to upholding the nuclear deal. President-elect Joe Biden must send a clear message to Israel that under his administration, these illegal acts will have consequences. He must also send a clear message to Iran that he intends to quickly re-enter the nuclear deal, stop blocking Iran’s $5 billion IMF loan request, and begin a new era of diplomacy to dial back the intense conflict he inherited from Trump’s recklessness.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.