The shift to post-industrialism was associated with the rise of a powerful new set of capitalist elites and new corporate centers of production, finance, and communication. In the 21st century, Silicon Valley became the symbol of the new post-industrial high-tech world. It would become the showcase of the new high-tech companies, such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple, which were becoming the first trillion-dollar companies, led by tycoons such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Peter Thiel, all fabulously wealthy members of the Big Tech power elite. Silicon Valley introduced itself as a modern miracle, bringing unprecedented new productivity and prosperity that would benefit both owners and workers, and contribute to the betterment of the general population with magical new products such as the personal computer, the iPhone, and the new internet-based world of online culture and communication on social media. This new world revolutionized the economic and social spheres, while also having major uses and implications for politics and the military. Because billions of people globally now have iPhones or personal computers, with access to the new online universe of the internet and social media, Silicon Valley seemed to open up not only a transformative new economy for entrepreneurs and knowledge workers but a transformed, newly connected world of online social communication and relationships.

This is not entirely an illusion. The online world does open up new social connections and political connections, with social media being a powerful new tool for the younger generation to build new friendships, communities, and politics. But Silicon Valley’s fantastic new array of electronic communications and online connections may also prove to be a gateway to weak social relations and ultimately the end of strong face-to-face social relationships, as well as democracy itself. We face a sociocidal transformation fueled by high tech, with Silicon Valley also proffering its own politics of authoritarianism. Sociocide is the process by which human connection is largely severed, and individuals are only concerned for themselves. A sociocidal society is one in which solidarity is nonexistent and meaningful human relationships are destroyed.

Several sociocidal forces emerge directly from the economic restructuring created by huge Big Tech firms, especially the “Magnificent Seven,” whose individual worth now reaches into the trillions:  Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook), and Tesla. One is the interest of these corporate high-tech elites, much like their corporate counterparts in other spheres, in eroding the face-to-face workplace and social ties that can challenge their power. In the workplace, that translates into the intensified attack on secure employment, unionism, and a collective physical workplace. The intent is to weaken the social relations of workers in the workplace – and more broadly, to subvert the solidarity and face-to-face connections of people throughout society that can challenge authoritarianism in both work and politics.

Focusing first on the workplace, the Magnificent Seven play a special role here by creating and developing the technology – including the personal computer, iPhone, internet apps, AI, robots, and social media — that allows corporate elites to create a precariat of dispersed and contingent workers, increasingly separated from each other, while also replacing millions of workers and transferring their jobs to robots and other AI inventions.

The most rapid replacement of workers by robots and AI is in high-skill jobs. Matt Sigelman, president of the Human Resources Institute, summarized his Institute’s widely circulated report on AI, saying, “There’s no question the workers who will be most impacted are those with college degrees, and those are the people who always thought they were safe.” He indicates that: “Companies in finance, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, have some of the highest percentages of their payrolls likely to be disrupted by generative A.I. Not far behind are tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Meta.”

Tech workers, talented and highly trained, are developing the tools allowing their companies to eliminate many of their own jobs. Meanwhile, employers are also using robots to replace low-skill workers. The sociocidal tech impulse of Silicon Valley, as in other sectors, is embraced because of its profit-saving capacity. And the fastest way to increase profit is to reduce wages, usually by weakening relations among employees or busting unions.

The Magnificent Seven have used their overwhelming economic power to directly undermine unions, the most effective form of worker social relations and organization. In January 2024, Elon Musk, now legendary for his anti-union and broader right-wing views, filed a lawsuit in federal courts to declare unconstitutional the National Labor Relations Board, which protects and regulates workers’ right to organize. In August 2024, just before his re-election, Trump joked with Musk about firing workers, complimenting Musk during a two-hour conversation on X for firing Tesla workers who wanted to strike. “They go on strike,” Trump said to Musk, “and you say, ‘That’s OK, you’re all gone.’” Trump then added, “You’re the Greatest!” The UAW filed labor charges against both Trump and Musk for the unfair labor practices that the two had celebrated; Musk’s Tesla had clashed with union activists for years, and the NLRB in 2021 had found that the non-union Tesla violated labor laws when it fired a union organizer.

One of Musk’s Magnificent Seven compatriots, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, quickly joined in Trump and Musk’s union-busting party, filing a copycat suit to make the NLRB and unions unconstitutional. Here, we see the world’s two richest men, leaders of the High-Tech Robber Barons, exploiting economic size to reap the fruit of their technology’s economic power. They are seeking a revolutionary breakdown of workplace social relations, moving from the sociopathy of the first Gilded Age to the sociocide of today’s Gilded Age.

The Magnificent Seven’s power undercuts workplace social relations and fiercely attacks union solidarity in the name of free-spirited libertarianism running rampant in Silicon Valley. The broader corporate success in drastically weakening unions is key to sociocide in the entire US labor force and has been achieved not only by the anti-union fervor of corporations since the New Deal but also by the zeal of the Republican Party from Reagan through Trump to make the destruction of labor solidarity and unions a top political priority.

_________________________________________

The above is an excerpt from Charles Derber’s most recent book, Bonfire: American Sociocide, Broken Relations, and the Quest for Democracy.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Charles Derber.

We speak to Peter Beinart, editor-at-large at Jewish Currents, about changing popular opinion in the U.S. toward Israel and Palestine. “I’m not sure there’s any political issue in the United States, perhaps other than gay marriage, over the last couple of decades where public opinion has shifted as fast,” he says, citing the surprise victory of pro-Palestinian mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s Democratic primary as evidence of a shifting political landscape. We also discuss a recent article in The New York Times that criticizes Mamdani, a Ugandan-born Indian Muslim who immigrated to the U.S. as a child, for self-identifying as both Asian and Black/African American on a college application. Beinart, whose own parents are of European Jewish background and were raised in multiracial South Africa, explains how the limitations of formal racial categories often elide the true complexity of racial, ethnic and national identity. “It’s not the case that Zohran Mamdani was trying to pull some sleight of hand to try to take advantage of affirmative action. This was a very deep statement about what he believed it was to have grown up in Uganda,” he says.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump this week in Washington, D.C. Trump and Netanyahu are discussing Israel’s war in Gaza, with Netanyahu suggesting that new plans for the forced relocation of refugees to other countries would give Palestinians the “freedom” to choose. But what Palestinians actually want is “the freedom to return to the places from which their families were expelled,” says Peter Beinart, editor-at-large at Jewish Currents and the author of Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. “What kind of freedom is it when you have an area where most of the buildings and the hospitals and the schools and the bakeries and the agriculture have all been destroyed, where you have more child amputees than any other place on Earth?”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Article in Wired magazine by “Beth Mole”

Speaking at an anti-vaccine rally in 2022, Malone spread dangerous falsehoods about mRNA Covid-19 vaccines: “These genetic vaccines can damage your children. They may damage their brains, their heart, their immune system and their ability to have children in the future. Many of these damages cannot be repaired.”

By the way, besides being a pro-pharma propaganda rag, Wired magazine appears to have ties with, shall we say, “the intelligence community”

Hold on to your horses there, “Beth Mole”, Tech Bro.

What do you think myocarditis is? What do you think blood clots do? What do you think the damage to the pituitary/hypothalamac/gonadal axis is? What do you think that passing a decidual clot in a pre-menopausal girl is? Do you think these are not damaging? And you got your training in Pathology and Medicine where?

This is just one of many examples currently being pushed by dead media to delegitimize the current Secretary of Health and Human Services and build the false narrative that both RFK jr and his appointees are wild-eyed crazies.

NBC news, for example, just invents quotes that I did not write concerning Measles and Measles vaccines. Measles vaccines are 60 – 80 % effective, depending on the study and context. That means that, on average, if you expose 100 people to an infectious dose of measles, 20 – 40 of them will get infected. Technically, that is what is called in the business a leaky vaccine. Measles vaccines are live attenuated, and at a low frequency will genetically revert and can cause measles, and others can be infected when this happens. The recent West Texas outbreak happened in a Mennonite community. Mennonites historically, for decades, do not generally vaccinated their children. This has nothing to do with RFK jr. It is a historic fact. An immigrant family introduced wild-type measles into that Mennonite community, and it spread like wildfire – measles virus is extremely infectious but rarely lethal. Some in the surrounding region who thought they were protected became infected. See above statistics. Two young girls died. Their medical records demonstrated that their immediate cause of death were 1) inadequately treated mycoplasma pneumonia, and 2) inadequately treated hospital acquired E coli pneumonia. Not measles.

Another example, from the “Associated Press”, states that “Malone, who runs a wellness institute and a popular blog, rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as he relayed conspiracy theories around the outbreak and the vaccines that followed.” Apparently the Associated Press is confused about the difference between myself and Dr. Peter McCullough. I do not run a “wellness institute”, whereas Peter is the CSO for The Wellness Company. The capabilities of these reporters and their editors to even factcheck their own work product appears to be…. limited.

I have previously written about the roll up smear in our book PsyWar, Enforcing the New World Order, and here is a relatively mild example of that strategy being deployed by the generally more centrist “News Nation”.

The wrap-up Smear is a deflection tactic whereby a smear is made-up and leaked to the press. The press then amplifies the smear and publishes it, which conveys legitimacy. Then another organization or author can use the press coverage of the smear as a validation to write a summary story which is the wrap-up smear.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Malone.

Article in Wired magazine by “Beth Mole”

Speaking at an anti-vaccine rally in 2022, Malone spread dangerous falsehoods about mRNA Covid-19 vaccines: “These genetic vaccines can damage your children. They may damage their brains, their heart, their immune system and their ability to have children in the future. Many of these damages cannot be repaired.”

By the way, besides being a pro-pharma propaganda rag, Wired magazine appears to have ties with, shall we say, “the intelligence community”

Hold on to your horses there, “Beth Mole”, Tech Bro.

What do you think myocarditis is? What do you think blood clots do? What do you think the damage to the pituitary/hypothalamac/gonadal axis is? What do you think that passing a decidual clot in a pre-menopausal girl is? Do you think these are not damaging? And you got your training in Pathology and Medicine where?

This is just one of many examples currently being pushed by dead media to delegitimize the current Secretary of Health and Human Services and build the false narrative that both RFK jr and his appointees are wild-eyed crazies.

NBC news, for example, just invents quotes that I did not write concerning Measles and Measles vaccines. Measles vaccines are 60 – 80 % effective, depending on the study and context. That means that, on average, if you expose 100 people to an infectious dose of measles, 20 – 40 of them will get infected. Technically, that is what is called in the business a leaky vaccine. Measles vaccines are live attenuated, and at a low frequency will genetically revert and can cause measles, and others can be infected when this happens. The recent West Texas outbreak happened in a Mennonite community. Mennonites historically, for decades, do not generally vaccinated their children. This has nothing to do with RFK jr. It is a historic fact. An immigrant family introduced wild-type measles into that Mennonite community, and it spread like wildfire – measles virus is extremely infectious but rarely lethal. Some in the surrounding region who thought they were protected became infected. See above statistics. Two young girls died. Their medical records demonstrated that their immediate cause of death were 1) inadequately treated mycoplasma pneumonia, and 2) inadequately treated hospital acquired E coli pneumonia. Not measles.

Another example, from the “Associated Press”, states that “Malone, who runs a wellness institute and a popular blog, rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as he relayed conspiracy theories around the outbreak and the vaccines that followed.” Apparently the Associated Press is confused about the difference between myself and Dr. Peter McCullough. I do not run a “wellness institute”, whereas Peter is the CSO for The Wellness Company. The capabilities of these reporters and their editors to even factcheck their own work product appears to be…. limited.

I have previously written about the roll up smear in our book PsyWar, Enforcing the New World Order, and here is a relatively mild example of that strategy being deployed by the generally more centrist “News Nation”.

The wrap-up Smear is a deflection tactic whereby a smear is made-up and leaked to the press. The press then amplifies the smear and publishes it, which conveys legitimacy. Then another organization or author can use the press coverage of the smear as a validation to write a summary story which is the wrap-up smear.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Malone.

On 2 November 2008, the New York Times Magazine headlined “Questions for James K. Galbraith: The Populist,” which was an “Interview by Deborah Solomon” of the prominent liberal economist and son of John Kenneth Galbraith. She asked him, “There are at least 15,000 professional economists in this country, and you’re saying only two or three of them foresaw the mortgage crisis” which had brought on the second Great Depression?

He answered: “Ten or twelve would be closer than two or three.”

She very appropriately followed up immediately with “What does this say about the field of economics, which claims to be a science?”

He didn’t answer by straight-out saying that economics isn’t any more of a science than physics was before Galileo, or than biology was before Darwin. He didn’t proceed to explain that the very idea of a Nobel Prize in Economics was based upon a lie which alleged that economics was the first field to become scientific within all of the “social sciences,” when, in fact, there weren’t yet any social sciences, none yet at all. But he came close to admitting these things, when he said: “It’s an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless.” His term “useless” was a euphemism for false. His term “blot” was a euphemism for “nullification.”

On 9 January 2009, economist Jeff Madrick headlined at The Daily Beast, “How the Entire Economics Profession Failed,” and he opened:

At the annual meeting of American Economists, most everyone refused to admit their failures to prepare or warn about the second worst crisis of the century.

I could find no shame in the halls of the San Francisco Hilton, the location at the annual meeting of American economists. Mainstream economists from major universities dominate the meetings, and some of them are the anointed cream of the crop, including former Clinton, Bush and even Reagan advisers.

There was no session on the schedule about how the vast majority of economists should deal with their failure to anticipate or even seriously warn about the possibility that the second worst economic crisis of the last hundred years was imminent.

I heard no calls to reform educational curricula because of a crisis so threatening and surprising that it undermines, at least if the academicians were honest, the key assumptions of the economic theory currently being taught. …

I found no one fundamentally changing his or her mind about the value of economics, economists, or their work.”

He observed a scandalous profession of quacks who are satisfied to remain quacks. The public possesses faith in them because it possesses faith in the “invisible hand” of God, and everyone is taught to believe in that from the crib. In no way is it science.

In a science, when facts prove that the theory is false, the theory gets replaced, it’s no longer taught. In a scholarly field, however, that’s not so — proven-false theory continues being taught. In economics, the proven-false theory continued being taught, and still continues today to be taught. This demonstrates that economics is still a religion or some other type of philosophy, not yet any sort of science.

Mankind is still coming out of the Dark Ages. The Bible is still being viewed as history, not as myth (which it is), not as some sort of religious or even political propaganda. It makes a difference — a huge difference: the difference between truth and falsehood.

The Dutch economist Dirk J. Bezemer, at Groningen University, posted on 16 June 2009 a soon-classic paper, “‘No One Saw This Coming’: Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models,” in which he surveyed the work of 12 economists who did see it (the economic collapse of 2008) coming; and he found there that they had all used accounting or “Flow of Funds” models, instead of the standard microeconomic theory. (In other words: they accounted for, instead of ignored, debts.) From 2005 through 2007, these accounting-based economists had published specific and accurate predictions of what would happen: Dean Baker, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Stephen (“Steve”) Keen, Jakob B. Madsen, Jens K. Sorensen, Kurt Richebaecher, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, and Robert Shiller.

He should have added several others. Paul Krugman, wrote a NYT column on 12 August 2005 headlined “Safe as Houses” and he said “Houses aren’t safe at all” and that they would likely decline in price. On 25 August 2006, he bannered “Housing Gets Ugly” and concluded “It’s hard to see how we can avoid a serious slowdown.” Bezemer should also have included Merrill Lynch’s Chief North American Economist, David A. Rosenberg, whose The Market Economist article “Rosie’s Housing Call August 2004” on 6 August 2004 already concluded, “The housing sector has entered a ‘bubble’ phase,” and who presented a series of graphs showing it. Bezemer should also have included Satyajit Das, about whom TheStreet had headlined on 21 September 21 2007, “The Credit Crisis Could Be Just Beginning.” He should certainly have included Ann Pettifor, whose 2003 The Real World Economic Outlook, and her masterpiece the 2006 The Coming First World Debt Crisis, predicted exactly what happened and why. Her next book, the 2009 The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Bankers, was almost a masterpiece, but it failed to present any alternative to the existing microeconomic theory — as if microeconomic theory isn’t a necessary part of economic theory. Another great economist he should have mentioned was Charles Hugh Smith, who had been accurately predicting since at least 2005 the sequence of events that culminated in the 2008 collapse. And Bezemer should especially have listed the BIS’s chief economist, William White, regarding whom Germany’s Spiegel headlined on 8 July 2009, “Global Banking Economist Warned of Coming Crisis.” (It is about but doesn’t mention nor link to https://www.bis.org/publ/work147.pdf.) White had been at war against the policies of America’s Fed chief Alan Greenspan ever since 1998, and especially since 2003, but the world’s aristocrats muzzled White’s view and promoted Greenspan’s instead. (The economics profession have always been propagandists for the super-rich.) Bezemer should also have listed Charles R. Morris, who in 2007 told his publisher Peter Osnos that the crash would start in Summer 2008, which was basically correct. Moreover, James K. Galbraith had written for years saying that a demand-led depression would result, such as in his American Prospect “How the Economists Got It Wrong,” 30 November 2002; and “Bankers Versus Base,” 15 April 2004, and culminating finally in his 2008 The Predator State, which blamed the aristocracy in the strongest possible terms for the maelstrom to come. Bezemer should also have listed Barry Ritholtz, who, in his “Recession Predictor,” on 18 August 2005, noted the optimistic view of establishment economists and then said, “I disagree … due to Psychology of consumers.” He noted “consumer debt, not as a percentage of GDP, but relative to net asset wealth,” and also declining “median personal income,” as pointing toward a crash from this mounting debt-overload. Then, on 31 May 2006, he headlined “Recent Housing Data: Charts & Analysis,” and opened: “It has long been our view that Real Estate is the prime driver of this economy, and its eventual cooling will be a major crimp in GDP, durable goods, and consumer spending.” Bezemer should also have listed both Paul Kasriel and Asha Bangalore at Northern Trust. Kasriel headlined on 22 May 2007, “US Economy May Wake Up Without Consumers’ Prodding?” and said it wouldn’t happen – and consumers were too much in debt. Then on 8 August 2007, he bannered: “US Economic Growth in Domestic Final Demand,” and said that “the housing recession is … spreading to other parts of the economy.” On 25 May 2006, Bangalore headlined “Housing Market Is Cooling Down, No Doubts About It.” and that was one of two Asha Bangalore articles which were central to Ritholtz’s 31 May 2006 article showing that all of the main indicators pointed to a plunge in house-prices that had started in March 2005; so, by May 2006, it was already clear from the relevant data, that a huge economic crash was comning soon. Another whom Bezemer should have listed was L. Randall Wray, whose 2005 Levy Economics Institute article, “The Ownership Society: Social Security Is Only the Beginning” asserted that it was being published “at the peak of what appears to be a real estate bubble.” Bezemer should also have listed Paul B. Farrell, columnist at marketwatch.com, who saw practically all the correct signs, in his 26 June 2005 “Global Megabubble? You Decide. Real Estate Is Only Tip of Iceberg; or Is It?”; and his 17 July 2005 “Best Strategies to Beat the Megabubble: Real Estate Bubble Could Trigger Global Economic Meltdown”; and his 9 January 2006 “Meltdown in 2006? Cast Your Vote”; and 15 May 2006 “Party Time (Until Real Estate Collapses)”; and his 21 August 2006 “Tipping Point Pops Bubble, Triggers Bear: Ten Warnings the Economy, Markets Have Pushed into Danger Zone”; and his 30 July 2007 “You Pick: Which of 20 Tipping Points Ignites Long Bear Market?” Farrell’s commentaries also highlighted the same reform-recommendations that most of the others did, such as Baker, Keen, Pettifor, Galbraith, Ritholtz, and Wray; such as break up the mega-banks, and stiffen regulation of financial institutions. However, the vast majority of academically respected economists disagreed with all of this and were wildly wrong in their predictions, and in their analyses. The Nobel Committee should have withdrawn their previous awards in economics to still-practicing economists (except to Krugman who did win a Nobel) and re-assigned them to these 25 economists, who showed that they had really deserved it.

And there was another: economicpredictions.org tracked four economists who predicted correctly the 2008 crash: Dean Baker, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, and Med Jones, the latter of whom had actually the best overall record regarding the predictions that were tracked there.

And still others should also be on the list: for example, Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider headlined on 21 November 2012, “The Genius Who Invented Economics Blogging Reveals How He Got Everything Right And What’s Coming Next” and he interviewed Bill McBride, who had started his calculated riskblog in January 2005. So I looked in the archives there at December 2005, and noticed December 28th, “Looking Forward: 2006 Top Economic Stories.” He started there with four trends that he expected everyone to think of, and then listed another five that weren’t so easy, including “Housing Slowdown. In my opinion, the Housing Bubble was the top economic story of 2005, but I expect the slowdown to be a form of Chinese water torture. Sales for both existing and new homes will probably fall next year from the records set in 2005. And median prices will probably increase slightly, with declines in the more ‘heated markets.’” McBride also had predicted that the economic rebound would start in 2009, and he was now, in 2012, predicting a strong 2013. Probably Joe Weisenthal was right in calling McBride a “Genius.”

And also, Mike Whitney at InformationClearinghouse.info and other sites, headlined on 20 November 2006, “Housing Bubble Smack-Down,” and he nailed the credit-boom and Fed easy-money policy as the cause of the housing bubble and the source of an imminent crash.

Furthermore, Ian Welsh headlined on 28 November 2007, “Looking Forward At the Consequences of This Bubble Bursting,” and listed 10 features of the crash to come, of which 7 actually happened.

In addition, Gail Tverberg, an actuary, headlined on 9 January 2008 “Peak Oil and the Financial Markets: A Forecast for 2008,” and provided the most detailed of all the prescient descriptions of the collapse that would happen that year.

Furthermore, Gary Shilling’s January 2007 Insight newsletter listed “12 investment themes” which described perfectly what subsequently happened, starting with “The housing bubble has burst.”

And the individual investing blogger Jesse Colombo started noticing the housing bubble even as early as 6 September 2004, blogging at his stock-market-crash.net “The Housing Bubble” and documenting that it would happen (“Here is the evidence that we are in a massive housing bubble:”) and what the economic impact was going to be. Then on 7 February 2006 he headlined “The Coming Crash!” and said “Based on today’s overvalued housing prices, a 20 percent crash is certainly in the cards.”

Also: Stephanie Pomboy of MacroMavens issued an analysis and appropriate graphs on 7 December 2007, headlined “When Animals Attack” and predicting imminently a huge economic crash.

In alphabetical order, they are: Dean Baker, Asha Bangalore, Jesse Colombo, Satyajit Das, Paul B. Farrell, James K. Galbraith, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Med Jones, Paul Kasriel, Steve Keen, Paul Krugman, Jakob B. Madsen, Bill McBride, Charles R. Morris, Ann Pettifor, Stehanie Pomboy, Kurt Richebaeker, Barry Ritholtz, David A. Rosenberg, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, Robert Shiller, Gary Shilling, Charles Hugh Smith, Jens K. Sorensen, Gail Tverberg, Ian Welsh, William White, Mike Whitney, L. Randall Wray.

Thus, at least 33 economists were contenders as having been worth their salt as economic professionals. One can say that only 33 economists predicted the 2008 collapse, or that only 33 economists predicted accurately or reasonably accurately the collapse. However, some of those 33 were’t actually professional economists. So, some of the world’s 33 best economists aren’t even professional economists, as accepted in that rotten profession.

So, the few honest and open-eyed economists (these 33, at least) tried to warn the world. Did the economics profession honor them for their having foretold the 2008 collapse? Did President Barack Obama hire them, and fire the incompetents he had previously hired for his Council of Economic Advisers? Did the Nobel Committee acknowledge that it had given Nobel Economics Prizes to the wrong people, including people such as the conservative Milton Friedman whose works were instrumental in causing the 2008 crash? Also complicit in causing the 2008 crash was the multiple-award-winning liberal economist Lawrence Summers, who largely agreed with Friedman but was nonetheless called a liberal. Evidently, the world was too corrupt for any of these 33 to reach such heights of power or of authority. Like Galbraith had said at the close of his 2002 “How the Economists Got It Wrong“: “Being right doesn’t count for much in this club.” If anything, being right means being excluded from such posts. In an authentically scientific field, the performance of one’s predictions (their accuracy) is the chief (if not SOLE) determinant of one’s reputation and honor amongst the profession, but that’s actually not the way things yet are in any of the social “sciences,” including economics; they’re all just witch-doctory, not yet real science. The fraudulence of these fields is just ghastly. In fact, as Steve Keen scandalously noted in Chapter 7 of his 2001 Debunking Economics: “As this book shows, economics [theory] is replete with logical inconsistencies.” In any science, illogic is the surest sign of non-science, but it is common and accepted in the social ‘sciences’, including economics. The economics profession itself is garbage, a bad joke, instead of any science at all.

These 33 were actually only candidates for being scientific economists, but I have found the predictions of some of them to have been very wrong on some subsequent matters of economic performance. For example, the best-known of the 33, Paul Krugman, is a “military Keynesian” — a liberal neoconservative (and military Keynesianism is empirically VERY discredited: false worldwide, and false even in the country that champions it, the U.S.) — and he is unfavorable toward the poor, and favorable toward the rich; so, he is acceptable to the Establishment.) Perhaps a few of these 33 economists (perhaps half of whom aren’t even members of the economics profession) ARE scientific (in their underlying economic beliefs — their operating economic theory) if a scientific economics means that it’s based upon a scientific theory of economics — a theory that is derived not from any opinions but only from the relevant empirical data. Although virtually all of the 33 are basically some sort of Keynesian, even that (Keynes’s theory) isn’t a full-fledged theory of economics (it has many vagaries, and it has no microeconomics). The economics profession is still a field of philosophy, instead of a field of science.

The last chapter of my America’s Empire of Evil presents what I believe to be the first-ever scientific theory of economics, a theory that replaces all of microeconomic theory (including a micro that’s integrated with its macro) and is consistent with Keynes in macroeconomic theory; and all of which theory is derived and documented from only the relevant empirical economic data — NOT from anyone’s opinions. The economics profession think that replacing existing economic theory isn’t necessary after the crash of 2008, but I think it clearly IS necessary (because — as that chapter of my book shows — all of the relevant empirical economic data CONTRADICT the existing economic theory, ESPECIALLY the existing microeconomic theory).

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

President Trump’s plan to fuse government power with private surveillance tech to build a centralized, national citizen database is the final step in transforming America from a constitutional republic into a digital dictatorship armed with algorithms and powered by unaccountable, all-seeing artificial intelligence.

This isn’t about national security. It’s about control.

According to news reports, the Trump administration is quietly collaborating with Palantir Technologies—the data-mining behemoth co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel—to construct a centralized, government-wide surveillance system that would consolidate biometric, behavioral, and geolocation data into a single, weaponized database of Americans’ private information.

This isn’t about protecting freedom. It’s about rendering freedom obsolete.

What we’re witnessing is the transformation of America into a digital prison—one where the inmates are told we’re free while every move, every word, every thought is monitored, recorded, and used to assign a “threat score” that determines our place in the new hierarchy of obedience.

The tools enabling this all-seeing surveillance regime are not new, but under Trump’s direction, they are being fused together in unprecedented ways, with Palantir at the center of this digital dragnet.

Palantir, long criticized for its role in powering ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids and predictive policing, is now poised to become the brain of Trump’s surveillance regime.

Under the guise of “data integration” and “public safety,” this public-private partnership would deploy AI-enhanced systems to comb through everything from facial recognition feeds and license plate readers to social media posts and cellphone metadata, cross-referencing it all to assess a person’s risk to the state.

This isn’t speculative. It’s already happening.

Palantir’s Gotham platform, used by law enforcement and military agencies, has long been the backbone of real-time tracking and predictive analysis. Now, with Trump’s backing, it threatens to become the central nervous system of a digitally enforced authoritarianism.

As Palantir itself admits, its mission is to “augment human decision-making.” In practice, that means replacing probable cause with probability scores, courtrooms with code, and due process with data pipelines.

In this new regime, your innocence will be irrelevant. The algorithm will decide who you are.

To understand the full danger of this moment, we must trace the long arc of government surveillance—from secret intelligence programs like COINTELPRO and the USA PATRIOT Act to today’s AI-driven digital dragnet embodied by data fusion centers.

Building on this foundation of historical abuse, the government has evolved its tactics, replacing human informants with algorithms and wiretaps with metadata, ushering in an age where pre-crime prediction is treated as prosecution.

Every smartphone ping, GPS coordinate, facial scan, online purchase, and social media like becomes part of your “digital exhaust”—a breadcrumb trail of metadata that the government now uses to build behavioral profiles. The FBI calls it “open-source intelligence.” But make no mistake: this is dragnet surveillance, and it is fundamentally unconstitutional.

Already, government agencies are mining this data to generate “pattern of life” analyses, flag “radicalized” individuals, and preemptively investigate those who merely share anti-government views.

This is not law enforcement. This is thought-policing by machine, the logical outcome of a system that criminalizes dissent and deputizes algorithms to do the targeting.

Nor is this entirely new.

For decades, the federal government has reportedly maintained a highly classified database known as Main Core, designed to collect and store information on Americans deemed potential threats to national security.

As Tim Shorrock reported for Salon, “One former intelligence official described Main Core as ‘an emergency internal security database system’ designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law.”

Trump’s embrace of Palantir, and its unparalleled ability to fuse surveillance feeds, social media metadata, public records, and AI-driven predictions, marks a dangerous evolution: a modern-day resurrection of Main Core, digitized, centralized, and fully automated.

What was once covert contingency planning is now becoming active policy.

What has emerged is a surveillance model more vast than anything dreamed up by past regimes—a digital panopticon in which every citizen is watched constantly, and every move is logged in a government database—not by humans, but by machines without conscience, without compassion, and without constitutional limits.

This is not science fiction. This is America—now.

As this technological tyranny expands, the foundational safeguards of the Constitution—those supposed bulwarks against arbitrary power—are quietly being nullified and its protections rendered meaningless.

What does the Fourth Amendment mean in a world where your entire life can be searched, sorted, and scored without a warrant? What does the First Amendment mean when expressing dissent gets you flagged as an extremist? What does the presumption of innocence mean when algorithms determine guilt?

The Constitution was written for humans, not for machine rule. It cannot compete with predictive analytics trained to bypass rights, sidestep accountability, and automate tyranny.

And that is the endgame: the automation of authoritarianism. An unblinking, AI-powered surveillance regime that renders due process obsolete and dissent fatal.

Still, it is not too late to resist—but doing so requires awareness, courage, and a willingness to confront the machinery of our own captivity.

Make no mistake: the government is not your friend in this. Neither are the corporations building this digital prison. They thrive on your data, your fear, and your silence.

To resist, we must first understand the weaponized AI tools being used against us.

We must demand transparency, enforce limits on data collection, ban predictive profiling, and dismantle the fusion centers feeding this machine.

We must treat AI surveillance with the same suspicion we once reserved for secret police. Because that is what AI-powered governance has become—secret police, only smarter, faster, and less accountable.

We don’t have much time.

Trump’s alliance with Palantir is a warning sign—not just of where we are, but of where we’re headed. A place where freedom is conditional, rights are revocable, and justice is decided by code.

The question is no longer whether we’re being watched—that is now a given—but whether we will meekly accept it. Will we dismantle this electronic concentration camp, or will we continue building the infrastructure of our own enslavement?

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we trade liberty for convenience and privacy for security, we will find ourselves locked in a prison we helped build, and the bars won’t be made of steel. They will be made of data.

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

The Trump administration has tapped Palantir — the notorious data-mining firm co-founded by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel — to compile information on people in the United States for a “master database,” creating an easy way to cross-reference sensitive data from tax records, immigration records and more. Palantir also has a $30 million contract with ICE to provide almost real-time visibility into immigrants’ movements as the agency seeks to arrest 3,000 people a day. Wired reporter Makena Kelly says the company is “becoming an operation system for the entire government,” and describes how Palantir’s contracts with the Trump administration are an outgrowth of work done by Elon Musk’s DOGE which aims to “centralize data all across government.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Yet concrete action to end this calamity is hard to organize. How does a genocide end? And specifically, how do people of conscience, acting with majority support of the US public, organize to end it?

The lack of true democracy in the United States, so evident in domestic policy on many issues, is even worse in terms of foreign policy, especially regarding the mostly ironclad support for Israel. However, cracks are showing, and they must be exploited quickly.

Earlier this week, US Senator Peter Welch (D-VT) brought his S. Res. 224, calling for an end to the humanitarian blockade on Gaza, to the Senate floor. The resolution had the support of all Democrats, except Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and the two Independents who caucus with the Democrats, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Angus King (I-ME).

The resolution was predictably blocked from getting a vote by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair James Risch (R-ID), but was significant as no other legislative measure in the year and half since the war on Gaza began has garnered such widespread, albeit partisan support (no Republicans supported it, nor have any called for a ceasefire or cutting off US weapons to Israel).

A companion resolution in the House of Representatives will be introduced very soon, and while both would be non-binding, they represent progress in the long struggle to exert pressure on Israel, and Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem are keenly aware of US political developments. Additionally, the Senate will likely soon vote on Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs) to stop specific US weapons transfers to Israel. Sen. Sanders forced such votes twice since November, and while they failed, the upcoming votes should attract more support, and add to the pressure on the Israeli government, which of course is opposed by most Israelis.

Legislative initiatives are far from the only strategies and tactics being employed by peace and human rights activists. Other recent and upcoming events and opportunities include the following:

Activists led by Montgomery County, Maryland Peace Action showed up at new US Senator Angela Alsobrooks’ “Sick of It” rally protesting the Trump/Musk cuts to health programs, and had a strong showing about also being sick of the Gaza genocide, including confronting the senator. It may have had some impact, as she later signed onto Sen. Welch’s resolution, after having been largely silent on the genocide in Gaza, and voting against Sen. Sanders’ most recent JRDs.

The impressive anti-genocide commencement speech by George Washington University student Cecelia Culver has received significant media coverage. She is now shamefully being investigated by the university. Similarly, New York University student Logan Rozos condemned the Gaza genocide in his commencement speech, and the university is withholding his diploma. Both students, along with other students similarly persecuted for speaking out for an end to the horrors in Gaza, deserve support and solidarity.

Reprising and expanding an effort from last year, New Hampshire peace activist Bob Sanders is conducting a cross country bike ride to raise awareness of the dire situation in Gaza.

Veterans for Peace and other allies are supporting a 40 day fast for Peace in Gaza.

Groups in the Philadelphia will hold a People’s War Crimes Tribunal on May 31, building on the difficult but necessary advocacy aimed at Sen. Fetterman.

Lastly, Do Not Turn on Us is a new initiative calling on military and National Guard personnel to refuse unlawful, fascist orders. While more aimed at stopping fascism in the United States, it certainly is a contribution to the overall movement to establish peace, human rights and the rule of law, domestically and internationally.

Will any of these efforts, along with many others, overcome powerful political forces that perpetuate genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid against the Palestinian people? No one can know for sure, but all are worthy of support and persistence. As Ms. Culver stated, none of us are free until Palestine is free.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kevin Martin.

My first thought on seeing Peter Beinhart’s title — Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning (2025) — was: Argh. More Jewish angst, holier-than-thou hand-wringing, but leading nowhere. Half-way through I had completely changing my mind. Angst, yes. But lots of meat to chew on, ok, spitting out some grissle, but it was mostly intelligent, informative, and even inspiring (for a goy no less). Beinhart marshalls statistics that confirm my own extreme anger at not just Jews but anyone who does not mobilize themselves to fight this ongoing, LIVE, genocide.

The West’s indifference to an ongoing genocide is more than shameful. Israel participates in Eurovision, its sports teams compete with only the occasional MUSLIM refusing to spar with his/her competitor from the genocidal state. Almost no one besides Muslims is concerned, donating charity, actively opposing Israel.

None of my five siblings can be bothered, unless buying Palestinian olive oil counts. All of us are ‘rich’. I’m rich, even if I go to a food bank. It’s all in your mind. The poor are always more generous than the rich. Shame on anyone who ignores genocide just because they feel helpless to stop it. Beinhart’s ashamed to be Jewish. I’m just as ashamed as a non-Jew. One of my favourite Muslim hadiths (in my free-verse version): Speak truth to an unjust ruler; if that’s impossible, then talk about it with others; if that’s impossible, then at least think about it, write about it, use any chance to protest.

The whole world is reliving 1930s-40s Germany, 1960s US deep south and Vietnam, though it probably feels even worse now to anyone who cares, as we watch live, day after day, already two years, the IDF deliberately slaughtering civilans (even beheading babies while falsely claiming it is Hamas doing this). How can Israelis, Jews, being so consciously, conscientiously EVIL?

And guess what? Anti-Jewish feelings, acts have gone through the roof. Nice educated college students angrily call out kippa-wearing Jewish classmates as supporters of genocide. Which they are. I’m too polite to ‘speak truth’ there (there is a 0.1% chance the kippa-wearer doesn’t actually like the horrors being perpetrated IN HIS NAME). The Zionist lobby has locked up free speech in the interests of genocide. If you criticize Israel, you are ANTI-SEMITIC, so kippa-wearers are walking targets. Beware. Take it off till the genocide stops or you are fair victim. Better yet, join an encampment, a demo.

Beinhart would be shocked at my savagery. Tsk, tsk. He protests this conflation, but, sorry, the tyrants in power aren’t listening to your sweet nothings. But my bitching and anger will turn to love if Israel stops acting like Nazi Germany. So don’t blame angry goys for not dotting your ‘i’s.

That is one of his weaknesses as a fervent, practicing Jew. Haven’t you figured out yet, Peter, that Judaism is dead? Israel killed it, along with (still counting) millions of dead, millions crippled and millions more displaced Palestinians, not to mention Iraq, Syria, Lebanon. Neturei karta and Satmar are nice but have no effect. They are the token anit-Zionists to prove that all Jews aren’t evil, but what good does that do except hobble what should be fierce pressure on all Jews to do something to stop the madness?

Silver bullet for peace

Beinhart grew up in South Africa under apartheid so he doesn’t need the Israeli version to understand the evil at play. Afrikaners saw black Africa as barbarism and dysfunction, and justified themselves, their violent repression of blacks as second class drudges(not citizens), by arguing the blacks would kill the whites otherwise.

Now, looking back, he sees the same false story in northern Ireland and in the US south. And the proof that this story is false is that in each case, when the oppression ends with liberation, the armed resistance movements of the blacks in Africa and the US, the Catholics in northern Ireland melted away. That’s what even our pathetic Conciliation Commission in Canada with our genocided natives was all about. We Canadians have done a half-assed job of reconciliation, but still the natives don’t slit our throats.

He sees the proof in Israeli Palestinians, who are still second class drudges but CITIZEN drudges. That’s the key. They have a vote, political parties, even representation in the government on rare occasions. That’s all the Gazans and West Bankers want. To be treated like human beings, citizens, even if still second class. That is still wrong, but is a huge step forward. Imagine if Israel made everyone citizens. The thought of a liberated Middle East (NOT Trump’s Club Med) is exhilarating. Do Israelis need reeducation camps, like in Vietnam after the liberation in 1975? Maybe. Certainly new history books. Not their perverse history of victimhood, as Beinhart jokingly summarized in his chapter one title: They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat.

Beinhart was/is himself a Zionist, though now recondite. He loves Buber and others who promoted a caring Zionism. Sorry, Peter. That gentle version never had a chance before Israel was declared the Jewish State, and certainly has no chance now. There were similarly National Socialists who promoted a less toxic Nazism, Strasserism, but they were purged by Netanyahu (sorry, Hitler) or fled abroad. Speaking of which, Toronto has the largest Israeli population outside the ‘fatherland’. Now hundred(s) of thousands of Israelis are abandoning ship, the nicer ones, who, if they had stayed, might have tried stopping the madness. Instead they leave behind the bloodthirsty, murderous settlers, toxic American, British and Russian fanatics, not taking any responsibility themselves as Jews for their Jewish tribe’s crimes.

You can’t have your Purim cookie and eat it

Purim celebrations: Israelis’ love of genocide derives from the Purim story of the slaughter of 75,000 Persians ‘in self-defense’, using Esther (concubine/ prostitute) as a honey-trap. The cookies represent tyrant Haman and his sons’ ears.

Judaism used to be the exalted granddaddy of monotheism. Christians took the Old Testament (OT) with all its Jewish supremacism as the truth. Though Jews were feared and reviled as outsiders, usurers, schemers, the religion was always respected, along with the prophecy that Jews will ‘go back’ in the endtimes.

This vague notion became a fact in the 1820s, a British imperial project, a 9th Crusade, a proto-Israel in the minds of British Christian Zionists, whose love-hate for Judaism-Jews convinced them to export all Jews to the Holy Land. Israel was conceived as the pet project of (very anti-Jewish) Christian-Zionist Lord Palmerston, which came to life with the invention of the steamship, the leading-edge tech. Palmerston immediately used it to — guess what? — wage war, obliterating Akka (Crusader Acre, Hebrew Akko) in 1840 with British cannons and this new fangled hot air machine (the Brits needed Mount Lebanon’s high-grade coal to fuel their steamships). ‘Not a sign of endtimes but as a new era of prosperity.’¹

The new war-tech allowed Britain to seize control of Egypt (the Suez Canal) by the 1870s. Capitulations to French, British, Russian and US trade and Christian agents in the Levant under the Ottomans prepared the way for divvying up the Ottoman spoils when the time was ripe (1918). So when wealthy Rothschilds-type Jews decided they would like to dabble in creating their own nation, it was readily accepted by imperial Britain. From the first Zionist conference in 1897 to the Balfour declaration in 1917, Israel became the key actor in a new Crusade to ‘free’ the Holy Land (and its oil riches).

The Brits could get rid of their Jews, and those rich Jews could have their very own Jewish state. Win-win. WWII was the final touch, the get-out-of-jail card, a passport to a racial state for the Chosen People, a state without morals, i.e., f*#k the world, international law, kill, kill, steal, steal, dispossess, trick, torture until – poof! – no more natives standing in your way. That was more or less British colonial policy anyway. There were no ‘nays’, or at least none that got any traction in Westminster or the mainstream press.

In the process, Judaism has been reduced to just an old boy’s club, a way to get the edge over goys, who have no rich, influential tribe to help them move up the greasy pole. Hillel House won’t have a speaker who criticizes Israel, Zionism, but undermining belief, promotion of atheism? No problemo.

Wake up Peter! You admit that even US Jews, the heretics, are arrested now, deplatformed, kicked out of university for protesting Israel, excommunicated from the tribe, but still argue that there is no justification for targeting Jews as A TRIBE. But Israel preempted you. Israel wants kippa-wearers to be targetted. Which means that kippa-wearing Jews who parade their Jewishness (Israel-lovers) are by default part of the problem – unless they are vocal opponents of Israeli war crimes and their kippa is to defy the craven kippa-wearing Zios. You can’t eat your blood-soaked Purim cookies, shaped as heads of the decapitated Palestinians (sorry, Persians) and have them too.

Beinhart argues eloquently in his dynamite last chapter, Korach’s children, that Moses’s opponent, Korach (All the community are holy, all of them, and God is in their midst.), was indeed wrong for claiming that the tribe’s chosenness meant a ‘free pass’. That they didn’t need Moses and his tiresome commandments demanding that they be good Jews. For Moses, chosenness meant responsibility for your own sins. Korach is identical to the Zionists today. Your genes (or very rigorous conversion, including Zionism) give you a ‘free pass’. Your only ‘responsibility’ is to defend the state of Israel, which can do no wrong as it’s, well, ISRAEL. So just shut up and let’s eat our bloody cookies!

This is idol worship. The Jewish state replaces God in a secular Israel. This isn’t the first time Jews have been called on the carpet for worshipping idols. The Golden Calf is just the most colourful biblical story, and the consequences are always dire. Lots of exile as punishment. In fact, Jewish ‘history’ is one long litany of Jews screwing up and God getting very angry and punishing them. So stop playing victim. Own up to your sins. Stop worshipping idols.

The other jewcy bits are the OT genocides. The Zionist Mephistopheles Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and Israel’s first Prime Minister Ben Gurion, both atheists, both loved the story of Joshua, who delivered the ‘promised land’ by wiping out all the Palestinians of the day, the Amalek.² The Zionists celebrate this original sin/theft and use it to justify their present-day genocide. Purim is the icing on the cake.

Beinhart mentions Jewish supremacists of the past – 11th century Spanish poet Yehuda Halevi (living happily under Islamic rule in Andalou), the 16th century rabbi Maharal of Prague, 18thc Hasids in Poland, the list goes on. Idols are the Jews’ downfall. Hello, Israel. And hello, anti-Jewish prejudice. When you see yourself as superior to the goys around you, you invite resentment. Beinhart doesn’t go the extra mile here, dismissing a few dreamers in Moorish Spain or the Silesian shtetl. They didn’t have the power to do anything about it. Sure, but their supremacist behaviour continually bred resentment. Pogroms against Jews? Yes, but by isolating your tribe, insisting on being superior, when things go wrong, Jews make great scapegoats. Surprise, surprise.

Enter, stage right

Jews live in a different world now, where they are the richest and most powerful tribe around, with steel-plated armour against criticism, and where you can’t say any of this in mainstream media without being roasted, sliced and eaten like a Purim cookie. So Beinhart’s soul-searching and his new-found Palestinian friends is all very well, but not enough. He just can’t give up his youthful devotion to Israel as the Jewish state. Pigs really can fly.

*He quotes IF Stone: Israel is creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world Jewry, depending on the maintenance of secular, non-racial, pluralistic societies but championing a Jewish state in which the ideal is racial and exclusionist.³

*bemoans Brandeis University for banning a pro-Palestine group, so students could ‘feel safe in their Jewish identity.’

*is appalled at how Israel is cozying up to neo-fascists in Europe and America, abandoning Jewish progressives.

And still doesn’t see that an ethnic state is exactly what Hitler created, that the problem is with Zionism. An ethnic state stinks of colonialism or worse. That era ended in the 1960s-1980s with the liberation of Africa. Israel is dragging the whole world back into the worst form of that nightmare world, Hitler’s Germany, bent on wiping out Amalek/Untermenschen and colonizing the world. But then Beinhart is already pilloried and denied his soapbox in Hillel House and other Jewish-controlled places, so thank you Peter for going as far as you go.

As I read, I couldn’t help comparing Judaism and Islam. While Judaism is a closed religion, not seeking converts, Islam actively promotes conversion. When you become a Muslim (born or converted, it’s the fastest growing religion), you become part of the ‘chosen’. But Islam means ‘submission’. And all colours are welcome. O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you.(49.13). Of course there are bigoted Muslims, tribal Muslims, oily Muslims, but arrogance and racism are universally frowned on. There is no celebration in the Quran or Hadith of massacring Amalek as a template for committing genocide. It’s the OT that is genocidal, jingoistic.

There are ‘Islamic states’, which are riddled with problems, but unlike in Israel, there are no Untermenschen. All states are suspect in both Judaism and Islam, especially monarchies, which were the normal state structure of two millennia ago, and which often ended up with ‘divine right’ kings who acted like God, idols, and brought about their own demise. The Prophet Muhammad presciently warned against kings, not anointing his blood relative Ali as his inheritor, calling on his followers to elect their own ‘caliph’. Islam was almost destroyed when a later caliph Muawiya appointed his incompetent son Yazid to succeed him. As for Muslim rule, Jews have always lived well under Islamic rule, from Spain to Afghanistan.

Until Israel reared its ugly head. That angered all Muslims, which delighted Zionists, whose plan was to scare all diaspora Jews into coming to Israel. We killed them, let’s eat. It didn’t work, but it did destroy precious ancient Jewish cultures throughout the Middle East, and brought suddenly unhappy Mizrahi Jews to live as second class Jewish citizens, learn an artificial Hebrew, under ‘white’ European Jews as masters.

So, for all the backsliding of Muslims over the past millennium and a half, idol worship was never one of its failings. Muslims know that being ‘chosen’ means hard work. Fasting, praying, charity, pilgrimage, study. Lazy Muslims don’t brag about their failings. An atheist Muslim is an oxymoron. This contrasts sharply with not only Jewish centres like Hillel, but even Christian churches, some of which preach atheism.

2025 – Palestine’s year

Palestine has finally made the bestseller list. Another fine book, Andreas Malm’s The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth, relates the origins of Israel, how the British invention of the steamship was the technological breakthrough of the day, giving British a few decades of ocean supremacy, feeding the new racial supremacism that saw European smarts capturing (literally) the entire world, to colonize, exploit, destroy cultures, peoples, genocide, all the great things that made us westerners the new ‘chosen race’. Israel should be celebrating its bicentennial, with Akko the capital.

Malm poignantly goes the extra miles on the environmental destruction that Israel is responsible for. Nice irony: Israel is poisoning itself by dropping toxic bombs just a few miles from Tel Aviv. Nature knows no bounds. It also is the incentive for all the Arab oil sheikhs to blow $100s of billions on weapons of mass destruction — which all our high-faluting hypersonic things are in fact. US-Israel is the world’s incentive to arm yourself to the teeth, ironically, with US-Israeli weapons intended to protect them from US-Israel. Imagine a world with no Israel, or rather with Palestine-Israel. No need for the military industrial complex. We might actually save planet Earth.

And Egyptian emigre Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. A tweet by El Akkad, a slightly longer version of his catchy title, got 10m hits, so Omar understandably whipped off a book. Cool. He came to the West like all immigrants, thinking it would be heaven, but found it was a big pile of you-know-what. You don’t have to be Palestinian, Arab, Muslim to be the brunt of the lies and bigotry.

Beinhart is still naval-gazing, the nice little Jewish boy, top marks, loved granny (who loathed what he wrote to the bitter end). Has he bothered reading up on Islam? He never considers the possibility that the real reason Israel MUST be Jews-only is because Islam is a far better version of monotheism, alive and well despite two centuries of imperialist occupation and, now, genocide. No racism, no idols, real chosenness a la original Judaism, where it means responsibility, humility before God, genuine service to ‘the nations’. He finally started making Palestinian Muslim friends and was delighted to find them warm, generous, and spiritual. He was recently on a panel with UCLA law prof Khaled Abou El Fadl. I felt I was in the presence of a profound religious voice. I think, hope Beinhart is still a work in progress.

ENDNOTES:

1 Andreas Malm, The destruction of Palestine is the Destruction of the Earth, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Walberg.

The calls by the Israel Institute of New Zealand for Peter Davis to resign from the Helen Clark Foundation because of comments he made with regard to an ugly, hateful piece of graffiti are absurd.

The graffiti in question said “I hated Jews before it was cool!” On social media, Davis made this comment :

“Netanyahu govt actions have isolated Israel from global south and the west, and have stoked anti-Semitism. Yitzak Rabin was the last leader to effectively foster a political-diplomatic solution to the Israel-Palestine impasse. He was assassinated by a settler. You reap what you sow.”

• READ MORE: World could be witnessing ‘another Nakba’ in Palestine, UN committee warns
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

IMO, this sounds like an expression of sorrow and regret about the conflict, and about the evils it is feeding and fostering. Regardless, the institute has described that comment by Davis as antisemitic.

“‘You cannot claim to champion social cohesion while minimising or rationalising antisemitic hate,’ the institute said. ‘Social trust depends on moral consistency, especially from those in leadership. Peter Davis’s actions erode that trust.'”

For the record, Davis wasn’t rationalising or minimising antisemitic hate. His comments look far more like a legitimate observation that the longer the need for a political-diplomatic solution is violently resisted, the worse things will be for everyone — including Jewish citizens, via the stoking of antisemitism.

The basic point at issue here is that criticisms of the actions of the Israeli government do not equate to a racist hostility to the Jewish people. (Similarly, the criticisms of Donald Trump’s actions cannot be minimised or rationalised as due to anti-Americanism.)

Appalled by Netanyahu actions
Many Jewish people in fact, also feel appalled by the actions of the Netanyahu government, which repeatedly violate international law.

In the light of the extreme acts of violence being inflicted daily by the IDF on the people of Gaza, the upsurge in hateful graffiti by neo-Nazi opportunists while still being vile, is hardly surprising.

Around the world, the security of innocent Israeli citizens is being recklessly endangered by the ultra-violent actions of their own government.

If you want to protect your citizens from an existing fire, it’s best not to toss gasoline on the flames.

To repeat: the vast majority of the current criticisms of the Israeli state have nothing whatsoever to do with antisemitism. At a time when Israel is killing scores of innocent Palestinians on a nightly basis with systematic air strikes and the shelling of civilian neighbourhoods, when it is weaponising access to humanitarian aid as an apparent tool of ethnic cleansing, when it is executing medical staff and assassinating journalists, when it is killing thousands of children and starving the survivors . . . antisemitism is not the reason why most people oppose these evils. Common humanity demands it.

Ironically, the press release by the NZ Israel Institute concludes with these words: “There must be zero tolerance for hate in any form.” Too bad the institute seems to have such a limited capacity for self-reflection.

Footnote One: For the best part of 80 years, the world has felt sympathy to Jews in recognition of the Holocaust. The genocide now being committed in Gaza by the Netanyahu government cannot help but reduce public support for Israel.

It also cannot help but erode the status of the Holocaust as a unique expression of human evil.

One would have hoped the NZ Israel Institute might acknowledge the self-defeating nature of the Netanyahu government policies — if only because, on a daily basis, the state of Israel is abetting its enemies, and alienating its friends.

Footnote Two: As yet, the so-called Free Speech Union has not come out to support the free speech rights of Peter Davis, and to rebuke the NZ Israel Institute for trying to muzzle them.

Colour me not surprised.

• Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a lawsuit brought by South Africa and 35 other countries and organisations while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on arrest warrants for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This is a section of Gordon Campbell’s Scoop column published yesterday under the subheading “Pot Calls Out Kettle”; the main portion of the column about the new Pope is here. Republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Gordon Campbell: On The New Pope, And The Israeli Attack On Peter Davis https://t.co/UWiLiI6J7d pic.twitter.com/xkWXusJEio

— Scoop Independent News (@ScoopNZ) May 9, 2025

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

This did not quite match pre-election remarks and assessments. The government of Anthony Albanese had been markedly unconvincing, marked by dithering, short sightedness and a lack of conviction. It had, rather inexplicably, made the conservative Coalition led by that cruel, simian looking automaton Peter Dutton, look electable.

Overall, the campaign on the part of both sides of politics was consistently dull and persistently mediocre. Expansive, broad ideas were eschewed in favour of minutiae and objects of bribery: tax matters, cutting fuel excise, forgiving some student debt, improved Medicare services and child care assistance. Issues such as the parlous reliance of Australia upon US security interests, not to mention the criminally daft obligations of the AUKUS security pact, or a detailed, coherent policy on addressing environmental and climate challenges, were kept in storage.

What did become evident in the weeks leading up to the poll was that the Coalition policy palette, which never went beyond blotches of law and order (terrorism, criminal refugees, paedophilia forefront themes), mild bribes for “cost of living relief”; and illusory nuclear energy, failed to appeal. Its campaign lacked the barely modest bite of Labor, largely because it had been eclipsed by such oxygen drawing events as US President Donald Trump’s tariff regime and the death of Pope Francis I.

It had also misread the mood of the electorate in pushing policies with a tangy Trump flavour, notably the proposed removal of 41,000 jobs from the public sector and the establishment of something similar to the US Department of Government Efficiency . (Country Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price unhelpfully promised to “make Australia great again.”) The Coalition, Dutton admitted after being accused by Labor of being “DOGE-y Dutton”, had “made a mistake” and “got it wrong”. The focus would be, instead, on natural attrition. There were also scrappy sorties on the cultural war front, featuring lashings of undesirable press outlets, such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and The Guardian (“hate media”, according to Dutton), and the presence of “wokeism” in schools.

Flimsy soothsayers could also be found, many endorsing a Liberal-Nationals victory. “For the first time in my journalistic career,” beamed Sharri Markson of Sky News Australia on May 1, “I’m going to offer a pre-election editorial, endorsing one side of politics […] A Dutton prime ministership would give our great nation the fresh start we deserve.” With vigorous drumbeating, Markson could only see “our values under threat – from enemies and abroad” – and retaining Anthony Albanese as prime minister was dangerous. With the analytical skill of an unread, hungover undergraduate, the political astrologist found the PM a victim of “far-left ideology”, something “out of step with mainstream Australia.”

With Labor’s victory assured, the fiscal conservatives at the Australian Financial Review proved sniffy, noting that Labor’s record on the economy did not warrant another term “but the Coalition has not made the case to change the government.” More explicit, with hectoring relish, was Australia’s premier shock jock of the press stable, Andrew Bolt. “No, the voters aren’t always right,” he wrote scoldingly in the News Corp yellow press. “This time they were wrong, and this gutless and incoherent Coalition should be ashamed.” Australians were set to “get more” of policies that had “left this country poorer, weaker, more divided and deeper in debt”.

One is reminded of Henry Kissinger’s rebuke of Chilean democracy at the election of the socialist leader Salvador Allende. As one of US foreign policy’s chief malefactors, he refused to accept the proposition that a country could “go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.” Democracy was only worthy if directed by the appropriate interests.

Senator Price, evidently rattled by the result, returned to the Trumpian well, hoping to draw attention to claims of irregular voting in rural polling booths. The Australian Electoral Commission, she told the ABC, “has been alerted to this over and over and does little with it. I urge the ABC, as a taxpayer funded organisation, to go out and see what is occurring.”

There are other evident patterns that emerged in the vote. The old division between urban, metropolitan areas and rural and country communities has been coloured with sharpness. The Liberal Party, which must win seats in urban Australia, finds itself marginalised before its allies, the Nationals, who have retained their complement in regional and country areas. Party voices and strategists lament that not more was done after the 2022 defeat, with the Liberals refusing to address, among other things, the failure to appeal to female voters or the youth vote.

Disappointing in such stonking majorities is the assumption that minority parties and independents can be ignored, if not with contempt, then with condescending politeness. Labor may well be soaring with the greatest return of seats in its history, but attitudes of the electorate can harden quickly. The move away from the major parties, as a trend, continues, and there is no room for complacency in a new Albanese government.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Despite all the political machinations and hate towards the media coming from the president of the United States, I always thought the majority of Australian politicians supported the role of the press in safeguarding democracy.

And I certainly did not expect Peter Dutton — amid an election campaign, one with citizens heading to the polls on World Press Freedom Day — to come out swinging at the ABC and Guardian Australia, telling his followers to ignore “the hate media”.

I’m not saying Labor is likely to be the great saviour of the free press either.

• READ MORE: On ‘moral panic’ and the courage to speak – the West’s silence on Gaza
• Trump’s war on the media: 10 numbers from US President’s first 100 days
• Other media freedom reports

The ALP has been slow to act on a range of important press freedom issues, including continuing to charge journalism students upwards of $50,000 for the privilege of learning at university how to be a decent watchdog for society.

Labor has increased, slightly, funding for the ABC, and has tried to continue with the Coalition’s plans to force the big tech platforms to pay for news. But that is not enough.

The World Press Freedom Index has been telling us for some time that Australia’s press is in a perilous state. Last year, Australia dropped to 39th out of 190 countries because of what Reporters Without Borders said was a “hyperconcentration of the media combined with growing pressure from the authorities”.

We should know on election day if we’ve fallen even further.

What is happening in America is having a profound impact on journalism (and by extension journalism education) in Australia.

‘Friendly’ influencers
We’ve seen both parties subtly start to sideline the mainstream media by going to “friendly” influencers and podcasters, and avoid the harder questions that come from journalists whose job it is to read and understand the policies being presented.

What Australia really needs — on top of stable and guaranteed funding for independent and reliable public interest journalism, including the ABC and SBS — is a Media Freedom Act.

My colleague Professor Peter Greste has spent years working on the details of such an act, one that would give media in Australia the protection lacking from not having a Bill of Rights safeguarding media and free speech. So far, neither side of government has signed up to publicly support it.

Australia also needs an accompanying Journalism Australia organisation, where ethical and trained journalists committed to the job of watchdog journalism can distinguish themselves from individuals on YouTube and TikTok who may be pushing their own agendas and who aren’t held to the same journalistic code of ethics and standards.

I’m not going to argue that all parts of the Australian news media are working impartially in the best interests of ordinary people. But the good journalists who are need help.

The continuing underfunding of our national broadcasters needs to be resolved. University fees for journalism degrees need to be cut, in recognition of the value of the profession to the fabric of Australian society. We need regulations to force news organisations to disclose when they are using AI to do the job of journalists and broadcasters without human oversight.

And we need more funding for critical news literacy education, not just for school kids but also for adults.

Critical need for public interest journalism
There has never been a more critical need to support public interest journalism. We have all watched in horror as Donald Trump has denied wire services access for minor issues, such as failing to comply with an ungazetted decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

And mere days ago, 60 Minutes chief Bill Owens resigned citing encroachments on his journalistic independence due to pressure from the president.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is so concerned about what’s occurring in America that it has issued a travel advisory for journalists travelling to the US, citing risks under Trump administration policies.

Those of us who cover politically sensitive issues that the US administration may view as critical or hostile may be stopped and questioned by border agents. That can extend to cardigan-wearing academics attending conferences.

While we don’t have the latest Australian figures from the annual Reuters survey, a new Pew Research Centre study shows a growing gap between how much Americans say they value press freedom and how free they think the press actually is. Two-thirds of Americans believe press freedom is critical. But only a third believe the media is truly free to do its job.

If the press isn’t free in the US (where it is guaranteed in their constitution), how are we in Australia expected to be able to keep the powerful honest?

Every single day, journalists put their lives on the line for journalism. It’s not always as dramatic as those who are covering the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, but those in the media in Australia still front up and do the job across a range of news organisations in some fairly poor conditions.

If you care about democracy at all this election, then please consider wisely who you vote for, and perhaps ask their views on supporting press freedom — which is your right to know.

Alexandra Wake is an associate professor in journalism at RMIT University. She came to the academy after a long career as a journalist and broadcaster. She has worked in Australia, Ireland, the Middle East and across the Asia Pacific. Her research, teaching and practice sits at the nexus of journalism practice, journalism education, equality, diversity and mental health.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

On April 14, the specialist military publication Janes reported that Indonesia had “received an official request from Moscow, seeking permission for Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) aircraft to be based at a facility in [the country’s] easternmost province.” The area in question is Papua, and the relevant airbase, Biak Numfor, home to the Indonesian Air Force’s Aviation Squadron 27 responsible for operating surveillance aircraft of the CN235 variety.

Indonesian government sources had informed the magazine of a request received by the office of the defence minister, Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, following a February meeting with the Security Council of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu. This was not the first time, with Moscow making previous requests to Jakarta for using a base for its long-range aircraft.

The frazzled response in Australia to the possibility of a Russian presence on Indonesian soil betrays its presumption. Just as Australia would rather not see Pacific Island states form security friendly ties with China, an anxiety directed and dictated by Washington, it would also wish those in Southeast Asia to avoid the feelers of other countries supposedly unfriendly to Canberra’s interests.

Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, who has an addict’s fascination with security menaces of the phantom variety, sprung at the claims made in Janes. “This would be a catastrophic failure of diplomatic relations if [Australian Foreign Minister] Penny Wong and [Prime Minister] Anthony Albanese didn’t have forewarning about this before it was made public,” he trumpeted. “This is a very, very troubling development and suggestion that somehow Russia would have some of their assets based in Indonesia only a short distance from, obviously, the north of our country.”

The Albanese government has tried to cool the confected heat with assurances, with the PM reaffirming Canberra’s support for Ukraine while stating that “we obviously do not want to see Russian influence in our region”. It has also accused Dutton for a streaky fabrication: that Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto had “publicly announced” the details.

Australia’s Defence Minister, Richard Marles, also informed the press that he had spoken to his counterpart Sjamsoeddin, who duly replied “in the clearest possible terms [that] reports of the prospect of Russian aircraft operating from Indonesia are simply not true.”

Besides, a country such as Indonesia, according to Marles, is of the friendly sort. “We have a growing defence relationship with Indonesia. We will keep engaging with Indonesia in a way that befits a very close friend and a very close friendship between our two countries.” This sweetly coated nonsense should have gone out with the façade-tearing acts of Donald Trump’s global imposition of tariffs, unsparing to adversaries and allies alike.

Marles continues to operate in a certain twilight of international relations, under the belief that the defence cooperation agreement with Jakarta “is the deepest level defence agreement we’ve ever had with Indonesia, and we are seeking increasing cooperation between Australia and Indonesia at the defence level.” Whether this is the case hardly precludes Indonesia, as an important regional power, from conducting defence and foreign policy on its own terms with countries of its own choosing.

In January, Jakarta officially added its name to the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group, an alternative power alignment that has been foolishly disregarded in terms of significance by the United States and its satellites. Subianto’s coming to power last October has also heralded a warmer turn to Moscow in military terms, with both countries conducting their first joint naval drills last November in the Java Sea near Surabaya. (Indonesia is already a market for Russian fighter jets, despite the cloud of potential sanctions from the US Treasury Department.) For doing so, self-appointed disciplinarians, notably such pro-US outlets as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, have questioned the country’s fabled non-aligned foreign policy. Engaging Russia in cooperative military terms supposedly undermined, according to the think tank’s publication The Strategist, Jakarta’s “own stated commitment to upholding international law.”

Such commentary is neither here nor there. The Indonesian military remains jealous and proprietary, taking a dim view of any notion of a foreign military base. Retired Major General TB Hasanuddin, who is also a Member of Commission I of the Indonesian House of Representatives, points to constitutional and other legal impediments in permitting such a policy. “Our constitution and various laws and regulations expressly prohibit the existence of foreign military bases.”

Any criticism of Jakarta’s recent gravitation to Moscow also refuses to acknowledge the flexible, even sly approach Indonesia has taken to various powers. It has done so while maintaining a firm independence of mind. In the afterglow of the naval exercises with the Russian Navy, Indonesia’s armed forces merrily went about the business of conducting military exercises with Australia, named Keris Woomera. Between November 13 and 16 last year, the exercise comprised 2,000 personnel from the navy, army and air force from both countries. As Australia frets and fantasises about the stratagems of distant authoritarian leaders, Indonesia having the last laugh.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Sam Jones, who claims to be such an influencer, and a wildlife biologist and environmental scientist to boot, thought it wise to pick up a young wombat, thereby separating it from its distressed mother. The whole episode was, unnaturally, filmed. Even for someone of Jones’s sparse intellect, she at least observed the following: “Momma’s right there and she’s pissed. Let’s let him go.” She makes some effort to beef up her credibility by claiming the following: “I ran, not to rip the joey away from its mother, but from fear that she might attack me.” At the end of the now deleted video, she claims that she did reunite the mother and joey, though did so by essentially making them potential roadkill victims.

Her account remains inconsistent and contradictory, something not helped by her record of images on Instagram displaying an evident, bloodthirsty delight for the hunt. Carcasses of slain animals feature, suggesting a desire to accumulate trophies rather than promoting any keen environmental interest. Jones remains, in that sense, rather traditional: the exotic, the bizarre or the dangerous shall be killed, snapped by camera or just teased for social media purposes. There is no evident awareness about the cruelty inherent in these measures.

The response to Jones in Australia proved heated. A petition seeking deportation was launched, receiving over 40,000 signatures. The Wombat Protection Society expressed shock at the “mishandling of a wombat joey in an apparent snatch for ‘social media likes’.”

Even the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, thought it worth mentioning. “It’s a shocker. You know, a wombat is a slow moving, peaceful animal, and to take a baby wombat from its mum was distressing, quite clearly,” he spoke in a radio interview. He also claimed to have found the video “really distressing”, wondering “what the hell this woman thought she was doing.” Jones herself claims to have been threatened by “thousands” of the irate.

A number of academics from Australian universities tell us, in tepid language via The Conversation, that this sort of behaviour is becoming ever more frequent. “Unfortunately,” they lament, “we are seeing a rise in people directly interacting with wildlife through feeding them or taking risks to get close to them, often driven by the pursuit of social media attention. These interactions can hurt wildlife in many different ways.” They also note that Jones was fortunate not to receive injuries, given that wombats can “weigh up to 40 kilograms and have teeth and claws they can use for defence.” Furthermore, she might (here, the delight is barely concealed) have gotten scabies, given the mange many wombats have caused by the relevant parasitic mite.

The incident does give us some room for pause. Mighty moralism about Australia’s treatment of animals is certainly something to question from the start. Foamy indignation at the behaviour of a visitor offers mighty distraction given Australia’s less than comfortable relationship with its various species. Jones herself alludes to this by pointing out the “treatment of its native wildlife”, which includes the expenditure of “millions of your tax dollars to mass slaughter native Australian animals, as well as Snowy River and Kosciuszko brumbies, wild pigs and numerous deer species.”

Peter Singer, the noted Australian bioethicist and author of the seminal tract Animal Liberation, feels that Jones is on some sensible ground. He takes particular issue with harvesting kangaroos for commercial profit and reducing their numbers as competitors for pasture. He also notes, however, that the destruction of wombats remains less widespread, while also grudgingly conceding that culling pest species that pose a threat to native habitats and wildlife may be necessary.

Jones could also count on partial agreement from Tania Clancy of Wombatised, a volunteer wildlife rescue and rehabilitation group. “Thousands [of wombats] each year are shot, poisoned to suffer, and trapped legally,” she notes. “Landowners rip up wombat burrows with heavy machinery, poison them with fumigation and shoot them whenever they can.”

For a continent that tops the league table of species extinction, indignation at such acts of stupidity and exploitation requires some cooling. The animals of Australia are superficially revered for their singular qualities but their treatment by the human populace has been less than admirable. Be it debatable culling practices, expansive land clearing, the ongoing and insatiable hunger for exporting commodities and the unshakeable power of the mining industry in politics, Mother Nature Down Under has been, and continues to be roughed and violated.

The current federal government also demonstrated an almost head-high contempt in abandoning the creation of an Environmental Protection Agency, something that arose, in large part, from state premiers worried about a puncture in mining profits. Besides, animal species don’t tend to go to the ballot box.

At the very least, the insufferable, trophy craving simpleton who took that wombat joey from its mother for sporting shots brought some attention to the fraught relationship between humans and Australia’s beleaguered animal species.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Australia is caught in a jam, between an assertive American ally and a bold Chinese trading partner. America is accelerating its pivot to the Indo-Pacific, building up its fighting forces and expanding its military bases.

As Australia tries to navigate a pathway between America’s and Australia’s national interests, sometimes Australia’s national interest seems to submerge out of view.

Admiral David Johnston, the Chief of the Australia’s Defence Force, is steering this ship as China flexes its muscle sending a small warship flotilla south to circumnavigate the continent.

• READ MORE: Other Declassified Australia investigative reports
• Other AUKUS reports

He has admitted that the first the Defence Force heard of a live-fire exercise by the three Chinese Navy ships sailing in the South Pacific east of Australia on February 21, was a phone call from the civilian Airservices Australia.

“The absence of any advance notice to Australian authorities was a concern, notably, that the limited notice provided by the PLA could have unnecessarily increased the risk to aircraft and vessels in the area,” Johnston told Senate Estimates .

Johnston was pressed to clarify how Defence first came to know of the live-fire drill: “Is it the case that Defence was only notified, via Virgin and Airservices Australia, 28 minutes [sic] after the firing window commenced?”

To this, Admiral Johnston replied: “Yes.”

If it happened as stated by the Admiral — that a live-fire exercise by the Chinese ships was undertaken and a warning notice was transmitted from the Chinese ships, all without being detected by Australian defence and surveillance assets — this is a defence failure of considerable significance.

Sources with knowledge of Defence spoken to by Declassified Australia say that this is either a failure of surveillance, or a failure of communication, or even more far-reaching, a failure of US alliance cooperation.

And from the very start the official facts became slippery.

Our latest investigation –

AUSTRALIA’S DEFENCE: NAVIGATING US-CHINA TENSIONS

We investigate a significant intelligence failure to detect live-firing by Chinese warships near Australia, has exposed Defence weaknesses, and the fact that when it counts, we are all alone.

… pic.twitter.com/GxbSxrtXyc

— Declassified Australia (@DeclassifiedAus) March 7, 2025

What did they know and when did they know it
The first information passed on to Defence by Airservices Australia came from the pilot of a Virgin passenger jet passing overhead the flotilla in the Tasman Sea that had picked up the Chinese Navy VHF radio notification of an impending live-fire exercise.

The radio transmission had advised the window for the live-fire drill commenced at 9.30am and would conclude at 3pm.

We know this from testimony given to Senate Estimates by the head of Airservices Australia. He said Airservices was notified at 9.58am by an aviation control tower informed by the Virgin pilot. Two minutes later Airservices issued a “hazard alert” to commercial airlines in the area.

The Headquarters of the Defence Force’s Joint Operations Command (HJOC), at Bungendore 30km east of Canberra, was then notified about the drill by Airservices at 10.08am, 38 minutes after the drill window had commenced.

When questioned a few days later, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appeared to try to cover for Defence’s apparent failure to detect the live-fire drill or the advisory transmission.

“At around the same time, there were two areas of notification. One was from the New Zealand vessels that were tailing . ..  the [Chinese] vessels in the area by both sea and air,” Albanese stated. “So that occurred and at the same time through the channels that occur when something like this is occurring, Airservices got notified as well.”

But the New Zealand Defence Force had not notified Defence “at the same time”. In fact it was not until 11.01am that an alert was received by Defence from the New Zealand Defence Force — 53 minutes after Defence HQ was told by Airservices and an hour and a half after the drill window had begun.

Defence Minister Richard Marles later in a round-about way admitted on ABC Radio that it wasn’t the New Zealanders who informed Australia first: “Well, to be clear, we weren’t notified by China. I mean, we became aware of this during the course of the day.

“What China did was put out a notification that it was intending to engage in live firing. By that I mean a broadcast that was picked up by airlines or literally planes that were commercial planes that were flying across the Tasman.”

Later the Chinese Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, told ABC that two live-fire training drills were carried out at sea on February 21 and 22, in accordance with international law and “after repeatedly issuing safety notices in advance”.

Eyes and ears on ‘every move’
It was expected the Chinese-navy flotilla would end its three week voyage around Australia on March 7, after a circumnavigation of the continent. That is not before finally passing at some distance the newly acquired US-UK nuclear submarine base at HMAS Stirling near Perth and the powerful US communications and surveillance base at North West Cape.

Just as Australia spies on China to develop intelligence and targeting for a potential US war, China responds in kind, collecting data on US military and intelligence bases and facilities in Australia, as future targets should hostilities commence.

The presence of the Chinese Navy ships that headed into the northern and eastern seas around Australia attracted the attention of the Defence Department ever since they first set off south through the Mindoro Strait in the Philippines and through the Indonesian archipelago from the South China Sea on February 3.

“We are keeping a close watch on them and we will be making sure that we watch every move,” Marles stated in the week before the live-fire incident.

“Just as they have a right to be in international waters . . .  we have a right to be prudent and to make sure that we are surveilling them, which is what we are doing.”

Around 3500 km to the north, a week into the Chinese ships’ voyage, a spy flight by an RAAF P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane on February 11, in a disputed area of the South China Sea south of China’s Hainan Island, was warned off by a Chinese J-16 fighter jet.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to Australian protests claiming the Australian aircraft “deliberately intruded” into China’s claimed territorial airspace around the Paracel Islands without China’s permission, thereby “infringing on China’s sovereignty and endangering China’s national security”.

Australia criticised the Chinese manoeuvre, defending the Australian flight saying it was “exercising the right to freedom of navigation and overflight in international waters and airspace”.

Two days after the incident, the three Chinese ships on their way to Australian waters were taking different routes in beginning their own “right to freedom of navigation” in international waters off the Australian coast. The three ships formed up their mini flotilla in the Coral Sea as they turned south paralleling the Australian eastern coastline outside of territorial waters, and sometimes within Australia’s 200-nautical-mile (370 km) Exclusive Economic Zone.

“Defence always monitors foreign military activity in proximity to Australia. This includes the Peoples Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) Task Group.” Admiral Johnston told Senate Estimates.

“We have been monitoring the movement of the Task Group through its transit through Southeast Asia and we have observed the Task Group as it has come south through that region.”

The Task Group was made up of a modern stealth guided missile destroyer Zunyi, the frigate Hengyang, and the Weishanhu, a 20,500 tonne supply ship carrying fuel, fresh water, cargo and ammunition. The Hengyang moved eastwards through the Torres Strait, while the Zunyi and Weishanhu passed south near Bougainville and Solomon Islands, meeting in the Coral Sea.

As the Chinese ships moved near northern Australia and through the Coral Sea heading further south, the Defence Department deployed Navy and Air Force assets to watch over the ships. These included various RAN warships including the frigate HMAS Arunta and a RAAF P-8A Poseidon intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance plane.

With unconfirmed reports a Chinese nuclear submarine may also be accompanying the surface ships, the monitoring may have also included one of the RAN’s Collins-class submarines, with their active range of sonar, radar and radio monitoring – however it is uncertain whether one was able to be made available from the fleet.

“From the point of time the first of the vessels entered into our more immediate region, we have been conducting active surveillance of their activities,” the Defence chief confirmed.

As the Chinese ships moved into the southern Tasman Sea, New Zealand navy ships joined in the monitoring alongside Australia’s Navy and Air Force.

The range of signals intelligence (SIGINT) that theoretically can be intercepted emanating from a naval ship at sea includes encrypted data and voice satellite communications, ship-to-ship communications, aerial drone data and communications, as well as data of radar, gunnery, and weapon launches.

There are a number of surveillance facilities in Australia that would have been able to be directed at the Chinese ships.

Australian Signals Directorate’s (ASD) Shoal Bay Receiving Station outside of Darwin, picks up transmissions and data emanating from radio signals and satellite communications from Australia’s near north region. ASD’s Cocos Islands receiving station in the mid-Indian ocean would have been available too.

The Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) over-the-horizon radar network, spread across northern Australia, is an early warning system that monitors aircraft and ship movements across Australia’s north-western, northern, and north-eastern ocean areas — but its range off the eastern coast is not thought to presently reach further south than the sea off Mackay on the Queensland coast.

Of land-based surveillance facilities, it is the American Pine Gap base that is believed to have the best capability of intercepting the ship’s radio communications in the Tasman Sea.

Enter, Pine Gap and the Americans
The US satellite surveillance base at Pine Gap in Central Australia is a US and Australian jointly-run satellite ground station. It is regarded as the most important such American satellite base outside of the USA.

The role of ASD in supporting the extensive US surveillance mission against China is increasingly valued by Australia’s large Five Eyes alliance partner.

A Top Secret ‘Information Paper’, titled “NSA Intelligence Relationship with Australia”, leaked from the National Security Agency (NSA) by Edward Snowden and published by ABC’s Background Briefing, spells out the “close collaboration” between the NSA and ASD, in particular on China:

“Increased emphasis on China will not only help ensure the security of Australia, but also synergize with the U.S. in its renewed emphasis on Asia and the Pacific . . .   Australia’s overall intelligence effort on China, as a target, is already significant and will increase.”

The Pine Gap base, as further revealed in 2023 by Declassified Australia, is being used to collect signals intelligence and other data from the Israeli battlefield of Gaza, and also Ukraine and other global hotspots within view of the US spy satellites.

It’s recently had a significant expansion (reported by this author in The Saturday Paper) which has seen its total of satellite dishes and radomes rapidly increase in just a few years from 35 to 45 to accommodate new heightened-capability surveillance satellites.

Pine Gap base collects an enormous range and quantity of intelligence and data from thermal imaging satellites, photographic reconnaissance satellites, and signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites, as expert researchers Des Ball, Bill Robinson and Richard Tanter of the Nautilus Institute have detailed.

These SIGINT satellites intercept electronic communications and signals from ground-based sources, such as radio communications, telemetry, radar signals, satellite communications, microwave emissions, mobile phone signals, and geolocation data.

Alliance priorities
The US’s SIGINT satellites have a capability to detect and receive signals from VHF radio transmissions on or near the earth’s surface, but they need to be tasked to do so and appropriately targeted on the source of the transmission.

For the Pine Gap base to intercept VHF radio signals from the Chinese Navy ships, the base would have needed to specifically realign one of those SIGINT satellites to provide coverage of the VHF signals in the Tasman Sea at the time of the Chinese ships’ passage. It is not known publicly if they did this, but they certainly have that capability.

However, it is not only the VHF radio transmission that would have carried information about the live-firing exercise.

Pine Gap would be able to monitor a range of other SIGINT transmissions from the Chinese ships. Details of the planning and preparations for the live-firing exercise would almost certainly have been transmitted over data and voice satellite communications, ship-to-ship communications, and even in the data of radar and gunnery operations.

But it is here that there is another possibility for the failure.

The Pine Gap base was built and exists to serve the national interests of the United States. The tasking of the surveillance satellites in range of Pine Gap base is generally not set by Australia, but is directed by United States’ agencies, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) together with the US Defense Department, the National Security Agency (NSA), and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Australia has learnt over time that US priorities may not be the same as Australia’s.

Australian defence and intelligence services can request surveillance tasks to be added to the schedule, and would have been expected to have done so in order to target the southern leg of the Chinese Navy ships’ voyage, when the ships were out of the range of the JORN network.

The military demands for satellite time can be excessive in times of heightened global conflict, as is the case now.

Whether the Pine Gap base was devoting sufficient surveillance resources to monitoring the Chinese Navy ships, due to United States’ priorities in Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Africa, North Korea, and to our north in the South China Sea, is a relevant question.

It can only be answered now by a formal government inquiry into what went on — preferably held in public by a parliamentary committee or separately commissioned inquiry. The sovereign defence of Australia failed in this incident and lessons need to be learned.

Who knew and when did they know
If the Pine Gap base had been monitoring the VHF radio band and heard the Chinese Navy live-fire alert, or had been monitoring other SIGINT transmissions to discover the live-fire drill, the normal procedure would be for the active surveillance team to inform a number of levels of senior officers, a former Defence official familiar with the process told Declassified Australia.

Expected to be included in the information chain are the Australian Deputy-Chief of Facility at the US base, NSA liaison staff at the base, the Australian Signals Directorate head office at the Defence complex at Russell Hill in Canberra, the Defence Force’s Headquarters Joint Operations Command, in Bungendore, and the Chief of the Defence Force. From there the Defence Minister’s office would need to have been informed.

As has been reported in media interviews and in testimony to the Senate Estimates hearings, it has been stated that Defence was not informed of the Chinese ships’ live-firing alert until a full 38 minutes after the drill window had commenced.

The former Defence official told Declassified Australia it is vital the reason for the failure to detect the live-firing in a timely fashion is ascertained.

Either the Australian Defence Force and US Pine Gap base were not effectively actively monitoring the Chinese flotilla at this time — and the reasons for that need to be examined — or they were, but the information gathered was somewhere stalled and not passed on to correct channels.

If the evidence so far tendered by the Defence chief and the Minister is true, and it was not informed of the drill by any of its intelligence or surveillance assets before that phone call from Airservices Australia, the implications need to be seriously addressed.

A final word
In just a couple of weeks the whole Defence environment for Australia has changed, for the worse.

The US military announces a drawdown in Europe and a new pivot to the Indo-Pacific. China shows Australia it can do tit-for-tat “navigational freedom” voyages close to the Australian coast. US intelligence support is withdrawn from Ukraine during the war. Australia discovers the AUKUS submarines’ arrival looks even more remote. The prime minister confuses the limited cover provided by the ANZUS treaty.

Meanwhile, the US militarisation of Australia’s north continues at pace. At the same time a senior Pentagon official pressures Australia to massively increase defence spending. And now, the country’s defence intelligence system has experienced an unexplained major failure.

Australia, it seems, is adrift in a sea of unpredictable global events and changing alliance priorities.

Peter Cronau is an award-winning, investigative journalist, writer, and film-maker. His documentary, The Base: Pine Gap’s Role in US Warfighting, was broadcast on Australian ABC Radio National and featured on ABC News. He produced and directed the documentary film Drawing the Line, revealing details of Australian spying in East Timor, on ABC TV’s premier investigative programme Four Corners. He won the Gold Walkley Award in 2007 for a report he produced on an outbreak of political violence in East Timor. This article was first published by Declassified Australia and is republished here with the author’s permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

When it comes to antisemitism, politicians in Australia are often quick to jump on the claim without waiting for evidence.

With notable and laudable exceptions like the Greens and independents such as Tasmanian federal MP Andrew Wilkie, it seems any allegation will do when it comes to the opportunity to imply Arab Australians, the Muslim community and Palestinian supporters are trying to destroy the lives of the Jewish community.

A case in point. The discovery in January this year of a caravan found in Dural, New South Wales, filled with explosives and a note that referenced the Great Synagogue in Sydney led to a frenzy of clearly uninformed and dangerous rhetoric from politicians and the media about an imminent terrorist attack targeting the Jewish community.

• READ MORE: A Sydney caravan laden with explosives was a ‘fake terrorism plot’. Here’s what we know
• Other terror plot reports

It was nothing of the sort as we now know with the revelation by police that this was a “fabricated terrorist plot”.

As the ABC reported on March 10: “Police have said an explosives-laden caravan discovered in January at Dural in Sydney’s north-west was a ‘fake terrorism plot’ with ties to organised crime”, and that “the Australian Federal Police said they were confident this was a ‘fabricated terrorist plot’,” adding the belief was held “very early on after the caravan was located”.

One would have thought the political and media class would know that it is critical in a society supposedly underpinned by the rule of law that police be allowed to get on with the job of investigating allegations without comment.

Particularly so in the hot-house atmosphere that exists in this nation today.

Opportunistic Dutton
But not the ever opportunistic and divisive federal opposition leader Peter Dutton.

After the Daily Telegraph reported the Dural caravan story on January 29,  Dutton was quick to say that this “was potentially the biggest terrorist attack in our country’s history”. To his credit, Prime Anthony Albanese said in response he does not “talk about operational matters for an ongoing investigation”.

Dutton’s language was clearly designed to whip up fear and hysteria among the Jewish community and to demonise Palestinian supporters.

He was not Robinson Crusoe sadly. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns told the media on January 29 that the Dural caravan discovery had the potential to have led to a “mass casualty event”.

The Zionist Federation of Australia, an organisation that is an unwavering supporter of Israel despite the horror that nation has inflicted on Gaza, was even more overblown in its claims.

It issued a statement that claimed: “This is undoubtedly the most severe threat to the Jewish community in Australia to date. The plot, if executed, would likely have resulted in the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil.”

Note the word “undoubtedly”.

Uncritical Israeli claims
Then there was another uncritical Israel barracker, Sky News’ Sharri Markson, who claimed; “To think perpetrators would have potentially targeted a museum commemorating the Holocaust — a time when six million Jews were killed — is truly horrifying.”

And naturally, Jilian Segal, the highly partisan so-called “Antisemitism Envoy” said the discovery of the caravan was a “chilling reminder that the same hatred that led to the murder of millions of Jews during the Holocaust still exists today”.

In short, the response to the Dural caravan incident was simply an exercise in jumping on the antisemitism issue without any regard to the consequences for our community, including the fear it spread among Jewish Australians and the further demonising of the Arab Australian community.

No circumspection. No leadership. No insistence that the matter had not been investigated fully.

As the only Jewish organisation that represents humanity, the Jewish Council of Australia, said in a statement from its director Sarah Schwartz on March 10 the “statement from the AFP [Australian Federal Police] should prompt reflection from every politician, journalist and community leader who has sought to manipulate and weaponise fears within the Jewish community.

‘Irresponsible and dangerous’
“The attempt to link these events to the support of Palestinians — whether at protests, universities, conferences or writers’ festivals — has been irresponsible and dangerous.” Truth in spades.

And ask yourself this question. Let’s say the Dural caravan contained notes about mosques and Arab Australian community centres. Would the media, politicians and others have whipped up the same level of hysteria and divisive rhetoric?

The answer is no.

One assumes Dutton, Segal, the Zionist Federation and others who frothed at the mouth in January will now offer a collective mea culpa. Sadly, they won’t because there will be no demands to do so.

The damage to our legal system has been done because political opportunism and milking antisemitism for political ends comes first for those who should know better.

Greg Barns SC is national criminal justice spokesperson for the Australian Lawyers Alliance. This article was first published by Pearls and Irritations social policy journal and is republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The dropping by Creative Australia of Lebanese-born artist Khaled Sabsabi as Australia’s representative for the 2026 Venice Biennale, along with the curator of the pavilion’s artistic team, Michael Dagostino, shows that true artistic subversion is not the game, and uncontroversial subservience the form.  If an arts body fears that the milch cow will be starved, if not killed altogether, they will slight, blight and drop the artist in question and prostrate before Mammon’s moneyed throne.

In Australia’s febrile, philistine and increasingly hysterical atmosphere on matters controversial, debate that supposedly tests what is tepidly termed social cohesion has been cut and mauled to the point of non-recognition.  Journalists are given to following strict talking points on matters of international interest, from President Donald Trump (criticism of all his moves, marvellous) to the issue of Israel (criticism, not quite so marvellous, entailing avoidance of such words as “massacre”, “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”).

Criticism of Israel’s policies in levelling Gaza and creating an open-air theatre of massacre in real time have led agitating voices in both Israel and Australia to claim that the demon of antisemitism is more virulent than usual.  Threats have been inflated and the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, inspired to secure votes in the months leading up to the federal election.  A pathology has taken root, from art circles to universities.

It began with an intervention by the Australian newspaper, an outlet that Israel can rely on as its pro bono propagandistic emissary down under.  The paper’s sympathetic correspondent, Yoni Bashan, had been embedded with Israeli forces in Gaza.  After receiving a number of messages, Bashan took an interest in Creative Australia’s choice for the biennale, thinking he had scored a coup by going through Sabsabi’s previous work.  This preschool hackwork found a 2007 video installation titled You, which features Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of the Lebanese Shiite militia group Hezbollah.

Nasrallah, whose voice and image appears in the montage, was slain in the latest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.  The buffoonish, hatchet assessment (“I’m not an arts reporter,” Bashan conceded in a podcast, calling the art industry “a bit too fluty for me”) claimed that Creative Australia’s selection of Sabsabi was a “creative form of racism”.  Instead of understanding the broader context of the horrors of war which Sabsabi has been preoccupied with, himself a refugee from the Lebanese civil war, the paper was thrilled to have uncovered a terrorist sympathiser.

The falsely revelatory nature of the Australian’s intervention, coupled with a discussion in the Australian Parliament that also scorned a 2006 video titled Thank you very much showing the 9/11 attacks and then US President George W. Bush, was pitifully juvenile.  Tony Burke’s expression of shock was craven, a capitulation that necessitates his immediate resignation as Minister for the Arts.  Within hours of the parliamentary exchange – one could hardly call it a debate – Creative Australia convened an emergency board meeting that unanimously endorsed cancelling the contract regarding the Venice Biennale representation featuring Sabsabi and Dagostino.  It had taken all but six days from the announcement that praised the artist’s work for exploring “human collectiveness” and questioning “identity politics and ideology, inviting audiences to do the same.”

Thankfully, this indecent chapter did provoke resignations and stinging criticism.  Mikala Tai, an important figure in Creative Australia’s visual arts departments over the last four years, wrote to Chief Executive Adrian Collette stating that she had resigned “in support of the artist.”

To the list of resignations can be added artist and board member, Lindy Lee and Simon Mordant, twice commissioner at the Venice Biennale, who told ABC Arts that he “immediately resigned” his role and terminated financial support. “There was a question asked in parliament [on Thursday, February 13] and that subsequently resulted in an unprecedented move by Creative Australia to rescind the contract.”  For Mordant, he could not think of any other situation “in any country in the world” where something of this nature had happened, and “certainly” not in Australia.

To its credit, Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), which accepted You and exhibited it in 2009, rightly wondered how the decision was reached.  In a statement to the Australian Financial Review on February 21, the gallery expressed concern with “the lack of transparency in Creative Australia’s process.”  The decision had “major ramifications for the arts in Australia and the reputation of Australia in the world at a time when creating space for diverse artist voices and ideas has never been more important.”

Other galleries have been committedly cowardly and silent on the decision, even those whose funding does not depend on Creative Australia.  The Art Gallery of NSW, which ran Sabsabi’s solo show in 2019, is a case in point, merely stating that it was “not commenting on this matter at this time”.  Liz Ann Macgregor, who ran the MCA for over two decades till 2021, offers a cast iron reason for the cringeworthy reticence.  “I think people are second-guessing that they might upset some of their donors if they say something.”

The teams shortlisted to join the biennale pavilion were also keen to express their views in an open letter addressed to the Creative Australia board.  “We believe that revoking support for the current Australian artist and curator representatives for Venice Biennale 2026 is antithetical to the goodwill and hard-fought artistic independence, freedom of speech and moral courage that is at the core of arts in Australia, which plays a crucial role in our thriving and democratic nation.”

The letter goes on to ask the salient question.  “If Creative Australia cannot even stand by its expert-led selection for a matter of hours, abandoning its own process at the first sign of pressure, then what does that say about its commitment to artistic excellence and freedom of expression?”  The answer: everything.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

President Trump’s targeting of South Africa is clearly tied to his influential adviser Elon Musk and a coterie of wealthy U.S. oligarchs, “all of whom in some way or other grew up in South Africa as children.” These men are known as the “PayPal Mafia” due to their involvement in the founding of the financial tech company PayPal, explains reporter Chris McGreal. McGreal, a former South Africa correspondent for The Guardian, outlines Musk’s pro-apartheid and neo-Nazi family history, which appears to form the basis of his adherence to a right-wing ideology that believes white South Africans “are the victims of the end of apartheid” and at risk of a “white genocide.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We speak to Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart about his new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, which is “addressed to my fellow Jews” and criticizes what he characterizes as the increasing privileging of Zionism as a part of Jewish identity. “The Jewish community is structured to basically make the existence of a Jewish state, a state that privileges Jews over Palestinians, sacred, … elevat[ing] ethnonationalism — a Jewish state — over Judaism itself,” Beinart says. In response, he challenges the erasure of Zionism’s explicitly colonial roots and political myths about majoritarian rule, arguing for the acceptance of more critical stances toward the state of Israel within Jewish communities.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The prominent British Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah remains imprisoned in Cairo even after he completed his five-year sentence last September. Fattah came to prominence during the Egyptian revolution as a blogger and political activist, and he has been jailed multiple times by the authoritarian government of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for his advocacy. His family and supporters continue to demand his freedom and have pressed the U.K. government to pressure Egypt into releasing him. Fattah’s mother Laila Soueif is now on her 117th day on hunger strike, standing on Downing Street for at least an hour every workday until her son is released. Now Australian journalist Peter Greste has launched his own hunger strike to pressure the British government, saying he owes his life to the Egyptian activist, who helped him survive when he was imprisoned in Egypt in 2013. “I quite literally owe Alaa my life,” says Greste. “He is the most popular, the most recognized political prisoner in the system, and I think they fear his capacity to mobilize people. They fear his capacity to inspire.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

At least 10 people have died in the devastating Los Angeles wildfires as firefighters continue to battle multiple infernos in the area. Thousands of homes and other structures have been destroyed, and some 180,000 people are under evacuation orders. Multiple neighborhoods have been completely burned down, including in the town of Altadena, where our guest, climate scientist and activist Peter Kalmus, lived until two years ago, when increasing heat and dryness pushed Kalmus to leave the Los Angeles area in fear of his safety. “I couldn’t stay there,” he says. “It’s not a new normal. … It’s a staircase to a hotter, more hellish Earth.” Kalmus discusses an op-ed he recently published in The New York Times about the decision, which he says was toned down by the paper’s editors when he attempted to explain that fossil fuel companies’ investment in climate change denial and normalization has only accelerated the pace of unprecedented large-scale climate disasters. “This is going to get worse,” he warns, “Everything has changed.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Experts on climate change are at a loss for words and at a loss for understanding how and why the climate change issue, which is negatively impacting planetary ecosystems, is largely ignored. The proof of this is found at the celebrated UN climate conferences, where talk is cheap, like COP29 held in oil-rich Azerbaijan. These are annual events with a long history of poor results. This frustrating stagnation has been ongoing for over 30 years.

Meanwhile, climate denialists, including the entire Republican Party, have brainwashed the public that climate change is not all that it’s cracked out to be, “no worries, it’s a hoax, ignore the radical leftists, ignore science, and oh, yes, they are communists.”

However, the climate system is not listening to fairy tales. It’s on a tear that’s broadcast nightly via headline news re super hurricanes: “Disastrous Hurricane Season Cost Soar Past $100 Billion in US, Estimates Say,” USA Today, November 1, 2024. And severe drought that threatens the existence of the Amazon rainforest, The Shriveling Mighty Amazon River Drying Out, October 11, 2024, as Antarctic glaciers slip slide away: Scientists in Chile Question Whether Antarctica Has Hit a Point of No Return, Reuters, August 8, 2024.

The world has changed like never before.

Meanwhile, insurance premiums for home ownership skyrocket, especially Florida and California. Climate change is challenging homeownership as some insurers in regions where radical climate change hit hardest drop coverage altogether: “Cimate Change Should Make You Rethink Homeownership,” New York Times, October 29, 2024.

And: “Climate Change, Disaster Risk, and Homeowner’s Insurance,” Congressional Budget Office, August 2024. How do deniers explain this?

When studying climate change, there are climate scientists and advocates of all sorts, but few understand and relate the true impact as well as Dr. Peter Carter, who’s studied the science since 1988 and an Expert Reviewer of IPCC reports. His analyses go to the core of the climate change issue. He’s openly critical of the failures of national economies to act quickly enough, and he’s on a warpath to crush climate deniers that preach falsehoods.

Tough Climate Times Ahead

Dr. Peter Carter (retired physician and founder of Climate Emergency Institute, est. 2008) posted a climate update, “November 2024: Tough Climate Times Ahead.” A synopsis of his report, in part, follows herein:

Ever since the IPCC 2018 1.5C warning of a climate emergency that required immediate mitigation efforts by major economies of the world to hold temps to 1.5C pre-industrial, everybody that can make a difference has sort of disappeared while the emergency gets worse, and worse. Where are they?

With the ranks of active advocates shrinking, Carter has appealed for help in taking the case to the major nations of the world, reaching out to climate scientists to get involved publicly by telling it like it is, making the case for immediate mitigation measures to stem “a dire climate emergency.”

And he’s looking for help to counter massive denial campaigns, especially in the U.S.: “There’s still dangerous climate change denial.” Social media is full of ridiculous denials, which originate from fossil fuel corporations and from the Republican Party. It’s not just Trump who is skeptical; it’s the whole Republican Party.

However, there’s plenty of news to dispel the lies.

The US has suffered back-to-back powerful hurricanes, not totally unusual, but the intensity is very unusual and off-the-charts bred by abrupt climate change. Hurricanes have caused $100B damage.

These things don’t happen by themselves in isolation. Human influence has changed the climate and not for the better. It’s important to connect the dots of what is happening right before our eyes, meaning fossil fuel companies, big banks, and big economy governments all threaded to climate change: “They must be held accountable… They are getting away with mass murder on a scale we have never seen before.” (Carter)

It’s a scientific fact that as the lower atmosphere warms via greenhouse gases, the more moisture it holds. Moreover, with tropical storms, water vapor increases five-to-seven times per degree of Centigrade, resulting in torrential rains, atmospheric rivers, and floods, some of the most damaging aspects of climate change.

For example, because the UK is experiencing much heavier rains than ever before, agricultural fields become waterlogged, resulting in a decline of agricultural production. This new era of extreme climate behavior impacts food supply, as the UK suffers from “weather whiplash”: “Climate Change is a Growing Threat to UK Farming,” Yale Climate Connections, October 25, 2024.

The IPCC 6th Assessment calls for immediate action on global emissions, but that call to action is nowhere to be found; it’s not happening. Therefore, we must force governments to stop subsidizing fossil fuels, a dead-end industry. For decades we’ve known fossil fuels can be completely replaced by renewables as “Fossil Fuel Subsidies Surge to Record $7 Trillion,” IMF, Aug. 24, 2023. Imagine splurging $7 Trillion per year on renewables, a 10-fold increase over current spending.

Shocking New News for 2024

“It’s very clear climate change is no longer decades in the future. It’s very obvious it’s happening now, so we need to adapt.” (Jim Skea, chairman IPCC)

“The whole of Europe is vulnerable and especially the Mediterranean. We are already seeing desertification taking place, not only in North Africa, but some of the southern margins of Europe, like Greece, Portugal and Turkey,” (Jim Skea)

The Telegraph interviewed IPCC Chair Jim Skea: It’s too Late to save Britain from Overheating, Says UN Climate Chief, October 5, 2024.  According to the interview, humanity has lost the opportunity to hold global temperature to 1.5C. And it will take a heroic effort to limit it to 2C.

Since the mid 1990s, the ultimate danger has been set at 2C above pre-industrial, which incidentally, according to Dr. Carter, is catastrophe on a global basis. All tipping points will be triggered at that level… then, it’s too late.

The most feared tipping point is permafrost thaw, which is emitting more and more CO2 (carbon dioxide) and CH4 (methane) than ever. It is melting in the Arctic and subarctic regions, emitting three major greenhouse gases, CO2, CH4 and N2O (nitrous oxide). Atmospheric CH4 is going up a lot.

“The observed growth in methane emissions follows the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most pessimistic greenhouse gas scenarios, which predict global temperatures could rise above 3°C by the century’s end if such trends continue.” (Source: “The 2024 Global Methane Budget Reveals Alarming Trends,” The European Space Agency, October 9, 2024)

According to Dr. Carter, scientists are uniformly agreed that the permafrost plight may be irreversible. In the most recent The State of the Cryosphere Report scientists claim permafrost melt is so bad/threatening that people should “be frightened.” This alone should motivate worldwide mitigation measures to halt CO2 emissions.

Alas, permafrost is now officially competing with cars, trains, planes, and industry: “An international team, led by researchers at Stockholm University, discovered that from 2000 to 2020, carbon dioxide uptake by the land was largely offset by emissions from it.” (Source: “NASA Helps Find Thawing Permafrost Adds to Near-Term Global Warming,” NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, October 29, 2024)

Moreover, some of the most shocking news is the State of Climate Change Report in 2023 of huge global surface increases in temperature, part of which was El Nino related, but it was not nearly powerful enough to kick up temperatures so radically. Obviously, something else was at work. Putting the 2023 experience of massive heat into IPCC projections, it hits the “very worst-case scenario category,” because the planet is now tracking above the worst-case scenarios at 8.5 W/m² (watts per square meter) which measures the radiative forcing that heats the planet. This is serious trouble.

[Side Note: According to NOAA data, the Earth’s average radiative forcing in 2000 was approximately 2.43 W/m², with most of this forcing coming from increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. “Before the industrial era, incoming and outgoing radiation were in very close balance, and the Earth’s average temperature was more or less stable” – MIT Climate Portal]

A major source behind the issue is straight-forward: We’ve never produced or burned more coal than today. It’s the worst thing we can do. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2023 global coal usage reached an all-time high, driven by strong demand in China and India, with production also peaking at record levels…  for 2024, global coal demand is expected to remain largely flat with production levels of 2023. This crushes Paris ’15.

Earth’s Carbon Sinks Are Failing

Earth’s carbon sinks are losing efficiency. This is horrific news. The Global Carbon Project of the past three years discovered land and ocean carbon sinks starting to lose efficiency. According to Dr. Carter, “this is a terrifying development.” We may be losing our most important natural buffers by up to 50%. The IPCC didn’t expect this to happen until after 2050, if at all, but it’s here now.

A recent study claims the planet’s overall carbon sink absorbed zero carbon or negligible amounts last year. This is the shocker of the year. Well, actually, it’s the shocker of the century. It’s a game-changer, and a devastating climate curse.

The Global Carbon Project 2nd Assessment on the status of methane CH4 and nitrous oxide N2O found each greenhouse gas to be tracking the “IPCC worst-case scenario.” This confirms Dr. Carter’s overriding thesis that we’re pushing the climate system to the edge of a dangerous spiral.

Carter: “Yes, honestly, it is time to panic…. but mysteriously there is no panic in the world.”  The 2^nd Assessment found all three greenhouse gases going up faster than anybody ever thought possible.

Is there hope?

Dr. Carter says we must communicate with people and tell the truth. We must make sure the world knows we are in a global climate planetary emergency. All kinds of emergency declarations were initiated in 2018 with the alarming IPCC 1.5C warning, but it has faded; it is gone. That warning can be put back into place. And we must harass politicians “to stop fossil fuels, to stop wiping out our future.” And hold corporations accountable. And stop harassing and jailing peaceful climate protestors.

There are possibilities of hope because we have the nuts and bolts of renewables to replace fossil fuels many times over. But fossil fuels are increasing at the same rate, or faster, as renewables. This is a road to nowhere.

In summation, the climate system is tracking above the IPCC’s worst-case scenario, and in Dr. Carter’s words: “It is time to panic: Yes, panic.” But who really knows this? And who really knows but could care less? Something somehow must be done well in advance of the world suddenly waking up one day when it’s too late with the sudden realization: “We are screwed.”

Academy Award Nominee Don’t Look Up (2021) is a perfect analogy for today’s situation.

The storyline: Astronomy grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) discover a comet the size of Mount Everest headed straight for Earth. Warned by Dibiasky and Mindy, the political establishment, brushing off the astronomers while they’re preoccupied with an election campaign, adopt a political slogan: “Don’t Look Up” to win the election.

Sound familiar?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Hunziker.

In the previous first three instances, all outfits were integrated into the political fold of their countries, revealing the flimsy nature of badging organisations as terrorist entities.  War makers and practitioners of violence can become peacemakers and creatures of paper pushing officialdom.  Such transformations take time and an acid bath of reality.

That backdrop offers context in understanding, and sternly critiquing, the hysteria of critics keen to press charges against those sporting Hezbollah symbols.  At the very least, it should consider the mockery that is free speech in a country such as Australia, awash with authoritarians concerned about the watery concept of social cohesion.  Down under, the skimpy protections for free speech are being whittled away year by year. The Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Prohibited Hate Symbols and Other Measures) Bill 2023, passed in December last year, makes it an offence to publicly display and trade in prohibited symbols, along with the Nazi salute.  Prohibited symbols are defined as prohibited Nazi symbols or “a prohibited terrorist organisation symbol.”

The Criminal Code Act 1995 as amended, offers a number of glutinous elements that must be made out in such a charge.  They are thickly unclear and, it follows, difficult to apply.  To be charged with a prohibited symbol offence, a reasonable person (drafters can never resist this feeble term) would have to consider that any public display would involve dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority, hatred or constitute incitement “to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate”.  That same inscrutable reasonable person would also consider the display to involve “advocacy of hatred of a group of persons distinguished by race, religion or nationality or a member of the targeted group” with the incitement element also present. Thirdly, such conduct must be “likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate a reasonable person who is a member of a group distinguished by race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion or national or social origin.”

These elements are nonsensical, attempting to impose unmeasurable standards about feelings that are rarely reasonable and always almost subjective.  Subjectively, people are constantly offended by what they disagree with.  The whole field of political opinion is one lengthy record of taking offence.  It quickly follows that some might also be intimidated, insulted, or humiliated by an opponent’s contrary view, notably when it comes to discrediting a position.  Freedom of speech, axiomatically, requires the exclusion of the offended from consideration.  But the concept is fragile in Australia’s regulation-crazed environment.

Arrests have already been made.  On October 2, a 19-year-old woman was arrested and charged for publicly displaying the symbol of a prohibited organisation at a Sydney demonstration.  The question, however, is whether did so with the requisite intention, absurdly determined by the hypothetical reasonable person, to incite offence, insult, humiliation and intimidation. Ahead of protests scheduled for October 6 and 7, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, not wishing to find himself in a messy quagmire of prosecution and confusion, warned that they should not take place.  “It would not advance any cause.  It would cause a great deal of distress.”  Again, free speech, felled by the concept of hurt feelings.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has created a dedicated taskforce to investigate nine allegations of prohibited symbols being displayed in Victoria, demonstrating how vagueness in legislation is always good for creating work for idle authorities.  Operation Ardana will consider the display of such symbols “while potentially inciting or advocating violence, or hatred, based on race and religion.”

AFP Deputy Commissioner Krissy Barrett offers her view about what behaviour would satisfy the test.  “The context around the conduct is extremely important … If they’re holding the flag, what are they saying?  What are they chanting?  What are they wearing? What sort of physical behaviour are they demonstrating?”

The Home Minister Tony Burke is only too grateful to leave it to Barrett and her colleagues, given his own muddle about how such laws are to apply.  Instead of offering any clarifications, he has warned mischievous Hezbollah flag wavers that they risk losing their visas.  “We don’t know whether they are actually on visas … [but] we do have a higher standard if you’re on a visa.”

Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, all sledgehammer and no grace, senses room for political exploitation, ostensibly calling for legal improvements to an already shabby law.  “The laws already exist, and if the laws are inadequate then the Australian Federal Commissioner should advise the minister and the parliament should deal with it as a matter of urgency.”

In addition to the Commonwealth law, states laws also exist to layer the prosecution case.  The Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, for instance, is convinced that Victoria police had the relevant powers to deal with those who “may be displaying terrorist flags”.

With the paranoid authoritarians in charge, the very concept of valid protest has been reduced to a hint, a suggestion.  Keep it anodyne and any relevant arguments humbly polite.  Avoid the inherent brutality of a broadening bloody conflict hostile to international law.  Most of all, make social cohesion a license to muzzle.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The legal action followed the use of a photo of Fico on the cover of a book authored by Bárdy, entitled “Fico-Obsessed with Power.”

Bárdy was the editor at Aktuality when Slovak investigative journalist Ján Kuciak was shot and killed on February 21, 2018. Kuciak is widely believed to have been targeted in retaliation for his corruption reporting. Despite the hitmen and intermediaries receiving lengthy prison sentences, the businessman accused of masterminding the crime, after threatening the journalist, was twice found not guilty. 

Read the full letter.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The Australian political-media class have been in an uproar ever since footage surfaced of people waving Hezbollah flags at a protest in Melbourne over the weekend and displaying pictures of the group’s deceased leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated by Israel in a massive airstrike on Friday.

After initially stating that no crime had been committed in these acts of political speech, Victoria police are now saying they have identified six potentially criminal incidents related to the demonstration. These incidents reportedly involve “prohibited symbols” in violation of the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment which was enacted last year.

Needless to say, free nations do not have “prohibited symbols”.

This development follows numerous statements from various Australian leaders denouncing the protests as criminal.

“I expect the police agencies to pursue this,” Victorian premier Jacinta Allan said of the protests, adding, “Bringing grief and pain and division to the streets of Melbourne by displaying these prohibited symbols, is utterly unacceptable.”

Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong took to Twitter to denounce the protesters, saying Australians must not only refrain from supporting Hezbollah but from even giving “any indication of support”.

“We condemn any indication of support for a terrorist organisation such as Hizballah,” Wong tweeted, adding, “It not only threatens national security, but fuels fear and division in our communities.”

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke wants to deport any international visitors displaying prohibited symbols in Australia, saying “I won’t hesitate to cancel the visas of visitors to our country who are spreading hate.”

On the other side of the aisle, opposition leader Peter Dutton is on a crusade to get new laws passed to ensure the elimination of banned symbols from public view, saying “enforcement for law is required and if there are laws that need to be passed to make sure that our values are upheld then the Prime Minister should be doing that.”

“Support for a proscribed terrorist organisation has no place on the streets of Melbourne,” tweeted Labor MP Josh Burns. “Anyone breaking counter-terrorism legislation should face the full force of the law.”

“Australians cherish the right to peaceful protest,” tweeted independent MP Zoe Daniels. “However, there is no justification for supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation. Those who were seen doing so on the streets of Melbourne at protests yesterday should be investigated and prosecuted.”

In an article titled “Hezbollah flags at protests shape as test of new hate-symbol laws,” the ABC reports that these legal efforts to stomp out dissenting political speech are made possible by laws which were recently passed with the official intention of targeting Nazi symbols, but which “also cover the symbols of listed terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah.” Which is about as strong an argument on the slippery slope of government censorship as you could possibly ask for.

Hezbollah is listed as a “terrorist organisation” on the say-so of the Australian government, not because of its actions or methods but because it stands in opposition to the US power alliance of which Australia is a part. This arbitrary designation is smeared across any resistance group on earth which opposes the dictates of Washington, and can then be used to suppress the speech of anyone who disagrees with the murderous behavior of the western empire.

And it should here be noted that Australia is the only so-called democracy in the world which has no national charter or bill of rights of any kind. A tremendous amount of faith has been placed in state and federal legislators to simply do the right thing, which has proved foolish and ineffective. Professor George Williams wrote for the Melbourne University Law Review in 2006:

“Australia is now the only democratic nation in the world without a national bill of rights. Some comprehensive form of legal protection for basic rights is otherwise seen as an essential check and balance in democratic governance around the world. Indeed, I can find no example of a democratic nation that has gained a new Constitution or legal system in recent decades that has not included some form of a bill of rights, nor am I aware of any such nation that has done away with a bill of rights once it has been put in place.

“Why then is Australia the exception? The answer lies in our history. Although many think of Australia as a young country, constitutionally speaking, it is one of the oldest in the world. The Australian Constitution remains almost completely as it was when enacted in 1901, while the Constitutions of the Australian states can go back as far as the 1850s. The legal systems and Constitutions of the nation and the Australian colonies (and then states) were conceived at a time when human rights, with the prominent exception of the 1791 United States Bill of Rights, tended not to be protected through a single legal instrument. Certainly, there was then no such law in the United Kingdom, upon whose legal system ours is substantially based. This has changed, especially after World War II and the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but by then Australia’s system of government had been operating for decades.”

If you ever wonder why Australia so often stands out as a freakish anomaly in the western world with its jarring authoritarianism and disregard for human rights, this is why.

The powerful abuse our civil rights because they can. We are pummeled with propaganda in the birthplace of Rupert Murdoch and increasingly forbidden from speaking out against the atrocities of our government and its allies overseas. We are being groomed into mindless, obedient sheep for the empire.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Caitlin Johnstone.

Hurricane Helene tears through the southeastern United States as scientists say climate change rapidly intensifies hurricanes. The storm devastated large swaths of the southeastern United States after making landfall in Florida as a Category 4 storm. Officials say the death toll is likely to rise, as many are still missing. Helene is expected to be one of the costliest hurricanes in U.S. history and was fueled by abnormally warm water in the Gulf of Mexico, but most of the media coverage has failed to connect the devastation to the climate crisis. “The planet’s overheating. It’s irreversible. It’s caused by the fossil fuel industry,” says climate activist and climate scientist Peter Kalmus in Raleigh, North Carolina. “This will get worse as the planet continues to get hotter.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

For the Peter Fensham AM Lecture Series (AM is not to be confused with a radio frequency), few finer choices than Professor Peter Doherty could have been selected.  The immunologist and Nobel Laureate was intended as the glittery introduction to a series named after the inaugural chair of science education at Monash University’s Faculty of Education from 1967 to 1992.  The lecture topic: The Challenge of Public Science Education.

Before the glitter comes the dross.  Introductions must be made by the current Dean of Faculty.  Acknowledgments made.  Paralytically boring jokes delivered with the skill of a suffocating goldfish.  The audience is also introduced to a perfect, waxwork figure behind the lecture series.  As with eulogies, juicy flaws are never mentioned, off colour jokes rarely entertained.

When it finally comes to Doherty’s turn to speak, one is immediately disabused by the image of a tyrannical professor lording over labs, staff and students.  With mischief, he enters, unevenly, that treacherous field of educating the public about science.  In a sense, he assumes a role more popularly associated with the celluloid astrophysicist, the species of character that has colonised television and screen with their searching, almost scolding gazes (Neil deGrasse Tyson), or drawn out walks upon the earth’s surface (Brian Cox).

What the audience gets is a healthy, even bawdy dose of stories, anecdotes and analogies.  Having made his name in a field, Doherty has every right to be dull.  Instead, he is self-deprecating and mocking.  Wit sparkles.  “I miss the obituaries.  The most interesting people are in the obituaries.”

He refuses to punish his listeners with elaborate details on work that won him the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1995 and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1996, along with Rolf M. Zinkernagel.  The Nobel Prize committee offers a summary: “By studying mice, Peter Doherty and Rolf Zinkernagel proved in 1973 how the immune system recognises virus-ridden cells.”  The white blood T-cell eliminates virus-ridden cells, but only “if it recognises both the foreign substances, viruses, and certain substances from the body’s own cells.”  The result: vital work in vaccine production and the production of medicines against infectious diseases.

Doherty prefers to muse about the endless dining in Stockholm following the ceremony, and the taxing of his prize money by the US Internal Revenue Service.  On being made Australian of the Year in 1997, he acknowledged criticism that such a figure would be expected to be in the country rather than domiciled or resident elsewhere.

Sensible points are made.  With the huge literature, often of a specialist type, in such areas as virology and immunology, a modicum of scientific knowledge and literacy is needed.  School curricula should accordingly be shaped to reflect that focus.  The logic here is unimpeachable, but for a country like Australia, the shift towards what are called the STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – has become the hijacked province of warmongers, militarists and panic merchants.  The AUKUS agreement between Australia, the UK and the United States has made the Australian Commonwealth eager to fund “student pathways” to recruit graduates for the military-industrial complex.

He also makes a point made trite by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Sicilian epic, Il Gattopardo (The Leopard): “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”

The audience audibly gasps at Doherty’s observations on the US scientific-industrial base.  Unlike Australia, which sports a much leaner foundation from which to pursue research and innovation, one verging on a starvation model, US scientific industry thrives on what could be described as industrial socialism.  Forget notions of free standing, pioneer scientists operating with funding drawn exclusively from the fruits of free enterprise.  Much of it has come, at least initially, from government sources, with the intention that the investment will eventually make a return for the US economy.  Australian scientific endeavours, in contrast, must migrate and exit their country of origin, often finding richer soil in the United States.

The immunologist does, however, seem short on how to convince those hermetically sealed from scientific reason to open their minds.  Resort is made to Max Planck’s observation (Doherty misattributes the remark to Isaac Newton) that new scientific truths do not prove victorious by convincing opponents “but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”.  So it follows that science advances one funeral at a time.

He also admits to suffering various maladies, Trump Derangement Syndrome being the most prominent of them.  In doing so, he struggles to be consistent with observing one of his own lessons: avoid belittling sceptics and conspiracy theorists.

While Doherty is faultless in noting the former US president’s breezy tendency to mutilate science and its strictures, he is optimistic that the Democratic hopeful, Kamala Harris, will be a shining light in the field.

With the address delivered, an appropriate sense of bonhomie established, the session moves to questions.  While the lecture is advertised as both an in person and online show, it is clear that the digital elves at the back of the room are guarding the gates and sifting through what Doherty might or should answer.  The Dean shifts and twitches nervously, hoping that no question will court controversy.  Monash Education is, after all, logo and brand.

Up rises a man dressed in bright emerald, his shirt promising informality with menace.  He takes the mic, speaking in broad, disarming tones.  The issue: “I represent a group fighting for truth.  I heard you attack conspiracy theorists.  But we are out there seeking the truth about COVID-19.”  Doherty, with magnanimity, admitted that the study of COVID-19 was a constantly evolving one, and initially poorly understood.  No longer could it be seen as merely a respiratory virus but a coagulating one.  Corrections would have to be made over time.  The fires sadly doused, the formal end of proceedings was announced, leaving Doherty hostage to a gaggle of mobbing questioners.

A bit of wisdom from Doherty lingers as the lecture hall empties.  “I did become more known with the Nobel Prize.  But I found that I became only as famous as a person in a coffee advertisement that had not been shown for three months.  And that’s how it should be.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The method of doing so is always unimaginatively dull and almost always inaccurate.  Select your marginal group in society.  Elevate it as a threat, filling it with a gaseous, nasty fantasy.  Condemn said group for various fictional and misattributed defects.  When all is done, demonise its members and tar any alleged supporters or collaborators as foolish at best, unpatriotic at worst.

The group of late to rankle Dutton and his front bench of security hysterics are Palestinians, notably those fleeing the odious war in Gaza and seeking sanctuary in Australia.  Since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, only 2,922 visas have been granted to those possessing Palestinian Authority travel documents, with roughly 350 being visitor visas.  Much larger total of 7,111 visa applications have been refused by the federal government.  So far, a mere 1,300 of them have made it to Australia, placed on temporary visitor visas that do not enable the holders to receive government aid or engage in meaningful employment.  The Albanese government is ruminating on whether to create a new category of visa that would lift such impediments.

On such figures, Dutton has little to work with.  Undeterred, he has spent the best part of a week playing the role of the tactically paranoid. “If people are coming in from that war zone and we’re uncertain about their identity or allegiances,” he told Sky News on August 14, it was “not prudent” to let them in.

Education Minister Jason Clare, who represents an electorate in Western Sydney with a sizeable Muslim population, mockingly invited Dutton to pay a visit.  “There are people from Gaza here now, they live in my electorate, I’ve met them, great people.”  They had “had their homes blown up, their schools blown up, their hospitals blown up, who have had their kids blown up.”

The Shadow Home Secretary James Paterson has also drummed up the concern that the government has simply not convinced “us and the Australian people that the security and identity checks that they’re doing are sufficiently thorough and robust to protect the Australian people”.  While Australia had an “important role to play” in confronting “a very serious need,” safety and security of the Australian populace came first.

What constitutes a satisfactory measure for Paterson?  A blanket refusal to grant visas to any supporters of Hamas would be a start.  “We are several days now into this debate, and they still have not clearly said whether they will or whether they won’t accept someone who is a supporter of Hamas into our country.”  All applications from Palestinians fleeing Gaza had to be referred to the domestic intelligence service, ASIO and “robust in-person interviews and biometric tests” conducted.

In comments made to The Australian Financial Review, Paterson revealed the true intention of this dash into demagogy’s thicket.  “Governments make choices all the time about who they prioritise to bring to Australia.  If the Albanese government picks this cohort ahead of others it will be a revealing choice.”

These objections have an air of stifling unreality to them.  For one thing, they are scornful of the views of Mike Burgess, the current ASIO director general, who, on August 11, stated that “there are security checks” or “criteria by which people are referred to my service for review and when they are, we deal with that effectively.”

Burgess, showing uncharacteristic nuance, drew a distinction between the provision of financial or material aid to the organisation, something which might tickle the interest of a screening officer, and that of “rhetorical support”.  “If it’s just rhetorical support, and they don’t have an ideology or support for a violent extremism ideology, then that’s not a problem.”

The logic of preventing individuals coming to Australia purely because of a supporting link with Hamas shows a dunce’s principle at work.  It falsely imputes that the individual is a potential terrorist, eschewing any broader understanding.  Immature and unworldly, such a perspective ignores the blood-spattered political realities of the conflict.  The insinuation here is that the only acceptable Palestinian is an apolitical one mutely acknowledging the primacy of Israel power, humble in expressing any claims to self-determination.

The Coalition opposition to granting visas to Palestinians voicing support for Hamas is also implausible in another respect.  While claiming to be defenders of that most weaselly of terms, “social cohesion”, Dutton and his stormtroopers seek to demolish it.  Manufacturing insecurity, much like the mafia’s credo, becomes the pretext for battling it.

Boiled down to its essentials, the views of Dutton and his colleagues, wholly picked from the cabinet of Israel’s security narrative, is that any support for Palestinian autonomy and independence, manifested through any political or military arm, must be suspect.  You had to be, as Paterson put it, “a peaceful supporter of Palestinian self-determination” and an opponent of “using violent means”.  Be quiet, remain subservient, and wait for the oppressor’s good will.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

In foreign policy, he supports US interventions in any theatre of the globe without question.  Ditto such allies as Israel.  To the distant north, the evil Yellow Horde is abominated.  Domestically, matters are similarly one dimensional.  Irregular boat arrivals are to be repelled with necessary cruelty.  And then there is a near pathological hatred of renewable energy.

Needing to find some electoral distraction to improve the Liberal-National coalition’s chances of returning to office, Dutton has literally identified a nuclear option.  Certainly, it is mischievous, throwing those wishing to invest in the problematic Australian energy market into a state of confusion.  The business of renewables, as with any investment, is bound to also be shaken.

Last month, Dutton finally released some details of his nuclear vision.  Seven nuclear projects are envisaged, using sites with currently working or shuttered coal fired power stations. These will be plants up to 1.4 gigawatts (GW) to be located at Loy Yang in Victoria, Liddell in NSW’s Hunter Valley and Mt. Piper near Lithgow, Tarong and Callide in Queensland.  Small modular (SMR) reactors are planned for Port Augusta in South Australia and Muja near Collie in Western Australia.

The SMR gambit is particularly quixotic, given that they have yet to come to viable fruition.  Besides, the entire reactor venture already faces glaring legal impediments, as nuclear power is prohibited by Commonwealth and state laws.  (The ban on nuclear energy was, with sweet irony, legislated by the Howard Coalition government a quarter of a century ago.)

Already, the handicaps on the proposal are thick and onerous.  Ian Lowe of Griffith University witheringly describes the proposal as “legally impossible, technically improbable, economically irrational and environmentally irresponsible.”

The greatest of all handicaps is the fact that Australian governments, despite tentatively flirting with the prospect of a civilian nuclear sector at points, have never convinced the citizenry about the merits of such power.  The continuous failure of the Commonwealth to even identify a long-standing site for low-level radioactive waste for the country’s modest nuclear industry is a point in fact.

Aspects of the proposed program also go distinctly against the supposedly free market individualism so treasured by those on Dutton’s side of politics.  If nuclear power were to become the fundamental means to decarbonise the Australian economy by 2050, it would entail crushing levels of debt and heavy government stewardship.

By its very nature, the Commonwealth would have to take the reins of this venture, given that private investors will have no bar of it.  Tom Dusevic, writing in the otherwise pro-Dutton outlet The Australian, put it thus: “There is no other way because private capital won’t go anywhere near this risky energy play, with huge upfront costs, very long lead times and the madness that has pervaded our energy transition to meet international obligations.”

The extent of government involvement and ownership of the proposed nuclear infrastructure made The Age and Sydney Morning Herald search for a precedent.  It seemed to have an element of “Soviet economics” to it, directly at odds with the Liberal Party’s own professed philosophy of “lean government that minimises interference in our daily lives; and maximises individual and private sector initiative”.

It would also further add to the already monstrous AUKUS obligations Australia has signed up to with the United States and United Kingdom, a sovereignty shredding exercise involving the transfer and construction of nuclear-powered submarines to Canberra costing upwards and above A$368 billion.  The Smart Energy Council has been good enough to offer its own estimate: the seven nuclear plants and reactors would cost somewhere in the order of A$600 billion, securing a mere 3.7% of Australia’s energy share by 2050.

While draining the treasury of funds, the nuclear-in-Duttonland experiment would do little to alleviate energy costs.  The CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, along with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), have concluded that nuclear power in Australia would not be prudent in terms of cost relative to other sources of power.  The obstacles noted in their 2023-4 report are impressively forbidding.

Australia, for instance, lacks existing nuclear power projects.  “Therefore, although it is true that all technologies have extensive pre-construction development times, nuclear is unique in that it has an empty development pipeline in Australia.”  Throw in the layers of legal, safety and security steps, any pioneering nuclear plant in Australia would be “significantly delayed”, rendering nuclear power’s role in achieving net zero emissions by 2050 a nonsense.

The Dutton plan is scratched of all empirical shape.  Estimates are absent.  Numbers, absent.  Capacity, absent.  Figures, if supplied, will be done immediately prior to the next election, or while in government.  Such moves teeter on the edge of herculean stupidity and foolhardiness, at least in Australian conditions.  The exercise is also, quite rightly, being seen as an attempt to stealthily retain coal fired stations while starving continued investment to the renewable sector.

Dutton’s junior partner, the Nationals, have also shown much candour on where they stand on renewable energy projects.  Party leader David Littleproud nailed his colours to the mast on that subject early last year.  By August 2023, he was explicitly calling for a “pause” to the roll out of wind and solar and transmission links, calling the Albanese government’s pursuit of their 82% renewables target a “reckless” one.  His implicit suggestion: wait for the release of the nuclear genie.

The Coalition opposition’s nuclear tease continues the tendency in Australia to soil climate policy with the sods of cultural conflict.  On any matter, Dutton would be happy to become a flat earther were there any votes in it.  The problem h

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

I opposed the bombing of Libya by Obama in 2011 — which destroyed that country — even before it was perpetrated. George Clooney, Peter Welch, the New York Times, and other liars or fools of liars, did not.

I opposed the U.S. arming of Al Qaeda in Syria in order to overthrow Assad in 2012 by Obama — which destroyed that country — even before it was perpetrated. George Clooney, Peter Welch, the New York Times, and other liars or fools of liars, did not.

I opposed the U.S. coup that was perpetrated in 2014 by Obama, Clinton, and Biden, against Ukraine in order to place U.S. missiles there to blitz-nuke The Kremlin — which destroyed Ukraine — even before it was perpetrated. George Clooney, Peter Welch, the New York Times, and other liars or fools of liars, did not.

The Democratic Party is as flamingly neoconservative, pro-MIC, hawkish and pro-U.S.-imperialism, as is the Republican Party; and, so, only a Second American Revolution that recognizes all Americans’ enemy as being right here at home — the super-rich who control all of the major ‘news’-media and the Government (both of its Parties) — and which Revolution removes them from the power they have to deceive the majority of the public and destroy nation after nation while the MIC-owners grow ever fatter feasting upon the blood and misery of others in other lands and upon the despair of the poor in our own, can be constructive in the present era when the U.S. behemoth is craving feverishly to control the entire world and to increase the annual aggression(‘defense’)-budget so high it will leave nothing left to spend for the public.

George Clooney says of our present neoconservative-in-chief, “I love Joe Biden. As a senator. As a vice president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him. Believe in his character. Believe in his morals.” I do not, and I would never sink so low as to say such a thing as that.

Peter Welch says of our present neoconservative-in-chief, “I have great respect for President Biden. He saved our country from a tyrant. He is a man of uncommon decency. He cares deeply about our democracy. He has been one of the best presidents of our time.” (He thinks that Obama was the best.) I do not, and I would never sink so low as to say such a thing as that.

The New York Times says that we must vote for Biden because Trump is supposedly even worse: “HE IS DANGEROUS IN WORD, DEED AND ACTION: DONALD TRUMP IS UNFIT TO LEAD”. Instead, they want us to vote for the most corrupt President in all of U.S. history.

But the candidate who is chosen by representatives of Democratic Party billionaires, is no less evil than and no better than the candidate who is chosen by representatives of Republican Party billionaires; and to allege to the contrary is not only to be ludicrous but to be vile, because it’s by now obvious that both sides of the U.S. aristocracy are equally evil and equally dangerous to the entire world. Only a Second American Revolution can now save us all.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

“We welcome the Dutch court’s conviction of three perpetrators for the murder of crime reporter Peter de Vries in 2021,” Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative in Berlin, said on Thursday. “While the verdict is an important step towards ending impunity in this case, Dutch authorities should keep up their efforts to ensure real justice is achieved by identifying those who ordered the murder and pursuing their prosecution.”

On June 12, a court in the capital Amsterdam sentenced three men for their involvement in the shooting of de Vries — shooter Delano G. and getaway driver Kamil E. were each given 28 years in prison, while the organizer of the attack, Krystian M., received a sentence of more than 26 years. Full names of suspects were not released to comply with Dutch privacy regulations.

Three other unidentified men were convicted of complicity in the murder, receiving sentences ranging from 10 to 14 years.

It was unclear at the time of publication whether the convicted men would appeal the verdict.

De Vries was gunned down on July 6, 2021, outside a television studio in Amsterdam, where he had just finished appearing on a talk show, and died nine days later in the hospital. Authorities believe he was targeted for his role as an adviser and spokesperson for a witness in the trial of a drug kingpin rather than for his reporting. The witness’s brother and lawyer were both murdered.

CPJ’s emails requesting comment from the Dutch Public Prosecution Service and the de Vries family did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

We speak with veteran journalist Peter Maass about the Israeli war on Gaza and his new opinion piece for The Washington Post headlined “I’m Jewish, and I’ve covered wars. I know war crimes when I see them.” Maass, who was a senior editor at The Intercept until earlier this year, has spent decades covering wars, including the Bosnian genocide in the 1990s that killed about 100,000 people over nearly four years. He says many of the same war crimes he reported then are part of Israel’s current assault, including sniper attacks on civilians, bombing of civilian infrastructure, attacks on bread lines and besieging whole populations by preventing food and other aid from entering. “What seems to be unfolding in Gaza is even worse than what I saw in Bosnia,” says Maass.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

On April 7, Chester Chikumbutso Doba, a detective in the Malawi Police Service’s Cyber Crime Unit, summoned Mhone to appear for questioning the following day at a police station in the commercial capital of Blantyre, according to a statement by the Malawi chapter of the regional press freedom group Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), news reports, the journalist, and his lawyer Joseph Lihoma, who separately spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Mhone was questioned and arrested at the Wenela police station in Blantyre the following day in connection with two articles published August 2023 by the privately owned Malawi24 news site, which alleged police involvement in corruption with a local businessman according to those same sources. Mhone worked with Malawi24 until March 27, 2024. Mhone told CPJ that police transferred him on April 9 to police headquarters in the capital of Lilongwe, about 186 miles from Blantyre.

“I was treated like a criminal when I was being taken to Lilongwe,” the journalist said. “Police handcuffed me as though I was going to run away when I handed myself over to them on Monday [April 8].”

Mhone said Doba questioned him for the first time at police headquarters, also in connection to his August 2023 Malawi24 reporting. The police informed Mhone that he was facing charges of publishing false news, likely to cause fear or public alarm, extorting the businessman, and cyber spamming unspecified persons.Prosecutors are expected to prepare a formal charge sheet to be presented in court, according to Lihoma. Mhone was released later that day. 

“Macmillan Mhone’s arrest points to authorities’ intolerance for reporting that sheds light on allegations of corruption involving the security services,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator, Muthoki Mumo, in Nairobi.“Instead of targeting journalists, authorities in Malawi should spend their time investigating those allegations. The cybercrime, extortion, and false news charges leveled against Macmillan Mhone must be dropped without delay.” 

If convicted of publishing false news Mhone faces up to two years in prison and/or a fine at the discretion of the court, while an extortion conviction carries up to 14 years in prison, according to Malawi’s penal code. The cyber spamming charge includes a 2,000,000 Malawian kwacha (about US$1,150) fine and imprisonment of five years if found guilty, according to section 91 Malawi’s Electronic Transactions and Cyber Security Act.

The police seized the Mhone’s mobile phone soon after his arrest and handed it back to him the morning of April 10, the journalist and Lihoma separately told CPJ. It is unclear whether police searched the mobile device.

According to Mhone’s bail document, the journalist is scheduled to appear in court in Lilongwe on April 23, 2024, for the spamming and extortion charges. Lihoma told CPJ that it was unclear why the bail document does not mention the publication of false news charge.

Mhone is the latest Malawian journalist to be targeted by authorities in connection with reporting on alleged corruption. In February, investigative journalist Gregory Gondwe fled Malawi over fears that he would be arrested in connection with his coverage of alleged military dealings with a businessman under investigation for corruption, according to a CPJ statement at the time and news reports. In 2022 Gondwe was arrested for several hours, also in connection with corruption reporting. 

Detective Doba refused to comment when reached by CPJ via messaging app, referring all queries to Malawi Police spokesperson Peter Kalaya. Kalaya promised to return CPJ’s calls but did not. Kalaya also did not respond to written requests for comment sent via text message and messaging app. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

President Kennedy was furious at the CIA for having misled him. Waiting several months before he compelled CIA Director Allen Dulles to resign, Kennedy told him, “Under a parliamentary system of government it is I who would be leaving. But under our system it is you who must go.”

Thus John F. Kennedy defended the illusion that the Anglophile dominated US government had transcended its British aristocratic-monarchical roots. Allen Dulles resigned from his office as Director of Central Intelligence to preside over the committee that would disprove Kennedy‘s naive belief in an American system of responsible government in the hands of popularly elected representatives.

A Conservative friend of the Thatcher regime in Great Britain created a series called “Yes Minister” (with a sequel “Yes Prime Minister”) in which the power of the permanent civil service over elected parliamentary government was lampooned. Yet behind the sarcasm with which Sir Humphrey exhibits his scarcely concealed contempt for the “barbarians” – meaning His Majesty’s ordinary subjects- lies the admission of simplicity in what has been recently called the “Deep State”. Denied by most in the West, the existence of what Prouty called “the secret team” is so obvious to the scriptwriters of the aristocratic- monarchist British Broadcasting Corporation that it could be advertised in prime time. The history of the current regime in the Federal Republic of Germany, ignored by most of occupied Germany’s licensed “free media”, was so obvious that GDR prime time TV broadcast a series in the 1970s which dramatized the US-Nazi cooperation in the remilitarization of Germany (west) to fight the war now actually impending against Russia. Das Unsichtbare Visier told the story of secret rearmament using the core of the SS and reliable Wehrmacht officers and the use of CIA Gladio operations to create pseudo-Left terrorism in the strategy of tension against the nominally legal Left in the NATO-occupied countries.

The best the US could do was House of Cards, which follows the Dallas template with some cynical steroids. However while the British and the GDR series admit this is a system, the US version is unable to transcend celebrity and the superficiality of daytime soap operas. All three series were devised as entertainment. They therefore have aesthetic attributes, which permit the viewer to suspend belief. However the difference in context is remarkable. While the GDR version fictionalizes history and the British version reeks of the smugness in the senior common room, Americans at their most cynical cannot transcend the Disneyland/ Leave it to Beaver (even if Beaver now would be a trannie) exceptionalism by which only the individual is good or bad. Despite the candid asides and opportunism of the players, the story is always about corruption. The politicians are dishonest and greedy for wealth and power. But so is everyone else. House of Cards conceals the interests of power inherent in the system by making all the participants sinners with varying degrees of indulgence and grace. The clever are the elect (or elected). Calvinism is affirmed.

While I was searching for Kennedy’s words to Allen Dulles (not knowing who would have recorded the original exchange), I listened to some of Kennedy‘s press conferences. I can recommend them highly. They are remarkable for their studied candour, lacking that vacuous, manipulative staging by the handlers of subsequent POTUS. John F Kennedy campaigned among other things on alleged indicators of US weakness in comparison to the Soviet Union- the so-called missile gap. This persisted in his speeches about the space program. However as POTUS he also implied the Soviet Union or the communist countries were ahead of the US in social welfare. In his 21 April 1961 press conference he replied to a question by saying not that the US was better or more successful than the USSR but that he believed it was “more durable”.

At this point one could have asked what virtue lies in a durable yet inferior system? Needless to say this question was not asked. Sixty years after his assassination the US system has proven resilient and reactionary. Despite almost quadrennial changes in the executive branch the resilience of the Reaction continues to amaze while innumerable analysts draft obituaries for the expected demise of the great empire. Meanwhile long-term rises in living standards are only found among the enemies (Russia and China).

To put this in perspective the Soviet Union accomplished the equivalent of two industrialisation phases between 1917 and 1962 (45 years) despite a world war, civil war, foreign invasion and “cold war” that lasted from 1910 until 1989. All that was accomplished based on domestic resources. China accomplished similar development between 1949 and 1989. The US required a century with African and Chinese slave labour, the extermination of a whole continent of indigenous people and some 182 wars fought to dominate the Western hemisphere. Russia and China out produce the US quantitatively and qualitatively despite latter having the highest armaments expenditure in the world. Clearly durability does not translate into human welfare. Kennedy was oblique but somehow aware that the US system would be durably unattractive if something essential did not change in the country whose chief executive he had become.

The press conferences reveal a man who knew how the formal machinery of Congress worked but seemed oblivious to the operation of government itself. His hesitancy and caution betrayed that novitiate status. One need only compare him to Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower or Richard Nixon. His seniors in the business all clearly understood how precarious elected office was. Eisenhower’s farewell may not have been cynical but it suggested that there was actually a choice between elected government and the permanent state. As a career Army officer and high functionary in the permanent bureaucracy he must have known that no later than the machinations that made Truman the new tenant in the White House the POTUS had become a cupid doll for the cultic rituals of entrenched power. The patriotic (loyal) opposition chronically overvalue this speech.

If one believes the government is only corrupt – although that is bad enough – then it is very tempting to believe that if only the right, honest people get elected then change or even salvation is in sight. However if one begins with the questions what do ordinary people need to live decent lives? And how are those needs satisfied? Then the constant threat that those needs will not be met can be openly addressed. Instead of abstract, negative freedom (Isaiah Berlin) where one is more or less free to sleep under bridges in default of eternal debts, one might judge a government by its willingness to spend maybe half of what it appropriates for killing people to keeping people alive. Then with such a modest proposal one might assess the willingness and ability of one’s government to facilitate well-being for all instead of deliberately preventing it. That could lead to questions about who makes decisions if not the elected representatives (sometimes pretending to be leaders)?

Until the mid-19th century the US had no permanent civil service like the British had developed. In history books one can read deprecatory discussions of the “spoils system”. Whenever there was a change in elected office, the new officer or his party exercised patronage privilege to hire and fire the civil servants to fit the taste or priorities of the incoming officeholders. Even letter carriers and secretaries owed their posts to the officeholder’s pleasure. In the Reform Era leading into the 20th century the US adopted a competitive civil service system with permanent appointment regardless of party. The only posts that remained discretionary were cabinet-level and those subject to Senate confirmation. This rational improvement and professionalization was intended to give daily government and administration quality and efficiency. However it also created a class of officials whose primary interest was career promotion and not professional implementation of government policy. The very security which was to keep them out of politics created a political subculture insulated from expressions of the popular will. This clerical caste operated like its cultural predecessors in the Latin clergy. The prelates, i.e. cabinet officials and agency directors relied on the senior and ambitious junior civil servants to implement policy but also to defend ministerial/ cabinet secretary turf. While the British filled these ranks from the aristocratic families, new and old, the Americans filled these preferments from the plutocracy. Thus the civil service was socially reproduced like the British service with the US equivalent of titled privilege. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was not the first to call attention to industry “capture” of the regulatory agencies. As serious and justified as that critique is it misses the class component of capture entirely. The “revolving door” which amplifies “capture” is not merely corruption. It is a direct reflection of how the American class system works. There is no better head of NIH or Dr Anthony Fauci’s fief just waiting for an honest selection to confirm his appointment. The DIE dogma is not a solution but a further obfuscation of the problem. There is no “better CIA” or “cleaner FBI” any more than there was a better Inquisition or Gestapo to be had. Philip Agee was clear about that point, as was David Atlee Phillips. Moshe Lewin in his discussion of the eternally maligned Soviet government under Joseph Stalin (The Making of the Soviet System, 1994) pointed out that from the start of the October Revolution the Soviet Union was dependent on the vast majority of Tsarist civil and military servants simply because there were never enough educated Communist cadre to fill all the administrative positions for the vast Russian territory. This Tsarist civil service was even more rigid than those of the “modern” Western states. The only way to change policy was to change personnel. Hence throughout the Stalin era the so-called purges were mainly the punishing or serial replacement of recalcitrant and entrenched bureaucrats with those schooled and tested to enforce the new policies. The bulk of those purged according to Lewin were CPSU cadre and functionaries. Aggravated by war, the Politburo had few direct ways to communicate policy and assure its implementation—using one bureaucracy against the rest. Such periodic “draining of the swamp” is an allusive task, especially in countries like the US, Great Britain and France where the senior civil service is entirely dominated by the ruling class and its aristocratic-corporate cadre.

The term “deep state”, an expression Peter Dale Scott used to describe the “continuity of government” apparatus that expanded massively under Ronald Reagan, is a meaningful cliché. In increasingly common parlance it directs us to the failure of electoral politics as a means of democratic social management. Electoral politics is in fact a strategy applied by the ruling oligarchy through the permanent state apparatus to manage the population. However it is not something mysterious, secret or transcendental. The term has arisen to poorly substitute for a term and concept still prohibited in serious political action, namely class power. Perhaps the last American to seriously describe this phenomenon both empirically and theoretically was the renegade sociologist C Wright Mills. Mills called it the “power elite”. Today that insight has been distorted beyond recognition by obsession first with the “rich and famous“ and then celebrity. In fact the genre “reality TV” is the paramount vulgarization of the concept. That a former and aspirant POTUS enjoys such celebrity also shows the impact of fantasy on the political unconscious. The term “deep state” is a weak if concerted attempt to reformulate the question: if the people as electors have no power, then who does? Call it a class or the “power elite“ or as George Carlin said the big club – and you ain‘t in it. And it’s also the club they beat you with… till your own deep state is six feet underground.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by T.P. Wilkinson.

Photograph Source: Seven Stories Press – Link

Where the hell is Peter Plate? And who the hell is he? His editor, Dan Simon, calls him a “proletarian novelist,” but that doesn’t seem right. The author of ten novels, all of them set in the Mission District in San Francisco and all of them published by Seven Stories Press in New York, Plate was once a visible figure in the San Francisco literary scene. But years ago, he vanished into what his former agent, Elise Capron, calls “the aether.” She adds, “If that’s what he wants, it’s fine with me.  I lost track of him about ten years ago.”

Dan Simon at Seven Stories calls Plate a “proletarian novelist,” but that doesn’t seem right. Plate doesn’t write about proletarians. You might call him a novelist of the criminal classes and a neo-Marxist author. Noir is his chosen field.

In Theories of Surplus Value Marx wrote that “a criminal produces crimes, also criminal law, the police and criminal justice, penal code art, belles-lettres, novels.” Marx added “the criminal breaks the monotony of bourgeois life.” Plate would echo that perspective. His criminals produce nearly all of society as he sees it.

He breaks the monotony of bourgeois San Francisco by making the “gutter look like paradise” and by turning poverty into poetry and crime into the sublime. Along the way, he wears the fedora of a romantic.

Capron, his former agent, remembers having dinner with Plate at the home of the Chinese-American best-selling author, Amy Tan who once took him under her wing. Even Plate’s publicist, Eva Sotomayor, at Seven Stories, knows little if anything about him. “I have never met Plate,” she wrote in an email. “All I do know is that he’s based in the San Francisco area and is a bit of a recluse. I believe he doesn’t have a phone or a computer and doesn’t grant many interviews.” In fact, he doesn’t grant any interviews at all.

Plate might have been famous. He might have been the talk of the town, but he turned his back on fame, withdrew from nearly all social life and is holed up in an apartment in San Francisco battling bad health and also writing his eleventh novel, as yet untitled. His editor, publisher and friend, Dan Simon, at Seven Stories doesn’t rendezvous with Plate in person. “Our director of operations, Jon Gilbert, who is based in Oakland, meets with Peter in public spaces that are anonymous,” Simon tells me. “So there’s a lot of intimacy and trust, but yes at the same time everything is essentially done in secret.”

For a time, Plate was not only famous but also infamous. In 1978, he went wild in the streets of San Francisco during the “White Night” riots that followed the dual assassinations of San Francisco’s Mayor George Moscone and gay supervisor Harvey Milk— and the light sentence ( seven years) for the shooter, supervisor Dan White.

That memorable night, at least a dozen police cars were destroyed and eight non-police vehicles were torched. Plate, one of the most visible of protesters, was arrested, charged with “assault and battery on a police officer and burning police cars.” A flyer from that era, now a collector’s item, bears the headline, “Police vs. Plate.” That seems to be the way he views the world; himself versus the cops.

With the help of criminal defense lawyer Doron Weinberg, Plate “beat the rap,” as one of his fictional characters would say. The website, Good Reader, calls him, “Perhaps the most important anarchist prose writer around today.” True, if one associates anarchists with acts of violence.

Meanwhile, in his absence, a cottage industry has sprung up online to keep his memory and his work alive. “Kinky Kevin Federline,” as he calls himself, wrote, “Plate is one of my favorite authors.” Another fan who identifies himself as “the Fake Bruce Forsyth” chimed in with “hasn’t Plate done well without a computer!”

Dana Smith, a successful San Francisco graphic artist, remembered that Plate, an ex-boyfriend, wrote years ago with a pencil. “When I lived with Plate in the ‘80s I bought him an electric typewriter,” she wrote online. “He refused the contraption and it was returned to the store. I think he eventually tackled the typewriter. I say this with love, respect and fond memories.”

Yet another fan wrote online, “He seems to see it [the internet] as a vehicle for police surveillance.” He added, “he isn’t easy to locate and right now doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry.” A man named Dave Kelso-Mitchell accused Plate of “elitism” and “snobbery.”

A longtime friend of Plate’s, a retired public school teacher and a union organizer, who wants only to be known as “KT,” suggests that Plate might be paranoid and rightfully so. Even paranoids have enemies. In Night of the Short Eyes, his most recent book, which boasts autobiographical elements, the narrator says, “I saw fear in my own eyes. Fear of the cops. Fear of getting snitched out. Fear of cracking up. A fear that burned brightest when I was by myself.”  Now that he’s living by himself and rarely ventures outside his apartment, that fear burns brighter than ever before, according to KT.

A San Francisco private investigator, who first learned the art of detection 40 years ago by serving an apprenticeship with super sleuth, Hal Lipset, and by studying Hammett’s novels— who wished to remain, anonymous— told me, “I would help you find Plate, but I’ve just been hired by a man with big bucks to learn if his mother is dead or alive. You’d think a man would know if his own mother was dead or alive.” He added, “Looking for someone can be challenging, and then bam? All of a sudden they reach out to you.”

Before his disappearing act, Plate often appeared in the pages of The San Francisco Chronicle. In 2001, while still riding the fame train, he wrote an op-ed piece titled, “A noir author reflects on the Mission [District] as a center of public literary life.” In the photo that accompanies the story, Plate poses in front of the apartment building where Dashiell Hammett, the father of noir, wrote The Maltese Falcon.

In 2004, he described, in another piece for The Chronicle, his Odyssey on foot across San Francisco: from the Ferry Building to the Castro. “The dialectic of Market Street is in the homeless with their shopping carts and the yuppies in their black leather jackets,” Plate wrote. He added, “At the Powell Street cable car turnaround, pickpockets, pizza delivery men, nickel-bag dealers, jugglers, mimes, saxophonists, homeboys, exhausted tourists and office workers mingle.”

In 2006, in Soon the Rest Will Fall, a prophetic novel which traces the fictional decline and near-total collapse of San Francisco, he wrote, “The police doubled their patrols. Christmas shoplifters were pilfering. Holiday customers had been jacked at gunpoint in the underground parking garages.”

 In 2008, in his last piece for The Chronicle, “S.F. Is Crime Central —On the Printed Page,” Plate observed that San Francisco is “a time bomb of poverty and wealth. The perfect canvas for the new noir. For every skyscraper, there’s a tenement. For each yuppie, there’s a wino on Market Street. The contradictions are brutal. You have to write about them.”

After 2008, he continued to write about the contradictions of San Francisco, as he sees them, and he has turned himself into a kind of contradiction: the preeminent bard of the San Francisco barrio, and at the same time the city’s most furtive author. If cities get the writers they deserve and writers get the cities they need, then perhaps San Francisco and Plate form a near-perfect couple.

In his absence, his novels speak volumes for him and about him. They also read like today’s deadline news.  In Night of the Short Eyes, his most recent publication, California is on fire, people are testing positive for the virus, patrols of SWAT teams roam the streets.

At 153 pages, with short chapters, and wide margins, Night can be enjoyed in a brief sitting. Plate’s narrator— a bookish sixteen-year-old and the descendant of Russian Jews—says of himself and his friends, “we were on the run from everyone in the world.” That’s pure Plate. Two of the characters have comic book names: Superman and The Lone Ranger; an alcoholic woman is “Frankenstein.” Yet another character, a bomb maker, is “Putin.”

Angels of Catastrophe—the title is reminiscent of Jack Kerouac’s title for his big Beat novel, Desolation Angels— might be Plate’s best work of fiction. It begins with pizzazz—“A policeman was gunned down by an unknown shooter,” and it also ends with pizzazz. The main character, Ricky Durrutti, Plate writes, “stayed awake through the night and listened to a police car’s siren have a nervous breakdown on Mission Street.”

Earlier in the story, he observes that Durrutti “was at that strangest of all crossroads, having lived long enough to make a lot of mistakes, but not long enough to fix any of them.” That too sounds like pure Plate, who might be compared to J. D. Salinger, the author of The Catcher in the Rye,and the most reclusive of all the major male writers (Norman Mailer, James Jones, William Styron, and James Baldwin) who emerged in the aftermath of World War II.

Salinger published his own work in The New Yorker and became a best selling writer who decided, decades after Catcher appeared in print, that “publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy.” He stopped publishing and backed away from fame and publicity, though he didn’t hide his whereabouts. In New Hampshire, he paid workmen to build a high fence to protect his privacy. In a way Plate has built a wall around himself.

In an unpublished interview with me which was conducted nearly 20 years ago he wisely observed, “What people are not saying is as important as what they are saying.”  What was Plate not saying? Read between the lines of his novels and in the margins and one can get a pretty good idea. In a way, he’s not private at all, but rather hiding in plain sight. As an author with integrity and with a unique moral compass, he deserves to be read by fans of noir, Dashiell Hammett and those who belong to the precariat.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jonah Raskin.

The seizures took place largely at MBC offices in Blantyre, Lilongwe, and Mzuzu following a complaint by MBC’s management about the creation of a “fake” Facebook page bearing the corporation’s name and logo, which the outlet had not approved, according to the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), the journalists, and police search warrants reviewed by CPJ. The complaint accused the 14 journalists of “spamming,” which carries a maximum penalty of two million Malawian kwacha (about US$1,190) and imprisonment for five years under section 91 of Malawi’s Electronic Transactions and Cybersecurity Act.

As of March 8, police returned three laptops and nine phones to the journalists, according to a journalist who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal. The journalist, whose phone has been returned, is concerned that the device has been compromised while in police custody and will no longer use it.

Another journalist, who also spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal, said some MBC colleagues received email notifications about attempts to log into their Instagram and X accounts while their devices were in police custody.

Malawi police spokesperson Peter Kalaya told CPJ in a late February 2024 phone interview that the police investigation was being conducted in response to a legitimate complaint, and police had obtained a warrant before seizing and searching the devices. 

“The investigation is not targeting journalists, it is targeting people who we suspect to be responsible” for the Facebook page, Kalaya said, but he declined to explain how the police had determined which individuals were suspects. 

“We have a forensics laboratory and sometimes we use other institutions’ forensic laboratories,” Kalaya told CPJ, but declined to give specifics about the technologies used to search the journalists’ devices. “Our search in the gadgets is going to be restricted to those apps that we believe or that we suspect were used in the commission of the crime,” Kalaya told CPJ, adding that the journalists whose devices had been seized should trust the professionalism of the investigating officers. “Why should a police officer go to contacts, to [the] photo gallery when what he is looking for is not there, or if he does not suspect it will be there?” he said.

In January 2024, the local Platform for Investigative Journalism (PIJ-Malawi) reported that Malawian authorities had obtained the Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED), a powerful technology designed to access and extract information from electronic devices and sold by the Israel-based company Cellebrite. The Malawi police sought to further expand its investigative capacity with similar tools, according to the report. In response to CPJ’s questions about which tools, including those sold by Cellebrite, police used to search the devices of MBC journalists, Kalaya declined to give specifics.

CPJ has previously documented the use of Cellebrite’s UFED by police in Botswana to search journalists’ phones and has raised the issue of privacy concerns when law enforcement seizes devices and has access to such technology. 

MBC director general George Kasakula declined to comment until the police investigation into the alleged spamming concludes at an unknown date.

On February 15, five police officers looking for Greyson Chapita, MBC’s suspended controller of news and programs, arrived at his daughter’s home. The officers told family members there to call Chapita and tell him that his daughter was sick to lure him there, the journalist told CPJ, adding that his family obliged, and he arrived shortly after. Once Chapita arrived, police officers told him that he was a suspect in a murder and requested to search his phone and laptop, but he initially refused.

Chapita told the officers that he would not comply until he verified that they were police officers, and he went with them to the local police station to confirm their identities. Once confirmed by a senior officer, Chapita returned with them to his home, where the officers showed him the same warrant citing MBC management’s complaint, and he opened his laptop and entered his password, he told CPJ. The officers then looked through his Facebook account for 30 minutes without further explanation as Chapita watched.

“[T]hey checked my Facebook account and took screenshots. They made me sign a document showing that they searched my laptop and did not find anything, so they didn’t take it. They couldn’t see my phone because it is not a smartphone,” the journalist added.

When asked about the police officers’ tactics used to summon Chapita and search his computer, Kalaya told CPJ that he could not comment on the specifics of the incident, but he said the journalist could file a complaint. 

“What I can assure you is that our investigators are very professional and whatever they are doing is very professional,” Kalaya said.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

On Monday, DW’s Spanish-language TV channel posted a video on X calling Venezuela “the world’s second most corrupt country” and reporting that high-ranking politicians were allegedly involved in cocaine trafficking, extortion, and illegal gold mining.

In response, Communications Minister Freddy Ñáñez accused DW of “promoting hatred” and defaming Venezuela. On Monday evening, the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP) said DW was no longer available on the country’s two main cable distributors, Supercable and SimpleTV. On his weekly TV program that day, Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s president, justified taking DW off the air by calling it a “Nazi” broadcaster.

“By taking DW off the air over a critical report, the Venezuelan government is once again demonstrating its overt hostility to press freedom in the country,” said CPJ’s Latin America program coordinator, Cristina Zahar, in São Paulo. “Venezuelans have a right to information, especially information that holds the powerful to account. Venezuela’s government must allow DW to return to the air.” 

In a statement Tuesday, DW Director General Peter Limbourg said, “We urgently call on the Venezuelan government to once again ensure the distribution of the Spanish language DW television channel as quickly as possible. This restriction of DW’s broadcast is a serious encroachment on the freedom of the people in Venezuela to find independent information themselves.”

Amid government censorship of local media, international TV stations had been an important source of independent news coverage for Venezuelans, Carlos Correa, director of the Caracas-based press freedom group Espacio Público, told CPJ. However, since 2010 at least 14 channels, including CNN and news stations from Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and other countries, have been taken off the air, according to the SNTP. The union noted that DW transmissions were also briefly blocked in 2019 following the station’s coverage of anti-Maduro protests.

The blockage of DW comes amid a wider government crackdown on dissent, including the arrest last month of a prominent critic of Venezuela’s powerful military and the expulsion of a United Nations human rights agency, as the country gears up for the scheduled July 28 presidential election, in which Maduro is seeking another six-year term.

CPJ’s calls to Venezuela’s Communications Ministry and Maduro’s press office went unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

In an unprecedented legal development, senior Australian politicians, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, have been referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigation into whether they have aided or supported Israel’s actions in Gaza.

The referral, made by the Sydney law firm Birchgrove Legal on behalf of their clients, is the first time any serving Australian political leaders have been formally referred to the ICC for investigation.

The referral asserts that Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and other members of the government have violated the Rome Statute, the 1998 treaty that established the ICC to investigate and prosecute allegations of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

• READ MORE: There has been much talk of war crimes in the Israel-Gaza conflict. But will anyone actually be prosecuted?
• Why is accountability for alleged war crimes so hard to achieve in the Israel-Palestinian conflict?

Specifically, the law firm references:

• Australia’s freezing of aid to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the aid agency that operates in Gaza
• the provision of military aid to Israel that could have been used in the alleged commission of genocide and crimes against humanity
• permitting Australians to travel to Israel to take part in attacks in Gaza
• providing “unequivocal political support” for Israel’s actions in Gaza.

A key aspect of the referral is the assertion, under Article 25 of the Rome Statute, that Albanese and the others bear individual criminal responsibility for aiding, abetting or otherwise assisting in the commission (or attempted commission) of alleged crimes by Israel in Gaza.

At a news conference today, Albanese said the letter had “no credibility” and was an example of “misinformation”. He said:

Australia joined a majority in the UN to call for an immediate ceasefire and to advocate for the release of hostages, the delivery of humanitarian assistance, the upholding of international law and the protection of civilians.

How the referral process works
There are a couple of key questions here: can anyone be referred to the ICC, and how often do these referrals lead to an investigation?

Referrals to the ICC prosecutor are most commonly made by individual countries — as has occurred following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — or by the UN Security Council. However, it is also possible for referrals to be made by “intergovernmental or non-governmental organisations, or other reliable sources”, according to Article 15 of the Rome Statute.

The ICC prosecutor’s office has received 12,000 such referrals to date. These must go through a preliminary examination before the office decides whether there are “reasonable grounds” to start an investigation.

The court has issued arrest warrants for numerous leaders over the past two decades, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova; former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir; and now-deceased Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

ABC interview with barrister Sheryn Omeri KC on the referral of Australian political leaders to the International Criminal Court.

Acting for over 100 Australian lawyers, Omeri, through the law firm Birchgrove Legal, has referred Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese & key… pic.twitter.com/aHAdVct6eV

— Peter Cronau (@PeterCronau) March 5, 2024

Why this referral is unlikely to go anywhere
Putting aside the merit of the allegations themselves, it is unlikely the Australian referrals will go any further for legal and practical reasons.

First, the ICC was established as an international court of last resort. This means it would only be used to prosecute international crimes when courts at a national level are unwilling or unable to do so.

As such, the threat of possible ICC prosecution was intended to act as a deterrent for those considering committing international crimes, as well as an incentive for national authorities and courts to prosecute them.

Australia has such a process in place to investigate potential war crimes and other international crimes through the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI).

The OSI was created in the wake of the 2020 Brereton Report into allegations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan. In March 2023, the office announced its first prosecution.

Because Australia has this legal framework in place, the ICC prosecutor would likely deem it unnecessary to refer Australian politicians to the ICC for prosecution, unless Australia was unwilling to start such a prosecution itself. At present, there is no evidence that is the case.

Another reason this referral is likely to go nowhere: the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, is currently focusing on a range of investigations related to alleged war crimes committed by Russia, Hamas and Israel, in addition to other historical investigations.

Given the significance of these investigations – and the political pressure the ICC faces to act with speed – it is unlikely the court would divert limited resources to investigate Australian politicians.

Increasing prominence of international courts
This referral to the ICC, however, needs to be seen in a wider context. The Israel-Hamas conflict has resulted in an unprecedented flurry of legal proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s top court.

Unlike the ICC, the ICJ does not deal with individual criminal responsibility. The ICJ does, however, have jurisdiction over whether countries violate international law, such as the Genocide Convention.

This was the basis for South Africa to launch its case against Israel in the ICJ, claiming its actions against the Palestinian people amounted to genocide. The ICJ issued a provisional ruling against Israel in January which said it’s “plausible” Israel had committed genocide in Gaza and ordered Israel to take immediate steps to prevent acts of genocide.

In addition, earlier this week, a new case was launched in the ICJ by Nicaragua, alleging Germany has supported acts of genocide by providing military support for Israel and freezing aid for UNRWA.

PRESS RELEASE: #Nicaragua institutes proceedings against #Germany and asks the #ICJ to indicate provisional measures https://t.co/RtdImbNben pic.twitter.com/UdsKZmDdxS

— CIJ_ICJ (@CIJ_ICJ) March 1, 2024

All of these developments in recent months amount to what experts call “lawfare”. This refers to the use of international or domestic courts to seek accountability for alleged state-sanctioned acts of genocide and support or complicity in such acts. Some of these cases have merit, others are very weak.

As one international law expert described the purpose:

It’s […] a way of raising awareness, getting media attention and showing your own political base you’re doing something.

These cases do succeed in increasing public awareness of these conflicts. And they make clear the desire of many around the world to hold to account those seen as being responsible for gross violations of international law.

Dr Donald Rothwell, professor of international law, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

On February 24, 2022, over 100,000 Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Russia’s invasion violated international law and has been brutal (though far less deadly for civilians than the Canadian-enabled onslaught on Gaza).

Eight years earlier, on February 22, 2014, elected president Victor Yanukovich was forced from office in an event that propelled Moscow’s seizure of Crimea and a civil war in the east of Ukraine, which was partly a NATO-Russia proxy war. Russia massively expanded that conflict two years ago.

As Owen Schalk and I detail in the just released Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy, Ottawa played a significant role in destabilizing Yanukovich and pushing him out. Between 2010 and 2014, Canada waged a campaign to subvert an elected president who passed legislation codifying Ukrainian neutrality in the geopolitical confrontation between NATO and Russia, which increasingly played out in Ukraine.

Soon after he was elected, Ottawa began seeking to undermine Yanukovych’s government. Months after he became president, Prime Minister Harper declared, “there are issues that are of concern to Ukrainian-Canadians and to the government of Canada involving issues of human rights and the rule of law, and I’ll be raising those with President Yanukovych.” Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) head Paul Grod and other representatives of the ultranationalist organization accompanied the prime minister during his October 2010 visit to Ukraine. In announcing their participation, the UCC release claimed, “recent steps taken by Ukraine’s political leadership have seriously undermined the country’s constitution, its democratic institutions, the protection of its historical memory and national identity, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

During the trip, Stephen Harper met opposition leaders, including failed presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko. In Lviv, Harper visited a controversial new nationalist museum and met its director, who had recently been accused of passing classified information to third parties. Talking to journalists about Ukraine’s 1932 famine, Harper encouraged the public to challenge their government, saying the Holodomor should “remind the Ukrainian people of the importance of their freedom and democracy and independence, and of the necessity of always defending those things.”

A year after his trip, Harper threatened Yanukovych over legal proceedings against Tymoshenko, who was found guilty of corruption. In an October 2011 letter, Canada’s PM wrote, “I cannot overstate the potential negative impact of the current judicial proceedings against Yulia Tymoshenko on both Ukraine’s future relations with Canada and others and on Ukraine’s long-term democratic development.” During an April 2012 visit, international trade minister Beverly Oda said Canada was deeply concerned about human rights abuses and, in a highly abnormal diplomatic move, had Ukrainian-Canadian representatives participating in her delegation criticize the government.

Further encouraging opposition to the government, Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney announced funding for a project “to strengthen freedom of expression, freedom of information and free media in Ukraine.” Launched during a March 2013 visit, the initiative was designed to boost antigovernment forces.

Ottawa helped encourage the November 2013 Maidan protests that would spiral into regime change by breathlessly criticizing the Yanukovych government. It is quite clear that if Yanukovych’s main competitor in the 2010 election, Yulia Tymoshenko, had won and committed five times more rights violations, she would have received far less criticism.

In the two decades before the Maidan uprising, Canada channeled tens, probably hundreds, of millions of dollars to anti-Russian elements of Ukrainian civil society. In 2013, US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland boasted that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID, and other US government agencies had plowed $5 billion into bolstering Western-oriented forces in Ukraine since 1991. In a sign of Ottawa’s close ties to opposition activists, throughout the Maidan protests the Canadian embassy’s local spokesperson, Inna Tsarkova, was a prominent member of AutoMaidan, an anti-government group that organized protests in front of Yanukovych’s residence calling for the president to go. As the Embassy’s Program Officer, Tsarkova had previously led sessions about acquiring Canadian funding. Two months into the Maidan protests, Tsarkova’s car was set ablaze. In an interview with a Ukrainian Canadian radio program two days after, the long-time employee at the Canadian embassy said, “if we don’t stand up enough than you know it means the end of Ukraine in terms of democracy and real freedoms. It will be the Soviet empire back in the 1930s when people were just thrown into prison and killed.”

The Maidan protests were sparked by Yanukovych stalling on the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement. The free trade accord was a step forward in the process of the country potentially joining the EU, which was attractive to many Ukrainians, especially in the west and centre of the country. However, the agreement was more divisive than portrayed by Canadian media and officials. Ukraine, with the second largest landmass in Europe, has significant geographical divisions. For instance, Lviv in the west is closer to Prague, Vienna and Berlin than to the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, which is near Russia. Additionally, eastern and southern Ukraine was part of the Russian empire for two centuries, while modern Ukraine’s west was once part of the Polish-Lithuanian and Austro-Hungarian empires.

Joining the EU was viewed favourably by many Ukrainians, but the Association Agreement had costs as well. The EU deal would not only undercut trade with Russia; it also depended on Kyiv agreeing to the International Monetary Fund’s demand for “extremely harsh conditions” on eliminating energy subsidies and other government supports.

Amidst the negotiations over the Association Agreement, Moscow offered some $10 billion in benefits to Ukraine and called for tripartite (EU, Russia, and Ukraine) negotiations to work out various trade and economic issues. The EU rejected negotiations. The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, said explicitly that Kyiv had to choose between the EU Association Agreement and a customs union with Russia. The EU’s take-it-or-leave-it position exacerbated deep geographical and linguistic divisions within Ukraine.

When the anti-Yanukovych uprisings began in late 2013, Canada supported the three-month-long protests. The Canadian government assisted pro-EU, including many far-right, protesters who rallied in central Kyiv’s Maidan square from November 21, 2013, to February 22, 2014. During the uprising Canada’s foreign minister attended an anti-government rally and protesters used the Canadian embassy as a safe haven for numerous days.

A little over a week into the protests, Canada released a statement critical of government repression, which University of Ottawa professor Ivan Katchanovski says was precipitated by far-right infiltrators.  In a November 30, 2013, release titled “Canada Condemns Use of Force Against Protesters in Ukraine,” Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird declared, “Canada strongly condemns the deplorable use of force today by Ukrainian authorities against peaceful protesters.” ix days later, Baird visited Maidan square with Paul Grod, president of the ultranationalist UCC. From the stage, Grod announced Baird’s presence and support for the protesters, which led many to chant “Thank you Canada.” In recognition of Canada’s important role, a Canadian flag flew at the Maidan protest. Baird also called on Ukrainian authorities to respect the protests and bemoaned “the shadow that Russia is casting over this country.”

On December 27, Canada’s chargé d’affaires visited protest leader and journalist Tetyana Chornovol in the hospital after she was violently attacked. Three weeks earlier, Chornovol was widely reported to have participated in seizing Kyiv City Hall. A former member of a far-right party, Chornovol had previously been arrested on numerous occasions and was subsequently charged with murder for throwing a Molotov cocktail at Yanukovych’s Party of Regions headquarters during the Maidan protests.

Prime Minister Harper repeatedly expressed support for the protesters and criticized Yanukovych. On January 27, he slammed the Ukrainian president for “not moving towards a free and democratic Euro-Atlantic future but very much towards an anti-democratic Soviet past.” The next day Ottawa announced travel restrictions and economic sanctions on individuals close to the elected president. At the press conference to announce the measures, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander said, “you [Yanukovych] are not welcome in Canada and we will continue to take strong action until the violence against the people of Ukraine has stopped and democracy has been restored.” Ottawa subsequently slapped travel bans and economic sanctions on dozens of individuals aligned with Yanukovych.

At the height of the protests, activists used the Canadian embassy, which was immediately adjacent to Maidan square, as a safe haven for “at least a week.” The protesters gained access to a mini-van and other Canadian material. In a story written a year after the coup, the Canadian Press quoted officials from allied European nations accusing Canada of being “an active participant in regime change.” In his investigation of Maidan activists’ use of the Canadian embassy in Kyiv, Canadian Press reporter Murray Brewster writes, “Canadians are not very popular in some quarters and occasionally loathed by pro-Russian Ukrainians.”

At least some of those allowed to use the Canadian embassy were from the far right. In “The far right, the Euromaidan, and the Maidan massacre in Ukraine” professor Katchanovski reported, “the leader of the [far right] Svoboda-affiliated C14 admitted that his C14-based Maidan Self-Defense company took refuge in the Canadian embassy in Kyiv on February 18 and stayed there during the Maidan massacre.”

On February 19 and 20, more than 50 were killed in violence that was widely blamed on government security forces. However, the recent trial verdict confirmed work by Katchanovski showing that far-right activists were likely responsible for many of these deaths.

The killings precipitated the collapse of the government. As revealed in a leaked phone call between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, US officials midwifed Yanukovych’s unconstitutional replacement. During the call the US officials decide that Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who advocated joining NATO, should take power.

After Yanukovych was ousted, Ottawa sought to shore up the unconstitutional government. Soon after, Baird “welcomed the appointment of a new government”, saying, “the appointment of a legitimate government is a vital step forward in restoring democracy and normalcy to Ukraine.” But the country’s constitutional provisions dealing with replacing or impeaching a president were flagrantly violated. While Ukraine’s Parliament passed a resolution backing Yanukovych’s ouster, the impeachment procedure enshrined in Article 111 of the constitution requires a special investigatory commission to formulate charges against the president, a ruling by the Constitutional Court and Supreme Court and multiple (decisive) votes in parliament.

Days after the coup, Baird led a delegation of Conservative Party MPs and Ukrainian-Canadian representatives to meet acting president Oleksandr Turchynov and new prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who was Nuland’s preference. Canada’s foreign minister announced an immediate $200,000 in medical assistance for those injured in the political violence. Subsequently, Ottawa announced $220 million in aid to the interim government. Harper said, “I think we really have to credit the Ukrainian people themselves with resisting the attempt to overturn their democracy and to lead their country back into the past.”

After the coup, Canada’s PM was the first G7 leader to visit the interim government. Alongside Baird and Justice Minister Peter MacKay, Harper told the acting president, “you have provided inspiration and a new chapter in humanity’s ongoing story of the struggle for freedom, democracy and justice.” During his visit to shore up the US and Canadian-installed government, Harper accused Vladimir Putin of seeking to destabilize international security and return the world to the “law of the jungle.” In support of the unconstitutional change of power, Harper visited the authorities in Kyiv twice in under two months.

All this is history. But over the past week the Canadian media has all but ignored the ten-year anniversary of Yanukovych’s ouster. It complicates the narrative that the war is simply explained by Russia’s aggression. Understanding the background to the war is essential to finding an exit to the it.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

The fifteen judges that will meet in the Hague are eminent jurists, but their role is political, not legal. They will vote the way their country tells them to vote, not upon conclusions drawn from the proceedings. They were selected by their respective countries on that basis, and elected by a majority vote of the UN General Assembly and Security Council.

That’s an odd combination. In the General Assembly, each member has one vote, and in the Security Council, each member also gets one vote. But since all the countries on the Security Council are already represented in the General Assembly, when they vote for judges in the ICJ, they get two votes. And since five members of the SC are permanent, they permanently have two votes.

In addition, the absolute majority requirement means that only the most powerful and influential nations can cajole, influence, threaten or bribe enough votes to meet the requirement. Generally speaking, this means that the US can command enough votes in the court to control most of the decisions of consequence. The haggling is almost certainly taking place right now, before the court has even heard the case.

Of course, the US doesn’t control every vote. The judges from China, Russia, Slovakia, Lebanon, Somalia and Morocco, for example, are unlikely to take orders from the US on this issue. But neither are they likely to vote on the basis of law or evidence. They will vote according to what they believe to be in their country’s interest. If it happens to accord with the evidence, so much the better for justice. But, barring one or more renegade votes, justice will be coincidental.

Following is an analysis of the probable votes of the judges, based in part on the opinion of Norman Finkelstein as well as views expressed directly by government figures in the countries that nominated the judges.

Judge Joan E. Donoghue of the United States: A no-vote is almost certain to come from Donoghue, given the United States’ long and unwavering support for Israel’s actions. United States officials blame the large numbers of civilian casualties on Hamas’s supposed usage of civilians as “human shields” and have adamantly denied that Israel’s actions constitute genocide.

Judge Kirill Gevorgian of the Russian Federation: While the Russian government has shown sympathy for the Palestinian cause and spoken against excessive civilian casualties, they may be wary of the potential consequences of such a landmark genocide ruling that could be used against them in the future regarding their military actions in Ukraine. Even so, showing support for the Palestinian people and taking a stand against America and its allies could be advantageous to Russia’s image. For this reason, a yes vote from Russia is possible but uncertain.

Judge Peter Tomka of Slovakia: Slovakia has enjoyed friendly relations with Israel and has refrained from criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza. However, Slovakia has voiced concern over illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and supports a two-state solution. Slovakia abstained in a recent UN General Assembly vote calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. For this reason, it is difficult to predict how the Slovakian judge may vote, but constituting Israel’s actions as a genocide would be a leap in Slovakia’s foreign policy regarding the matter. Therefore, such a ruling appears more unlikely than likely to come from Judge Tomka.

Judge Ronny Abraham of France: France has remained a strong supporter of Israel and its policies throughout the years, and the two enjoy a friendly and cooperative relationship. However, French President Emmanuel Macron has harshly criticized Israel’s recent military actions in Gaza, saying there is “no justification” for the bombing campaign and urged Israel to cease its hostilities. The ruling from Judge Abraham could go either way, with significant evidence backing either possibility.

Judge Mohammed Bennouna of Morocco: The Moroccan population has shown unwavering support for the Palestinian cause, with tens of thousands of Moroccans marching in the streets to protest Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Although Morocco’s government adopted a policy of normalizing ties with Israel in return for recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara, Moroccan authorities continue to voice support for Palestine’s struggle for human rights and statehood. Hence, a yes vote is highly likely to come from Mohammed Bennouna, and the alternative would cause widespread anger and discontent among Morocco’s population.

Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf of Somalia: The nation of Somalia unwavering supports the Palestinian cause and the liberation of its people. Somalis took to the streets to stand with Gaza and protest Israel’s bombardment of the strip. Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre condemned international silence on the Israeli occupation and praised Hamas for fighting for liberation. A yes vote is highly likely to come from Judge Yusuf.

Judge Xue Hanqin of China: The Chinese government has been a strong critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza and supports an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. However, China may be hesitant to set a precedent regarding violations of the Genocide Convention for similar reasons as Russia. Some accuse China of committing genocide against the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in China. For this reason, a yes vote from China is possible but not assured.

Judge Julia Sebutinde of Uganda: Uganda’s position regarding the situation in Palestine is nuanced and not apparent. Uganda has tentatively friendly relations with Israel and supports a two-state solution. However, during a visit to Uganda from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni repeatedly referred to the land as Palestine, including describing relations between “Palestine and Africa.” Uganda’s Minister of State for International Affairs confirmed that Uganda supports Palestine and its right to an independent State. Uganda’s votes in the UN General Assembly regarding conflicts in Palestine have been inconsistent, with the Ugandan representative voting no on resolutions critical of Israel in several cases. However, Uganda recently voted for a resolution calling for a ceasefire of hostilities in Gaza. Judge Sebutinde’s ruling is somewhat unpredictable, but either decision is possible.

Judge Dalveer Bhandari of India: While in the past India has shown support for the Palestinian cause, the modern Hindu-majority government has shifted India to a nation described as pro-Israel. India views Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “counterterrorism operation” but called for international humanitarian law to be maintained in the strip. India was one of the first to condemn Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel and banned protests in support of Palestine. Therefore, a no-vote is a probable ruling to come from India.

Judge Patrick Lipton Robinson of Jamaica: Jamaica’s history of oppression at the hands of the British has caused them to be a defender of resistance against unjust governments. They were the first nation to issue sanctions against the apartheid state of South Africa, paving the way for others to follow suit. However, the Jamaican government’s silence on Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has drawn criticism from the Jamaican population, who generally support the Palestinian cause. A yes vote from Jamaica would answer calls to take a clear stance on the conflict, and for that reason, it is the more likely possibility.

Judge Nawaf Salam of Lebanon: A yes vote is almost certain to come from the Lebanese Judge, as the struggle of the Palestinians is historically intertwined with Lebanon’s struggle against Israel. The Lebanese population staunchly supports the Palestinian cause and views Israel as an occupying and oppressive state. The Lebanese militia Hezbollah has led successful military campaigns against Israeli forces in the past and is currently shelling the northern areas of the territory that Israel controls. Over 270,000 Palestinian refugees reside in Lebanon, and scores took to the streets to protest Israel’s actions in Gaza. Lebanon and Israel have no official diplomatic relations.

Judge Iwasawa Yuji of Japan: Japan advocates for a two-state solution and maintains a hesitant and tentative foreign policy approach regarding the conflict. Japan unequivocally condemned Hamas’s October 7th attack and voiced support for a cessation of hostilities. Japan is a strong Asian ally of the United States and Western European states, and Japan’s foreign policy often aligns with the positions of those states. Hence, constituting Israel’s actions as genocide would be a large leap from the country’s current position, and a no-vote would be most probable.

Judge Georg Nolte of Germany: Germany has been a strong supporter of the Israeli government and its actions, and the two maintain a “special relationship” based on Western values and historical perspectives. Some analysts suggest Germany’s unwavering support of the Jewish state is an attempt to make amends for the atrocities committed against the Jewish population by the Nazis during WWII. Following October 7th, German Chancellor Olaf Sholz offered military aid to Israel and dismissed calls for a ceasefire. Germany also banned demonstrations in support of Palestine. As such, a no vote is highly likely to come from Judge Nolte.

Judge Hilary Charlesworth of Australia: Australia supports a two-state solution and often defends Israel’s policies and actions. Australia’s foreign policy is often reflected by its strong relationships with Western states such as the United States. However, the Australian population is split in its stance on the conflict, and large demonstrations have taken place in support of Palestine. Still, a no vote is the most likely ruling to come from Judge Charlesworth.

Judge Leonardo Nemer Caldeira Brant of Brazil: Brazil strongly supports a Palestinian state according to its 1967 borders (including the West Bank and Gaza), and the Brazilian population is split in its support for either side. President Lula has attempted to walk the diplomatic line between either side, emphasizing the need for de-escalation. The potential for a cessation of hostilities in the event of a conviction of Israel violating its obligations may sway the Brazilian judge to rule accordingly. Therefore, a yes vote is a more likely possibility.

Considerations:

Each of the judges on the court has highly esteemed experiences, academics, and careers, and their knowledge and insights should not be ruled out in predicting their decisions. They do not officially represent their nation and are required to be uninfluenced by politics and policies. However, powerful nations have ways of “persuading” weaker nations and individuals to vote as directed. It is therefore unlikely that evidence and law will be more than window dressing in the outcome of the case against Israel.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Larudee.

To our Patreon community at the Truth-teller level and higher, save the date for our January 18th 8 pm ET Quit Twitter Social Media Workshop. If you hate social media, if you miss Old Twitter before Apartheid Barbie Musk deliberately destroyed it, if you want to elevate your voice for those who need your solidarity and support, then this is the workshop for you! We’ll be joined by organizer Rachel Brody who helps various campaigns with their social media strategy and helps lead the statewide coalition to replace Jay Jacobs, the useless chair of the New York state Democratic Party who, from George Santos to Republican control of the House running through New York, has cost this country so much. This is an event not to miss! To get access, subscribe to the show at the Truth-teller level or higher on Patreon.com/Gaslit 

To get access to our January 18th social media workshop, subscribe at the Truth-teller level or higher on Patreon.com/Gaslit 

Thank you to everyone who supports the show – we could not make Gaslit Nation without you!

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

Beyond daily gossip, practical advice, or mere information, Schudson contended, people desire what he called “public knowledge,” or news, the demand for which made it difficult to imagine a world without journalism.

Nearly thirty years later, many Americans live in a version of the world remarkably close to the one Schudson pondered in 1995—because either they lack access to news or they choose to ignore journalism in favor of other, more sensational content.

By exploring how journalism is increasingly absent from many Americans’ lives, we can identify false paths and promising routes to its reinvention.

The Rise of News Deserts

Many communities across the United States now suffer from limited access to credible, comprehensive local news. Northwestern University’s 2022 “State of Local News” report determined that more than half of the counties in the United States—some 1,630—are served by only one newspaper each, while another two hundred or more counties, the homes of some four million people, have no newspaper at all. Put another way, seventy million Americans—a fifth of the country’s population—live in “news deserts,” communities with very limited access to local news, or in counties just one newspaper closure away from becoming so.

Not surprisingly, the study found that news deserts are most common in economically struggling communities, which also frequently lack affordable and reliable high-speed digital service—a form of inequality known as digital redlining. Members of such communities are doubly impacted: lacking local news sources, they are also cut off from online access to the country’s surviving regional and national newspapers.

Noting that credible news “feeds grassroots democracy and builds a sense of belonging to a community,” Penny Abernathy, the report’s author, wrote that news deserts contribute to “the malignant spread of misinformation and disinformation, political polarization, eroding trust in media, and a yawning digital and economic divide among citizens.”

Divided Attention and “News Snacking”

While the rise of news deserts makes credible news a scarce resource for many Americans, others show no more than passing interest in news. A February 2022 Gallup/Knight Foundation poll found that only 33 percent of Americans reported paying “a great deal” of attention to national news, with even lower figures for local news (21 percent) and international news (12 percent).

With the increasing prevalence of smartphone ownership and reliance on social media, news outlets now face ferocious competition for people’s attention. Following news is an incidental activity in the lives of many who engage in “news snacking.” As communications scholar Hektor Haarkötter described in a 2022 article, “Discarded News,” mobile internet use has altered patterns of news consumption: “News is no longer received consciously, but rather consumed incidentally like potato chips.”

Instead of intentionally seeking news from sources dedicated to journalism, many people now assume the viral nature of social media will automatically alert them to any truly important events or issues, a belief that is especially prominent among younger media users, Haarkötter noted. A 2017 study determined that the prevalence of this “news-finds-me” perception is likely “to widen gaps in political knowledge” while promoting “a false sense of being informed.”

Signs of Reinvention?

With journalism inaccessible to the growing number of people who live in “news deserts,” or only a matter of passing interest to online “news snackers,” the disappearance of journalism that Schudson pondered hypothetically in 1995 is a reality for many people today. If journalism as we have known it is on the verge of disappearing, are there also—as Schudson predicted—signs of its reinvention? Examining the profession itself, the signs are not all that encouraging.

Consider, for example, the pivot by many independent journalists to Substack, Patreon, and other digital platforms in order to reach their audiences directly. Reader-supported journalism may be a necessary survival reflex, but we are wary of pinning the future of journalism on tech platforms controlled by third parties not necessarily committed to principles of ethical journalism, as advocated by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Media companies—including the tech websites CNET and BuzzFeed—have experimented with using artificial intelligence programs, including the infamous ChatGPT bot, to produce content. Noting that there would be “nothing surprising” about AI technology eventually threatening jobs in journalism, Hamilton Nolan of In These Times suggested that journalists have two key resources in the “looming fight” with AI, unions and “a widely accepted code of ethics that dictates how far standards can be pushed before something no longer counts as journalism.”

News outlets, Nolan argued, do not simply publish stories, they can also explain, when necessary, how a story was produced. The credibility of journalists and news outlets hinges on that accountability. Artificial intelligence may be able to produce media “content”—it may even be of use to journalists in news gathering—but it cannot produce journalism.

We also don’t anticipate a revival of journalism on the basis of the June 2022 memo from CNN’s Chris Licht, shortly after he became the network’s CEO, which directed staff to avoid overuse of its “breaking news” banner. “We are truth-tellers, focused on informing, not alarming our viewers,” Licht wrote in his memo. (In June 2023, CNN reported that the network’s chairman and CEO was “out after a brief and tumultuous tenure.”) But competitive pressures will continue to drive commercial news outlets to lure their audiences’ inconstant attention with sensational reporting and clickbait headlines.

Toward a Public Option

More promising bases for the reinvention of journalism will depend not on technological fixes or more profitable business models but on reinvesting in journalism as a public good.

In a 2020 article for Jacobin, media scholar Victor Pickard argued that commercial media “can’t support the bare minimum levels of news media . . . that democracy requires.” Drawing on the late sociologist Erik Olin Wright’s model for constructing alternatives to capitalism, Pickard argued that the creation of a publicly-owned media system is the most direct way “to tame and erode commercial media.”

The “public options” championed by Pickard and others—which include significant budgets to support nonprofit media institutions and municipal broadband networks—would do much to address the conditions that have exiled far too many Americans to news deserts.

If the public option advocated by Pickard focuses on the production of better quality news, the reinvention of journalism will also depend on cultivating broader public interest in and support for top-notch journalism. Here, perhaps ironically, some of the human desires that social media have so effectively harnessed might be redirected in support of investigative journalism that exposes abuses of power and addresses social inequalities.

Remembering a Golden Era of Muckraking

Few living Americans recall Ida Mae Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, and other pioneering investigative journalists who worked in the aftermath of the Gilded Age—an era, comparable to ours, when a thin veneer of extravagant economic prosperity for a narrow elite helped camouflage underlying social disintegration. “Muckraker” journalists exposed political and economic corruption in ways that captivated the public’s attention and spurred societal reform.

For instance, in a series of investigative reports published by McClure’s Magazine between October 1902 and November 1903, Steffens exposed local stories of collusion between corrupt politicians and businessmen in St. Louis, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York. Most significantly, though, Steffens’s “Shame of the Cities” series, published as a book in 1904, drew significant public attention to a national pattern of civic decay.

Steffens’s reporting not only made him a household name, it also spurred rival publications to pursue their own muckraking investigations. As his biographer, Peter Hartshorn, wrote in I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens (2012), other publishers “quickly grasped what the public was demanding: articles that not only entertained and informed but also exposed. Americans were captivated by the muckrakers and their ability to provide names, dollar amounts, and other titillating specifics.”

By alerting the public to systemic abuses of power, investigative journalism galvanized popular support for political reform and indirectly helped propel a wave of progressive legislation. As Carl Jensen related in Stories That Changed America, the muckrakers’ investigative reporting led to “a nation-wide public revolt against social evils” and “a decade of reforms in antitrust legislation, the electoral process, banking regulations, and a host of other social programs.” The golden age of muckraking came to an end when the United States entered World War I, diverting national attention from domestic issues to conflict overseas.

Though largely forgotten, the muckraking journalists from the last century provide another model of how journalism might be renewed, if not reinvented. The muckrakers’ reporting was successful in part because it harnessed a public appetite for shame and scandal to the cause of political engagement. To paraphrase one of Schudson’s points about news as public knowledge, the muckrakers’ reporting served as a crucial resource for “people ready to take political action.”

Reviving Public Hunger for News About “What’s Really Going On”

Despite its imperiled status, journalism that serves the public good has not yet disappeared. There is no shortage of exemplary independent reporting on the injustices and inequalities that threaten to disintegrate today’s United States.

That said, it is not simple to recognize such reporting or to find sources of it, amidst the clattering voices that compete for the public’s attention. Finding authentic news requires not only countering the spread of news deserts, but also cultivating the public’s taste for news that goes deeper than the latest TikTok trend, celebrity gossip, or talking head “hot takes.”

A public option for journalism could help assure more widespread access to vital news and diverse perspectives; and a revival of the muckraking tradition, premised on journalism that informs the public by exposing abuses of authority, could reconnect people who have otherwise lost interest in news that distracts, sensationalizes, or—perhaps worse—polarizes us.

Both the twentieth-century muckrakers and today’s advocates of journalism in the public interest provide lessons about how journalism can help recreate a shared sense of community—a value touted in Northwestern’s 2022 “State of Local News” report. The muckrakers appealed to a collective sense of outrage that wealthy tycoons and crooked politicians might deceive and fleece the public. That outrage brought people together to respond in common cause.

As George Seldes—a torchbearer of the muckraking tradition, who founded In Fact, the nation’s first successful periodical of press criticism, in 1940—often noted, journalism is about telling people “what’s really going on” in society. At its most influential, journalism promotes public awareness that spurs civic engagement, real reform, and even radical change.

Perhaps that is why it is so difficult, especially in these troubled times, to imagine a world without journalism. Our best hopes for the future, including the renewal of community and grassroots democracy, all hinge at least partly on what Schudson called “public knowledge,” which a robust free press protects and promotes.

Note: The above material was excerpted from Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2024, edited by Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff (Fair Oaks, CA and New York: The Censored Press and Seven Stories Press, 2024).

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff.

Beyond daily gossip, practical advice, or mere information, Schudson contended, people desire what he called “public knowledge,” or news, the demand for which made it difficult to imagine a world without journalism.

Nearly thirty years later, many Americans live in a version of the world remarkably close to the one Schudson pondered in 1995—because either they lack access to news or they choose to ignore journalism in favor of other, more sensational content.

By exploring how journalism is increasingly absent from many Americans’ lives, we can identify false paths and promising routes to its reinvention.

The Rise of News Deserts

Many communities across the United States now suffer from limited access to credible, comprehensive local news. Northwestern University’s 2022 “State of Local News” report determined that more than half of the counties in the United States—some 1,630—are served by only one newspaper each, while another two hundred or more counties, the homes of some four million people, have no newspaper at all. Put another way, seventy million Americans—a fifth of the country’s population—live in “news deserts,” communities with very limited access to local news, or in counties just one newspaper closure away from becoming so.

Not surprisingly, the study found that news deserts are most common in economically struggling communities, which also frequently lack affordable and reliable high-speed digital service—a form of inequality known as digital redlining. Members of such communities are doubly impacted: lacking local news sources, they are also cut off from online access to the country’s surviving regional and national newspapers.

Noting that credible news “feeds grassroots democracy and builds a sense of belonging to a community,” Penny Abernathy, the report’s author, wrote that news deserts contribute to “the malignant spread of misinformation and disinformation, political polarization, eroding trust in media, and a yawning digital and economic divide among citizens.”

Divided Attention and “News Snacking”

While the rise of news deserts makes credible news a scarce resource for many Americans, others show no more than passing interest in news. A February 2022 Gallup/Knight Foundation poll found that only 33 percent of Americans reported paying “a great deal” of attention to national news, with even lower figures for local news (21 percent) and international news (12 percent).

With the increasing prevalence of smartphone ownership and reliance on social media, news outlets now face ferocious competition for people’s attention. Following news is an incidental activity in the lives of many who engage in “news snacking.” As communications scholar Hektor Haarkötter described in a 2022 article, “Discarded News,” mobile internet use has altered patterns of news consumption: “News is no longer received consciously, but rather consumed incidentally like potato chips.”

Instead of intentionally seeking news from sources dedicated to journalism, many people now assume the viral nature of social media will automatically alert them to any truly important events or issues, a belief that is especially prominent among younger media users, Haarkötter noted. A 2017 study determined that the prevalence of this “news-finds-me” perception is likely “to widen gaps in political knowledge” while promoting “a false sense of being informed.”

Signs of Reinvention?

With journalism inaccessible to the growing number of people who live in “news deserts,” or only a matter of passing interest to online “news snackers,” the disappearance of journalism that Schudson pondered hypothetically in 1995 is a reality for many people today. If journalism as we have known it is on the verge of disappearing, are there also—as Schudson predicted—signs of its reinvention? Examining the profession itself, the signs are not all that encouraging.

Consider, for example, the pivot by many independent journalists to Substack, Patreon, and other digital platforms in order to reach their audiences directly. Reader-supported journalism may be a necessary survival reflex, but we are wary of pinning the future of journalism on tech platforms controlled by third parties not necessarily committed to principles of ethical journalism, as advocated by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Media companies—including the tech websites CNET and BuzzFeed—have experimented with using artificial intelligence programs, including the infamous ChatGPT bot, to produce content. Noting that there would be “nothing surprising” about AI technology eventually threatening jobs in journalism, Hamilton Nolan of In These Times suggested that journalists have two key resources in the “looming fight” with AI, unions and “a widely accepted code of ethics that dictates how far standards can be pushed before something no longer counts as journalism.”

News outlets, Nolan argued, do not simply publish stories, they can also explain, when necessary, how a story was produced. The credibility of journalists and news outlets hinges on that accountability. Artificial intelligence may be able to produce media “content”—it may even be of use to journalists in news gathering—but it cannot produce journalism.

We also don’t anticipate a revival of journalism on the basis of the June 2022 memo from CNN’s Chris Licht, shortly after he became the network’s CEO, which directed staff to avoid overuse of its “breaking news” banner. “We are truth-tellers, focused on informing, not alarming our viewers,” Licht wrote in his memo. (In June 2023, CNN reported that the network’s chairman and CEO was “out after a brief and tumultuous tenure.”) But competitive pressures will continue to drive commercial news outlets to lure their audiences’ inconstant attention with sensational reporting and clickbait headlines.

Toward a Public Option

More promising bases for the reinvention of journalism will depend not on technological fixes or more profitable business models but on reinvesting in journalism as a public good.

In a 2020 article for Jacobin, media scholar Victor Pickard argued that commercial media “can’t support the bare minimum levels of news media . . . that democracy requires.” Drawing on the late sociologist Erik Olin Wright’s model for constructing alternatives to capitalism, Pickard argued that the creation of a publicly-owned media system is the most direct way “to tame and erode commercial media.”

The “public options” championed by Pickard and others—which include significant budgets to support nonprofit media institutions and municipal broadband networks—would do much to address the conditions that have exiled far too many Americans to news deserts.

If the public option advocated by Pickard focuses on the production of better quality news, the reinvention of journalism will also depend on cultivating broader public interest in and support for top-notch journalism. Here, perhaps ironically, some of the human desires that social media have so effectively harnessed might be redirected in support of investigative journalism that exposes abuses of power and addresses social inequalities.

Remembering a Golden Era of Muckraking

Few living Americans recall Ida Mae Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, and other pioneering investigative journalists who worked in the aftermath of the Gilded Age—an era, comparable to ours, when a thin veneer of extravagant economic prosperity for a narrow elite helped camouflage underlying social disintegration. “Muckraker” journalists exposed political and economic corruption in ways that captivated the public’s attention and spurred societal reform.

For instance, in a series of investigative reports published by McClure’s Magazine between October 1902 and November 1903, Steffens exposed local stories of collusion between corrupt politicians and businessmen in St. Louis, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York. Most significantly, though, Steffens’s “Shame of the Cities” series, published as a book in 1904, drew significant public attention to a national pattern of civic decay.

Steffens’s reporting not only made him a household name, it also spurred rival publications to pursue their own muckraking investigations. As his biographer, Peter Hartshorn, wrote in I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens (2012), other publishers “quickly grasped what the public was demanding: articles that not only entertained and informed but also exposed. Americans were captivated by the muckrakers and their ability to provide names, dollar amounts, and other titillating specifics.”

By alerting the public to systemic abuses of power, investigative journalism galvanized popular support for political reform and indirectly helped propel a wave of progressive legislation. As Carl Jensen related in Stories That Changed America, the muckrakers’ investigative reporting led to “a nation-wide public revolt against social evils” and “a decade of reforms in antitrust legislation, the electoral process, banking regulations, and a host of other social programs.” The golden age of muckraking came to an end when the United States entered World War I, diverting national attention from domestic issues to conflict overseas.

Though largely forgotten, the muckraking journalists from the last century provide another model of how journalism might be renewed, if not reinvented. The muckrakers’ reporting was successful in part because it harnessed a public appetite for shame and scandal to the cause of political engagement. To paraphrase one of Schudson’s points about news as public knowledge, the muckrakers’ reporting served as a crucial resource for “people ready to take political action.”

Reviving Public Hunger for News About “What’s Really Going On”

Despite its imperiled status, journalism that serves the public good has not yet disappeared. There is no shortage of exemplary independent reporting on the injustices and inequalities that threaten to disintegrate today’s United States.

That said, it is not simple to recognize such reporting or to find sources of it, amidst the clattering voices that compete for the public’s attention. Finding authentic news requires not only countering the spread of news deserts, but also cultivating the public’s taste for news that goes deeper than the latest TikTok trend, celebrity gossip, or talking head “hot takes.”

A public option for journalism could help assure more widespread access to vital news and diverse perspectives; and a revival of the muckraking tradition, premised on journalism that informs the public by exposing abuses of authority, could reconnect people who have otherwise lost interest in news that distracts, sensationalizes, or—perhaps worse—polarizes us.

Both the twentieth-century muckrakers and today’s advocates of journalism in the public interest provide lessons about how journalism can help recreate a shared sense of community—a value touted in Northwestern’s 2022 “State of Local News” report. The muckrakers appealed to a collective sense of outrage that wealthy tycoons and crooked politicians might deceive and fleece the public. That outrage brought people together to respond in common cause.

As George Seldes—a torchbearer of the muckraking tradition, who founded In Fact, the nation’s first successful periodical of press criticism, in 1940—often noted, journalism is about telling people “what’s really going on” in society. At its most influential, journalism promotes public awareness that spurs civic engagement, real reform, and even radical change.

Perhaps that is why it is so difficult, especially in these troubled times, to imagine a world without journalism. Our best hopes for the future, including the renewal of community and grassroots democracy, all hinge at least partly on what Schudson called “public knowledge,” which a robust free press protects and promotes.

Note: The above material was excerpted from Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2024, edited by Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff (Fair Oaks, CA and New York: The Censored Press and Seven Stories Press, 2024).

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff.

University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill voluntarily resigned her position Saturday after a House Education Committee hearing last Tuesday on how colleges have handled antisemitism. Magill has faced demands to resign since September, when she refused to bow to pressure to cancel the Palestine Writes Literature Festival on campus. More universities face accusations that they have failed to protect Jewish students since the October 7 Hamas incursion into southern Israel amid a broader effort to restrict pro-Palestinian speech on campus. We speak with Peter Beinart, professor of journalism at the City University of New York and the editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, and with Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. “This whole discussion seems to me to be the least important issue,” says Bartov. “What is most important now is that Israel now has been conducting a war for weeks and weeks in which it has killed thousands and thousands of Palestinians.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, discusses proposals for a prisoner swap with Hamas, the ongoing cycle of Palestinian oppression and resistance, censorship of pro-Palestine advocacy in the United States, what he calls a “generational struggle” among American Jews over Zionism, and more on Israel’s current assault of Gaza.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Janine Jackson interviewed Public Citizen’s Peter Maybarduk about Paxlovid price-gouging for the October 27, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

NPR (12/31/19)

Janine Jackson: There are a number of crises that the Covid pandemic did not create, but certainly threw into relief. It has always been disgusting, frankly, that pharmaceutical companies are permitted to sell necessary, life-improving and life-saving drugs at many times the cost of their development and production, keeping them out of the hands of those who can’t afford them, and leading some who can just about afford them to ration them dangerously. It’s a particularly callous aspect of the US profit-driven system—so out of keeping with basic tenets of public health that one kind of wonders how long it can be allowed to continue.

We’re looking at the latest example of this right now with a Covid-19 treatment. Here to tell us about it is Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines group. He joins us now by phone from DC. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Peter Maybarduk.

Peter Maybarduk: Great to be with you.

JJ: I’m sure that people won’t be shocked to hear that the company in question right now is Pfizer, though they’re hardly alone in these sort of practices. What is this most recent outrage that folks are concerned about?

PM: So Pfizer has more than doubled the price of its Covid-19 treatment Paxlovid—nirmatrelvir plus ritonavir—to the US government from around $530 a course up to $1,390 for a list price now. And that despite the fact that Pfizer’s already made $18 billion off this drug in global sales, and they’re raising the price right at a time when it hurts most, because will, obviously, to fight and to fund pandemic response has diminished greatly, and the US government is transitioning its response to the commercial market.

So there’s very limited public resources now, in the United States and around the world, to ensure continuity of treatment. And in order to make up for the loss of volume, Pfizer has decided to increase prices, but that’s going to suppress demand further; that’s going to make it harder worldwide to access Covid treatment for people that need it.

And it’s also been pointed out that the cost of production of this drug is a mere $13. And when you look at it that way, Pfizer is increasing prices to 100 times the cost of production for this drug.

JJ: I just take a pause there, and we’ll come back to it, but let’s just lay out there: Paxlovid is an important drug; it’s not an ancillary drug. It has been shown to be impactful, and then, globally, access to it has not been what it should have been.

Public Citizen (10/17/23)

PM: So we put out a study just last week finding that there’s been more than 8 million cases of unmet need in 2022 alone, looking in last year’s data; that basically more than 90% of need for Covid treatment, as measured by high-risk infections, was unmet in developing countries.

And this despite the fact that manufacturers have pointed to what they consider to be a supply glut; they say they’re making enough of the drug. But, again, the problem has been monopoly, single source of supply; opaque agreements about who is getting the drug and when; and very high prices have suppressed demand. So that if you look at high-risk infections in the Global South, if you look at even just people over 65—which is what we looked at, but it’s a significant undercount, because it doesn’t give you people with preexisting and ongoing conditions, and other vulnerabilities—you see that very, very, very few of those individuals received Paxlovid when they needed it.

JJ: It just seems, in a way, like there’s at least two different conversations going on, one of which is about: There’s a global health crisis, how do we address it? And then another one that’s like, well, we have these pharmaceutical companies, and they need to make money. And it’s almost as though there’s no overlap.

I mean, I just saw Pfizer’s CEO, a week ago, saying, “We remain proud that our scientific breakthroughs played a significant role in getting the global health crisis under control.” It sounds like, from what you’re saying, that, actually, they could have played a much different role in actually working towards getting the global health crisis under control.

Peter Maybarduk: “Pfizer has decided to charge high prices to the few, rather than affordable prices to the many, in order to meet its benchmarks.”

PM: It’s very frustrating to us that health authorities have relegated so much power to the pharmaceutical companies. In many ways, Covid-19 is a pandemic where prescription drug corporations have determined who receives what treatment or vaccine when, at least at a population level, at a sort of country-by-country level. And health agencies have been on the receiving end of that; they haven’t always known what price another country’s paying, they haven’t known what’s their place in line, the terms and conditions.

And, of course, global health authorities haven’t been able to effectively prioritize and indicate that we must prioritize population A, B and C, in these ratios, in order to end the pandemic as quickly as possible. Instead, drug corporations have really been in the driver’s seat, working privately, secretly, on their own logic’s terms, of where they can make the most money, or what public relations and pandemic concessions they want to make. And, unfortunately, that’s continuing here in this case.

Pfizer could choose to be a good partner at this stage, like set any sort of R&D ideas aside. They’ve made $18 billion off this drug. It’s a bonanza. And there’s an opportunity now to meet the funding shortfall with solidarity and with public health interest. Pfizer can afford to say, “We’re actually going to reduce the price of the drug, because there is a funding shortfall, so that more people can get it, so that we can make up the access gap.”

And you almost don’t hear about that anymore, because prices have been high enough, and funding limited enough, that the world has kind of given up. There was, if you roll the clock back a year or two, there was an ambitious call for a global test-treat programming. So all over the world, you could get a Covid test, and then have a straight path to the appropriate treatment that you needed.

And what materialized is a small pilot program in a dozen countries, instead of that great global ambition, and a very significant factor there has been that the treatments are too expensive for developing countries, or for the global effort, to pay for. And so, instead, we just have this shadow of an effort. We’re almost giving up on the idea that treatment can be available to everyone.

And if you walk around in public health circles, you’ll sometimes hear, well, there’s no demand; countries aren’t ordering the treatment. Then you have to think about why. And if you are a health ministry that’s squeezed for resources, you have to make tough decisions about, you know, hospital beds and available protocols against malaria. Do you shell out what was then $250, minimum, probably $250 to $500, I think, and probably now potentially going to be more, to Pfizer for this treatment? Or do you hold on that, not least given you don’t even know when you’ll receive it, because of those shortages.

And it might be different if the drug actually costs something like that. But knowing Pfizer’s production costs are far lower, $13, perhaps less, and the revenue they’ve made so far, it’s a conscious choice on Pfizer’s part to make it harder to prescribe Paxlovid, and to make up for that by charging a premium. Essentially, Pfizer has decided to charge high prices to the few, rather than affordable prices to the many, in order to meet its benchmarks.

Common Dreams (10/19/23)

JJ: And that’s a public health decision. It’s not a corporate—it is a corporate, capitalist decision, but it’s a public health decision in its impact. And I just want to say, finally, you’ve been quoted saying Pfizer is treating Paxlovid like a Prada handbag, a luxury for the few, rather than a treatment for the many. Meanwhile, Pfizer CEO took home $33 million last year, having been gifted a 36% raise from 2021. I think that folks can see that this is stomach-churning and confusing and weird and bad, but what Pfizer is doing is incentivized, or at least they’re not being prevented from doing it. So where are the checks, or where are the guardrails, on this sort of behavior? What do we do about it?

PM: Yeah, that’s part of the problem, is that we have insufficient guardrails. HHS recently negotiated a deal with Pfizer to keep people without insurance on treatment in coming years, and to contribute courses to a national stockpile. So HHS has taken some appropriate steps to ensure continuity of treatment here. But why did HHS have to pay the high prices that it paid? Could it have negotiated lower prices?

I think it is a significant concern, and undergirding it all is the patent monopoly that allows Pfizer to exclude competitors from the market; again, the drug is inexpensive to produce, and had we authorized generic competition, we probably could have an affordable supply by now, bringing these prices down to earth. We’re not paying for research and development here, we’re paying for a monopoly.

And we were among a number of organizations that called on the Biden administration early on to issue a compulsory license, or exercise certain rights it has under law, to authorize affordable generic competition with expensive patented Paxlovid, and bring alternatives online. And, of course, the government hasn’t acted on that proposal because of the lobbying power of the pharmaceutical industry.

So right now we’re kind of stuck, but there are reforms that we can make to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. And there’s going to be ongoing discussions about that. I mean, you saw this week, in the hearings for a new NIH director, we saw Senator Sanders taking a stand and saying we have to take responsibility for medicine pricing in our executive policies, and there will be an upcoming review by HHS and Commerce of government authority to act against drug monopolies in certain circumstances. So it’s an ongoing conversation, but our government has too few tools, and does not sufficiently use the tools that it has.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines group. You can learn more about their work online at Citizen.org. Thank you, Peter Maybarduk, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

PM: Thanks so much.

The post ‘Drug Corporations Have Really Been in the Driver’s Seat’ appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

Paxlovid tablets

This week on CounterSpin: Advertising critics have long noted that a company’s PR tells you, inadvertently but reliably, exactly what their problems are. The ad features salmon splashing in crystalline waters? That company is for sure a massive polluter.

That’s the lump of salt with which to take the recent announcement from the US Department of Health and Human Services that their new deal with Pfizer “extends patient access” to Covid treatment drug Paxlovid and “maximizes taxpayer investment”—as the HHS works with the drug company to “transition” Paxlovid “to the commercial market.” The announcement doesn’t note that this “transition” entails hiking the cost of the treatment to more than $1,300 for a five-day course, or 100 times the cost of production.

We discuss this outrage, and what allows it, with Peter Maybarduk, director of the Access to Medicines group at Public Citizen.

(image: Truthout)

Also on the show: CounterSpin listeners, more than many, recognize news media as a keystone issue—important not simply in their own right but to all of the other issues we care about. The media lens—the points of view that they show us day after day, those they obscure or ridicule—affects the way we understand the world, our neighbors and what’s politically possible. That’s why we see the fight for a thriving media ecosystem as bound up completely with the fights for social, racial, economic and environmental justice. We talked about that nexus with Maya Schenwar, author and editor at large of Truthout, and director of a new project, the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism.

The post Peter Maybarduk on Paxlovid, Maya Schenwar on Grassroots Journalism appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

Clio, Muse of History, Charles Meynier (1768–1832)

Peter Turchin, author of End Times: Elites, Counter-elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, (2023), is one of the founders of the new ‘science’ of cliodynamics, a discipline which coalesced in the 1990s, statistical juggling ‘facts’ from the past, stitched together from bare bones (literally) of archeology, climate, geopolitics, crimes, arrests/ executions, wine imports, lots and lots of numbers. There’s probably even a case for kitchen sinks. Think: weather forecasting. My favourite historian, Arnold Toynbee, when asked by a critic what the secret of history was, answered: Just one damned thing after another. Well, it seems Turchin has finally trumped the great master.

We can use computers to plumb the depths of human civilization for social darwinian ‘laws’ for how societies form, how individuals develop within family and state structures. We have even revolutionized astrology, churning out detailed astrological charts that connect each of us to the planets (especially the gas giants). Just as stunning is how we can now look back at the rise and fall of civilizations and detect ‘laws’ for how and why they collapse. I put quotation marks around laws, as we all know there is no Absolute Truth, only relative truths, truths for each individual universe/ bubble that each of us lives in, only generalizations in human knowledge, even so-called science.

Turchin was born Soviet, emigrated as a teen to the West, and as a math whiz and biologist, found the perfect niche: exploring the collapse of civilizations, in the first place his own, which he surely mourns, though his deadpan style and mordant sense of humor tempers any hint of nostalgia. Another Soviet emigre whiz kid, Dmitry Orlov has made a career out of predicting US collapse along the lines of the Soviet one.¹ But Turchin’s work is more serious, dare I say scientific?

Axioms: 1) Our main engine for civilizations is power. Power comes from force, wealth, bureaucracy, ‘soft’ ideology.

2) Turchin doesn’t come out and say it in so many words, but the natural state of civilization is plutocracy, rule by the elite. It’s possible to keep this in check (Mamluks in Egypt) but there are always external factors that undermine the best of intentions (Ottomans with gunpowder). Democracy is no magic bullet as it is easily subverted by elites.

Laws: 1) Revolution arises only from immiseration and elite overproduction.

2) The iron law of oligarchy: where an interest group acquires a lot of power, it inevitably uses this power in self-interested ways.

If whoever ‘wins’ just replaces the old elite with a new elite, this creates a wealth pump, which syphons the society’s wealth from the poor to the new elite, over time creating more immiseration and more useless elites, leading to collapse and the cycle repeats.

3) There are only so many places for elites. When the wealth pump is active, it creates more elites and more immiseration, leading to collapse.

4) The rise-collapse is generally in long cycles of 200+ years. (100 years for polygamy.)

Revolutions should be a last resort. They are never pretty, and usually end up at a place no one expected or wanted. Except for the handful of conspirators that end up on top and can create a new elite before the masses figure out what has happened. Occasionally, the revolution works beautifully, at least in the short term. Russia 1917, Cuba 1959, Egypt 1952, Libya 1969, Iran 1979, Venezuela 1999. Those were the ‘easy’ ones. Then there’s China 1948, which took 20 years of hell. Vietnam, ditto. Ditto hegemon. Let’s not even mention poor Afghanistan. Or Cambodia.

Our above select revolutions all took very different but equally nasty turns, sometimes internal (not controlling the wealth pump), all face(d) fierce efforts to undermine them by the ruling world hegemon, that have left revolutionaries bitter and disillusioned.

Case studies

Turchin focuses on France, where the state was flourishing in the 13th C but collapsed in the 1350s as elite factions fought among themselves and with the English, massacring each other until Henry V’s iconic battle of Agincourt in 1415 and a second collapse till 1453, as the English soldiers stayed behind for the pickings. That saw the population fall by half to 10m. The ‘good’ news was the quantity of nobles fell by 3/4, leaving room for the next cycle to begin.

The rise-collapse is generally in long cycles. France went through cycles of 250, 210, 210 years. England had its own glitches, so its cycles are less uniform. Civil war anarchy under King Stephen 1150s, then 1315+ famine, Black Death and the (civil) War of Roses 1455+. it was able to export its surplus elites to 14th c France but they returned and then there was the peasant revolt of 1381. For history nuts, all this turbulence is heady stuff which makes great swashbuckling. Game of Thrones. Richard II deposed by Lancaster (Lannister). Turchin identified the fall of elite status by English wine imports. By the end of the War of Roses 1490, there were few wine-drinkers.

Dynamics of rise-collapse

Clidynamics was in fact invented in the 14th c by Ibn Khaldun who proposed cycles of 4 generations which then replace their elites, stabilized for a new cycle. But he was writing for the polygamous Muslim world, which shortens the cycle, as new elites grow rapidly and need replacing more often. And without the masses of statistics and computers, Ibn Khaldun was limited in what could be done with his insight

Another curiosity is dynamic entrainment, as observed when metronomes, randomly started, eventually come into sync. Instabilities sometimes coincide. The 17th C English civil war, the Russian time of troubes, the collapse of the Ming dynasty. Then followed the 18th c time peace and imperial expansion, excess elite population, the wealth pump shifting wealth to the elites leading to immiseration and the rollicking 19th C.

Of course the elephant in the room is the hegemon. Where one size is made to fit all, the Roman/British/US steamroller flattens most bubbles, making our cycles fit its cycles. Whether there is positive feedback, increasing the violent swings of rise and collapse, I’m not sure. Probably. Turchin doesn’t go that far. But it seems likely, especially when an angry hegemon and global warming are put into the same equation.

Where are we today?

In Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (2018), Steven Pinker is optimistic about the world, seeing a bright future of tech blessings lifting the poor out of poverty. Turchin sees our present world as one of turmoil, with far too many elite wannabees, the masses revolting. Most of Pinker’s decline in poverty since 1970 is from China. Median wages have hardly increased, the lowest wages even fell since 1970s. Numbers are easily cooked so Turchin looks at the most important ‘basket of goods’: education, home, health. Tuition has increased 10x or more; it is impossible to buy a house; life expectancy is falling most for white males 30–50 (dropped by 1.6 yrs from 2014–2020.).

The last quasi-collapse for the US was, like in Europe, in the mid-19th C, culminating in the civil war, when US average height fell by 4+ cm 1830-1900. In the US, after the civil war, the elites managed to pull together to stave off revolution, reducing the immiseration during what’s called the Progressive era and then New Deal reforms. The elites paid for all this. The number of millionaires plummeted. Corporations paid 90% of profits to the public good till 1960. The post-WWII prosperity was based on an unwrtten contract among workers, business, and the state.

But the next generation of elites didn’t remember. The turning point into chaos was 1980, Reagan’s ‘greed is good’ neoliberalism. The 1970s sharpened the struggle with new eager elites sharpening their knives, creating an age of discord, as the pillars of postwar prosperity were dismantled. Wages stagnated, institutions eroded. The happiness quotient has dropped from 2000 on. The wealth pump was shifting wealth to the overproduced elite.

As in the 19th C, US height stopped increasing in 1960 (now the tallest humans are in the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany). Real wages stopped growing in the late 1970s. There is even a new term for the sharp increase in suicides among the nonelite (i.e. no college education) in America: deaths of despair. Now for women too. And the mad rush to join the elite is at fever pitch (note: cheating on entrance to elite universities).

So it’s pretty clear that the 2020s are crisis time in the US, and all of the collective West, like dutiful metronomes, coming together in one big rave. (Nothing like war to line the dominoes up.) Immiseration and elite overproduction. Roll out the ‘red’ carpet. But remember revolution is deadly business. Look for off ramps.

What about the tragedy of Ukraine?

The US, Ukraine and Russia are classic plutocracies, Belarus far less so, having avoided the privatizing/looting that both Russia and Ukraine suffered in the 1990s. So no oligarchs. A benign, stable dictatorship. No collapse imminent despite lots of external shenanigans.

Russia managed to bring the oligarchs sort-of into line. Not Ukraine, where the state is powerless over the oligarchs and fell prey to external forces (the US State Department) to govern among the feuding oligarchs in the 2000s.

Belarus, surprise, has been the big winner. Lukashenko was elected with 80% of the vote in 1994 with the promise to keep Soviet system as much in tact as possible. No mass privatizations. No billionaires. Strong links with the military.

The Ukraine oligarchs were never overthrown. Ukraine had a higher GDP per capita in 1990 than either Belarus or Russia, but by 2013 was less than half ($7,400 vs Russia $18,100, Belarus $16,100). All elected Ukrainian politicians just filled their pockets, divided oligarch spoils. All were western-oriented as ther stashes were in western banks, their kids at Oxford, Stanford.

By 2014, it was run by proconsul Victoria Nuland, who came with $5b to tame the oligarchs. Ukraine had/has three ‘classes’: the masses, oligarchs and the State Department. Elections were/are a joke, so immiserated masses change leaders each time, producing only new scandals. Only the first leader Kuchma served two terms. It’s as if Turchin’s laws are working at warp speed, with elites slogging it out and masses more and more immiserated with each election, until the current collapse in war.

Some sobering outcomes of past crises:

1. Population declines are common—through history, half of the exits from crises resulted in population loss. Ukraine’s population has fallen by about half, like France in the 15th C.

1. 30% from epidemic

1. 16% with extermination of elite groups

1. 40% with ruler assassination

1. 75% of crises ended in revolutions or civil wars

1. 20% recurrent civil wars dragging on for a century

1. 60% of exits led to the death of the state. Conquered or simply disintegrated.

1830-70 was spectacularly turbulent. All major states have had revolutions or civil wars, including the US and China. France managed to get three revolutions—in 1830, 1848, 1871. Japan’s regime felll in 1867.

Some conclusions:

1) Success stories: US Progressive era and New Deal, Chartist Britain, Russian reforms of Alexander II. The US and Britain avoided revolution. Russia didn’t. We can be optimistic if it is possible to shut down the wealth pump and rebalance the masses-elite division without resorting to revolution or catastrophic war. We can use cliodynamics to predict coming collapse and the policies necessary to remedy and bring the society back into balance.

2) There is no permanent solution. Beware the iron law of oligarchy. We must constantly fine-tune the system to shut down the wealth pump and avoid unstable disequilibrium.

• The early Russian empire was a service state with the elite serving in the army and as administrators, but the nobility subverted the tripartite compact by freeing themselves from service, turning on the wealth pump to oppress the peasants and becoming a parasitic class.
• The Progressive era/New Deal stopped the slide down the slippery slope, but the elites turned the pump back on in the 1970s. The Democratic party by 2000 was now the party of the elite. Piketty studied hundreds of elections and found that political parties all increasingly cater to the well-educated and rich.

3) Money allows the plutocrats to plan and then implement their plans for the long term. Only immiseration and intra-elite squabbles can undermine them. The share of income to the top 1% since 1945 was 10%, but rapidly increased after 2000. In Germany to 13%. In nice Denmark it went from 7% to 14%. In the US it started shifting in 1980 and is now a whopping 19%. In contrast, in France it is still a modest 10%.²

We are living through a real-life experiment to see how the different strategies pan out. We all are now in the disintegrative phase of the clio-cycle, our own age of discord, entrained by multiple crises. It’s hard to just wipe out the excess elite these days, although the war in Ukraine is helping. Complex human societies need rulers, administrators, thought leaders to function well. The trick is to constrain them to act for the benefit of all.

4) Democracy is usually a plus, but the fate of Ukraine is a stark reminder of its inherent weakness. If the elites are too greedy and too powerful, they subvert democracy through soft power, their control of the bureaucracy, and their wealth. When that fails, war.

19th C Britain gets the Nobel prize for social change, avoiding the dreaded, inevitably violent revolution that came to France in 1871 and more fatefully, Russia in 1917. The Chartist period 1819-1867 saw a breakdown of elite solidarity, hurried liberal reforms to mitigate the immiseration of the masses, the export of surplus elites and workers by opening the floodgates to emigration, even subsidizing travel to the new colonies. There was just enough unrest, demos, riots, deaths to persuade just enough of the political elite to undertake critical reforms, repealing the Corn Laws, allowing trade unions, the vote, etc. Workers regained their physical height, lost since the rise of industrial capitalism. Britain moved from ‘a fiscal-military state to an administrative state capable of meeting the needs of complex commercial and industrial society.’³

Sadly, Turchin doesn’t mention basic income. It is increasingly promoted by worried elites. This is surely a kind of magic bullet to deflate the wealth pump, if used in conjunction with a new resolve as in WWII, when corporations were harnessed to produce for society, and were taxed at 90+%, turning off the wealth pump. Cliodynamics provides a powerful tool to support it.

Turchin doesn’t dwell on the Soviet experience, but there the wealth pump was directly in the hands of the state. It was stable but finally it too overproduced elites and, at the same time stagnated without democracy to keep renewing the elite in balance with the interests of society (i.e., Belarus today). His prescription is the cruder version of ‘basic income’: bringing the relative wage up too the equilibrium livel, shutting down elite overproduction.

We now face a massive overproduction of elite wannabees at the same time as we are confronted by the need to cut back on consumption to meet external threats (climate). It certainly looks like socialism is the only way out. The most elegant and transparent mechanism to get there is the basic income and higher corporate taxes. As for excess elites, we must educate ourselves away from snobbism, find other ways to keep humans busy, engaged, developing, sans money/status.

ENDNOTES

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Walberg.

The true end of Man… is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole. Freedom is the first and indispensable condition which the possibility of such a development presupposes… Whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being but still remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies but merely with mechanical exactness…

[T]he principle of the true art of social intercourse consists in a ceaseless endeavor to grasp the innermost individuality of another, to avail oneself of it, and, with the deepest respect for it as the individuality of another, to act upon it… The very variety arising from the union of numbers of individuals is the highest good which social life can confer, and this variety is undoubtedly lost in proportion to the degree of State interference. Under such a system, we have not so much the individual members of a nation living united in the bonds of a civil compact, but isolated subjects living in relation to the State…

The entire book is an elaboration of these ideas. In them, we do not see a vulgar individualism, a reduction of humans to mere nodes in the cash-nexus who buy and sell to one another and need protection from each other, the kind of anti-humanism for which traditionalists and Marxists have criticized classical liberalism. We see, instead, an appreciation of the richness of every individuality; an emphasis on the human need for community, respect, friendship, and love; an anarchist critique of coercive institutions, in particular the state; a proto-Marxist theory of the alienation of labor; socialistic intimations that people have the right to control their own labor; in short, a liberal humanism of the sort that leftists of various persuasions would embellish in the following two centuries.

If one were to believe the “postliberals” who have burst onto the ideological scene in recent years, liberalism doesn’t have the moral or intellectual resources for such a mature humanism. It seems they haven’t read Humboldt.

Postliberalism has emerged in the UK and U.S. during the last ten years as a reaction against the manifest failures of what its thinkers call liberalism. The economic, social, political, and environmental crises that afflict the world they attribute to a systemic lack of regard for the “common good,” which, in turn, they attribute to a liberalism that has been horribly successful in its reduction of humans to atoms—“increasingly separate, autonomous, nonrelational selves replete with rights and defined by our liberty, but insecure, powerless, afraid, and alone.” So writes Patrick Deneen, professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, in his 2018 book Why Liberalism Failed. Other vocal postliberals include Adrian Vermeule, Sohrab Ahmari, Yoram Hazony, Adrian Pabst, Chad Pecknold, Gladden Pappin, and some other writers associated with such magazines as American Affairs, UnHerd, and Compact. For all their differences, these writers share a rejection of any one-sided fixation on liberty, whether it be that of right-wing libertarianism—the “free market” doctrine to which the Republican Party is at least rhetorically committed—or left-wing social liberalism, the liberalism of identity politics. They seek to resuscitate ideas of social obligation, duty, community, and tradition, for example in the forms of family, church, and nation. The modern understanding of liberty is unhealthily and immorally licentious; better is the ancient and Christian conception that true freedom consists in self-control, self-discipline (under the constraints of tradition and religion), rather than slavish submission to base and hedonistic appetites.

Postliberals, therefore, criticize the modern gospel of “progress” and its ideological cognates, alleged solvents of social bonds, such as “Enlightenment rationalism,” or the application of critical reason to all forms of order and authority for the sake of dismantling whatever isn’t emancipatory, liberal, or conducive to economic growth. Their perspective is reminiscent of that of the social theorist and historian Christopher Lasch, whose 1991 book The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics was an extended critique of the ideology of progress and a history of its dissenters in the United States. Preferring an honest recognition of ineluctable limits—not least ecological limits—over modern liberalism’s faith in endless economic growth, endless moral progress, and liberation from the benighted parochialism of the past, Lasch turned to the culture of the lower middle class as a more human and realistic alternative. Without denying the historical vices of this culture (“envy, resentment, and servility”), he was nevertheless impressed by “the moral conservatism of the petty bourgeoisie, its egalitarianism, its respect for workmanship, its understanding of the value of loyalty,” in general its rootedness, so different from the deracinated future-fixation—detachment from the past—of contemporary liberal elites. Postliberals share these concerns and values.

What postliberalism amounts to, then, is a rejection of dominant tendencies of modernity. Some writers are more willing than others to acknowledge the positive achievements of liberalism—for instance, in The Politics of Virtue (2016), John Milbank and Adrian Pabst grant that liberalism “has afforded some protection against the worst transgressions upon the liberty of some by the liberty of others”—but, on the whole, postliberals are attracted to a kind of Burkean conservatism. “Right-wing on culture, left-wing on the economy” is how they are usually characterized. Through this formula, they think, it may be possible to bring back social cohesion, “the wisdom of tradition,” and respect for “the common good.”

Two books published this year by leading lights of postliberalism, Patrick Deneen and Sohrab Ahmari, provide an opportunity to critically evaluate this “new” school of thought (perhaps not so new). On the one hand, Deneen’s Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future illustrates the weaknesses of the ideology; on the other hand, Ahmari’s Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What to Do About It illustrates its potential strengths. Ultimately, however, despite its mutability, postliberalism is misguided and dangerous in its idealism, its theoretical confusions, its political naïveté, and many of its political commitments. It too easily slides into proto-fascism. What is valid in it can be and has been expressed more sophisticatedly by the Marxist left.

Since it has the ear of some right-wing populists, such as J.D. Vance and Josh Hawley, and it seems to be growing in influence, this ideology should be taken seriously. Leftists may be able to find common ground with its advocates on certain issues, but in general, they should strongly resist this latest brand of conservatism.

The Idealism of Postliberalism

One of the major analytical flaws of postliberalism is, in fact, one of the weaknesses of all conservatism: its anti-Marxian idealism. In all his romantic talk of reverence for ancestral traditions, Edmund Burke abstracted from the actual daily functioning of these traditions, from their foundations in appalling violence, in constant violations of the dignity and freedom of the lower classes, in the irrationality of a nation’s being subject to the will of some arbitrary monarch who happened to be born to a previous monarch. A very different conservative, Milton Friedman, similarly abstracted from the daily realities of capitalism—the indignities of working for a boss, the suppression of the right to unionize, the violence in which the rule of capital is grounded—in his simplistic paeans to “freedom.” (His famous book Capitalism and Freedom (1962) consists of abstract idealizations like this one, chosen at random: “The kind of economic organization that promotes economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other.” As if, in the real world, economic power doesn’t tend to confer political power!) Fascism was even worse: it idealized will, nation, race, the state, the Leader, and war, abstracting from the grubby realities of all these things.

Being a type of conservatism, postliberalism does the same. Its very name is idealistic and simplistic. “Liberalism” can’t be the fundamental problem we face today for the simple reason that there isn’t only one liberalism, there are many. Among the classical liberals, there were British, French, American, and German figures, as diverse as John Locke, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Kant, Thomas Paine, William Godwin, John Stuart Mill, and Tocqueville. There were socialists, anarchists, and capitalists. There were deists, Protestants, Catholics, and atheists. There were democrats, republicans, and monarchists. And in the twentieth century, liberalism evolved in even more complex ways, towards social democracy and its protection not only of “negative liberty” but also “positive liberty,” as in the freedom of people to have a living wage, a home, an education, and affordable healthcare. Even the anarchist communism of Peter Kropotkin can be said, in some respects, to belong to the liberal tradition. In short, the core intuition of liberalism—“a general enlargement and freedom and rational direction of human life,” as Lionel Trilling described it—can be fleshed out institutionally in innumerable ways, including in socialism, i.e., people’s democratic control of their work. (In fact, one can argue that Marxism is but a continuation and conceptual deepening of the best traditions of liberalism.)

Patrick Deneen’s two recent books—Why Liberalism Failed and Regime Change—exemplify the idealism of conservatism. Again and again, imposing a false unity on the liberal tradition, he blames liberalism for things that are more realistically attributed to capitalism. When he refers to “[recent] decades of liberal dismantling of cultural norms and political habits essential to self-governance,” what he means is capitalist dismantling. Liberalism is but an ideological attitude, a constellation of philosophies; capitalism—how people work, how they acquire property, how they exchange goods, how class relations are structured, how culture is produced and politics is organized—is the real basis for a way of life.

When Deneen, in Why Liberalism Failed, writes that “[liberalism] has remade the world in its image, especially through the realms of politics, economics, education, science, and technology, all aimed at achieving supreme and complete freedom through the liberation of the individual from particular places, relationships, memberships, and even identities,” one recalls the words of an infinitely more profound thinker:

“The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations… It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation… All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned…”

No mere ideological “tendency” (to quote Trilling again) could achieve all this. It is the class structures of capitalism that have remade the world.

Regime Change is shot through with idealism. The basic structure of the book is reasonable enough: in the first two chapters, Deneen diagnoses the faults of liberalism, including not only its ostensible ripping apart and atomizing of the social fabric but also its elevation of hypocritical liberal elites (“the managerial class,” the real power elite) who don’t care about “the people” but use identity politics to pretend they do, shredding the last vestiges of traditional norms in the process. In the next three chapters, he presents the postliberal vision. He calls this “common-good conservatism,” associating it with Burke, Benjamin Disraeli, and G. K. Chesterton, but more generally with “the classical and Christian tradition of the West—a common-good political order that seeks to harmonize the various contentious elements of any human society.” This conservatism aligns itself with the “common sense” of ordinary people, who “seek stability, predictability, and order within the context of a system that is broadly fair.” The solution to contemporary social ills is to implement the political philosophy of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, a “mixed constitution” (democratic and aristocratic) in which an elite much more noble than that of today will “work to improve the lives, prospects, and fate of the people,” as the people, in turn, demand excellence from the elite and themselves are influenced by the virtues of the new aristocracy.

In the final two chapters, Deneen fills out his Aristotelian vision, which he calls “aristopopulism,” while also gesturing towards an answer as to how this glorious new society will be realized. His answer isn’t particularly satisfying: “an ennobling of our elite” will come about “through the force of a threat from the popolo [people],” that is, “through the efforts of an energized, forceful, and demanding populace.” This is pretty much all he says on the matter. Likewise, his sketches of the better world to come consist of empty bromides and exhortations. Rather than meritocracy, we need a society that integrates the “working-class ethos of social solidarity, family, community, church, and nation” with the “virtues of those blessed by privilege.” To combat racism, we shouldn’t embrace affirmative action or other divisive approaches but should resurrect Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a “deeper ‘integration.’” Tepidly criticizing the ardent nationalism of people like Yoram Hazony (author of The Virtue of Nationalism), National Review editor Rich Lowry, and other “national conservatives,” Deneen proposes instead “a new form of integration of local, national, and international” (italics in the original). What that concretely means he leaves unsaid. His practical program for reinfusing religion into social life is similarly perfunctory, containing little more than such vague entreaties as “a simple first step would be to publicly promote and protect a life of prayer.” Politics should be “a place for prayer, since politics is how we together seek to realize the good that is common.”

One of the greatest swindles of postliberalism is its nostalgia for an idealized past. According to Deneen, the Enlightenment project of individual liberation required the overthrow of “older social forms that had taught and reinforced the cultivation of virtue.” Traditional institutions “protect the stability and order that most benefits ordinary people,” and in fact are deeply democratic “because they are the creation of countless generations of forebears” and “largely develop from the ‘bottom up.’” As it happens, feudalism wasn’t a particularly democratic institution that cultivated virtue. Nor was absolute monarchy. Nor was the Catholic Church, which, until the spirit of liberalism finally began to permeate it, was a rapacious tyranny that burned heretics, policed thought, crusaded against the advance of knowledge, and made common cause with autocrats everywhere. (Also, of course, it now has the distinction of systemically aiding and abetting child abuse.) However inspiring the figure and philosophy of Jesus may be, history has shown that religious institutions, like all administrative hierarchies, are prone to abusing their power unless suffused with the liberal spirit of respect for individual rights.

This worship of religion is a classic instance of mistaken idealism. Postliberals are enamored of Christianity, attributing much of what is good in our civilization to its religious inheritance and much of what is bad to its abandonment of religion. Most of the time, they ignore questions about whether, after all, it is true that something called “God” exists or that Jesus is His son and was resurrected after dying for our sins, or any of the other dogmas of Christianity (or Judaism)—and rightly so, for in order to evaluate the plausibility of any proposition, it’s necessary to use the Enlightenment’s “rationalistic” method they dislike. With regard to socially relevant questions, they appear to have a pragmatist conception of truth: if a belief is useful, we might as well believe it. But is religion in fact useful? Its violent, tortured, bigoted history suggests otherwise. Nor is it at all clear that humans need religion in order to enjoy a healthy communal and family life or to heed the moral duties that bind us all together.

Often, religion has functioned to undermine the well-being of communities and families. It isn’t a secret that conservative politicians use appeals to religion to convince people to vote against their economic interests. An infamous example is that of Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas, a religiose Christian who passed radical tax cuts in 2012 that, as the Brookings Institution summarizes, “led to sluggish growth, lower-than-expected revenues, and brutal cuts to government programs” like schools, housing, infrastructure, and police and fire protection. Similarly, for over a hundred years, businesses in the American South have used conservative Christianity to ward off the threat of unionism, helping to keep the region in a state of relative poverty. In Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South (2015), historians Elizabeth and Ken Fones-Wolf describe how corporate executives in the postwar era relocated their factories to this region, where “chambers of commerce advertised the benefits [of] locating in a ‘distinctly religious city’ where the ‘labor is of native Anglo-Saxon stock—loyal and efficient.’” The CIO’s Operation Dixie was unable to overcome the resistance that evangelical Protestantism (among other forces) put up to unions.

On the whole, then, postliberals have a rather uncritical attitude towards tradition and religion, as conservatives usually do. They’re nostalgic for a lost social cohesion, the lost unity of “Western culture.” As Adrian Pabst writes in Liberal World Order and Its Critics (2019), identity politics (combined with “corporate crony capitalism”) is “changing the fundamental character of Western civilisation from being a cultural community bound together by common values that define shared interests to a ‘business community’ based on sectional interests that promote divisive values.” But when, exactly, was “Western civilization” such a unitary entity? The history of Europe is the history of constant clashes, constant wars, constant struggles between different value systems and interests and cultures, long centuries of violence and bloody suppression of innumerable popular uprisings. Divisiveness is history. And idealism is false history.

Buried under all the confusions and shallowness of postliberalism, however, there is a truth: throughout its five-hundred-year history, riven by war, privatization and the destruction of the commons, mass immiseration, and the crushing of democracy, capitalism has profoundly disrupted communities and uprooted identities. This is precisely why, or one reason why, leftists and “the people” have fought against it. Genuine leftists are well aware of the human need for roots, for order and stability and community. The great anarchist mystic Simone Weil even wrote a book entitled The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind. “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul… Money destroys human roots wherever it is able to penetrate, by turning desire for gain into the sole motive.” There is no reason such a recognition should be incompatible with the best traditions of liberalism, for instance Humboldtian liberalism. That is, there is no reason a philosophy of individual rights and individual dignity should preclude a recognition of mutual obligations and the essentially social nature of humanity, including even a valorization of honorable traditions and shared norms that constrain unfettered liberty. This isn’t the place to delve into the philosophies of communism, socialism, and anarchism—the writings of Kropotkin, William Morris, Anton Pannekoek, Rudolf Rocker, Murray Bookchin, etc.—but the societies they envision are hardly licentious or degenerate or atomized. (Or remotely similar to the Soviet Union’s state capitalism, with which socialism and communism are absurdly associated.) They are eminently ordered, communal, and democratic, because they are grounded in a liberal humanist sensibility.

Indeed, one might even say that the real reason the world is in such an awful state is the opposite of that given by postliberals: there is too little freedom, not too much. There is too much authoritarianism, not enough liberalism or democracy. In particular, the authoritarian structures known as corporations have overwhelming power—including over governments—which they certainly do not use in the interests of humanity, community, or social harmony. Noam Chomsky is surely right that classical liberalism, or libertarianism, in its profoundest forms is not only not fulfilled in capitalism but is actually incompatible with it, inasmuch as capitalism tends to violate both the negative and positive liberties (“freedom from” and “freedom to”) of ordinary people. A vast literature of the left, of journalism, and of historical scholarship exposes the tyrannical nature of capitalist institutions; for example, in 2017, the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson published a well-received book called Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It). (A corporation is “a government that assigns almost everyone a superior whom they must obey… [T]here is no rule of law… Superiors are unaccountable to those they order around. They are neither elected nor removable by their inferiors,” etc.) The most recent addition to this literature may be a surprise, though: Ahmari’s new book.

Tyranny, Inc. could not be more different from Regime Change. It appears, in fact, that Ahmari is undergoing a semi-conversion to the left, or to aspects of the left. It is striking, after all, that a postliberal should have written a book the very subtitle and substance of which valorizes “American liberty.” Whereas Deneen wallows in a lazy idealism that traffics in windy abstractions like virtue, excellence, and tradition, Ahmari investigates the material conditions workers have faced under the neoliberal onslaught, together with the corrupt political economy that has brought about these abysmal conditions. Where Deneen believes that an enlightened Aristotelian aristocracy will magically come into being and work to uplift the people, Ahmari comprehends the essential fact of class struggle and advocates the resurrection of strong unions and social democracy. He even uses Marxist language: “cultural norms, practices, and beliefs…rest on a material substrate that includes law, politics, and economics.” In short, while Deneen and his co-thinkers blame a unitary ideology of their imagination called liberalism, Ahmari, at least in this book, blames capitalism.

One can’t help wondering if the postliberal gang is a little unhappy with Ahmari’s semi-apostasy. Consider his criticisms of conservatives in his concluding chapter:

[C]onservative defenders of the [social] system are often the first to lament its cultural ramifications: …a decline in civic and religious engagement, particularly among the poor and working classes; low rates of marriage and family formation; and so on.

…[What results] is a downright ludicrous politics centered on preaching timeless virtues while denying what political theory going back to the Greeks has taught, and what every good parent or teacher knows: that cultivating virtue requires tangible, structural supports. A child will struggle to master honesty if his parents routinely model dishonesty; a body politic will likewise spurn the virtues if subjected to merciless economic exploitation.

It’s true that more populist conservatives these days are prepared to defend right-wing cultural values against ‘woke capital.’ But few if any dare question the coercive power of capital itself. Dig into the policy platforms of tub-thumping GOP populists, and you will likely find effusions of unreserved praise for capitalism.

Here, he is coming close to the realization that right-wing populism is completely phony, that it has always functioned to distract from the class conflicts that are fundamentally responsible for popular suffering, so that a large portion of the public instead rages against LGBTQ people, liberals, Muslims, immigrants, Jews, Communists, China, and anyone else not big business. To be sure, postliberals don’t effusively praise capitalism, as other populist conservatives do. But if they really valued “the common good” about which they prattle, they would, like leftists and the new-and-improved Ahmari, direct their ire at the chief agents of the collapse of community, family, morality, and the natural environment, namely the capitalist class. Otherwise they’re in danger of being useful idiots for this class that is interested only in further shredding the social compact.

Tyranny, Inc. is dense with journalistic investigations of a litany of types of “coercion” corporations inflict today on employees and the public, informed by a competent telling of the history behind it all (relying on scholars like Karl Polanyi, John Kenneth Galbraith, and David Harvey). Among other topics, Ahmari illuminates the many ways in which the sacred doctrine of “liberty of contract” between employer and employee conceals chasmic disparities in power that can ruin people’s lives. He illustrates the capture of the judiciary by the corporate sector. He exposes the predations of private equity, including its use of private emergency services (firefighting firms, ambulance companies) to fleece unsuspecting innocents of tens of thousands of dollars. He discusses the ongoing evisceration by Big Tech and Big Finance of the U.S.’s newspaper industry, which has seen almost a third of its newspapers shutter since 2005 (while many of the remainder are gutted by their new Wall Street owners). And so on. The most viable solution to all these tragedies, he argues, is to revive Galbraithian countervailing power. “Once more, it’s up to the American worker to drag our politicians and corporate leaders into a new consensus.”

Insofar as Ahmari remains a postliberal, his book shows the mutability of this ideology. Its proponents can choose any particular agenda to devote their energies to, whether reconstituting unions and social democracy, advocating a Catholic theocracy (like Adrian Vermeule), fighting against the rights of non-heteronormative people, seeking a much more restrictive immigration regime, denouncing so-called “liberal” interventionist foreign policy, or prohibiting the teaching of the history of racism in the U.S.’s public schools. Rhetorically at least, all of this can be defended in terms of shoring up the disintegrating social order and protecting “communal solidarity.” In a sense, this mutability can be considered a strength, for it allows postliberalism to appeal to people of very different values and interests. But it is the strength of fascism, an ideology that likewise prided itself on being postliberal. Fascism was no less resourceful in appealing to different groups of people, including peasants, landowners, industrialists, the petty bourgeois, racists, traditionalists, even a small minority of workers, who were told their interests would be represented in the great community of the nation bound together by common traditions. In practice, of course, fascism, as a species of conservatism, ended up representing above all the interests of the ruling class, while crushing unions and working-class political parties.

The Proto-Fascism of Postliberalism

Tyranny, Inc. shows that leftists can find common cause with postliberals on some issues. To the extent that someone of the right really does care about the common good, or rather the good of the vast majority (to which the good of the ruling class tends to be inimical, since its power rests on the exploitation of others), a socialist might well be willing to work together with him. Such an alliance, necessarily limited and conditional, is often ridiculed as “red-brownism” by leftists, but it does happen in politics that people of different ideologies cooperate on a political campaign or policy that will conduce to the greater good. A politics that rests on maintaining one’s purity is unlikely to get very far.

Nevertheless, it is undeniable that postliberalism is very dangerous, potentially fascist. Insofar as it is anti-liberal—which left-leaning postliberals, such as Adrian Pabst, are not—this isn’t a difficult case to make. “Within the West, Hungary has set the standard for a reasonable approach,” Gladden Pappin believes. Vermeule deplores the expansiveness of liberal rights: “Yesterday the frontier was divorce, contraception, and abortion; then it became same-sex marriage; today it is transgenderism; tomorrow it may be polygamy, consensual adult incest, or who knows what.” In Conservatism: A Rediscovery (2022), Yoram Hazony argues that “cultivation of the national religion is an indispensable purpose of government.” He goes so far as to affirm, quoting Irving Kristol, that “there is no inherent right to self-government if it means that such government is vicious, mean, squalid, and debased.” But who is to make such a judgment? Why is your definition of what is right and good necessarily better than someone else’s? Are you infallible? What gives a reactionary religious nationalist like Hazony the right to impose his vision of the good life on an entire society?

Apart from the noxious political commitments of most postliberals, there is an even deeper problem: in conditions in the United States today, to ground one’s politics in attacking liberalism is to undermine postliberals’ own professed values of “national resilience,” “common purposes,” and the “social covenant” (to quote Adrian Pabst’s Postliberal Politics). This is because the chief beneficiaries are the forces most aggressively sabotaging these values, the Republican Party and reactionaries in the business community.

To put it bluntly, postliberals’ embrace of politicians like J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley, even (in some cases) Donald Trump, and their hope for an authentically populist, working-class Republican Party, is incredibly naïve. Nor is it new. At least since (in fact, before) Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, Republican politicians have been clothing themselves in populist garb, stoking culture wars and denouncing liberal elites in order to cleave the “working-class” vote from Democrats. As Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew traveled the country attacking “permissivists,” “elitists,” “radical liberals,” “thieves, traitors, and perverts.” Reagan liked to invoke the “postliberal” themes of family and community: “When they [Democrats] talk about family, they mean Big Brother in Washington. When we talk about family, we mean ‘honor thy father and mother.’” These themes, of course, have been a mainstay of Republican rhetoric for generations. “I am here to say to America,” Bob Dole pontificated, “do not abandon the great traditions that stretch to the dawn of our history. Do not topple the pillars of those beliefs—God, family, honor, duty, country—that have brought us through time and time again.” George W. Bush preached the virtues of compassionate conservatism, which proved to be just as oxymoronic as common-good conservatism will doubtless be. Today, the enemies du jour are critical race theory, transgenderism, and wokeness, but the underlying strategy is always the same.

And what does that strategy eventuate in? Tax cuts for the rich, gutting of regulations to protect the environment, and a war on workers and the poor. Trump’s NLRB waged an “unprecedented” attack on workers’ rights. His administration weakened or eliminated over 125 policies that protected the country’s air, water, and land. His budgets savagely slashed benefits for low-income Americans, continuing a longstanding Republican practice. The great “populist” senators Hawley and Vance give, at best, tokenistic and rhetorical support to the working class: neither has even cosponsored the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, and Hawley, according to the AFL-CIO, has almost always voted against the interests of workers. Vance, a venture capitalist, finds it much more congenial to spout racist “great replacement” nonsense and blame those with a low income for their own failures than to actually do anything to help the latter. Meanwhile, the Republican Party remains rock-solidly opposed to even the mildest proposals to address global warming, which threatens not only working people but all life on earth. If this sabotage of life itself is what the postliberal common good looks like, one might even prefer the classical fascists.

Analytically, a key error that helps make possible postliberal political naïveté (assuming the likes of Patrick Deneen and Yoram Hazony are acting in good faith) is to associate together, in one overarching nefarious tradition, classical liberals, modern economic conservatives, New Deal liberals, contemporary centrist liberals, woke identitarians, and “liberal” imperialists from Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. In a sense, even Marxism is included in this tradition, inasmuch as it shares the orientation towards progress of all these groups, their detachment from and denial of the virtues of tradition. (As if the left doesn’t want to preserve healthy traditions and abandon unhealthy ones.) This is a hopelessly confused classification, wholly superficial because of its idealistic focus on the supposed shared commitment to vague concepts of progress and freedom. In order to understand political history, you have to consider the material interests that these different groups and ideologies serve.

For example, economic conservatives like Milton Friedman or Paul Ryan are liberal or libertarian in name only. Their talk of free markets is a fig leaf for outright authoritarianism in the form of slavish support for corporate tyrannies (as Ahmari describes), which would have horrified classical liberals like Adam Smith. Most conservatives don’t care about a mythical free market anyway, as shown by their enthusiasm for exorbitant government spending on the defense industry and for munificent tax breaks and subsidies for corporations. Capitalism could not survive without these sorts of government interventions, nor can markets operate without some firms soon exerting “illiberal” market power; so it is idle for postliberals to talk about a nonexistent economic liberalism.

New Deal liberals were and are totally different from self-styled economic liberals, serving a popular constituency—so it’s odd that Deneen attacks them, too. After all, they often acted—as progressives still act—in approximately the same way as his ideal aristocracy would, “work[ing] to improve the lives, prospects, and fate of the people.” If one cares about the common good, why denounce social democracy, which more than any other capitalist formation protected families and communities? But because the progressive state was irreligious, non-traditional, and supposedly inspired by elite fear and loathing of the people (?), it was and is bad. (Deneen also opines that redistribution of wealth to workers has “led to extensive damage to the broader economic order,” citing no evidence.) His preferred reforms include increasing the size of the House of Representatives to 6,000 members; requiring that every American serve one year in the military; “substantially reducing” university education and investing in more vocational education; breaking up monopolistic companies; investing more public funds in infrastructure and manufacturing; penalizing companies that employ undocumented immigrants; banning pornography and passing laws that promote “public morality”; and enacting policies that reward marriage and family formation, such as Hungary has instituted under Orbán. Predictably, he says nothing about labor unions, except, as a parenthesis, that strengthening them is “a worthy undertaking.”

Leftists would be more sympathetic to postliberals’ contempt for the conventional centrist liberalism of the Democratic Party today, albeit not necessarily for the same reasons. Indeed, many are similarly disdainful of the performative, business-friendly identity politics that has become a dominant ethos in the “professional-managerial class” that postliberals despise. But to call this “class” the real power elite, the real oppressors—as Deneen and others do—is both laughable and proto-fascist. This thesis is a core premise of right-wing postliberalism, for, if you can find a villain that isn’t the capitalist class, you don’t have to locate yourself uncomfortably close to the left. The PMC will do the job nicely, since it’s a diffuse category of people, many of whom have an elite status, that pervades and partially runs society’s hegemonic institutions. Its members tend to be culturally different from the masses of Americans without a college degree, so it’s easy to stir up resentment against them, which can be used to elect reactionaries who will do the bidding of the real ruling class (while blaming woke liberal professionals for the suffering that results).

Deneen’s treatment of the “managerial elite” is influenced by a favorite text of postliberals, Michael Lind’s The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite (2020), which itself is influenced by James Burnham’s famous book The Managerial Revolution (1941). Burnham posited that ownership and control were separated in modern corporations, and that, as a result, a new managerial class was replacing capitalists as the ruling class. This was a flawed analysis: for one thing, despite the transformations of the economy that had indeed occurred in preceding decades, corporations were still subject to the logic of capital, which required that they squeeze profits out of the exploited labor of workers. Capitalism was not ending. But whatever plausibility the thesis may have once had was long gone by the time of the 1980s’ shareholder revolution, which Deneen and Lind seem not to have heard of. The stubborn fact is that some people still make their money from ownership and investments, while others make money by selling their labor-power. These two groups tend to have antagonistic interests, an antagonism rooted not in the vague cultural differences between the “meritocracy” and “the people” that Deneen describes—such as (he says) the former’s mobility, its “disconnection from a shared cultural inheritance,” and its identity politics—but rather in objective structures of how money is made and how power is distributed in the workplace and the economy.

It is true that most professionals occupy an ambiguous place between capitalists and the larger working class. Barbara and John Ehrenreich theorized this ambiguity in their landmark 1977 essay “The Professional-Managerial Class,” and Marxists since then have devoted a great deal of effort to making sense of this huge group of people, some of whom have more interests in common with the traditional working class and others with corporate executives and owners. Since its emergence in the early twentieth century to help manage “the reproduction of capitalist culture and capitalist class relations,” the PMC has, most of the time, not shown much solidarity with the blue-collar working class. In fact, in their 2013 essay “Death of a Yuppie Dream,” the Ehrenreichs argue it “has played a major role in the oppression and disempowerment of the old working class.” Professionals (usually more or less politically centrist, or “liberal” in today’s parlance) are easy to dislike, since they often exhibit the vices of high-status groups everywhere: they’re prone to being smug, elitist, hypocritical, conformist despite their pretensions to independent thought, complicit in the neoliberal evisceration of society, etc. Leftists are, perhaps, almost as fond of ridiculing them as conservatives; see Catherine Liu’s Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class (2021) and Amber A’Lee Frost’s “The Characterless Opportunism of the Managerial Class” for examples.

Nevertheless, if you want a more communal, just, and sustainable social order, you have to think about strategy. No class exemplifies virtue. The question is whether your agenda will be to dismantle corporate power, the real engine behind the atomization that postliberals decry, or to attack the relative peons of the PMC, who (as the Ehrenreichs note) are beginning to succumb to the disintegrating economic and political forces that have decimated the old working class. The second path is the road of fascism, the search for a scapegoat that only ends up empowering the most vicious elements of the ruling class. The first path, according to which professionals in precarious economic circumstances ought to be appealed to instead of vilified, is the road to genuine social change.

In other words, postliberals have to make a decision: do they want to concentrate on combating social liberalism—banning pornography, criminalizing gender-affirming health care for those who suffer from dysphoria, erecting draconian barriers to immigration, banning “liberal” books and school curricula that address America’s real history—thereby empowering faux-populist Republicans who will cut social programs, attack unions, increase military spending, accelerate environmental destruction, give corporations and the wealthy even more power than they have, and devastate families and communities? Or do they want to concentrate on tackling the latter crises and forego a war on social liberalism? They can’t have it both ways, because only the left will ever honestly confront the material catastrophes that are savaging working-class communities. The left itself would do well to start prioritizing class solidarity rather than only identity politics (as some leftists have argued), but at least it is trying to do far more for the working class than the right is (since the right, after all, exists to serve business). Even Biden’s Build Back Better bill, which couldn’t pass because of Republican opposition, would have enormously benefited working families through its investments in childcare and preschool, paid family and medical leave, community college, child tax credits, physical infrastructure, affordable housing, health care, and environmental protection.

Thus, because of its alleged interest in the public good but its conservative (Republican) orientation, postliberalism is ultimately incoherent. It is not a new ideology, being in many ways a return of paleoconservatism, of the anti-modernism of Jerry Falwell and Pat Buchanan, even of the—admittedly more extreme—alt-right of several years ago, which shared a lot of the reactionary cultural grievances of postliberals. Deneen & Company try to make their ideas more respectable by invoking Aristotle, Aquinas, Tocqueville, Pope Leo XIII, and other exalted names, but this is a transparent exercise in idealistic mystification. The proto-fascism is right below the surface.

There is a particle of hope, however. If more postliberals choose the left-wing path of Tyranny, Inc. than the far-right path of Regime Change, they might manage to make a positive contribution to American politics. But this will require shedding their illusions about the likes of J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and Josh Hawley, and instead following the example of, say, Bernie Sanders. That’s where a humane, working-class politics is to be found.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Chris Wright.

The report, citing “sources familiar with the matter,” goes on to mention that Pratt “allegedly shared the information with scores of others, including more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists”. The net, in other words, proved rather large, with emails and conversations taking place on the subject with three former Australian prime ministers, 10 Australian officials, 11 of Pratt’s employees and six journalists.

The revelation has emerged as part of an ongoing investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into Trump’s retention of classified documents on leaving the White House. Some of the documents, hoarded at Mar-a-Lago, covered US military matters, nuclear weapons, and spy satellites.

What is buried in the latest spray and foam of the Trump disclosures to Pratt is whether that encounter had any bearing on the broader strategic thinking in Canberra and its links to the US military industrial complex. The AUKUS security agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia contemplates the transfer of at least three US nuclear powered Virginia class boats, along with the construction of a specific co-designed nuclear-powered boat for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Did Pratt’s enthusiasm for US nuclear submarines percolate through to other officials, think-tankers and courtiers working for Washington’s interests?

Former Australian Prime Ministers Paul Keating and Tony Abbott have told the Australian Financial Reviewthat Pratt never raised the issue of purchasing US nuclear submarines with them. Who, then, were the other prime ministers who received Pratt’s gobbets of wisdom? Surely Scott Morrison must figure, given his role in brokering the AUKUS agreement.

The ABC News report does acknowledge that a number of Australian officials who featured in the Pratt disclosures were “involved in then-ongoing negotiations with the Biden administration over a deal for Australia to purchase a number of nuclear-powered attack submarines from the United States.”

A number of Australian commentators have tried to minimise the significance of the Trump-Pratt encounter, thereby revealing visible smoke plumes. “We’ve had submariners serve on US nuclear submarines for years,” statedformer Australian ambassador to the US Joe Hockey. “I find it hard to believe that in a conversation between Anthony Pratt and Donald Trump, anything of great significance was discussed that would have an impact on the national security of either Australia or the United States.”

Former Australian Defence Department official Peter Jennings, who also served as executive director of the US-funded and parochially pro-Washington think-tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, for over a decade, saw little reasonto be concerned about the content of the disclosures. Most of the material on US submarines was already in the public domain. His concern, rather, was with Trump’s cavalier approach to national security information. “It’s just the 1000th example of why Trump is unfit to be president,” he tut-tutted. Jennings, along with the other members of the paid-up Washington consensus in combating Beijing, is no doubt losing sleep about Trump redux. Were Trump to return to the White House, all bets about Australia getting its nuclear-powered submarines are off.

The speed with which AUKUS was entered into by the Scott Morrison government in September 2021, an agreement which also brought no demurral or any murmurs of dissent from the then Labour opposition of Anthony Albanese, had a rank smell to it. For one thing, it has seen Australia further trapped in an insidious game of military competition being waged against China at the behest of US interests, militarising the country and mortgaging the budget to the tune of $368 billion over the course of two decades.

AUKUS also brought with it the abrupt termination of Canberra’s contract with the French Naval Group to construct twelve diesel-electric attack submarines for the RAN. This proved to be a disastrous affair for Australian diplomacy, savaging French-Australian relations and also advertising, to the region, the abject repudiation of Australian sovereignty.

While it should be stressed that Pratt faces no charges of illegality or impropriety, nor features in the 40 charges Smith is levelling against Trump, the Mar-a-Lago meeting with a former US president may prove critical in identifying a nexus with Canberra’s irrational interest in US-nuclear powered technology and the point at which that fascination ended the last vestiges of Australian independence.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Kia ora koutou. Ko Ngāpuhi tōku iwi. Ko Ngāti Manu toku hapu. Ko Karetu tōku marae. Ko Myles Thomas toku ingoa.

I grew up with David Beatson, on the telly. Back in the 1970s, he read the late news which I watched in bed with my parents. Later, David and I worked together to save TVNZ 7 and also regional TV stations.

The Better Public Media (BPM) trust honours David each year with our memorial address, because his fight for non-commercial TV was an honourable one. He wasn’t doing it for himself.

• READ MORE: Other Better Public Media reports
• Better Public Media website

He wasn’t doing it so he could get a job or because it would benefit him. He fought for public media because he knew it was good for Aotearoa NZ.

Like us at Better Public Media, he recognised the benefits to our country from locally produced public media.

David knew, from a long career in media, including as editor of The Listener and as Jim Bolger’s press secretary, that NZ’s media plays an important role in our nation’s culture, social cohesion, and democracy.

NZ culture is very important. NZ culture is so unique and special, yet it has always been at risk of being swamped by content from overseas. The US especially with its crackpot conspiracies, extreme racial tensions, and extreme tensions about everything to be honest.

Local content the antidote
Local content is the antidote to this. It reflects us, it portrays us, it defines New Zealand, and whether we like it or not, it defines us. But it’s important to remember that what we see reflected back to us comes through a filter.

This speech is coming to you through a filter, called Myles Thomas.

Commercial news reflects our world through a filter of sensation and danger to hold our attention. That makes NZ seem more shallow, greedy, fearful and dangerous.

The social media filter makes the world seem more angry, reactive and complaining.
RNZ’s filter is, I don’t know, thoughtful, a bit smug, middle class.

The New Zealand Herald filter makes us think every dairy is being ram-raided every night.

And The Spinoff filter suggests NZ is hip, urban and mildly infatuated with Winston Peters.

These cultural reflections are very important actually because they influence us, how we see NZ and its people.

It is not a commodity
That makes content, cultural content, special. It is not a commodity. It’s not milk powder.

We don’t drink milk and think about flooding in Queenstown, drinking milk doesn’t make us laugh about the Koiwoi accent, we don’t drink milk and identify with a young family living in poverty.

Local content is rich and powerful, and important to our society.

When the government supports the local media production industry it is actually supporting the audiences and our culture. Whether it is Te Mangai Paho, or NZ On Air or the NZ Film Commission, and the screen production rebate, these organisations fund New Zealand’s identity and culture, and success.

Don’t ask Treasury how to fund culture. Accountants don’t understand it, they can’t count it and put it in a spreadsheet, like they can milk solids. Of course they’ll say such subsidies or rebates distort the “market”, that’s the whole point. The market doesn’t work for culture.

Moreover, public funding of films and other content fosters a more stable long-term industry, rather than trashy short-termism that is completely vulnerable to outside pressures, like the US writer’s strike.

We have a celebrated content production industry. Our films, video, audio, games etc. More local content brings stability to this industry, which by the way also brings money into the country and fosters tourism.

We cannot use quota
New Zealand needs more local content.

And what’s more, it needs to be accessible to audiences, on the platforms that they use.

But in NZ we do have one problem. Unlike Australia, we can’t use a quota because our GATT agreement does not include a carve out for local music or media quotas.

In the 1990s when GATT was being negotiated, the Aussies added an exception to their GATT agreement allowing a quota for Aussie cultural content. So they can require radio stations to play a certain amount of local music. Now they’re able to introduce a Netflix quota for up to 20 percent of all revenue generated in Aussie.

We can’t do that. Why? Because back in the 1990s the Bolger government and MFAT decided against putting the same exception into NZ’s GATT agreement.

But there is another way of doing it, if we take a lead from Denmark and many European states. Which I’ll get to in a minute.

The second important benefit of locally produced public media is social cohesion, how society works, the peace and harmony and respect that we show each other in public, depends heavily on the “public sphere”, of which, media is a big part.

Power of media to polarise
Extensive research in Europe and North America shows the power of media to polarise society, which can lead to misunderstanding, mistrust and hatred.

But media can also strengthen social cohesion, particularly for minority communities, and that same research showed that public media, otherwise known as public service media, is widely regarded to be an important contributor to tolerance in society, promoting social cohesion and integrating all communities and generations.

The third benefit is democracy. Very topical at the moment. I’ve already touched on how newsmedia affect our culture. More directly, our newsmedia influences the public dialogue over issues of the day.

It defines that dialogue. It is that dialogue.

So if our newsmedia is shallow and vacuous ignoring policies and focussing on the polls and the horse-race, then politicians who want to be elected, tailor their messages accordingly.

There’s plenty of examples of this such as National’s bootcamp policy, or Labour’s removing GST on food. As policies, neither is effective. But in the simplified 30 seconds of commercial news and headlines, these policies resonate.

Is that a good thing, that policies that are known to fail are nonetheless followed because our newsmedia cater to our base instincts and short attention spans?

Disaster for democracy
In my view, commercial media is actually disaster for democracy. All over the world.

But of course, we can’t control commercial media. No-one’s suggesting that.

The only rational reaction is to provide stronger locally produced public media.

And unfortunately, NZ lacks public media.

Obviously Australia, the UK, Canada have more public media than us, they have more people, they can afford it. But what about countries our size, Ireland? Smaller population, much more public media.

Denmark, Norway, Finland, all with roughly 5 million people, and all have significantly better public media than us. Even after the recent increases from Willie Jackson, NZ still spends just $44 per person on public media. $44 each year.

When we had a licence fee it was $110. Jim Bolger’s government got rid of that and replaced it with funding from general taxation — which means every year the Minister of Finance, working closely with Treasury, decides how much to spend on public media for that year.

This is what I call the curse of annual funding, because it makes funding public media a very political decision.

National, let us be honest, the National Party hates public media, maybe because they get nicer treatment on commercial news. We see this around the world — the Daily Mail, Sky News Australia, Newstalk ZB . . . most commercial media quite openly favours the right.

Systemic bias
This is a systemic bias. Because right-wing newsmedia gets more clicks.

Right-wing politicians are quite happy about that. Why fund public to get in the way? Even if it it benefits our culture, social cohesion, and democracy.

New Zealand is the same, the last National government froze RNZ funding for nine years.

National Party spokesperson on broadcasting Melissa Lee fought against the ANZPM merger, and now she’s fighting the News Bargaining Bill. As minister she could cut RNZ and NZ On Air’s budget.

But it wouldn’t just be cost-cutting. It would actually be political interference in our newsmedia, an attempt to skew the national conversation in favour of the National Party, by favouring commercial media.

So Aotearoa NZ needs two things. More money to be spent on public media, and less control by the politicians. Sustainable funding basically.

The best way to achieve it is a media levy.

Highly targeted tax
For those who don’t know, a levy is a tax that is highly targeted, and we have a lot of them, like the Telecommunications Development Levy (or TDL) which currently gathers $10 million a year from internet service providers like Spark and 2 Degrees to pay for rural broadband.

We’re all paying for better internet for farmers basically. When first introduced by the previous National government it collected $50 million but it’s dropped down a bit lately.

This is one of many levies that we live with and barely notice. Like the levy we pay on our insurance to cover the Earthquake Commission and the Fire and Emergency Levy. There are maritime levies, energy levies to fund EECA and Waka Kotahi, levies on building consents for MBIE, a levy on advertising pays for the ASA, the BSA is funded by a levy.

Lots of levies and they’re very effective.

So who could the media levy, levy?

ISPs like the TDL? Sure, raise the TDL back up to $50 million or perhaps higher, and it only adds a dollar onto everyone’s internet bill. There’s $50 million.

But the real target should be Big Tech, social media and large streaming services. I’m talking about Facebook, Google, Netflix, YouTube and so on. These are the companies that have really profited from the advent of online media, and at the expense of locally produced public media.

Funding content creation
We need a way to get these companies to make, or at least fund, content creation here in Aotearoa. Denmark recently proposed a solution to this problem with an innovative levy of 2 percent on the revenue of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney.

But that 2 percent rises to 5 percent if the streaming company doesn’t spend at least 5 percent of their revenue on making local Danish content. Denmark joins many other European countries already doing this — Germany, Poland, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France and even Romania are all about to levy the streamers to fund local production.

Australia is planning to do so as well.

But that’s just online streaming companies. There’s also social media and search engines which contribute nothing and take almost all the commercial revenue. The Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill will address that to a degree but it’s not open and we won’t know if the amounts are fair.

Another problem is that it’s only for news publishers — not drama or comedy producers, not on-demand video, not documentary makers or podcasters. Social media and search engines frequently feature and put advertising around these forms of content, and hoover up the digital advertising that would otherwise help fund them, so they should also contribute to them.

A Media Levy can best be seen as a levy on those companies that benefit from media on the internet, but don’t contribute to the public benefits of media — culture, social cohesion and democracy. And that’s why the Media Levy can include internet service providers, and large companies that sell digital advertising and subscriptions.

Note, this would target large companies over a certain size and revenue, and exclude smaller platforms, like most levies do.

Separate from annual budget
The huge benefit of a levy is that it is separate from the annual budget, so it’s fiscally neutral, and politicians can’t get their mits on it. It removes the curse of annual funding.

It creates a funding stream derived from the actual commercial media activities which produce the distribution gaps in the first place, for which public media compensates. That’s why the proceeds would go to the non-commercial platform and the funding agencies — Te Mangai Paho, NZ On Air and the Film Commission.

One final point. This wouldn’t conflict with the new Digital Services Tax proposed by the government because that’s a replacement for Income Tax. A Media Levy, like all levies, sits over and above income tax.

So there we go. I’ve mentioned Jim Bolger three times! I’ve also outlined some quite straight-forward methods to fund public media sustainably, and to fund a significant increase in local content production, video, film, audio and journalism.

None of it needs to be within the grasp of Melissa Lee or Willie Jackson, or David Seymour.

All of it can be used to create local content that improves democracy, social cohesion and Kiwi culture.

Myles Thomas is a trustee of the Better Public Media Trust (BPM). He is a former television producer and director who in 2012 established the Save TVNZ 7 campaign. Thomas is now studying law. This commentary was this year’s David Beatson Memorial Address at a public meeting in Grey Lynn last night on broadcast policy for the NZ election 2023.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Barely a day passes without a story in the British or Australian media that ramps up fear about the rulers in Beijing, reports the investigative website Declassified Australia.

According to an analysis by co-editors Antony Loewenstein and Peter Cronau, the Australian and British media are ramping up public fear, aiding a major military build-up — and perhaps conflict — by the United States and its allies.

The article is a warning to New Zealand and Pacific media too.

• READ MORE: China and the Pacific

Citing a recent article in the Telegraph newspaper in Britain headlined, “A war-winning missile will knock China out of Taiwan – fast”, says the introduction.

“Written by David Axe, who contributes regularly to the outlet, he detailed a war game last year that was organised by the US think-tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“It examined a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and concluded that the US Navy would be nearly entirely obliterated. However, Axe wrote, the US Air Force ‘could almost single-handedly destroy the Chinese invasion force’.

“‘How? With the use of a Lockheed Martin-made Joint Air-to-Surface Strike Missile (JASSM).

“‘It’s a stealthy and highly accurate cruise missile that can range hundreds of miles from its launching warplane,’ Axe explained.

“‘There are long-range versions of the JASSM and a specialised anti-ship version, too — and the USAF [US Air Force] and its sister services are buying thousands of the missiles for billions of dollars.’

“Missing from this analysis was the fact that Lockheed Martin is a major sponsor of the CSIS. The editors of The Telegraph either didn’t know or care about this crucial detail.

“One week after this story, Axe wrote another one for the paper, titled, ‘The US Navy should build a robot armada to fight the battle of Taiwan.’

“‘The US Navy is shrinking,’ the story begins. ‘The Chinese navy is growing. The implications, for a free and prosperous Pacific region, are enormous.'”

Branding the situation as “propaganda by think tank”, the authors argue that some sections of the news media are framing a massive military build-up by the US and its allies as necessary in the face of Chinese aggression.

“These repetitive media reports condition the public and so allow, or force, the political class to up the ante on China,” Loewenstein and Cronau write.

• The full report – ‘The media are targeting the public for a war with China’

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Dr. Carter, expert reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and director of the Climate Emergency Institute, posted a 26:33 minute YouTube update on the status of our climate system: Climate Emergency Update September 2023. In his broadcast, the elements of an emergency are clearly related to the planet’s climate system.

Dr. Carter’s broadcasts are closely followed by people looking for answers to what’s really happening. Indeed, it is rare, in fact, almost impossible to find a source that truly lays it out without pulling any punches. His presentations are excellent, filled with factually backed statements that are brought to life with emphasis. Indeed, Dr. Carter is a rare personality, a breath of fresh air in today’s world of cynicism, disinformation, and the tendency to ignore difficult choices, especially the challenging status of the planet’s climate system. It is the one thing that we must “get right.”

The following synopsis, including editorial comment, highlights the issues as seen by Dr. Peter Carter:

In his opening statement he starts by reporting the state of the climate today as “worse… than ever before,” emphasizing the fact that it’s actually “much worse than ever before.” He suggests: “If it seems to you that the climate situation is getting worse, yes, it is. There’s no question about that, and it’s been getting worse for a long time. That’s what the science has told us, for example, in scientifically based assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”

For years, his motto has been: “Everything is getting worse faster.”

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) identifies the climate’s status as “a major climate disruption that’s driven by atmospheric CO2.”  In that regard, the risks to the planet’s climate system have increased substantially, as atmospheric CO2 and methane are higher than they’ve ever been whilst increasing faster than ever before. Carter: “It’s a recipe for an overwhelmingly destructive global warming scenario.” And, frankly, that’s what’s been starting to appear on TV.

Ocean surface temperature has been off-the-charts, rapidly increasing like never before. According to Carter: Fossil fuel impact is adding heat to the oceans at the rate of 10 Hiroshima bombs per second. Moreover, he claims it’s at least that amount and some sources claim it’s even higher than 10 Hiroshima bombs per second. Of course, one problem with comparisons like 10 Hiroshima bombs/second is the impossibility of imagining that scope, which unfortunately causes people to fail to get it.

Meanwhile, the hard truth is that it was thirty years ago 1992 in Rio de Janeiro at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that 166 countries initially agreed that global warming needed to be counteracted. Over the subsequent 30 years nothing has happened. Meantime, the science has been hard at work, essentially confirming: “We are headed for the collapse of the biosphere… we are on a rapid trend of biosphere collapse” (YouTube, 4:52 min).

This fatal destiny of biosphere collapse is the result of a world economy agenda that’s designed “to burn all of the fossil fuels.” However, as if by the sleight of hand, it’s claimed, by pro-growth and pro-fossil fuel interests, we’ll be able to geo-engineer our way out of the quagmire of excessive atmospheric Co2, not-to-worry. But, according to Dr. Carter: “That is absolute nonsense.” More on the carbon capture ruse later.

The Methane Threat

Methane is coming into focus as an extremely troublesome threat with scientists on edge like never before. Over the past couple of years, since 2019-20, methane emissions have been explosive, which is precisely how scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) refer to today’s methane emissions: “Explosive!”

 Even worse yet, Carter highlights what he refers to as “the newest terrible news”: “We have methane feedback,” meaning the explosive increase in methane emissions is hands free on auto pilot; it’s the wetlands! This is really bad news because the feedback is literally running wild. Carter: “This is what we have been dreading for decades.”

Even more troubling yet, most scientific models have claimed we did not have to worry about this specific event; i.e., self-reinforcing methane emissions, until the end of the century. Carter: “Well, it’s here now; it’s here big time.”  The problem is not a small one as wetlands hold double the amount of carbon as forests. According to David Archer, in one of his carbon climate publications, the climate has never had as much carbon aboard as it has now, and it’s mostly in wetlands.

Euan Nesbit, Emeritus Professor, Earth Sciences, University of London, Honorary Fellow, Darwin College, the world’s leading scientist on methane has sounded the alarm about wetland methane feedback. He put out a paper a couple of weeks ago “that’s nothing short of terrifying.” The paper: “Atmospheric Methane: Comparison Between Methane’s Record in 2006-2022 and During Glacial Terminations“, American Geophysical Union, July 14, 2023.

Moreover, the ultra-dangerous East Siberian Arctic Shelf, which is loaded with methane hydrates, is possibly being compromised, see: “Seafloor Methane Tipping Point Reached!” Titanic Lifeboat Academy, September 18, 2023.

Methane explosiveness is likely one of the factors behind: “July was the hottest month ever on record.” According to NASA, the Northern Hemisphere was almost 1.7°C. Of course, one month does not make a year, but throughout the planet, for example, all of Europe, temperatures above the dreaded 1.5°C and/or 2.0°C continue to pop up, almost like a permanent trend. It’s unnerving and signaling a very early arrival of inhospitable ecosystems, like what’s already happening in northern Canada and all across the northern reaches of the Northern Hemisphere.

As a result, crazy things happen at both poles. For example, suddenly, Antarctica’s sea ice has become something to worry about after decades of “no worries.” It reached record lows in February 2023, and even worse, when it refreezes, it does so at a slower and slower pace. Carter: “This is a very, very bad, complex, disturbing, disrupting thing that’s happening in Antarctica.” (FYI -There are some well-known Antarctic experts who’ve flat-out said they are scared)

All the while, as the biosphere is experiencing massive intense disturbing, disrupting threats to ecosystems that literally support life, governments are pushing for more and more fossil fuels. According to The Economist, there will be no slowdown in extraction and burning of fossil fuels. According to the IPCC 6th Assessment, because of fossil fuel emissions increasing: “We are looking at temperature increases that are way far-out, totally unprecedented.” (YouTube, 12:40) A scientific paper that came out earlier this year made the point that the temperature rate of increase over the past decade was unprecedented.

Honestly, you only had to turn on the TV news over the past summer to know about unprecedented temperatures and the relationship to human-caused global warming. As such, global warming is slowly going mainstream, causing people to cock their heads to one side as if to question, “what’s going on and is this real news or is it fake news?” Poorly educated people claim it’s fake or totally exaggerated. But is it?

Another disturbing issue is drought conditions throughout the world – NASA’s Grace satellites are the most reliable measurements of drought. And nowhere is drought more responsible for climate chaos than Canada. Canada’s massive fires are driven by global warming; a recent study of Grace data shows the entire north of Canada in severe drought fed by global surface warming. It’s a massive climate catastrophe that simply will not stop and likely one of the worst most disheartening and threatening scenarios of the decade.

Moreover, another major concern detected by Grace satellites: “All of Europe is subject to ground water depletion drought.” In fact, the EU officially made mention of this at the beginning of the year in a public statement. What could possibly be worse? Already, consequences were on display in France and Italy when over 100 towns and villages ran out of ground water during the summer of 2022, governments scrambled to temporarily truck-in bottled water.

Last year (2022) was a record-year of unprecedented mega disasters. And 2023 is similar. All of this is being driven by fossil fuels. The Economist claims oil production/consumption will be higher in 2030 than it is today, as well as increased use of coal, because increased heat waves in China and India require extraordinary measures for air conditioning, requiring more power plant production. They easily turn to coal.

Dr. Carter issued what he refers to as “the worst news ever” … the IMF recently published an assessment of fossil fuel subsidies worldwide of $7,000,000,000,000 in 2022. Meaning governments are subsidizing the destruction of the planet at the rate of $13M per minute. Ten years ago, it was $5 trillion for one year. He believes this is why young people rightfully protest fossil fuels.

Governments must act immediately to stop fossil fuels because the entire climate system is starting to turn inside out. For example, approximately 50% of emissions are absorbed by the carbon sinks of land and ocean. But boreal forests are on fire, emitting carbon, not absorbing carbon. Boreal forests circumnavigate the planet and are absolutely vital for our survival. They are vital to all life. Canada alone has had 5,936 boreal fires to date this year. The burned area is 58,687 square miles, a figure that boggles the mind.

According to Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Services, boreal forests in regions all over the world have experienced the worst wildfires in recorded history. As a result of the world’s major forests burning, emitting carbon instead of absorbing it, the year-over-year increase in Co2 from July 2022 to July 2023 was a record high increase of 3,29 ppm, 422.14 ppm versus 418.85, a massive increase.

The big question: What can we do?  Carter: “We must recognize that we have an enemy, which is fossil fuels.”

We must act now because our greatest asset and one of our last lines of defense for life on the planet, the boreal forest, is burning, emitting CO2 instead of absorbing it. Carter: “This is beyond critical!!!” The boreal forest is the largest forest area of the world, covering one-tenth of the world’s land, wrapped around the entire Northern Hemisphere. It feeds our lungs and stores our carbon. Without it, we fail.

“Extreme wildfires are turning the world’s largest forest ecosystem from carbon sink into net-emitter.” (Source: Alaska Beacon, March 2023) How can this not be anything other than a worldwide emergency?

In summation, Dr. Carter’s update emphasizes six major categories (1) ocean surface temperatures off the charts (2) impending biosphere collapse (3) the methane threat coming unglued, way too early (4) world government policies continue to favor fossil fuels, more than ever (5) severe worldwide drought (6) loss of boreal forests – a key lifeline.

COP28/Dubai, the meeting of the nations of the world on climate change, starts in a few weeks. It’s likely that oil and gas interests will claim carbon removal and sequestration will save our asses. That’s extremely doubtful. (“Carbon Capture Has a Long History of Failure“, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, September 2022)

According to the US EPA’s description of carbon capture: “It’s technologies that are not economically or technically feasible for widespread use.”

And according to a recent Al Gore speech, Orca (Iceland), the first large-scale carbon dioxide removal plant’s operations are being improved enough so that, in 7 years, each DAC unit will be able to capture 27 seconds worth of annual worldwide emissions. There are 8 units, do the math!

More to the point, according to Dr. Carter: “It is absolute nonsense.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Hunziker.

A delegation of Australian lawmakers has arrived in Washington, D.C., to urge the Biden administration to halt its prosecution of WikiLeaks founder and Australian citizen Julian Assange. More than 60 members of Australia’s Parliament from across the political spectrum have called for Assange’s release. We speak to Australian Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, who co-founded the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group, about the growing Australian movement to free Assange and its implications for U.S.-Australia relations. Whish-Wilson warns that Assange’s extradition to the U.S. to stand trial on espionage charges is “something you would expect from a totalitarian regime” and would set a dangerous precedent for press freedoms around the world.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

On the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-backed military coup in Chile that deposed democratically elected socialist leader Salvador Allende, we discuss the U.S. contribution to the coup and declassified records obtained by the National Security Archive’s Chile Documentation Project with Peter Kornbluh. His book, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, has been revised and published in Chile for the first time. “​​There’s a lot known about the U.S. role in Chile, but there’s a lot to be reminded of, as well, and then there are the secrets that remain,” says Kornbluh, who says countries around the world must learn from Chile’s history to counter growing misinformation and authoritarianism today. “Very authoritarian voices are rising to dangerous levels that actually threaten our democracy.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

On Friday, September 8, around 10:30 p.m., two Congolese national police officers arrested Bujakera, a reporter for the privately owned Jeune Afrique news website and Reuters, as well as deputy director of publication for the local news website Actualite.cd, at the N’djili international airport in Kinshasa, the capital, according to a report from the privately owned Le Congo Libere news website and Hervé Diakiese, Bujakera’s lawyer, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

The officers took Bujakera to the local police station, confiscated his two phones and laptop computer, and accused him of “spreading false rumors” and “disseminating false information,” according to those sources.

Diakiese told CPJ on Monday, September 11, that Bujakera’s case had been transferred to the office of the Kinshasa-Gombe public prosecutor for investigation.

“DRC authorities should immediately and unconditionally release journalist Stanis Bujakera and halt the unabated pattern of arresting journalists over publications deemed undesirable,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ Africa program coordinator, in Durban, South Africa. “Laws in the DRC should be swiftly reformed to prevent the criminalization of journalism and the jailing of journalists.”

According to Diakiese and reports by Jeune Afrique and Actualité.cd,while Bujakera was in police custody on Saturday, September 9, officials investigating the July murder of former Congolese Transport Minister Chérubin Okende interrogated the journalist for several hours about a Jeune Afrique report that raised questions about the military intelligence’s possible involvement in that murder. That report, published on August 31, did not carry Bujakera’s name and indicated only that it had been written by Jeune Afrique.

On September 4, DRC Minister of Communication and Media Patrick Muyaya called Jeune Afrique’s August 31 report “totally false.” The following day, Peter Kazadi, deputy prime minister and minister of interior, security, and customary affairs, wrote a letter to Jeune Afrique’s leadership, which CPJ reviewed, calling the same article “false information.”

Earlier this year, Congolese authorities enacted a new press law and digital code that criminalize the sharing of information deemed “false.”

In March, Congolese Minister of Defense Gilbert Kabanda filed, and then withdrew, a criminal complaint accusing Bujakera of publishing false rumors for quoting Kabanda in a tweet. In 2022, Bujakera and two other reporters received threats over their coverage of the conflict in eastern DRC.

Separately, on August 18, police forced their way into the offices of the privately owned Perfect TV broadcaster in Kinshasa, arrested the outlet’s director general, Peter Tiani, and detained him overnight at the local police station, according to a report by the privately owned Libre Grand Lac news website and Tiani, who spoke by phone with CPJ. Police, who told Tiani that he was being questioned as an “informer” on Okende’s killing, released him unconditionally the day after his arrest, according to those sources.

According to media reports and a police invitation reviewed by CPJ, police had summoned Tiani on July 18 in connection with a post on X, formerly Twitter, that police claimed the journalist had published about Okende being abducted before his killing. Tiani told CPJ he did not report to the police at that time because he had not made such a post.

CPJ calls to Kinshasa’s police commissioner, General Blaise Kilimbalimba, rang unanswered.

In 2018, Tiani was arrested and detained for over a month in connection with reporting on alleged government corruption.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

A pile of garbage stored at E Ranch in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Photo by Peter Byrne

This piece first appeared in Pacific Sun.

On Aug. 31, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP filed a lawsuit against the National Park Service in California Northern District Court in San Francisco on behalf of freelance journalist Peter Byrne.

The complaint alleges that the National Park Service is violating the Freedom of Information Act by refusing to disclose public records that may reveal decades of federal mismanagement of Point Reyes National Seashore and ongoing environmental concerns.

Since 2020, the North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun have published a half dozen investigative reports by Byrne detailing how the Park Service has harmed the endemic ecologies of Point Reyes by leasing a third of the parkland to the environmentally destructive dairy and beef ranching industry. The science and historicity revealed by the reports are influential in informing activities in environmentalist circles, and have garnered attention in local and national press.

Byrne’s ongoing reporting on Point Reyes is supported by the Washington D.C. based Fund for Investigative Journalism and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and has been recognized with several journalism awards.

These investigative stories on the environmental and archeological disaster at Point Reyes are sourced by public records obtained at the county, state and federal levels. The lawsuit declares that the United States Department of Interior, of which the National Park Service is a division, is improperly withholding public records; and that the agency is overly redacting (censoring) some of the records it has provided to Byrne. The lawsuit protests that on the Point Reyes National Seashore website, the National Park Service wrongly accuses Byrne of publishing factual inaccuracies in what appears to be an attempt to avoid disclosing evidence of governmental malfeasance.

The opening of the lawsuit reads like a blurb for a John Grisham novel, if he wrote about matters as seemingly mundane as FOIA: “In December of 2020, Plaintiff authored an article, Apocalypse Cow: The Future of Life at Point Reyes National Park … The article was highly critical of the 250-page Environmental Impact Statement on Point Reyes that was released earlier that year by the National Park Service. The NPS was so sensitive to criticism of its work that it went so far as to post ‘corrections’ to Plaintiff’s Apocalypse Cow article on the agency’s website, which remain to this day.” After the Park Service posted its response online, the editors of the North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun investigated the claim that there were factual errors, and there are none.

The complaint continues, “Ever since Plaintiff’s Apocalypse Cow article was published, Plaintiff has consistently experienced unlawful barriers to obtaining public records from Defendants. Defendants have strung along, or stymied, his attempts to obtain what they are statutorily obligated to provide: public records. The public records that Plaintiff seeks—improperly withheld by Defendants—would shed light on credible, first-hand reports of a plethora of inter-related ecological, environmental, and archaeological issues, including: prioritization of commercial dairy and cattle ranching interests above statutorily mandated public-interest duties of Defendants; commercial dairy farms and cattle ranches neglecting septic systems on said farms and ranches, resulting in polluted water; polluted water harming elephant seals; enclosure of tule elk into an unsustainable environment for the benefit of dairy farms and cattle ranches, resulting in preventable deaths of these elk; and cattle trampling and destroying indigenous archaeological sites.”

The lawsuit describes the categories of records improperly withheld by the Park Service, and asks for a judge to order full disclosure.

Federal financial disclosure statements of Park Superintendent Craig Kenkel;

Annual budgets for the operation of Point Reyes National Seashore;

Park Service correspondence with the Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria, the Seashore’s co-manager;

Park Service correspondence with Rep. Jared Huffman, who is a strong supporter of keeping federally subsidized industrial agriculture in the Seashore in perpetuity, despite the ecological damage attributed to ongoing dairy and cattle ranching in the park by the National Park Service’s own investigations;

Bids and contracts and disbursements awarded under government mandate to a small business for work cleaning up rancher generated toxic waste that was in actuality performed by a company that was not an eligible small business;

“All reports, memoranda, email or other forms of internal and external written communications regarding the health of elephant seals at Point Reyes National Seashore from September 2022 to the present which are reported by the PRNS co- manager to ‘sicken and die’ from Seashore waters polluted with agricultural run- off, including but not limited to correspondence between the NPS, Rep. Jared Huffman, Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria, California Coast Commission, Marine Mammal Center.”

Records related to the preservation of, or failure to preserve, Indigenous archeology sites.

Davis Wright Tremaine LLP is a major force in all mediums of media law, representing many national companies. Firm partner Thomas R. Burke regularly litigates high profile public records cases.

Regarding Byrne’s complaint, Burke commented, “The public cannot provide meaningful oversight into the management of this national treasure unless and until the National Park Service begins to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. This lawsuit will force compliance.”

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by CounterPunch News Service.

• Former Trump advisor Peter Navarro convicted of contempt of Congress for not cooperating with Jan. 6 probe.
• Record heat continues to bake much of Eastern part of the country.
• Hurricane Lee building strength as it churns through the Atlantic.
• Possible UAW strike looms as talks with big three automakers stall.
• Lawmakers consider homeowners insurance crisis linked to climate change.
• Bay Area tenants protest unfair treatment at Southern California headquarters of their landlord. 

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – September 7, 2023 Former Trump advisor Peter Navarro convicted of contempt of Congress for not cooperating with Jan. 6 probe. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

As Hurricane Idalia left a wake of destruction Wednesday, President Joe Biden said, “I don’t think anybody can deny the impact of the climate crisis anymore.” Climate activist and scientist Peter Kalmus calls for Biden to declare a climate emergency in order to unleash the government’s ability to transition away from fossil fuels. “The public just doesn’t understand, in my opinion, what a deep emergency we are in,” says Kalmus. “This is the merest beginning of what we’re going to see in coming years.” Kalmus blasts the fossil fuel industry for manipulating politics through campaign contributions, and GOP presidential candidates for misleading the public about climate science. “As a parent, as a citizen and as a scientist, I find it appalling and disgusting,” declares Kalmus. “I can’t mince words anymore.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Cosmopolitan — ‘world politics’, ‘world citizen’ — people of many races under a world empire. The word became a meme in the 1890s as British empire blossomed, supposedly the world now united around principles of the free market. Sounds cool. The market is the proven way to run economies. It is neutral, no favorites, harsh but just, making us work hard, the state ensuring people don’t cheat and undermine the sacred system. For if belief in all this wavers, the loss of faith in the market would spell doom for all, equally. We are equal before the law, and we can vote. That’s what democracy and freedom are all about, right?

But is the apparent real?

Statistics suggest there’s much more to all this. Income distribution has never been more skewed, clearly the result of four decades of neoliberalism. We’ve never been closer to world war (except in 1914 and 1939). Weren’t countries merrily trading in ‘free markets’ supposed to be peaceful? Reason and logic fail us.

Peter Myers’ Cosmopolis is a collection of essays, available free at his website, which can be read independently, packed with quotes, reflecting on past conspiracies, critiquing the neoliberal plot for world hegemony today, its origins and its relation to Jewish, Freemason, Nazi, Bolshevik, capitalist ones. The main actors — Trotsky vs Stalin, HG Wells and Orwell, the pandemic, and the return of fascism/ Nazism as the conspirators push for their TINA moment in the Great Reset, culminating in the war in Ukraine.

The star is HG Wells, who proposed a World State which he also called ‘Cosmopolis’. His ‘Open Conspiracy’, the world movement for the supercession or enlargement or fusion of existing political, economic, and social institutions … a movement aiming at the establishment of a world directorate” (Wells, Open Conspiracy, 1933, p. 32-3.)

There are two main themes. The first centres around the role of Jews in the Russian revolution, how Stalin ‘stole’ ‘their’ evolution (Myers calls it ‘one of the great Denials of our time’¹), and how that resulted in Israel and feminism-gay liberation as the new, post-Marx ‘revolution’. He shows that the new Cold War is between the atheistic, LGBT, ‘Trotskyoid’, ‘Cosmopolitan’ West, on the one hand, and a coalition of Christian Russia and Confucian China, both a hybrid socialist-capitalist authoritarian on the other.

Myers’ other main theme is linking all suspicious recent events — assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, 9/11 + the anthrax letters, MH370, the World Economic Forum and the Great Reset — to deep state elite plans. The WEF ‘penetrates the cabinets’, ‘but for an unelected body to do so is undemocratic and subversive. It implies Oligarchic rule—for the greater good, of course, because most people are Deplorables. The Globalists are attempting to implement the World State advocated by HG Wells.’

Myers draws from dozens of sources, many of which he unearthed himself and with the help of his strategically located readers, from the New York Public Library to the grave site of Stalin’s mother in Georgia. Part of the fun in reading this very readable work is following his sleuthing.

His appendices including the smoking gun revelations of Morrow and Hunt on JFK are welcome reminders of how truly bizarre US politics is. They make the case of assassination as the CIA modus operandi for JFK, MLK, and RFK. Truman’s 1963 Oped to the New York Times calling for the CIA to be brought under control disappeared the moment it appeared. (Eisenhower made sure his message got out and stayed out by springing it on a nationally broadcast farewell speech in 1960.) RFK was killed for calling for an independent investigation of his brother’s death. Which brings us to the ultimate cloak and dagger, the blowing up of North stream. The CIA is alive and well and still out of control.

Promised lands

Myers, like Solzhenitsyn, is not afraid to analyze the role of Russian Jews in the Russian revolution from start to finish, with a short bumpy patch under Stalin. The details are fascinating. It’s finally time to access Soviet history through different lenses, and Myers is a good source for this. One tidbit: ‘Both Trotsky (Kronstadt, collectivization) and Stalin (gulags) lived by the sword and died by the sword.’ i.e. they were both assassinated.²

It struck me that Israel is actually a slicker version of the Russian revolution from Lenin to Putin: a cosmopolitan ideological state, originally socialistic but quickly devolved into authoritarian capitalism, governed by a European elite as a police state oppressing non-Jews. BUT with a ‘heppi end’ for the Jews both in Russia and Israel. All but one of the Russian oligarchs are Jewish.

Just stating this truth is heresy. The centrality of the Jewish tribe must be rigorously denied, a feat which we watch as laws are pushed even in the United Nations (and unwritten laws for media stamped in journalists’ minds), asserting that any criticism of the Jewish state is racism, despite clear practice that shows Israel is the font of racism. Orwell’s 1984 doublethink and newsspeak have a new playing field, where INGSOC (Orwell’s Britain) has devolved into the most loyal supporter of the new Oceania (US), and no one notices that the Grand Inquisitor is a Goldstein.

In the days of the British empire, before the state of Israel, it was easier for the goy empire of the day (Britain) to manoeuvre, as the elite Jews at the centre of that conspiracy had to behave. The Shaftsbury/ MacKinder idea of a Jewish colony in the Middle East was there by the mid-19th century, but when it materialized in 1948, it had a new mother country and quickly started to play its own political games. Jews are nobody’s puppets. So the US-Israel empire is unwieldy and is wearing thin as Israel celebrates 75 years, its diamond jubilee. And moves to unite Sunni and Shia in a newly invigorated united front against Israel, with the US out of the picture, suggest that all the plandemics and wars might not be enough to put Humpty Dumpty together again.

Illuminati/ Freemason

Myers deals with the origins of today’s conspiracy, giving a central role to the Illuminati and Freemasons. I’m not convinced that there is more than an just an element of nostalgia in those who identify with these secretive groups. The Tempest, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Winter’s Tale are based on Masonic legends. Mozart’s Magic Flute has clear Illuminist influence. Goethe was a member of the Illuminati. Myers traces Freemason imagery, poses and beliefs as continuous through the post-enlightenment period. The hand-hiding pose traces back to classical times – Aeschines, founder of a rhetoric school, suggested that speaking with an arm outside one’s chiton was bad manners. The pose was used in 18th-century British portraiture as a sign that the sitter was from the upper class.

But there are definitely two versions of today’s conspiracy. Myers sees the Illuminati as more globalist (rule by the United Nations, UN Committees and International courts) as opposed to a more hegemonic nationalist rule by the UK/US/Israel. Jews, the most internationalist/cosmopolitan and yet ‘the most nationalist (chauvinist, self-absorbed) of peoples, are riven by the oscillation between Akhenaten’s Universal God and Jehovah the Tribal God.’

Elite Jews are behind the conspiracies today, though a small minority of ‘good’ Jews reject this secular Judaism-Zionism and work with non-Jews to unite as opponents to this corporate globalization, either nice Wellsian or chauvinist. Such as Jeffrey Sachs, who condemns US imperial policy today, having participated in the post-collapse Russian reforms which almost cemented post-Soviet Russia into the US-led conspiracy. Sachs and Putin ended up on much the same page three decades later, both essentially fighting the post-pandemic push by the globalists.

Marx was not a Freemason nor were Lenin, Trotsky, etc. Stalin, Hitler, Franco banned it as do all dictators. The most authoritative text, Manly Hall, Lost Keys of Freemasonry, 1923, is anodyne, admirable, no hint of anything nefarious, just another ‘path to enlightenment’. Freemasony operate(d) as a secret society but never very secret (unless outlawed) as it became fashionable in the 18th century. It was openly behind both the American and French revolutions (though not the Russian). Now it is more or less completely open. It has evolved over time as capitalism developed and made use of the Freemasons as a governing force of educated bourgeois.

Freemasonry serves imperialism though it is either unaware of this or accepts imperialism as the way to a universal society, the ancient dream, the Tower of Babel in reverse, as sincere striving rather than hubris. Hall’s thought stops with bourgeois society, though he explains the pomp of mystic self-striving which ‘true’ Masons pursue as part of their 33-level initiation.

Myers chides RFK Jr for not pointing to Masonic handshakes by Fauci and others, but are they just colourful flourishes, hiding the real deep state? Most Masons are just nice science-oriented, educated middle class men and women. Though Freemasonry might have sparked the French revolution, it didn’t come to power as a disciplined elite, and it was not a factor in the conspiratorial organization that brought the Bolsheviks to power. Freemasonry did not re-emerge in the former Soviet Union until after the breakup of Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe.

Vladimir Antyufeyev, deputy prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic blamed the ongoing conflict on US and European Masons. If in fact all European leaders are Freemasons and the US has Freemasonry built into its revolution, then Antyufeyev is right. Putin also attacked ‘Masonic’ competitors (at 15 minute spot) and warned that Russia has always ‘caught up with them in strategic weapons’.

An appeal online by Andrey Bogdanov, Great Master Of The Grand Lodge Of Russia, addressing the war in Ukraine, suggests the role of Freemasonry is not a serious lethal conspiracy: ‘For a real Freemason, no matter how complex the outside world is, a sense of inner harmony, fraternal communication and continuity of the chain of communication of Masonic knowledge are the prevailing aspects of its existence. Everything passes and only brotherhood seems eternal to us.’

New morality: anything goes

It is interesting that both ‘Marx and Engels saw the bourgeois family as a farce, oppressing women and predicted communal child-rearing but traditional forms of living, as did HG Wells. ‘ Yet all had traditional families. Rousseau, author of Emile, on free child-rearing, place all five of his children in an orphanage at birth.’ My takeaway: Intellectuals make poor rulers, always theorizing, conflicting and/or totalitarian.

Myers shows how important the Stalin-Trotsky war-within-the-revolution is to understanding our current cultural wars. ‘Trotskyists did not learn from the Soviet Union’s experience, because they deemed Stalinism a ‘betrayal’ of True Communism. Instead, they are bringing the Culture War — begun by Old Bolshevism — to the West; but, as David Horowitz noted, in the West it is called ‘Feminism’ rather than ‘Marxism’. … Whereas Hitler’s supporters are in jail for Holocaust Denial, and most of Stalin’s supporters in the West disappeared after 1991, Trotsky’s heirs and supporters are entrenched in Academia, university campuses, Foundations, the Media, the Public Service, and the Judiciary. They have dominated university campuses for decades. They regularly march in city centres—marches organised by Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative, or other Trotskyist sects. Green Left Weekly is a mainly Trotskyist newspaper.’

You must read the details yourself. The ‘revolution’ snuck in the back door.

And now we arrive at the Globalists, the ‘collective West’ elites, the new Oceania, having rewritten 20th c history as a benevolent empire that crushed fascism and communism (i.e., Stalinism), with no mention of the role of Judaism, though it was behind both, as Svengali for the Nazis and as shapers of communism in the latter.

‘The anti-Stalin ‘Trotskyoid’ Left, which Stalin defeated in Russia, has consolidated in the West and largely overthrown the Christian order via the so-called Culture War,’ which is already creating a centre of opposition that brings left and right together. ‘Putin, meanwhile, has re-established Christianity in Russia. The new Cold War is between the atheistic, LGBT, ‘Trotskyoid’, ‘Cosmopolitan’ West, on the one hand, and a coalition of Christian-socialist Russia and Confucian-Stalinist China on the other.’ Which is now attracting the evangelical right in the US, creating fissures in any conspiratorial attempt at a ‘Great Reset’.

Where is the East in all this? Myers points out that ‘Knowledge and ideas spread both ways across the Silk Road, from around 2000BC. Heraclitus’ philosophy is similar to Taoism, and he too took to the hills.’ Eastern thinking culminated in Plato. Marx dismissed ‘oriental despotism’ but Schopenhauer built his philosophy around Buddhism and despised socialist notions of elevating the working class as a historical actor. He quips in The World as Will and Representation that he would prefer to be ruled by a lion than one of his fellow rats. So were the nonentities that followed Stalin rats? They certainly weren’t lions. And the workers’ state collapsed in an awful hurry, with rats fleeing the sinking ship in droves when the hatch opened.

As for totalitarianism, Plato was the first to promote it, though he insisted his republic would only work for a community of 5,000. We shouldn’t blame Plato. ‘When Russian emigrants went to Palestine and established the state of Israel there, they brought with them both socialism (the kibbutzes being a benign kind) and the totalitarianism disclosed by Israel Shahak.³ Their treatment of the Palestinians and of their neighbours bears comparison with Soviet precedents. As for the ‘Open Society’, could there be anything more ‘Closed’ than the Jewish Bible’s mindset in its depiction of Goyim/the Nations?’

It is important to have reliable sources when dealing with Jewish issues. This work by Myers and his online library are essential tools to recognize the Jewish origins of today’s world.

Prescriptions

‘There IS a need for Environmental Limits, but the One Worlders are using this as an excuse to push World Government. The Trotskyist/HG Wells version of Communism is alive and well. ‘Open-border immigration, casual relationships treated as equivalent to marriage, We did not recognise it as Communist simply because we identified Stalin’s modifications as Communism. The Marxist Cultural Revolution, begun in the West in the late 1960s, has taken the West down the path pioneered by the early USSR. … To treat “relationships” as the equivalent of marriage is, in effect, to abolish marriage.’

‘As social breakdown proceeds, desperation will force us back to the essentials of life. We’ll be looking for ways to re-establish family ties, and the bonds between men and women.’ Myers takes many blinkers off leftists’ eyes (including mine). Even John Lennon’s Imagine: ‘no borders and no religion too.’ Many of us were smitten by the promise of 1917, which somehow morphed into a backdoor revolution of sex and drugs.

Myers has his finger in the dyke to stem the flood of book burning and newspeak today: History had already been rewritten, but fragments of the literature of the past survived here and there, imperfectly censored, and so long as one retained one’s knowledge of Oldspeak it was possible to read them. … A great deal of the literature of the past was, indeed, already being transformed. (1984 p. 250) As Myers points out it is the Trotskyoids of today that are the Thought Police for this brainwashing.

Is there any hope for ‘a less-severe Managerial State one day, not burdened by this Jewish bitterness or, equally, by a ‘white separatist’ prejudice’? China’s long tradition of state bureaucracy without full-blown slavery suggests itself as a tradition worth building on today, though contemporary China’s 996 policy⁴, and the plight of Tibetans, Uighurs and no doubt others, suggest capitalism erases even the most honoured traditions. Egypt and Babylon were successful state bureaucratic formations which were admired by Herodotus. It’s only biblical lore that paints a (self-serving) narrative dissing those civilizations.

Myers’ chapter on the covid plandemic documents how the Trotskyists in Australia sided with the conspiracy, denouncing anti-vaxxers as fascists. He could add the remnant of the communist parties too, which have all gone down the trans/gay road and meekly promoted the pro-vax plan. Even Cuba. The future opposition to the Wellsian world government is taking shape now, centred on Russia and China and their growing trade bloc with the third world (85% of the world population).

Wells is still the inspiration behind the one-worlders today, complete with his recommendation of an end to war and instead to deindustrialize in the interests of preserving the planet. ‘Wells presents a strong case for World Government, and it is a matter we should be discussing openly and (I believe) agonizing over, because we are in a Catch-22 situation. The threats are real, but the outcome could be Tyranny and the End of Civilization.’

‘Was George Orwell wrong when he depicted the coming tyranny as a Left-wing one?’ Left and right have lost their meaning. Genuine conservatives and genuine Marxist socialists have much common ground in opposing the liberal, now neoliberal Great Reset behind the plandemic and the cementing of a Wellsian globalism but under US-Israel.

*****

Afterthought:

The world had its moment of a global civilization. It started in 1917 and embraced the world by 1945 but collapsed when the US launched the Cold War. It was a proto-socialism, which the ‘collective West’ tolerated long enough to let the Communists beat Hitler. In the 1930s, it was implanted in the minds of anyone who took the time to consider it. Even the western media seemed to be on board as the fascist rivals prepared to destroy (the idea of) Communism.

Communism was the 19th century answer to industrial society, but Stalin made it a nonstarter for the ‘collective West’. Reading all this and the complicity of western media in giving Stalin’s regime lots of slack during the 1930s (Ukraine famine, mass arrests, slave labour), I’m reminded of my own ‘sov-symp’ Soviet sympathies, even today, with all the filth and horror exposed. It was never just a ‘managerial’ bureaucratic society. It was and will remain a stirring symbol of defiance of capitalism, banker-capitalist control, war as a plaything for weapons producers and cynical imperialist governments.

And it is Stalinism that retains the stamp of authenticity. The 1920s NEP mixed market was only a way station, and Khrushchev’s Thaw was really just living off the fruits of Stalinism; but without the ideological backbone, it slowly, then quickly collapsed. That spark/ flame  in history is now the stuff of legend, still inspiring Africa and Asia for help in liberating themselves in the 1960s. When Russia needed them, they held out their hands.

Yes, Cuba and a few others survive, fiercely attacked by imperialism, but none of them would have existed without the Soviet Union, and none have found a magic key to leave its legacy – good and bad — behind. It still looms as the conscience of the world cosmopolis. It included villains but many more heroes and many happy, if exasperated campers. And inspired the best music of the century (Shostakovich, Prokofiev), the best athletes (hockey, figure skating legends). They proved socialism could work, even under excruciating conditions. Russians are right to mourn its demise. I will die a sovsymp.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Walberg.

On August 16, the British Museum stated in a press release that an independent review into its security was being launched “after items from the collection were found to be missing, stolen or damaged.”  The extent of such theft or damage is not clear, though the Museum revealed that one member of staff had been dismissed, with legal action being taken against the unnamed individual.  The Metropolitan Police, through its Economic Crime Command branch, was also investigating the matter.

Led by former trustee, Sir Nigel Boardman, and Lucy D’Orsi, Chief Constable of the British Transport Police, the review is intended to furnish the Museum with “recommendations regarding future security arrangements” while also commencing “a vigorous programme to recover the missing items.”

Short on detail, the Museum gave some sense about the items involved, which were, it was keen to point out, “kept primarily for academic and research purposes.”  These included “gold jewellery and gems of semi-precious stones and glass dating from the 15th century BC to the 19th century AD.”

Officials have been keen to contain the scandal, with director Hartwig Fischer insisting that this was “highly unusual”.  In apologising for the whole affair, he also assured the public that “we have now brought an end to this – and we are determined to put things right.”  Fischer’s own occupancy of the director’s role is also coming to an end in 2024.

The Chair of the Museum, George Osborne, formerly Chancellor of the Exchequer, even saw an opportunity to weave the theft into a strategy of reforming the institution.  “This incident only reinforces the case for the reimagination of the Museum we have embarked upon.”

The person who seems to have spurred such reimagining was subsequently identified as Peter John Higgs, a curator of Greek antiquities of some prominence.  There is a delicious irony in this, given the fraught history the Museum has had with the Elgin Marbles, so brazenly taken from the Parthenon in Athens by the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1801.

Much the same could be said about many artefacts housed in the BM’s collections, including the Benin bronzes and the Easter Island Hoa Hakananai’a.  As the notable human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson sourly remarked in 2019, “The trustees of the British Museum have become the world’s largest receivers of stolen property, and the great majority of their loot is not even on public display.”

What has since emerged is that the Museum has been less than frank about the spate of pilfering, let alone the number of items missing from its inventory.  One report suggests that the number might be anywhere between 1,500 to 2,000, taken over a period of two decades.

Publicity is being made about the artefacts through official channels without much specificity, which can be taken either as a sign of acute awareness as to where they might be found, or old-fashioned, groping ignorance.  Christopher Marinello, lawyer and CEO of Art Recovery International, is of the latter view.

Higgs, it transpires, was sacked on July 5 with barely a murmur, despite having led the 2021 exhibition  “Ancient Greeks: Athletes, Warriors and Heroes,” which was received by three Australian museums and slated to arrive in Suzhou Museum in China at the end of the year.  The Higgs dismissal took place, it has been reported, for his alleged role behind the disappearance of various gold jewellery, semi-precious stones and glass.

The suspicion here is that Higgs operated stealthily, removing the objects over a number of years.  Somewhat odder, and less stealthy, was how many of those objects found their way onto eBay.  Prices also dramatically varied, suggesting either a cheeky sense of humour, or the understanding of an untutored eye.  One item of Roman jewellery, made from onyx, valued anywhere between £25,000 and £50,000, fetched the less than princely sum of £40.

In 2016, an unnamed antiquities expert cited in a Telegraph report began noting various listings of glass items and semi-precious gems on the e-commerce site.  Pieces from the Townley collection of Graeco-Roman artifacts, which the Museum started purchasing in 1805, were spotted under an eBay seller by the name of “sultan1966”.  Sultan1966 proved less than forthcoming to the expert in question when confronted about any link to Higgs.

In June 2020, the Museum was informed of the matter.  In February 2021, the BBC revealed that an art dealer by the name of Ittai Gradel had alerted the institution about some of the items being sold online.  Deputy director Jonathan Williams took five months to rebuff the claim: “there was no suggestion of any wrongdoing.”  An unconvinced Gradel chased up matters with a museum board member, claiming that Williams and Fischer had swept “it all under the carpet.”  In October 2022, Fischer repeated the line that “no evidence” of wrongdoing had been identified.

The son of the alleged perpetrator, Greg Higgs, is mightily unimpressed, declaring that his father could not have been responsible.  “He’s lost his job and his reputation, and I don’t think it was fair.  It couldn’t have been (him). I don’t think there is even anything missing as far as I’m aware.”  The lamentable conduct by the British Museum, notably in initially insisting that nothing had gone missing, would suggest that someone is telling a glorious fib.

The Economist, in reacting to the affair, suggested that making off with such items from a museum “is easier than you might think.”  But what also matters is the museum’s response to alleged claims of theft.  As Marinello puts it, instances of pilfering are not unusual, but the British  Museum’s failure to involve the police “right away” was nothing short of “shocking”.  The Higgs matter suggests as much and is likely to prove a tonic to those seeking a return of various collections lodged in the British Museum over the years.

Lina Mendoni, Greece’s Minister of Culture, is one who wasted little time suggesting that the missing objects reinforced “the permanent and just demand of our country for the definitive return” of the Parthenon Marbles.  The fact that the incidents had taken place “from within, beyond any moral and criminal responsibility” questioned “the credibility of the organisation itself.”  Such theft has somehow put the universe of looted treasures into greater balance.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

On August 16, the British Museum stated in a press release that an independent review into its security was being launched “after items from the collection were found to be missing, stolen or damaged.”  The extent of such theft or damage is not clear, though the Museum revealed that one member of staff had been dismissed, with legal action being taken against the unnamed individual.  The Metropolitan Police, through its Economic Crime Command branch, was also investigating the matter.

Led by former trustee, Sir Nigel Boardman, and Lucy D’Orsi, Chief Constable of the British Transport Police, the review is intended to furnish the Museum with “recommendations regarding future security arrangements” while also commencing “a vigorous programme to recover the missing items.”

Short on detail, the Museum gave some sense about the items involved, which were, it was keen to point out, “kept primarily for academic and research purposes.”  These included “gold jewellery and gems of semi-precious stones and glass dating from the 15th century BC to the 19th century AD.”

Officials have been keen to contain the scandal, with director Hartwig Fischer insisting that this was “highly unusual”.  In apologising for the whole affair, he also assured the public that “we have now brought an end to this – and we are determined to put things right.”  Fischer’s own occupancy of the director’s role is also coming to an end in 2024.

The Chair of the Museum, George Osborne, formerly Chancellor of the Exchequer, even saw an opportunity to weave the theft into a strategy of reforming the institution.  “This incident only reinforces the case for the reimagination of the Museum we have embarked upon.”

The person who seems to have spurred such reimagining was subsequently identified as Peter John Higgs, a curator of Greek antiquities of some prominence.  There is a delicious irony in this, given the fraught history the Museum has had with the Elgin Marbles, so brazenly taken from the Parthenon in Athens by the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1801.

Much the same could be said about many artefacts housed in the BM’s collections, including the Benin bronzes and the Easter Island Hoa Hakananai’a.  As the notable human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson sourly remarked in 2019, “The trustees of the British Museum have become the world’s largest receivers of stolen property, and the great majority of their loot is not even on public display.”

What has since emerged is that the Museum has been less than frank about the spate of pilfering, let alone the number of items missing from its inventory.  One report suggests that the number might be anywhere between 1,500 to 2,000, taken over a period of two decades.

Publicity is being made about the artefacts through official channels without much specificity, which can be taken either as a sign of acute awareness as to where they might be found, or old-fashioned, groping ignorance.  Christopher Marinello, lawyer and CEO of Art Recovery International, is of the latter view.

Higgs, it transpires, was sacked on July 5 with barely a murmur, despite having led the 2021 exhibition  “Ancient Greeks: Athletes, Warriors and Heroes,” which was received by three Australian museums and slated to arrive in Suzhou Museum in China at the end of the year.  The Higgs dismissal took place, it has been reported, for his alleged role behind the disappearance of various gold jewellery, semi-precious stones and glass.

The suspicion here is that Higgs operated stealthily, removing the objects over a number of years.  Somewhat odder, and less stealthy, was how many of those objects found their way onto eBay.  Prices also dramatically varied, suggesting either a cheeky sense of humour, or the understanding of an untutored eye.  One item of Roman jewellery, made from onyx, valued anywhere between £25,000 and £50,000, fetched the less than princely sum of £40.

In 2016, an unnamed antiquities expert cited in a Telegraph report began noting various listings of glass items and semi-precious gems on the e-commerce site.  Pieces from the Townley collection of Graeco-Roman artifacts, which the Museum started purchasing in 1805, were spotted under an eBay seller by the name of “sultan1966”.  Sultan1966 proved less than forthcoming to the expert in question when confronted about any link to Higgs.

In June 2020, the Museum was informed of the matter.  In February 2021, the BBC revealed that an art dealer by the name of Ittai Gradel had alerted the institution about some of the items being sold online.  Deputy director Jonathan Williams took five months to rebuff the claim: “there was no suggestion of any wrongdoing.”  An unconvinced Gradel chased up matters with a museum board member, claiming that Williams and Fischer had swept “it all under the carpet.”  In October 2022, Fischer repeated the line that “no evidence” of wrongdoing had been identified.

The son of the alleged perpetrator, Greg Higgs, is mightily unimpressed, declaring that his father could not have been responsible.  “He’s lost his job and his reputation, and I don’t think it was fair.  It couldn’t have been (him). I don’t think there is even anything missing as far as I’m aware.”  The lamentable conduct by the British Museum, notably in initially insisting that nothing had gone missing, would suggest that someone is telling a glorious fib.

The Economist, in reacting to the affair, suggested that making off with such items from a museum “is easier than you might think.”  But what also matters is the museum’s response to alleged claims of theft.  As Marinello puts it, instances of pilfering are not unusual, but the British  Museum’s failure to involve the police “right away” was nothing short of “shocking”.  The Higgs matter suggests as much and is likely to prove a tonic to those seeking a return of various collections lodged in the British Museum over the years.

Lina Mendoni, Greece’s Minister of Culture, is one who wasted little time suggesting that the missing objects reinforced “the permanent and just demand of our country for the definitive return” of the Parthenon Marbles.  The fact that the incidents had taken place “from within, beyond any moral and criminal responsibility” questioned “the credibility of the organisation itself.”  Such theft has somehow put the universe of looted treasures into greater balance.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The official X profile, on the site, as of August 2023. Image Source: SamH29 – CC BY-SA 4.0

“X” marks the spot. For the modern advertiser, this is problematic. It breathes pornographic escape, self-denial, elusive treasure, irresistible capture, compelling lasciviousness. And now Elon Musk has decided to impose himself upon a brand he loved as a plaything of juvenile ecstasy. Farewell the bird of Twitter; welcome the X of Musk.

The company rebrand is certainly all Muskian in manner, part of his monomaniac obsession with the letter. In 1999, he created the online bank X.com, which eventually merged with PayPal the following year. Just shy of two decades later, Musk reacquired the X.com site from PayPal. Over time, it seems to have become an ideology and practice, a purpose and an end. X is seen as an “everything app” that will function as a platform to transfer money, order meals, and share posts.

Linda Yaccarino, the company’s chief executive, described it as follows: “X is the future of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities”. As if this did not sound sinister, Yaccarino also declared that there was “absolutely no limit to this transformation. X will be the platform that can deliver, well….everything.”

Like a spreading cult, it has rushed through the Musk empire, afflicting all manner of products and themes. Twitter even has conference rooms with X-oriented names, be they the cringeworthy “eXposure”, or the less revolting “s3Xy”.

For even the most junior of advertising minions, the whole matter has been an example of counter-intuitive madness. “It’s a rookie mistake to throw away decades of equity in those assets [the name Twitter and the blue bird logo],” remarked marketing consultant Gareth Turner. Negative assessments of the rebrand exercise have suggested that billions of dollars have been wiped from the value of the company.

The company is being tanked with a fanatic’s relish, submerged in a sea of depraved indulgence. Its mutilating, despoiling owner hardly seems to care. In the meantime, there is a lot of management rot that’s crept in, just to replace the initial management rot that seeped through prior to Musk’s acquisition.

The substance of the rebrand, for all the lamentations about extinguishing the bird logo, is hard to discern. There is the lexical dimension, which seems to have bothered a goodly number of social media users. What, for instance, are posts on the renamed platform meant to be? Has the verb of tweeting been abandoned altogether? According to the Associated Press stylebook, the platform is to be referred to “as X, formerly known as Twitter.” Usage of the term “tweet” is still considered acceptable.

Beyond the labels, the Musk experiment remains infantile. Far better to simply reflect on the boy-child nature of the entire enterprise, a Peter Pan mad venture that rejects adulthood in favour of an arrested, preserved adolescence. The video game designer Ian Bogost is certainly on to something in noting that “Twitter, like other social platforms and the very internet itself, is already redolent of a seventh grader’s mindset that Musk’s behaviour betrays.”

The seventh grader mindset is one based on noise, shouting, and deafening declarations. It repudiates the notion of trusted small communities, where limits and protocols of good conduct matter. “The shift from social networks to social media,” writes Bogost, “was culturally destructive. It set the expectation that everyone deserves – is owed, even – an audience for every notion, quip, photo, or activity.” The consequences that follow have been manifold: the surfeit of public data, the stratospheric rise of the outrage culture, the prevalence of misinformation, the normalising of shame.

As if to serve up a perfect illustration of the problem, Musk decided last month to fire off a number of social media posts challenging his technology rival and Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to a penis “measuring contest” and cage fight. Much of this came about because of Zuckerberg’s own efforts to create Threads, a shameless rival platform to Twitter that apes many microblogging features of the latter. Aiming low, Zuckerberg agreed, requesting that Musk send him the location. “Vegas, Octagon,” Musk shot back. To date, the man child bullies have yet to go through with their arrangements, which was hardly surprising.

In a sense, Musk and Zuck resemble the generation of another era, one so beautifully and plangently captured by Cyril Connolly in his memoir, Enemies of Promise. Published in 1938, a year before the catastrophe of the Second World War, it captures a distinct, spoilt view of human development, one where privilege and luxury blight, and where growth is to be feared. On leaving Eton, Connolly distilled his “Theory of Permanent Adolescence”, where the “boys at the great public schools” undergo experiences “so intense as to dominate their lives and to arrest their development.” For Musk and his fellow tech nerds, the future is a necessarily stunted one.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The official X profile, on the site, as of August 2023. Image Source: SamH29 – CC BY-SA 4.0

“X” marks the spot. For the modern advertiser, this is problematic. It breathes pornographic escape, self-denial, elusive treasure, irresistible capture, compelling lasciviousness. And now Elon Musk has decided to impose himself upon a brand he loved as a plaything of juvenile ecstasy. Farewell the bird of Twitter; welcome the X of Musk.

The company rebrand is certainly all Muskian in manner, part of his monomaniac obsession with the letter. In 1999, he created the online bank X.com, which eventually merged with PayPal the following year. Just shy of two decades later, Musk reacquired the X.com site from PayPal. Over time, it seems to have become an ideology and practice, a purpose and an end. X is seen as an “everything app” that will function as a platform to transfer money, order meals, and share posts.

Linda Yaccarino, the company’s chief executive, described it as follows: “X is the future of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities”. As if this did not sound sinister, Yaccarino also declared that there was “absolutely no limit to this transformation. X will be the platform that can deliver, well….everything.”

Like a spreading cult, it has rushed through the Musk empire, afflicting all manner of products and themes. Twitter even has conference rooms with X-oriented names, be they the cringeworthy “eXposure”, or the less revolting “s3Xy”.

For even the most junior of advertising minions, the whole matter has been an example of counter-intuitive madness. “It’s a rookie mistake to throw away decades of equity in those assets [the name Twitter and the blue bird logo],” remarked marketing consultant Gareth Turner. Negative assessments of the rebrand exercise have suggested that billions of dollars have been wiped from the value of the company.

The company is being tanked with a fanatic’s relish, submerged in a sea of depraved indulgence. Its mutilating, despoiling owner hardly seems to care. In the meantime, there is a lot of management rot that’s crept in, just to replace the initial management rot that seeped through prior to Musk’s acquisition.

The substance of the rebrand, for all the lamentations about extinguishing the bird logo, is hard to discern. There is the lexical dimension, which seems to have bothered a goodly number of social media users. What, for instance, are posts on the renamed platform meant to be? Has the verb of tweeting been abandoned altogether? According to the Associated Press stylebook, the platform is to be referred to “as X, formerly known as Twitter.” Usage of the term “tweet” is still considered acceptable.

Beyond the labels, the Musk experiment remains infantile. Far better to simply reflect on the boy-child nature of the entire enterprise, a Peter Pan mad venture that rejects adulthood in favour of an arrested, preserved adolescence. The video game designer Ian Bogost is certainly on to something in noting that “Twitter, like other social platforms and the very internet itself, is already redolent of a seventh grader’s mindset that Musk’s behaviour betrays.”

The seventh grader mindset is one based on noise, shouting, and deafening declarations. It repudiates the notion of trusted small communities, where limits and protocols of good conduct matter. “The shift from social networks to social media,” writes Bogost, “was culturally destructive. It set the expectation that everyone deserves – is owed, even – an audience for every notion, quip, photo, or activity.” The consequences that follow have been manifold: the surfeit of public data, the stratospheric rise of the outrage culture, the prevalence of misinformation, the normalising of shame.

As if to serve up a perfect illustration of the problem, Musk decided last month to fire off a number of social media posts challenging his technology rival and Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to a penis “measuring contest” and cage fight. Much of this came about because of Zuckerberg’s own efforts to create Threads, a shameless rival platform to Twitter that apes many microblogging features of the latter. Aiming low, Zuckerberg agreed, requesting that Musk send him the location. “Vegas, Octagon,” Musk shot back. To date, the man child bullies have yet to go through with their arrangements, which was hardly surprising.

In a sense, Musk and Zuck resemble the generation of another era, one so beautifully and plangently captured by Cyril Connolly in his memoir, Enemies of Promise. Published in 1938, a year before the catastrophe of the Second World War, it captures a distinct, spoilt view of human development, one where privilege and luxury blight, and where growth is to be feared. On leaving Eton, Connolly distilled his “Theory of Permanent Adolescence”, where the “boys at the great public schools” undergo experiences “so intense as to dominate their lives and to arrest their development.” For Musk and his fellow tech nerds, the future is a necessarily stunted one.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The company rebrand is certainly all Muskian in manner, part of his monomaniac obsession with the letter.  In 1999, he created the online bank X.com, which eventually merged with PayPal the following year.  Just shy of two decades later, Musk reacquired the X.com site from PayPal.  Over time, it seems to have become an ideology and practice, a purpose and an end.  X is seen as an “everything app” that will function as a platform to transfer money, order meals, and share posts.

Linda Yaccarino, the company’s chief executive, described it as follows: “X is the future of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities”.  As if this did not sound sinister, Yaccarino also declared that there was “absolutely no limit to this transformation.  X will be the platform that can deliver, well….everything.”

Like a spreading cult, it has rushed through the Musk empire, afflicting all manner of products and themes.  Twitter even has conference rooms with X-oriented names, be they the cringeworthy “eXposure”, or the less revolting “s3Xy”.

For even the most junior of advertising minions, the whole matter has been an example of counter-intuitive madness.  “It’s a rookie mistake to throw away decades of equity in those assets [the name Twitter and the blue bird logo],” remarked marketing consultant Gareth Turner.  Negative assessments of the rebrand exercise have suggested that billions of dollars have been wiped from the value of the company.

The company is being tanked with a fanatic’s relish, submerged in a sea of depraved indulgence.  Its mutilating, despoiling owner hardly seems to care.  In the meantime, there is a lot of management rot that’s crept in, just to replace the initial management rot that seeped through prior to Musk’s acquisition.

The substance of the rebrand, for all the lamentations about extinguishing the bird logo, is hard to discern.  There is the lexical dimension, which seems to have bothered a goodly number of social media users.  What, for instance, are posts on the renamed platform meant to be?  Has the verb of tweeting been abandoned altogether?  According to the Associated Press stylebook, the platform is to be referred to “as X, formerly known as Twitter.”  Usage of the term “tweet” is still considered acceptable.

Beyond the labels, the Musk experiment remains infantile.  Far better to simply reflect on the boy-child nature of the entire enterprise, a Peter Pan mad venture that rejects adulthood in favour of an arrested, preserved adolescence.  The video game designer Ian Bogost is certainly on to something in noting that “Twitter, like other social platforms and the very internet itself, is already redolent of a seventh grader’s mindset that Musk’s behaviour betrays.”

The seventh grader mindset is one based on noise, shouting, and deafening declarations.  It repudiates the notion of trusted small communities, where limits and protocols of good conduct matter.  “The shift from social networks to social media,” writes Bogost, “was culturally destructive.  It set the expectation that everyone deserves – is owed, even – an audience for every notion, quip, photo, or activity.”  The consequences that follow have been manifold: the surfeit of public data, the stratospheric rise of the outrage culture, the prevalence of misinformation, the normalising of shame.

As if to serve up a perfect illustration of the problem, Musk decided last month to fire off a number of social media posts challenging his technology rival and Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to a penis “measuring contest” and cage fight.  Much of this came about because of Zuckerberg’s own efforts to create Threads, a shameless rival platform to Twitter that apes many microblogging features of the latter.  Aiming low, Zuckerberg agreed, requesting that Musk send him the location. “Vegas, Octagon,” Musk shot back.  To date, the man child bullies have yet to go through with their arrangements, which was hardly surprising.

In a sense, Musk and Zuck resemble the generation of another era, one so beautifully and plangently captured by Cyril Connolly in his memoir, Enemies of Promise.  Published in 1938, a year before the catastrophe of the Second World War, it captures a distinct, spoilt view of human development, one where privilege and luxury blight, and where growth is to be feared.  On leaving Eton, Connolly distilled his “Theory of Permanent Adolescence”, where the “boys at the great public schools” undergo experiences “so intense as to dominate their lives and to arrest their development.”  For Musk and his fellow tech nerds, the future is a necessarily stunted one.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

De Vries’ killing was the most serious attack on journalist safety in a country where press freedom has long been taken for granted. In today’s Netherlands, journalists covering protests have been attacked by demonstrators – and occasionally detained by police — and face a torrent of online harassment. Combined with threats to crime reporters amid a rise in illegal drug trafficking, such incidents have dimmed the reputation of the Netherlands – along with other countries in the European Union – as one of the world’s safest places for journalists.  

On a fact-finding and advocacy mission to the Netherlands from June 26 to 30, CPJ met with journalists, press freedom advocates, experts, and government officials about ways to keep journalists safe in an increasingly hostile media climate.  

Key takeaways from CPJ’s visit:

De Vries’ killing has had ripple effects

At a café just a few blocks away from the site of de Vries’ killing, crime reporter Paul Vugts spoke to CPJ about his close colleague. Authorities believe de Vries was targeted for his role as an adviser and spokesperson for a witness in the trial of a drug kingpin rather than for his reporting, an assessment with which Vugts agrees. But he says that the killing has impacted Dutch journalism nonetheless.

“It had a chilling effect on journalists. Experienced crime reporters continue publishing. I do. But I let the police know in advance. That’s new. I wouldn’t do so before,” said Vugts, who was the Netherlands’ first journalist to go under full police protection because of death threats due to his work.

Before de Vries was killed, he had been outspoken about receiving threats due to his connection to the witness, whose brother and lawyer were also killed. The journalist, however, was not under police protection, according to Vugts and another local journalist with knowledge of the case.

Vugts said de Vries was negotiating a kind of modified protection with law enforcement as he believed full-scale protection offered to witnesses would hamper his ability to meet with sources. De Vries’ lack of protection at the time of his death sparked criticism and calls from local and international press freedom groups for better safety measure for the press.  

“Although the killing was not perceived as an attack on a journalist, it was perceived as an attack on press freedom and the rule of law,” said Guusje Somer, policy and advocacy officer at the Amsterdam-based journalist rights group Free Press Unlimited. “Its goal was to intimidate [journalists] and send a message that organized crime was a boss.”

Meanwhile, the crime remains unsolved despite authorities’ arrest of two suspects within an hour of the shooting. The case was delayed after prosecutors submitted new evidence, and then again after a judge resigned. The trial will continue in early 2024; there are now a total of nine suspects.

The Dutch government plans to improve protections for journalists

The de Vries killing was the most serious, but hardly the first, incident of its kind in the Netherlands. In 2016, Martin Kok, a convicted killer who wrote about crime on his blog, was killed in a gang-related attack. In 2018, an anti-tank missile was fired at the offices of the publisher of weekly newspapers Panorama and Nieuwe Review; two days later an attacker crashed a van into the headquarters of the daily newspaper De Telegraaf and set the vehicle on fire. While investigators did not establish formal links to criminal gangs in the newspaper attacks, prosecutors suspected a connection to the outlets’ coverage of organized crime.

“The fear among crime reporters is that now everything is possible, no one is safe,” Yelle Tieleman, an investigative journalist, told CPJ in an interview in Amsterdam. Tieleman said that Dutch crime reporters have always walked a fine line between publishing scoops about gangs and navigating potential blowback. After this series of attacks, “this line has become even finer,” he said. Some journalists are self-censoring and other reporters, in particular freelancers without institutional support, have abandoned crime reporting altogether.

A recent study commissioned by the Ministry of Justice found that crime reporting has become more dangerous, with gangs showing an increased willingness to resort to deadly force in order to suppress information or express dissatisfaction with certain publications. In response, the government has been working on a comprehensive overhaul of the protection system provided to individuals threatened by organized crime, including journalists, lawyers, and prosecutors, the specifics of which have yet to be released.

Vugts welcomed these efforts, calling the current system “top-down and rigid” and ill-equipped to handle the increasing number of individuals facing threats. He said the government must allocate resources and solutions tailored to journalists so they can continue reporting on crime, even under police protection. “We are not in a narco-state, here the state is working to provide a better system of protection,” he said.

Crime reporters aren’t the only ones at risk

The growing risks to crime reporters reflect an increasingly hostile environment for journalism in the Netherlands. Linda Bos, a communications professor at the University of Amsterdam told CPJ that the rising populism and deepening polarization have fueled anti-establishment sentiments and conspiracy theories. “The pandemic has only further highlighted this trend” due to skepticism around vaccines, she said. This has impacted journalists, who are broadly perceived as part of the establishment.

A survey by PersVeilig or “PressSafe,” a joint initiative of journalists unions, media, police, and prosecutors, showed a sharp uptick in threats to journalists between 2017 and 2021, including incidents of verbal aggression, physical assaults, intimidation, and legal harassment. Two-thirds of journalists experienced verbal aggression at least once in the year before the survey was conducted in 2021, while 17% were exposed to physical aggression. Women journalists and those from minority groups or immigrant backgrounds are at greater risk.

The rise in hostile attacks prompted NOS, the country’s public broadcaster, to remove its logos from the company’s vehicles and equipment to better protect staff. Some outlets have also resorted to hiring safety personnel to accompany their crews during protests.

In addition, tensions between journalists and the police during demonstrations have made it harder for the media to cover civil unrest. Police must make on-the-spot decisions to identify journalists, and at times have lumped them in with protesters, arresting them or forcing them to leave demonstrations.   

When CPJ met the police representatives in The Hague, they were preparing for a farmers’ protest expected the following day. Officers and members of the communications team told CPJ that the police were committed to ensuring safety of journalists covering protests, and riot police were provided with information and training on identifying members of the press.

The Netherlands’ Union of Journalists’ (NVJ) head Thomas Bruning told CPJ that police are indeed committed to ensuring press access to protests, but don’t have the resources to ensure officers on the ground follow such guidelines. “There’s a willingness of police to train their forces on press cards and rights of journalists but they don’t have sufficient training capacity,” he said. NVJ has tried to fill the gap with its own police trainings “but it has been ad-hoc. A more systemic, regular approach is needed,” he said.    

Dutch journalists are harassed online

Online harassment is also a press freedom issue in the Netherlands. Another PersVeilig survey showed that nearly 82% of 300 surveyed women journalists said they had been subject to online harassment, threats, and intimidation on various tech platforms. Nearly a quarter of the incidents occurred on X (formerly Twitter), which Bos called “the main platform of hate.”

CPJ met with Peter ter Velde, the head of PersVeilig in his office in central Amsterdam. He told CPJ that he and representatives of media organizations have met with tech companies including Google and Meta to raise the issue of harassment on their platforms but had not yet been able to meet with X. PersVeilig, which shares an office with the journalists’ union, is keenly aware of how the issue affects women; it recently hired a woman to field harassment complaints from female journalists who might feel uncomfortable reporting them to a man. Ter Velde also said that the police are trying to address the issue. They are “on board,” he said, but “lack capacity to look into all cases of online harassment.”

Pieter van Koetsveld and Charlotte Wolf, of the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science’s directorate in charge of liaising with journalists, told CPJ in a meeting that online harassment is a priority for the ministry. They pointed to their department’s funding of PersVeilig as evidence of their commitment.

“Our Ministry identified journalists as a vulnerable group who need our support and we have plans to support them,” Wolff said. Koetsveld said that the ministry has been in touch with Google on the issue of online harassment of journalists, but not with X.

PersVeilig provides hope to journalists

PersVeilig has been hailed by press freedom organizations as an international model for building bridges between journalists, law enforcement, and prosecutors in order to keep journalists safe so they can do their jobs. When ter Velde, a former journalist who covered wars and conflicts, agreed to head PersVeilig after its founding in 2019, it helped the organization gain trust in the Dutch journalism community.

In addition to hosting safety trainings and detailing security protocols, PersVeilig operates a hotline and a dedicated online platform where journalists can report threats and receive guidance on filing complaints with the police. One of PersVeilig’s biggest achievements is that it secured commitments from police and prosecutors to prioritize investigating attacks on journalists by opening a rapid criminal investigation when one occurs. Prosecutors have also committed to increasing punishments for attacks on journalists, ter Velde said.

Ter Velde told CPJ that journalists know and trust the organization, but that its work is “vulnerable” so long as he is the only employee. Ter Velde plans to hire one more staffer, with the hopes of expanding further in the future to focus on the security needs of female journalists and on legal threats.

“When we started PersVeilig, we thought it’d continue for three years. But the country has changed. Organized crime has changed – there are no red lines, no boundaries for them as Peter’s killing demonstrated,” he said. “Journalists need more help than ever before.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Gulnoza Said.

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This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Project Censored.

At about 7 a.m., a man in plainclothes confronted broadcast reporter Eddy Enuru as he prepared to begin live coverage of the elections from the Bukedea Township Polling Station, according to Enuru, who works for the private broadcaster NBS and is the region’s bureau chief, and Simon Peter Emwamu, another journalist who witnessed the incident.

The man grabbed Enuru’s tripod and a phone he planned to use to film, and slapped the journalist several times across his face and neck, according to Enuru and Emwamu, who works with the Daily Monitor, a newspaper owned by NTV Uganda’s parent company. The assailant did not identify himself.

About 20 minutes later, the attacker drove away from the scene after giving Enuru’s phone and tripod to police officers, who returned the devices to the journalist. Enuru told CPJ that he suffered bruising to his chin and neck, received a medical check-up at a local hospital, and filed a complaint about the assault at the Bukedea Central Police Station.

Separately, a group of about 10 people who identified themselves as security personnel but were dressed in plain clothes told Emwamu to keep his distance from the polling station, saying that they were holding a security meeting.

When Emwamu identified himself as a reporter and asked why they were holding a security meeting at a polling station, one man confiscated his phone and his camera and held it for a few minutes before returning it.

Emwamu and Enuru told CPJ that they believed the attacks were meant to stop them from covering alleged irregularities in the election. The elections, in which a ruling party candidate emerged victorious, were marred by violence against opposition candidates and allegations of ballot-stuffing.

In a separate incident on the morning of June 14, unidentified men robbed two local radio journalists, Continental FM reporter John Bosco Ojojo and Mama Bukedea FM reporter George Emuron, who were also covering the elections, according to Ojojo and the HRNJ-U statement.

Ojojo told CPJ that he and Emuron, who also contributes to the Daily Monitor, were riding together on a motorcycle after making a reporting stop at a polling station at the Tamula Primary School, when the riders of a second motorcycle hailed them to stop.

“We thought they knew us, or they wanted to ask us a question. When we stopped one of them approached us and said: ‘your life or your gadgets, which one are you giving us?’” Ojojo said.

The two journalists handed over a laptop, audio recorder, and two smartphones. The assailants’ faces were covered with masks and their motorcycle’s registration plates were also covered, Ojojo said. The journalists reported the robbery at the Bukedea Central Police Station later that day.

In a June 14 interview with NTV-Uganda, regional police spokesperson Oscar Ageca said that police were investigating Enuru’s complaint. In a phone interview on July 5, Ageca told CPJ that investigations were ongoing into the assault on Enuru and robbery of Ojojo and Emuron, but said the inquiry was frustrated because the suspects were not known to the journalists. Ageca told CPJ that police were still trying to trace the stolen laptop and smartphones.

Local media reported that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on June 26 ordered a presidential anti-corruption unit to investigate allegations of irregularities around the Bukedea by-election and to “take action” if any wrongdoing was identified.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

At about 7 a.m., a man in plainclothes confronted broadcast reporter Eddy Enuru as he prepared to begin live coverage of the elections from the Bukedea Township Polling Station, according to Enuru, who works for the private broadcaster NBS and is the region’s bureau chief, and Simon Peter Emwamu, another journalist who witnessed the incident.

The man grabbed Enuru’s tripod and a phone he planned to use to film, and slapped the journalist several times across his face and neck, according to Enuru and Emwamu, who works with the Daily Monitor, a newspaper owned by NTV Uganda’s parent company. The assailant did not identify himself.

About 20 minutes later, the attacker drove away from the scene after giving Enuru’s phone and tripod to police officers, who returned the devices to the journalist. Enuru told CPJ that he suffered bruising to his chin and neck, received a medical check-up at a local hospital, and filed a complaint about the assault at the Bukedea Central Police Station.

Separately, a group of about 10 people who identified themselves as security personnel but were dressed in plain clothes told Emwamu to keep his distance from the polling station, saying that they were holding a security meeting.

When Emwamu identified himself as a reporter and asked why they were holding a security meeting at a polling station, one man confiscated his phone and his camera and held it for a few minutes before returning it.

Emwamu and Enuru told CPJ that they believed the attacks were meant to stop them from covering alleged irregularities in the election. The elections, in which a ruling party candidate emerged victorious, were marred by violence against opposition candidates and allegations of ballot-stuffing.

In a separate incident on the morning of June 14, unidentified men robbed two local radio journalists, Continental FM reporter John Bosco Ojojo and Mama Bukedea FM reporter George Emuron, who were also covering the elections, according to Ojojo and the HRNJ-U statement.

Ojojo told CPJ that he and Emuron, who also contributes to the Daily Monitor, were riding together on a motorcycle after making a reporting stop at a polling station at the Tamula Primary School, when the riders of a second motorcycle hailed them to stop.

“We thought they knew us, or they wanted to ask us a question. When we stopped one of them approached us and said: ‘your life or your gadgets, which one are you giving us?’” Ojojo said.

The two journalists handed over a laptop, audio recorder, and two smartphones. The assailants’ faces were covered with masks and their motorcycle’s registration plates were also covered, Ojojo said. The journalists reported the robbery at the Bukedea Central Police Station later that day.

In a June 14 interview with NTV-Uganda, regional police spokesperson Oscar Ageca said that police were investigating Enuru’s complaint. In a phone interview on July 5, Ageca told CPJ that investigations were ongoing into the assault on Enuru and robbery of Ojojo and Emuron, but said the inquiry was frustrated because the suspects were not known to the journalists. Ageca told CPJ that police were still trying to trace the stolen laptop and smartphones.

Local media reported that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on June 26 ordered a presidential anti-corruption unit to investigate allegations of irregularities around the Bukedea by-election and to “take action” if any wrongdoing was identified.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Image from Ferrovial press release, “Baylor College of Medicine Receives $162,000 Donation from Ferrovial and Webber Amid COVID-19 Crisis”

This article was written by a physician who writes using the pseudonym “A Midwestern Doctor”. Both Dr. Pierre Kory and I are fans of this work and insights, I subscribe to his substack, and you may also wish to consider subscribing to his substack (“The Forgotten Side of Medicine”), which can be found here. He requested it be published in this substack (“Who is Robert Malone”) because the general topic is aligned with prior essays which we have published regarding cyberstalking, disruptors, chaos agents, fifth generation warfare, and propaganda.

When I was in High School, I heard a quote that really stuck with me:

“Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about themselves, and small people talk about others” — John C. Maxwell.

As I went on through life, I noticed that all of my happy and successful friends freely admitted when they made mistakes and rarely disparaged others. On the other hand, my friends whose lives were perpetually a mess, tended to do the opposite and in some cases, I had dear friends who made these mistakes for decades. Yet, regardless of how bad things went for them or how close we were, rarely would they be open to receiving feedback that required them to take ownership of their situation instead of blaming others for their bad luck.

Since I often observed this phenomenon inside and outside my circle of friends, I frequently asked myself what drove people to do this. Eventually, I concluded that much of it results from a classic way humans cope with pain.

A central dogma within Chinese Medicine is that there will be pain wherever something cannot flow in a human being (e.g., a fluid or their conception of the human biological energy known as “Qi”). The phrase classically used to convey this is “Tong Ze Bu Tong. Tong Ze Bu Tong” which translates to “when open, there is no pain. When there is pain, it is not open.”

In a recent article, I put forward the thesis that the secret to emotional health is to allow your emotions to be open and able to flow (and eventually exit you) rather than being contracted and suppressed (so they remain as a pathologic force within you indefinitely). Unfortunately, this is rarely practiced as our culture actively encourages us to do the opposite because it is much easier to endlessly sell unneeded products to emotionally unhealthy people.

Note: contractions can be acute or chronic. For example, clenching your fist creates an acute contraction, while people often have muscles in their body that have chronically remained tight for such a long time that they’ve become numb. Likewise, contractions also exist in the mind and spirit (e.g., consider how often people close their minds to things that don’t sit well with them). Initially, this concept seems abstract, but once you spot it a few times, it becomes very apparent how frequently habitual contractions crop up.

Whenever a problematic contraction (e.g., a painful one) is present in the body, mind, or spirit, to resolve it, the contraction needs to open up so it can disperse. However, the innate reflex instead is typically to contract into the contraction (e.g., the classic example is someone biting down on a stick right before a painful procedure), which provides a brief alleviation of the pain before it inevitably returns.

The (unhealthy) approaches people typically use to address physical and emotional pain thus somehow contract them into their pain or disconnect them from it. Unfortunately, the greater the pain or trauma someone carries, the harder it is for the individual to not contract into their pain (which is quite tragic as it perpetually prevents them from utilizing an approach that opens their system and can resolve the underlying trauma residing within them).

Generally speaking, I find that the more one can keep their body, mind, and spirit open rather than closing it down (especially under challenging circumstances), the more successful one will be in life. Unfortunately, this becomes increasingly difficult to do as individuals carries more and more trauma or enter more and more stressful circumstances.
Note: This resistance to contraction was a common factor amongst the doctors who did the right thing throughout the pandemic and resisted following the overpowering COVID-19 narrative.

So, while they are quite challenging to deal with, I often have a great deal of compassion for individuals who continually lash out at others if I can tell they hold significant pain somewhere in their body, mind, or spirit. In turn, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen someone demonize someone else (without a good reason for doing so) as a way of contracting into their pain. I’ve even had a few cases where the individual directly admitted they were doing it to alleviate their pain temporarily and that they greatly feared a time would come when it was longer possible for them to continue lashing out at a relative who allowed them to.

In personal relationships, the best rule I’ve found to navigate this dynamic came from the book How to Be An Adult, which advised having both “Unconditional Love” and “Conditional Involvement” (meaning you can love the individual but separate yourself from them if they insist on making the relationship unhealthy). In the professional sphere, it gets a bit more challenging and complex (since you often have to be involved with those individuals), so I hesitate to try to soundbite a specific strategy.

However, I must note that in addition to alternative activist movements being comprised of the 5-10% of the population that see things for what they are (and thus dissent from the prevailing narrative), they also tend to attract individuals with habitual emotional contractions. I believe those individuals are drawn in because their self-sabotaging behaviors prevent them from succeeding within the conventional sphere resulting in the alternatives spheres being the only ones still available to them.

Thus, many within this movement have shared the observation that there are quite a few individuals within our movement who continually attack or demonize other people who I know are sincerely trying to do a good job. In almost all cases, just like my friends from childhood, I have found these people are unwilling to listen to feedback suggesting they behave differently, even when it could allow them to be much more successful in their endeavors.

Each time I go through this dynamic with someone (e.g., authors I knew from early on here) I am continually reminded of two song lyrics. One of them is from Taylor Swift:

And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off

The other is from an obscure German song about how we are continually lied to and given a false conception of reality by the ruling class:

You let it go
As if you know you are alone.

You always underrate the ability
To change the state
Of mind

And what you’ll find
Is hate so blind
It destroys every way out of here.

Note: the song is a bit weird and jarring, but it holds a special place in my heart because of how accurately it describes how we have been trained to close our hearts and minds to what is directly in front of us.

Attacking Public Figures

Because of my views on emotional contractions, I hesitate to publicly attack anyone I harbor negative feelings towards. Beyond not wanting to set a bad example, there are two specific reasons I do not do this:

•The first is that it is challenging to know with certainty what someone’s motivations are and if they are guilty of what they are accused of. I feel very strongly about upholding the doctrine of “innocent until proven guilty,” Thus, I will not make an accusation unless I am relatively sure of it.

To use a contemporary example, many friends and readers have shared concerns about Dr. Malone, and I’ve looked into quite a few of them. At this point, I’ve lost count of how many were either (often nonsensical) misinterpretations of existing information or assumptions from afar about his personality that are entirely at odds with who I have found Malone to be when speaking to him directly. In many of those instances, I can see why their thought processes and emotionally biased filters of reality led them to those negative conclusions. Simultaneously, I believe those misinterpretations could have been prevented had they prioritized being “beyond a reasonable doubt” before making their accusations.

•The second is that it is seldom productive to respond to an emotional contraction with an emotional contraction (the only time this can work is when one has the strength to overpower someone else, and irrespective of what people believe, it is very rare they actually do). There are two specific reasons why doing so is counterproductive:

•If you engage an emotional contraction while contracting inside yourself, all that does is cause the other person to contract more (this is somewhat analogous to saying something which makes the other person become defensive which grinds the discussion to a halt); you can only overcome a contraction by remaining open.

•Humans (and some animals) have an animalistic instinct to interpret someone contracting (e.g., reacting to taunt) as a sign of weakness, which causes them not to take the contracting individual seriously and often to be drawn to attack them (predators instinctually seek out the weakest prey).

All of this thus begs the question—when should you denounce public figures? My view is that some, and ideally all, of the following requirements first need to be met:

•The individual is directly responsible for something that has caused significant harm.

•The individual consciously chose to make the events happen and willfully ignored warnings not to engage in their conduct.

•The individual in the present moment continues to perpetuate the harmful events.

To illustrate these points, there are many public figures I fully admit I dislike (e.g., the militant doctors who have spent years going after anyone who questions an existing narrative). However, unless these people directly challenge something I put forward, I don’t confront them—and when that happens, I try to present their argument in the best possible light before debating it rather than doing the opposite and misportraying it (which is what ideologically driven individuals typically do).

Because of this, there are a relatively small number of people I directly criticize. For example, Anthony Fauci has met the above criteria, and as I discussed in a recent article, Robert Califf, the current head of the FDA, has as well.

Peter Hotez

Peter Hotez has spent his career as one of the vaccine establishment’s leading cheerleaders, and I believe he was one of the individuals most directly responsible for the deadly censorship we saw throughout COVID-19. This is because right before COVID-19, he paved the way for it by going on a media tour to make people aware of the extreme dangers of the anti-vaccine movement and the critical need to censor them on each platform.

Note: I have long suspected (but cannot prove) his actions were part of a public relations campaign because many other things also happened at that time, Hotez used the same phrases in each media appearance (suggesting a PR company made them), and he consistently is invited to speak by major networks despite not being photogenic (the guy is a mess).

After Hotez got the mass censorship he clamored for, he then pivoted to aggressively defending the current narrative on television, frequently asserting statements with absolute certainty that were later definitively proven to be false. Following this, he then pivoted to gradually denouncing with increasing fervor anyone who questioned the narrative (i.e., Hotez’s lies), which gradually escalated to him calling for any criticism of Anthony Fauci to become a federal hate crime and for governments around the world to mobilize against anyone who did not support COVID-19 vaccines because vaccine skeptics were killing people.

Since Hotez was a clown, most of us just ignored him. However, last December, this was posted by the WHO, and we decided Hotez’s actions had reached the point we needed to do something.

“Anti-vaccine activism, which I actually call anti-science aggression, has now become a major killing force globally."
– @PeterHotez, Professor and Dean @BCM_TropMed, on the devastating impact of #misinformation and disinformation. pic.twitter.com/ZluiMGJ2gX

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) December 14, 2022

Note: many of Hotez’s statements in the WHO’s video were disingenuous or outright false (which in turn casts the WHO in a very bad light). Additionally, there is no way Hotez could have made this video himself, once again suggesting that this was part of a broader PR campaign.

After I saw Hotez’s call for political crackdowns, I remembered that during his 2019 media tour, Hotez had given an interview on Joe Rogan, which ended up being comical since Hotez was a mess, and unlike the rest of the media, Rogan gave Hotez a few tough questions. I felt simply letting Hotez show exactly who he was constituted the best response to his calls for political crackdowns, so I clipped their exchange and sent it to Pierre Kory. Many others felt the same way, and it immediately went viral (presently, it has 3.5 million views).

Note: in this clip and within the full interview, Hotez makes false statements, some of which his past statement demonstrated he knew were lies.

This might be my all time favorite Joe Rogan moment.

In just a few minutes, Peter Hotez inadvertently shows the world exactly what has gone wrong with our medical system and why his endless push for more vaccines will never create health. pic.twitter.com/Zye715BL0y

— Pierre Kory, MD MPA (@PierreKory) December 25, 2022

Later that day, once the clip had gone viral on Twitter, Hotez decided he needed to issue one of the few “apologies” of his career:

I then dug into Hotez’s background and learned a few noteworthy things about him:

•Because he ardently promotes vaccines and has an autistic daughter, anyone suggesting vaccines cause autism provokes profound mental and emotional contractions within him. He thus wrote a book to prove “Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism” and regularly cites it as proof vaccines don’t cause autism. I read the book and discovered not only did Hotez fail to provide any proof vaccines don’t cause autism, but he also provided a chronology of events and symptoms in his daughter identical to what many parents with autistic children have observed immediately following vaccination. That’s pretty sad but emblematic of how people like Hotez think.

•The most unbelievable passage I found in Peter Hotez’s book says a great deal about he sees himself and the world:

•Not surprisingly, I discovered that Peter Hotez has deep financial entanglements with the Gates Foundation and has received numerous large grants for vaccine development.

•Hotez is very thin-skinned. Anytime he is criticized, he frequently blames it on “antisemitism” or “anti-scientism,” he continually complains on Twitter about all the harassment he receives (which I feel is minimal relative to the inflammatory rhetoric he puts out) and he immediately blocks anyone who uses data to debunk one of his lies on Twitter.
Note: This personal weakness is something I associate with someone who follows a path they are internally conflicted with, which leads to a wide variety of contractions in the body, mind, and spirit, thereby preventing one from having the openness that could provide the internal strength to persist in the face of obstacles.

•Hotez worked very hard to brand himself as a scientific celebrity (to the point he even wrote a paper about how he’d done it) so he could be an ambassador of science. One of the most noteworthy things about the publication was Hotez emphasizing the importance of self-awareness with how you presented yourself in the public sphere—which again illustrates how distorted his view of the world is as how he presents himself publicly is often abysmal.

•In 2019, Hotez stated that the anti-vaccine lobby owns the internet and that the brave defenders of science need someone to protect the anti-vaxxer’s onslaught (see the clip for yourself).

The story of Peter Hotez is covered in more detail here:

The Forgotten Side of Medicine
Why Does Peter Hotez Think We Are Mass Murderers?

One of the most common tactics the medical industry uses to defend against the scrutiny of bad medical practices is to accuse those who question those practices (and thus make the public reluctant to receive them) of “killing their patients!” (under the logic that the treatment is so safe and effective that causing the public to avoid it equates to murd…
Read more

6 months ago · 966 likes · 1,114 comments · A Midwestern Doctor

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When I looked at Hotez’s whole life story, I genuinely felt bad for the guy and could only imagine what his childhood was like. Beyond being a mess, he struck me as someone who continually got scammed by life and might just be being controlled by his unresolved internal distress to the point he could genuinely buy into the narrative that there was an evil cabal of anti-vaccine advocates who were terrorizing Hotez and his colleagues with impunity.

However, after I posted the article, an MD (who had been in Hotez and Fauci’s world and then left it to become a whistleblower) reached out and shared that she had directly worked with Hotez and deemed him to be a sociopath.

Anti-Science Violence

Recently Tucker Carlson aired the second episode of his widely viewed show on Twitter. A key point he made was how problematic nebulously defined crimes are as they undermine the fundamental rule of law our society depends upon (where you know what is illegal and what crime you are being charged with) and thereby leave everyone in a perpetual state of terror because they might accidentally break that unwritten rule.

These “crimes” are commonly created by the media relentlessly promoting an emotional charge to a word. Eventually, through doing this, anything associated with the word becomes “bad” solely based on the alleged association, which, in turn, becomes the means through which political opponents can be targeted as needed. This becomes particularly problematic because once that emotional gestalt is associated with the trigger word, the public’s filters become primed to associate everything with the evils of that trigger word (regardless of if it is or is not related) and then zealously move to enforce its de-facto law upon the entire population.

Peter Hotez’s key talking point has been to link everything he disagrees with (e.g., anything that questioned the scientifically flawed pandemic narrative) to being “anti-science” and to link “anti-science” to every other bad thing in the world (e.g., the far right). For the last few months, his focus has been promoting his upcoming book The Deadly Rise of Anti-science: A Scientist’s Warning, which in its brief Amazon description, concisely portrays Hotez’s distorted view of reality:

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, one renowned scientist, in his famous bowtie, appeared daily on major news networks such as MSNBC, NPR, the BBC, and others. Dr. Peter J. Hotez often went without sleep, working around the clock to develop a nonprofit COVID-19 vaccine and to keep the public informed. During that time, he was one of the most trusted voices on the pandemic and was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his selfless work. He also became one of the main targets of anti-science rhetoric that gained traction through conservative news media.

In this eyewitness story of how the anti-vaccine movement grew into a dangerous and prominent anti-science element in American politics, Hotez describes the devastating impacts it has had on Americans’ health and lives. As a scientist who has endured antagonism from anti-vaxxers and been at the forefront of both essential scientific discovery and advocacy, Hotez is uniquely qualified to tell this story. By weaving his personal experiences together with information on how the anti-vaccine movement became a tool of far-right political figures around the world, Hotez opens readers’ eyes to the dangers of anti-science. He explains how anti-science became a major societal and lethal force: in the first years of the pandemic, more than 200,000 unvaccinated Americans needlessly died despite the widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines. Even as he paints a picture of the world under a shadow of aggressive ignorance, Hotez demonstrates his innate optimism, offering solutions for how to combat science denial and save lives in the process.

All of this thus raises a simple question. What exactly is “anti-science?”

I’ve spent a while looking for an answer to this, and as best as I can tell (I admit I have not read all of his papers or seen all his interviews), Hotez never defines it. Rather, as is seen in many other PR campaign who just repeats the word in a charged manner over and over with as many negative associations as possible to demonize anyone who disagrees with him. So, if anyone can cite an example of Hotez defining exactly what anti-science is, I would greatly appreciate seeing it.

At this point, the only definition I’ve found of anti-science comes from Wikipedia. It essentially says that individuals who are skeptical either of mainstream scientific positions or the scientific method being the objective arbiter of truth are “anti-science,” as are those who believe in concepts (e.g., alternative medicine) not supported by mainstream scientific consensus.

Unlike Hotez’s hysterical portrayal of “anti-science” extremists, the existing definition is fairly tame as it’s essentially just a philosophical disagreement and applies to almost every revolutionary scientist throughout history. In turn, I would argue the Wikipedia definition of “anti-science” refers to opposing the political institution of science rather than science itself (which to some extent is acknowledged within Wikepedia’s article). This essentially means anyone who rallies against “anti-science” (to protect the prevailing institutions of science) is attacking science itself, and that is exactly what we saw throughout COVID-19 as every piece of scientific evidence which could have prevented the catastrophe we witnessed was systematically attacked and censored.

Regardless of which interpretation you choose from the Wikipedia article, one thing is clear. The accepted definitions are a far cry from Hotez’s portrayal and likely why he refuses to define anti-science. After all if it was, it could no longer be weaponized against those dissenting from the current narrative:

It is my sincere hope that this article will inspire Hotez to define exactly what anti-science violence is or where it has occurred. I would also like to know exactly where this anti-science violence is occurring because presently, while acts of violence were committed throughout COVID-19, I only know of them being committed against those who did not support “the science.”

Conclusion

Many spiritual traditions heavily emphasize compassion because they believe it is the one emotion that can antidote all of the contractions inside you and those within the world around you. However, there is also much more to compassion than the colloquial understanding that it is equivalent to empathy.

For example, compassion requires you not only to bear witness to someone’s conduct while having a deep understanding of where it originated from but also to be able to do that without having any contractions within your heart. This is quite difficult to do, and I frequently see individuals claiming to be compassionate towards someone while simultaneously having all manner of negative emotions arise within them during their moments of compassion.

Likewise, genuine compassion also requires the wisdom to know what is right and the strength to do it. In my own life, I’ve had so many times where I did what I believed was in someone’s best interest that later ended up backfiring and doing the opposite of what I intended (e.g., I sought to “help” them, but all I accomplished was enabling a bad habit on their part which was eventually catastrophic for them).

In a recent post, Robert Malone also provided an important example of why compassion requires strength—as stated above, bad actors will often filter into activist groups and then, once established in the group, fracture it apart. These individuals are usually relatively easy to spot, but despite that, the group’s leadership often takes a passive role and allows the bad actors to entangle themselves within the group.

Malone argued that this arises from personal weakness in the leadership:

Protest movement leaders, eager to grow their organization and activities, are prone to say “Yes” to any and all volunteers. And very reluctant to prune out the bad wood, to get rid of the bad apples before they contaminate the entire barrel. And so they postpone, rationalize, provide soft reprimands. “C’mon kids, cut it out, just play nice with each other”.

And therein lies the trap. The nice-guy trap. The “I just want to be liked, can’t we all get along” trap.

Having seen the same, I agree but would go further and state that weakness arises from the emotions and minds of the leaders being closed down. Conversely, when open, and those individuals live in accordance with their values, they are filled with a strength that does not permit this cowardice and allows them to persist through the most challenging of obstacles—something many have observed throughout history (e.g., for those who stand against a malignant mass formation) and which I repeatedly saw in the 5-10% of my profession who resisted the COVID-19 narrative. Much of this is encapsulated by the iconic quote:

      “If you don’t stand for something, you fall for anything.”

Like many of you, since I was a child, I always wanted to be a “good” person, but as life moved forward, more and more, I learned that this was easier said than done. Many of the ideas here likely come across as quite abstract, and I thank you for considering them. It is my sincere hope they provided insights on how each of us can be better prepared to stand against the wave of technocratic tyranny sweeping the world and provided more of a context for the abhorrent actions of those of like Peter Hotez.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Malone.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/26/peter-hotezs-war-against-science/feed/ 0 407072 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/02/transparency-png-calls-for-further-charges-over-worrying-paraka-case/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/02/transparency-png-calls-for-further-charges-over-worrying-paraka-case/#respond Fri, 02 Jun 2023 22:32:45 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=89226 RNZ Pacific

Transparency International Papua New Guinea has welcomed the conviction of lawyer Paul Paraka as the police confirm they are widening the investigation into the fraud case.

The NGO admits the depths of Paraka’s activities, revealed by the case, are very worrying.

Paraka, who had operated his own eponymous law firm, was convicted of misappropriating 162 million kina (about NZ$75 million) in government funds, between 2007 and 2011.

• READ MORE:  PNG lawyer Paraka found guilty of misappropriating K162m
• Other Paul Paraka reports

Transparency PNG spokesperson, Peter Aitsi, said the evidence outlined the complex structures that Paraka and others put together.

Significant case
He said it was a very significant case because of the amount of public money involved.

“And those are just the funds that have been identified within this case itself and paid to different parties as a result of Paraka’s activities.

“From a TI point of view we would encourage the agencies to continue to develop the evidence and if there are further charges to be laid against individuals then we would encourage them to ensure they uphold their duty and responsibility,” Aitsi said.

Paraka’s law firm, which he claimed was the biggest in the country, was engaged by the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General’s office in 2000, but this arrangement ceased in 2006.

However, from 2007 the state was still making payments to legal firms linked to Paraka.

Investigations have seesawed for 10 years and led to the replacement of the Attorney-General, the shutting down of the police fraud unit investigating the matter, and acccusations of politicians being involved.

Meanwhile, Paul Paraka threatened legal action amid claims the issues were simply administrative matters.

Police action
Police Commissioner David Manning has confirmed an investigation into fraud, money laundering and misappropriation following Paraka’s conviction.

Manning said the Paraka case attracted significant national interest due to the huge amounts of public money involved in these corrupt dealings.

“The way and manner in which these funds were syphoned through the Department of Finance to various law firms, who would then transfer this money to Mr Paraka himself, has been the subject of public outrage,” he said.

Manning said police will continue to pursue, investigate, charge and arrest those involved, and to recoup all money lost in these illegal deals.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/02/transparency-png-calls-for-further-charges-over-worrying-paraka-case/feed/ 0 400601 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/02/ben-roberts-smith-the-breaking-of-a-plaster-saint/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/02/ben-roberts-smith-the-breaking-of-a-plaster-saint/#respond Fri, 02 Jun 2023 01:52:03 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=140752 It was an ugly case lasting five years with a host of ugly revelations. But what could be surprising about the murderous antics of a special arm of the military, in this case, the Australian Special Air Service Regiment, which was repeatedly deployed on missions in an open-ended war which eventually led to defeat and withdrawal?

Ben Roberts-Smith was meant to be a poster boy of the regiment, the muscular noble representative who served in Afghanistan, a war with sketchy justifications. Along the way, he became Australia’s most decorated soldier, raking in the Medal of Gallantry in 2006, the Victoria Cross in 2010, and a Commendation for Distinguished Services for outstanding leadership in over 50 high-risk operations in 2012. He came to be lionised in the popular press, even being named “Father of the Year” in 2013.

A number of his colleagues, keen to take him down a peg or two, saw through the sheen. As did journalists at The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Canberra Times. The deployments by the special forces to Afghanistan had not, as the narrative would have it, been paved with heroic engagements of military valour. Roberts-Smith, it seemed, was less plaster saint than ruthless executioner and bully.

Some of the transgressions reported on by the papers were very much of the same type investigated by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force. The findings were eventually made available in the stomach churning Brereton Report, released in 2020.

But even prior to that, a 2016 report by sociologist Samantha Crompvoets, commissioned by the Special Operations Commander of Australia (SOCAUST), noted body count competitions and the use of the Joint Priority Effects List (JPEL) among special force personnel sent to Afghanistan. The JPEL became what effectively amounted to a “sanctioned kill list”.
Unsurprisingly, the numbers that were put forth were cooked, often featuring the gratuitous torture and killing of unarmed villagers.

Roberts-Smith, incensed by the reporting, commenced defamation proceedings against the three papers in question, and the journalists Nick McKenzie, Chris Masters and David Wroe. The use of such a civil weapon is often odious, a measure designed to intimidate scribblers and reporters from publishing material that might enlighten. While the defamation laws have been mildly improved since the trial’s commencement, featuring a public interest defence, the publishers here could only really avail themselves of the truth defence.

In the proceedings, three groups of articles featured, sporting a ghoulish succession of allegations. The first, published on June 8 and 9, 2018, are said to have conveyed three imputations: that Roberts-Smith “murdered an unarmed and defenceless Afghan civilian, by kicking him off a cliff and procuring the soldiers under his command to shoot him”; that he also breached moral and legal rules of military engagement thereby making him a criminal; and “disgraced his country Australia and the Australian army by his conduct as a member of the SASR in Afghanistan.”

The second group of articles, published on June 9 and 10 that year, were alleged to convey three imputations of murder, including the pressuring of a new, inexperienced SASR recruit to execute an elderly, unarmed Afghan as part of the “blood the rookie” ritual and the killing of a man with a prosthetic leg.

The third group of articles, published in August 2018, contain a whole medley of imputations including alleged domestic violence against a woman at Canberra’s Hotel Realm; the authorising of an unarmed Afghan’s execution by a junior member of his patrol; assaults on unarmed Afghans; bullying of one of the troops – one Trooper M – and threatening to report another soldier – trooper T – to the International Criminal Court for firing on civilians “unless he provided an account of a friendly fire incident that was consistent with the applicant’s”.

The trial ended in July 2022, after 110 days of legal submissions and evidence. During its course, Roberts-Smith, through his lawyers, dismissed the reliability of the eyewitness accounts. They were the bitter offerings of jealousy and mania, products of fantasy and fabulism.

On June 1, the Federal Court Justice Anthony Besanko found against Roberts-Smith. The three papers, along with the journalists, had made out the defence of substantial truth of several imputations made under the Defamation Act 2005 of New South Wales. The defence of contextual truth was also successful on a number of claims.

Most damning for Roberts-Smith was the establishment of the substantial truth of the first three imputations: the murder of a defenceless Afghan in Darwan by means of kicking him off a cliff and ordering troops to fire upon him, breaching the laws of military engagement and disgracing the country’s armed forces. The newspapers had not, however, established the Particulars of Truth on two missions – that to Syahchow (October 20, 2012) and Fasil (November 5, 2012). Contextual truth was also made out on the allegations of domestic violence and bullying claims.

The net effect of the claims proven to be substantially and contextually true meant that the unproven statements had done little to inflict overall damage upon the soldier’s reputation. The plaster saint had cracked.

In the assessment of Peter Bartlett, law partner at the firm MinterEllison and also one of the lawyers representing the papers, “Never has Australia seen a media defendant face such challenges from a plaintiff and his funders. This is an enormous and epic win for freedom of speech and the right for the public to know.”

Fine words. Yet this murky case does little to edify the efforts of a unit that executed its missions with a degree of frightening zeal, let alone the commanders that deployed its members in the first place. Therein lies the uncomfortable truth to the whole matter. When trained killers perform their job well, morality beats a hasty retreat. Expectations of priestly judgment and pastoral consideration evaporate before the use of force. The ultimate saddling of responsibility must always lie higher up the chain of command, ending in the offices of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Even now, the journalists involved claim they can find gemstones in the gutter, better angels among depraved beasts. According to James Chessell, managing director at Nine, which owns the three newspapers, the ruling was “a vindication for the brave soldiers of the SAS who served their country with distinction, and then had the courage to speak the truth about what happened in Afghanistan.” But did it really do that?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/02/ben-roberts-smith-the-breaking-of-a-plaster-saint/feed/ 0 400233 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/27/henry-kissinger-turns-100/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/27/henry-kissinger-turns-100/#respond Sat, 27 May 2023 14:41:46 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=140584

Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands.

— Anthony Bourdain, A Cook’s Tour (2002)

If a heavy resume of crimes is a guarantee of longevity, then surely Henry A. Kissinger (HAK, for short), must count as a good specimen. The list of butcheries attributed to his centurion, direct or otherwise, is extensive, his hand in them, finger fat and busy. There were the murderous meddles in Latin America, the conflicts in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. (The interventions in Laos and Cambodia are said to have left 350,000 Laotians and 600,000 Cambodians dead.) Then came the selective turning of blind eyes in Indonesia and Pakistan, and the ruthless sponsorship of coups in Africa.

Regarding the Vietnam War, this pornographer of power’s deviousness, and his attempt to inveigle himself into the favours of Richard Nixon, running as presidential candidate in 1968, knew no bounds. With privileged access as an advisor to the US State Department, he became the conduit for information to Nixon’s campaign to sabotage the Johnson Administration’s efforts to broker an earlier peace with North Vietnam. This involved convincing South Vietnam that the peace terms they could negotiate would be far more favourable under a Nixon administration. Peace prospects were scuppered; the war continued, eventually yielding a wretched Nobel Peace Prize for the Doctor in 1973. The US forces soon withdrew, leaving the impotent South Vietnamese to be overrun by their stronger Northern opponents.

Nixon’s electoral victory in 1968 ushered in an era of ruthless subversion of the international order, and one that bears repeating in these testy times of China ascending and US imperial anxiety. Kissinger, working with Nixon, thought that convincing North Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh to return to talks would be helped by targeting North Vietnamese supply routes in Laos and Cambodia. With stomach-churching cynicism, these bombing operations were given various gastronomic names: Operation Menu; Breakfast Plan. When the covert bombing program was exposed by the New York Times on May 9, 1969, Kissinger put the wind up FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to not only place a number of journalists under surveillance, but a select number of government officials, including his aides in the National Security Council. One of the latter, Morton Halperin, would subsequently sue his former boss, Nixon and the Department of Justice for illegal wiretapping of his home and office phones.

In Chile, Nixon and Kissinger poisoned the waters of that country’s politics, destabilising the democratically elected government of socialist President Salvador Allende and paving the way for a bloody coup that installed General Augusto Pinochet. A mere eight days after Allende’s election in September 1970, Kissinger, in conversation with CIA director Richard Helms emphatically stated that, “We will not let Chile go down the drain.” Three days later, Nixon, in a meeting including Kissinger, infamously told the CIA to “make the [Chilean] economy scream.”

In November 1970, Kissinger demonstrated an almost callow level of expertise in claiming in a memorandum that Allende’s election “would have an effect on what happens in the rest of Latin America and the developing world; on what our future position will be in the hemisphere; and on the larger world picture”. To permit democratically elected socialist governments in the Americas along the “Titoist” lines of Allende’s government “would be far more dangerous to us than in Europe”, creating a model whose “effect can be insidious.”

Kissinger’s venality, and complicity as a deskbound suited thug, supply us a bottomless reservoir. To commemorate the occasion of his hundredth natal day, Nick Turse of The Intercept revealed a number of unreported attacks on Cambodian civilians during the secret war, suggesting that the program has been more expansive, and vicious, than had been previously assumed. “These attacks were far more intimate and perhaps even more horrific than the violence already attributed to Kissinger’s policies, because the villages were not just bombed, but also strafed by helicopters gunships and burned and looted by US and allied troops.”

The incidents are too numerous to list, leaving us a catalogue of cruelties ghoulish and despairing. Yet his own accounts do little to shed light on such exploits. The White House Years are barren on his blood-soaked achievements, the doorstop memoirs being a selective account drawing from memos, memcons and telcons that this faux Metternich had generated while in office. In 1977, in typical fashion, Kissinger made off with over 30,000 pages of daily transcripts of phone conversations he was involved in, documents he deviously called “personal papers”. In self-reflective glory, he could pilfer, cut and adjust.

Efforts to seek his richly deserved arrest have been made, though all have ended in a legal and practical cul-de-sac. In January 2015, CODEPINK protesters ventured to make a citizen’s arrest during a US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. In the UK, human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell also had a stab in April 2002, seeking a warrant from the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court under the Geneva Conventions Act 1957. The charges asserted that “while he was national security adviser to the US president 1969-1975 and US Secretary of State 1973-1977, [Kissinger] commissioned, aided and abetted and procured war crimes in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia”.

The presiding District Judge Nicholas Evans was not willing to play along, hampered by higher powers. To proceed, the Attorney-General’s consent was needed. Lacking that, “there is nothing I can do.” That’s HAK’s way of operation, an oleaginous Brahmin above others. Let the likes of Pinochet be nabbed; the backer always makes his getaway.

Best, then, to conclude this natal day salutation to the man by reflecting on the remarks of that most raw yet delicate of culinary (and social) commentators, Anthony Bourdain. In visiting Cambodia for his Cook’s Tour series, he could only reflect about why such a man was not sharing dock space at The Hague with other war criminals. “You will never be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking.” Sadly, for many in the Kissinger cosmos, they continue to do so without so much as flinching.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/27/henry-kissinger-turns-100/feed/ 0 398928 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/26/jamie-raskin-and-rachel-maddow-brought-to-you-by-peter-thiel-and-lockheed-martin/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/26/jamie-raskin-and-rachel-maddow-brought-to-you-by-peter-thiel-and-lockheed-martin/#respond Fri, 26 May 2023 11:00:00 +0000 https://production.public.theintercept.cloud/?p=429362

Progressives Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow are outspoken critics of the bloated defense budget and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. Next month, though, both Raskin and Maddow will headline an event sponsored by defense industry giant Lockheed Martin and Palantir, a $26 billion defense contractor founded and chaired by Peter Thiel, the polarizing billionaire and megadonor to Donald Trump.

The appearances by Raskin and Maddow will come as part of TruCon, the conference of the Democratic Party-aligned Truman Center, which runs from June 1 to 4 in Washington, D.C. TruCon’s website describes the conference as an opportunity to see “[t]hought leaders across government, policy, and national security fields speak on the most pressing issues facing America today.”

“Obviously, the real test of integrity is to argue with folks you disagree with, not to cover your eyes and ears and look away.”

For Mark Thompson, a national security analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, the big question for Raskin and Maddow at the conference will be whether they hold their tough positions against defense contractors. If they don’t speak out, Thompson said, it would indicate that sponsors can buy the silence of their outspoken critics.

“If I were Jamie Raskin or I were Rachel Maddow — what a great opportunity to name these companies and say where they’re coming up short,” said Thompson. “Do you, a company, buy my silence or tacit silence by sponsoring this event? Obviously, the real test of integrity is to argue with folks you disagree with, not to cover your eyes and ears and look away.”

According to a source close to Raskin, the conference sponsors were announced after the member of Congress accepted the invitation. Maddow, Palantir, Lockheed, and Truman did not respond to requests for comment.

At TruCon, sponsors are promised access to influential conference participants, according to promotional materials. “Elevate your brand, connect with your customers, feed your employee pipeline in meaningful, exciting ways,” reads a Truman brochure marketing sponsorship opportunities for the event. The brochure repeatedly references the advantages of aligning a company’s “brand” with the Truman Center and TruCon.

For Palantir and Lockheed, which are listed as the two top sponsors on the event website, that means enjoying high-level recognition and association with prominent progressive and other Democratic Party-aligned figures.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., testifies during the Weaponization of the Federal Government Subcommittee hearing on February 9, 2023.

Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Raskin and Maddow — an honoree and keynote speaker, respectively, at the conference — have both been harshly critical of the defense industry at large and specifically Lockheed and Palantir.

Raskin co-sponsored a House resolution in 2020 denouncing “wasteful Pentagon spending and supporting cuts to the bloated defense budget.” The bill, which did not make it to the floor for a vote, highlighted that “the Pentagon had no way to track replacement parts for the $1,400,000,000,000 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program” — a Lockheed project widely considered to be the biggest military procurement boondoggle in history.

For Lockheed Martin, the F-35 is only one of the many upsides the company sees thanks to the Pentagon’s enormous expenditures on contractors. Over half of the nearly trillion-dollar defense budget goes to contractors, and Lockheed Martin is the top recipient of Pentagon dollars, receiving about $75 billion in the 2020 fiscal year. That figure amounts to over one and a half times the entire combined State Department and Agency for International Development budget for the same year, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project. Lockheed derived 73 percent of its net sales from the U.S. government in 2022.

When Lockheed CEO James Taiclet was asked last year about whether his company’s government contracts — as compared to the State Department’s budget — represented a reasonable balance, he deflected, saying simply that “it’s only up to us to step to what we’ve been asked to do and we’re just trying to do that in a more effective way.” It was, he said, “up to the U.S. government.”

The company, however, pours staggering sums of money into influencing the government: Lockheed spent $13 million lobbying the federal government last year. Its biggest area of focus was the defense budget, according to OpenSecrets.

For her part, Maddow has been an even more outspoken critic of Pentagon contractors than Raskin. In March 2011, she told her MSNBC viewers, “Defense spending is untouchable because civilian lawmakers defer so deeply to the military, and to the former military officers laced through the contractor world, that if you squint, you would swear that Congress is some lackey puppet parliament in a country where the government has taken over by a junta.”

Maddow has also denounced Thiel, whom she lit into during MSNBC’s coverage of the 2016 Republican National Convention, where Thiel spoke.

Referencing Thiel’s company Palantir, Maddow said, “He also runs one of the biggest surveillance companies in the world that does lots of business with the CIA and the NSA and lots of other government agencies, and mass surveillance is a controversial thing in Republican politics.”

Palantir provided software used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in support of the Trump administration’s controversial detention, deportation, and family separation policies — policies denounced by both Raskin and Maddow. 

Truman doesn’t seem to have concerns about associating with Palantir and Lockheed. Two Palantir employees are on Truman’sadvisory council — Mehdi Alhassani and company Vice President Wendy Anderson — and both of them, alongside Lockheed, are listed as funders in Truman’s most recentannual report. Truman President and CEO Jenna Ben-Yehuda hosted Taiclet, Lockheed’s CEO, for a “fireside chat” last September. The following month, Truman hosted a panel featuring Anderson, the Palantir executive.

The embrace of prominent defense contractors might seem out of step for a group whosewebsite claims it supports “international engagement through diplomacy first and foremost, and by force only when necessary.” Thompson, though, offered a simple explanation for the turn to weapons money.

“It’s typically tawdry but it’s the way business is done in this town,” he said. “If Truman wants to be a player, they have to do events, they need money for events, and they need to barter away their sense of themselves in order to sponsor these events.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Eli Clifton.

And so, it follows: the rampant, habitual abuse of the elderly, seen as the gnats and brats of family and human refuse, the lack of community protections, the human rights abuses, all exposed vividly by the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.

No Royal Commission could possibly deal with all the social and structural issues that afflict the treatment of the elderly. A central feature of the nuclear family remains its obsessive selfishness: the savaging of the older member is seen as not only natural but logical. Those no longer functioning in mind, bowel and being, are rushed off to the retirement village or nursing home once the age meter ticks over. Family members are assured that their discarded elders will be happy in their new prison, and the conspiracy between what is loosely called the “aged care sector”, one racked by the most insidious of abuses, and the medical profession, is complete. All there is to do is wait out the time for the inevitable passing, and hopefully the old bats will have some spare cash left behind after the nursing home steals the bulk of the estate.

Before passing, the elderly individual will face the risks created by their environment, helped along by unhelpful carers, rapacious providers, and money-counting administrators. To this can now be added another risk: the prospect of being tasered by the police.

The last line deserves a place in a species of ageist dystopian literature with a social Darwinian slant, a sort of Mad Max for the Aged. But it is precisely what took place on May 17. Clare Nowland, a great-grandmother suffering dementia, found herself in a critical condition after being tasered by a senior constable of the New South Wales Police. The incident took place at Yallambee Lodge in the small town of Cooma, roughly 100 kilometres south of Canberra.

The Taser has a lengthy, rather nasty history of misuse. Comprising two barbed darts shot in Probe Mode, the recipient faces the release of 50,000 volts of electrical current lasting over 5 seconds. When used in its Drive-Stun Mode, the weapon is placed directly against the victim’s skin, causing terrific pain, sometimes burns. The casualty list attributed to the Taser is a growingly ghoulish one. In February 2012, Amnesty International reported that the US death toll attributable to the weapon since 2001 had risen to 500.

The Australian-based Police Accountability Project notes the significant risks that arise from Tasers “when used on vulnerable groups or in particular ways.” By giving police such devices, the likelihood of their use, “rather than negotiation, containment, retreat and de-escalation” increases.

Peter Cotter, NSW Police Force Assistant Commissioner, tried to justify the actions of the officer in question. “At the time [Nowland] was tasered she was approaching the police.” Was it at breakneck speed? No. “It is fair to say at a slow pace.” This dementia-suffering terror was also using a walking frame, bound to strike fear in any law enforcement figure. “But she had a knife,” insisted Cotter, miraculously elevating the level of risk. “I can’t take it any further as to what was going through anyone’s mind when he used the Taser.”

Other details were offered. Two officers, after being called to the address at 4.15 a.m., found Nowland with “a steak knife with a serrated edge that she had obtained from the kitchen area of the nursing home a couple of hours earlier.” Negotiations followed – as if Nowland’s state warranted a lengthy conference with paramedics and the police. She duly “approached the doorway where the police were at that stage, and the officer, the one officer, discharged the Taser.” Nowland fell to the floor. Hit her head. Lost consciousness. “The injury that she suffered as a result of hitting her head on the floor has rendered her bedridden at the moment,” stated Cotter.

The result of this incident means that Nowland, despite her critical state, is facing a round-robin, rotational vigil mounted by her own family: eight children and an enormous brood of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Whether this improves her safety, or health, remains to be seen.

A local community advocate, Andrew Thaler, holds little hope for her recovery. “I don’t think there’s going to be a recovery. Tasers take out bulls and fully grown men. She’s a slip of a woman.”

A number of conversations have been generated by the incident, mostly avoiding the reality of Tasers. There is much chat about dementia and the need for better understanding. “It is not just about memory,” says one touted expert on the ABC news network. “We need people to understand that our brains are slowing down.” And not just dementia sufferers.

It would be useful if such an understanding would extend to the police. But these recruits are not exactly renowned for their intelligence, emotional or otherwise. Cotter is adamant that the video and audio coverage of the incident, captured by the body cameras of the two police, would not be released. It was “confronting” and “not in the public interest” which, in Australian institutional terms, tends to mean that disclosure should take place.

While the US National Rifle Association has little logical to say about gun violence, namely in insisting that more guns, not fewer, is the answer, one repurposed bit of advice may be useful. Give the elderly, doomed to their carceral fate in nursing homes, Tasers.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

When Canadian Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino attempted to hype up the so-called China’s overseas police stations, one word stood out — could. “Mendicino concedes there could be new ‘Chinese police stations’ in Canada,” the country’s CTV News reported on Sunday.

The first paragraph of the article is filled with similar expressions, such as “there may be” new “Chinese police stations” and Royal Canadian Mounted Police will close any new sites “if they do exist.”

The real story should be why this speculation without evidence became a news story in the first place.

In April, the US arrested two Chinese Americans, accusing them of operating a “secret police station,” attempting to label China as engaging in illegal extraterritorial law enforcement and undermining the sovereignty of other countries. After that, the Canadian government was demanded to follow suit and take more proactive actions against such stations, Deutsche Welle reported on Monday.

Canada now shows its obedience. However, when it makes audacious slander against China based solely on vague information, it is making a fool of itself – pretending to be serious in dealing with a “national security threat” yet with nothing more than junky information at hand.

China has repeatedly clarified, as Wang Wenbin, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said again on Monday, there is no so-called overseas police stations. The relevant institutions helped overseas Chinese who could not return to China due to the pandemic renew their driving licence and perform physical examination. They are not so-called police stations or police service centers at all. The local Chinese groups who helped provide venues for the services and the volunteers are Chinese from the local communities who are willing to help their compatriots, not Chinese police personnel. In light of the evolving COVID situation and relevant services now available online, the relevant service centers have been closed. China always upholds the principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs, strictly observes the international law, and respects the judicial sovereignty of all countries.

Neither the US nor Canada listens. Instead, they cherish the report about so-called Chinese overseas police service centers made by the Spanish-based so-called human rights NGO, Safeguard Defenders. Its founder, Peter Dahlin, was previously expelled from China for engaging in illegal unregistered activities.

The financing of Safeguard Defenders cannot be traced on its official website. But reports show its previous incarnation, the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, an NGO claimed to assist so-called human rights defenders in China, received funds from the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization set up to fund groups conducive to Washington’s regime change priorities.

It seems there is an answer about whom Safeguard Defenders works for, or manipulates and fabricates information for.

Safeguard Defenders’ reports focus on overseas dissidents and corrupt officials from China. It’s like a group of illegal individuals forming a clique.

Some Chinese fugitives, fearing being repatriated, often tell fabricated stories about China to NGOs. The NGOs, which likely make money from the fugitives, collect stories from them and help them seek political asylum, while feeding Western governments with anti-China materials they received, Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University, told the Global Times. It has nothing to do with national security, but is more likely a money-for-shelter business, Shen said.

Experts question whether Canada, before smearing China, has carried out independent verification of the information at hand. Can it provide solid evidence instead of fabricated stories?

The US is a source of spreading virus of discrediting China. Canada, sharing the longest international border in the world with the US, is severely infected. It’s a virus, which does no good to Canada’s long-term healthy development, Shen said. It is going too far in blindly following the US on the path of slandering China in an ugly way, regardless of what a fool it is making itself, and regardless of the fact that there is no historical dispute or conflicting interests between China and Canada.

Canada coordinating with the US goes beyond just hyping the police station. There are the Meng Wanzhou case, and the hype of so-called Chinese interference in Canada’s internal affairs. Worse, it announced the expulsion of a Chinese diplomat last week, triggering a reciprocal countermeasure from China.

Now the bilateral relationship is in a state of diplomatic crisis, said Liu Dan, a research fellow with the Center for Canadian Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.

Yet, Liu added that facts have repeatedly shown that the US is willing to sacrifice Canada when necessary as it believes Canada can be easily manipulated. Forcing Canada to restructure the North American Free Trade Agreement, launching a trade war on steel and aluminum against Canada, and canceling the Keystone XL pipeline project with Canada are proofs.

Abandoning diplomatic independence does not necessarily bring the greatest security to Canada. Only by positioning itself as a balancer between major powers while making its independent voice, can Canada truly gain respect, including from its ally, the US, Liu added.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Global Times.

Two American C-17 Globemaster transport planes will bring 20 vehicles to Papua New Guinea in the next few days as part of preparations for the arrival of US President Joe Biden next week.

All eyes will be on APEC Haus as the President and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet Pacific Island leaders at separate meetings.

Dubbed “the Island”, APEC Haus will be the most watched building in the country if not throughout the whole Pacific region.

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On Sunday, four security armoured vehicles were flown into Port Moresby and were under heavy escort out of Jackson International Airport.

Just yesterday afternoon another lot of vehicles was brought in as momentum builds up to the first ever visit by a sitting President to a Pacific island nation.

Another 16 vehicles will be arriving over the next few days.

The presidential limousine, popularly referred to as “The Beast”, Marine One and security detachments are expected to arrive before the President touches down in Port Moresby.

Advance Secret Service team
White House officials also arrived in the country on the weekend to join an advanced Secret Service team that flew in last week.

About 1000 local security personnel, both PNG Defence Force and police will be assisting about 200 members of Biden’s security team.

The Correctional Service team is on standby to assist, CS Commissioner Stephen Pokanis said.

From the police, the Special Services Division (SSD) will be providing 200 men from the mobile squad, 36 from the national security unit, 20 from the air wing unit and several members from the bomb squad, bringing the total to 241 men.

Other units who will be involved include the NCD dog unit, the water police, police headquarters, Bomana police college, Central Province police, the incident management team, and the planning and co-ordination team. NCD police will support with 150 men and women.

Minister for Internal Security Peter Tsiamalili Jr confirmed the collaboration between the PNG task force who will work hand in hand with US security and intelligence teams, as well as the Indian intelligence.

Security ‘dry run’
“To ensure a seamless experience for our Pacific leaders, we will be conducting a dry run on Wednesday, May 17.

“This will involve running through the airport arrival procedures, as well as the routes from the Apec Terminal to the Apec Haus,” Tsiamalili said.

“We are expecting a full support team from the White House and the Indian Prime Minister’s office to accompany their respective leaders.”

The National Co-ordination Centre will be operating from Morauta House and will accommodate the different local agencies.

The Post-Courier understands that the airspace around APEC Haus will be closed to all aircraft while President Biden meets with Prime Minister James Marape and the leaders from the Pacific.

Security will also be tight at sea, with ships guarding around APEC Haus.

Sniper teams will be stationed around APEC Haus and the airport.

14 Pacific nations
Pacnews reports that the 14 Pacific island nations taking part are Cook Islands (current Pacific Island Forum chair), Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands,  Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

The forum between India and 14 Pacific island countries began in 2014, with India offering assistance to major projects.

They included the setting up of a US$1 million funding for adapting to climate change and clean energy; establishing a trade office in India; a Pan Pacific Islands e-network to improve digital connectivity; extending visa-on-arrival at Indian airports for the 14 countries; cooperation in space technology applications for improving the quality of life of the islands; and training diplomats from Pacific Island countries.

India also increased the annual grant-in-aid from US$125,000 to US$200,000 to each of the Pacific Island countries for community projects of their choice.