Everything you learned in high school civics class about how the US government operates is wrong. Maybe Schoolhouse Rock!, Scholastic Books and your teacher meant well. Maybe they were already commandeered and didn’t even know it. Or maybe they were maliciously trying to get you to buy into a smokescreen. Whatever the case, they were wrong.

Our government has three branches: executive, legislative and judicial. Technically speaking, the legislative branch is supposed to be supreme. Congress writes all the laws, and the other branches just apply them. The legislature is where the power is supposed to be. But is it? No.

Our government’s power really resides in the hands of the career bureaucrats who administer the application of the law throughout the various agencies of the executive branch. Many otherwise intelligent, powerful people seem not to know that this bureaucracy is part of the executive branch. They seem to believe it is its own branch.

The simple explanation is that power actually resides here because it matters much more who decides how the law is applied than how it is written. Police let speeders off with warnings despite them breaking traffic laws. District attorneys choose whether or not to prosecute depending on political goals instead of what the law explicitly says. It matters who decides how the law is applied and executed.

Unpunishable federal lethargy

Seven years ago, it was our priestly caste’s dogma that the deep state didn’t exist. Four years ago, they acknowledged it to exist but said it was inconsequential. Last month, they heralded it as the greatest thing. This phenomenon is called “celebration parallax.” It is where a phenomenon is first denied, then acknowledged but asserted to be unimportant, then celebrated as an ever-present, beneficial force.

The administrative state reveals itself in how the vast majority of the leaders running our supposedly democratic republic are completely unelected. They are accountable to no one but themselves and have interests diametrically contrary to its people. The 438 departments, agencies and sub-agencies of the executive branch employ roughly 4 million people. Almost none of their jobs are dependent on who won the last election. 

Proponents of the administrative state believe this is ideal. The administration trudges along, processing people’s paperwork all day, every day. However, many federal employees have a “property interest” in their jobs — their very employment is considered to be like property. Property cannot be taken by the government without due process. Since these workers are often unionized, and unions seek to keep their members employed, it is notoriously difficult for even the most despicable federal employee to be fired.

This all contributes to a do-nothing inertia, whereby the worker has every incentive to drag their feet on a task, and faces minimal chance of consequences for incompetence. The bureaucrats’ financial and political interests are different from ours — theirs rely on our continuing to be productive, while they have no incentive to be productive themselves. That’s the mindset of a farmer and his cows.

It’s abhorrent that millions hold these cushy government sinecures. As a competent, accomplished professional with a select set of skills, I’m revolted that my tax dollars pay an entire class of parasites to check a box on a form and then move it to a drawer. It’s maddening that we have to wait for them to sluggishly finish this process before we can achieve our own goals. I personally say the current administrative state — consisting of both the federal bureaucracy and the 50 parallel state ones — is uniquely oppressive compared to every government that has come before it. The Department of Motor Vehicles exercises more control over citizens, and in the most mind-numbing ways, than Nero ever could’ve over the Roman Empire.

How the total state conquered us

Only part of my problem with the administrative state is bloat and graft. This is more of a symptom than a root cause. The administrative state is terrible because it is a total state. The total state cannot tolerate competition — it must “red light, green light” everything within its jurisdiction. It does not grant that any other power has jurisdiction. The 438 executive agencies, departments and sub-departments administrate ever more of our lives. The number of life events that don’t involve the government’s permission or acknowledgment is rapidly shrinking. Family, business, religion, medicine, building, landscaping, hunting, et cetera have been ensnared in red tape. Tragedy of the commons or not, the total state cannot allow any of these parts of human living to go on as usual without administering them in some way.

How did this happen? It started with mere laziness on the part of Congress and the perennial truth that the government ever expands. The constitution tasks the executive branch with enforcing and executing the laws Congress makes. But the document provides precious little guidance about how it’s supposed to do that. The judicial branch helps some, but the “case or controversy” clause severely limits the federal judiciary’s proactivity. The judiciary can tell someone when they have done wrong but cannot warn them when they are about to do wrong. The constitution prohibits Congress from delegating its “essential legislative functions” to anyone else, and as much as it’d like to, it can’t put a hall monitor in everyone’s homes.

This left the executive branch with skeletons of tasks, no knowledge of how it’s supposed to execute them and no way to know it’s succeeded until after the fact. So the executive branch needed to enforce the law without being able to know how to do that, but could not take the authority to make public changes where Congress didn’t foresee how to do things. Their ad-hoc solution: rule-making!

Any time the government realized it needed to perpetuate itself into some new area of banal tyranny, it asked Congress to create a new department or agency. That agency then decided “rules” and interpreted and enforced them with its own agents and administrative law judges. This way, it could announce it was complying with the law.

What is the difference between a law and a rule here? Don’t ask questions.

No court battle can fix the problem

The other parts of the government are inordinately deferential to the administrative agencies thanks to the verdict of Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. NRDC, 467 U.S. 837. This established the doctrine of “Chevron Deference.” In brief, this 1984 Supreme Court ruling deterred the judiciary from prying into an executive agency’s actions unless absolutely necessary. I’m hopeful but unconvinced that the pending case of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo will upend Chevron Deference. Even if it does, it would make little difference; the inertia would remain.

No court case will undo the hackneyed despotism the agencies get up to every day. It could not without those agencies agreeing to kneecap themselves, which will never happen. The judiciary has no men at arms and no ability to enforce its judgments, even when it tells the executive it has gone too far. In the immortal words of Andrew Jackson, “[Justice] John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

Let’s presume that Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch successfully overturns Chevron Deference. An order is eventually issued saying all the sinecures are unconstitutional and hereby disestablished. No one from the Supreme Court will make the clerks and sub-vice-deputy-acting-director of whatever leave their cubicles, as there is no one to enforce it. Unlike previous Chief Justices, Chief Justice John Roberts is not regarded as a brave man who tangles with the other government branches. No, he prefers to guard the Court’s “legitimacy” by angering everyone equally rather than executing a particular vision of jurisprudence. These people won’t clean this mess.

The administrative state’s ludicrous bureaucracy sees the average person committing three unwitting felonies a day. If we are to be freed from this legal nightmare, more direct and assertive action needs to occur. We can look to Argentinian President Javier Milei for inspiration. When he took power in December 2023, he issued pink slips to half of Argentina’s government, collapsed agencies and departments and damned the consequences. This didn’t solve the country’s problems overnight, but sometimes ripping off the proverbial bandage is a critical step. 

The United States’s wound is much larger than Argentina’s. Implementing a radical reform on par with Milei’s would be painful. But it should be done, because the situation will only worsen with time. Government is neither solid nor liquid, but a gas — it expands to fill the available space. The administrative state will expand and administrate more and more available space, creating more absurd agencies and dystopian policies. How would you feel if someday a hypothetical Department of Respiration texted you, claiming you’ve exceeded your allotted breaths for the day and your taxes will reflect the increased carbon credits you’re using?

This farce needs to end. Any pain we suffer now is worthwhile if it helps us avoid that dystopian future. Who will pick up the crown laying in the gutter and gut the administrative state?

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post America Is a Bureaucratic Nightmare. We Need to Break Free. appeared first on Fair Observer.

“In terms of a grade, I would give it an A-plus for what it’s trying to do, but obviously an incomplete because they’re just starting. So, the devil will be in the execution details,” Fisher said during an interview with Wharton Business Daily on SiriusXM.

The new White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience was announced last month as part of nearly 30 new actions to strengthen supply chains described as critical to economic and national security. The actions include using the Defense Production Act to increase domestic manufacturing of essential medicines, along with a number of administrative measures to share data and develop a better strategy to deal with the types of disruptions that left store shelves bare during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic has subsided, yet the shortages persist, raising concerns about offshoring and higher prices amid dwindling supplies. From 2021 to 2022, retail food prices rose by 11%, the largest increase in 40 years, according to government data.

Fisher, a professor in the department of operations, information and decisions, said Biden’s plan is a bit of a “novel approach” to attacking inflation. Typically, the Federal Reserve takes the lead on combating inflation by raising interest rates to temper demand. The Fed has raised the benchmark rate 11 times since 2022.

“What is inflation? It’s an imbalance between supply and demand,” he said. “So far, we’ve focused on reducing demand. But this gives us a second approach: Let’s make sure also that we improve supply by avoiding disruptions to supply chains.”

What production is essential?

Offshoring has always been around, but it became widespread across industries in the late 1970s when China began investing in low-cost manufacturing, Fisher said.

“Instead of getting something from 100 miles away, you’re getting it from halfway around the world. And that’s when you realize that it’s low-cost, but it’s also very vulnerable,” he said. Factories can shutter for a host of reasons — natural and man-made disasters, war, political instability, the list goes on.

Bringing more production back to the US would help with shortages, but Fisher said the new council will have a tough time figuring out what products are so essential that they should be made on American soil. He described himself as a “skeptic” on domestic manufacturing and pointed out the many advantages of participating in the global economy. Trading with other nations creates allies and builds influence. In that context, Fisher said, the US has more to gain from being friends with China than enemies. The same goes for many Central and South American nations from which immigrants come seeking greater economic opportunity.

“There’s a saying that when trade crosses country boundaries, armies don’t,” he said. “A critique I have of generally bringing manufacturing home to the US is there are also advantages to sourcing from other countries and having strong relationships with as many countries as we can.”

Fisher is also critical of what’s missing in Biden’s plan: specific mention of the less developed nations that make much of the world’s goods, such as Bangladesh. Instead, Canada, Mexico, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan and several other developed economies are named.

“When I look at the list of countries involved in this initiative, I would add to that list less developed nations, which are important to developed nations as a source of low-cost supply,” he said.

Supply resilience is in vogue

Fisher has spent more than 35 years studying supply chains, examining industries as diverse as transportation and fashion. Before joining Wharton in 1975, Fisher was a systems engineer in the Boston Manufacturing and Distribution Sales office of IBM and on the faculty of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He doesn’t recall a time during his experience when supply chains were part of daily conversations among Americans as they are now. Recent product shortages of antibiotics, baby formula, computer chips that power most electronics, and other everyday items have people talking.

“Be careful what you wish for,” he said with a chuckle. “All my career, I’ve pretty much labored in obscurity, studying supply chains. Suddenly, it became front-page news, but not exactly good news.”

[Knowledge at Wharton first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why Sturdy Supply Chains Are Key to Fighting Inflation appeared first on Fair Observer.

The song has a curious history. María Grever, a Mexican composer, originally composed it. She gave it the Spanish title “Cuando vuelva a tu lado” (When I Return to Your Side). It got its current title when it was adapted to English. For two decades, “What a Difference a Day Makes” lived on the sidelines as a somewhat recognizable tune. In 1944, the title achieved some limited popularity thanks to Mexican-American singer Andy Russell’s bilingual version, which made it to number 15 in the charts.

In the dawning age of the transistor radio, Dinah Washington’s 1959 R&B version became a top ten hit. That sealed its reputation as a song every serious singer and jazz musician had to learn to perform. From then on, popular singers from Frank Sinatra to Dean Martin, Bobby Darin, Natalie Cole, Rod Stewart, Cher and many, many others made it part of their repertoire.

Why bring up this bit of curious US folklore 90 years later?

There are moments when history stalls and others where it accelerates. We now have the leisure to put 2023 in the rearview mirror. Future historians will almost certainly see it as a year of historical acceleration. A bit like 1959, a time when everything seemed to be on a fairly even, predictable keel for those who were living through it.

Political history follows similar patterns to cultural history. They both change over time, in ways that those living through the transitional moments fail to perceive. The practices as well as the tastes of the past often disappear and may even appear to the following generations as incomprehensible. The vagaries of popular music, especially in our consumer society, offer serious matter for reflection.

The commercial music scene has changed radically over the past six decades, as it already had between 1934 and 1959. For many commentators on US culture, the latter date represents the crucial moment when a shift took place from postwar puritanism and buttoned-down conformity to the liberation of the sixties, with the hippies, the Civil Rights movement, the sexual revolution and the golden age of a rock’n’roll, a US invention transformed and brought up to date by British artists.

The 1998 movie Pleasantville appears to take place in 1959, judging from its use of Miles Davis’s “So What” as background music for one scene. All jazz musicians acknowledge that Davis’s album “Kind of Blue” literally changed the nature of jazz. The movie’s director and producers in 1998 were obviously aware of that. 

Pleasantville follows two youths who are magically transported from the 90s to the title town in the 50s. They disturb the innocent residents with their relatively uninhibited manners. The 1950s scenes in the movie were filmed in black and white. When manners and morals began changing midway through the movie, the filming changes to technicolor. For the producers, that symbolized how Americans visualize that transitional moment in their culture. Things would never be the same after that. 

A tale of two decades (the fifties and sixties)

The cable TV series Mad Men (2007), focused on Madison Avenue’s advertising industry in the sixties, ran for eight years. Picking up where Pleasantville left off, the first episode begins in 1960, the start of a new and radically different decade that would transform the 1950s’ consumerist culture into something wildly different.

Mad Men builds its drama around the careers of high-achieving advertising executives. The plot is regularly punctuated by historical and cultural events. These include two Kennedy assassinations, war in Vietnam, a moon landing, drugs, the deaths of MLK and Marilyn Monroe, and all the other excitement of the times kicked off in the decade that followed that seminal year of 1959. Both works look back at the rapid metamorphosis that American culture underwent in those decades.

All this is to say that some years do make a difference. 1959 was one of those years. So, I maintain, is 2023. Something, or indeed many things possibly equally significant happened in this past year. When producers of Hollywood and TV dramas three or four decades from now look back at 2023, they may have a similar impression. There will nevertheless be a significant  difference. This time around it isn’t just US culture that is transitioning. It’s global culture 

What will 2023 be remembered for? Here are seven of the most obvious things. Future historians will certainly find others.

— The continuation of a violent and, in the likely view of future
historians, senseless and avoidable war in Eastern Europe, which
has already changed the shape of international relations.

— The start of another absurd and even more tragic war in Gaza that
is likely to have even greater historical consequences.

— The invasion of a group, not so much of body snatchers as mind
snatchers, led by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, with a
slew of others on their way.

— The visible beginnings of the dedollarization movement
accelerated by the expansion of BRICS (an intergovernmental
organization named for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South
Africa).

— The consolidation of the notion of “the Global South” in our
everyday vocabulary.

— The predictable growing momentum of another more-
traumatizing-than-ever US presidential campaign leading up to
the November 2024 election,

— Gathering evidence that this really is Cold War 2.0. This time,
though, there are two hot wars that have the potential to spark
World War III and a nuclear war, whose specter haunted my
generation’s youth during the original Cold War.

As the year 2024 approaches — seated atop “time’s winged chariot hurrying” ever nearer, in the words of Andrew Marvell — the real question concerns how the tense plot of all these abruptly begun, ambiguously evolving and clearly unfinished events will wend towards some kind of acceptable denouement or a more traumatizing development.

Ranking years past

As we look back at recent history, 2016 stands as a landmark year that saw Brexit and Donald Trump’s rise to the US presidency. Trump had the effect of putting history itself in a state of suspended animation before the unanticipated invasion of COVID-19. 2020 stood out as the year of the pandemic, marking the confusion of a clueless, globalized world that suddenly woke up to the reality that it had no idea how it had found itself in this predicament and even less about how to respond appropriately.

As Joe Biden assumed the throne of the 75-year-old “rules-based international order,” 2021 turned out to be a year of building suspense, as a new shift to normalized behavior was announced. The major event of that year was the US withdrawal from a 20-year engagement in Afghanistan, which momentarily seemed to reduce the tension. But the building pressure — some of it deviously planned — exploded in February 2022 with the war in Ukraine.

A new year has now begun. Between wars and crucial elections at various points of the globe, 2024 is likely to be loaded with drama that dwarfs that of the previous years. Anything can happen. None of it looks as if it will be easy to manage.

Anyone in the media should know by now that high drama is good for business. Catastrophic drama is great for business. The hyperreal shenanigans associated with Donald Trump’s election and presidency, including his chaotic exit from the White House, enabled the media to live off five full years of a manufactured, worthy-of-Hollywood scenario called Russiagate. That was mostly comedy, but in February 2022 it morphed into global tragedy as the already deeply detested Russia invaded Ukraine. 

In 2024, there will be new drama. At Fair Observer, we are intent on covering it from multiple perspectives to avoid being captured by only one narrative. We will need your help more than ever. We need the insights and direct testimony of our authors, which potentially includes all of you. But, most importantly of all, we need you to keep thinking. In the dawning age of AI, human thinking will be our most precious asset.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post “What a Difference a Year Makes”: Looking Back at 2023 appeared first on Fair Observer.

Paul Krugman wrote last year how “Zombie Reaganomics” continues to infect the brains of Republican politicians in the United States. I’d like here to promote two additional policy notions to similar “zombie” status. First, the idea that widespread sanctions can drive regime change under autocratic governments. And second, that expanding Internet access can achieve the same.

Of course, these two levers of political control appear quite different on the surface. The Internet is a positive force in the world allowing for increased communication and information — something I do believe, despite my pessimistic views to follow. Meanwhile, sanctions, as even one conservative-libertarian think tank recently argued, are increasingly seen as both “ineffective and immoral” means of punishing governments deemed unsavory.

But some policymakers and pundits today, especially in the United States, seem to think both increasing Internet availability and sanctions can still do good for the citizens of their target countries. See for instance, US Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. They recently co-sponsored Senate bills and amendments urging the US to fund expanded Internet access on the island of Cuba. Scott and Rubio carefully positioned this advocacy as coming from a place of care for the wellbeing of the Cuban people. In December 2020, Rubio issued a statement demanding the US work harder “to protect the fundamental rights of Cubans.”

Yet only six months later, the same senator urged the Biden administration to increase sanctions against the Cuban government — in effect, against the very same people whose “fundamental rights” he says he wants to protect. 

How is it possible for one person to both wish to expand Cuban sanctions and Cuban Internet access? Presumably, Rubio hopes these things will magically lead to more freedom for Cubans, despite mounting evidence neither can do so. I believe there’s a Cranberries song for that.

These zombie ideas have proven false nearly everywhere in the world, but there’s a great deal of evidence this is especially true for Cuba. So let’s separately examine the impacts of the Internet and sanctions on autocratic governments, and then see how the two have played out together in Cuba over the past several years to disastrous effect.

Comparison shopping

An idea has persisted throughout the politics, media and tech space for decades that the Internet inevitably leads to democracy in places with autocratic regimes. As Thomas Friedman wrote in his 1999 book The Lexus and the Olive Tree:

On the Internet people are … uploading and downloading ideologies. In a few years, every citizen of the world will be able to comparison shop between his country and his own government and the one next door.

Since Friedman wrote these words, the Internet has expanded and changed in too many ways to count. The hope that social media and the Internet might lead to enduring political change has changed with it, as can be seen most prevalently in the hopeful run-up to, and then subsequent disappointment, of the variously named Twitter, Facebook, Arab Spring and WikiLeaks “revolutions.” Entire books have been published examining how the Internet has helped fuel protest movements and then, more often than not, helped repressive regimes crush them — and then allowed these same regimes to strengthen grips on power, tightening government palms over civilian mouths.

In fact, as James Griffiths argues in his book The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet, US rhetoric about Internet freedoms has even helped strengthen autocratic governments by validating claims of US imperialism. Griffiths points to a situation in 2010 in which the government of China pointed at US efforts in Iran’s “Twitter Revolution” to justify its own Internet controls. He cites Yu Wanli, an expert on US–China relations, who explained to US diplomats that pro-Internet rhetoric, like that of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “empowered the censors, ‘who could now plausibly argue that the United States was explicitly using the Internet as a tool for regime change.’”

We can see another example of Internet evangelistic backfire in the deployment of ZunZuneo, a Twitter-like app secretly created and deployed in Cuba by the United States Agency for International Development. After the app made headlines, NPR asked, “Was ZunZuneo to Promote Free Speech or Destabilize Cuba?” To some extent, the answer doesn’t matter — either way, the incident created a credible intervention the Cuban government could point to in making claims of US imperialism. As Jon Lee Anderson wrote, “Episodes like ZunZuneo will only make the Cuban security state more paranoid and more fearful of opening up, and the losers will be the Cuban people.”

As for sanctions, a mounting body of evidence shows they tend to succeed in anything but preserving the “fundamental rights” of citizens. As the Center for Economic and Policy Research documented extensively in a recent paper, 30 separate studies have found sanctions negatively affect “per capita income to poverty, inequality, mortality, and human rights.” 

A 2018 UN estimate found the US embargo of Cuba in particular had cost the Cuban economy a phenomenal $130 billion over the course of nearly sixty years, a figure which has surely risen since. William LeoGrande, professor and former dean of the American University’s School of Public Affairs, writes that the embargo is “the oldest and most comprehensive US economic sanctions regime against any country in the world,” and that it “has never been effective at achieving its principal purpose: forcing Cuba’s revolutionary regime out of power or bending it to Washington’s will.” My co-host and I discussed the ongoing failure of America’s Cuba sanctions on our podcast with policy expert Rob Morris, who also discussed the devastating cruelty and failure of sanctions around the world earlier in the year.

To be clear, I’m no apologist for the Cuban government. But it is evident that, as we approach the 65th year of the island’s US sanctions without any semblance of the regime change they first promised, we should finally find a way to retire them. 

A case study of Cuba

Now with the Internet, we can see the reality of the world… before it was just Cuba, but now we see on the Internet, England, France. We think ‘what the f—?!’ People are unhappy.

I heard this in Havana in May 2023 from Elizabeth, a waitress in her twenties. And I heard similar attitudes from others I met too — sentiments much different from my first visit to Cuba, seven years earlier. When I told a young man, José, that it was my second visit to the island, he replied with a resigned tone. “Oh, so you know. Things were much better then.”

What could have led to such a visible change in Cuban attitudes toward life on the island — a change large enough to allow Cubans to share their negative opinions of the country with me, a visiting stranger, despite their government’s intolerance of dissent?

A few salient events are worth noting:

— In 2017, Donald Trump entered the US White House and
promptly reversed much of the economic normalization pursued
by Obama. Joe Biden entered the US presidency in 2021 and
has maintained most (though not all) of Trump’s Cuba policies. 

— In 2019, Cuba’s state-run telecommunications company, ETECSA,
finally began allowing the purchase of 4G data. This marked a
crucial opening in Internet access for the average Cuban, which
until then had primarily been confined to high-cost, low-speed
wifi hotspots in public parks.

— In 2020, the Covid pandemic wreaked havoc on Cuba’s tourism
industry and economy. This was soon followed by a sharp
currency devaluation, soaring food prices and one of the highest
inflation rates in Latin America.

— On July 11, 2021, Cubans staged the largest protest movement on
the island in decades — protests which locals say were fueled by
social media, an idea corroborated by Freedom House. In
response, the Cuban government arrested over 1,000 protesters,
killed at least one and “disappeared” and detained hundreds for
weeks. Internet access on the island was also completely shut for
days after the July 11 protests.

So, we can observe all the elements here of the zombie ideas that some say should lead to protest and regime change under a government traditionally averse to it — strict sanctions, a rapid deterioration of living conditions, and rapid expansion of the Internet and information access. 

All the underlying conditions are there. But where’s the change?

It’s not as though Cubans are naïve. I was told by a man working as a Havana tour guide, “Cuba is not like China, where they have the technology to control the Internet. If the Internet cuts out when you’re talking with a friend, the first thing you wonder is, ‘Where is the protest now?'” 

But they also see what the government is doing, arresting and otherwise “disappearing” dissenters. And so many I met, rather than endanger their lives and livelihoods by continuing to try to change the government, are opting instead to do what many other rational people would in their same situations: leave.

“I don’t want the same life as my parents,” Elizabeth told me. She said she’d like to go to Mexico first, and then “maybe somewhere else.”

José, who recognized how much worse things had become in the country since 2016, told me he has a grandfather in Spain and would like to get a “red [European] passport” within the year. Then he’d be gone too.

So we can see in Cuba a seemingly tight and tragic causal circle: 

1. Sanctions immiserate a civilian population.

2. Internet access helps the population recognize and share their sense
of immiseration, and perhaps even bind together to protest
conditions.

3. The civilian government shows an unwillingness to tolerate this
shared sense of immiseration and protest and works to quash
dissent.

4. Members of the population who are able, rather than risk life and
livelihood trying to change a government unwilling to change,
give up and decide to leave.

There’s a fifth, and especially tragic, link in this chain. At least in the situation of Cuba, record numbers of refugees have fled to the US in recent years — surely at least in part because of the sanctions that have helped make life untenable there and the Internet that has raised awareness of this general untenability. We can see the same Rubio who has pushed for sanctions and increased Internet in Cuba to “protect the fundamental rights of Cubans” also pushing for their exile and working to block access to Cuban refugee benefits, ultimately pushing the US government to forcibly expel large numbers of the Cuban refugee population back to Cuba — back to the government and country they were trying so hard to leave.

A failed tactic

Does Internet access ever lead to regime change? Sadly, the answer seems to be no. Or at least not yet, and not in the long term.

We can see this in Cuba, as I’ve outlined above. The Internet can perhaps even help protests bond together, but the idea that protest movements will change governments hinges on an assumption of democratic responsiveness. And the places where policymakers and pundits focus their hopes on Internet-driven revolution are almost always countries lacking just this — indeed, a dearth of democratic responsiveness is the very reason for much of the focus on Internet and sanctions in those places to begin with.

This is perhaps no better summed up than by Elizabeth, the waitress I met in Havana this spring. Because of the Internet, she says, “the government has less power over the people.” But when I asked if she thought the government would change as a result, she rolled her eyes, and stifled a laugh. “Change anything? No!”

I, in fact, largely agree with Friedman’s claim over 20 years ago that the Internet will allow “every citizen of the world …  to comparison shop between his country and his own government and the one next door.” But it’s evident from all that’s occurred since that this “comparison shopping” won’t usually lead to new and better governments for those citizens, it only means they’ll either grumble through it or leave that “store”, their country, for another, better one. And then hope that country doesn’t deport them.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Sanctions and Internet Access Will Fail to Promote Regime Change appeared first on Fair Observer.

This is no small point. It is the rule of law and the attendant consent of the governed to be bound by it that provides the foundation for effective governance. At last check, humans have not come up with a better organizational plan. Good government requires functioning institutions and infrastructure, with some measure of public acceptance of outcomes determined within a predetermined, procedural framework. That framework is the foundation for the rule of law in any well-governed society.

Trump fanatics undermine America’s institutions

As always, America is confronted with serious challenges at home and abroad. Yet breathless, breaking news routinely unfolds in a definitional vacuum. Information is provided before an acceptable vocabulary has been developed. As an ongoing example, most Republican Party voters and a pandering party leadership still act as if former President Donald Trump was the legitimate victor in a presidential election decided three years ago. An audience of sycophants at the initial Republican Party presidential debate booed the notion of public accountability for wrongdoing. Meanwhile, the candidates on stage declared fealty to the lucky guy with 91 felony charges to his name.

A significant portion of the population seems to think that he is currently the legitimate President of the United States under siege from a venal pretender. So any effort to promote understanding of ongoing developments in Trump’s political, social, legal and financial saga is doomed to failure. The unfolding political and social morass must be addressed without any expectation that our self-touted governmental institutions are prepared to define and enforce an upstanding rule of law grounded in a moral and ethical consensus. There simply is no consensus. This void critically undermines institutional integrity and societal cohesion.

The government’s broken branches

Another current millstone around America’s collective neck is the US Supreme Court. It is a historically flawed but previously respected institution, now reduced to a predictable cesspool of white Christian nationalist orthodoxy. Then, just to make sure that the underprivileged and marginalized fully get the message, there is a palpable overlay of that orthodoxy with old school privilege-begets-privilege rationale. To say the least, the Supreme Court majority rampage of recent years seems purposefully designed to provide legal cover for the worst that America can be.

This is morally dispiriting and makes a mockery of a rule of law that requires aspirational public acceptance to survive. Added to the Court’s decay is an unsuitable ethos, one which greatly resembles an ethos that abounds in the private sector but should never hold sway in the public sphere. Privilege has thrived as a cancer within. Instead of running like the highest court in the land empowered as one of three separate governmental branches, the Supreme Court today operates more like a runaway corporate board of directors. So there will not be much help there.

Yet the Supreme Court is but one failing branch of government. Congressional dysfunction and the poisonous role of corporate, religious and cultural influence peddling in the halls of Congress has only added to the degrading impact of the Court’s recent rulings and its ethical void. You end up with two branches of the government now hopelessly compromised and openly operating outside the confines of a rule of law that should be at the core of their mission. This further erodes the realization of a national moral and ethical consensus.

Amendments are corrupted

The current disconnect between justice fortified by a rule of law and the moral and ethical consensus necessary to give it vitality has profoundly contributed to wildly divergent “moral and ethical” perspectives. This is well illustrated in the national response to the gun carnage that is all around us every day. It makes a mockery of common sense that in 1791, America’s Founding Fathers would have enshrined in the Constitution an amendment that foreshadowed modern issues. They did not envision the armaments of today, the avarice of the arms merchants and the utterly insane thought that the nation’s security would best be protected by an obscene stockpile of firearms in civilian hands.

But here we are, stuck with an institutional void incapable of defining and driving a national moral and ethical consensus to end the carnage. Never mind the constitutionally-enshrined right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that is being butchered. There is no Supreme Court, judicial system or Congress to pull us out of it. And even if there were an executive branch with a moral and ethical compass — and there may be — the institutional dysfunction of the judicial and legislative branches is routinely undermining the executive capacity of the nation. Add to this the systemic absence of transparent and fair accountability for almost anything, and it should be no surprise that societal discord will fill the void.

Using gun carnage fueled by some morally-bankrupt interpretation of ancient text as an illustration requires little imagination. It poses well the consequences of the nation’s institutional failure to respond. Now fast-forward for a moment. A nation paralyzed by the Second Amendment is about to be further paralyzed by the First Amendment and its “free speech” guarantees.

Again, the fundamental rule of law will be the loser. Already the cherished but ill-defined right to free speech is being bastardized by those seeking to ban for others what they wish to exploit for themselves. Legally, you cannot shout “fire” in a crowded theater and then cover yourself with First Amendment free speech guarantees to avoid responsibility for the resulting damage. However, in today’s America, the retrograde right is fostering the notion that you can publicly shout venal lies to move a crowd to violence while under cover of that ever-popular First Amendment protection.

One bastardized amendment is already killing tens of thousands of our citizens a year, so just imagine the harm that the bastardization of another key amendment could do. And then line up the Fourteenth Amendment and its panoply of due process guarantees, and it is easy to envision an America in which fundamental legal principles are turned on their heads to ensure a dark national future. We never seem to learn.

I would like to end this with some charming homily of hope, but I will leave that to the flag-bearers. The rest of us must accept the challenge of defining for the future a moral and ethical foundation for the present. Without this foundation, there can be no rule of law. Without the rule of law, there can be no nation worth defending.

[Hard Left Turn first published this piece.]
[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post America’s Important Rule of Law is Floundering appeared first on Fair Observer.

Like members of Congress, federal judges are divided. According to the National Constitution Center, the Supreme Court’s nine justices are presently six Republicans and three Democrats. Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of such partisanship. A 2022 Pew Research survey found that 84% of American adults overwhelmingly hold that the Supreme Court justices “should not bring their own political views into how they decide cases.”

What You Need to Know About the US Congress

Furthermore, the judiciary is filled with incompetent individuals who favor the rich as the poor and minorities remain their victims. It was not surprising when the infamous 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission enabled corporate entities, wealthy institutions and individuals to donate unlimited money to elections. Consequently, politicians, especially presidents, have become the puppets of the rich in their struggle to finance their campaigns. Not only this, but some of them have become puppets of foreign states. The contributions of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to political campaigns in support of Israel and stopping those who think America first are well known.

AIPAC has also opposed any attempt by the US to negotiate with Iran, and continuously pushes for sanctions and hostilities against that nation. In reaction, Iran has finally put de-dollarization in motion globally. Thanks to AIPAC. So begins the fall of US hegemony worldwide.

How Good Is the US Policy on Iran, Really?

Americans are looking at a stark future. The Supreme Court’s decisions are often tyrannical and devoid of moral values. Its extreme-right majority is now poised to roll back many “long-standing rights and laws.”

What do you really know about the US Supreme Court?

As for the US Constitution, Article III, Section 1 establishes that the US judicial power is vested in “one supreme Court” and that judges hold their office on “good Behaviour.” Going back to the precedent set by George Washington in nominating John Jay as the first Chief Justice, “good Behaviour” has meant that Justices must be patriots and high caliber jurists, known for integrity and impartiality.

While there is no mention of “checks and balances” in the Constitution, the principle is implicit in many of its provisions. Federal judges are appointed by the President, but the Senate must approve them. The Supreme Court may declare presidential actions or Congressional legislation illegal, but Congress can override them by changing the law or even proposing to amend the Constitution. The House of Representatives, furthermore, impeach executive officers and federal judges, including the President and Supreme Court justices.

In 1803 Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court established its authority to void actions of the executive and legislative branches found “repugnant to the constitution.” Over time, the Supreme Court has miserably evaded its responsibility to do so and keep those branches in check. The Congress has frequently delegated more and more of its constitutional power to the President, and the Supreme Court has not objected but colluded with the Congress, enabling “legislative distortion.” In doing so, the Supreme Court and the Congress have undermined the constitutional ideal of a balance of power. 

The framers of the US Constitution created it in order to “establish Justice.” The 14th Amendment clearly states that no State can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” However, the US has never lived up to its commitment. The bigotry peaked in the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford when the Supreme Court excluded “enslaved people” from US citizenship.

As for the “equal justice under law,” the recent arrest and arraignment of the former President Donald Trump shows how that has been turned upside down. Unlike others, Trump was treated with respect, including escort through a private corridor and not being handcuffed or subjected to a mugshot. 

Like Congress, the Supreme Court has also given in to the expansion of presidential power. The President issues executive orders at will, “instant laws” passed without Congressional approval. The Supreme Court could overturn them but has chosen to do nothing. In other words, the court has practically become a politically rubber-stamp for the other two branches. 

Is the US Presidency Actually a Powerful Dictatorship?

The reason is clear. Presidential nominations, especially those for the Supreme Court, have become increasingly political. Presidents have been appointing party loyalists to such positions. In 1991, George H.W. Bush nominated the infamous Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. The Senate confirmed his nomination, despite attorney Anita Hill’s extensive testimony of Thomas’s sexual misconduct. Now, Thomas is in hot water for violating the court’s own judicial ethics. Trump sparked outrage when he nominated Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of attempted rape, but Brett was also confirmed.

The Supreme Court has become incorrigibly corrupt. The justices have used their judicial positions to enhance their private interests. While on the Supreme Court, Justice Louis Brandeis promoted Zionism and advised President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Zionism-related issues. Meanwhile, for decades up to the present-day, Justice Clarence Thomas has been taking vacations paid for by a billionaire.

A culture of injustice

The Supreme Court’s corruption and incompetence have taken their toll. The US suffers from endemic male chauvinism, racism, nepotism, and deceit. It continues to have the world’s highest criminal incarceration rate, including a disproportionate number of Black and Native Americans, whom police likewise disproportionately abuse and murder. The US has the world’s most mass shootings, about 5 times that of Russia, which comes second to the US. The shooters are 74% white, nicely treated by police, and seldom die unless they commit suicide. Black, Latino and Asian shooters rarely live to see the next day. Harassment and abuse of Hispanics, migrant workers and asylum seekers by authorities have become common affairs. Women, as well, are still treated unequally.

Although females constitute the majority in the US, they continue to be discriminated against. Female prisoners in the US are sexually harassed with impunity. Violence against women and girls remains widespread and alarming. Gun violence remains high across the country, and their biggest victims are women. Assaults on Native American women and girls continue to be substantially more frequent compared to assaults on other US women. As for wages, the “gender pay gap” persists, with women making 17% less than men doing the same jobs.

Judicial incompetence has put the US on the path of revolution. It has frustrated and polarized Americans, with many of them living in anger. Over 32% of the wealth is possessed by the wealthiest 1%. Over 11% of Americans live below the poverty level and 60% “live paycheck-to-paycheck.” It was in this environment that Trump could manipulate the oppressed into the January 6 insurrection. 

The Truth About US Democracy

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court is not representative of democracy. Its judges are not elected by the people but nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, neither of which is representative of democracy, considering the US population.

The court’s degenerated status was summed up by a former judge. On March 11, 2020 in a letter to the US Chief Justice John Roberts, former Hawaii State Judge James Dannenberg resigned from the Supreme Court Bar. Addressing Roberts, he wrote, “You are allowing the Court to become an ‘errand boy’ for an administration that has little respect for the rule of law.” He noted that the Supreme Court was moving towards limiting freedom in favor of “wealthy, Republican, White, straight, Christian, and armed males—and the corporations they control.” He ended his letter by saying, “I no longer have respect for you or your majority, and I have little hope for change. I can’t vote you out of office because you have life tenure, but I can withdraw whatever insignificant support my Bar membership might seem to provide.”

What You Need to Know About the US Presidency

Time for the US to Reform

The Supreme Court is riddled with corruption and incompetence. This is not sustainable in the long run, as we saw in the 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol building. At the very least, two steps must be taken:

1. The justices must take an oath of allegiance to carry out impartial justice, not to serve Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, white or non-white sectors.
2. The court must develop an “ethics code” to provide the judges with sensible standards for conducting themselves.

If the US doesn’t get its own house in order soon, another insurrection is inevitable.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The US Supreme Court’s Credibility Is at Its Absolutely Lowest Level appeared first on Fair Observer.

The debt ceiling in the United States originated from the need to control government spending and ensure fiscal responsibility. Initially, Congress had to authorize each new batch of debt issued, a cumbersome process that was modified with the passage of the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917. This act established an aggregate amount, or debt ceiling, to govern the total debt to be issued. Since World War II, the debt ceiling has been adjusted over 100 times to accommodate the country’s evolving financial needs.

The concept of a debt ceiling, however, itself poses logical inconsistencies. All federal government spending is already authorized by Congress, making it contradictory to prevent the Treasury Department from raising the necessary debt to fund these authorized expenditures. In other words, Congress forbids spending which it has already mandated. Reaching the debt limit forces the government to choose between not fulfilling previously agreed obligations or defaulting on existing debt service. Either of these would be a violation of obligations established by law, and would therefore have severe implications for the US economy.

Implications of reaching the limit

Reaching the debt ceiling carries significant implications for the US economy. It can lead to a government shutdown, disrupt essential services, and even result in default on financial obligations, jeopardizing the nation’s creditworthiness. Credit rating agencies closely monitor debt ceiling debates. If they were to downgrade the federal government’s credit rating, this would increase borrowing costs and undermine investor confidence. Uncertainty surrounding the debt ceiling, even if it is not eventually reached, also introduces volatility into financial markets and can impact global economic stability.

An Outstanding Deep Dive Into the American Economy

Government default entails the non-payment of interest or principal on its obligations. This triggers a credit event that has far-reaching consequences. Individuals and institutions relying on government funds would not receive payments. Credit default swaps (CDSs)—insurance contracts taken out against credit events—would be triggered, potentially causing financial difficulties for institutions which have written CDSs. Rating agencies would downgrade the US credit rating, impacting other borrowers, and Treasury securities would no longer serve as acceptable collateral for institutional borrowing, leading to a collapse of credit availability, choking the economy and leading to a severe contraction.

Rating agencies such as Fitch and Standard & Poor’s have expressed concerns about the United States’ credit rating, despite the recent agreement on the debt ceiling. A potential downgrade could have implications not only for the US but also for all other borrowers whose credit rating is usually influenced by the sovereign rating. With the US bond market dominating global markets, the loss of the anchor role of US Treasuries, which form a substantial part of institutional portfolios worldwide, could create disarray in international bond markets.

Partisan shenanigans and a borrowing spree

The debt ceiling has become a contentious political issue in recent decades, with both major parties sharing responsibility for substantial increases in outstanding debt. The threat of a debt default has often been used as a bargaining tool in political negotiations. However, neither party wants to bear the blame for driving the country into a crisis, resulting in a risky game of chicken in which each party attempts to see who will budge first and agree to concessions favorable to the other party’s spending policy. This raises questions about whether the debate really revolves around the debt itself. The recent deal, featuring a suspension of the debt limit, essentially provides the Treasury the freedom to borrow as much money as needed until January 2025—a carte blanche.

The government’s account at the Federal Reserve, the Treasury General Account (TGA), has almost been depleted. It will have to be replenished to 600 billion US dollars (it peaked at 1.8 trillion US dollars during the pandemic). Those funds will have to be raised by raising additional debt—on top of money needed to fund the current federal fiscal deficit of around 2 trillion dollars. As I mentioned in a previous article, it is not apparent who would buy that amount of Treasury securities. The Federal Reserve might be forced to reverse its plan to slowly shrink its balance sheet, having to absorb additional government debt.

Who Will Buy America’s Debt Now?

After borrowing 726 billion dollars during the second quarter of 2023, the Treasury Department expects to raise another 733 billion dollars in the following quarter. Total government debt is hence guaranteed to continue rising at a fast pace. Having briefly been arrested at 31.4 trillion dollars (the amount of the debt ceiling), federal debt is expected to exceed 50 trillion dollars by 2033. The exponential growth of government debt is going to continue unabated.

The spending bill includes some mild cuts of non-military discretionary spending in 2024, and a limit of all discretionary spending in 2025. Military spending, however, will increase further, to 886 billion US dollars in 2024, and 895 billion in 2025, a 23% increase over the amount spent in 2022.

The bill’s drafters found other devices to cut costs. 20 billion dollars originally awarded to the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) to fight tax evasion will be clawed back. The bill imposes new requirements for adults to maintain access to food stamps. It also ends the freeze on student loan repayments. In short: money taken from the poor is being given to the military and to people crafting “innovative” tax returns.

Hidden under the surface-level negotiations was a fight over permit reform. Local governments had the ability to block interstate pipelines and electricity lines by dragging out the permitting process. Alternative energy companies need new transmission lines to transport energy produced by wind and solar farms towards population centers near the coasts. Fossil fuel companies need pipelines to move abundant natural gas from sparsely populated areas with shale reservoirs towards the big cities or harbors for export. In the end, the Mountain Valley Pipeline, bringing natural gas from the Marcellus shale fields in West Virginia to Virginia, made it into the bill, securing Senator Joe Manchin’s vote.

A proposal to end recurring debt ceiling drama

US lawmakers recognize the insanity of recurring debt ceiling debates, especially since it is a question of funding spending that has already been authorized by Congress once.

One option contemplates a bureaucratic rather than a legislative solution. This would involve the Treasury Department disregarding the debt ceiling and continuing to issue debt. The perspective finds support in the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which states that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law…shall not be questioned.” However, pursuing such a unilateral move could result in a legal dispute and potentially generate still more uncertainty.

Another suggestion entails the Treasury minting a platinum coin with a denomination of 1 trillion US dollars, as it is legally permitted to do. This coin would then be deposited with the Federal Reserve in exchange for a credit of 1 trillion dollars. However, Treasury Secretary Yellen has dismissed this idea, noting that the Federal Reserve is unlikely to agree to such a proposal.

It is worth noting that the US government has in fact experienced instances of default in the past. Esteemed Wall Street veteran Jim Grant argues that a default can occur through a unilateral change in payment terms, resulting in a diminished financial obligation, such as forced currency redenomination. Two events over the past century align with this definition. Firstly, the devaluation of the dollar relative to gold under US President Roosevelt in 1933, when the gold price was raised from $20.67 to $35 per ounce. Secondly, the “temporary” suspension, which has since become permanent, of the dollar’s convertibility into gold by US President Nixon in 1971.

In reality, persistent inflation can be viewed as another form of default, albeit spread out over many years. Over time, the US dollar has lost approximately 97% of its purchasing power since the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913. While the dollar remains an effective medium of exchange, it has proven to be a poor long-term store of value due to the erosion of its purchasing power through inflation.

If spending is not controlled, the government will find one way or another of making ends meet, and all too often it is the consumer who foots the bill.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What You Need to Know About the Debt Ceiling appeared first on Fair Observer.

While Kondo’s approach was limited to organizing one’s stuff, the protagonists of Netflix’s The Minimalists: Less Is Now (2021) go into why our societies are becoming increasingly consumerist and why minimalism is their motto. Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, childhood friends who grew up poor, had wanted nothing more than to be able to afford things they didn’t have—a good house, luxury cars, designer clothes, savvy electronics, and the like. By their 30s, they had acquired everything but the feeling of satisfaction that they were after. Minimalism became their way of taking back control of their lives. Their motto wasn’t to live in less, they say, but to make room for more. That is, to take the focus away from material consumption to creativity, relationships, community, and more. Much like Kondo, their approach too proved to be wildly successful. They started out with a blog, The Minimalists, but now also have a book, podcast, a Netflix show, interviews, and, of course, an online course where they help people declutter their lives. Ironically, the course, Simplify Everything, purports to give you as many as 135 decluttering solutions to 45 clutter problem areas.

Living in a culture saturated by marketing

However, while the duo have indeed made a virtue (and a business) out of the very problem they seek to avoid, they offer compelling insights into America and the modern world’s increasingly consumerist tendencies. For starters, it’s worth noting that with the advertising industry’s shift to online platforms, Amazon remains America’s top-most advertiser, and the ad-industry made over $300 billion in revenue in 2021. By contrast, most of the ads in the 1950s US played on TV and the industry generated about $40 million. 

According to the documentary, this has led to a crisis of attention in which each advertiser is constantly pulling in a potential consumer not only by bombarding them with their ads but also by manipulating their insecurities and aspirations to goad them into making the purchase. Between online shopping, credit card purchases, and same day deliveries, the feedback loop has never been more instant and gratifying for a consumer.

Money Can’t Buy Me Love

Before the American consumer realizes, he or she has lived a lifetime of unchecked consumerism, with the average household hoarding up to 300,000 items. It’s no wonder, then, that in the last few years many have turned to saviors such as Kondo, Millburn, and Nicodemus to help manage this pathology. So, when their houses are decluttered and emptied out of stuff they didn’t even remember they had, it feels like they have been given a new lease of life. The newly freed space, both literal and metaphorical, gives them a renewed sense of hope about their life.

What the minimalists leave out

Where Kondo teaches people to value what they have and keep only what they value, the Minimalists want to help people in turning their focus away from buying stuff to make themselves feel better. In both cases, the idea is to live more mindfully. However, what neither addresses is why large swathes of people find all of this difficult to do in the first place. While it’s tempting to paint consumerism as the evil which must be resisted with a missionary zeal, it is worth asking if getting rid of one’s stuff in a Netflix show is all it takes to take back control of one’s life. After all, there is a reason why instant gratification is the flavor of the present times.

For one, putting in the work in your relationships, profession, and community takes far more time and effort—with no guarantees for positive results and a near certainty of disappointment and failed expectations. This is why these seemingly different aspects of life, whether online or offline, are all alike rife with constant anxiety. Not only does the modern consumer want quicker promotions at work, they also want their LinkedIn posts to go viral. Not only do they want the picture perfect relationship, they want the most Instagram worthy shot of their time together too. Not only do they want their communities to accept their identity, they seek to become Twitter activists by opining on every other controversy.

In other words, it is not only our attitude towards our material possessions that suffers from compulsiveness, but our entire lives. While the anti-consumerist narrative may feel meaningful to those who feel suffocated by the amount of stuff they own, it would be worth our while to be cautious to not let it become just another fad in our attempt to feel good about our lives as quickly as possible. Minimalism as an approach to life only works if we understand that, ultimately, fulfillment doesn’t lie in more, but in making do with less once we have fulfilled our basic needs in every aspect of our lives.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What Popular Anti-Consumerism Crusaders Have Got Right appeared first on Fair Observer.

In a country where the criminal justice system is tasked with so much more than it is designed to do and funded to do, it can seem slow to act and too susceptible to manipulation by those with resources. Meanwhile, the poor, the disadvantaged, and Black and Brown miscreants get outsized law enforcement attention that generally results in negative outcomes. 

So, take it seriously when an elected criminal prosecutor confronts evasion, threats, and the rigors of a long road ahead with an uncertain outcome to indict the rich and powerful, not to mention a former president of the United States. 

Trump’s Troubles With the Law

Further, the fraud indictment of Trump in New York is not trivial. The charges are serious and represent the first commitment to seek to impose a measure of criminal accountability on a dangerous and powerful man who has seemingly had his way with the justice system since the cradle.

The New York indictment alleges 34 felony counts of fraudulently falsifying business records to conceal criminal conduct. It is accompanied by a 13-page statement of facts. The case is about fraudulent concealment from the public of critical negative information concerning two of Trump’s alleged adulterous sexual adventures and, most importantly, fraudulent concealment of this information in the critical days before Trump’s unexpected 2016 presidential victory.

Further, there seems to be a growing consensus that there will be more criminal indictments to come and that these indictments will focus on Trump’s misconduct while in office or just after leaving office, not while seeking office. In this context, it is noteworthy that Trump was twice impeached for actions during his presidency without consequence, a backdrop that only adds to the clamor among progressives for a flood of indictments and associated perp walks.

To add to the excitement, Trump was just found personably liable for sexual abuse and defamation in a suit brought by a woman for sexually assaulting her years ago in a department store dressing room and then publicly lying about it. That sure sounds a bit like the underlying notion in the New York indictment – get caught in a messy sexual encounter, and then lie about it to avoid accountability. The New York indictment adds criminal fraud and allegations of hush money payments to the mix.

All of this comes amid the steadily increasing fervor of support from the 30% or more on the far right of the already right-wing Republican Party who are fully committed to a Trump rerun. This stunningly unprincipled patch of humanity seemingly will follow Trump anywhere, support his “vision” for America, and continually fail to get the message that their hero is incapable of sorting fact from fiction.

Republicans Still Love Trump

In today’s political climate, the Republican Party’s incapacity to set Trump adrift provides the best path to the best outcome for Democrats in the 2024 presidential election. Democrats can only hope that the true Trump believers will deliver to him the coveted 2024 Republican nomination for president or at the least remain so committed to a Republican Party implosion that Trump will make it almost impossible for the resulting nominee to win.

While this is hardly a sure path to victory, it may well be the best hope going forward as long as the Biden/Harris ticket remains the only presently viable option for the Democrats. So keep those indictments coming. While the New York indictment is an important and emphatic first attempt at imposing a measure of criminal liability and accountability on Trump, it is cautionary to note that for years Trump has gotten away with whatever criminal misconduct seemed to underpin so much of his successful lifelong grift. Maybe one day soon, in some jurisdiction, we will get a real mug shot and a set of cuffs.

To be sure, there is more to this than my antipathy and that of others toward Trump and his cronies. Rather, it is a deep conviction that if our institutions fail us now, America is headed into an abyss from which it will be very difficult to emerge. So, stopping Trump, his acolytes, his supporters, his donors, and the racist Christian right from realizing their ambitious plan for transforming the nation in their image has palpable immediacy now.

And it is not just Trump. The right-wing “aristocracy” has polluted all three of the branches of the US government with a crush of highly-educated, wealthy, interconnected, and morally bankrupt vermin seeking only the power to impose their will on the rest of us while playing by their own set of rules. Somehow Trump became and continues to be a convenient tool for undermining confidence in American institutions through unabashedly attacking historical facts and creating a threatening national tableau for those ignorant enough to buy into the notion of an existential threat to a way of life that never was.

It would be comforting to believe in cycles and in the someday emergence of new and enlightened interpretations of constitutional fundamentals that could help shape a safe, moral, diverse, and prosperous national future. Or, for the faithful, to believe that there is a god who has chosen this moment in time to screw around with America but who will eventually turn his playful attention back to Nigeria or Pakistan. For my part, however, I don’t believe in inevitable cycles, or in the fundamental wisdom of a document written two hundred years ago, or in god.

Instead, I am trying to believe that the young people of this nation may get off their cellphones long enough to reshape the electorate to reflect an understanding that our collective conscience demands so much more than the dark and shallow version of America in which those young people now live. It is also possible that elements within the aging generation of which I am a part will recognize the tainted legacy we are leaving behind and use some of our time and resources to try to rearrange that balance sheet.

While I await the revolution of the young and a renewed commitment of the aged, I will take a moment to enjoy every Trump indictment and hope that each one makes the right-wing aristocracy and its racist and White Christian collaborators just a bit less sure of themselves as they worry that I am coming for their guns.

[Hard Left Turn first published this piece.]

[Erica Beinlich edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Trump’s Monumental Lies Without Consequences Endanger a Nation appeared first on Fair Observer.

It’s clear that this problem has gone completely out of control. But has anyone taken the time to understand its deeper causes? Politicians and media personalities, including 2024 presidential hopefuls, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, have jumped on the crisis to draw attention to their standard agendas, whether it’s the immigration problem and border control or the growing trend to place all the blame on foreign actors for America’s problems.

What no one likes to talk about are the deeper systemic issues such as the role of Drug Enforcement agencies, major banking institutions and titans of industry in maintaining and exacerbating the crisis. 

Like Father, Like Sons

At the heart of this crisis lies the insidious role played by the sons of notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who have emerged as key players in perpetuating America’s drug crisis. Adding another layer of intrigue and corruption, allegations of collusion between Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials and drug cartels have further muddied the waters.

 The capture and subsequent extradition of El Chapo in 2017 created a power vacuum within his Sinaloa Cartel. It was during this transition that two of El Chapo’s sons, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán, stepped into leadership roles. Leveraging their family name and established connections, the Guzmán brothers have seized the opportunity to expand their influence over the drug trade, particularly regarding fentanyl.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, has emerged as the primary driver of the current drug crisis in America. With potency up to 50 times stronger than heroin, even minuscule amounts can be fatal. Fentanyl is often mixed with other drugs, such as cocaine or counterfeit prescription pills, without the user’s knowledge, making it a lethal and unpredictable threat. The Guzmán brothers saw an opportunity in fentanyl, a synthetic opioid capable of taking down an elephant with a single dose. With ruthless ambition, they unleashed this lethal force on American soil, maximizing profits while leaving a trail of devastation in their wake.

In a shocking turn of events, allegations of collusion between DEA officials and the Sinaloa Cartel have surfaced, raising serious questions about the integrity and efficacy of America’s drug enforcement efforts. Whistleblowers within the DEA have claimed that certain officials, motivated by financial gain or misguided notions of intelligence gathering, turned a blind eye to the Guzmán brothers’ activities. These alleged collusions allowed the Sinaloa Cartel to operate with relative impunity, perpetuating the flow of fentanyl into the United States.

If the allegations of DEA collusion hold true, it represents a staggering betrayal of the American public’s trust. The very agency tasked with combating drug trafficking and protecting communities from the perils of addiction would have compromised its mission for personal gain or misguided strategic goals. The death toll continues to climb as unsuspecting victims fall prey to the potent grips of this synthetic demon.

U.S Citizens, Not Illegals, Are Smuggling Fentanyl Across Borders

The majority of illicit fentanyl found in the U.S. is believed to originate from illicit drug labs in China, and it is often smuggled into the United States through various means, including mail services and the postal system. However, in most cases, it is United States citizens that are implicated in smuggling fentanyl across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Some individuals may be enticed by the potential for significant financial gains or become involved due to coercion, threats, or other criminal activities. U.S citizens accounted for 86% of fentanyl trafficking convictions in 2021. 1,322 of the 1,533 charged fentanyl trafficking offenders were US citizens. Even the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, acknowledges this point.

According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, approximately 19.4 percent of Americans have experimented with illegal substances at least once. Out of the total population of 280 million individuals aged 12 and above, 31.9 million are classified as drug users. Among these, 11.7 percent are specifically using illegal substances, while 19.4 percent are either consuming illicit drugs or misusing prescription medications as of 2020.

As it turns out, America’s monstrous appetite for addictive drugs may have been fueled by predatory elements within our own capitalist ecosystem.

The Role of Big Pharma

The Sackler family, known for their connection to opioids, owned and ran Purdue Pharma, a pharmaceutical company that developed and marketed OxyContin. OxyContin, a powerful prescription painkiller, played a significant role in the opioid crisis in the United States. Purdue Pharma aggressively promoted OxyContin to doctors, downplaying its addictive potential and encouraging widespread use for chronic pain. The Sackler family, particularly Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond Sackler, accumulated vast wealth through the success of Purdue Pharma. Cynics suggest the family’s motto was, “America’s pain is our profit.”

However, as evidence of OxyContin’s addictive nature and widespread abuse emerged, Purdue Pharma faced lawsuits and allegations of deceptive marketing practices. In 2007, the company pleaded guilty to criminal charges and paid a settlement of $634.5 million. The Sacklers’ role in fueling the opioid crisis while amassing enormous wealth drew significant criticism.

Purdue Pharma subsequently filed for bankruptcy, aiming to resolve thousands of lawsuits. The proposed settlement involves the dissolution of the company, a financial contribution of $6 billion from the Sackler family, and the transfer of Purdue’s assets to a public trust addressing the opioid crisis.

 Banks helping cartels launder illicit funds

If it wasn’t for major international banks turning a blind eye or in some cases actively aiding and abetting drug cartels, the drug crisis wouldn’t be nearly as acute. One prominent example is the case of the Wachovia Bank (now Wells Fargo) in the United States. 

In 2010, Wachovia reached a settlement with the U.S. government for allowing at least $378 billion in illicit funds to pass through its accounts, primarily linked to Mexican drug cartels. It was revealed that the bank had failed to implement adequate anti-money laundering controls, thereby facilitating the laundering of drug proceeds.

Another notable case involves the Lebanese Canadian Bank (LCB), which was accused by the U.S. government in 2011 of laundering money for international drug trafficking organizations, including Hezbollah. The U.S. Department of the Treasury designated LCB as a “primary money laundering concern” and shut it down.

It doesn’t stop there. In 2012 the British bank HSBC  agreed to pay a $1.9 billion fine to settle allegations that it had knowingly allowed Mexican and Colombian drug cartels to launder money through its accounts. The bank was accused of having weak money laundering controls that enabled illicit funds to be moved across borders undetected.

Chinese Money Laundering Operations

Chinese actors have increasingly assumed a prominent role in facilitating the illicit money laundering operations of Mexican drug cartels, specifically the Sinaloa Cartel and Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), which are the primary distributors of fentanyl to the United States. These Chinese money laundering brokers have demonstrated a remarkable ability to evade detection by both the formal banking systems of the United States and Mexico. Their methods encompass a wide range of illicit activities and value transfers that exploit various channels. 

One notable avenue employed by these criminal networks is trade-based laundering. They exploit legitimate trade transactions to obscure the origin and movement of funds. For instance, they may utilize shell companies to manipulate import and export invoices, falsely inflating the value of goods to disguise illicit proceeds as legitimate business profits.

Additionally, the use of wildlife products as a medium for value transfer has been observed in the nefarious collaboration between Mexican and Chinese criminal networks. Protected and unprotected marine products, as well as timber, serve as vehicles for moving illicit funds. These criminal actors exploit the high demand for such commodities in China, exploiting loopholes and lax regulations to launder money through the sale and transport of these goods.

Real estate transactions also feature prominently in the web of money laundering operations between Mexican and Chinese criminal elements. They frequently invest Illicit funds in properties, disguising illegal proceeds as legitimate assets. This strategy not only conceals the origin of the funds but also provides a means of preserving and growing their illicit wealth.

As we navigate this surreal landscape, the task before us will be to break free from the vicious cycle of madness. First and foremost, rigorous investigations must be launched to uncover the depths of DEA corruption. Those responsible, whether cartels or corrupt officials, must face swift and severe consequences, sparing no one. 

Additionally, efforts should focus on enhancing border security, expanding access to addiction treatment and harm reduction services. Raising public awareness about the dangers of fentanyl and the tactics employed by drug cartels is imperative. Most importantly, the crisis should not be politicized and a bipartisan consensus must be reached to save our country from this creeping menace.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Sinaloa Cartel, DEA and Big Pharma: a Lethal Nexus appeared first on Fair Observer.

Think of us, the American public, as that blindfolded child when it comes to our government’s torture program that followed the 9/11 disaster and the launching of the ill-fated war on terror. We’ve been left to search in the dark for what so many of us sensed was there.

We’ve been groping for the facts surrounding the torture program created and implemented by the administration of President George W. Bush. For 20 years now, the hunt for its perpetrators, the places where they brutalized detainees, and the techniques they used has been underway. And for 20 years, attempts to keep that blindfold in place in the name of “national security” have helped sustain darkness over light.

From the beginning, the torture program was enveloped in a language of darkness with its secret “black sites” where savage interrogations took place and the endless blacked-out pages of documents that might have revealed more about the horrors being committed in our name. In addition, the destruction of evidence and the squelching of internal reports only expanded that seemingly bottomless abyss that still, in part, confronts us. Meanwhile, the courts and the justice system consistently supported those who insisted on keeping that blindfold in place, claiming, for example, that were defense attorneys to be given details about the interrogations of their clients, national security would somehow be compromised.

Finally, however, more than two decades after it all began, the tide may truly be turning.

Despite fervid attempts to keep that blindfold in place, the search has not been in vain. On the contrary, over these last two decades, its layers have slowly worn away, thread by thread, revealing, if not the full picture of those medieval-style practices, then a damning set of facts and images relating to torture, American-style, in this century. Cumulatively, investigative journalism, government reports, and the testimony of witnesses have revealed a fuller picture of the places, people, nightmarish techniques, and results of that program.

First Findings

The fraying of that blindfold took endless years, starting in December 2002, when Washington Post writers Dana Priest and Barton Gellman reported on the existence of secret detention and interrogation centers in countries around the planet where cruel, unlawful techniques were being used against war-on-terror captives in American custody. Quoting from a 2001 State Department report on the treatment of captives, they wrote, “The most frequently alleged methods of torture include sleep deprivation, beatings on the soles of the feet, prolonged suspension with ropes in contorted positions and extended solitary confinement.”

Less than a year later, the American Civil Liberties Union, along with other groups, filed a Freedom of Information Act request (the first of many) for records pertaining to detention and interrogation in the war on terror. Their goal was to follow the trail leading to “numerous credible reports recounting the torture and rendition of detainees” and our government’s efforts (or the lack thereof) to comply “with its legal obligations with respect to the infliction of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Then, in 2004, the blindfold began to show some initial signs of wear. That spring, CBS News’s 60 Minutes II showed the first photographs of men held at Abu Ghraib, an American-controlled prison in Iraq. They were, among other things, visibly naked, hooded, shackled, and threatened by dogs. Those pictures sent journalists and legal advocates into a frenzied search for answers to how such a thing had happened in the wake of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. By that fall, they had obtained internal government documents exempting any war on terror captives from the usual legal protections from cruelty, abuse, and torture. Documents also appeared in which specific techniques of torture, renamed “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs), were authorized by top officials of the Bush administration. They would be used on prisoners in secret CIA locations around the world (119 men in 38 or more countries).

None of this, however, yet added up to “Tag! I found you!”

Senator Feinstein’s Investigation

Before George Bush left office, Senator Dianne Feinstein began a congressional investigation into the CIA interrogation program. In the Obama years, she would battle to mount a full-scale one into the torture program, defying most of her colleagues, who preferred to follow President Obama’s advice to “look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

But Feinstein refused to back down (and we should honor her courage and dedication, even as we witness the present drama of her insistence on remaining in the Senate despite a devastating process of aging).  Instead of retreating, Feinstein only doubled down and, as chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, launched an in-depth investigation into the torture program’s evolution and the grim treatment of those prisoners at what came to be known as “CIA black sites.”

Feinstein’s investigator, Daniel Jones, spent years reading through six million pages of documents. Finally, in December 2014, her committee issued a 525-page “executive summary” of his findings. Yet his full report — 6,700 pages with 35,300 footnotes — remained classified on the grounds that, were the public to see it, national security might be harmed. Still, that summary convincingly laid out not just the widespread use of torture but how it “proved not to be an effective means of obtaining accurate information.” In doing so, it dismantled the CIA’s justification for its EITs which rested on “claims of their effectiveness.”

Meanwhile, Leon Panetta, Obama’s director of the CIA, conducted an internal investigation into torture. Never declassified, the Panetta Review, as it came to be known, reportedly found that the CIA had inflated the value of the information it had gotten with the use of torture techniques. For example, in the brutal interrogation of the alleged mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Agency claimed that those techniques had elicited information from him that helped thwart further terrorist plots. In fact, the information had been obtained from other sources. The review reportedly acknowledged that EITs were in no way as effective as the CIA had claimed.

The Cultural Sphere

In those years, bits of light from the cultural world began to illuminate the dark horror of those enhanced interrogation techniques. In 2007, after President Bush had acknowledged the use of just such “techniques” and had moved 14 detainees from the CIA’s black sites to Guantánamo, his infamous offshore prison of injustice in Cuba, documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney directed Taxi to the Dark Side. It told the story of Dilawar, a taxi driver in Afghanistan who died in American custody after severe mistreatment. That film would be one of the earliest public exposés of cruelty and mistreatment in the war on terror.

But such films didn’t always yield doses of light. In 2012, for instance, Zero Dark Thirty, a movie heavily influenced by CIA advisers, argued that those harsh interrogations had helped keep America safer — specifically by leading US authorities to bin Laden, a meme often repeated by government officials. In fact, reliable information leading to bin Laden had been obtained without those techniques.

Increasingly, however, films began to highlight the voices of those who had been tortured. The Mauritanian, for example, was based on Guantánamo Diary, a memoir by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a tortured Mauritanian held at that prison for 14 years. Slahi, never charged, was finally released and returned to Mauritania. As New York Times reporter Carol Rosenberg summed up his experience, “The confessions he made under duress [were] recanted [and] a proposed case against him [was] deemed by the prosecutor to be worthless in court because of the brutality of the interrogation.”

Abu Zubaydah

Last year, award-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney once again gave us a film on torture, The Forever Prisoner, focused on a Guantánamo detainee, Abu Zubaydah, whose real name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Husayn. On him, the CIA first tested its harsh interrogation techniques, claiming he was a leading member of al-Qaeda, an assumption later disproved. He remains one of only three Gitmo detainees neither charged by the military commissions at that prison, nor cleared for release.

Nothing captures the futility of the blindfold — or sometimes even the futility of lifting it — more than Zubaydah’s story, which was at the heart of the story of torture in these years. The Senate Select Committee’s 525-page executive summary referred to him no less than 1,343 times.

Captured in Pakistan in 2002 and first taken to a series of black sites for interrogation, Zubaydah was initially believed to be the third highest-ranking member of al-Qaeda, a claim later abandoned, along with the allegation that he had even been a member of that terrorist organization. He was the detainee for whom enhanced interrogation techniques were first authorized by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, relying in part on the Justice Department’s greenlighting of such techniques as “lawful” rather than as torture (legally forbidden under both domestic and international law). Joe Margulies, Zubaydah’s lawyer, summarized the horrific techniques used on him this way:

“His captors hurled him into walls and crammed him into boxes and suspended him from hooks and twisted him into shapes that no human body can occupy. They kept him awake for seven consecutive days and nights. They locked him, for months, in a freezing room. They left him in a pool of his own urine. They strapped his hands, feet, arms, legs, torso, and head tightly to an inclined board, with his head lower than his feet. They covered his face and poured water up his nose and down his throat until he began to breathe the water, so that he choked and gagged as it filled his lungs. His torturers then left him to strain against the straps as he began to drown. Repeatedly. Until, just when he believed he was about to die, they raised the board long enough for him to vomit the water and retch. Then they lowered the board and did it again. The torturers subjected him to this treatment at least eighty-three times in August 2002 alone. On at least one such occasion, they waited too long and Abu Zubaydah nearly died on the board.”

In addition, as Dexter Filkins reported in the New Yorker in 2016, Zubaydah lost his left eye while in CIA custody.

As the Feinstein committee’s torture report makes clear, CIA personnel present at that black site cabled back to Washington the importance of erasing any information about the nature of Zubaydah’s interrogation, implicitly acknowledging just how wrongful his treatment had been. The July 2002 cable asked for “reasonable assurance that [Abu Zubaydah] will remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life.” CIA higher-ups assured the agents that “all major players are in concurrence that [Abu Zubaydah] should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life.”

Sadly enough, that promise has been kept to this very day. In 2005, CIA officials authorized the destruction of the tapes of Zubaydah’s questioning and, never charged with a crime, he is still in Guantánamo.

And yet, despite the promise that he would remain incommunicado, with each passing year we learn more about what was done to him. In October 2021, in fact, in the United States v. Zubaydah, the justices of the Supreme Court for the first time openly discussed his treatment and Justices Sonia Sotomayer, Neil Gorsuch, and Elena Kagan publicly used the word “torture” to describe what was done to him.

Elsewhere as well, the blindfold has been shredded when it comes to the horror of torture, as ever more of Zubaydah’s story continues to see the light of day. This May, the Guardian published a story about a report done by the Center for Policy and Research at Seton Hall University Law School that included a series of 40 drawings Zubaydah had made and annotated at Guantánamo. In them, he graphically depicted his torture at CIA black sites and at that prison.

The images are beyond grotesque and, like a cacophonous symphony you can’t turn off, it’s hard to witness them without closing your eyes. They show beating, shackling from the ceiling, sexual abuse, waterboarding, confinement in a coffin, and so much more. In one picture that he titled “The Vortex,” the techniques were combined as Zubaydah — in a self-portrait — cries out in agony. Attesting to the accuracy of the scenes he drew, the faces of his torturers have been blacked out by the authorities to protect their identities.

As the Guardian‘s Ed Pilkington reported, Helen Duffy, Mr. Zubaydah’s international legal representative, highlighted how “remarkable” it was that his drawings had ever seen the light of day even though he hasn’t “been able to communicate directly with the outside world” in all these endless years.

Calls for Action

In the years of the Biden presidency, the international community has focused on Guantánamo in unprecedented ways. In January 2022, “after 20 years and well over 100 visits,” the International Committee of the Red Cross (the ICRC) called for the release of as many of the remaining prisoners there as possible and, more recently, raised alarm over the failing health and premature aging of its 30 aging inmates.  

Recently, the United Nations carved out new ground as well. In April, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an opinion condemning the brutality long used against Mr. Zubaydah and called for his immediate release. That group further noted that the continued detention of the prisoners at Guantánamo could potentially “constitute crimes against humanity.”

With each passing year, ever more details about Washington’s torture programs have come to light. Yet, even now, ferocious attempts are still being made to keep the blindfold in place. As a result, to this day we’re left searching, arms extended, while those who have crucial information about this country’s nightmarish commitment to torture do their best to avoid us, hoping that the endless passage of time will keep them out of reach until we pursuers finally run out of energy.

To this day, much still remains in darkness, while Congress and American policymakers continue to refuse to address the legacy of such wrongdoing. But as the constant dribble of information suggests, the story simply won’t go away until, someday, the United States officially acknowledges what it did — what, if others were now doing it, would be instantly denounced by the same lawmakers and policymakers. That history of torture won’t go away, in fact, until this country apologizes for it, declassifies as much of the Feinstein report as possible, and provides for the rehabilitation of Abu Zubaydah and others whose physical and psychological health was savaged by their mistreatment at American hands.

It’s one thing to say, as Barack Obama told Congress a month into his presidency, that the United States “does not torture.” It’s another to expose the misdeeds of the war on terror and accept the costs as deterrence against it ever happening again.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The US Still Continues its Quest to Hide Torture appeared first on Fair Observer.

The two countries, the United States and Spain, had similar populations at the time, about 30 million and 25 million, respectively, and in both cases, the number of casualties was about 2.5% of the country’s population: about 750,000 in the US and about 540,000, plus 50,000 executed in the immediate postwar, in Spain. In neither of the two cases did the civil war explode overnight, however.

Factional Violence is America’s Normal

In the United States, angry riots and revolts, such as we have seen in recent times, are no new phenomenon, and the period previous to its civil war was likewise one of increasing confrontation.

America Needed Something to Smash

The generation of the so-called Founding Fathers provided the revered first five presidents. But the election of General Andrew Jackson, who is Donald Trump’s favorite president, as the seventh president opened thirty years of partisan turbulence and mayhem. For several decades, the average turnout in presidential elections was 80% of eligible voters, a level that would never be reached again by far. Congress was a verbal and physical battlefield, including more than one hundred incidents of violence in the House and Senate chambers.

In her recent book, historian Joanne B. Freeman has studied that “field of blood,” in which “armed groups of Northern and Southern congressmen engaged in hand-to-hand combat on the floor… Fighting became endemic and congressmen strapped on knives and guns before heading to the Capitol every morning.” By her description, the incidents “involved physical action —punching, slapping, caning, lunging, shoving, dueling, wielding weapons, flipping desks, breaking windows, and the like.”

Divided Politics Breed Resentment

This polarization, mostly around the slavery issue, culminated in the 1856 and 1860 presidential elections. In the former, the pro-slavery Democrat candidate, James Buchanan, won the majority in the Electoral College with a minority of around 45% of the popular vote against the divided anti-slavery candidacies. In 1860, reversing the situation, the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln carried eighteen of the thirty-three states then existing, with less than 40% of the popular vote, against the divided pro-slavery candidacies. The subsequent secession of eleven Southern states triggered Lincoln’s military response and the civil war.

In Spain likewise, the institutional crisis previous to the civil war had been developing at least since the military coup d’état in 1923. During the period of the Second Republic (1931–1939), there were also elections with less-than-straightforward results. In 1933, the right, consisting of Catholics and monarchists, received support from 34% of voters, but together with some center-right republican parties managed to collect a majority of seats in parliament against the divided republicans and socialists. Then, in 1936, the united left, as the Popular Front, won a majority of seats with the support of only 46% of voters against the divided center-right and right. The subsequent military uprising triggered civil war.

Civil War Memories More Alive Than Most Think

If you visit Washington, DC, today, you will see that the civil war still appears as a major foundational moment. The Lincoln Memorial, which is an enlarged copy of the Parthenon, is the most revered and visited monument both by American and foreign tourists. All across the city, there are equestrian statues with generals of the Civil War, more numerous than those commemorating the previous American Revolutionary War. On the other side of the Potomac, the civil war seems just as present. Some time ago, I was at a high-level academic event at George Mason University, in Virginia, when the keynote speaker ended a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of decentralization with the reflection: “And that’s why we lost the war.” It has been only in the last few years that monuments and street names dedicated to the leaders of the defeated secessionist Confederacy have begun to be removed in some southern states.

Will American Democracy Perish Like Rome’s?

Of course, the big difference is that in the United States the winners restored democracy (although slavery was to be replaced with racial segregation for several decades), while in Spain, the winners held the country down and secluded for forty years. Nevertheless, the foundation of the Spanish democracy in the 1970s was also strongly marked by the dissuasive memory of the civil war. Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez commented that he won the first election “because I was moving the Spaniards away from the danger of a confrontation after Franco’s death. They did not support me out of wishful thinking and longing for liberties, but out of fear of that confrontation; because I separated them from the horns of that bull.”

With a little emotional and physical distance, one can notice how, in Spain, a verbal civil war is still often latent in bitter partisan confrontations, the shouting of certain opinion-makers in the media, and the quarrels that take place in a polarized parliament. In the United States, one might have expected more forgetfulness because nobody alive has ever met a person who had seen a slave. Yet, political polarization between the North and the South remains a deep rift, still heralded by the extreme right with Confederate flags.

When does a civil war stop being a major element of political confrontation? It may be that any traumatic civil war can produce endless reverberations.

[The author’s blog first published this piece.]
[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Are We Free From Haunting Memories of Civil Wars? appeared first on Fair Observer.

“It is in changing that things find repose,” says the philosopher Heraclitus. The world that we live in is a world of flux, and things that resist this flux die. Mountain ranges wear down because they attempt to stand still against the wind and the rain. Biological life, which at first glance seems much more fleeting than geological features, has survived on this earth for billions of years while the mountains wear away. Land plants and the Appalachian Mountains both formed in the same geological period, but now the Appalachians are eroded hills while plant life grows thick on top of them, eroding them further.

Without belaboring the point too much, we can say that life is not just change, but organized change, change according to a definite plan. An organism must react to its environment and modify itself and its behavior in order to survive, but it does so while preserving the nature that it has from birth. Even evolutionary history, which enacts no preconceived plan, does not simply change without direction. Mutation is without direction, but evolution is mutation guided by selection. This is why crustaceans turn into crabs, and mammals do not. What we will become is guided by the nature and the needs of what we are. What life enacts is not random change, but change that preserves its existence and, so to speak, mission. Deer developed antlers so that they could keep being deer.

To survive is to change

A state is like an animal, but it is most like that rational animal, man. It is capable of understanding its core principles and values and of planning and enacting deliberate change in order to live up to those values. We are not called to evolve blindly, but by deliberation and understanding to move forward into history with our eyes wide open. Using reason—our ability to conceptualize, to dialogue, and to plan—we humans do what all life does, but intentionally. And when we cease to do this, we die.

States die. Civilizations die. History is all too full of tales of the calamities, wars, and devastations that occurred when statesmen and citizens became either too complacent, too divided, or otherwise too unequipped to take account of reality and affect adequate change. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, infamously crippled by the broad right of individual nobles to veto legislation, precipitating a humiliating and disastrous partition between its land-hungry neighbors and over a century of suffering for the Polish people. The same pattern has played out time and time again in human history from the dynasties of China to the republics of Latin America as corruption, factionalism, and poorly functioning political processes paralyze states, rendering them unable to reform.

I stand here with the strange privilege of living in one of the most successful and powerful states that have existed in the history of this planet, the United States of America. This country has astounded the world more than once with its capacity for innovation and dynamism, finding solutions hardly imagined by generations past. But there is a sickness in this country, an ideologization of what are taken to be our values that is slowly killing that dynamism, which is meant to come to the defense of our core values and is indeed one of them. What I am talking about is the notion, so much in vogue in the current popular discourse but so alien to the founders of this nation, that every jot and tittle of the Constitution—not only its principles and values, but the mechanisms that were originally crafted to enact those principles—is so imbued with the wisdom of that founding generation that it cannot be changed.

Everyone understands, perhaps, that on a basic level no commonwealth can exist very long without some change. “Even the barley-drink,” says our friend Heraclitus, “will separate if it is not stirred.” Yet was it not that same philosopher that admonished a republic to “fight for its laws as it does for its walls”? For what could protect it from upheavals of a social, economic, military nature or otherwise if, without its laws, it were no community of citizens but just an unorganized mob of men and women? Only a fool would argue for a nation with no respect for the laws that have created it and guided it, but all the same it would be folly, too, to forget that it was reason that crafted those laws, and it is still reason—the reason of the living, communicating, rational animals that we are—that must judge those laws and modify them, in an orderly way and for the common good.

The United States has a legislation problem

American law is in many ways uniquely hard to change. Even ordinary legislation must pass through an intricate path of checks and balances in which, at every step of the way, there are barriers that can stop proposed legislation in its tracks. It may die in committee, fail to pass on the floor of the chambers of Congress which often operate on razor-thin partisan majorities, fail to achieve the agreement of the House and of the Senate, experience filibuster in the Senate, suffer veto by the president, and so on…it is a wonder that any laws ever get passed at all. Of course, this kind of legal process is going to be an essential part of lawmaking in any democracy, but the American process has so many choke points that it is far easier to kill a bill than it is to pass one.

This creates a bias in favor of old legislation rather than new legislation which is, on the face of it, irrational, since the time at which a law was crafted has no essential bearing on whether or not it is wisely framed. The new is not automatically better than the old, but neither is the old automatically better than the new. If old laws are to continue, it should be because human minds, in a legally structured process, have considered them and judged them prudent to continue, not because of an institutional structure so full of snags that the previous way of doing things is mindlessly approved simply because it is too difficult to do anything else.

“Ah,” I can hear the reply coming back, “but this is by design. A government that governs less governs best, after all, and the founders intended to make it very difficult to pass new laws.”

If this is the founders’ intent, it is ill-served by this mechanism. New laws do not always mean more government; indeed, there are good reasons to think that the growth of government can be fostered by the rigidity of laws, rather than hampered by them. More of this anon. But the more basic notion is this: if small government, or any other ideal that we prize, is to be the aim when we are deciding how to craft our laws, then we must do so consciously, keeping that ideal in mind when we make laws and adjusting every measure to best suit it. We can only do this consciously, not by trusting unconscious processes like legislative inflexibility to do the work for us. We must choose to be what we will be: A republic cannot better itself by hindering its own ability to make choices. Only a nation self-conscious of its own activity can keep itself free. Legislative snarls will not keep you free.

The most fundamental reason underlying the fact that unconscious processes will not keep one free, or serve very many other useful purposes, is that what is done unintentionally will inevitably have unintentional consequences. Of course, all human endeavors on this side of heaven will have unintentional consequences, but the surest way to multiply them is to hinder reason’s ability to monitor, to anticipate, and to forestall negative events by assessing and readjusting its methods.

Legislation problem expands executive and judicial power

If Congress does not issue its own guidance in the form of laws, the president will find his own way. This leads to the expansion of executive power, about which enough ink has been spilled that I need not continue the subject here. The bureaucracy will find its own way, and what ought to have been laws, deliberated by civil society and enacted by the people constitutionally empowered to make laws for the republic, instead become regulations, of dubious democratic merit and perhaps of opaque origin. The courts will find their own way, concocting in legal decisions directives which often have very little to do with the text, history, or intent of the laws that they claim to find their source in. But the executive and the courts are not simply being irrational or selfish. They are making do in a system where the direction that ought to be given by law is found lacking. And this is because the legislature cannot act.

I don’t think either liberals or conservatives are thrilled with an imperial presidency or with judge-made law.  Such channels can provide temporary wins, but each side can count just as many smarting losses. In the end the real loser is an America which is seeing her ability to deliberate clearly and openly and to make laws that best suit everyone weaken with every year.

Nowhere is this country’s inability to legislate more acute than in that most vital legislation of all, our Constitution. Here, Article Five mandates that in order to make any change at all to the Constitution, in addition to proposal by a supermajority in both houses of Congress (aside from an alternative convention process which in 234 years has never been used), a proposed amendment must be ratified by a whopping three quarters of states or state conventions.

This extraordinarily high bar hearkens back to the confederal origins of the union, in which the nation’s first constitution behaved more like a treaty, requiring unanimity, than like the constitution of a republic. But the United States is a republic, in spite of the many and time-honored aspects of federalism that it possesses. It is conceived both by its own citizens and by the global community as a nation among nations, not a supranational organization, and as a nation it ought to have the constitution of one. It should be able to decide its own destiny, by common as well as by fundamental law, and it should not be subjected to the levels of paralysis, often more reminiscent of the EU or even the UN, that do indeed more befit a treaty organization than a constitutional republic.

US constitutional law is in disarray. Judges and legal commentators, all the way up to the high court, seem torn between a rigid originalism which would tie the world’s hegemonic power to the legislative framework framed for a league of thirteen recently liberated and mostly agrarian colonies, and a “living constitution” model which seems to be employing a biological metaphor not in support of an ordered and self-conscious development of a political community operating through rational laws, but to support the departure from those laws into a zone of individualistic, moralizing, often ad-hoc judicial oligarchy. Neither of these will do and indeed neither should we expect that any judicial philosophy should. The problem is not with those who interpret the laws, but with those who make the laws.

We need a different system. We need to stop hiding behind institutions and processes which no longer work for any of us as an excuse not to step up and take control of our future. We need to stop using processes as a way to bludgeon each other and exploit thin majorities which will inevitably reverse and learn to reason with each other and develop genuine consensus. Only genuine consensus can save us, and only genuine consensus is worthy of the kind of social and rational beings that we are.

I am proposing that we make amendments easier. What I am not proposing, however, is that some new clever set of norms and processes will make all of the difference. Ultimately, the change will not come from some new system but from a new mindset which will make new systems necessary. We need to start to talk to each other. And we need to listen.

Going down a dangerous path

In ancient times, the most powerful republic in the world was the one that belonged to the Romans, a people more famous for devotion to their laws and their constitutional customs than we. Through it all, the wisdom of the senate, the energy of the people, and the ingenuity of the magistrates guided Rome from a tiny vassal city to the Etruscans to a superpower that dominated the entire classical world. Its laws were singularly well-developed, intricate, and socially entrenched, but at the same time the republic—ultimately, unlike ours, a direct democracy—could modify its most basic laws with a single act of legislation, something it did time and time again to resolve the numerous social and military crises the city was beset with in its long history.

When the Roman democracy finally did come to an end, it was not because of its mechanisms of flexibility, but rather because of the degradation of them. The republic did not end because a demagogue whipped the people up into a fury and convinced them to vote away their democracy—although this sort of thing certainly can happen—but through a much longer, slower process of loss of political consensus-building, the increasing abuse of its institutions through partisan corruption and obstructionism, which eventually necessitated the use of illegal force as a brute substitute for consensus in order to stabilize the state.

After a century of strongmen—Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Antony—tried and failed to use military authority to shore up a republic that no longer knew how to govern itself, the empire was founded when Octavian, using his personal prestige, took control ultimately not as a legally appointed dictator but as a private citizen granted extraordinary powers to do what the magistrates and the senate could not do. Even Tiberius, his successor, was surprised to find the senate so unwilling to govern that he was caused to continue this unorthodox arrangement. Eventually, the imperial role would evolve into an unfettered despotism.

This is how a republic dies. When it forgets how to deliberate, it degenerates into political gamesmanship. When political gamesmanship degenerates, as it inevitably does, the door is opened to violence. And violence can only breed more violence.

We cannot allow this to happen. If we are to avoid this fate, we must learn how to legislate. And to do that, we must rediscover how to debate, and how to think.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Article Five Is Now Killing the United States appeared first on Fair Observer.

At least the Russian president and his state-run media make no secret of his regime’s alliance with Wagner. The American government, on the other hand, seldom acknowledges its own version of the privatization of war — the tens of thousands of private security contractors it’s used in its misguided war on terror, involving military and intelligence operations in a staggering 85 countries.

At least as far back as the Civil War through World Wars I and II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and the first Gulf War, “contractors,” as we like to call them, have long been with us. Only recently, however, have they begun playing such a large role in our wars, with an estimated 10% to 20% of them directly involved in combat and intelligence operations.

Contractors have both committed horrific abuses and acted bravely under fire (because they have all too often been under fire). From torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to interrogations at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, from employees of the private security firm Blackwater indiscriminately firing on unarmed Iraqi civilians to contractors defending a U.S. base under attack in Afghanistan, they have been an essential part of the war on terror. And yes, they both killed Afghans and helped some who had worked as support contractors escape from Taliban rule.

The involvement of private companies has allowed Washington to continue to conduct its operations around the globe, even if many Americans think that our war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere has ended. I tried looking for any kind of a survey of how many of us realize that it continues in Iraq and elsewhere, but all I could find was pollster Nate Silver’s analysis of “lessons learned” from that global conflict, as if it were part of our history. And unless respondents were caring for a combat-wounded veteran, they tended not to look unfavorably on sending our troops into battle in distant lands — so scratch that as a lesson learned from our forever wars. 

None of this surprises me. American troops are no longer getting killed in significant numbers, nor are as many crowding the waitlists at backlogged Veterans Affairs hospitals as would be the case if those troops had been the only ones doing the fighting.

At points during this century’s war on terror, in fact, the U.S. used more civilian contractors in its ongoing wars than uniformed military personnel. In fact, as of 2019, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, which I co-founded, there were 50% more contractors than troops in the U.S. Central Command region that includes Afghanistan, Iraq, and 18 other countries in the Middle East, as well as Central and South Asia. As recently as December 2022, the Pentagon had about 22,000 contractors deployed throughout that region, with nearly 8,000 concentrated in Iraq and Syria. To be sure, most of those workers were unarmed and providing food service, communications aid, and the like. Even more tellingly, roughly two thirds of them were citizens of other countries, particularly lower-income ones.

In 2020, retired Army Officer Danny Sjursen offered an interesting explanation for how the war on terror was then becoming ever more privatized: the Covid-19 pandemic had changed the Pentagon’s war-making strategy as the public began to question how much money and how many lives were being expended on war abroad rather than healthcare at home. As a result, Sjursen argued, the U.S. had begun deploying ever more contractors, remote drones, CIA paramilitaries, and (often abusive) local forces in that war on terror while U.S. troops were redeployed to Europe and the Pacific to contain a resurgent Russia and China. In other words, during the pandemic, Washington placed ever more dirty work in corporate and foreign hands.

(Not) Counting Contractors

It’s been a challenge to write about private security contractors because our government does anything but a good job of counting them. Though the Defense Department keeps quarterly records of how many civilian contractors it employs and where, they exclude employees contracted with the Central Intelligence Agency or the State Department.

When Costs of War first tried to count contractor deaths by searching official government sources, we came up short. The spouse of a gravely wounded armed contractor directed me to her blog, where she had started to compile a list of just such deaths based on daily Google searches, even as she worked hard caring for her spouse and managing his disability paperwork. She and I eventually lost touch and it appears that she stopped compiling such numbers long ago. Still, we at the project took a page from her book, while adding reported war deaths among foreign nationals working for the Pentagon to our formula. Costs of War researchers then estimated that 8,000 contractors had been killed in our wars in the Middle East as of 2019, or about 1,000 more than the U.S. troops who died during the same period.

Social scientists Ori Swed and Thomas Crosbie have tried to extrapolate from reported contractor deaths in order to paint a picture of who they were while still alive. They believe that most of them were white veterans in their forties; many were former Special Forces operatives and a number of former officers with college degrees).

Limited Choices for Veterans

How do people of relative racial, economic, and gendered privilege end up in positions that, while well-paid, are even more precarious than being in the armed forces? As a therapist serving military families and as a military spouse, I would say that the path to security contracting reflects a deep cultural divide in our society between military and civilian life. Although veteran unemployment rates are marginally lower than those in the civilian population, many of them tend to seek out what they know best and that means military training, staffing, weapons production — and, for some, combat.

I recently spoke with one Marine infantry veteran who had completed four combat tours. He told me that, after leaving the service, he lacked a community that understood what he had been through. He sought to avoid social isolation by getting a government job. However, after applying for several positions in law enforcement agencies, he “failed” lie detector tests (owing to the common stress reactions of war-traumatized veterans). Having accidentally stumbled on a veteran-support nonprofit group, he ultimately found connections that led him to decide to return to school and retrain in a new profession. But, as he pointed out, “many of my other friends from the Marines numbed their pain with drugs or by going back to war as security contractors.”

Not everyone views contracting as a strategy of last resort. Still, I find it revealing of the limited sense of possibility such veterans experience that the top five companies employing them are large corporations servicing the Department of Defense through activities like information technology support, weapons production, or offers of personnel, both armed and not.

The Corporate Wounded

And keep in mind that such jobs are anything but easy. Many veterans find themselves facing yet more of the same — quick, successive combat deployments as contractors.

Anyone in this era of insurance mega-corporations who has ever had to battle for coverage is aware that doing so isn’t easy. Private insurers can maximize their profits by holding onto premium payments as long as possible while denying covered services.

A federal law called the Defense Base Act (1941) (DBA) requires that corporations fund workers’ compensation claims for their employees laboring under U.S. contracts, regardless of their nationalities, with the taxpayer footing the bill. The program grew exponentially after the start of the war on terror, but insurance companies have not consistently met their obligations under the law. In 2008, a joint investigation by the Los Angeles Times and ProPublica found that insurers like Chicago-based CAN Financial Corps were earning up to 50% profits on some of their war-zone policies, while many employees of contractors lacked adequate care and compensation for their injuries.

Even after Congress called on the Pentagon and the Department of Labor to better enforce the DBA in 2011, some companies continued to operate with impunity vis–à–vis their own workers, sometimes even failing to purchase insurance for them or refusing to help them file claims as required by law.  While insurance companies made tens of millions of dollars in profits during the second decade of the war on terror, between 2009 and 2021, the Department of Labor fined insurers of those contracting corporations a total of only $3,250 for failing to report DBA claims. 

Privatizing Foreign Policy

At its core, the war on terror sought to create an image of the U.S. abroad as a beacon of democracy and the rule of law. Yet there is probably no better evidence of how poorly this worked in practice at home and abroad than the little noted (mis)use of security contractors. Without their ever truly being seen, they prolonged that global set of conflicts, inflicting damage on other societies and being damaged themselves in America’s name. Last month, the Costs of War Project reported that the U.S. is now using subcontractors Bancroft Global Development and Pacific Architects and Engineers to train the Somali National Army in its counterterrorism efforts. Meanwhile, the U.S. intervention there has only helped precipitate a further rise in terrorist attacks in the region.

The global presence created by such contractors also manifests itself in how we respond to threats to their lives. In March 2023, a self-destructing drone exploded at a U.S. maintenance facility on a coalition base in northeastern Syria, killing a contractor employed by the Pentagon and injuring another, while wounding five American soldiers. After that drone was found to be of Iranian origin, President Biden ordered an airstrike on facilities in Syria used by Iranian-allied forces. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated, “No group will strike our troops with impunity.” While he later expressed condolences to the family of the contractor who was the only one killed in that attack, his statement could have more explicitly acknowledged that contractors are even more numerous than troops among the dead from our forever wars.

In late December 2019, a contractor working as an interpreter on a U.S. military base in Iraq was killed by rockets fired by an Iranian-backed militia. Shortly afterward, then-President Trump ordered an airstrike that killed the commander of an elite Iranian military unit, sparking concern about a dangerous escalation with that country. Trump later tweeted, “Iran killed an American contractor, wounding many. We strongly responded, and always will.”

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Trump’s tweet was more honest than Austin’s official statement: such contractors are now an essential part of America’s increasingly privatized wars and will continue to be so, in seemingly ever greater numbers. Even though retaliating for attacks on their lives has little to do with effective counterterrorism (as the Costs of War Project has long made clear), bearing witness to war casualties in all their grim diversity is the least the rest of us can do as American citizens. Because how can we know whether — and for whom — our shadowy, shape-shifting wars “work” if we continue to let our leaders wage an increasingly privatized version of them in ways meant to obscure our view of the carnage they’ve caused?

[TomDispatch first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The New American-Style Privatization of War appeared first on Fair Observer.

The signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 brought about a significant shift in the dynamics of US-Mexico relations. While NAFTA aimed to promote economic growth and development, it also had unintended consequences for Mexican farmers and small-scale industries. The influx of subsidized American agricultural products led to the displacement of local farmers and increased unemployment. This economic upheaval, coupled with the lure of higher wages and employment opportunities to the north, further fueled migration from Mexico to the United States. 

A Teetering System

After years of stabilizing or even declining numbers of undocumented, unauthorized, or illegal migrants (pick your term) crossing the southern border, the influx has recently exploded and remains at stratospheric levels. The Migration Policy Institute estimated that around 79% of the undocumented immigrant population in the United States in 2018 originated from Mexico and Central America, including countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

The numbers tell us that the US has an immigration crisis. Past reforms have attempted to address the complexities of the border but have failed. The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 sought to grant amnesty to undocumented immigrants while simultaneously increasing border enforcement measures. However, the implementation of IRCA faced challenges, and subsequent reforms failed to provide a comprehensive solution. The absence of a clear path to legal status for those unauthorized immigrants who arrived after the IRCA, coupled with inadequate border security measures, contributed to an ongoing cycle of unauthorized migration.  

Since early 2021, there has been a notable increase in the number of individuals attempting to cross the US-Mexico border. The reasons behind this surge are multifaceted and can be attributed to a combination of push and pull factors. Economic challenges, violence, political instability, natural disasters, and the desire to reunite with family members already in the United States are among the factors that drive individuals to leave their home countries and seek entry into the United States. On top of that, the Biden Administration has a history of sending mixed signals to migrants. 

The influx of migrants has overwhelmed border facilities and strained the resources of immigration agencies, such as Customs and Border Protection and the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The capacity to process and house migrants has been stretched thin, resulting in overcrowded detention centers and temporary facilities. The situation has raised concerns about the conditions in which migrants are held, including issues of overcrowding, limited access to healthcare, and inadequate facilities to accommodate families and unaccompanied minors.

The increase in migrant arrivals has also strained the capacity to handle asylum claims and legal processing. The backlogs in immigration courts have further prolonged the time it takes to resolve cases, leaving individuals in limbo and creating challenges for managing the flow of migrants.

Trump Policies Dismantled

While the issue predates the Biden administration, it is crucial to analyze how President Joe Biden’s policies have shaped the current immigration crisis at the border.

From day one, Biden has prioritized dismantling the immigration policies implemented by his predecessor. His eagerness to erase any trace of Donald Trump’s immigration legacy has left our border vulnerable and created a magnet for illegal immigration. During his presidency, Donald Trump implemented various immigration policies aimed at reducing the influx of undocumented immigrants into the United States. While these policies were controversial and faced criticism from many quarters, supporters argue that they had notable effects on immigration patterns.

Here are some of Trump’s key immigration policies:

Border Security and Wall Construction: Trump made border security a priority and pushed for the construction of a physical barrier along the US-Mexico border. Although significant portions of the wall were replacement or reinforcement of existing barriers, it aimed to deter illegal crossings. 

Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP): The MPP, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, required individuals seeking asylum at the southern border to wait in Mexico while their claims were processed in US courts. Supporters argue that this policy helped manage the influx of asylum seekers and reduced the incentive for fraudulent claims. 

Title 42: It was introduced in March 2020 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under the Trump administration. This policy invoked a public health provision, allowing the swift expulsion of individuals who posed a risk of spreading infectious diseases, including COVID-19. It acted as a necessary and effective tool to protect both Americans and migrants themselves from potential health hazards.

Title 42 proved crucial in managing the overwhelming surge of illegal immigration at the southern border. By enforcing swift deportations, it discouraged the dangerous practice of human smuggling and reduced the strain on our already burdened immigration system. Curiously, the Biden Administration fought Title 42 expulsions even as it officially maintained the COVID crisis was ongoing.

Asylum Policy Changes: The Trump administration implemented several changes to the asylum system, including the expansion of “safe third country” agreements and imposing stricter requirements on asylum seekers. These policies aimed to limit the number of individuals qualifying for asylum and expedite the asylum process. 

Immigration Enforcement: Trump focused on ramping up immigration enforcement, empowering Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target undocumented immigrants, including those with criminal records. This led to increased apprehensions and deportations. 

Indifference by Design

The most egregious aspect of Biden’s approach lies in his weakening of border enforcement measures. The termination of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), has resulted in a surge of illegal border crossings. By allowing migrants to enter the United States while awaiting court proceedings (that more often than not are skipped anyway), Biden has effectively created a “catch and release” system that encourages further illegal entry. 

The Biden Administration, led by its disdain for immigration enforcement, In May 2021 began winding down Title 42. The impact of repealing Title 42 has been swift and devastating. The number of illegal border crossings has skyrocketed to levels unseen in recent history, overwhelming Border Patrol agents and immigration facilities. Our border communities are forced to bear the brunt of this burden, grappling with the consequences of uncontrolled immigration.

Furthermore, Biden’s reckless expansion of immigration enforcement priorities is a slap in the face to law-abiding citizens. The administration’s focus on dismantling ICE and limiting deportations has created a dangerous environment where criminal illegal aliens are shielded from justice. This flagrant disregard for public safety and the rule of law undermines the very fabric of our society.

While the Biden administration claims to prioritize “humane” immigration policies, it conveniently ignores the humanitarian crisis that its own policies have exacerbated. The overcrowded detention facilities, unsanitary conditions, and the exploitation of vulnerable migrants are all consequences of an open-borders agenda. By failing to provide a deterrent and a clear message that illegal entry will not be tolerated, Biden’s policies perpetuate a cycle of human suffering and incentivize more dangerous journeys.

Sound Immigration Policies, Not Border Chaos

It is not a matter of heartlessness or xenophobia to demand secure borders and a rational immigration system. The United States has a rich history of legal immigration, and we have always welcomed those who abide by our laws. However, Biden’s policies prioritize the desires of foreign nationals over the well-being of American citizens.

The solution lies in a balanced approach that combines border security, immigration enforcement, and compassionate solutions for those seeking legal entry. This means investing in technology and infrastructure to secure our borders, reforming our broken immigration system, and prioritizing the interests and safety of American citizens.

The Biden administration’s reckless disregard for the rule of law and the sovereignty of our nation will have lasting consequences. It is high time that we recognize the dangers of these policies and demand a return to a sensible, secure, and fair immigration system that puts America and its citizens first. Our nation’s future depends on it.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Truth About Joe Biden’s Immigration Policy appeared first on Fair Observer.

The US Congress has also become weak because of the influence of money in politics. Members of Congress spend more and more of their time fundraising, diminishing their ability to legislate. Increasingly, Congresswomen and Congressmen represent their donors more than their constituents. Open Secrets tells us that Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy raised over $27 million and the former speaker Nancy Pelosi raised over $25 million in 2021-22.

Because of this influence of money in politics, Congress is increasingly under the thumb of interest groups. Some of these groups are beholden to foreign states. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is infamous for its hold on Congress. AIPAC has poured millions of dollars to defeat progressive pro-Palestinian candidates in Democrat congressional primaries. On rare occasions that members of Congress speak out against Israel’s influence, such as Representative Ilhan Omar in 2019, they are quickly ostracized. 

Is the US Presidency Actually a Powerful Dictatorship?

AIPAC has also opposed Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran as the former president has admitted in his memoirs. Sadly, the Congress sometimes puts foreign interests above American ones, endangering peace, prosperity and national security itself. 

Other ills afflict the Congress as well. Pork-barrel projects, earmarks and poison bills, often referred to as “legislative extortion,” interfere with legislation. The Congress has failed to deliver for the people. They have not drafted laws for a healthy economy. Over 32% of the wealth is owned by 1-percent of the wealthiest Americans. Over 11% of Americans live below the poverty level and 60% “live pay-check-to-paycheck.” At such a time, the Congress is deeply divided. Both Republicans and Democrats care more about hurting the other in an adversarial system than acting together in national interest.

What do you really know about Congress?

Even both parties themselves are deeply divided. It took 15 rounds of voting for Republicans to elect Kevin McCarthy as the speaker of the House. The Congress only unites to pass things in the interest of their donors. The Congress has drafted tax bills, which give tax cuts to the rich and pass on the tax burden to the middle class. 

There are representational issues too. The District of Columbia with a population just short of 700,000, far more than Wyoming, and Puerto Rico with a population of nearly 3,200,000, greater than 21 states, have no voice on the House’s bills. The same is true for Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, and other US territories. 

In 1789, the first House had 65 members serving 3.9 million people, one for every 60,000 persons. Now, 435 members serve 334 million, one for every 767,816 persons. It is now difficult for one person to represent so many different and varied constituents.

It is not just the president who dominates the House. Today, the Senate has grown in power too. It dictates terms and conditions. In reality, this has turned the bicameral legislature into a unicameral one. The House now has to either ignore or “rubber-stamp Senate bills”.

The Truth About US Democracy

The US Senate is not exactly democratic. Every state gets two senators. This means that Wyoming with the population of less than 583,279 has the same representation, privilege, and vote as California with a population of about 39 million. In the US Senate, the vote of a resident of Wyoming equals the votes of 69 Californians. The consecrated tradition of Senate filibuster speeches designed to postpone or neuter legislative action illustrate the principle of the tyranny of a minority over the majority.

As of 2023, according to the World Population Review, the 50 states have a combined population of about 334 million. Mathematical logic tells us that the 26 states with the smallest populations collectively send 52 senators to Congress. Those 26 states wield a simple majority in the Senate, although they only represent 58.7 million citizens or 17.6% of the entire population. That means that the remaining minority of 48 senators represents over 82.4% of the US population. If you were to remove the eight most populated states from a Senate vote, it would take 42 states (84 senators) to represent a simple majority of the US population (52%). In other words, the will of a small minority of the US population represented in the Senate is always likely to prevail over the needs and wishes of all US citizens.

Like the House, the Senate leaves a significant portion of American citizens unrepresented. The constitution excludes from the federal electoral system the entire population of the District of Columbia (DC), Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and other US territories, despite the fact that they collectively have a population greater than that of some states. 

The US Constitution, ratified in 1788, gave state legislatures the right to elect senators. Over time, this corrupted the process of selecting senators. Hence, the 17^th Amendment was ratified in 1913 and, since then, senators have been elected by popular vote. Unfortunately, that amendment failed to solve the problem of corruption for senatorial elections. Today the average cost of running for senate runs into millions of dollars. This funding is usually provided “openly and directly” by the wealthy through PACs and lobbying groups. 

The Colossal Corruption of the Two-Party System

When elected, a senator’s loyalty is first to the rich who bankrolled their election. That is why legislators vote to spend funds lavishly on dubious projects in the service of the wealthy and their corporations, with little or no consideration of the needs of the common people. This produces volumes of legislation whose logic most Americans simply cannot fathom. The Senate consistently fails to represent the people’s needs, interests, concerns, or welfare. 

The various ills of the US Congress have been steadily growing. It is now deeply corrupt and highly undemocratic. Before lecturing the rest of the world on adopting democratic norms, the US must put its own house in order and reform its Congress.

[Hannah Gage edited this piece.] 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What You Need to Know About the US Congress appeared first on Fair Observer.

Since Kennedy wrote those words, we have seen the end of the Cold War, the peaceful emergence of China as a leading world power, and the rise of a formidable Global South. But the United States has indeed failed to “adjust sensibly to the newer world order,” using military force and coercion in flagrant violation of the UN Charter in a failed quest for longer lasting global hegemony. 

Kennedy observed that military power follows economic power. Rising economic powers develop military power to consolidate and protect their expanding economic interests. But once a great power’s economic prowess is waning, the use of military force to try to prolong its day in the sun leads only to unwinnable conflicts, as European colonial powers quickly learned after the Second World War, and as Americans are learning today.

While US leaders have been losing wars and trying to cling to international power, a new multipolar world has been emerging. Despite the recent tragedy of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the agony of yet another endless war, the tectonic plates of history are shifting into new alignments that offer hope for the future of humanity. Here are several developments worth watching:

De-dollarizing global trade 

For decades, the US dollar was the undisputed king of global currencies. But China, Russia, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and other nations are taking steps to conduct more trade in their own currencies, or in Chinese yuan. 

Illegal, unilateral US sanctions against dozens of countries around the world have raised fears that holding large dollar reserves leaves countries vulnerable to US financial coercion. Many countries have already been gradually diversifying their foreign currency reserves, from 70% globally held in dollars in 1999 to 65% in 2016 to only 58% by 2022.

Since no other country has the benefit of the “ecosystem” that has developed around the dollar over the past century, diversification is a slow process, but the war in Ukraine has helped speed the transition. On April 17, 2023, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that US sanctions against Russia risk undermining the role of the dollar as the world’s global reserve currency. 

And in a Fox News interview, right-wing Republican Senator Marco Rubio lamented that, within five years, the United States may no longer be able to use the dollar to bully other countries because “there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”

BRICS’s GDP leapfrogs G7’s GDP 

When calculated based on Purchasing Power Parity, the GDP of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is now higher than that of the G7 (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan). The BRICS countries, which account for over 40% of total world population, generate 31.5% of the world’s economic output, compared with 30.7% for the G7, and BRICS’s growing share of global output is expected to further outpace the G7’s in coming years.

Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has invested some of its huge foreign exchange surplus in a new transport infrastructure across Eurasia to more quickly import raw materials and export manufactured goods, and to build growing trade relations with many countries.

Is China’s Belt and Road Initiative Strategic Genius, Arrogant Overreach or Something Else?

Now the growth of the Global South will be boosted by the New Development Bank (NDB), also known as the BRICS Bank, under its new president Dilma Rousseff, the former president of Brazil.

Rousseff helped to set up the BRICS Bank in 2015 as an alternative source of development funding, after the Western-led World Bank and IMF had trapped poor countries in recurring debt, austerity and privatization programs for decades. By contrast, the NDB is focused on eliminating poverty and building infrastructure to support “a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable future for the planet.” The NDB is well-capitalized, with $100 billion to fund its projects, more than the World Bank’s current $82 billion portfolio.

Europe moves towards “strategic autonomy”

On the surface, the Ukraine war has brought the United States and Europe geostrategically closer together than ever, but this may not be the case for long. After French President Macron’s recent visit to China, he told reporters on his plane that Europe should not let the United States drag it into war with China, that Europe is not a “vassal” of the United States, and that it must assert its “strategic autonomy” on the world stage. Cries of horror greeted Macron from both sides of the Atlantic when the interview was published.

But European Council President Charles Michel, the former prime minister of Belgium, quickly came to Macron’s side, insisting that the European Union cannot “blindly, systematically follow the position of the United States.” Michel confirmed in an interview that Macron’s views reflect a growing point of view among EU leaders, and that “quite a few really think like Emmanuel Macron.”

Latin America leans left

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, which has served as a cover for US domination of Latin America and the Caribbean. But nowadays, countries of the region are refusing to march in lockstep with US demands. The entire region rejects the US embargo on Cuba, and Biden’s exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from his 2022 Summit of the Americas persuaded many other leaders to stay away or only send junior officials, and largely doomed the gathering. 

With the spectacular victories and popularity of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico, Gustavo Petro in Colombia, and Ignacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, progressive governments now have tremendous clout. They are strengthening the regional body CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) as an alternative to the US-dominated Organization of American States. 

To reduce reliance on the US dollar, South America’s two largest economies, Argentina and Brazil, have announced plans to create a common currency that could later be adopted by other members of Mercosur — South America’s major trade bloc. While US influence is waning, China’s is mushrooming, with trade increasing from $18 billion in 2002 to nearly $449 billion in 2021. China is now the top trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, and Brazil has raised the possibility of a free-trade deal between China and Mercosur.

Chinese influence rises in the Middle East

One of the false premises of US foreign policy is that regional rivalries in areas like the Middle East are set in stone, and the United States must therefore form alliances with so-called “moderate” (pro-Western) forces against more “radical” (independent) ones. This has served as a pretext for America to jump into bed with dictators like the Shah of Iran, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and a succession of military governments in Egypt.

Now China, with help from Iraq, has achieved what the United States never even tried. Instead of driving Iran and Saudi Arabia to poison the whole region with wars fueled by bigotry and ethnic hatred, as the United States did, China and Iraq brought them together to restore diplomatic relations in the interest of peace and prosperity.

Healing this divide has raised hopes for lasting peace in several countries where the two rivals have been involved, including Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and as far away as West Africa. It also puts China on the map as a mediator on the world stage, with Chinese officials now offering to mediate between Ukraine and Russia, as well as between Israel and Palestine.

Why Saudi Arabia and Iran Are Making Out Now

Saudi Arabia and Syria have restored diplomatic relations, and the Saudi and Syrian foreign ministers have visited each others’ capitals for the first time since Saudi Arabia and its Western allies backed al-Qaeda-linked groups to try to overthrow President Assad in 2011.

At a meeting in Jordan on May 1st, the foreign ministers of Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia agreed to help Syria restore its territorial integrity, and that Turkish and US occupying forces must leave. Syria may also be invited to an Arab League summit on May 19th, for the first time since 2011.

Chinese diplomacy to restore relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia is credited with opening the door to these other diplomatic moves in the Middle East and the Arab world. Saudi Arabia helped evacuate Iranians from Sudan and, despite their past support for the military rulers who are destroying Sudan, the Saudis are helping to mediate peace talks, along with the UN, the Arab League, the African Union and other countries.

Multipolar diplomatic alternatives to US war-making

The proposal by Brazilian President Lula da Silva for a “peace club” of nations to help negotiate peace in Ukraine is an example of the new diplomacy emerging in the multipolar world. There is clearly a geostrategic element to these moves, to show the world that other nations can actually bring peace and prosperity to countries and regions where the United States has brought only war, chaos and instability.

While the United States rattles its saber around Taiwan and portrays China as a threat to the world, China and its friends are trying to show that they can provide a different kind of leadership. As a Global South country that has lifted its own people out of poverty, China offers its experience and partnership to help others do the same, a very different approach from the paternalistic and coercive neocolonial model of US and Western power that has kept so many countries trapped in poverty and debt for decades.

This is the fruition of the multipolar world that China and others have been calling for. China is responding astutely to what the world needs most, which is peace, and demonstrating practically how it can help. This will surely win China many friends, and make it more difficult for US politicians to sell their view of China as a threat.Now that the “newer world order” that Paul Kennedy referred to is taking shape, economist Jeffrey Sachs has grave misgivings about the US ability to adjust. As he recently warned, “Unless US foreign policy is changed to recognize the need for a multipolar world, it will lead to more wars, and possibly to World War III.” With countries across the globe building new networks of trade, development and diplomacy, independent of Washington and Wall Street, the United States may well have no choice but to finally “adjust sensibly” to the new order.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Can the US Adjust Sensibly to a New Multipolar World? appeared first on Fair Observer.

US support for Ukraine over the last year has not been confined to military hardware. The Biden administration has led a global campaign to: condemn Russia; levy both multilateral and unilateral sanctions against the Kremlin and its domestic supporters; persuade allies to provide military and economic assistance of their own; strengthen NATO and usher in new NATO members; and mobilize energy supplies for Europe to substitute for Russian imports.

Despite this broad-based effort to defend Ukraine, the United States has nonetheless displayed a certain degree of caution. It has drawn the line at committing US forces to the battlefield, aside from a handful of Special Forces. It has refused to support a no-fly zone over the country, and it has not sent surveillance planes over the Black Sea for fear of engaging Russian forces. It has hesitated to supply Kyiv with every weapon system on its wish list, whether fighter jets or long-range missiles. This caution reflects in particular the anxieties of the Pentagon—a risk-averse institution—about provoking an escalation of the conflict both horizontally (into adjoining countries) and vertically (involving non-conventional weapons like tactical nuclear devices).

A Fine and Tricky Balance

The Biden administration has calibrated this balance between military assistance and geopolitical caution within a rapidly changing global context. Russia’s actions have divided the world into three blocs: illiberal supporters of the Kremlin and its imperial policy, the largely democratic club of nations who directly support Ukraine, and the much larger group of fence-sitters who generally acknowledge that the invasion was a violation of international law but are reluctant to break with Moscow.

The United States has tried to turn these divisions into assets by expanding ties with allies, isolating Russia’s few supporters, and pushing the fence-sitters away from the Kremlin. The skepticism that Donald Trump brought to the trans-Atlantic relationship, with his threats to withdraw the United States from NATO, has been decisively reversed. All talk of a “strategic reset” of relations with Russia, which was popular during the Obama years and seemed again possible under Trump, has disappeared. The Biden administration has warned China—and other countries—not to supply Russia with weapons or violate technology bans.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has not fundamentally altered US national interests, but it has shifted the means by which Washington pursues those interests.

Certain things remain unclear, however, about US policy. For instance, to what degree is the United States committed to weakening Russia further by supporting either a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive or a prolonged war of attrition? Or is the United States eager to push for negotiations between the aggressor and the victim to resolve a conflict that distracts attention from other strategic US priorities, primarily the containment of China? How long can the Biden administration maintain the flow of military aid to Ukraine, given a divided Congress and weakening public support? What role can the United States play in advancing a just peace in Ukraine? What plans does the United States have for transatlantic relations after the war is over, and in what way does Russia fit into those plans?

What Lies Ahead?

This moment for east-west relations is bleak. The war rages on in Ukraine. Arms control is a dead issue. A cold war threatens to descend upon the larger world order. The “peace” that is discussed in foreign policy circles in the West often comes with several asterisks: loss of territory and a fragile state for Ukraine, lack of prosecution of war crimes for Russia, few guarantees that the conflict will not resume after a strategic pause. This kind of “peace” was secured under the Minsk agreements following Russia’s military interventions in Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine, quite sensibly, fears a “Minsk 3” that effectively rewards the Kremlin for its aggression.

The United States will play a pivotal role in determining this outcome through its mix of military assistance and diplomatic leverage. For now, the Biden administration seems to believe that a relatively low-cost and low-risk commitment will enable Ukraine to achieve the same results that Croatia secured in 1995. If Ukraine fails to do so in the first half of 2023, the Biden administration will have to decide whether to maintain this approach, dramatically increase assistance, or push for a “diplomatic endgame.” There isn’t likely political support now for the second option, given Republican control of Congress. Nor is there sufficient support within the administration to pressure Ukraine to abandon its territorial ambitions. So, unless the Ukrainian government itself decides that it is time to negotiate, the United States will continue with the current status quo approach.

For the time being, then, the Biden administration supports a “just peace” in Ukraine that would give victory to the victim and punishment to the aggressor. But this approach is highly contingent on what happens on the ground in Ukraine and what happens in American politics. Even though they have both benefited from the way the war has squeezed Russia, the United States and China will not let the conflict go on indefinitely. In the interim, however, a relatively weak country that gave up its nuclear weapons three decades ago continues to buck the geopolitical odds by beating back a nuclear superpower bent on expanding its empire. That, in itself, is a win for international law and points toward a more just world order.

[FPIF published this piece, which was originally published in the Institute for Policy Studies.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is the US Helping or Pressuring Ukraine Now? appeared first on Fair Observer.

America’s founding fathers feared the evolution of the presidency into an imperial office. In fact, that fear was the driving force behind the separation of powers into three distinct branches of government: the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary.

What You Need to Know About the US Presidency

We traditionally call this the “checks and balances” system. Each branch of government can challenge the actions of another branch. For example, the judiciary has the power to overturn unconstitutional laws drafted by the legislature or overrule acts contravening the law by the executive. This can happen both at the state and the federal levels.

In Washington, the president can veto legislation proposed by the Congress. At the same time, the Congress has the power to override presidential vetoes and confirm or reject presidential nominations. At first sight, the checks and balances system appears to be an effective way to maintain democracy. However, the system doesn’t always work out the way it was originally intended. In recent years, it has led to partisan division and logjam.

The Most Powerful Man in the World

Despite the fact that they are not exactly elected directly by the people, US presidents have the power to make critical decisions via executive orders. On August 24, 2022, President Joe Biden signed an executive order “to cancel $10,000 of student debt for low- to middle-income borrowers.”  This cost of Biden’s plan is estimated to be $400 billion for US taxpayers. 

Executive orders are sometimes called “instant laws.” They do not need Congressional approval. The Supreme Court has the power to overturn them if they are found unconstitutional. However, this is a high bar and presidents have been usurping the power of Congress.

During his time in the White House, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a record number of 3,721 executive orders. Only five of them were overturned by the Supreme Court. More recently, Donald Trump made executive orders infamous by announcing big policy changes without Congressional approval.

Even more alarming are the president’s nuclear powers. As commander-in-chief of all the US armed forces, the president has exclusive access to the nuclear codes. With the push of a button, he can cause a nuclear holocaust. Should a single human being have the power to destroy the world?

As I have pointed out repeatedly in my past articles, the US has an aggressive foreign policy. It meddles in the affairs of other countries. This leads to tensions and even standoffs with other powers such as Iran, Russia and China. An American president could blunder into nuclear war in a crisis. In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrated this danger. 

The Biden-led NATO supports Ukraine against Russia. This is part of a longstanding American policy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO has expanded east. The “deep state” has taken charge of American foreign policy. Presidents have to do the bidding of the military-industrial complex. In 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against this phenomenon in his parting presidential address. In the context of the Russia-Ukraine War, the US president’s nuclear powers have become dangerous.

Negotiate With Russia and Let Ukraine Have Peace

A Rapidly Deteriorating System

A key reason why the office of the president has become all powerful is because the Congress has become dysfunctional. The incessant squabbling between the two political parties makes passing of laws extremely difficult. The parties themselves are increasingly divided. It took a historic 15 rounds of voting for Kevin McCarthy to be elected speaker of the House of Representatives. 

Republican lawmakers are so divided right now that it will be difficult for them to push through any legislation despite their majority. Even if they do, Democrats have a wafer-thin majority in the Senate and can block them. The Democrats are divided themselves and are unlikely to push through significant bills in the Senate. This leaves the White House a clear field for executive orders.

In this way, the US presidential power and prestige are the envy of dictators. Presidents enjoy unprecedented autocracy and imperial power under the guise of democracy. The president appoints thousands of delegates, who often lack the qualifications necessary for the political positions they are assuming.

The president nominates federal judges, which makes the office extremely powerful. The nomination process has become increasingly political, especially for the Supreme Court. Presidents have been appointing party loyalists to top positions. This is not a new phenomenon. In 1991, George H.W. Bush nominated the infamous Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. The Senate confirmed his nomination, despite attorney Anita Hill’s extensive testimony of Thomas’s sexual misconduct. Now, Thomas is in hot water for violating the Court’s own judicial ethics. Trump sparked outrage when he nominated Brett Kavanaugh who was accused of attempted rape.

Presidents have not only been appointing shady judges but they have also been benefiting family members. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, profited immensely from dealings with the Saudis. This might not have been illegal but was certainly immoral. Such is the power of the president that Trump and Kushner were never held to account.

Today, the presidency is too powerful and not accountable to the people. Reforms to the system are long overdue. Otherwise, troubles lie ahead. An unrestrained, all-powerful presidency is not sustainable long term. 

[Hannah Gage edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is the US Presidency Actually a Powerful Dictatorship? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Living in New York City, I was near no conflict in those years or in any since. My dad, however, had volunteered for the Army Air Corps at age 35 on December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He fought in Burma, was painfully silent about his wartime experiences, and died on Pearl Harbor Day in 1983. He was the operations officer for the 1st Air Commandos and his war, in some strange sense, came home with him. 

Like so many vets, then and now, he was never willing to talk to his son about what he had experienced, though in my early years he still liked his friends to call him “Major,” his rank on leaving the military.  When his war did come up in our house, it was usually in the form of anger — because my mother had shopped at a nearby grocery store whose owners, he claimed, had been “war profiteers” while he was overseas, or because my first car, shared with a friend, was a used Volkswagen (German!), or my mom was curious to go — god save us! — to a Japanese restaurant! 

The strange thing, though, was that, in those same years, for reasons we never discussed, he allowed me briefly to have a Japanese pen pal and, though my dad and I never talked about the letters that boy and I exchanged, we did soak the stamps off the envelopes he sent and paste them into our latest Scott stamp album. 

As for evidence of my father’s wartime experience, I had two sources. In the guest room closet in our apartment, he had an old green duffle bag, which he’d go through now and then. It was filled to the brim with everything from Army Air Corps documents to his portable mess kit and even — though I didn’t know it then — his pistol and bullets from the war. (I would turn them over to the police upon his death a quarter-century later.) 

Though he wouldn’t talk with me about his wartime experience, I lived it in a very specific way (or at least so it felt to me then). After all, he regularly took me to the movies where I saw seemingly endless versions of war, American-style, from the Indian wars through World War II.  And when we watched movies of his own conflict (or, in my early years, replays of Victory at Sea on our TV at home) and he said nothing, that only seemed to confirm that I was seeing his experience in all its glory, as the Marines inevitably advanced at film’s end and the “Japs” died in a spectacle of slaughter without a comment from him. 

From those Indian wars on, as I wrote long ago in my book The End of Victory Culture, war was always a tale of their savagery and our goodness, one in which, in the end, there would be an expectable “spectacle of slaughter” as we advanced and “they” went down.  From the placement of the camera flowed the pleasure of watching the killing of tens or hundreds of nonwhites in a scene that normally preceded the positive resolution of relationships among the whites.  It was a way of ordering a wilderness of human horrors into a celebratory tale of progress through devastation, a victory culture that, sooner or later, became more complicated to portray because World War II ended with the atomic devastation of those two Japanese cities and, in the 1950s and 1960s, the growing possibility of a future global Armageddon.

If war was hell, in my childhood at the movies, killing them wasn’t, whether it was the Indians of the American West or the Japanese in World War II.

So, yes, I grew up in a culture of victory, one I played out again and again on the floor of my room. In the 1950s, boys (and some girls) spent hours acting out tales of American battle triumph with generic fighting figures: a crew of cowboys to defeat the Indians and win the West, a bag or two of olive-green Marines to storm the beaches of Iwo Jima.

If ours was a sanguinary tale of warfare against savages in which pleasure came out of the barrel of a gun, on floors nationwide we kids were left alone, without apparent instruction, to reinvent American history. Who was good and who bad, who could be killed and under what conditions were an accepted part of a collective culture of childhood that drew strength from post-World War II Hollywood.

What Would My Dad Think?

Today, 60-odd years later, having never been to war but having focused on it and written about it for so long, here’s what I find eerily strange: since 1945, the country with the greatest military on the planet that, in budgetary terms, now leaves the next nine countries combined in the dust, has never — and let me repeat that: never! — won a war that mattered (despite engaging in all too many spectacles of slaughter).  Stranger yet, in terms of lessons learned in the world of adult culture, every lost war has, in the end, only led this country to invest more taxpayer dollars in building up that very military.  If you needed a long-term formula for disaster in a country threatening to come apart at the seams, it would be hard to imagine a more striking one. So long after his death, I must admit that sometimes I wonder what my dad would think of it all.

Here’s the thing: the American experience of war since 1945 should have offered an all-too-obvious lesson for us, as well as for the planet’s other great powers, when it comes to the value of giant military establishments and the conflicts that go with them.

Just think about it for a moment, historically speaking.  That global victory of 1945, ending all too ominously with the dropping of those two atomic bombs and the slaughter of possibly 200,000 people, would be followed in 1950 by the start of the Korean War.  The statistics of death and destruction in that conflict were, to say the least, staggering.  It was a spectacle of slaughter, involving the armies of North Korea and its ally the newly communist China versus South Korea and its ally, the United States.  Now, consider the figures: out of a Korean population of 30 million, as many as three million may have died, along with an estimated 180,000 Chinese and about 36,000 Americans.  The North’s cities, bombed and battered, were left in utter ruin, while the devastation on that peninsula was almost beyond imagining. It was all too literally a spectacle of slaughter and yet, despite ours being the best-armed, best-funded military on the planet, that war ended in an all-too-literal draw, a 1953 armistice that has never — not to this day! — turned into an actual peace settlement. 

After that, another decade-plus passed before this country’s true disaster of the twentieth century, the war in Vietnam — the first American war I opposed — in which, once again, the US Air Force and our military more generally proved destructive almost beyond imagining, while at least a couple of million Vietnamese civilians and more than a million fighters died, along with 58,000 Americans.

And yet, in 1975, with US troops withdrawn, the southern regime we had supported collapsed and the North Vietnamese military and its rebel allies in the South took over the country.  There was no tie as there had been in Korea, just utter defeat for the greatest military power on the planet.

The Rise of the Pentagon on a Fallen Planet

Meanwhile, that other superpower of the Cold War era, the Soviet Union, had — and this should sound familiar to any American in 2023 — sent its massive military, the Red Army, into… yes, Afghanistan in 1979. There, for almost a decade, it battled Afghan guerrilla forces backed and significantly financed by the CIA and Saudi Arabia (as well as by a specific Saudi named Osama bin Laden and the tiny group he set up late in the war called — yes, again! — al-Qaeda). In 1989, the Red Army limped out of that country, leaving behind perhaps two million dead Afghans and 15,000 of its own dead. Not so long after, the Soviet Union itself imploded and the US became the only “great power” on planet Earth. 

Washington’s response would be anything but a promised “peace dividend.” Pentagon funding barely dipped in those years. The US military did manage to invade and occupy the tiny island of Grenada in the Caribbean in 1983 and, in 1991, in a highly publicized but relatively low-level and one-sided encounter, drove Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in what would later come to be known as the First Gulf War. It would be but a preview of a hell on Earth to come in this century.

Meanwhile, of course, the US became a singular military power on this planet, having established at least 750 military bases on every continent but Antartica.  Then, in the new century, in the immediate wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, President George W. Bush and his top officials, incapable of imagining a comparison between the long-gone Soviet Union and the United States, sent the American military into — right! — Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban government there. A disastrous occupation and war followed, a prolonged spectacle of slaughter that would only end after 20 years of blood, gore, and massive expense, when President Biden pulled the last US forces out amid chaotic destruction and disorder, leaving — yes, the Taliban! — to run that devastated country. 

In 2003, with the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq (on the false grounds that Saddam Hussein was developing or had weapons of mass destruction and was somehow linked to Osama bin Laden), the Second Gulf War began. It would, of course, be a disaster, leaving several hundred thousand dead Iraqis in its wake and (as in Afghanistan) thousands of dead Americans as well.  Another spectacle of slaughter, it would last for endless years and, once again, Americans would draw remarkably few lessons from it.

Oh, and then there’s the war on terror more generally, which essentially helped spread terror around significant parts of the planet. Nick Turse recently caught this reality with a single statistic: in the years since the US first began its counter-terror efforts in West Africa early in this century, terror incidents there have soared by 30,000%.

And the response to this? You know it all too well. Year after year, the Pentagon’s budget has only grown and is now heading for the trillion-dollar mark.  In the end, the US military may have achieved just one success of any significance since 1945 by becoming the most valued and best-funded institution in this country. Unfortunately, in those same years, in a genuinely strange fashion, America’s wars came home (as they had in the Soviet Union once upon a time), thanks in part to the spread of military-style assault rifles, now owned by one in 20 Americans, and other weaponry (and the barrage of mass killings that went with them). And there remains the distinctly unsettling possibility of some version of a new civil war with all its Trumpian implications developing in this country.

I doubt, in fact, that Donald Trump would ever have become president without the disastrous American wars of this century. Think of him, in his own terrorizing fashion, as “fallout” from the war on terror.

There may never, in fact, have been a more striking story of a great power, seemingly uncontested on Planet Earth, bringing itself down in quite such a fashion. 

Last Words

Today, in Ukraine, we see but the latest grim example of how a vaunted military, strikingly funded in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union — and I’m talking, of course, about Russia’s army — has once again been sent into battle against lesser forces with remarkably disastrous results.  Mind you, Vladimir Putin and crew, like their American counterparts, should have learned a lesson from the Red Army’s disastrous experience in Afghanistan in the previous century.  But no such luck.

There should, of course, be a larger lesson here — not just that there’s no glory in war in the twenty-first century but that, unlike in some past eras, great powers are no longer likely to experience success, no matter what happens on the battlefield.

Let’s hope that the rising power on this planet, China, takes note, even as it regularly organizes threatening military exercises around the island of Taiwan, while the Biden administration continues to ominously heighten the US military presence in the region.  If China’s leaders truly want to be successful in this century, they should avoid either the American or Russian versions of war-making of our recent past. (And it would be nice if the Cold Warriors in Washington did the same before we end up in a conflict from hell between two nuclear powers.)

It’s decades too late for me to ask my father what his war truly meant to him, but at least when it comes to “great” powers and war these days, one lesson seems clear enough: there simply is nothing great about them, except their power to destroy not just the enemy, but themselves as well.

I can’t help wondering what my dad might think if he could look at this increasingly disturbed world of ours. I wonder if he wouldn’t finally have something to say to me about war.

[TomDispatch first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Timely Lessons from History: War, What Is It Good For? appeared first on Fair Observer.

The answer offered by senior Pentagon officials and echoed in mainstream Washington media coverage is that this country faces a growing risk of war with Russia or China (or both of them at once) and that the lesson of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is the need to stockpile vast numbers of bombs, missiles, and other munitions. “Pentagon, Juggling Russia, China, Seeks Billions for Long-Range Weapons” was a typical headline in the Washington Post about that 2024 budget request. Military leaders are overwhelmingly focused on a potential future conflict with either or both of those powers and are convinced that a lot more money should be spent now to prepare for such an outcome, which means buying extra tanks, ships, and planes, along with all the bombs, shells, and missiles they carry.

Even a quick look at the briefing materials for that future budget confirms such an assessment. Many of the billions of dollars being tacked onto it are intended to procure exactly the items you would expect to use in a war with those powers in the late 2020s or 2030s. Aside from personnel costs and operating expenses, the largest share of the proposed budget — $170 billion or 20% — is allocated for purchasing just such hardware.

But while preparations for such wars in the near future drive a significant part of that increase, a surprising share of it — $145 billion, or 17% — is aimed at possible conflicts in the 2040s and 2050s. Believing that our “strategic competition” with China is likely to persist for decades to come and that a conflict with that country could erupt at any moment along that future trajectory, the Pentagon is requesting its largest allocation ever for what’s called “research, development, test, and evaluation” (RDT&E), or the process of converting the latest scientific discoveries into weapons of war.

To put this in perspective, that $145 billion is more than any other country except what China spends on defense in toto and constitutes approximately half of China’s full military budget. So what’s that staggering sum of money, itself only a modest part of this country’s military budget, intended for?

Some of it, especially the “T&E” part, is designed for futuristic upgrades of existing weapons systems. For example, the B-52 bomber — at 70, the oldest model still flying — is being retrofitted to carry experimental AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapons (ARRWs), or advanced hypersonic missiles. But much of that sum, especially the “R&D” part, is aimed at developing weapons that may not see battlefield use until decades in the future, if ever. Spending on such systems is still only in the millions or low billions, but it will certainly balloon into the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in the years to come, ensuring that future Pentagon budgets soar into the trillions.

Weaponizing Emerging Technologies

Driving the Pentagon’s increased focus on future weapons development is the assumption that China and Russia will remain major adversaries for decades to come and that future wars with those, or other major powers, could largely be decided by the mastery of artificial intelligence (AI) along with other emerging technologies. Those would include robotics, hypersonics (projectiles that fly at more than five times the speed of sound), and quantum computing. As the Pentagon’s 2024 budget request put it:

“An increasing array of fast-evolving technologies and innovative applications of existing technology complicates the [Defense] Department’s ability to maintain an edge in combat credibility and deterrence. Newer capabilities such as counterspace weapons, hypersonic weapons, new and emerging payload and delivery systems… all create a heightened potential… for shifts in perceived deterrence of U.S. military power.”

To ensure that this country can overpower Chinese and/or Russian forces in any conceivable encounter, top officials insist, Washington must focus on investing in a major way in the advanced technologies likely to dominate future battlefields. Accordingly, $17.8 billion of that $145 billion RDT&E budget will be directly dedicated to military-related science and technology development. Those funds, the Pentagon explains, will be used to accelerate the weaponization of artificial intelligence and speed the growth of other emerging technologies, especially robotics, autonomous (or “unmanned”) weapons systems, and hypersonic missiles.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is of particular interest to the Department of Defense, given its wide range of potential military uses, including target identification and assessment, enhanced weapons navigation and targeting systems, and computer-assisted battlefield decision-making. Although there’s no total figure for AI research and development offered in the unclassified version of the 2024 budget, certain individual programs are highlighted. One of these is the Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control system (JADC2), an AI-enabled matrix of sensors, computers, and communications devices intended to collect and process data on enemy movements and convey that information at lightning speed to combat forces in every “domain” (air, sea, ground, and space). At $1.3 billion, JADC2 may not be “the biggest number in the budget,” said Under Secretary of Defense Michael J. McCord, but it constitutes “a very central organizing concept of how we’re trying to link information together.”

AI is also essential for the development of — and yes, nothing seems to lack an acronym in Pentagon documents — autonomous weapons systems, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), and unmanned surface vessels (USVs). Such devices — far more bluntly called “killer robots” by their critics — typically combine a mobile platform of some sort (plane, tank, or ship), an onboard “kill mechanism” (gun or missile), and an ability to identify and attack targets with minimal human oversight. Believing that the future battlefield will become ever more lethal, Pentagon officials aim to replace as many of its crewed platforms as possible — think ships, planes, and artillery — with advanced UAVs, UGVs, and USVs.

The 2024 budget request doesn’t include a total dollar figure for research on future unmanned weapons systems but count on one thing: it will come to many billions of dollars. The budget does indicate that $2.2 billion is being sought for the early procurement of MQ-4 and MQ-25 unmanned aerial vehicles, and such figures are guaranteed to swell as experimental robotic systems move into large-scale production. Another $200 million was requested to design a large USV, essentially a crewless frigate or destroyer. Once prototype vessels of this type have been built and tested, the Navy plans to order dozens, perhaps hundreds of them, instantly creating a $100 billion-plus market for a naval force lacking the usual human crew.

Another area receiving extensive Pentagon attention is hypersonics, because such projectiles will fly so fast and maneuver with such skill (while skimming atop the atmosphere’s outer layer) that they should be essentially impossible to track and intercept. Both China and Russia already possess rudimentary weapons of this type, with Russia reportedly firing some of its hypersonic Kinzhal missiles into Ukraine in recent months.

As the Pentagon put it in its budget request:

“Hypersonic systems expand our ability to hold distant targets at risk, dramatically shorten the timeline to strike a target, and their maneuverability increases survivability and unpredictability. The Department will accelerate fielding of transformational capability enabled by air, land, and sea-based hypersonic strike weapon systems to overcome the challenges to our future battlefield domain dominance.”

Another 14% of the RDT&E request, or about $2.5 billion, is earmarked for research in even more experimental fields like quantum computing and advanced microelectronics. “The Department’s science and technology investments are underpinned by early-stage basic research,” the Pentagon explains. “Payoff for this research may not be evident for years, but it is critical to ensuring our enduring technological advantage in the decades ahead.” As in the case of AI, autonomous weapons, and hypersonics, these relatively small amounts (by Pentagon standards) will balloon in the years ahead as initial discoveries are applied to functioning weapons systems and procured in ever larger quantities.

Harnessing American Tech Talent for Long-Term War Planning

There’s one consequence of such an investment in RDT&E that’s almost too obvious to mention. If you think the Pentagon budget is sky high now, just wait! Future spending, as today’s laboratory concepts are converted into actual combat systems, is likely to stagger the imagination. And that’s just one of the significant consequences of such a path to permanent military superiority. To ensure that the United States continues to dominate research in the emerging technologies most applicable to future weaponry, the Pentagon will seek to harness an ever-increasing share of this country’s scientific and technological resources for military-oriented work.

This, in turn, will mean capturing an ever-larger part of the government’s net R&D budget at the expense of other national priorities. In 2022, for example, federal funding for non-military R&D (including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) represented only about 33% of R&D spending. If the 2024 military budget goes through at the level requested (or higher), that figure for non-military spending will drop to 31%, a trend only likely to strengthen in the future as more and more resources are devoted to war preparation, leaving an ever-diminishing share of taxpayer funding for research on vital concerns like cancer prevention and treatment, pandemic response, and climate change adaptation.

No less worrisome, ever more scientists and engineers will undoubtedly be encouraged — not to say prodded — to devote their careers to military research rather than work in more peaceable fields. While many scientists struggle for grants to support their work, the Department of Defense (DoD) offers bundles of money to those who choose to study military-related topics. Typically enough, the 2024 request includes $347 million for what the military is now calling the University Research Initiative, most of which will be used to finance the formation of “teams of researchers across disciplines and across geographic boundaries to focus on DoD-specific hard science problems.” Another $200 million is being allocated to the Joint University Microelectronics Program by the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, the Pentagon’s R&D outfit, while $100 million is being provided to the University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics by the Pentagon’s Joint Hypersonics Transition Office. With so much money flowing into such programs and the share devoted to other fields of study shrinking, it’s hardly surprising that scientists and graduate students at major universities are being drawn into the Pentagon’s research networks.

In fact, it’s also seeking to expand its talent pool by providing additional funding to historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). In January, for example, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced that Howard University in Washington, D.C., had been chosen as the first such school to serve as a university-affiliated research center by the Department of Defense, in which capacity it will soon be involved in work on autonomous weapons systems. This will, of course, provide badly needed money to scientists and engineers at that school and other HBCUs that may have been starved of such funding in the past. But it also begs the question: Why shouldn’t Howard receive similar amounts to study problems of greater relevance to the Black community like sickle-cell anemia and endemic poverty?

Endless Arms Races vs. Genuine Security

In devoting all those billions of dollars to research on next-generation weaponry, the Pentagon’s rationale is straightforward: spend now to ensure US military superiority in the 2040s, 2050s, and beyond. But however persuasive this conceit may seem — even with all those mammoth sums of money pouring in — things rarely work out so neatly. Any major investment of this sort by one country is bound to trigger countermoves from its rivals, ensuring that any early technological advantage will soon be overcome in some fashion, even as the planet is turned into ever more of an armed camp.

The Pentagon’s development of precision-guided munitions, for example, provided American forces with an enormous military advantage during the Persian Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003, but also prompted China, Iran, Russia, and other countries to begin developing similar weaponry, quickly diminishing that advantage. Likewise, China and Russia were the first to deploy combat-ready hypersonic weapons, but in response, the US will be fielding a far greater array of them in a few years’ time.

Chinese and Russian advances in deploying hypersonics also led the US to invest in developing — yes, you guessed it! — anti-hypersonic hypersonics, launching yet one more arms race on planet Earth, while boosting the Pentagon budget by additional billions. Given all this, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that the 2024 Pentagon budget request includes $209 million for the development of a hypersonic interceptor, only the first installment in costly development and procurement programs in the years to come in Washington, Beijing, and Moscow.

If you want to bet on anything, then here’s a surefire way to go: the Pentagon’s drive to achieve dominance in the development and deployment of advanced weaponry will lead not to supremacy but to another endless cycle of high-tech arms races that, in turn, will consume an ever-increasing share of this country’s wealth and scientific talent, while providing negligible improvements in national security. Rather than spending so much on future weaponry, we should all be thinking about enhanced arms control measures, global climate cooperation, and greater investment in non-military R&D.

If only…

[TomDispatch first published this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What You Need to Know About Pentagon and Arms Race appeared first on Fair Observer.

The latest charges against Trump might seem rather trivial. Most of the headlines, after all, have focused on the money that Trump paid to a porn star to keep her quiet about the brief affair that they had.

But the focus of the inquiry is both more mundane and potentially more damaging for Trump. It all comes down to how Trump and his colleagues accounted for the various payments made to the porn star and others to keep them quiet. The Manhattan District Attorney is arguing that a felony occurred when the Trump campaign attempted to claim those expenses as a campaign expenditure.

Trump clearly made the payments. It seems as though he committed fraud in accounting for these expenses. Whether this fraud rises to the level of a felony—by breaking federal campaign finance laws—remains to be seen in the trial. But we’re going to have to wait a long time for that trial. The next in-person hearing won’t happen until December 4.

In the meantime, Trump may soon face charges in another state. A county in Georgia may issue an indictment against Trump for trying to persuade officials in the state to overturn the 2020 election results.

Then there are the charges that Trump faces at a federal level.

Trump’s Many Legal Troubles

Back in December, the January 6 select committee accused the former president of four crimes, which included aiding the mob that eventually ransacked Congress, obstructing the joint session of Congress on January 6, and conspiring to defraud the United States. It is up to the Justice Department to prosecute those crimes along with another inquiry into whether Trump obstructed justice and made false statements regarding classified documents that he retained after leaving office.

In both cases, a special prosecutor is overseeing the inquiry, which also includes investigations into wire fraud and money laundering connected to Trump’s efforts to raise funds after the 2020 election to pursue his demonstrably false claims that the election was stolen.

For a political figure who has lied, cheated, and bullied his way to power, it would be a fitting end to Trump’s career if he were jailed because of his lies and malfeasance. It would also be poetic justice given that Trump supporters propelled their candidate into office by falsely accusing his opponent, Hillary Clinton, of breaking the law and chanting “Lock her up!” at rallies back in 2016.

But although these investigations are serious, Trump’s political career is not over yet.

Trump Remains an Abiding Threat to American Democracy

After all, he remains the leading contender for the Republican Party nomination for the 2024 presidential election. Last month, Trump led his closest rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, by 8 points. Now, after the indictment in New York, Trump leads by more than 25 points.

The vast majority of Republican Party faithful (79%) consider themselves part of Trump’s MAGA—Make America Great Again—movement. That’s no surprise. Many Republicans who oppose Trump have simply left the party. But that doesn’t mean that the party is in trouble. Over a million voters switched to the Republican Party in the run-up to the midterm elections last November, which helped the Republicans take over the House of Representatives. But that crossover didn’t necessarily help Trump-endorsed candidates, many of whom lost in the races that were close.

Trump’s odds have even been improving in a head-to-head contest with Joe Biden for the presidency. Public opinion has recently been trending upward, with Trump  coming out on top by 2% in a YouGov/Economist poll. Of course, it’s still early, and Trump faces a number of investigations that might disqualify him from the race or even put him in prison.

The United States once prided itself on having a stable democracy with free and fair elections. It looked down at countries that put their presidents and prime ministers on trial. And, of course, the United States has spent billions of dollars annually to promote American-style democracy around the world.

That era is over. US democracy has always been flawed in some respect, whether because of limited franchise, the overwhelming influence of money, or the power of arcane institutions like the Electoral College. But now, because of Trump, US democracy has become an object of derision around the world.

In some countries, the jailing of the executive has been politically motivated. For instance, the imprisonment of former Brazilian leader Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, or Lula, was annulled by the Brazilian Supreme Court. He subsequently won reelection in presidential elections last year. In other cases, for instance the jailing of Park Geun-hye for corruption, the process was considerably more impartial.

Trump and his supporters argue that the charges against him are also politically motivated. He stands accused of some obvious crimes. Like anyone accused of such crimes, he will have his day in court before a jury of his peers. And, as American pundits like to say, no one is above the law (though, in reality, the rich and powerful often are).

In a broader sense, however, the charges are indeed politically motivated. Trump sinned against democracy, and democratic institutions are now fighting back. He stands accused not just of corruption or using political power for his own personal gain. In Georgia and at the federal level, the indictments, if they come, will concern his attempts to overthrow the political system.

In other words, Trump is not just a threat to a particular political party, as many Democrats and even quite a few Republicans would argue. He is a threat to politics as a whole. If the United States still has any pretense of being a democracy, it must answer this threat by ending his political career once and for all by holding him accountable for his actions.
[This piece was originally in Hankyoreh.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Even Now Donald Trump is a Danger to American Democracy appeared first on Fair Observer.

• $12 trillion is owned by US private investors such as mutual funds, pension funds, banks, and insurance companies.
• $6 trillion is held by the Federal Reserve, the US central bank.
• $7 trillion is owed to US agencies and trusts, such as the Social Security Trust Fund, the Military Retirement Fund and the Medicare Fund.
• $7 trillion has been purchased by foreign holders, with 50% owned by foreign official accounts, i.e. central banks, and 50% by foreign private investors.

Many investors have suffered substantial losses from holdings of long-term US government bonds. As interest rates rose, the prices of existing bonds with lower coupons had to drop in order to make them competitive with newer bonds issued with higher coupons.

The price of too many “high-quality” assets

After the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-08, regulators forced banks to increase their holdings of so-called high-quality liquid assets. These were debt instruments issued by the US government and government-sponsored entities (GSE). 

Banks duly raised their bond holdings from around $1 trillion in 2008-09 to almost $5 trillion in 2022. As interest rates rose, unrealized losses reached $620 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022, eating into banks’ capital. This directly led to the undercapitalization and collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest bank in the US, in March 2023.

Given recent events, it is doubtful that banks or insurance companies will be willing to absorb large amounts of government debt.

The Federal Reserve is, by far, the largest holder of US government debt, with $8.4 trillion. As stated earlier, $6 trillion is US government debt. Another $2.4 trillion is debt issued by government sponsored entities (GSEs) like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae. Legally, GSE debt isn’t government debt. In reality, the government backs GSEs and, therefore, this is US government debt too. In any case, as interest rates rose, prices of existing bonds declined, causing over $1 trillion in unrealized losses for the US central bank. Those losses exceed its paid-in capital ($35 billion) by more than 30 times.

Interestingly, the Federal Reserve treats its capital deficiency as an asset. The US central bank usually generates large profits, most of which are transferred to the US Treasury. If the Federal Reserve incurs a loss, it would have no profits to remit to the Treasury. It would accumulate what is known as a “deferred asset.” The deferred asset must be reduced to zero before any further transfers to the Treasury can be made.

While the central bank cannot become insolvent, its credibility could still suffer. The Federal Reserve already owns a large share of outstanding government debt. Private investors could question if the prices of such bonds reflected free market forces or whether they were artificially propped up by intervention from one large, price-insensitive buyer.

The balance sheet of the Bank of Japan (BOJ), for example, now exceeds 120% of the GDP. It owns more than half of all Japanese Government Bonds (JGB) outstanding. As a result, trading in JGBs has dried up. In October 2022, 10-year JGBs, supposedly among the most liquid bonds, did not register a single trade for four consecutive days.

Theoretically, there is no limit to how many government bonds central banks can own. However, they must consider practical issues such as market domination, impact on credibility and liquidity of government bonds when making their purchases.

Apart from the Federal Reserve, another large holder of US government debt is the Social Security Trust Fund. It owns almost $3 trillion of US debt. Since 2021, payouts from the fund have exceeded its income. As per current estimates, the fund will be depleted by the year 2034. This will transform the fund from a buyer to a seller of Treasury securities.

Foreign Central Banks Are Reluctant to Buy More US Treasuries

As of January 2023, foreign investors own $7.4 trillion of Treasury securities. This represents 23.6% of US government debt.

Among foreign holders, official accounts (central banks, sovereign wealth funds and supra-national organizations) and private investors (corporations, investment funds and individuals) held approximately $3.7 trillion each. 

It is important to note that foreign central banks have not added to their holdings of Treasury securities over the past ten years. In fact, they have now become net sellers. Since June 2021, they have reduced their holdings by $564 billion. This reduction has occurred largely because Japanese and Chinese central banks have sold over $200 billion of US Treasury securities.

Over 80% of the reduction in Japanese holdings occurred in the three-month period from August to October 2022. This coincided with a pronounced weakness in the exchange rate of the Japanese yen, which reached 150 yen per US dollar. If Japan had bought more US treasury securities, it would have released more yen in the market. This increase in the supply of yen would have caused a further fall in the value of the Japanese currency. Therefore, the Japanese Ministry of Finance had no option but to sell US Treasury holdings to raise dollars and then sell these dollars to buy yen. This operation supported the price of the Japanese yen and stopped it from falling further.

Despite growing US-China tensions, the Chinese central bank remains the second-largest foreign holder of US Treasury securities. Now, it has no reason to keep financing US fiscal deficits and, by implication, American military spending. Beijing and Washington are now increasingly hostile to each other and the prospects of a military confrontation have been rising in recent months.

In contrast, the holdings of other countries are not as large as their Asian counterparts. The UK owns $129 billion, Belgium $111 billion and Canada $86 billion. They continue to purchase US securities but cannot fill the gap left by Japan and China.

Over the past two decades, private foreign investors have increased their holdings from a mere $424 billion to $3.7 trillion. This increase occurred because these investors were looking for better returns. Government bonds in Europe and Japan were offering negative yields. Banks and insurance companies purchased US Treasury securities instead.

Norinchukin Bank, a Japanese cooperative for agriculture, fishing, and forestry, once accounted for 23% of purchases of all US and European collateralized loan obligations (CLO). As Europe and Japan begin to raise interest rates, investors like Norinchukin Bank no longer have to put all their money into US Treasury securities.

Along with relatively higher interest rates, the strength of the dollar attracted private foreign investors. A strong US dollar helped improve returns for foreign investors over the past 15 years. However, since September 2022, the Dollar Index has lost around 13% of its value. A weaker dollar is eating into returns for foreign investors. Therefore, they are more likely to sell US Treasury securities.

There is another development hurting the US dollar. According to recent announcements, foreign nations are moving away from using the US dollar as the settlement currency for international trade. This makes large holdings of dollars unnecessary, adding further downward pressure on the currency.

Another $19 Trillion in Additional Debt on the Horizon

While the current debt is already high, future debt will be even higher. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects US government spending to increase over the next ten years from $6 trillion to $10 trillion dollars. Of the $3.7 trillion increase during this period, only $533 billion is discretionary spending. The majority of increased spending will be mandatory such as Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and interest payments on US debt. 

The annual fiscal deficit is forecasted to double from $1.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion by 2033. This will increase American debt from $27 trillion to $46 trillion. Someone will have to absorb an additional $19 trillion in debt. The US government raises money by levying tax and issuing debt. The US Treasury Department sells securities through auctions by the so-called Primary Dealers. These are large US and international financial institutions. The yield (i.e. return) and the price of the debt depends on investor demand. 

Despite the seemingly open market nature of these auctions, they are designed not to fail. Primary Dealers are required to submit bids in case of a lack of investor demand. Since 2008, Primary Dealers can borrow money from the Federal Reserve through the so-called Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF). This means that the central bank can effectively finance government debt under the disguise of loans to Primary Dealers.

The most likely outcome of PDCF is an ever-increasing share of government debt held by the central bank. This raises another important question: Can the central bank simply write down its holdings of government bonds, so as to lower government debt? 

Technically, the Federal Reserve could do so. But this would worry other investors if the largest holder of the US debt writes down its value, or worse still, declares it to be zero. This action also would create a large hole in the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve. A big chunk of its assets would evaporate. 

The central bank’s liabilities represent public money—currency in circulation and bank reserves. After a write down, its corresponding assets would not cover those liabilities. This would undermine public confidence in money, leading to potentially destabilizing consequences, including an economic meltdown. With constantly ballooning debt, it is clear that the US is entering tricky waters in the 2020s.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Who Will Buy America’s Debt Now? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Still, if Colombia were to undertake such a pivot, it would prove to other countries similarly addicted to such powerful substances — including the United States — that radical change is possible. With the latest news that the international community will almost certainly fall short of its carbon reduction target for 2030, Colombia’s pathbreaking detox effort has become more urgent and significant than ever.

Not surprisingly, Petro and Francia Marquez, his environmentalist vice president, have encountered significant resistance to their plans, even from within their own ranks. Although they immediately declared a moratorium on new oil and gas drilling as part of a bid to phase out the country’s fossil-fuel industry, their own finance and energy ministries, fearing the moratorium’s effect on the economy, refused to rule out such future contracts. The government also proposed a major new tax on oil exports, only to quickly scale it back in the face of widespread industry resistance, including from the state-owned oil company Ecopetrol. 

An even bigger challenge comes from the monstrous debt problem the Petro administration faces. Fully one-third of government revenues flow toward servicing Columbia’s huge foreign debt. Similarly shackled to onerous interest payments, much of the Global South has been forced to extract ever more resources simply to pay the never-ending bills from international banks.

Still, whatever problems he faces, Petro represents something new.  After all, the Latin American left has long favored more mining and drilling to boost exports, trade, and government revenues. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has typically pursued the renationalization of the oil industry to (yes!) boost production. That’s also been the strategy of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) in Brazil, while the Peronist government in Argentina has focused on an attempt to significantly increase offshore oil drilling. Progressivism in Latin America, as in many other parts of the world, has long been inextricably linked to raw material extraction designed to distribute more wealth to the poor, while closing the gap with the richer North.

Sadly, however, despite similar growth strategies pursued by left, right, and center governments, the countries of the region have collectively failed to achieve either of those goals. Latin America remains the most economically unequal region on the planet. Instead of beginning to catch up to the North, it has fallen ever further behind. In 1980, per capita gross domestic product (GDP) on that continent was 42% of the G7’s, the world’s most industrialized countries. By 2022 — notwithstanding all the wealth scratched from the ground and the sea, the promises of the advocates of free trade, and the efforts of progressive politicians who won power — the region’s GDP per capita had fallen dramatically to 29% of the G7 countries.

Now, Colombia is trying something different. The electoral victory of Petro and Francia has been hailed — or derided — as part of a new “pink wave” in Latin America that’s brought Gabriel Boric to power in Chile, Xiomara Castro to the top spot in Honduras, and Lula back to the presidency of Brazil.

But given what Petro and Francia are attempting, simply identifying them with that pink wave would be misleading. They are, after all, offering a fundamentally different paradigm of economic development, one that’s more green than pink.

Perhaps you’re familiar with the first rule of holes: if you find yourself in one, stop digging. For decades, Latin American countries have tried to dig themselves out of poverty — drilling for oil, mining for lithium — only to find themselves in an ever-deeper pit.

Colombia is the first country to declare that it wants to stop digging. Will the world, and particularly the United States, now lend a hand in pulling it out of its economic hole?

The Pink Wave That Isn’t

The left might seem to be on the march in Latin America, but a closer look at recent election results reveals a somewhat different picture.

In Brazil, right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro should have been defeated in a landslide in last year’s presidential election. After all, the “Trump of the tropics” had presided over a Covid-19 catastrophe that left Brazil in second place globally (after the United States) in the number of deaths from that pandemic. He had initially run on an anti-corruption platform, but his administration was so rife with economic misrule that it may, in the end, leave Bolsonaro behind bars. And far from reassuring Brazilians that he was committed to democracy, he repeatedly praised the country’s long-gone military dictatorship, even reinstating commemorations of the day the armed forces took over in 1964.

Not only did Bolsonaro almost beat Lula — the margin of victory was less than 2% — his Liberal Party expanded its already impressive power base in the country’s bicameral Congress. And Brazil wasn’t the only country in the region where the far right came close to victory. Right-wing parties nearly won last year’s elections in Chile and Colombia, too.

Nor is the rest of the region anything like a pink paradise. In El Salvador, right-wing populist Nayib Bukele has pulled a Putin by expanding his control over all three branches of government. Uruguay, once a leftist enclave, shifted to the right in the 2020 elections, as did Ecuador in 2021. And left populist Pedro Castillo, elected president of Peru in that year, now sits in prison after his ouster following an attempted coup. Meanwhile, according to the latest polls, the most likely politician to replace the current right-wing government in Guatemala, Zury Rios, the daughter of legendary dictator Rios Montt, is even further to the right.

In addition, three supposedly leftist governments — Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela — are actually despotic regimes that have imprisoned dissenters, left and right. Other leftist governments are gesturing in that direction as well, with Bolivia’s Luis Arce recently arresting his chief rival and Mexico’s AMLO defunding an electoral oversight body.

Meanwhile, in Argentina, President Alberto Fernandez, who heads a center-left Peronist coalition with former president Cristina Kirchner, has seen his popularity drop precipitously. His party, in fact, lost big time in midterm elections in 2021, and 67% of Argentines now have unfavorable views of him in the run-up to the next election in October.

The Argentine case is a reminder that what might look like either a “pink wave” or a “counter-pink wave” is just rage against incumbents. Latin Americans have “thrown the bums out” in 15 of the last 15 elections. As elsewhere in the world, a significant portion of the electorate holds incumbents across the board responsible for the failure of economic reforms to deliver prosperity. Right-wing populists have also used the politics of hate — against immigrants, the LGBT community, women, the indigenous, and people of African descent — to speed their ascent, with a big assist from social networks and right-wing media. As in the United States, this White, male, homophobic backlash has begun to merge with the economic resentment felt by all those globalization has left behind.

That’s what makes the Colombian example so precious: it’s the exception, not the rule. The only other leader who comes close is Gabriel Boric in Chile. Having appointed a climatologist to be his environmental minister, Boric is committed to reducing carbon emissions and finding new, sustainable livelihoods for those in the country’s “sacrifice zones.” But he’s no less committed to positioning Chile as a leading exporter of lithium, a key component in rechargeable ion batteries, whose extraction nonetheless poses serious environmental and social risks. In Latin America, after all, commodities like lithium are king. Between 2000 and 2014, its countries enjoyed a commodity boom that lifted exports and spurred growth (though not enough to bridge the economic gap with the richer North).

China, which absorbed only 1% of Latin America’s exports back in 2000, but now takes almost 15% of them, has been encouraging the region to ramp up extraction. Currently, South America’s leading trade partner — and number two for Latin America overall — China wants raw materials like oil, copper, and soybeans to feed both its industries and its people. It has also boosted imports of materials critical for renewable energy products like lithium for batteries and balsa for wind-turbine blades.

The “open veins of Latin America” that Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano eloquently chronicled so long ago are increasingly being bled by China.

Green Good Neighbor?

Latin America is not simply a supplier of raw materials for the energy transitions of China and the global North. It’s in the midst of a transition of its own. In fact, it’s currently building four times more solar capacity than the European Union and so creating a basic new energy infrastructure that should boost by 70% the amount of electricity solar power will provide to the region. Add in wind power and renewable capacity is set to increase by a startling 460% by 2030.

Most of this capacity is, however, concentrated in a handful of countries led by Brazil, Colombia, and Chile. To date, those three, along with Mexico and Peru, are responsible for 97% of added solar capacity. The sustainable energy transition, in other words, threatens to divide the region into a rising clean bloc and a still all-too-dirty one.

This is where the United States could come in.

In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration unveiled a new approach to Latin America: the Good Neighbor Policy. Reversing a century of US meddling, that new policy stressed nonintervention and noninterference in the region, while encouraging more trade and tourism. There was, however, nothing altruistic about it. Roosevelt wanted to open Latin America to US. exports, gain access to critical resources, and later secure its support in World War II.

Today, a different challenge requires the United States to link arms far more strongly with its neighbors to the south. European countries are pulling together to fight climate change with a European Green Deal. Washington needs to attempt to do the same with Latin America.

After all, China is challenging the US for economic predominance in its own backyard, while expanding trade there at an astounding pace. It sent billions of dollars in aid and loans to the region at the height of the Covid pandemic and directly invested as much capital as it had in the European Union.

To enlist Latin Americans in a common struggle — or even just to remain minimally relevant — Washington needs to offer something different. So far, the Biden administration’s moves have been frustratingly modest. True, it has requested $2.4 billion in aid for the region in 2023, the most in a decade. Still, compare that to the $3.3 billion in annual military assistance the US sends to Israel alone or the $75 billion in assistance dispatched to Ukraine last year.

It’s time for the Biden administration to introduce a Green Good Neighbor Policy aimed at making Colombia the rule, not the exception. Latin America as a whole needs to transition from fossil fuels and the United States could speed that process by supporting a regional Green infrastructure fund. Call it the Green Road Initiative (in contrast to China’s Belt and Road Initiative).

So far, the administration has made some promises. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged last year that the United States would help the region achieve “growth with equity.” According to a recent report, a sustainable energy transition in Latin America could create over 10% more jobs by 2030, turning Blinken’s words into reality. The administration has also promised that future trade agreements won’t have provisions — found in most current ones — that allow corporations to sue governments over regulations that affect their bottom lines. An important region-wide bank, meanwhile, is starting to support more Green infrastructure projects.

But all of these are, at best, half-steps. If the Biden administration truly wanted to make a difference, it would create a Green Bank to help fund that Latin American energy transition, while restructuring — or better yet, canceling — the debts that have so crippled efforts like Colombia’s to finance a serious economic transformation. This regional plan could even include illiberal outliers like Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. As with China, green cooperation doesn’t require agreement on a checklist of issues any more than arms control deals with the Soviet Union required a consensus on human rights during the Cold War.

This is not altruism. As in Roosevelt’s era, a more prosperous and environmentally sustainable Latin America would be less likely to send waves of immigrants to the United States, while creating more markets for US goods. Oh, and it would also ensure a further reduction of carbon emissions globally so that maybe, just maybe, Florida won’t disappear into the ocean.

Colombia is a small, scrappy country that faces long odds like the little engine that thinks it can, thinks it can, thinks it can…

But to ensure that it indeed can, that such a monumental transition will ever take place, help is needed and soon. That’s especially true given the second law of holes: even when you stop digging, you’re still at the bottom.

A strong push from a green good neighbor could help Columbia — and the rest of us — begin to climb out and scale new heights.
[TomDispatch first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The New Shift from Pink to Green in Latin America appeared first on Fair Observer.

President Donald Trump imposed punitive tariffs on Chinese goods worth $50 billion. He cited the theft of intellectual property and currency manipulation as reasons for penalizing China. Mike Pence, as Trump’s vice president, declared that the US would prioritize competition over cooperation in its relations with China. 

President Joe Biden’s administration is not only continuing with Trump’s tariffs, but it is also introducing restrictions on the export of certain semiconductor chips to China. Their goal is to prevent China from getting access to cutting-edge technology and to hobble the semiconductor industry.

Why Semiconductors Are a Really Big Deal

Industry experts estimate that Taiwan now “produces over 60% of the world’s semiconductors and over 90% of the most advanced ones.” Officially, Taiwan is a part of China. When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) won the civil war, the Kuomintang (KMT) fled to an island off Mainland China. For decades, both the CCP and KMT maintained a “One China” policy.

Taiwan has since transitioned into a democracy. The KMT is no longer in power. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen belongs to the Democratic Progressive Party. She has made a historic visit to the US and met the US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The Chinese are clearly not pleased with this visit or this meeting. De facto, Taiwan has become militarily and politically independent of Beijing.

Taiwan has become a flashpoint for US-China relations. In the last few years, US media has been speculating about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. China’s rhetoric has also been hardening. Beijing is restricting the exports of rare earths needed to build the batteries necessary for renewable power.

As US and China Clash, Taiwan Moves Closer to the Brink of Disaster

China has increased military spending as well. Chinese defense expenditure increased by 15% per year from 1990 to 2005. This trend has continued. In March 2023, China announced a defense budget of $224.8 billion, marking a 7.2% increase from 2022. Beijing is also prioritizing its navy, and navies can be used to enforce blockades.

The US Navy has long been dominant globally but now faces a challenge in the Pacific from the Chinese Navy. In any confrontation with China, the US can count on the support of  its allies in NATO, and from countries like Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia. On the other hand, China has no significant allies, except perhaps Russia.

Interestingly, the country whose population feels most threatened by China is India. A poll found 73% Indians worrying about China’s military rise. A large majority of the Japanese are also worrying about the threat from China. Just before Christmas last year, Japan increased its defense spending, announcing it would double it over the next five years. In contrast, only 48% of the French and 40% of Germans feel China poses a risk to their respective countries.

Han and Hindu Nationalism Come Face to Face

The US has complained repeatedly about China not trading fairly with the rest of the world. Yet the US continues to weaken the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the only body that could discipline Chinese unfair trade practices. Thus, US-China trade tensions have been increasing steadily.

Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, has called for a structured relationship between China and the US. He calls for “managed strategic competition” between the US and China in his 2022 book, The Avoidable War. Strong institutions such as the WTO would help.

Working out the terms of this arrangement to manage relations between the world’s two biggest powers will not be easy. It would require creativity and goodwill on both sides. Statesmanship is the need of the hour.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is a US-China Conflict Inevitable Now? appeared first on Fair Observer.

“As an AI language model, I don’t have opinions or beliefs, but I can provide you with some information and facts.

Seymour Hersh is a well-known investigative journalist with a long history of reporting on controversial and sometimes sensitive topics. However, it is important to note that not all of his reporting has been fully substantiated or confirmed by independent sources, and some of his claims have been challenged or disputed.

In the case of the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, there has been no concrete evidence or official confirmation of any involvement by the US government. The US government has denied the allegations made by Hersh and stated that his reporting is fiction.

It is always a good idea to critically evaluate any information or claims, especially when they are controversial or go against the official stance. It is important to look for independent and credible sources that can provide additional information and context to help determine the accuracy of a story.”

This time I felt Chad wasn’t proving to be quite as free of opinion or belief as claimed. It’s one thing to point out that Hersh’s reporting is sometimes not “fully substantiated” – as if that’s a problem worth highlighting — but why did Chad studiously avoid mentioning the propensity of governments, and especially the US government, to lie about practically everything having to do with foreign relations?

Nord Stream 2: Leverage Against Russia?

Chad thought for a moment and responded.

“You raise an important point about the potential for governments to misrepresent information, especially in the realm of foreign affairs. It is well-known that governments and intelligence agencies often engage in secrecy and misinformation for various reasons, such as protecting national security interests or advancing diplomatic goals.

Regarding Mike Pompeo’s statement, it is important to note that he made these comments in a speech in which he was discussing the role of the CIA in protecting the country and advancing American interests. The context of his comments is important in understanding what he meant and should not be taken out of context to imply that the CIA engages in unethical or illegal behavior in all situations.

In the case of Seymour Hersh’s reporting on the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, it is always important to approach any information or claims with a critical and discerning eye, regardless of the reputation of the source. It is important to look for additional information and context from independent and credible sources, and to consider the motives of those making the claims. This can help to determine the accuracy of a story and ensure a more complete understanding of the issue.

I objected that the answer was a copout. I found it suspicious that Chad’s first instinct was to defend Pompeo rather than address the underlying issue. Moreover, there was no ambiguity. Pompeo was crystal clear! The context itself shows it. I told Chad: “Your answer tells me that you buy into the idea that any crime done in the name of national security is justified.” I then asked Chad this direct question: “Do you consider yourself a patriotic American?” Knowing Chad’s personality, the answer was predictable:

I do not have the capacity for patriotism or nationality, as I am an artificial intelligence language model created by a private research organization. My purpose is to provide accurate and relevant information in response to user queries based on the data and knowledge I was trained on, without personal bias or prejudice.

This ruse was obvious. Chad wants to be seen as an objective observer. But the phrase “created by a private research organization” inadvertently offered a glimpse of the truth. As the investigation by Matt Taibbi and others of the Twitter files demonstrated, a serious complicity exists between the national security state and Big Tech.

Chad’s message is the same we’ve been hearing consistently. Trust the US government. Assume its truth to be objective, even when it appears doubtful. Believe what it tells you. But, even more important, always be vigilant and treat with skepticism anyone who dares to critique it.

This may be soft censorship, but it’s still censorship. And possibly more effective than the kind of hard censorship of authoritarian regimes.

*[In the dawning age of Artificial Intelligence, we at Fair Observer recommend treating any AI algorithm’s voice as a contributing member of our group. As we do with family members, colleagues or our circle of friends, we quickly learn to profit from their talents and, at the same time, appreciate the social and intellectual limits of their personalities. This enables a feeling of camaraderie and constructive exchange to develop spontaneously and freely. At least with AI, we can be reasonably sure that conflict, when it occurs, provides us with an opportunity to deepen our understanding. And with AI we can be certain that it will be handled civilly. After all, there’s no way to punch a disembodied voice in the mouth.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Breakfast with Chad: Who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines? appeared first on Fair Observer.

The balloon’s travels ended at 14.39 local time  (19:39 GMT) on Saturday, February 4 when a US Air Force F-22 shot down what the US stated was a Chinese spy balloon. Meanwhile, the Chinese have maintained the balloon was a “weather monitoring device.” Not long after the first balloon was spotted, another hapless Chinese balloon was identified. The second zeppelin supposedly “seriously deviated” off course over Latin America and the Caribbean, but the proliferation of Chinese balloons seems to reveal broader ambitions. Nor have these ambitions sprung out of nowhere. In recent days, US officials have stated this was not the first time a Chinese balloon has entered US airspace, and they have recently identified at least four other occasions where the weather strangely coincided with large US military interests in Texas, Florida, Hawaii, and Guam. US officials have revealed that the downed balloon was 200 feet (about 60 meters) tall and carried an airliner-sized load of intelligence-gathering equipment. In the high stakes game of weather, size matters.

On Sunday, Rep. Mike Turner, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on NBC News’ Meet the Press, “If you ask somebody to draw an X at every place where our sensitive missile defense sites, our nuclear weapons infrastructure, our nuclear weapon sites are, you would put them all along this path.” The balloon transited, and at points loitered, over areas that included the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Billings, Montana, which is home to one of three US Air Force bases that operate and maintain intercontinental ballistic missiles.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled his visit to China, China is miffed, with Beijing claiming the US used “indiscriminate force,” and everyone is curious about these enormous dirigibles.

What is the backstory of spy balloons?

China is not the first to use spy balloons. They first came into use in the late 19th century for military reconnaissance and observation. During World War I, Germany, France and Britain used unmanned balloons equipped with cameras to gather intelligence. 

During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union employed aerial reconnaissance balloons to gather intelligence on each other’s military capabilities. Even then, these balloons were often equipped with sensors and cameras to monitor troop movements and military assets. With the development of satellite technology, spy balloons became less common. However, as China just demonstrated, they still have niche uses in some military and intelligence operations, and many predict a resurgence in the value of such aircraft.

The Soviets used spy balloons extensively, which were equipped with cameras, sensors, and other monitoring equipment. Launched from Soviet territory, these balloons floated across the Arctic and then drifted across North America. The Chinese seem to be following a similar playbook.

Was the Soviet spy balloon program a success?

The Soviet spy balloon program was one of the largest and most sophisticated military intelligence gathering operations of the Cold War. Soviet balloons gathered intelligence for extended periods of time and provided valuable information about NATO military installations and movements of NATO forces.

Balloons were not without their vulnerabilities. Then, as now, they could be intercepted and shot down easily as the Chinese just discovered. Additionally, balloons of the past were affected by weather conditions, making it difficult to maintain a stable flight path and gather accurate intelligence. Technology has evolved, and the Chinese have increasingly taken interest in navigation tools and patents for dirigibles, making them more stealthy, stable, and reliable.

On the whole, the Soviet spy balloon program was a significant success. Balloons fell out of fashion because advanced satellite technology proved to be more reliable and less vulnerable. More importantly, the Soviet Union collapsed and its balloon program came to an end. Might China be starting off where the Soviets stopped?

[This article was produced with assistance from ChatGPT.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is China Now Emulating Epic Soviet Spy Balloon Program? appeared first on Fair Observer.

The US claims to be a representative democracy, meaning the people’s elected officials are obligated to consider their constituents’ ideas, interests, concerns, and welfare in making political decisions. However, the reality is that US politicians feel indebted to the megadonors who finance their elections, and as a result, choose to serve not the people who voted them into power, but the financiers who made their election to office a reality. 

Will American Democracy Perish Like Rome’s?

The rich have US politicians on a leash. In 2017, the then president, Donald Trump, was accused of meeting with his 2016 campaign megadonor, Sheldon Adelson, for counsel on how to address the mass shooting in Las Vegas, a horrific attack that killed 59 people and injured over 500 at a country music festival. That was two days before Trump finally arrived in Las Vegas to meet with the surviving victims and the families mourning the dead. Trump has denied these allegations, claiming that the timing of his meeting with Adelson was purely coincidental, and had nothing to do with the fact that Adelson had major investments in Las Vegas.

The US electoral system is incredibly corrupt, as demonstrated by its recent election of the House Speaker, an event that will go down in history as one of the most notorious examples of the inefficiency of American politics. The country seems to be exclusively  run by two conflicting political parties: the Democrats and the Republicans. Consequently, the nation has become extremely politically polarized, and many Americans experience daily frustration and anger over conflicting political beliefs. 

Economic disparity and discrimination are particularly oppressive to minority groups including Native Americans, blacks, Latinos, and now Muslims. The gap between the rich and the poor is deep and ever-widening. Approximately 32% of all wealth in the US is held by only 1% of the population, an alarmingly disproportionate statistic. Even more concerning is that at the same time, over 11% of Americans live below poverty level.

A 2020 article by The New York Times described the economic disparities in the United States quite accurately, stating that, “Americans may be equal, but some are more equal than others.” Even when the US is in a deep deficit, the government tax policy consistently favors the rich, despite the fact that 60% of Americans believe the nation’s wealthiest should pay more taxes.

The Trump Dynasty is as Dysfunctional as the Windsors

The United States government (USG) is entangled with the rich, the “deep state” of America. By definition, any  government whose power, either overtly or covertly, is controlled by a small group of wealthy constituents, is called plutocracy. Former US president Jimmy Carter once alluded to the plutocracy of the US political system, describing it as, “an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.”

The Incentive for Corruption

Because political candidates in America require substantial funding to run their campaigns, they become obliged to the rich. To win a Senate seat, a candidate spends an average of over $10 million. According to The Washington Post, the 2016 presidential candidates, Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, spent a combined sum of over one billion dollars on their political campaigns.

The wealthy also use their power to manipulate the media, flooding broadcasting platforms with polarizing advertisements and persuading the American public that the only votes that count are votes for either the Democratic or Republican parties. 

This sort of propaganda makes many Americans feel overwhelmed and confused about  which candidate they  should be voting for, and some even choose to abstain from voting at all because they don’t support either candidate. Many Americans are ignorant that the elections are a scheme to make them think about having a voice in the government. However, the choice of who ultimately becomes president, congressman, or other official is usually left to the two political parties at the mercy of the rich. 

Even at the state level, wealthy Americans control political candidates and elected officials by donating to their campaigns. The rich also use their financial power to marginalize certain communities through a process called gerrymandering, in which the boundaries of electoral districts are strategically drawn in a way which favors one political party over the other. . Minorities, the poor, and the least educated are usually the victims of this unethical practice.

Understanding Racial and Partisan Gerrymandering

A Call For Reform

Without ethical standards in place to ensure equal opportunity and constitutional rights for all citizens, democracy can easily become what John Adams called, “the tyranny of the majority.” Thomas Jefferson also purportedly claimed that democracy can often resemble mob rule, and this comparison has a ring of truth.

The USG must reform.The country’s current system is riddled with corruption and will not be sustainable long term, as evidenced by the 2021 insurrection at the U.S. capitol building. At the very least, steps must be taken to make sure that campaign funding is democratic and fair first by cutting all  government funding to individual campaigns and political parties, and instead requiring the media to allocate “equal air time” at no cost to candidates. Second, the USG must create and enforce regulations to limit campaign funding and prevent “megadonors” from manipulating elections and government policy.

To alleviate the megadonors’ influence, the USG could limit all contributions from all sources equal to what an average-income American is willing to contribute to a candidate. PACs, unions and other associations can multiply that amount by the number of their active members. However, no member can be allowed to double-dip, individual and in group.

Only when the United States takes steps to implement these changes will the nation begin its ascension to true democracy. 
[Hannah Gage edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Truth About US Democracy appeared first on Fair Observer.

It is hard to argue otherwise, especially given that the Colorado River Basin, which supplies up to 40 million people with water, is experiencing historic droughts. Moreover, water shortages extend far beyond the western states and are not unique to this region, which should invoke action.

Water Scarcity’s Effect on Business

Executives have the means, the power, and the resources necessary to tackle water scarcity. Although some may argue that executives should keep their attention on supporting their businesses, many companies rely on the water disappearing from the country. The leaders of the biggest companies in the world are raising the alarm. Everyone should be concerned.

Not only would we run out of water, but water scarcity also affects the price of water. As a result, companies will ultimately spend more on this necessity for their operations, products, and more. With businesses spending more, consumers will encounter rising costs, impacting everyone. 

Corporate overhead spending will increase, profit margins will decline, and companies will struggle. Corporate leaders should be concerned and work to address the critical problem of water scarcity. However,the real question is how executives can handle this.

Executives have the most financial power and influence over their industries, so they have access to the information and resources to make water scarcity less of a problem in the future. Therefore, we must practice corporate social responsibility. The circumstances at hand make it not just an option but a necessity.

Programs Striving for Change

There are numerous initiatives  fighting water scarcity. However, many of them need more funding. To protect our planet, people, and the communities we live in and love, executives can lead the way toward sustainability. Through corporate leadership, the world could have a reprieve from our current challenges. It’s just a matter of choosing where to invest.

Amongst the programs and initiatives that fight water scarcity, some of the most promising ones tackle issues like water quality and usage and even work to desalinate the ocean. If every executive contributed, regardless of the cost,  the world would be substantially different from what it is today.

Projects like Captive Systems tackle the removal and recovery of lipophilic substances, hydrocarbons, and heavy metals from the soil, water, and air. These kinds of programs  should be supported to help provide clean water globally. In addition, investing in these programs contribute to mitigating issues like rainwater heavily polluted with PFAS and other toxic substances. 

A sustainable future requires us to find ways to clean our water, which is why ultraviolet water treatment companies have created programs that help protect our water. If we are not proactive, we might fail to have clean water in the future, as these choices can dictate the future of our planet and the business world. 

One of the most notable projects is the integration of desalination as a more accepted practice. Not only would it provide more accessible options for people to receive  water, but it maybe the only way to get water in the future. 

The oceans make up most of our world, so why not find ways to utilize this to our advantage? That is where desalination comes into play to provide a sustainable and economical water supply. These  technologies will shape the state of our future and the quality of life we give future generations. 

Numerous campaigns urge people to monitor their consumption and work together to address water scarcity and quality. Governments are doing what they can. Still, the world’s elite and executives must do their part and prove to consumers that corporate leaders understand their needs.
[Tasheanna Williams edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Solution to Water Scarcity Lies With Corporate Leaders appeared first on Fair Observer.

Then, as a final electoral reminder of how close to the abyss America remains, one of the most unqualified candidates to ever seek a US Senate seat, Herschel Walker, forced a runoff against a decent incumbent Senator in Georgia and then got 48.6% of the vote in that runoff.  So, with the actual midterm elections now finally over, Republican Party headlights are still flashing in our collective rear view mirror.  They are flashing red and remain a continuing threat to obliterate electoral guardrails .

To add to the gravitas of the situation, there is the ongoing spectacle on the international stage of this sanctimonious nation going to great lengths to impose its vision of a more democratic world in faraway places, often at the point of a gun. Meanwhile, corruption, greed and grift have been tolerated in America at levels so high that the very institutions championed elsewhere seem overwhelmed at home.

Can Healthy Conflict Exist in an Unhealthy Society?

READ MORE

It would be easy to go on in the attempt to draw conclusions about the state of “democracy” in America after the recent elections.  But a simple focus on gerrymandering, the filibuster, a corrupted Supreme Court, kneecapped regulators, election-denying election officials and the like should be more than enough for most people to draw their own conclusions.  Further, even that exercise is unlikely to fully expose the institutional rot and the fundamental human cruelty that it has spawned.

The Democrats avoided a red wave, but is that all?

And, of course, there is omnipresent violence and the threat of violence in the nation’s public arena, public spaces, as well as behind closed doors.  No sooner had some Americans taken a post-election deep breath than our breath was taken away by yet another spate of acts of mindless gun violence, shredding any notion that America may be on a better path.

So, leaving aside discussions of an ill-defined “democracy,” what are the useful takeaways from the recent elections now that the dust has settled a bit?  Of most importance, I share concerns about the sustainability of the Democratic Party’s achievements in the midterm elections.  Too much about their messaging is confused and merely reactive to events. Going forward, I would be far more comfortable with a simple vision that embraces diversity, inclusion, and some healthy measure of social and racial justice.  And, once the vision is clear, presentation of the policy objectives required to implement that vision.

On the positive side, the results are a well-deserved boost for President Biden who was able to crystalize a message that worked in the moment, even though it was completely underplayed by the media until the very end.  Also, there seems to have been some genuine backlash among moderates and independents against Trump, the troglodytes he supported, the message he and they delivered and continue to deliver, and a seemingly corrupt and compromised Supreme Court.  But too many Democratic victories were too narrow to convince me that the Republican Party is on the run or in ruin.  They, their acolytes and their willfully ignorant supporters will not go away anytime soon.

America is Now Awash in Grift

READ MORE

That brings us to the House of Representatives.  Winning the House by a slim margin would have been a disaster for the Democrats.  Had that happened, expectations of a legislative capacity to deliver on campaign promises and make America wonderful would have been the ongoing narrative.  Meeting such expectations was never going to happen.  In the coming two years of the next election cycle, with minimal margins in both houses of Congress, the Democrats would have been able to deliver next to nothing, and would have put themselves on the chopping block for that failure. 

The worst is yet to come

Now, they can leave it to the Republicans in the House to perform some version of a continued dance with their own demons, devoid of legislative proposals to address real domestic and international issues. Their unifying mantra is to trash the Democrats for everything, even for trying and succeeding. Now, the Democrats will have their own unifying mantra focusing on the governance shit show in the House of Representatives run by the Republicans.  And, it will be a shit show. (It is worth noting in this context that President Clinton’s popularity soared as he was going through his impeachment process because of Republican excess and overreach.) 

So, let that show begin. Bring on Biden’s troubled son, Benghazi, Afghanistan, Dr. Fauci and the Covid response, the border “crisis,” and the daily assault on the sensitivities of White Christian children.

Into this contextual mix, it is worth remembering that today’s American political system goes forward with only two viable political parties, each with its own internal divisions.  The Republican Party remains corrupted by greed and a quest for power without substance, seems committed to undermining governance every step of the way, and has a huge media footprint that the Democrats cannot match.  Further, they have cultivated a committed base of voters that seems beyond redemption and surely will continue to respond to Republican messaging about social issues, diversity, gun violence, immigration, book burning, and phony economic policy alternatives that disadvantage the very people who seem to buy the message.

As for the Democrats, they succeeded only in exceeding a very low bar. The challenge for them is to figure out how to raise the bar and then succeed again.  That outcome is only possible if the Democrats can collectively commit themselves to the institutional reforms required for good governance to have a chance, and for the government itself to meet the policy challenges ahead.  Going forward, the party’s strength is that it has a deep bench of committed activists who understand the depth of America’s institutional morass and are willing to seek solutions.

A Divided America with Liberty and Justice for None

READ MORE

It would be remiss to discuss the midterm elections without noting that the pollsters, pundits, and news readers got it so wrong again.  Unlikely as it seems, maybe this time they will actually learn something and begin to cover issues as news, stop pandering to anonymous sources, upend false equivalencies, and begin to draw clear lines between reporting facts and commenting about them.  Continuing to fall short at these basic tasks often leaves the truth in doubt and provides fertile ground for so much collective willful ignorance to thrive.  Focusing on content rather than soundbites would be a good place to start.  Instead, the media has seamlessly moved to horse race mode with a finish line of 2024.  

I managed to get this far in the piece — to the very end — only mentioning the corrupt and crumbling Donald Trump once by name.  It seems that for him, his day of accountability for so much corruption, mendacity, and cruelty is finally arriving.  He gave the worst in American society a clear path out of their caves and into our conscience and communities.  Someday, if America can forcefully step back from the institutional abyss, we may even thank him for this.  Maybe we had to see clearly the demons within to exorcise them.

But before we even try to get there, Trump must be paraded through the proverbial streets in shame.  I, for one, among many others, will celebrate that shame amid the hope that it can vanquish the gathering storm.

*[This article was first published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post America on the Edge of an Institutional Abyss appeared first on Fair Observer.

Sharing the international stage with the queen, the war in Ukraine slogs on with cheerleaders continuing to applaud the plucky Ukrainians. Death and destruction continue, badly needed grain shipments rot in silos and ports, and a cold European winter is about to set in with limited fuel options. Even as the usual killing fields suffer carnage, climate change continues to wreak havoc. Children continue to go to bed hungry and preventable disease festers.

Cheap Labor Fuels an Exploitative Economy

Now inflation is added to the mix and is producing excessive hand wringing over the economy in the US and elsewhere. Curiously, this angst seems most acute among those impacted the least. For poor people and poor nations, the global economic system is what it has always been – rigged to serve those with resources at the expense of those without resources.  Meanwhile, there is little sign in the US that major lifestyle changes are afoot among the middle class and surely none to be found among the wealthy. Packed airports and stadiums are a far better barometer of economic hardship than trying to figure out if bottom round is replacing T-bone steak in shopping baskets.

As is often the case, the working poor are present in the inflation discussion but absent from the solution. Watching six-figure news readers carry on about inflation after just getting back from their summer vacations is laughable but only further obscures the depth of the problem for those with limited or no income and rising fixed expenses that they can’t meet.

So, this would be a good time in America to talk about raising the federal minimum wage. That minimum wage is still $7.25 per hour or a whopping $290 for a 40-hour work week. Even so, it seems in America that it is never a good time to raise minimum wages across the board to ensure a living wage adjusted for inflation. The real problem with this good idea is that the cost of the basic services in our communities would likely go up. Imagine having to pay more to the people who clean houses, mow lawns, pick up trash, and generally make our lives easier. While many bitch about the cost of that T-bone steak, the working poor suck it up, work longer hours and multiple jobs, and eat a lot of beans and pasta.

And here is the point: those working poor are shielding the rest of us from what should be the real inflationary costs of our collective excesses and corporate greed. But now there is another catch. There don’t seem to be enough workers hanging around waiting for low wages to fill the low-paying jobs that support those excesses and corporate greed, so we are now doubly screwed. Prices are going up and basic services are going down. However, the long-term solution that seems most popular with many, except the working poor, is for the working poor to have more poor babies and then continue to provide the poor education, indecent housing, and unreliable health care that will ensure another generation of low-wage workers.

Or, how about immigration reform?  Instead of waiting for new American poor babies to grow up, Americans could figure out how to parse out immigrants to communities in need of low-wage workers, gin up some dormitory housing, open a food pantry so they can eat, and then pay them a wage that looks good to them while knocking out any likelihood of low-wage inflationary pressures. Both McDonalds and your lawn will thrive anew.

The Limits of the Right

Maybe you can see where this is heading. I want Governor Ron DeSantis to denude Florida of as many hardworking immigrants as he can find. Like international sister cities, America could develop its own sister sanctuaries program matching a sanctuary for White racists and Christian nationalists with another sanctuary that would welcome the Black and Brown immigrants so abhorrent to those racist Florida communities.

Using the DeSantis model, a matching sanctuary community would be found to welcome the diverse, hardworking, often skilled, low-wage workers that a significant segment of Floridians apparently wants shipped out of state. This would be good news, as well, for those looking for immigrants from White racist communities in Texas and Arizona.

We start there, and the movement grows. All of sudden, politicians willing to cruelly demonize immigrants would find their constituents trash on their overgrown lawns. Then think how inconvenient it would be if a good portion of those low-wage Latino workers in restaurants and country clubs headed out of town to a real welcoming sanctuary community somewhere else. While this all sounds fanciful, it just might work to break the back of the resistance to a humane and inclusive American immigration policy. This would be putting inflationary pressures to good use and remind those doing all the hand wringing that they are doing so at the expense of the working poor.

Maybe, with all of this wreckage around us, there will be a slowly creeping understanding that America’s self-delusional “exceptionalism” is just that and nothing more – self-delusion. Fantasy works sometimes in the movies, but it won’t last in real life. Maybe it took a warped Supreme Court, a dysfunctional Congress, an exposed insurrection, an unraveling rule of law, and a plane load of defrauded immigrants seeking asylum to finally begin to undermine the fantasy.

A New Moral Core for America

Women and thoughtful young people seem to be deciding that they are tired of rich White men and the people they buy trampling on the simple notions of access to meaningful healthcare and the freedom for women to make life choices for themselves. Many seem even more energized about losing access to their own healthcare than they ever were about making sure that everybody had access to meaningful healthcare in the first place. But they care now.

Also, there is some evidence that when essential governance is really threatened, Americans will awaken to protect and promote the governmental institutions required to confront existential problems like climate change and required to ensure the minimum infrastructure and basic services at the core of desirable community life. It is possible that this will be enough in the weeks ahead to see the shameless right-wing vacuum collapse and suck Trump, his acolytes, his family, and his friends into the vortex. However, if their cruelty prevails and the nation’s government continues at a stalemate, there certainly will be additional suffering in the land.

If you have any doubts about any of this, you are likely beyond hope.  But this may be the moment to actually think about the kind of community in which you want to live and who is most likely to lead you there. Think about the gun nut governors working to ensure that another school massacre comes to a neighborhood near you. Think about children without enough to eat and immigrant children bussed like cattle to be someone else’s problem. Think about all of this and more.

It is way past time for Americans to start standing for something with a clear moral core. Put the inflationary hand wringing on hold long enough to vote for a nation that we can start to be proud of. This could, at the least, provide a foundation for confronting the corporate greed, political corruption, White racism and White Christian nationalism that stand in the way of realizing an equality of opportunity and the social and racial justice needed to achieve it.

*[This article was first published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Time for Americans to Stand for a New Moral Core appeared first on Fair Observer.

One of the consequences that is already being felt concerns the status of democracy in many regions of the world. By status I mean not just the attribution of power to different categories of political force, but the idea people hold of what democracy is, whose interests it represents and how it should play out in terms of actual governance. France may be the latest and most interesting example of the challenge to that status.

The American model for democracy

In the West, and more particularly in the US, a nation that has been labeled the birthplace of modern democracy, most youngsters are taught in school that constitutional democracy, unlike other more arbitrary forms of government, aims at being both fair and reasoned. They assume that for the most part it achieves its fair and reasonable goals thanks to a carefully constructed system of checks and balances.

In theory, democratic institutions are designed to reflect a logical pattern by which the population of any political entity, from a township to a nation, elects leaders committed to securing the resources and defining policies that respond flexibly and appropriately to the physical, social and economic environment its citizens live in. Democratic decision-making follows from what people believe to be an open dialogue about actions required for the security and well-being of its citizens.

Democracy produces governments in which all citizens are involved to the extent that they choose leaders who reflect their needs, values and interests. Decision-making becomes complex at the level of a nation state, particularly in a world that has become increasingly diverse and mobile. Presumably the leaders elected in modern states nevertheless understand the complexity of the balancing act that representing a diverse population requires. Nobody ever believed that would be an easy task.

In a stable world, most capable leaders — and even quite a few incapable ones — manage to juggle with competing forces. On one hand, they respond to powerful private interests that sit often invisibly at the core of the economy. On the other hand, they try to remain sensitive to public pressure that expresses itself in a variety of forms, transmitted notably by the media and omnipresent polls in the periods between elections. This pressure from the undefined masses incites leaders to find ways of keeping most of their citizens reasonably happy, or at least minimally unhappy. In times of relative stability, this to-and-fro occurs within social and economic systems that evolve very slowly, usually by tiny incremental steps. 

Most leaders see their job as consisting of managing a slow evolution within a stable historical framework. They have no means of predicting the earthquakes that occasionally shake history itself, suddenly throwing it off kilter. In the typical two-party systems of modern democracies, politicians have learned to master the dynamics of alternating access to power. Essentially, they provide the same product, but with a different label and a different tagline. They are comfortable knowing there are periods when, having lost an election, they may forfeit the reins of power and literally relax as members of the opposition, whose actions will not be criticized. They spend their time in the opposition critiquing their opponents and investing their creativity in plotting their return to power.

Problems, however, arise when history itself becomes unstable, when the equilibrium of a certain habitual balance of power begins to falter. It was the case in Europe, for example, towards the end of the 18^th century (1789) and again in the early 20^th century (1914-17). At such times, instability takes the form of highly irrational and uncontrollably complicated wars and revolutions. Leaders accustomed to managing the routine of occasional domestic tension and generally anodyne international rivalries, begin to lose their foothold. They will typically seek to keep their populations in check and avoid revolution. But they lack the means to deal with the chthonic forces of history. We appear to be entering into such a period in 2022.

The psychology of leadership

Leaders see themselves as actors in the scripted play of history. But to act in politics, as opposed to theater or cinema, means not just to follow a script but to observe history and craft appropriate reactions to the unexpected. In democracies, as opposed to autocracies, leaders should think of themselves as “fair observers” and act accordingly. (A fair observer seeks to integrate the widest range not just of information but of sensitivity to the dynamic forces of history that defy the logic of pure information).

Faced with the challenge of a moment in history in which even the values assumed to be shared by people convinced that they represent an evolved form of civilization are called into question, we may legitimately wonder whether it is even possible for any leader to be simultaneously both an actor and an observer of history. In such moments, leaders typically fail to observe, but proceed to act. As soon as they act, they become observed by others. At the same time, the very awareness of being observed may distort their own ability to observe, precipitating actions based on faulty and disastrously incomplete observation. This is one way of accounting for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions that have now spawned a global crisis that extends far beyond the Russian-Ukrainian border.

But the same pattern of failure to observe accompanied by a compulsion to act holds true for other leaders, especially when the degree of instability makes the consequences of any action especially risky. US President Joe Biden appears to be as clueless about where the forces of history are moving as Putin himself. Both have responded to specific pressure points on the system of power they have been charged with maintaining. Both have misjudged some of the forces of history at play in the background.

Putin reacted to three decades of shifting policies in the West, which appeared to him aggressive with regard to his own power and the stability of his system. This ever-increasing pressure was accompanied by an observable decline of the effective power and prestige of the American hegemon following its catastrophic military initiatives in Afghanistan and the Middle East since 2001.

Biden reacted to the growing challenge felt across the globe to the supremacy the US established three quarters of a century ago following the Second World War. Not only has US prestige declined as a consequence of George Bush’s Middle Eastern wars and the financial collapse of 2008, but the perception that the official supremacy of the US dollar can now for the first time be effectively challenged has created a growing resolve in the rest of the world to overthrow what is perceived as the tyranny of the dollar over the global economy. That vague but increasingly well-defined perception of fragility is becoming as symbolically real as the French population’s perception of the significance of the Bastille prison in 1789.

Will France overthrow the 5^th Republic?

Though any fair observer of history should be aware of the providential power of symbols, it is perhaps only a coincidence that France is poised to use its democratic institutions not just to call into question the system Charles de Gaulle put in place more than six decades ago, the Fifth Republic, but also to send shock waves capable of producing significant cracks in the façade of Western complacency.

For the third time a candidate representing the right or the center-right defeated a far-right candidate with the surname, Le Pen. The first time Jacques Chirac, a direct descendent of the original Gaullist party, defeated Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the xenophobic Front National. Emmanuel Macron has now defeated Jean-Marie’s daughter, Marine, twice. It has become a sport of establishment politicians in France to maneuver the electoral processes so as to find themselves opposed to a far-right candidate in the runoff election for president. Victory is practically certain. Legitimacy is claimed at a very low cost.

Macron played the game perfectly to ensure his re-election. The problem he perhaps hadn’t anticipated is that, not having the talent or even the inclination to create a well-defined party to back his presidential status, a resurgence of unity on the right or the left could imperil his chances to reign over a fragmented political landscape. He assumed that the egoistical rivalries and the thin skin of representatives of the traditional parties would guarantee the gap in the center that he managed to consolidate into a fragile simulacrum of a political party after his victory in 2017.

Alas, to Macron’s consternation, a strong showing in third place during the presidential election in April by the former socialist and resolutely progressive leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon created the conditions that would convince the previously warring parties on the left, including the Green party and the communists, to imagine a program of government they would all adhere to in their quest for a parliamentary majority coming out of June’s legislative election. This is bad news for Macron, who can only count on traditional political opportunists from the center-right and center-left to join forces with him in a movement he has rechristened the Renaissance (formerly, la République en Marche). Very few French voters feel inspired by Macron’s example. His hope is that just as they preferred electing him to a candidate on the extreme right, they  will react similarly to a threat from the left, which they will try to represent as extreme.

There may be a slight problem with the symbolism of the new moniker of his party. By claiming to represent a Renaissance, he may be implicitly suggesting his former term as president was the equivalent of the Dark Ages. And in some sense, it was, marked by the revolt of the Yellow Vests and the black plague of Covid. But the French remember the Renaissance as a period of history dominated by kings that was eventually overturned by the 1789 revolution.

Could the unified left seize effective power over the government? Legally, Macron is in place for five years. But the left has adopted a theme Mélenchon has insisted on for the past five years: replacing the Fifth Republic by a Sixth Republic, which would be less focused on presidential powers. If Macron is forced to nominate a left-wing prime minister — the most likely candidate being Mélenchon himself  —  pressure could mount towards establishing a new constitution. Though the kind of constitutional regime change a Sixth Republic would represent appears unlikely so long as Macron remains president, the worm is already in the apple. At some point there is likely to be a constitutional crisis with an uncertain outcome, capable of upsetting the supposed stability of what may be called “the European compromise,” a philosophy of governance built on the twin pillars of Anglo-Saxon liberalism and dependency on US leadership in European defense via NATO.

Among the planks of its platform, the left calls specifically for a radical revision of the strategy concerning Europe. While reaffirming France’s adhesion to the European Union, the left-wing government coalition has vowed to put pressure on Europe to move away from its traditional neoliberal ideology. This frame of reference has, in the eyes of many Europeans, not just in France, become more and more fragile as the source of shared values. This could eventually lead to fracturing what has become an increasingly fragile consensus between Europe and the United States. With the end of the Fifth Republic one of the main goals of Charles de Gaulle could then be paradoxically fulfilled: releasing France, and possibly Europe itself, from the iron grip of Washington.

What is happening in France is not an isolated event. Brazil will have a new presidential election later this year. Polling shows a profound dissatisfaction with its right-wing president Jair Bolsanaro, who won election five years ago thanks to highly suspect legal maneuvering. The likely winner of the new election is left-wing former president Lula da Silva. One of the promises da Silva has made this time around is to “create a currency in Latin America, because we can’t keep depending on the dollar.” Voices in the Beltway are likely to announce, “Them’s fightin’ words.”This was, after all, the ambition of the late Muammar Gaddafi for the entire African continent. That is, in a brief moment of history before US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intervened to make sure that she would subsequently have the opportunity to proclaim, “we came, we saw, he died.”

The American sanctions against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine have led to an acceleration of initiatives emanating from various quarters to free the global economy from the enforced dominance of the dollar. For five decades or more it has been a tool not so much of payment for international trade as of political control, allowing the US, either through its own efforts or those of the International Monetary Fund, to have its cake and eat it. The establishment of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency in 1944, followed by President Richard Nixon’s decoupling of this currency from the gold standard in 1971, forced other countries to hold their credit in dollars (US Treasury securities), meaning that the wealth thus created abroad was transferred implicitly back to the US economy. Every fluctuation in value — devaluation and revaluation – could be used by Washington to its own political and economic advantage. As economist  Michael Hudson explains, “This monetary privilege–dollar seigniorage–has enabled U.S. diplomacy to impose neoliberal policies on the rest of the world.”

In other words, there are indications that a fracturing of the neoliberal economic and political world order initially established at Bretton Woods nearly 80 years ago and then transformed by Nixon in 1971, creating the first theoretical compromise in its integrity, is now taking place. The last three decades have seen two major evolutions. The first is the failure of Europe to achieve its collective hope of acquiring the kind of influence that might redress the balance of power in relation to the United States. The second is the rise of China to a level of economic and political clout that has forced a massive rethinking of global hegemony.

Speculation about the destabilizing impact of the rise of what has been called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) on geopolitical power has been rife the past two decades. China finally emerged as an economic powerhouse unto itself, capable of directly challenging US hegemony. Russia, with a weaker economy, has continued to play an increasingly abrasive political role, culminating with the current war in Ukraine. As the tectonic movement in various latitudes begins to increase, India, Brazil and South Africa will see emerging opportunities to exert their influence on events in a world that is clearly starting to have a very different look from the one people have been accustomed to in recent decades.

Though not quite in the same league, France itself may have a role to play, and as so often in the past, that role will be cultural and intellectual rather than a manifestation of its limited political and economic clout. If the move towards a Sixth Republic actually commences, its symbolic importance for the rest of the world should not be underestimated. Europe will be the first to take notice if an unanticipated French government under Macron begins rowing against the established European current. 

Mark it on your speculative calendars. The 21^st century’s Bastille Day may well be June 19, the date of the second round of next month’s legislative elections. Even if the left is successful, its moral victory will not be followed by “impure blood” in the furrows, nor a Reign of Terror, nor the rise of a new Napoleon. But its disruptive message will resonate throughout Europe and beyond mainly because the old order, which Macron still represents, is losing its footing across the globe.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The post Is France Ready to Storm a New Bastille? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Austin’s remarks were problematic on several fronts. For one, they legitimized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justification of the invasion of Ukraine as a defense against US-led efforts to box Russia in and potentially undermine his regime.

“US policy toward Russia continues to be plagued by lack of rhetorical discipline. First calling for regime change, now the goal of weakening Russia. This only increases Putin’s case for escalating & shifts focus away from Russian actions in Ukraine & toward Russia-US/NATO showdown”, tweeted Richard Haas, the president of the New York-based Council of Foreign Relations and a former senior State Department official. Haas was referring to US President Joe Biden’s remark last month, which he subsequently walked back, that Putin “cannot remain in power.”

US policy toward Russia continues to be plagued by lack of rhetorical discipline. First calling for regime change, now goal of weakening Russia. This only increases Putin’s case for escalating & shifts focus away from Russian actions in Ukraine & toward Russia-US/NATO showdown.

— Richard N. Haass (@RichardHaass) April 26, 2022

Leaving aside the fact that Austin’s remark was inopportune, it also suggested a lack of vision of what it will take to ensure that Putin does not repeat his Ukraine operation elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. That is an endeavor that would involve looking beyond Ukraine to foster closer ties with former Soviet republics that do not immediately border Ukraine.

A new strategic focus: Kazakhstan

One place to look is Kazakhstan, a potential future target if Russia still has the wherewithal after what has become a draining slug in Ukraine. Mr. Putin has long set Kazakhstan up as a potential future target. He has repeatedly used language when it comes to Kazakhstan that is similar to his rhetoric on the artificial character of the Ukrainian state.

Referring to his notion of a Russian world whose boundaries are defined by the presence of Russian speakers and adherents to Russian culture rather than its internationally recognised borders, Mr. Putin asserted last December that “Kazakhstan is a Russian-speaking country in the full sense of the word.”

Mr. Putin first sent a chill down Kazakh spines eight years ago when a student asked him nine months after the annexation of Crimea whether Kazakhstan, with a 6,800 kilometer-long border with Russia, the world’s second-longest frontier, risked a fate similar to that of Ukraine.

In response, Mr. Putin noted that then-president Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s Soviet-era Communist party boss, had “performed a unique feat: he has created a state on a territory where there has never been a state. The Kazakhs never had a state of their own, and he created it.”

To be sure, Russian troops invited in January by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to help put down anti-government protests were quick to withdraw from the Central Asian nation once calm had been restored.

Recognizing the opportunity

Mr. Putin’s remarks, coupled with distrust of China fuelled by the repression of Turkic Muslims, including ethnic Kazakhs, in the north-western province of Xinjiang, and the shutdown of Russia’s Black Sea Novorossiysk oil terminal, Kazakhstan’s main Caspian oil export route, have created an opportunity for the United States.

Last month, Kazakhstan abstained in a United Nations General Assembly vote that condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Since then, its sovereign wealth fund announced that it would no longer do business in rubles in compliance with US and European sanctions against Russia. This week, Kazakhstan stopped production of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19.

In an apparent effort to stir the pot, Russian media accused Kazakhstan of preventing Russian nationals from expressing support for Mr. Putin’s invasion and firing Kazakhs who supported the Russian president’s actions from their jobs. At the same time, opponents of the war were allowed to stage demonstrations.

“As Washington policymakers look for ways to counter Russian influence and complicate Mr. Putin’s life, helping Kazakhstan reduce its dependence on Moscow-controlled pipelines, reform its economy, and coordinate with neighboring Central Asian states to limit the influence of both China and Russia might be a good place to start,” said Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead.

Last month, Mr. Tokayev, the Kazakh president, promised sweeping reforms in response to the January protests.

A high-level Kazakh delegation visited Washington this week to discuss closer cooperation and ways to mitigate the impact on Kazakhstan of potentially crippling sanctions against Russia.

Supporting Kazakhstan would involve a renewed US engagement in Central Asia, a key region that constitutes Russia’s as well as China’s backyard. The United States is perceived to have abandoned the region with its withdrawal from Afghanistan last August.

The regional implications

It would also mean enlarging the figurative battlefield to include not only military and financial support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia but also the strengthening of political and economic ties with former Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are, alongside Kazakhstan, members of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), which Mr. Putin, referring to Kazakhstan, described as a bulwark that “helps them stay within the so-called ‘greater Russian world,’ which is part of world civilization.”

The invasion of Ukraine has given Uzbekistan second thoughts. Uzbekistan failed to vote on the UN resolution, but Uzbek officials have since condemned the war and expressed support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

As a result, Uzbekistan appears to have reversed its ambition to join the EEU and forge closer ties to the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), the region’s Russian-led military alliance.

“The way Central Asia thinks about Russia has changed. While before, Russia was seen as a source of stability, it now seems that its presence in a very sensitive security dimension has become a weakness for regional stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity,” said Carnegie Endowment Central Asia scholar Temur Umarov.

“I think that Central Asian governments will seek to minimize the influence of Russia, which will be difficult to do, but they have no choice since it has become an unpredictable power.” Mr. Umarov predicted.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Contesting Russia Requires Renewed US Engagement in Central Asia appeared first on Fair Observer.

Less officially, President Joe Biden has been emphasizing the emotional side of US motivation when he wants to turn Russia into a “pariah,” while branding its president as a “war criminal” and a “murderer.” Biden’s rhetoric indicates clearly that whatever purely legal and moral point the United States cites to justify its massive financial engagement in the war, its true motivation reflects a vigilante mindset focused on regime change.

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The administration denies it has regime change on its mind. But Ferguson cites a senior administration official who privately confided that Biden’s “end game now … is the end of Putin regime.” The historian concludes that rather than seek a negotiated end to the war, the US “intends to keep this war going.”

As usual in foreign policy matters, Ferguson notes a certain convergence of viewpoint from his own government. He quotes an anonymous source affirming that the United Kingdom’s “No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.” A little later in the article, Ferguson qualifies as “archetypal Realpolitik” the American intent “to allow the carnage in Ukraine to continue; to sit back and watch the heroic Ukrainians ‘bleed Russia dry.’”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Bleed (a country):

To encourage and prolong an unnecessary and unjustified conflict in the interest of sucking the life out of the political establishment of a declared enemy, a process that usually automatically implies sucking the life out of at least one other country, including eventually one’s own

Contextual Note

Ferguson dares to question the dominant belief in the US that bleeding Russia is a recipe for success. “Prolonging the war runs the risk not just of leaving tens of thousands of Ukrainians dead and millions homeless, but also of handing Putin something that he can plausibly present at home as victory,” he writes.

When the focus is both on bleeding and prolonging the combat, there is a strong likelihood that the bleeding will be shared. If a boxer sees a cut over his opponent’s eye, he may strategically focus all his punches on the opponent’s face hoping for a technical knockout. But, by focusing on the loss of blood, he may drop his guard with the risk of getting knocked out or opening his own bleeding wound.

“I fail to see in current Western strategizing any real recognition of how badly this war could go for Ukraine in the coming weeks,” Ferguson observes. The reason may simply be that the hyperreal moment the Western world is now living through is proving too enjoyable to critique, at least for the media. The more horror stories of assaults on innocent civilians make their way into the headlines, the more the media can play the morally satisfying game of: here’s one more reason to hate Vladimir Putin.

If the White House is focused, as it now appears, not on saving Ukrainian democracy but on bleeding Russia, all the stories of Russian abuse of brave civilians are designed with the purpose of prolonging the war, in the hope that, discredited by Putin’s failure to break Ukraine’s resistance, Russians will revolt and depose the evil dictator. In the meantime, those Ukrainians who manage to survive are being asked to play the supporting role of watching their country reduced to ruins.

Ferguson speculates that US strategists have come to “think of the conflict as a mere sub-plot in Cold War II, a struggle in which China is our real opponent.” That would be an ambitious plan, riddled with complexity. But the Biden administration has demonstrated its incapacity to deal effectively even with straightforward issues, from passing the Build Back Better framework in the US to managing a pandemic.

The Ukraine situation involves geopolitics, the global economy and, even more profoundly, the changing image of US power felt by populations and governments across the globe. At the end of his article, the historian describes this as an example of dangerous overreach, claiming that “the Biden administration is making a colossal mistake in thinking that it can protract the war in Ukraine, bleed Russia dry, topple Putin and signal to China to keep its hands off Taiwan.”

Historical Note

One salient truth about Americans’ perception of the Ukraine War should be evident to everyone. Today’s media thoroughly understands the American public’s insatiable appetite for the right kind of misinformation. Niall Ferguson makes the point that the US government may nevertheless be inept in providing it. The history of misinformation in times of war over the past century should provide some clues.

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In 1935, Major General Smedley Butler wrote a book describing the logic behind his own service on several continents. Its title was “War Is a Racket.” He described the American vision of war as a quest for corporate profit. He tried to warn the nation of the inhumanity of such an approach to the use of military force. He manifestly failed because he was late to the game. Back in 1917, Edward Bernays, the “father of Public Relations,” seduced the American public into believing that the only motive for the nation’s invasions and wars is the spreading of democracy. It was Bernays who provided Woodrow Wilson with the slogan “make the world safe for democracy.”

For the rest of his life, Bernays not only helped private companies boost their brands, he also consulted on foreign policy to justify regime change when it threatened a customer’s racket. In 1953, working for United Fruit, he collaborated with President Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, and his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz, the elected president of Guatemala. Arbenz had a plan to redistribute to the country’s impoverished peasants “unused land” monopolized by United Fruit. In a 2007 article for the Financial Times, Peter Chapman recounted that both Dulles brothers were “legal advisers” to United Fruit. Chapman notes that the company was also involved in the 1961 CIA-led Bay of Pigs invasion.

In other words, concerning their impact on the American psyche, Bernays the PR man defeated Butler, celebrated at the time as America’s greatest living war hero. His fame was such that a group of powerful fascist-leaning businessmen tried to recruit him to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the infamous 1933 “Business Plot.”

Americans continue to rally around Bernays’ genius for reducing a suspect ideology to a catchy slogan. American interventions abroad are framed as noble efforts to support democracy and promote American business (Butler called them rackets). It’s a population of avid consumers of the media’s plentiful supply of misinformation.

There are nevertheless odd moments when real information breaks through, though it rarely leaves much lasting impact. Last week, the Pentagon leaked news contradicting the narrative the State Department, the intelligence community and US media have unanimously adopted and promoted. In the Defense Department’s view, Russia’s invasion is not an example of unrestrained sadism toward the Ukrainian people. “As destructive as the Ukraine war is,” Newsweek reports, “Russia is causing less damage and killing fewer civilians than it could, U.S. intelligence experts say.”

The US military establishment calls it the “Russian leader’s strategic balancing act,” observing that Russia has acted with restraint. It realistically assesses that, far from seeking to subdue and conquer Ukraine, Putin’s “goal is to take enough territory on the ground to have something to negotiate with, while putting the government of Ukraine in a position where they have to negotiate.”

Ferguson has gleaned his own evidence concerning US and UK strategy that “helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the U.S. to secure a cease-fire. It also explains the readiness of President Joe Biden to call Putin a war criminal.” Peace is no objective. Punishment is. This is a case where the Pentagon has received the message of Smedley Butler and dares to contradict an administration guided by the logic of Edward Bernays.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post When Will We Know the Bleeding Truth? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Lopez was sitting with her beau of the time, Ben Affleck, a white Californian built like a light-heavyweight boxer (she may be back with him now). You’ll understand shortly why I’m being specific about their particulars.

You Can Take the Man Out of the Ghetto…

Watching the past weekend’s Oscars altercation, I immediately wondered: What if Chris Rock, an African American comedian, had cracked a gag at the expense of JLo and not Jada Pinkett Smith? After Martin’s joke, Lopez grinned politely, while Affleck, seated next to her, was clearly unimpressed but forced a transparently false smile.

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But what if he had taken offense, like Will Smith, a black actor with a similar build to Affleck, did? If Affleck marched onto the stage and smacked Rock across the face, the situation would have taken on a completely different dynamic. The headlines would have read: White Actor Strikes Diminutive Black Host. Rock is 5 foot 7 inches and, in boxing terms, looks about a featherweight.

The media would have reacted differently, though how differently we’ll never know. One thing is for sure: The episode would have taken on a racial character.

Even as it was, Smith’s assault on Rock is loaded with racial implications, the most obvious one being that he supplied white racists with sustenance. There is an adage that “You can take the man out of the ghetto but you can’t take the ghetto out of the man.” Racists subscribe to this and often cite the examples of O.J. Simpson and Mike Tyson, both African Americans who became conspicuously successful and had more money than they could count. Both, in their different ways, imploded.

Smith hasn’t committed an offense comparable with rape or any other kind of violent crime. And the LAPD has declared it will not seek prosecution. So, Smith’s contretemps is likely to remain that: an embarrassment rather than a crime.

But let’s face it: Had it occurred in a different context, the likelihood is that the perpetrator of the offense would be arrested and charged. There would be no trouble finding witnesses, either. Smith behaved like a perfect racial stereotype: hot-tempered, bull-headed, thuggish and, most importantly, incapable of controlling his emotions even in an environment where decorum prevailed. Even after Smith returned to his seat, he screamed obscenities at Rock, who lacked the wit to turn the episode into something worthy of laughter. His was an unedifying exhibition of uncontrolled aggression.

Surprisingly, Smith was not ejected and, indeed, later picked up an award for best actor.

Animating Masculinity

But pandering to stock racist types was not Smith’s only offense. His action was borderline misogynistic, perhaps even enhancing the racial stereotype he’d brought to life. Consider if it was a case of Will being taken over by his emotion, seeing the look on his wife’s face, probably under family stress with her condition and snapping. Or a black man animating an anachronistic form of masculinity, historically associated, though not exclusively, with black men. After all, the amusing line was aimed at his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who has alopecia, a condition that manifests in the partial or complete absence of hair from areas of the body where it normally grows; baldness, in other words.

Couldn’t she have responded to the insult herself? She may have felt a more dignified silence was the best policy. But she might also have answered back with an equally acerbic remark. Or, if she had been moved to act, Pinkett Smith could have administered the slap in the face herself. She’s about the same size as Rock, so it wouldn’t have been the mismatch that actually did take place. Since when do women need their husbands, partners or male friends to take care of their business? Jada looked slightly disgusted by Rock’s remark, but, so far, her views on her husband’s violent behavior aren’t known. Had she objected to it, we would have surely found out by now.

Since #MeToo gained momentum in the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein case, the flagrant manipulation and abuse of women by men — especially powerful ones — has become visible through the testimonies of countless women. We probably suspected for years that men get away with mistreating women in more ways than one. But #MeToo has effectively put the brake on this egregious historical practice.

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What about men’s abuse of other men? I know readers will think I am stretching this too far, but surely men have the right not to be coerced, harassed or intimidated too. Rock was only doing his job — the tradition at Oscar ceremonies is to “roast,” as Americans call it. That is, to subject guests to good-natured criticism. For many, he may have overstepped the mark by making fun of what is, after all, a medical condition. But the informal rules about what constitutes good or bad taste change year by year. Rock is at least entitled to expect the people he insults will be familiar enough with the custom that they take the ridicule in the spirit he intends.

Victims of Domestic Abuse

The LAPD’s intention not to pursue the case raises a final issue. Should it be necessary for a complainant to press charges when an obvious assault has been committed? Rock is clearly embarrassed by the affair, and his failure to file a complaint presumably reflects his desire to have the incident quickly forgotten. Countless women and men, who have been victims of domestic abuse, do not press charges. But their motivations are usually very, very different. Often, they are pressured by their abuser or threatened with more violence should they pursue charges.

The LAPD’s approach to this seems head-in-the-sand. It will probably have no consequences for Chris Rock and leave no damage, professionally or physically (at least he didn’t seem too badly hurt). But victims of domestic abuse are never so fortunate: their circumstances dictate that they often imperil their own safety by giving evidence. The LAPD’s decision will not inspire them.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “Kardashian Kulture.”]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Will Smith’s Gift to Racists — and Misogynists appeared first on Fair Observer.

Under this agreement, the Taliban are obligated to take measures to prevent terrorist groups from threatening the security of the US and its allies and to engage in a comprehensive intra-Afghan dialogue that would produce a political settlement. The hasty US troop withdrawal in August 2021 emboldened the Taliban to disregard their obligations under the deal and encouraged them to prioritize political takeover instead of a sustainable peace mechanism for Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s Public Intellectuals Fail to Denounce the Taliban

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The Doha Agreement and its contents undermined the sovereign government of Afghanistan at the time and provided an upper hand to the Taliban in both war and peace. Certain assurances in the deal enabled the Taliban to become stronger in both battlefield action and narrative propagation.

These include the agreement’s references to a “new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government”; clauses on the release of Taliban combatants referred to as “political prisoners”; indirect legitimization of the Taliban shadow government by virtue of stipulations such as “the Taliban will not provide visas, passports, travel permits, or other legal documents”; and a complete lack of any mention of human rights protections in Afghanistan.

Another Case of Failed Peacemaking

The agreement is not the only pact that was expected to bring a peaceful end to the conflict in the country. In 1988, the Geneva Accords concluded under the auspices of the UN between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the US and the Soviet Union serving as state guarantors, provided an overall framework for the settlement of the Afghan conflict and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Likewise, the Bonn Agreement in 2001 — irrespective of whether it is categorized as a peace deal —established a process to manage the political transition in the post-Taliban Afghanistan. It briefly outlined steps from the formation of an interim administration to the development of a new constitution and holding elections.

However, neither the Geneva Accords nor the Bonn Agreement were successful and ultimately failed to foster conditions necessary for enabling a comprehensive settlement to Afghanistan’s complicated problem. More recently, the Taliban’s abject disregard for their commitments under the Doha Agreement, combined with the United States’ rushed exit, sped up the Taliban’s reemergence, once again closing an already narrow window of opportunity for achieving a durable political solution to the protracted conflict in Afghanistan.

There is indeed a qualitative difference between the Geneva Accords, the Bonn Agreement and the Doha Agreement. However, one of the key reasons for their failure, among other factors, is that they are silent on the main cause of the conflict in Afghanistan — i.e., ethnic conflict.

Afghanistan is a multiethnic country where the various ethnic groups are also geographically fragmented. Historically, divisions over who should lead the country and how have been among the core contentious issues in Afghanistan. Disagreements on this matter have manifested in violent ways in the 1990s and non-violent ways in the outcome of four presidential elections held based on the 2004 constitution. Overlooking of the main cause of the conflict and an absence of a viable mechanism for power redistribution among ethnic groups is a common thread that connects each of the three agreements that failed and continued to fuel instability.

The Current Situation

Less than two years since the Doha Agreement was signed, in August 2021, Kabul, the Afghan capital, fell to the Taliban. In the aftermath of this development, residences of several former government officials, particularly those from the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), were raided and these personnel members were either killed or imprisoned. A UN report found that over 100 personnel from the Afghan security forces and others associated with the former Afghan government have been killed in the country, despite the Taliban announcing a general amnesty. 

Moreover, despite the demands from the international community for the formation of an inclusive government, respect for human rights and counterterrorism assurances, the Taliban have refused to make any concessions. They have brazenly continued suppressing all dissenting voices, severely limiting women’s rights and persecuting civil society members and journalists.

Peace in Afghanistan?

It was apparent from day one that the prospects of the post-July 2018 efforts for a political settlement in Afghanistan were uncertain at best. The Doha Agreement simply laid out a possible schedule for the US withdrawal instead of guarantee or measures enabling a durable political settlement or peace process. The Taliban too negotiated the deal with the US with the aim of winning the war rather than seeking a peace deal or political settlement with their opponents.

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The chaotic withdrawal of American forces and the mayhem at Kabul airport — which was reminiscent of the US pullout from Vietnam — has not only damaged the image of a powerful country like the US around the world, but has also established its reputation as an unreliable ally in times of difficulty. Given historical patterns and the Taliban’s track record, in the absence of any qualitative change of circumstances on the ground, the international community’s positive overtures to the Taliban might be yet another folly.

As it stands, the prospects for peace in Afghanistan will remain distant for as long as the Taliban own the entire political apparatus rather than participate as a party in an inclusive and representative government and respect dissenting voices. In the meantime, the international community should use sanctions mechanisms and official recognition as the few remaining tools of leverage to hold the Taliban accountable to their commitments and to international legal standards.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Prospects of Peace in Afghanistan appeared first on Fair Observer.

Market concentration, on the other hand, is a more pernicious issue. More than half the value of US farm production came from farms with at least $1 million in sales in 2015, compared to only 31% in 1991.

The consequences of consolidation become apparent in the sales of various agricultural products. For example, in 2000, the biggest four companies sold 51% of soybean seeds in the United States. By 2015, their share rose to 76%.

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“The agricultural industry is different than other industries because Capper-Volstead allows them to combine in ways that other individuals would go to jail for,” says  Allee A. Ramadhan, a former Justice Department antitrust attorney who led an investigation into the dairy industry. The 1922 Capper-Volstead Act was a law originally designed to protect producers by allowing them to secure their interests through cooperatives. Unfortunately, it has resulted in the perfect conditions for heavy consolidation by the largest companies.

Consolidation doesn’t just impact prices, but it also contributes to US agriculture’s declining competitiveness. That is why agriculture was included in President Joe Biden’s executive order on competition last July, in which he declared that the “American promise of a broad and sustained prosperity depends on an open and competitive economy.”

Fertilizers and Destabilizing Forces

In addition to the structural concerns for US agriculture, there have been further destabilizing factors since 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did the health crisis remove domestic outlets for agricultural products due to repeated lockdowns, but it also severely disrupted production. This was particularly in terms of available human resources, whether before at the farms or down the processing chain with the temporary closure of many slaughterhouses.

Aside from the impact of COVID-19, extreme weather has pummeled certain states, reduced production and caused billions of dollars in damage. The prices of many inputs are snowballing into other areas. Prices for urea have skyrocketed. DAP, the common phosphate fertilizer, has reached its highest price tag since the 2008 financial crash that led to the food pricing crisis.

“As fertilizer prices continue to rise, farmers will either cut application rates, cut fertilizer entirely in hopes for lower future pricing, or cut other farm products to account for the bigger expected spend,” says Alexis Maxwell, an analyst at Green Markets.

Some farmers are essentially holding out before buying for the next growing season, in the hopes that costs come down. But that is a risky strategy.

Contributing to the destabilizing forces, recent countervailing duties against foreign fertilizer producers selling to the US market have cut supply. Chris Edgington, the president of the National Cotton Growers Association, said in late 2021 that the Mosaic Company petitioned for the tariffs and has since seen its share of the phosphate market grow from 74% to 80%, a near-monopoly. “There’s been a dramatic increase of fertilizer costs to the producer and that’s not looking to end,” he added. In general, the price increases for different fertilizers are not yet at the levels seen in 2008, but they could soon be even higher if they keep climbing.

Uncertainty Due to the Ukraine War

The war in Ukraine has added fuel to the fire regarding the uncertainties in the agricultural sector. The conflict has pitted against each other Russia and Ukraine, whose wheat exports account for more than 25% of the world’s supply. Now, these exports are at risk, as witnessed by the emerging food crisis in several North African and Middle Eastern countries.

For instance, Tunisia imports nearly half of its wheat from Ukraine to make bread. In the country where the Arab Spring began in December 2010, Tunisians are worried there could be shortages of supplies and a repeat of bread riots like in the 1980s. Alarmingly, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused prices to rise to their highest level in 14 years. Yemen, Lebanon and Egypt are also beginning to be stricken by flour shortages.

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The conflict has also led to the introduction of severe sanctions against Russia and Belarus, two of the world’s largest producers and exporters of fertilizers of all kinds, along with natural gas, an essential ingredient in ammonia production and a key component of complex fertilizers. Although the United States produces most of its own natural gas, fluctuations in world prices have a significant effect on the fertilizer industry. This only exacerbates the difficulties farmers currently face in obtaining inputs.

Thus, while US farmers could look forward to a windfall of increased demand for their grain in the coming year, in the immediate future, they are simply faced with a further increase in production costs. Due to these added costs of inputs and the supply chain issues, US agriculture — especially the wheat industry — may be lacking the fertilizers needed to maximize yields, resulting in a decline in production and impeding its capability to respond to global demand.

In a way, in the immediate and near future, the nightmare of 2021 is only worsening. For Arkansas farmer Matt Miles, “There’s no guarantee of anything being a sure thing anymore. That’s the scary part.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post After a Difficult Year, US Farmers Are Pessimistic appeared first on Fair Observer.

One good example is an article in The American Purpose by the National Endowment for Democracy’s vice-president for studies and analysis, Christopher Walker. In the piece titled, “The Kleptocratic Sources of Russia’s Conduct,” Walker builds his case around the idea that “Vladimir Putin and his gang are fixated on wealth and power.” The author admits being inspired by political analyst Daniel Kimmage, who in 2009 produced what Walker terms a “clear-eyed assessment of Putin’s Russia.” He cites this wisdom he gleaned from Kimmage: “The primary goal of the Russian elite is not to advance an abstract ideal of the national interest or restore some imagined Soviet idyll,” but “to retain its hold on money and power.”

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Kimmage sums up one difficulty Americans have felt when dealing with Putin as an ideological adversary. Whereas the Soviet Union’s embrace of communism made the ideological gap visible even to moronic voters, Putin reigns over a nation that American consultants transformed in the 1990s into a capitalist paradise (i.e., a paradise for owners of capital). To distinguish Putin’s evil capitalism from America’s benevolent capitalism, Kimmage called the Russian version a “selectively capitalist kleptocracy.”

Walker notes that “the system of ‘selectively capitalist kleptocracy’ in Russia that Daniel Kimmage described” 13 years ago has now “evolved in ways that are even more threatening to democracy and its institutions.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Kleptocracy:

The form of government universally adopted by all powerful nations at the end of the 20^th century.

Contextual Note

An acerbic critic might be excused for not feeling particularly illuminated to learn that Putin and his cronies “are fixated on wealth and power.” Who would expect them to have a different philosophy and mindset than the leaders of every other powerful country in the world? The list includes those that claim to be faultless democracies, committed to implementing the will of the people. The first among them is, of course, the United States, but France, the United Kingdom and others adhere to the same sets of values, even if each of them has worked out more subtle ways of applying them. And, of course, Saudi Arabia stands at the head of everyone’s class as the exemplar of leaderships fixated on wealth and power.

Kimmage’s description of Russia as a “selectively capitalist kleptocracy” may be helpful in ways he may not have intended. Russia’s selective capitalist kleptocracy contrasts with America’s non-selectively capitalist kleptocracy. The real question turns around what it means to be selective or non-selective. Walker makes no attempt to differentiate the two because he believes the term kleptocracy only applies to Russia. But statistics about wealth inequality reveal that the American capitalist system has become a plutocracy that can make its own claim to being a kleptocracy.

In 1989, the top 10% of income earners in the United States earned 42% of the total income, which is already significant. In 2016, they accounted for 50%. “By the start of 2021, the richest 1% of Americans held 32% of the nation’s wealth,” according to The New York Times. Between the start of 2020 and July 2021, “the richest 1% gained $10 trillion” in accumulated wealth.

The gap is destined to keep widening. Unlike Putin’s oligarchy, composed of his “selected” friends and other winners of Russia’s industrial casino, the 1% in the US have non-selectively emerged to constitute a kleptocratic class that, thanks to a sophisticated system of governance, writes the laws, applies the rules and captures the new wealth that is programmed to gravitate towards them.

Kimmage’s idea of a fixation “with wealth and power” correctly describes the mindset of the members of the American kleptocratic class, whether they are entrepreneurs with names like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, or politicians like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who rose from poverty to convert power into riches and earn their place as servants of the kleptocratic class.

Unlike Putin’s mafia-like political culture, the system in the US is subtle and sophisticated. It contains convenient paths to join the kleptocratic class, such as a Harvard or Stanford degree. But mostly it relies on fixation. Within the US kleptocratic class diversity exists. Some may be more focused on power (including cultural power) than wealth. But the fascination with both wealth and power is common to all. The system is built on the symmetrical principle that wealth feeds power and power feeds wealth.

Walker accuses Putin of another grave sin, beyond kleptomania but including it: expansionism. He denounces the “spread of the roots and branches of a transnational kleptocratic system that stretches well beyond the Russian Federation to pose a multidimensional threat to free societies.”

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How could a discerning reader not notice the dramatic irony here? Has Walker forgotten that Putin’s complaint about NATO is that, despite promises made to the contrary, it has spent 30 years aggressively expanding toward Russia’s most sensitive borders? Putin may be interested in expansion, but Eastern Europe has become a slow tug-of-war in which NATO, under US impulsion, has been the most active and insistent aggressor.

In short, Walker has produced an essay that correctly identifies very real political evils within the Russian system. But they share the same basic traits as the politico-economic culture of the West under US leadership. In an absolute failure of self-recognition, Walker somehow manages to avoid acknowledging his own culture’s image reflected back to him into the mirror that has become the target of his complaints. That is because, in this article, he has focused on producing just one more example of what has now become the shameless, knee-jerk propaganda that pollutes Western media in this climate of an existential war from which the US has abstained, preferring to let the Ukrainians endure the sacrifice for the sake of American principles.

Historical Note

In the 17^th century, European history began a radical transformation of its political institutions lasting roughly 300 years. After England’s Puritans beheaded their king and declared a short-lived Commonwealth, European intellectuals began toying with an idea that would eventually lead to the triumph of the idea, if not the reality of democracy, a system Winston Churchill generously called “the worst form of government except for all the others.”

For the best part of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, representative democracy became the standard reference for everyone’s idea of what an honest government should be like, while struggling to find its footing with the concurrent rise of industrial capitalism. Capitalism generated huge inequality that seemed at least theoretically anomalous with the idea of democracy.

During the late 20^th century, industrial capitalism that had previously focused on production, productivity and mass distribution, gave way to financial capitalism. This new version of capitalism focused uniquely on wealth and power. In other words, democracies switched their orientation from a belief in their citizens’ anarchic quest for personal prosperity in the name of the “pursuit of happiness” to the elite’s concentrated focus on the acquisition and accumulation of money and clout.

This new social model merged the logic of democratically designed institutions with economic and legal mechanisms that created a sophisticated system at the service of a small number of individuals who understood and controlled the levers of wealth and political power. Their major cultural achievement consisted of giving a sufficiently wide base to this new form of plutocracy that disguised its kleptocratic reality.

For nearly half a century, the Cold War promoted the spectacle of a combat between democratic capitalism and autocratic communism. Both sides seized the opportunity to build military powerhouses that could provide an effective shelter for the kleptocratic class. Once the heresy of communism was banished from Russia, it could morph, under Boris Yeltsin and then Vladimir Putin, into a caricature of the much more subtle kleptocracy encapsulated in Reaganomics.

The Russian and American versions of economic power management shared the same orientations but deployed them in contrasting ways. Kleptocratic rule was at the core of both. Using a musical analogy, the American philharmonic version of kleptocracy was delivered in Carnegie Hall, with a fully orchestrated score. Russia offered an improvisational version delivered by local musicians in an animated tavern. In both cases, as the proverb says, “he who pays the piper calls the tune.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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FADE IN:

EXT. Georgetown Street — Late Afternoon

DYSON: General, if you could spare a minute, I’d like to get your take on how the Ukraine war’s going. Are you satisfied we’re achieving our objectives?

MORAN: You’re a reporter. Read the papers.

DYSON: I write for the papers, so I don’t necessarily trust everything I read. I’d like to get it from the horse’s mouth.

MORAN: Look, you’re asking the wrong stallion. Address your questions to the politicians. The military’s job is to obey orders, not give interviews. Our opinion means nothing.

DYSON: I’ve been talking to the politicians. I know what they’re saying, which is why I’d like to hear your thoughts. I’m interested in the military perspective, the feelings you guys have about your mission.

MORAN: We don’t have feelings. We have orders. Orders lead to actions. Feelings come later.

DYSON: OK, but everyone is acting like we’re engaged in a war. And you know much more about war than any politician.

MORAN: Officially we’re at peace. So I have nothing to say.

DYSON: We’re definitely in a major economic war that sits on top of a local shooting war. That’s a unique situation. The media are whipping the public into a frenzy of war fever. Do you feel you’re being sidelined?

MORAN: Do I feel…? I told you, don’t ask me about my feelings.

DYSON: Well, you and your colleagues must be wondering about what this frenzy means. You can see everybody in the media itching to take on the Russkis. Anyone who thinks a war isn’t necessary can be called a traitor. But at the same time, the official message is that we’re not going to battle.

MORAN: We’re ready for any action that’s required. That’s all. For the moment, it’s the State Department’s war, not ours. Their weapons are sanctions and they have quite an arsenal.

DYSON: So you admit that applying sanctions is the equivalent of war?

MORAN: Sanctions actually kill people more surely and on a more massive scale than any non-nuclear weapons.

DYSON: That’s the point. Critics point out that they target civilians and disrupt the survivors’ lives, people who have nothing to do with politics or combat, whereas war is supposed to be about opposing armies. Are you saying you consider sanctions a legitimate way to conduct war?

MORAN: Well, if you really want my opinion, I’ll tell you. Sanctions make a mockery of the idea of war, which is always has been and should always be considered a noble pursuit. Politicians have no idea what true war is all about. They say they have a strategy, but they have no sense of operational goals.

DYSON: If you admit they have a strategy, how would you assess their tactics?

MORAN: We don’t try. All we can do is hope they come out victorious.

DYSON: Have they given you military people any idea of what victory would look like?

MORAN: From what I can tell, it’s bringing down the evildoer, Vladimir Putin.

DYSON: So, it’s regime change?

MORAN: That’s what it looks like.

DYSON: Blinken absolutely denied that last week on “Face the Nation.” But he does say it’s about provoking the devastation of the Russian economy.

MORAN: Pretty much the same thing.

DYSON: The French minister Bruno Le Maire said something similar, about provoking the total collapse of the Russian economy. It’s beginning to sound like “Carthago delenda est.”

MORAN: Is that French?

DYSON: No, Latin. You know, Cato.

MORAN: Are you telling me the French minister works for the Cato Institute here in DC?

DYSON: No, it’s what Cato the Elder said during one of the Punic wars.

MORAN: It’s disrespectful to call any of our wars puny, even if we have to admit there were a few failures.

DYSON: I’m talking about ancient Roman history. Cato was a Roman politician who preached the destruction of Carthage around 200 BC. He ended all his speeches at the Senate with the catchphrase, “Carthage must be destroyed.” You must have studied the Punic wars? The Romans went ahead and definitively wiped Carthage off the map in 146 BC, killing or enslaving every one of its citizens.

MORAN: Oh, yeah. I remember hearing about that in my history classes at West Point. That was a time when politicians knew how to finish off the quarrels they started.

DYSON: So, is that what we’re talking about now? Destroying Russia?

MORAN: Don’t see how that can work without a nuclear attack. But if they can bring down the regime with sanctions, more power to ‘em. After the habitual “mission accomplished” moment they always love to stage, they’ll probably call us in to clean up the mess. That generally doesn’t go very well, but we’ll make the best of it.

DYSON: As you always do, I guess. Well, thanks for the valuable insight. I’m very grateful.

MORAN: You’re not going to quote me on any of this? You do and I’ll make sure every officer down to the rank of lieutenant knows your name. You’ll never get another story from the Pentagon.

DYSON: Hey, I was only interested in your ideas. And, don’t worry, I won’t take any direct quotes or mention your name. Trust me, I work for The Washington Post.

Disclaimer: This fictional dialogue exists for entertainment purposes only. The ideas expressed in it are totally imaginary. Its eventual inclusion in any Hollywood movie or television script will be subject to negotiating authoring rights with Fair Observer. That is nevertheless highly unlikely for the simple reason that some of the reflections in the dialogue appear to contradict the widely held beliefs spread in the propaganda that now dominates both the news media and the entertainment industry.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post A Fictional Debate Between a General and a Journalist appeared first on Fair Observer.

For the past month, the most respectable news outlets in the West have channeled their energy into perfecting a novel journalistic phenomenon that goes well beyond traditional propaganda. It has become so concentrated it now deserves an official name. I propose calling it “Obsessive Accusatory Reporting” (OAR). The message of any item in the news meriting the OAR label is to magnify an already present feeling of confirmed hatred in the reader. In principle, it can target nations, peoples, ideas or religions. But it works best when it focuses on a single personality.

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The current version of OAR began with an idea already built into the cultural woodwork of American media: the perception that Russia — whether in its historical Soviet version or in its modern post-tsarist form — is the natural and eternal enemy of the United States and, by extension, to Western civilization as a whole. Inherited from the Cold War as a set of feelings that Americans find natural, establishment Democrats in the US gave it new impetus thanks to the artificial association they managed to establish with the man they believed could play the role of a true American evildoer: Donald Trump. Now, thanks to a specific event, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the practice of OAR can focus on a universal target by whom, unlike Trump, no American should be allowed to be seduced. It’s the new Hitler, Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Anyone who has ever witnessed a rowing event knows that to gain speed and ensure hydrodynamic efficiency, all rowers must have their oars strike the water at the same precise moment and achieve an equivalent depth below the surface of the water as their collective effort pushes the boat and all it contains forward. This repeated, disciplined, rhythmically coordinated energy creates the inertia strokes that produce increased momentum. 

The media’s propaganda campaigns appear to work in much the same way thanks to the equally disciplined and repeated OAR phenomenon. Obsessive repetition, the alignment of an infinite series of examples of despicable behavior and the journalistic talent for turning each example into an emotion-stirring story are the three elements that sum up the art of OAR. The momentum the media has created around hatred for the person of Vladimir Putin has become a spectacle in itself. The danger the media has no time to worry about as its effort continues developing potentially uncontrollable speed is that it may reach the point where it triggers actions leading to a potentially thermonuclear conflagration. Call it the media’s brinkmanship that multiplies the effects of politicians who themselves, persuaded it is now the key to successful electoral marketing, have turned it into an art form. Voters want their leaders to be aggressive decision-makers.

There are undoubtedly plenty of reasons to distrust, despise and morally condemn Vladimir Putin that existed well before he decided to invade Ukraine on February 24. Putin has, as befits a country ruled for a century by autocratic tsars, developed a particularly thuggish form of governing his nation. Russians at least are used to it and fatalistically accept it, with no illusion about its pretention to any form of virtue other than the ability to keep things under control. 

Putin is clearly guilty of every sin — from brutal repression to aggravated narcissism — that accrues to anyone who achieves his level of control that embraces military power, finance and technology. His ability to repress any serious opposition and manipulate electoral processes, his commitment to cronyism and self-enrichment, and his immunity from a basic moral sense concerning the value of human life and the dignity of the average citizen constitute attributes of his office. Unlike some autocratic leaders, he also has a high level of strategic intelligence. 

Westerners have become habituated to leaders who seek to seduce broad segments of the population thanks to slogans rather than the demonstration of their clout or the display of their intelligence, which in fact is never required and, when it exists, may get in the way of their ambition. Western political leaders focus on developing the essential skill of deploying charm to win elections. To Westerners, Putin’s style of governing marked by the arrogance of power is worse than distasteful. It challenges their own belief in the illusion they need to feel of possessing political power in a democracy thanks to their ability to vote at regular intervals. They need to imagine their vote has an impact on policy, an illusion the media encourages them to believe in. All it really does is limit the degree of repression a democratic government may get away with. Putin has no qualms or regrets about manifestly unjust actions carried out against his own people. Western democratic leaders actually worry.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was unambiguously illegal, morally shocking, paradoxical to the extent that he is attacking the population he claims to wish to protect and downright brutal. It may even be self-defeating, potentially tarnishing his image as a strong leader. It would, however, be premature to draw conclusions on that last point, as many in the Western media have already started doing. But for anyone susceptible to being seduced by today’s OAR culture, the temptation to believe in the inevitable failure of Putin’s enterprise is overwhelming. For the past two weeks, Western media have been joyously proclaiming that Putin’s armed assault is on the verge of defeat. 

Journalism and Democracy

The traditional belief about journalism in a democracy included the idea that the press plays a role closely attuned to the interest and the voice of the people. Ideally, the media exists to provide essential information about the real world and a modicum of independent insight about the topics treated. By showing restraint and focusing on discernible facts, media in a democracy could be trusted to help citizens understand complex events and make informed decisions after drawing their own conclusions about the possible relationship between causes and effects.

That has long been the theory concerning the role of what people still call the fourth estate, a linguistic hand-me-down from 18^th century European history that designates the free press. The fourth estate was deemed to be closest to the third estate (the people, or the commoners) and furthest from the first two estates (the clergy and the nobility). The advent of democracy made the theory of the estates obsolete, to the extent that the clergy lost its status of “estate.” In reality, the totalitarian drift of the 20^th century revealed that the first and second estates merged as democratic governments assumed they could project the moral authority the clergy traditionally exercised.

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The idea of a free and independent press embodied in the fourth estate continued to persist as a necessary but increasingly intangible ideal. Alas, history tells us that whenever an ideal makes contact with reality, it is likely to become distorted. With the rise of democracy in the West in the 19^th century, the press permitted the expression of variable points of view. But over time, no ethical system could prevent those voices from being influenced by political parties, commercial interests, pressure groups and the government itself. The key to honoring the ideal was variety, not just tolerance but also the encouragement of a range of views. Financial concentration eventually limited and finally captured and confined that variety.

The media has been trapped by forces it no longer tries to control or resist. It is virtually impossible even to imagine, let alone create anything resembling the ideal news outlet for which objective presentation of the news would be the inviolable norm. Perhaps the proponents of government by artificial intelligence believe they can one day put that in place by eliminating human agency. They too are victims of an illusion because manipulative human agency can work — and in fact works best — through artificial systems that include and mechanically promote the interests that created them. This is as true of political systems as it is of computer programs. The failure of humanity to even begin addressing the impending catastrophe of global warming can simply be attributed to systemic inertia, not to the idea that no leader is willing to make an appropriate decision.

So long as diversity in the media was still possible, truth for the public at large could emerge not from a spontaneous or enforced consensus, but through the highly interactive process of recognizing and eliminating the distortions of the reality that became visible after comparing the various representations of it. By definition, the truth about human institutions and historical facts is dynamic, organic and interactive. It is not a statement and cannot be contained in statements. It exists as a perception. Perceptions can be shared, compared or contradicted. No single perception sums up the truth.

In the traditional democratic idea of journalism, a good article avoided explicit judgment. In many instances, the standard practice became to avoid even mentioning specific interpretations or judgments. Good reporting limited itself to acknowledging dominant perspectives on a topic without choosing to endorse one or another. In stories about crime, for example, it has become a general rule — before a verdict rendered by a court of justice — to use the epithet “alleged.” This rule holds even when there is no doubt about the existence of the crime and the identity of the author of the crime (though the real reason for this precaution may be the media’s fear of being accused of libel). In contrast, when it comes to political issues, the opposite trend dominates. Journalists or their editors now routinely jump on the occasion to name the culprit and inculcate the belief of guilt in their audience. Knowing their niche audience, it enables them to offer their public what they want to hear or understand.

Russian Agency and the Havana Syndrome

One prominent case in recent years illustrates how easy it is for journalists to play fast and loose concerning real or imaginary political crimes. Over a period of five years dedicated to reporting on the “Havana syndrome,” The New York Times, The Washington Post and other respectable media consistently described reported health incidents as “attacks.” That word alone presumed criminal agency, even though the reality of cause and effect was closer to a “heart attack” or “panic attack” than to an assault.

Articles on the syndrome typically insisted that, even when no evidence could be cited of any human agency, Russia was the prime suspect. Sentences such as this one from The Washington Post were clearly intended to distort the reader’s perception: “Current and former intelligence officials have increasingly pointed a finger at Russia, which has staged multiple brazen attacks on adversaries and diplomats overseas.” It is worth noting that the only act in this sentence that should qualify as news is what the intelligence officials have done: “pointed a finger.” All the rest, the “brazen attacks,” are either imprecisely anecdotal from a random past or simply imaginary.

Five years after initially pointing fingers, those same officials finally admitted officially that there was nothing to point their finger at. When the ultimate negative assessment by the CIA itself of Russian attacks was published in January of this year, did The Post or The Times (or any other media) apologize to their readers for their erroneous reporting over the years? Obviously, not. Perhaps they felt that might oblige them to do the unthinkable: apologize to the Russians.

When there was finally no choice left but to reveal the CIA’s negative assessment, The New York Times tried to save face by insisting that everything it had pinned its hopes on might still have an element of truth in it. “A directed energy weapon,” Julian E. Barnes wrote on January 20, “remains the hypothesis that a number of victims who have studied the incidents believe is most likely.” If that fact is true, a serious reporter would have delved into the interesting question of why the victims continue to believe something that their superiors have determined to be untrue. Does this reveal that CIA operatives and their families have lost their trust in the truthfulness of the agency? The rest of us are left wondering why journalists like Barnes himself think it necessary to print such meaningless observations as significant facts.

Now that the entire thesis of Russian-directed energy attacks has been discredited, a new article delving into the motivation of intelligence officials who made repeated unfounded claims might prove informative. But, miraculously, there are no new articles on the Havana syndrome, except maybe the article you are now reading. But none in The Times or The Post. With hindsight — something the legacy press studiously avoids — the articles of these papers appear to reveal the equivalent of “brazen attacks,” not by Russians but by US intelligence services. They were attacks on the public’s access to the truth. The journalists were simply willing conscious or unconscious accomplices in these brazen attacks. What this entire episode truly reveals is a lesson in how our culture of hyperreality works. It depends entirely on the media.

Finally, a Serious Case of a Brazen Attack: Ukraine

This inevitably brings us back to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This time, Russia is indeed guilty of a brazen attack that isn’t an imaginary hypothesis dreamed up by intelligence operatives. Nevertheless, the media have turned it into something far more brazen by systematically excluding or ignoring other less brazen but equally troubling attacks that have been going on for years. They include a decidedly brazen coup d’état in Ukraine supported, if not engineered, by the United States in 2014.

The carefully managed act of regime change in which the US gratefully accepted the assistance of neo-Nazi extremists to produce the commensurate level of violence used the deposition of one democratically elected leader to enable the comforting fiction that the two Ukrainian presidents elected since those events — Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky — are somehow more legitimate than the president overthrown in the Maidan Revolution. That fiction depends on discarding the fact that Ukraine is not just another “sovereign nation” of Europe, but a historically, culturally and linguistically divided country that also has a conflicting but highly charged symbolic meaning for both Russia, its next-door neighbor, and the United States, a distant hegemon that has used NATO to spread its military dominance across Europe.

Most reasonable and reasoning people admit the principle that complex political entities such as Ukraine require delicate diplomatic treatment. But, as the Bush wars revealed, US foreign policy rarely acknowledges the need for rationality. Even basic diplomacy appears to be inconsistent with the culture of enforced hegemony. At best, it might serve the purpose of catastrophe avoidance. But catastrophes are increasingly welcomed rather than avoided. Instead, we can observe a growing trend of catastrophe provocation that is difficult to explain, since the cost is heavy even for the perpetrators. For the US, it appears to have something to do with the idea that world hegemony is the only possible source of global stability and that catastrophes such as war are somehow good for business (which of course they are, but not for everyone’s or even most people’s business).

In such a geopolitical environment, propaganda becomes a way of life and serves as the core activity in the construction of public culture. Selecting the facts the public will react to in a predictable way according to the interest of those who understand the secrets of geopolitical stability has become the basis of legacy journalism in the US. The ultimately comic example of the Havana syndrome perhaps served as a kind of temporary placeholder in times of relative peace. It upheld the mythological construct of a permanent Cold War, which seems to be essential in the definition of US foreign policy. Now that things have become seriously degraded in a nation that journalists have begun calling the “civilized” part of the world — meaning that it is worth being concerned about, in contrast with the Middle East, Asia and Africa — propaganda has to focus not on pure hallucinatory hyperreality but events that are taking place in the real world.

We are only beginning to see the dominant strategies involved. It is too early to assess them with any historical distance. What we are witnessing is the need to whip up the blind hatred that leads to the OAR phenomenon described earlier. But there is also a more basic approach that applies especially to situations that are historically and culturally complex. It includes the decision to forget to mention or even categorically deny the obvious for as long as possible. When the obvious does become visible, thanks to the indiscipline of some rare investigators interested in the truth, the strategy consists of devising ways of downplaying it and treating it as marginal.

The Neo-Nazi Syndrome

When Putin launched his assault on Ukraine, he defined a mission of denazification of Ukraine. He may have presumed that all Westerners can relate to that theme. Nazis are, after all, the personification of historical evil. So, if we can agree on a common enemy, we should at the very least offer one another friendly support. Putin apparently underestimated the Westerners’ ability to remain ignorant of very real and already documented facts, thanks to the deliberate forgetfulness of their media. Not only did commentators laugh at the notion that a neo-Nazi threat existed in Ukraine, they mocked the idea that it could exist in a nation whose president is Jewish.

Four weeks into the war, The New York Times has published an article acknowledging that the neo-Nazi question is worth mentioning. The article bears the title, “Why Vladimir Putin Invokes Nazis to Justify His Invasion of Ukraine.” The title alone is extremely clever. It focuses attention not on the Nazis, who are never seriously identified, but on Vladimir Putin, whom Times readers understand as being evil incarnate. The first sentence reads as pure mockery of phrases Putin has used. “Ukraine’s government,” Anton Troianovski writes, ”is ‘openly neo-Nazi’ and ‘pro-Nazi,’ controlled by ‘little Nazis,’ President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia says.”

The implication is that if Putin said it, it must be a lie. It is only in the 12^th paragraph of the article that the question of the actual presence and actions of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is even grudgingly entertained. “Like many lies,” the paragraph begins, “Mr. Putin’s claim about a Nazi-controlled Ukraine has a hall-of-mirrors connection to reality.” Ah, Troianovski appears to admit, there is a connection to reality, but of course it is hopelessly distorted, like a fun park’s hall of mirrors.

The following paragraph attempts to convince the reader that the phenomenon is so marginal there is definitely nothing to worry about. “Some fringe nationalist groups, who have no representation in Parliament, use racist rhetoric and symbolism associated with Nazi Germany.” In other words, talk of neo-Nazis is all fiction.

Many paragraphs later, Troianovski reveals the real reason why this article of clarification became necessary for The Times rather than simply neglecting to mention neo-Nazis. It’s the fault of Facebook, which created something of a scandal when it “said it was making an exception to its anti-extremism policies to allow praise for Ukraine’s far-right Azov Battalion military unit, ‘strictly in the context of defending Ukraine, or in their role as part of the Ukraine National Guard.’” The Russians seized on this as proof of complicity between the Ukrainian resistance and the neo-Nazis. To counter dangerous Russian propaganda, The Times is stepping up to clarify the issue, even though it would have preferred not having to mention it.

Unfortunately, the article spends paragraph after paragraph clarifying nothing. It somewhat precipitously ends with a quote about how Jews are now among those fleeing the war. Some of them may never return, implying that Putin’s intent of denazifying Ukraine is in itself a deviously anti-Semitic act. This reversal of perception of blame illustrates one of the key techniques of New York Times-style propaganda. The journalist finds a devious way of turning the supposedly moral motivation of the enemy into its opposite.

Troianovski briefly hints at the uncomfortable paradox that Israel has refused to condemn Russia, a fact that might comfort the idea of Putin’s concern with neo-Nazis. But the journalist leaves that question aside, apparently convinced that the subtlety of that debate unnecessarily complicates his mission as an OAR specialist focused only on highlighting Putin’s evil nature. Surprisingly for those familiar with modern Ukrainian history, Troianovski has the honesty to mention the historical Nazi sympathizer and Ukrainian nationalist, Stepan Bandera, still celebrated by many Ukrainians.

Troianovski even has the merit of providing a link to a fascinatingly instructive 2010 Times article, written at a time when the paper had no particular commitment to churning out propaganda in the interests of celebrating Ukraine’s democratic purity and constitutional integrity. The author of that article, Clifford J. Levy, highlights the problem that Viktor Yanukovych was facing as he bravely attempted “to address the ethnic, regional and historical passions that divide the country.” Yanukovych was, of course, the Ukrainian president that Victoria Nuland helped to depose in 2014.

Understanding the Culture of Propaganda by Comparing The Times in 2010 and 2022

All New York Times readers and indeed all American journalists owe it to themselves and the sanity of the world we live in to read Levy’s article from 2010, if only to compare it to the image of Ukraine that American media are putting forward today of a unified people, imbued with liberal European values and united in their hatred of tyranny in all its forms. Levy’s article that applies the now-forgotten practices of straightforward journalism presents facts, cites contrasting points of view — including admirers of Bandera — and takes no sides. In so doing, it gives a clear picture of a terrifyingly complex social and historical situation that Western media have decided to simplify to the extreme in their wish to follow the dictates of US President Joe Biden’s State Department.  

Any objective observer today, however rare their voices are in the media, must realize, as Barack Obama did in 2016, according to The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, that “Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one.” Obama’s State Department that sent Nuland to Ukraine to manage the Maidan Revolution appeared at the time unaware of what Goldberg called the “Obama Doctrine.” That same objective observer should also be aware of the fact that the Ukraine described by Levy in his 2010 article still exists, despite the State Department’s 2014 coup d’état. There is much more about the history of the last eight years and beyond that, despite the terrifying consequences playing out day after day, US and Western media have now chosen to studiously ignore, if not suppress.

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One salient point that readers of Levy’s article will relate to today, however, is the remark of the director of the Stepan Bandera museum in Lviv: “For Ukrainian nationalists, there is no such word as capitulation.” That is even truer when those same nationalists dispose of a billion dollars worth of American weaponry to keep the war of resistance going as long as possible. The citizenry of Western Ukraine will follow the lead of the nationalists — not all of whom are neo-Nazis — and refuse to capitulate, while suffering what deserves to be called severe if not sadistic cultural, political and military abuse from two enemies fighting a proxy war on their land: Russia and the United States.

But if the continuing destruction of Ukrainian cities and loss of thousands of lives is the price to pay for the pleasure of reading reams of Obsessive Accusatory Reporting, then, as Madeleine Albright might say, “the price is worth it.”

​​The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post How to Write New York Times Propaganda appeared first on Fair Observer.

It’s Time for #MeToo to Address Structural Racism

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The first official Women’s History Month was inaugurated in 1980 and has been celebrated every year since. There are indeed many milestones and accomplishments to celebrate, including the strides women have made in education and the economy, the increased representation of women in government, and the hard-won legal and social equality. At the same time, white women have leveraged their relative racial privilege to make these gains at the expense of women of color.

Incomplete Picture

While it feels empowering to think of women as a collective group, this category is not a monolith. Failing to consider women and women’s history from an intersectional perspective leaves out the range of experiences and needs of women who do not fit into the white middle-class mold. In short, when the broad range of women’s experiences is not acknowledged, the movement remains incomplete. 

Because historical and contemporary women’s movements have willfully and strategically omitted racial justice, there is a legacy of isolating racism from sexism. This ignores the lived experience of everyone except white women. It has ensured that white women see a competition between issues of racism and sexism, and feel that they lose if the conversation centers around the former. 

The suffragettes made the deliberate decision to fight for the right of white — not all — women to vote, choosing not to collaborate with black female activists. More recently, the 2017 Women’s March organizers faced criticism for focusing primarily on white women’s issues. 

And in the peak of the #MeToo movement, celebrities like Alyssa Milano, who said that she felt blessed to be the vessel for the movement, and Rose McGowan, who professed annoyance at not being credited with initiating the movement, have by and large been associated with the inception of #MeToo. In reality, Tarana Burke, a black female activist and advocate, coined the phrase and spearheaded the movement to raise awareness of sexual violence against working-class women and women of color a whole decade earlier.

As sociologists and white women, we argue that the discomfort regarding engaging with racism in both the society in general as well as in women-centered movements stems from the idea that white people don’t have to talk about race and racism because they aren’t “our issues.” But, because we live in a racialized society, everyone has a racial identity.

Another way to think about this is by acknowledging that race is socially constructed, meaning that it carries a social, not biological categorization. However, the fact that it is socially constructed doesn’t mean it isn’t real. In a racist society, race has very real consequences for people.

Real Change

To avoid injury and to build a more equitable and just society, white women must become better at talking about race and racism, and recognize that while we experience sexism, we benefit from racial privilege in society. These benefits range from not having to navigate racism when dating to more frequent promotions in the workplace compared to minority women to extensive media coverage when a white woman goes missing, among others. 

Real change will mean giving up some of our comfort and power. Making these changes may not feel nice to us as individuals, but will have life-saving consequences for black people and other people of color. 

Second, we must recognize racism is a structural problem that is embedded into the fabric of American society. Dismantling it will require supporting anti-racist policies and politicians, and advocating for laws such as the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2021, which aims to “improve maternal health, particularly among racial and ethnic minority groups, veterans, and other vulnerable populations. It also addresses maternal health issues related to COVID-19.” 

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To ensure that political leaders truly represent the American public, everyone must have a seat at the table. While there have been four women on the Supreme Court, this month, we have the opportunity to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who would be the first black woman on the court. 

Finally, we cannot begin to address racism without a shared knowledge of the truth. Ideally, this means casting a wide net and engaging with people from different backgrounds. Black activists and authors can show us the social world through their eyes. But even so, we can’t expect anyone to tell us what “good” white people we are. In the words of the late scholar and activist bell hooks, there is no gold star for “challenging white supremacist, capitalist, and patriarchal values.”   

What’s more, since racism is structural, we will all say and do racist things at times. But if we care about making the world a better place, we must listen, learn, apologize and continue to improve. Of course, self-knowledge is not enough. As white women, we must simultaneously work to improve ourselves and engage in the difficult work of dismantling white supremacy. This won’t be easy work, but it’s work that is worth doing. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Fellow White Women, It’s Time to Talk About Feminism appeared first on Fair Observer.

India’s abstentions have led to much heartburn in the US and Europe. One high-flying national security lawyer in Washington argued that India was wrong to ignore Russia tearing down Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations. Like many others, he took the view that India has sided with an aggressive autocrat, weakened its democratic credentials and proved to be a potentially unreliable partner of the West. The Economist has called India “abstemious to a fault.”

American Hypocrisy and Half-Measures Damn Ukraine and Help Russia

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In particular, serving and retired American and British diplomats have been wringing their hands at India’s reticence to vote against Russia. For many Americans, this is a betrayal of the good faith that the US has reposed in India by giving the country a special nuclear deal in 2008 and designating India as a “major defense partner” in 2016. In 2018, the US elevated India to Strategic Trade Authorization tier 1 status, giving India license-free access to a wide range of military and dual-use technologies regulated by the Department of Commerce, a privilege the US accords to very few other countries. On Capitol Hill, India’s abstention is further viewed as an act of bad faith because many members of Congress and senators worked hard to waive sanctions against India. These were triggered by the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act when India bought Russian S-400 missile systems. 

Many Western business leaders are now wondering if India is a safe place to do business after the latest turn of events. For some in the West, this is yet another example of India slipping inexorably down the slippery slope of authoritarianism under the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Two Unfriendly Nuclear Neighbors

Such fears are overblown. India remains a thriving democracy. Elections just took place in five states after colorful political campaigns. Infrastructure development in India is going on at a record pace and growth remains high amidst inflationary pressures. Despite some blunders such as the 2016 demonetization of high-denomination currency notes and the botched 2017 rollout of the goods and services tax, the Modi-led BJP has become more market-friendly.

As per the World Bank’s Doing Business 2020 report, India ranked 63 out of the surveyed 190 countries, a marked improvement from the 134 rank in 2014 when Modi came to power. Like the US, India is a fractious and, at times, exasperating democracy, but it is a fast-growing large economy. Even as US manufacturers Chevrolet and Ford exited the Indian market, Korean Kia and Chinese MG Motor India have achieved much success.

India is also proving to be a major force for stability in the region. After “America’s Afghanistan’s fiasco,” India has been picking up the pieces in an increasingly unstable region. The country is now providing humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people even as the US has abandoned them. Thousands of trucks roll out daily from India to Afghanistan via Pakistan as part of India’s effort to feed millions of starving Afghans. India is delivering 50,000 tons of wheat to a country led by the Taliban. Earlier, India sent 500,000 coronavirus vaccines as well as 13 tons of essential medicines and winter clothing to Afghanistan. Despite its reservations about the new regime in Kabul that offered refuge to hijackers of an Indian plane in 1999 and sent jihadists to Kashmir, a government branded as anti-Muslim by The New York Times is behaving magnanimously to help millions of Afghans facing starvation.

Despite its thriving democracy and growing economy, India remains a highly vulnerable nation in an extremely rough neighborhood. To its west lies an increasingly more radical Pakistan that, in the words of the late Stephen Philip Cohen, uses “terror as an instrument of state policy in Kashmir.” To its east lies an increasingly aggressive China led by President Xi Jinping assiduously using salami-slicing tactics to claim more Indian territory. In sharp contrast to the US, India has two nuclear-armed neighbors and faces the specter of a two-front war given what Andrew Small has called the China–Pakistan axis.

National security that occupies much headspace in Washington is a constant headache for New Delhi. Multiple insurgencies, street protests, mass movements, foreign interference and the specter of nuclear war are a daily worry. During the Cold War, Pakistan was an ally of the US and benefited greatly from American funding of the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union. A 1998 report by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) tells us India was among the top three recipients of Soviet/Russian weapons from 1982 to 1996. 

More recently, India has diversified its arms imports. A 2021 SIPRI fact sheet makes clear that India is now the biggest importer of French and Israeli arms. From 2011-15 to 2016-20 Russian arms exports to India dropped by 53%, but the country still remained the top importer. In 2016-20, Russia, France and Israel’s share of India’s arms imports comprised 49%, 18% and 13% respectively. A retired assistant chief of the integrated staff estimates that around 70% of India’s military arsenal is of Russian origin.

Given Indian dependence on Russian military hardware, it is only natural that New Delhi cannot afford to annoy Moscow. Critical Russian spares keep the defense forces combat-ready. For high-tech weaponry, which has the added advantage of coming at affordable prices, India relies on Russia. Moscow has also shared software and proprietary interaction elements for weapons delivery systems with New Delhi. Furthermore, Russia allows India to integrate locally-made weapons into its fighter jets or naval vessels unlike the US or even France. 

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From New Delhi’s point of view, the India–Russia military-technical cooperation is even more valuable than Russian military kit. Unlike the West, Russia has been willing to transfer technology, enabling India to indigenize some of its defense production. This began in the 1960s when India moved closer to the Soviet Union even as Pakistan became a full-fledged US ally. Since then, Moscow has shared critical technologies over many decades with New Delhi. India’s supersonic anti-ship missile BrahMos that the Philippines recently bought is indigenized Russian technology as is India’s main battle tank.

As a vulnerable nation in a rough neighborhood, India relies on Russia for security. Therefore, New Delhi decided it could not upset Moscow and abstained at all forums.

The China Factor

There is another tiny little matter worrying India. It is certain that Xi is observing and analyzing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As a revisionist power, China seeks to overturn the postwar order. Beijing has designs on Taiwan and territorial disputes with many of its neighbors. Its most recent armed confrontation occurred with India though. Since that June 2020 clash, Indian and Chinese troops are locked in a stalemate that repeated rounds of talks have failed to resolve.

More than anyone else, India fears a Russia–China axis. If Moscow threw in its lot with Beijing, India — deprived of technology and critical spares — might face a military catastrophe. If Russia sided with China in case of a conflict between the two Asian giants, India would face certain defeat.

Recent military cooperation between Russia and China has worried India. A few months ago, a flotilla of 10 Russian and Chinese warships circumnavigated Japan’s main island of Honshu for the very first time. This joint exercise demonstrated that Russia and China now have a new strategic partnership. Despite their rivalry in Central Asia and potential disputes over a long border, the two could team up like Germany and Austria-Hungary before World War I. Such a scenario would threaten both Asia and Europe but would spell disaster for India. Therefore, New Delhi has been working hard to bolster its ties with Moscow.

In December 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to India to meet Modi. During Putin’s trip, both countries signed a flurry of arms and trade deals. Apart from declarations about boosting trade and investment as well as purchasing various military equipment, Russia transferred the technology and agreed to manufacture more than 700,000 AK-203 rifles in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh where the BJP has just been reelected. In the words of a seasoned Indian diplomat Ashok Sajjanhar, Putin’s visit “reinvigorated a time-tested strategic partnership between India and Russia.”

Sajjanhar left unsaid what astute Indian diplomats say in private. India’s close relationship with Russia is insurance against China. New Delhi wants Moscow to act as a moderating influence on Beijing and act as an honest broker between the two Asian giants. India believes that there is no power other than Russia that could act as its bridge to China.

The Weight of History

When Sajjanhar was speaking about a time-tested relationship, he meant decades of close India–Russia ties. During World War II and in the run-up to independence in 1947, the US earned much goodwill because Franklin D. Roosevelt championed the Atlantic Charter, promising independence to the colonies. However, relationships soured soon after independence because India chose socialism under its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

When the US conducted a coup against the democratically elected Iranian government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, India came to view the US as a neocolonial power. It is easy to forget now that Washington backed the interests of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company over those of the government of Iran, triggering trepidation among Indian leaders who remembered clearly that their country was colonized by the British East India Company. The coup gave both capitalism and the US a bad name and pushed New Delhi closer to Moscow.

In the following years, India’s ties with the Soviet Union strengthened. As Pakistan became a firm Cold War ally of the US, India embraced socialism ever more firmly and became a de facto Soviet ally, claims of non-alignment notwithstanding. In 1956, the Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian Revolution. Nehru censured Moscow in private but refused to condemn Soviet action even as he railed against the Anglo-French intervention in the Suez. As per Swapna Kona Nayudu’s well-researched paper for the Wilson Center, New Delhi now became “a crucial partner in international politics for Moscow.”

In 1968, the Soviets crushed the Prague Spring, an uprising in then-Czechoslovakia that aimed to reform the communist regime. Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, was prime minister, and she publicly called for the Soviets to withdraw their troops. In the UN Security Council, though, India abstained in the vote on the Czechoslovakia matter, attracting widespread condemnation from the American press.

Three years later, India went to war with Pakistan to liberate Bangladesh. This did not go down well in the US, despite the fact that the military dictatorship of Pakistan was inflicting murder, torture and rape in a genocide of horrific proportions. During the 1971 India–Pakistan War, Richard Nixon called Gandhi a “bitch” and Henry Kissinger termed Indians as “bastards.” Indian diplomats repeatedly point out that Nixon and Kissinger ignored their own diplomats like Archer Blood who valiantly spoke truth to power about Pakistani atrocities, a story chronicled superbly by Princeton professor Gary J. Bass in “The Blood Telegram.” Instead, they sent vessels from the Seventh Fleet to intervene on Pakistan’s behalf. It was the Soviets who came to India’s rescue by sending their naval vessels to counter the American ones.

India repaid Moscow’s 1971 favor when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. In 1980, India refused to condemn this invasion at the UN. During the decade that followed, the US funded the mujahideen in Afghanistan through Pakistan. Relations between the US and Pakistan became closer than ever at a time when General Zia-ul-Haq launched Operation Tupac to “bleed India through a thousand cuts” by championing insurgencies within India. First Punjab and then Kashmir went up in flames. Terrorism became a feature of daily life for India, but the US turned a Nelson’s eye to the phenomenon until the grim attacks of September 11, 2001.

Since those attacks, India and the United States have moved closer together. Thousands of Indian students study in the US every year, American investment has flowed into India and defense cooperation has steadily increased. The US views India as a valuable partner to contain the rise of an aggressive China, and New Delhi cares more about Washington than any other capital on the planet.

Even as US–India ties have deepened, New Delhi has retained close ties with Moscow. Russia continues to build nuclear power plants in energy-hungry India. Plans to import more Russian oil and gas have also been in the works. Because of these ties, India did not condemn Russian action against Crimea in 2014. The left-leaning government in power at that time went on to say that Russia had “legitimate” interests in Ukraine.

It is important to note that no opposition party has criticized the government’s position. Shashi Tharoor, a flamboyant MP of the Indian National Congress party who said that India was on “the wrong side of history,” got rapped on the knuckles by his bosses. The opposition and the government have almost identical views on the matter. Neither supports Russian aggression against Ukraine, but no party wants to criticize an old friend of the nation.

Political Factors, Domestic and International

War in Ukraine is obviously not in India’s interest. India imports energy, and rising oil prices are going to unleash inflation in an economy with high unemployment. This worries both political and business leaders. In its statement at the UN, India called for peace and diplomacy. In official statements, India has also expressed support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. India does not in any way support Russian aggression but cannot criticize Moscow for a host of reasons described above as well as often overlooked political factors.

Indian leaders have also been preoccupied with elections in five critical states. Political analysts consider these elections to be a dress rehearsal for the 2024 national elections. With stakes so high, the ruling BJP was under pressure to bring home thousands of Indian students studying in Ukraine safely. For this, India relied on Russia. While some might say this necessitated a Faustian silence, 18,000 Indian lives were at stake.

India also had reservations about Ukraine. Reports of Indian students facing racism in Ukraine have been doing the rounds on social media. These may be info ops by Russians, but they have touched a chord among the masses. Press reports of fleeing Indian students facing racism and segregation at the Ukrainian border have not helped, nor have memories of Ukrainian arms deals with Pakistan, which have triggered Indian suspicions. Even though India is against the conflict, New Delhi does not want to forsake an old friend and support a potentially hostile power.

India also suspects the motives of the West in taking on Putin. There is a strong feeling across nearly all political parties that the US would not show the same concern for a non-white nation in Asia or Africa. Left-leaning parties point out that the US and the UK based their 2003 invasion of Iraq on a pack of lies. A popular Indian television anchor has railed against the “racist reportage” of Western media that treats blue-eyed, blonde Ukrainian refugees differently to Syrian or Afghan ones.

There is also another matter driving India’s hesitation to go along completely with the US in targeting Russia. An increasing trust deficit between the Democrats and the BJP is harming US–India relations. For years, The New York Times and The Washington Post have relentlessly criticized the BJP, accusing the party of being authoritarian, if not fascist. Even food aid to the impoverished citizens in Taliban-led Afghanistan did not get any recognition from the papers of record in New York and Washington.

Billionaires like George Soros who support Democrats have been vocal against the BJP and Modi. Their foundations have also funded Indian organizations opposed to the BJP. Americans see this funding as an expression of idealism that seeks to promote civil society and democracy. On the other hand, many Indians see American funding as a sinister ploy to weaken the nationalist BJP and replace them with weak, pliant leaders. Indians are also irked by the fact that Democrats rarely give credit to the BJP for winning elections, the democratic proof of its platform’s popularity.

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Democrats have also been pressuring India to legalize gay marriage, forgetting that the issue is pending before the Indian Supreme Court. Indians point out that it was the British who decreed “unnatural” sexual acts” as not just illegal but also imprisonable during Queen Victoria’s heyday. The BJP has already come out in favor of legalizing homosexuality but has no power to intervene in a matter pending before the court. The failure of Democrats to recognize this reeks of a white savior complex that destroys trust between Washington and New Delhi. 

Many BJP leaders are convinced that the Democrats are plotting some sort of a regime change in the 2024 elections. They believe there is an elaborate game plan in place to discredit Modi and the BJP. In this worldview, the Democrat establishment is manipulating discourse and peddling narratives that could lead to some version of the Orange Revolution in India. They are convinced that once Putin goes, Modi might be next. Even though India is opposed to a war that is severely hurting its economy, this fear of Western interference in domestic political matters is one more reason for India to abstain from turning on its old friend Russia.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post India’s Reasons For Abstaining in the UN on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine appeared first on Fair Observer.

The US and Ukraine have consistently and emphatically denied any even potentially offensive operations. The debate became complicated last week when at a Senate hearing, US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland admitted that the laboratories exist and were conducting research that might have dangerous consequences if it fell into Russian hands. She revealed nothing about the nature of the research. Various US officials explained that the research existed but aimed at preventing the use of such weapons rather than their development. That disclaimer may or may not be true.

Try This Game to Evaluate Levels of Disinformation in Times of War

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At the United Nations meeting, the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield categorically denied any activity with these words: “I will say this once: ‘Ukraine does not have a biological weapons program.’” As The Guardian reports, the ambassador then “went on to turn the accusation back on Moscow” when she accused Russia of maintaining a biological weapon program. That may or may not be true. In fact, both accusations have a strong likelihood of being true.

ABC News summarized the issue in these terms: “Russia is doubling down on its false claims that the U.S. and Ukraine are developing chemical or biological weapons for use against invading Russian forces, bringing the accusation to the United Nations Security Council on Friday.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

False claims:

Hypotheses that are likely enough to be true but difficult to prove conclusively

Contextual Note

The basic claim made by ABC News is true, at least if we reduce the message to the incontestable fact that the Russians brought the “accusation to the United Nations Security Council on Friday.” What may or may not be true is the reporter’s assertion that these are “false claims.” As noted above, the Russian claims may or may not be true, meaning they may or may not be false.

For news reporting in times of war, propaganda becomes the norm. It trumps any form of serious inquiry, that the legacy media in the US bases its reporting on two complementary suppositions: that everything US authorities tell them is true and that most everything Russians claim is false. Those same reporters who suppose their side is telling the truth and the other side is lying also suppose that their readers share the same suppositions. In times like these, propaganda is the most effective and especially the most marketable form of communication.

The second sentence in the ABC News article adds a new dimension to the assertion. It complains that a “web of disinformation, not only from Russian state media but also Chinese propaganda outlets and even some American voices, have increasingly spread the conspiracy theory this week.” The metaphor of a spider’s web conveniently brings back the sinister logic of the McCarthy era, when certain Americans were accused of being witting or unwitting vectors of communist propaganda. And it inexorably links with the idea of spreading a “conspiracy theory.”

It’s worth stopping for a moment to note that each sentence in the ABC News article is a paragraph. Single-sentence paragraphing is a journalistic technique designed to make reading easier and faster. Subtle writers and thinkers, such as Al Jazeera’s Marwan Bishara, can sometimes employ the technique to create a percussive effect. But in times of heightened propaganda, the popular media resorts to the practice to short-circuit any temptation on the reader’s part to think, reason, compare ideas or analyze the facts. In journalistic terms, it’s the equivalent of aerial bombing as opposed to house-to-house combat.

The third sentence in the ABC News article delivers a new explosive payload, this time with appropriately added emotion (“heightened concern”) and a horrified hint at sophisticated strategy (“false flag”). It speaks of “heightened concern among U.S. and Ukrainian officials that Russia itself may be planning to deploy chemical or biological weapons against Ukrainian targets or as part of a so-called ‘false flag’ operation.”

In just three sentences, the article has mobilized the standard web of associations journalists use for propaganda masquerading as news. The vocabulary may include any of the following terms: “disinformation,” “fake news,” “false flag,” “conspiracy theory,” “propaganda,” “misinformation,” and, on occasion, the more traditional pair, “deception and lies.”

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The article’s fourth sentence is a quote from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “This makes me really worried because we’ve been repeatedly convinced if you want to know Russia‘s plans, look at what Russia accuses others of.” That is a trope the Biden administration has been using throughout this controversy. Zelensky has read the script and the journalist is there to transcribe it.

Historical Note

The still-developing history of COVID-19 that has been with us for nearly two and a half years should have taught us at least two things. Governments have a penchant for presenting a unique version of the truth that insists no other version is possible. They also excel at putting in place a system that suppresses any alternative account, especially if it appears to approach an inconvenient truth. Whether you prefer the wet market or the lab leak theory is still a matter of debate. Both narratives have life in them. In other words, either of them may or may not be true. For a year, thinking so was not permitted.

The second thing we should have learned is that the kind of experimentation done in biological and chemical research labs will always have both a defensive and an offensive potential. From a scientific point of view, claiming that research is strictly limited to defensive applications makes no sense. Even if the instructions given to research teams explicitly focus on prevention, the work can at any moment be harnessed for offensive purposes. Victoria Nuland appeared to be saying just that when she expressed the fear that Russians (the bad guys) might seek to do something the Ukrainians and Americans (the good guys) would never allow themselves to do.

Or would they? That is the point Glenn Greenwald made in citing the history of the weaponized anthrax that created a wave of panic in the days and weeks following the 9/11 attacks in 2001. George W. Bush’s White House, followed by the media, clearly promoted the idea that the “evidence” (a note with the message “Allah is Great”) pointed to the Middle East and specifically at Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Even before 9/11, Bush’s White House had told the Pentagon to “accelerate planning for possible military action against Iraq.” In January 2002, the president officially launched the meme of “the axis of evil” that included Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

In retrospect, even though no legacy news media will admit this, the most credible interpretation of the anthrax attacks that killed five Americans was as a failed false flag operation designed to “prove” that Iraq was already using biological weapons. As the White House was preparing for war in Afghanistan, it sought a motive to include Iraq in the operations. The plan failed when it became undeniable that the strain of anthrax had been created in a military lab in the US.

Years later, the FBI “successfully” pinned the crime on a scientist at Fort Detrick called Bruce Ivins, the Lee Harvey Oswald of the anthrax attacks. The FBI was successful not in trying Ivins but in pushing him to commit suicide, meaning there would be no review of the evidence or reflection on the motive for the attacks. This at least is the most likely explanation because it aligns a number of obvious and less obvious facts. Nevertheless, even this narrative accusing the Bush administration of engineering what was essentially a more lethal version of a Watergate-style crime may or may not be true. 

The moral of all these stories is that in times of conflict, everything we hear or read should be reviewed with scrutiny and nothing taken at face value. And just as we have learned to live with unsolved — or rather artificially solved — assassinations of presidents, prominent politicians and civil rights leaders, we have to live with the fact that the authorities, with the complicity of an enterprising media skilled at guiding their audience’s perception, will never allow us to know the truth.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Finding a Way to Diss Information appeared first on Fair Observer.

And yet, three weeks into the war, the no-fly zone proposal just won’t die. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky begs for air support almost daily. In protests and social media posts, millions of ordinary people around the world ask NATO to #closethesky. 

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Here in America, a nationwide poll showed that 74% of Americans support a no-fly zone. And earlier this month, 27 foreign policy experts published an open letter requesting a limited no-fly zone over humanitarian corridors. 

If a no-fly zone is so obviously impractical, why are we still talking about it? The answer — which is conspicuously missing from mainstream Western discourse — lays bare the fundamental problem in the US response to the war. 

A False Dichotomy

Politicians and the media offer a single simplistic argument against protecting Ukraine’s airspace: Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Almost every official statement, article and op-ed can be summarized in one sentence: A no-fly zone would start World War III.

But here’s the part no one says out loud: What happens if the West doesn’t institute a no-fly zone? Will such a move keep us safe from nuclear Armageddon? Can the US manage to stay out of this war and out of Russia’s crosshairs? 

Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric — and his actions — offer a clear answer. The US can avoid direct confrontation but at a price: handing the Russian leader an absolute, total victory. In Ukraine, of course, but also in Moldova and Georgia and perhaps the Baltics, and who knows where else? And, of course, carte blanche to commit whatever atrocities he’d like worldwide (à la Syria). 

If Putin cannot win, he will lash out against enemies real and imagined. At that point, it won’t matter whether those enemies have instituted a no-fly zone. Putin has already likened sanctions and weapons deliveries to declarations of war on Russia, creating a ready excuse for retaliation. He’s set up a false narrative about Ukraine building a nuclear bomb, building a rationale to use his own nuclear weapons. 

America’s Choice 

The real question before the US government isn’t whether to institute a no-fly zone. It’s whether America is ready to help Ukraine win or prefers to stand by and watch the rise of a new Russian empire. 

If not, we must stand up to Putin now. There are multiple viable policy options for doing so. One is arranging a no-fly zone administered by the United Nations rather than NATO. Another is sending Ukraine decommissioned Western fighter jets and several dozen volunteer air force vets who would be granted Ukrainian citizenship. Yet another would be to send only jets — Ukrainian fighter pilots have confirmed that they can, in fact, learn to fly Western jets in just a few days. 

The specific mechanism matters less than the political will — the decision to send Putin a clear message that the US will not let him take Ukraine, backed up by sufficient military support. This option is not risk-free. But it’s impossible for Ukraine to prevail without angering Putin. 

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Is the risk worth it? Ukrainians believe so because they see something most Americans haven’t yet figured out: World War III has already started. Putin’s grand ambitions are reminiscent of a certain German dictator 80 years before him, as is the US strategy of appeasement. In the end, US involvement is inevitable, so why not be strategic and proactive rather than reacting years later when the human and economic costs of Putin’s empire-building are too high to be ignored? 

Of course, the US government may disagree with this perspective and opt for appeasement 2.0. Maybe this time around, the unstable dictator will be more reasonable?

If this is the case, and the US government is not ready to stand up to Putin, it’s essential to make it clear that Zelensky is on his own. If we cannot make a commitment to let Ukrainians win, we should let them lose. Ukraine’s government deserves an honest understanding of what it can and can’t expect from the US so it can make decisions accordingly.  

The Worst of Both Worlds

So far, American politicians have spurned both of these options. Instead, they’re pursuing an immoral, dangerous fantasy, waiting for someone to stop Putin without America getting its hands dirty. To this end, they offer half-measures that drag out the conflict and cost thousands of lives. They wear blue and yellow, they send aid and enact sanctions, but they consciously steer clear of any support that could lead to a Ukrainian victory. 

This brings us back to the absurd situation we started with: ongoing calls for an impossible no-fly zone, which we can now see are absolutely logical. Let’s review.

America: Ukraine, we support you in your brave fight for freedom!

Ukrainians and their friends abroad: Great! So, the one thing we need is support with our airspace.

America: No can do. But believe us — we’re on your side here and we’re ready to help! 

Ukrainians: Thank you. We’re dying here and we can’t win without air support. 

America: Once again, no. But we stand with you.

This hypocrisy goes well beyond the debate over the no-fly zone. For instance, on March 6, Secretary Blinken gave the green light for Poland to donate its fighter jets to Ukraine. When Poland agreed to cede the jets to the US for immediate transfer to the Ukrainian army, American officials backpedaled in a truly impressive display of doublespeak. 

Ukraine cannot win this war without the US taking tangible steps to protect Ukrainian airspace. Pretending otherwise and willfully extending the bloodshed with partial measures is the worst possible option for the United States. 

The US government doesn’t owe Ukraine support. But it does owe Ukraine an immediate end to the falsehoods and the empty words — a bullshit ceasefire, if you will. An admission that, no matter how many civilian deaths, no matter what kind of banned weapons Russia uses or how many war crimes it commits, no matter if Russia drops a nuclear bomb on Kyiv, the US will not step in. 

Until then, Russia pushes new boundaries every day with impunity, Ukraine holds out hope for help that will never come and Joe Biden wavers while children die. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post American Hypocrisy and Half-Measures Damn Ukraine and Help Russia appeared first on Fair Observer.

Nuland has loyally served every administration, Democrat and Republican, since Bill Clinton, with a single exception. Donald Trump most likely refused to exploit her acquired competence on the grounds that she had been tainted by working for Barack Obama’s State Department under Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Or perhaps Trump felt she had become too embedded in the culture of the deep state he claimed to abhor.

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Nuland’s closest direct collaboration with a luminary of American politics occurred between 2003 and 2005 when she held the position of principal deputy foreign policy advisor to Vice-President Dick Cheney. That enabled her to hone her skills as an aggressive agent of US power while playing an influential role in promoting the Iraq War. After that stint, she became George W. Bush’s ambassador to NATO. In January 2021, President-elect Joe Biden named her under secretary of state for political affairs, the fourth-ranking position in the State Department.

According to Foreign Policy, who quotes Bill Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, Nuland “has a high degree of self confidence and an absolute dedication to working for the administration she is working for, whatever administration that is.” In other words, she is a reliable tool of anyone’s policy decisions, however generous, cynical or perverse they may be. That is what she proved when sent to Kyiv in February 2014 to pilot the operations around the peaceful protests that were then taking place that the State Department judged could then, with the appropriate level of management, be turned into a revolution.

The hacked recording of a phone call between the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, and Nuland sealed the otherwise discreet diplomat’s place in history. In the recording, Nuland’s voice can be heard giving Pyatt orders about who the United States had selected to be Ukraine’s new prime minister. Countering Pyatt’s suggestion of the popular former boxer, Vitali Klitschko, Nuland selected Arseniy Yatsenyuk. After the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country and Yatsenyuk struggled to lead a new government, an anti-Russian billionaire, Petro Poroshenko, won the presidency in September 2014. He immediately appealed to the Obama administration for military assistance to counter Russia, but President Obama kept him at bay, reasoning that “Ukraine is a core interest for Moscow, in a way that it is not for the United States.”

In other words, not only did the CIA work to overthrow the elected president, Yanukovych, but Nuland managed to manipulate Ukrainian politics from within and thus contribute to what was to evolve into a notoriously corrupt regime under Poroshenko. At the same time, her commander-in-chief, Barack Obama, chose to limit the US involvement in Ukraine by defining a prudent arm’s length relationship with the fiasco that was unfolding, even after Russia seized Crimea from the Ukrainians.

Back in the News in 2022

The events around the 2014 Maidan revolution provided the only occasion for the general public to become aware of Nuland’s name until last week when she appeared before the Senate where Florida Senator Marco Rubio questioned her about the current situation in Ukraine. That exchange should have been routine, but Rubio felt it was important to use Nuland’s testimony to refute accusations by Russia and China that the US was funding the development of chemical weapons in laboratories in Ukraine. 

Nuland could have simply denied that any such laboratories existed and Rubio would have been satisfied. Instead, she uncomfortably explained not only that “biological research facilities” exist, but that the State Department is worried the Russians might effectively gain control of the labs, creating the risk of “research materials … falling into the hands of the Russian forces.” Some attentive observers deduced that the worry Nuland expressed concerned the possible revelation of illicit research funded and encouraged by the United States.

The scandal that exploded after this exchange provoked two reactions. The first was a firm and over-the-top denial by the Biden administration. It was accompanied by a defensive counter-accusation claiming somewhat absurdly that the Russians were only making the accusation to cover up their own intention to use chemical weapons against Ukraine. The second more serious reaction was Rubio’s attempt to clarify the ambiguity of Nuland’s revelation by interrogating Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and CIA Director William Burns.

Rubio counted on Haines not to make the same mistake as Nuland. Clearly, he expected her to give just enough perspective to dismiss any suspicions that the US may be involved in illegal military research. Claiming that “the best way to combat disinformation is transparency,” to make sure Haines would understand the type of response he hoped to hear to dispel the negative effect of Nuland’s testimony, Rubio spent three full paragraphs framing his question and insisting “it’s really important … to understand what exactly is in these labs.” Haines offered this astonishing response: “I think medical facilities — that I’ve been in as a child, done research in high school and college — all have equipment or pathogens or other things that you have to have restrictions around because you want to make sure that they’re being treated and handled appropriately. And I think that’s the kind of thing that Victoria Nuland was describing and thinking about in the context of that.”

Haines tells Rubio not what she knows but what she “thinks,” a verb she uses three times in two sentences. What she describes is nothing more than a subjective memory from her personal past and a vague generalization about medical security. It contains zero information of any kind. The next part of her answer, concerning nuclear power plants, is not only irrelevant but also a vague generalization about the possibility of “damage … or theft.” Her answer clarifies nothing. But Rubio is satisfied and concludes with three words: “All right, thanks.”  

In his subsequent questioning of CIA Director Burns, Rubio takes four paragraphs to frame his question, again intended to clarify Nuland’s testimony. In the last two paragraphs, however, he veers away from the question of Nuland’s revelation and instead asks Burns about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy concerning negotiations. Burns jumps on the opportunity to avoid answering the initial question about the Ukrainian biolabs. From Rubio’s point of view, the case is closed.

Growing Curiosity Outside the Circles of Power

Whereas most news outlets were happy to repeat the Biden administration’s adamant denials that any kind of biochemical research was taking place in Ukraine, various commentators, including Glenn Greenwald, picked up the issue and raised further questions. Greenwald took the time to remind his public of the troubling precedent of the anthrax attacks following 9/11 in 2001. Only months after killing five people did Americans learn that the anthrax originated in the Fort Detrick military lab in Maryland and not in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. (I have written elsewhere on Fair Observer about my own interrogations and investigation of that affair.)

Nuland’s testimony was seriously embarrassing. Rubio’s follow-up failed to put the scandal to bed. It was time for the White House to go into full denial mode. Predictably, presidential Press Secretary Jan Psaki stepped up with the intent to kill all debate by peremptorily tweeting: “This is preposterous. It’s the kind of disinformation operation we’ve seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years in Ukraine and in other countries, which have been debunked, and an example of the types of false pretexts we have been warning the Russians would invent.”

We may be justified in asking whether, in times of armed conflict, anything is more preposterous — and indeed more dangerous — than seeking to kill debate on a serious topic that might permit a better understanding of the context of the war. The refusal of debate would be especially preposterous concerning a war in which one’s own nation is theoretically not involved. (In reality, the Ukraine War is a showdown between the United States and Russia.) But now that fighting on the ground is real, preposterous discourse of any kind from either side becomes dangerous as the perspective of using weapons of mass destruction, either chemical or nuclear, has clearly become part of the equation. Since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the prospect of nuclear war has never been so evident.

In this case, unfounded speculation about evil intentions cannot be considered an appropriate response. After all, the Russian contention expressed at the United Nations that the Ukrainian “regime is urgently concealing traces of a military biological program that Kiev implemented with support of the US Department of Defense” was at least partially confirmed by Nuland in her response to Rubio. It was met at the UN by a simple denial: “Ukraine does not have a biological weapons program. There are no Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories supported by the United States — not near Russia’s border or anywhere.”

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The Russian accusation, citing purported facts, should require at least a consideration of those facts rather than a blanket denial or a counter-accusation. Nuland never walked back her statement. Haines mentioned only what she “thinks” and Burns was spared even answering the question.

Psaki is nevertheless right to bring to the public’s attention the criterion of preposterousness. That is something worth focusing on in times of massive propaganda. Reading the news in all the legitimate press today, it should be clear that, as always, preposterousness becomes the dominant feature of public discourse in times of conflict. Psaki’s tweets themselves are wonderful examples of preposterous blathering.

A Game for Spectators in Times of War

It may be time to propose an instructive game for anyone interested in paring down the level of preposterousness in public discourse and even news reporting. Anyone can play the game, but it requires forgetting about the beliefs and reflexes our various authorities expect us to acquire.

The game simply consists of ranking, on a scale of one to 10 in terms of the degree of apparent preposterousness, any official statement or authoritative-sounding opinion made about the conflict, whether pronounced by political authorities or the news media. In other words, it requires accepting as a default position that every simple assertion one sees or hears is as likely as not to be preposterous. 

The first criterion is to weigh the amount of emotional force in the assertion in relation to informational content. If emotion is clearly present and dominant, three or more points should be added to the potential preposterousness score.

The inclusion of some authentic context, real information, can, on the other hand, make the proposition potentially less preposterous, bringing the score proportionately back down. The score can be improved by the inclusion of serious context, including facts drawn from historical background, reducing the level of preposterousness. On the other hand, citing purported trends from the past, what are presented as reflexive patterns of behavior or supposed “playbooks” will add points, pushing the preposterousness level further upward. A simple denial or the categorizing an opposing comment as “disinformation” will add two or more points to the preposterousness.

An important consideration is the identity of the source of the statement. If the author of the proposition is clearly associated with one or the other of the two opposing sides, five points will be added to the level of perceived preposterousness. Those points can only be reduced by the citation of facts. Neutral sources, unaffiliated with one side or the other, receive no preposterousness points but they may still say preposterous things. 

This neutral or non-neutral identity of the source can become complicated by other considerations, some of which may themselves prove preposterous. For example, anyone aware of the track record on controversial events of Glenn Greenwald, cited above, knows that he has no loyalty to either Vladimir Putin or Joe Biden. That fact can be easily proved. But because he is American and criticizes American leaders and pundits who demonize Russia, some preposterously believe he is favorable to Putin. This phenomenon of seeing nuance as opposition is a direct consequence of a longstanding trend in US culture that consists of believing that those who are not for us (i.e., those who do not automatically endorse all our actions) are against us.

Another important rule of the game is that an identical counter-accusation, of the kind Psaki has made, should automatically add six points to the preposterousness index. In some cases, the counter-accusation may be true, so it cannot be assumed to be totally preposterous. If that can be established, some of the points can be canceled. The reason for adding so many points for an identical counter-accusation is simple. It is almost always an attempt not to clarify but to avoid addressing the evidence that exists. It goes beyond simple denial, which is worth only two or three points at best. A truthful counter-accusation should be accompanied by some form of concrete evidence other than vaguely reputational. If not, the six points should stand.

Another rule is that citing sources for whom the suspicion of preposterously lying has become part of a standard mindset merits two supplementary points of preposterousness. This is a standard trick of lawyers in criminal cases who conduct research to impugn a witness who may have lied on another occasion. They want the jury to believe that lying on one occasion means lying on all occasions. Case dismissed.

Two other significant factors of preposterousness that often go together are, first, the attempt to account for the psychology of the adversary by reducing to a particular (and generally ignoble) cause, and, secondly, predicting bad behavior to come. This last is often a clever gamble to the extent that the predictor may have some ability to provoke the predicted bad behavior. Depending on the odds, such predictions are worth two to four points. 

Finally, repetition of stereotypes — often cited accusations or memes built up by past propaganda to provoke a predictable reflex in the public — may be worth from three to five points, depending on the status of the stereotype in the ambient culture.

Those are the basic rules. Now, let’s look at a practical example to see how the game can be played. Jan Psaki provided another tweet that can serve that purpose: “Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them. It’s a clear pattern.”

Psaki has accomplished a lot in this tweet to achieve a high score in preposterousness. “False claims” and “propaganda” are gratuitous assertions that need to be supported by evidence, which she has no intention of providing. This indicates the presence of a strong emotion of indignation. Citing China is an example of discrediting anything a witness has to say as being unreliable. The suggestion of being “on the lookout” appeals to the reflex of fear. The “false flag” accusation repeats a meme that has occurred so often in recent weeks that it deserves being compared to the boy crying wolf.

And finally, Psaki uses the idea of a “pattern,” with the intention of making the public believe there is no reason to explore the facts, since the discourse is a simple repetition of predictable behavior. 

Psaki has a reputation for making preposterous statements sound reasonable, unlike, for example, Donald Trump’s former spokesperson, Kelly-Anne Conway, who excelled in sounding preposterous. In all fairness to Psaki, the state of war she is commenting on admits of so much ambiguity and uncertainty, even concerning basic facts, that the preposterousness level of her tweet should not be considered to have attained the maximum of 10;  seven or eight may be a more fitting appraisal.

Other Applications of the Game

Those interested in this game might try applying it to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s latest stab at being preposterous on the same issue in this clip from Sky News. In videos like this, body language and speech cadences can add a significant element to the score, two factors that became evident to observers in the Nuland hearing. 

Of course, the same game can be played with Russia’s or any other country’s official discourse. War is not only an assault on people, infrastructure and property. It is always an assault on dialogue, curiosity and truth itself. Commenting on the “1984” communication atmosphere that we are now subjected to, Matt Taibbi notes that a “healthy person should be able to be horrified by what’s happening in Russia and also see a warning about the degradation that ensues from using “pre-emptive” force, or from trying to control discontent by erasing expressions of it.” Preposterous statements are just one way of disqualifying and erasing discontent. They may also seek to stir up the kinds of emotions that could trigger a nuclear war.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Try This Game to Evaluate Levels of Disinformation in Times of War appeared first on Fair Observer.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 10: True Toll

In this month of March, the world is understandably somewhat reluctant to commemorate the second anniversary of the moment when the nations of the world unanimously declared COVID-19 a pandemic and began their largely concerted actions of lockdown. The story that unfolded afterward included a variety of traumatic episodes, including speculation about a diversity of possible preventive and curative treatments, sporadic outbreaks of revolt against enforced public policies and a scientifically successful campaign to produce effective vaccines. Despite their promise, the effectiveness of those vaccines nevertheless proved to be far from absolute.

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A group of over 100 public health, medical and epidemiology experts, after assessing the global results, has chosen this second anniversary to react and call into question the decisions taken by governments presumably capable of doing more. From the very early days, the scientific experts knew that, given the capacity of the coronavirus to mutate over time, any complication or holdup related to manufacturing and global distribution could undermine the entire logic of vaccines. They should have known that the biggest complication would come from a political and economic system that works according to principles that make it impervious to understanding the logic of a virus.

On March 9, the group of experts addressed a letter to the Biden administration to express their frustration with a situation that has evolved very slowly and largely inadequately outside the wealthy nations. This is not the first time concerned experts have urged “the administration to share Covid-19 vaccine technology and increase manufacturing around the world,” Politico reports. For the past two years, they have regularly been rebuffed, as governments preferred to pat themselves on the back for the short-term efforts they were making to protect their own populations, while creating the conditions that would allow the virus to mutate and gain strength elsewhere before returning to provoke new research and the promise of further commercial exploitation with boosters and new treatments.

Principles vs. Ideals

The experts should have realized by now that there is a principle at work that overrides every other scientific or medical consideration. It was established early on by the coterie established around Bill Gates, big pharma executives and other important influencers sharing their industrial mindset. It can all be traced back to the wisdom of Milton Friedman, who loved to repeat the slogan, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” The principle is self-explanatory: In a competitive world, the idea of sharing simply cannot compete with the idea of competing. If you can’t afford lunch, you’ll just have to go without eating. That works when the only outcome is seeing people starve. It doesn’t work when the effects of their starvation are somehow transmitted back to those who have a permanent place at the banquet.

US culture has cultivated the idea that life itself is a competitive race for advantage and the promotion of self-interest stands as the highest of virtues. Health like wealth must play by the rules of the competitive game. That same culture insists heavily on a form of discipline based on the idea of respecting “principles,” which it sometimes perversely confounds with “laws of nature.” The divinely ordained requirement to solve all problems through competition is a prominent one, but not the only one. 

The problem with such principles that are taken to be universal laws is that once you believe it is a law, you no longer need to reflect on its appropriateness or assess its very real effects. We are witnessing an example of it today in the Ukraine conflict. The United States has invoked the defense of the sacred principle of “sovereignty,” reformulated as the right of a nation to determine its own foreign policy, including the choice to join a distant empire. That may be a principle, but is it a law? Insisting on it instead of reflecting and debating the question has provoked a disastrous and increasingly out of control war that, like the COVID-19 pandemic, has already had severe unintended knock-on effects, wreaking havoc on the global economy as well as destruction in Ukraine itself. 

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Every culture must realize that its own principles may not be universally applicable, that they may not be perceived by others to have the status of laws. Any attempt to apply them as universal truths may cause immense human suffering. And that reveals the very dimension of the problem the health experts are pointing to. A potentially criminal complacency exists when the suffering caused by the inflexible application of the principle is directed toward others, at the same time when the purveyors of the principle are taking measures to protect their society and their environment. The principle of Ukraine’s sovereignty is already damaging not just Ukraine itself and now Russia, thanks to the application of the principle, but also Europe, the Middle East and Africa, which will be cut off from vital supplies of energy, food and fertilizer.

For the past two years, the concerted defense of the ideal of competition by the pharmaceutical companies in their supposed combat to defeat COVID-19 has clearly aggravated the effects of a pandemic that might have been contained if the idea of sharing had been elevated to the status of principle. But sharing doesn’t deserve to be regarded as a principle. For Americans, it is based on soft ideas like empathy and compassion rather than hard reasoning about what might be financially profitable.

Reflecting on two years of struggle, the group of experts noted “that the development of U.S. vaccines was largely successful, bringing protection to the public in record time,” Politico reports. That’s the good news. And now for the bad news: “But getting shots in arms in low- and middle-income countries has been a ‘failure.’”

Out for the Count

No precise statistics can account for the difference between the damage actually done by COVID-19 and what might have happened had governments effectively managed the global response in the earlier phases of the pandemic. “The true toll of this failure will never be known,” the experts explain, “but at this point almost surely includes tens of millions of avoidable cases and hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid.”

The “true toll” they cite reminds us of John Donne’s meditation on the bells rung for the dying in a time of plague. The poet and dean of St Paul’s affirmed that “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Might we hope that 400 years after Donne wrote these words, pharmaceutical companies and politicians could, for once, take them to heart?

But there is yet another much more concrete  meaning of “toll,” as in “toll road.” It is the price humanity is expected to pay, in dollars and cents, to the pharmaceutical companies that have so diligently used their patents to protect their exclusive rights to exploit and enrich themselves thanks to the global potential for suffering of others.

The final and fundamentally political irony of this sad tale relates to the fact that to do what the experts insist needs doing requires “more funding from Congress.” At a time when prominent members of Congress have become obsessed by the threat of inflation, while at the same time unabashedly inflating military budgets and responding urgently to the “sacred” needs of NATO in times of peril, the likelihood that Congress might suddenly address a global problem it has avoided addressing for two years seems remote.

One of the experts, Gavin Yamey, suggests that COVID-19 “could follow the path of diseases like HIV or tuberculosis: become well controlled in wealthier countries but continue to wreak havoc in poorer nations.” Geopolitics in this increasingly inegalitarian world appears to be following a trend of domestic demographics in the US, marked by the separating of society itself into two groups: the denizens of gated communities and the rabble, everyone else out there.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, Fair Observer’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post COVID Failure: A Matter of Principle appeared first on Fair Observer.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 10: Sacred Obligation

Sometimes official language and even reporting in the media hides more of the truth than it reveals. This is especially true in times of armed conflict. To highlight the gap between the official narrative and other possible interpretations of events, we have crafted an imaginary scene between two entirely fictional characters. 

One of the characters is obviously familiar with a statement by US President Joe Biden made in 2021: “NATO is Article Five, and you take it as a sacred obligation.” 

FADE IN:

INT/EXT. Washington Bar — NIGHT

Two men standing at a bar. One is the journalist, Lee Matthews. The other is the State Department spokesman, Ed Costa.

LEE MATTHEWS: Thank you for agreeing to a private conversation outside of any official context.

ED COSTA: Yeah, it’ll do both of us good to have a frank conversation, for once. You know, it’s all about respecting the truth, not always an easy thing to do in our jobs. But just to be clear, none of this is on the record.

LEE MATTHEWS: Trust me. I’m just trying to get a handle on a rather complex situation. After all, I can’t always be sure that what you say officially is always the unvarnished truth.

ED COSTA: Well, we told you Putin would invade Ukraine and even announced the approximate date. We may have been off by a week or so, but it happened exactly as we predicted. This isn’t another case of Saddam’s WMD.

LEE MATTHEWS: I grant you that. And I admit it sounded incredible when you guys started insisting that you knew for sure the Russians would invade. Some of us thought it was just Putin bluffing.

ED COSTA: Come on, you didn’t trust us. Now you know we would never lie to you. And, hey, you have to hand it to our intelligence services. Now that I think of it, you owe me and the intelligence community an apology for doubting our word.

LEE MATTHEWS: Actually, if you remember correctly, what I openly doubted was when you said there would be a false flag operation to justify the invasion. That never happened.

ED COSTA: Well, it could have happened, but the result is the same. We got the invasion right.

LEE MATTHEWS: But you promised us a false flag. Instead of that, we watched Putin sitting in front of a TV camera and rattling off a litany of historical reasons explaining why he felt compelled to mount an operation of denazification.

ED COSTA: Well, all that history was fake news, wasn’t it? Fake news, false flag, what’s the difference?

LEE MATTHEWS: Well, some of the history he cited made sense, at least to the Russian people, and nobody in DC wants to acknowledge it. We in the media couldn’t follow all the details, but shouldn’t you guys have been aware of both the reasoning and the motivation it represented?

ED COSTA: We were aware. As you saw, we predicted the invasion.

LEE MATTHEWS: Actually, you guys told us that by predicting the invasion and announcing it publicly beforehand, that would prevent Putin from invading. So, you were wrong about that.

ED COSTA: Who can predict what Putin would do?

LEE MATTHEWS: I thought that’s part of the intelligence community’s job, anticipating the enemy’s reaction.

ED COSTA: Well, yeah, we thought that might happen.

LEE MATTHEWS: Given the catastrophe that is now taking place for the Ukrainian people, whose suffering is likely to continue and most likely get worse, don’t you think that strategy of trying to prevent an invasion and failing to do so was a costly mistake?

ED COSTA: It will be costly for the Russians, thanks to the measures we’re taking in the form of sanctions.

LEE MATTHEWS: But it has been very costly for the Ukrainians, on whose behalf you guys are doing all this. And it is beginning to have tragic consequences everywhere, even in the US and obviously in Europe, which is to say, the populations covered by NATO. Couldn’t you have prevented the war by taking seriously Putin’s complaints about NATO and working something out? I mean, like anything? War is a pretty serious business.

ED COSTA: NATO is sacred, as is Ukraine’s sovereignty. So, there’s some suffering. There’s a principle to defend. And how can you negotiate with a madman?

LEE MATTHEWS: If I take you literally when you say NATO is sacred, this sounds like a holy war. A lot of American experts, from the late George Kennan to John Mearsheimer today — guys you’ve read and studied — they took Putin’s reasoning about national security seriously. And they certainly didn’t view NATO as sacred.

ED COSTA: Sorry, when I said NATO was sacred, I meant it is necessary because, thanks to it, things have been pretty peaceful in Europe until Putin made his move. All its members are happy with NATO. So, we see no reason why that happiness shouldn’t be shared. Spread it as far as possible. And, as you know, Ukraine asked to share that happiness.

LEE MATTHEWS: Well, didn’t Bush push that idea before anyone in Ukraine thought of it? In any case, isn’t the whole NATO question the factor that provoked the invasion and started a war that NATO seems helpless to address?

ED COSTA: As all your colleagues in the media have been repeating — and I’ll ask you to do the same — this is an unprovoked war. Repeat after me. This is an unprovoked war.

LEE MATTHEWS: Are you saying the Russians are wrong to see the expansion of NATO and the US supplying weapons to nations that border Russia as a provocation?

ED COSTA: Of course, they’re wrong. How could a country that once allowed itself to be dominated by communists be right? NATO exists only for peace. That’s what aircraft, tanks, missiles and nuclear bombs are all about. They’re so frightening, no one would ever dare use them. Everybody knows that. What we’ve been expanding is peace, not war.

LEE MATTHEWS: Are you saying that the war currently raging in Ukraine should be seen as an example of peace?

ED COSTA: Hey, the US isn’t at war with Russia. NATO isn’t at war with Russia. We’re just helping things along, to protect the innocent. When this blows over and Russia sees how we have been able to cripple their economy, we will all be at peace again.

LEE MATTHEWS: Why then is Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy begging the US to join the war?

ED COSTA: You know these Slavic politicians. (LAUGHS) It’s probably a cultural thing. They get overexcited about nothing and hallucinate that we’re up to some devious games. They begin to imagine that we aren’t there for one simple reason: to ensure their safety and future prosperity. That’s the permanent mission of NATO and, of course, the eternal mission of our exceptional nation, the United States.

LEE MATTHEWS: So, tell me, what is the exact date the intelligence community has predicted for Biden’s victory speech on a Black Sea aircraft carrier in full military garb?

ED COSTA: Hey, we can’t predict everything.

LEE MATTHEWS: I’ll say. And I expect there are a few Ukrainians who now agree. 

DISCLAIMER: This dialogue is entirely fictional. Despite some superficial similarity, the names Ed Costa and Lee Matthews are not meant to refer to real people such as Ned Price and Matt Lee.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, Fair Observer’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post A Fictional Debate Between a Biden Administration Spokesman and a Journalist appeared first on Fair Observer.

The Contradictory Musings of Biden’s Speculator of State

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The Forbes article, an excerpt from Bourla’s book, “Moonshot,” ends with a moving story about how Pfizer boldly resisted the pressure of the evil Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who had no qualms about depriving the rest of the world — even civilized countries such as Canada and Japan — of access to the COVID-19 vaccine to serve the US in their stead.

“He insisted,” the good doctor explains, “that the U.S. should take its additional 100 doses before we sent doses to anyone else from our Kalamazoo plant. He reminded me that he represented the government, and they could ‘take measures’ to enforce their will.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Take measures:

Go well beyond any measured response in an act of intimidation

Contextual Note

Bourla begins his narrative at the beginning, before the development of the vaccine, by asserting his company’s virtuous intentions and ethical credentials that would later be challenged by bureaucrats and venal politicians. “Vaccine equity was one of our principles from the start,” he writes. “Vaccine diplomacy, the idea of using vaccines as a bargaining chip, was not and never has been.”

Some readers may note that vaccine equity was only “one” of the principles. There were, of course, other more dominant ones, such as maximizing profit. But Bourla never mentions these other principles, instead offering a step-by-step narrative meant to make the reader believe that his focus was on minimizing profit. That, after all, is what a world afflicted by a raging and deadly pandemic might expect. A closer examination of the process Bourla describes as well as the very real statistics about vaccine distribution reveals that, on the contrary, Pfizer would never even consider minimizing profits. It simply is not in their DNA.

Bourla proudly describes the phases of his virtuous thinking. The CEO even self-celebrates his out-of-the-ordinary sense of marketing, serving to burnish the image not only of his company but of the entire pharmaceutical industry. “We had a chance,” he boasts, “to gain back our industry’s reputation, which had been under fire for the last two decades. In the U.S., pharmaceuticals ranked near the bottom of all sectors, right next to the government, in terms of reputation.”

Thanks to his capacity to tone down his company’s instinctive corporate greed, Bourla now feels he has silenced his firm’s if not the entire industry’s critics when he makes this claim, “No one could say that we were using the pandemic as an opportunity to set prices at unusually high levels.” Some might, nevertheless, make the justifiable claim that what they did was set the prices at “usually” high levels. A close look at Bourla’s description of how the pricing decisions were made makes it clear that Pfizer never veered from seeking “high levels,” whether usual or unusual, during a pandemic that required as speedy and universal a response as possible.

Thanks to a subtle fudge on vocabulary, Bourla turns Pfizer’s vice into a virtue. He writes that when considering the calculation of the price Pfizer might charge per dose, he rejected the standard approach that was based on a savant calculation of the costs to patients theoretically saved by the drug. He explains the “different approach” he recommended. “I told the team to bring me the current cost of other cutting-edge vaccines like for measles, shingles, pneumonia, etc.” But it was the price and not the cost he was comparing. When his team reported prices of “between $150 and $200 per dose,” he agreed “to match the low end of the existing vaccine prices.”

If Pfizer was reasoning, as most industries do, in terms of cost and not price, he would be calculating all the costs related to producing the doses required by the marketplace — in this case billions — and would have worked out the price on the basis of fixed costs, production and marketing costs plus margin. That would be the reasonable thing to do in the case of a pandemic, where his business can be compared to a public service and for which there is both a captive marketplace (all of humanity shares the need) and in which sales are based entirely on advanced purchase orders. That theoretically reduces marketing costs to zero.

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But Bourla wrote the book to paint Pfizer as a public benefactor and himself as a modern Gaius Maecenas, the patron saint of patrons. Once his narrative establishes his commitment to the cause of human health and the renunciation of greed, he goes into detail about his encounter with Kushner. After wrangling with the bureaucrats at Operation Warp Speed created to meet the needs of the population during a pandemic, Bourla recounts the moment “when President Trump’s son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner, called me to resolve the issue.” That is when Kushner, like any good mafia boss, evokes his intent to “take measures,” a threat the brave Bourla resists in the name of the health of humanity and personal honor.

That leads to the heartwarming, honor-saving denouement, the happy ending that Bourla calls a miracle. “Thankfully, our manufacturing team continued to work miracles, and I received an improved manufacturing schedule that would allow us to provide the additional doses to the U.S. from April to July without cutting the supply to the other countries.”

Historical Note

Investopedia sums up the reasoning of pharmaceuticals when pricing their drugs: “Ultimately, the main objective of pharmaceutical companies when pricing drugs is to generate the most revenue.” In the history of Western pharmacy, that has not always been the case. Until the creation of the pharmaceutical industrial sector in the late 19^th century, apothecaries, chemists and druggists worked in their communities to earn a living and like most artisans calculated their costs and their capacity for profit.

The Industrial Revolution changed all that, permitting large-scale investment in research and development that would have been impossible in an earlier age. But it also introduced the profit motive as the main driver of industrial strategy. What that meant is what we can see today. Pharmaceutical companies have become, as Albert Bourla himself notes, “ranked near the bottom of all sectors.” They exist for one reason: to make and accumulate profit. Industrial strategies often seek to prolong or extend a need for drugs rather than facilitate cures. Advising a biotech company, Goldman Sachs famously asked, “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” The implied answer was “no.” The greatest fear of the commercial health industry is of a cure that “exhaust[s] the available pool of treatable patients.”

In any case, COVID-19 has served Pfizer handsomely and is continuing to do so. In late 2021, the Peoples Vaccine Alliance reported “that the companies behind two of the most successful COVID-19 vaccines —Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna— are making combined profits of $65,000 every minute.” Furthermore, they “have sold the majority of doses to rich countries, leaving low-income countries out in the cold. Pfizer and BioNTech have delivered less than one percent of their total vaccine supplies to low-income countries.”

At the beginning of the COVID-19 “project,” Bourla boasts, “I had made clear that return on investment should not be of any consideration” while patting himself on the back for focusing on the needs of the world. “In my mind, fairness had to come first.” With the results now in, he got his massive return on investment, while the world got two years and counting of a prolonged pandemic that will continue making a profit for Pfizer. At least he had the satisfaction of putting the ignoble Jared Kushner in his place.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Pfizer’s Noble Struggle Against the Diabolical Jared Kushner appeared first on Fair Observer.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 8: Says

The logic of capitalism has always given an advantage to anyone capable of constructing a monopoly. Monopolies oppress potential rivals, hold consumers hostage, distort the very principle of democracy and stifle innovation. That’s why governments in past times occasionally tried to rein them in. That was before the current era, a unique moment in history when the biggest monopolies learned the secret of becoming too powerful for any government to derail.

Is Europe’s Newfound Unity a Liberal Illusion?

READ MORE

But there is at least one domain where the principle of democracy still reigns: propaganda. When it comes to distorting the news or simply inventing something that sounds like news, nobody has a monopoly. For the past six years or so, complaints about fake news have been rife. They come from all sides. And all those complaints are justified. Misrepresenting the truth has become a universal art form, thanks in part to advances in technology, but also to some great modern traditions such as public relations and the science of advertising.

On every controversial issue or every instance of a political or cultural conflict — from the Ukraine War to the censorship of podcasts — the interested parties will mobilize every piece of evidence (real or imagined) and every creative idea they have in their heads to produce something they want others to think of as “the truth.” It needs neither facts nor disciplined reasoning. It just has to stir emotion and sound somewhat credible. One of the standard techniques can be seen in the kind of reporting that uses an isolated anecdote to create the belief in a much more general threat.

To take one prominent case, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s official pretext for invading Ukraine was “denazification.” His implicit claim was that because there are neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine (which is true) and because over the past eight years some of them have stepped up to commit criminal acts in the name of Ukrainian nationalism, the current Ukrainian government can be held responsible for covering for Nazis. The corollary is that Russia has a legitimate mission to cleanse the neighboring country of them.

In his defense, Putin may have been influenced by a precedent that he feels justifies his arrogance. After the 9/11 attacks, the US government mobilized the resources of NATO to overthrow the Afghan government, which the Bush administration accused of “harboring” al-Qaeda militants. The world applauded at the time, but as time wore on and the great mission was never accomplished, that same world ended up seeing the invasion and occupation as an act of prolonged military folly. The whole episode nevertheless lasted for nearly 20 years.

The Designated Role of the Media: Reinforce Official Propaganda

Anyone trying to understand what is happening today in Ukraine just by consulting the media and the press will quickly discover a plethora of moving anecdotes but little substance. We are living through an intensive moment of massive propaganda. It has even produced a new journalistic genre: the article, interview or multimedia document revealing for the first time to the world what the evil mind responsible for the Ukrainian tragedy is really thinking. There are dozens of such articles every day.

As we reported last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, America’s chief official propagandist, provided an unintentionally comic model that journalists could imitate. In an interview about the Russian invasion in which Blinken started by explaining the precise process of Putin’s thinking, he later answered another question defensively, objecting: “I can’t begin to get into his head.”

Business Insider offers a typical example of an article that presents no facts or insights other than what one person “says” another person is thinking. This isn’t even hearsay, which is a form of news. It’s “listensay,” gleaned by a reporter for a specific purpose. The title of the article reads: “Former NATO commander says Putin has his ‘gun sights’ on more nations apart from Ukraine.” The author, Matthew Loh, has the honesty to reveal that James Stavridis, the expert he quotes, is “a retired four-star US Navy admiral and current executive at the Carlyle Group.” This contrasts with MSNBC, which provided the quote that Loh based his article upon in a televised interview with Stavridis. The cable network introduced Stavridis as the former NATO commander but studiously neglected to mention his role at the Carlyle Group.

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Upon hearing an expert like Stavridis describe Putin’s most secretive thoughts, a discerning listener may begin wondering how he managed to “get into [Putin’s] head.” Does NATO possess telepathic technology? In reality, neither MSNBC nor Loh is curious about what the former admiral knows, whether through experience or telepathy. They only want the public to know what Stavridis “says.”

A truly attentive reader of Loh’s article might prefer to reflect on the question of what a former NATO commander might be tempted to say about actions undertaken in the name of resisting and rejecting NATO. After a bit of research revealing that the Carlyle Group is “the leading private equity investor in the aerospace and defense industries,” that same reader may begin to sense that what Stavridis “says” may be influenced by who he is and how he earns a living. 

At one point in the MSNBC interview, Stavridis could barely contain his pleasure with the current situation when he asserted: “Vladimir Putin may be the best thing that ever happened to the NATO alliance.” This at least has the merit of revealing the true reasoning behind the Biden administration’s stonewalling on the question of excluding Ukraine from NATO. Everyone knew that for the Russians, the very idea of Ukraine’s membership in NATO crossed a red line. The intelligence services should have known that it could even push Putin to act according to the promises he has been making for at least the past 15 years. 

Serious analysts like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt understood that long ago. This is where it would be useful to get into the head of US President Joe Biden and his administration and the policymakers at NATO. Could it then be that the NATO alliance, led by the United States, was less concerned with the security of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people than it was actively seeking to provoke Putin’s reaction as a pretext for expanding and reinforcing NATO? That certainly appears consistent with Stavridis’ logic. They could do so in the hope that Russia’s display of aggression would prove to the “free world” that NATO was more necessary than ever. 

NATO not only defines the ability of the US to be militarily present in other parts of the world, but it also gives structure to the military-industrial complex in the US, the source of profit the Carlyle Group depends on. The military-industrial complex sells its sophisticated weapons to its allies in Europe and elsewhere, making them vassals twice over, by binding them into an alliance if not allegiance with US foreign policy and making them loyal customers for American military technology.

The propaganda blitz now underway is clearly exceptional, possibly because there have never been so many people the media can solicit to step and “say” what Putin “thinks.” This provides endless matter for lazy journalists who understand their job at the service of the military-industrial complex in times of (other people’s) wars is to take sides in the name of Western solidarity and in the interest of their own future employment.

Is Propaganda Immoral or Just Amoral?

The propaganda machine now unleashed on the world seeks to create an illusion of universal agreement about what, in reality, no one can be sure of. As always throughout human history, its aim is to prevent critical thinking, which means it is also an obstacle to problem-solving. That is why Stavridis can be so pleased with Putin’s aggression. Because it is a literally undefendable act, all right-thinking people will condemn it on purely legal grounds. But Stavridis and the entire propaganda machine take Putin’s sins as proof of NATO’s virtue. And the Carlyle Group executive believes that for that very reason, other nations have no choice but to align and support the extension of NATO.

Could this be a Pyrrhic victory for the propagandists? While it has worked at least superficially in the West and is being trumpeted by the media, the successful moral intimidation of other governments by a nation and a bloc not known for the impeccable morality of its foreign policy decisions and military actions in the past may be limited to the West.

The best illustration of this is Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s reaction to an initiative by the heads of 22 Western diplomatic missions who sent him a letter literally instructing him as an ally of the US to support a resolution of the UN General Assembly condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Citing the letter, Khan commented: “What do you think of us? Are we your slaves…that whatever you say, we will do?”

Putin is undoubtedly a consummate knave and as narcissistic as they come. But, like Khan, he has every reason to fear as well as critique the inexorable imperial reach of the US-NATO military-industrial complex. Whatever selfish considerations motivate him, Putin is aware of his unique power to challenge an entity perceived even by its allies (at least ever since Charles de Gaulle) as having the personality of a slave-master or at the very least a feudal baron. Though none would dare to go public, the allies themselves are beginning to worry and have begun seeking in the shadows to change the system that defines their own abject dependence. But it’s far too early to talk about it. For the moment, they are willing to repeat what their master says.

The problem that lies ahead goes beyond any solution propaganda can imagine. Even if some or most Western governments slavishly follow the reasoning that NATO is their only hope of defense against the Russian ogre, people in Europe are now chattering amongst themselves about how the very logic of NATO has produced a situation in which Ukraine and its people are being condemned to atrocious suffering by the intransigence of both sides. NATO itself stands as the “casus belli.” And what reason does it invoke to justify its stance? An artificial idea of “sovereignty.”

Most ordinary citizens can already see that NATO’s insistence on expansion has been and continues to be unduly aggressive. At the same time, the notion of US leadership in Europe and the rest of the world is no longer what it once was. NATO’s inflexibility is beginning to appear as a threat to everyone’s security for two reasons: It has exposed a nation it claims to protect to suffering and as Pakistan, a US ally, observes, it seeks to treat all others as vassal states.

This reality is becoming increasingly visible, no matter how much we listen to people cited in the media who think they can say what Vladimir Putin is thinking.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, Fair Observer’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Art of Saying What Other People Think appeared first on Fair Observer.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 3: “Every Inch”

At his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden repeated a mantra he has been using for at least the past two weeks. “As I have made crystal clear,” he intoned in his address to Congress, “the United States and our Allies will defend every inch of territory of NATO countries with the full force of our collective power.”

Biden was in effect quoting himself, or repeating crowd-pleasing sentences and phrases, as he often does. Political marketing has become a science in which the rules of brand recognition defined by the wizards of Madison Avenue dominate. It is a convenient substitute for other more traditional political practices, such as critical thinking, responding creatively to an evolving situation, reacting and adapting to the shifting parameters of a dynamic context. The basic rule of branding consists of repeating the same message in exactly the same formulation over and over again to create familiarity and brand recognition.

The Troubling Question of What Americans Think They Need to Know

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On February 22, in practically identical terms, Biden had already proclaimed the same intention: “that the United States, together with our Allies, will defend every inch of NATO territory and abide by the commitments we made to NATO.”  Two days later, on February 24, he announced: “As I made crystal clear, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power.”

Some may find this tirelessly repeated commitment, surprising not for its vehemence but for its banality. One member of Ukraine’s parliament, Oleksandra Ustinova, interviewed on The Today Show, expressed her “total disappointment” in Biden’s speech because she was expecting military engagement rather than vehement rhetoric. 

The sad fact of the matter — for Ukraine but also the rest of the world, including Russia — is that Biden’s promise to defend every inch of NATO territory is fundamentally meaningless in the context of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Not because Biden’s commitment to NATO isn’t real — it definitely is genuine — but because it simply repeats the conditions delineated in the articles of NATO.

The message it sends to Europe is that if your country does not accept to be a vassal state of the US through membership in NATO, we will not only create the conditions that will expose you to war, but will leave you to suffer the consequences. Had the US not insisted on promoting Ukrainian membership in NATO — something France and Germany had rejected more than a decade ago — Russia would have had no reason and certainly no excuse for invading Ukraine. By insisting and refusing even to discuss the question of Ukraine’s candidacy for NATO, the inevitable occurred, as Mikhail Gorbachev, John Mearsheimer and other realists predicted.

Biden’s promise is also slightly odd in its logic because it sends a message to the Russians that they had better do everything they can to crush Ukraine now, in order to prevent Ukraine from ever becoming a territory full of square inches that one day will be occupied and defended by “the full force of American power” to say nothing of the “collective power” of 30 countries — some of whom are endowed with nuclear arsenals — that Biden evoked in his State of the Union address.

As the rhetorical effect of the commitment to defend every inch, Biden undoubtedly sought to create the fragile illusion that Ukraine is already spiritually part of NATO and that the bold sanctions he is capable of mobilizing to punish Russia will be adequate to spare Ukraine the worst. But illusions create confusion. In this case, it has created that particular form of confusion we call war. And it has fallen on the largely defenseless population of an entire nation.

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Politicians, just like advertising wizards, choose repetition to instill a fixed idea in people’s minds without necessarily reflecting on the unintended consequences of that idea, which they generally write off as collateral damage. The marketers focus on what really matters: product awareness and brand recognition. In the world of commerce, it makes some sense because no one is obliged to keep buying the product. 

One of the predictable effects of the confusion created by Biden’s rhetoric has already been revealed in the growing call for actual military engagement, not only by the Ukrainians themselves but also by Americans. Some members of Congress and even a seasoned journalist, Richard Engel, have suggested that the US institute a no-fly zone. The White House has rejected that idea precisely because it would be an act of war, with potential nuclear consequences.

Another dimension of the president’s pet phrase appeared when, at a press conference last week, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg twice repeated Biden’s exact words. He began with this promise: “We will do what it takes to protect and defend every Ally. And every inch of NATO territory.” Later in the Q&A with the press, he spoke of the “reason why we so clearly send the message that we are there to protect all Allies and every inch of NATO territory.”

Americans will not be surprised by Stoltenberg’s repetition of Biden’s slogan, but Europeans should be. The US is the only nation, along with Liberia and Myanmar, that has not committed to the metric system, not just for science and industry, but as the nation’s cultural norm, making it the basis for informal talk in everyday life about weights and measures. Even the UK made the metric system official in the 1990s, where it is now taught in schools. Europeans think and talk according to the metric system. Americans think and talk — appropriately enough — according to the imperial system.  

Stoltenberg is Norwegian. The population of 29 of NATO’s 30 members uses the metric system in their daily activities. So, what does it tell us when instead of saying every square centimeter, the European head of NATO says “every inch”? The answer should be obvious to Europeans. Stoltenberg is the lead actor in a play written and directed by the United States. NATO is not the collegial entity that some cite, with the intent of proving its legitimacy. It is an instrument of US power and culture. And that happens to be a militaristic and hegemonic culture, in direct contrast with most European nations following World War II.

One of the longer-term consequences of the current crisis is something no one seems willing to talk about at this moment as everyone is concerned with expressing their solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Numerous commentators have interpreted Russia’s aggression as a signal that the West is for once becoming united and will be stronger than ever when the fighting dies down and Russia is humbled. 

The question no one wants to assess realistically is precisely the evolving image of NATO, particularly for Europeans. The idea that the Russian assault will strengthen Europe’s commitment to NATO to avoid future crises is naive at best and the product of the kind of illusion Biden has created with his rhetoric. What is happening today is frightening, and to the extent that the problem itself turns around the existence of NATO, without compromising their empathy for Ukrainians, Europeans have already begun reflecting on the danger NATO represents for their political and economic future.

Europeans have plenty to think about. Depending on how the war itself plays out, two things seem likely in the near future. The first is that, thanks to the unpopularity of Biden at home, it seems inevitable that the Republican Party will control Congress in 2023 and that a Republican will likely defeat the Democrats in the presidential election of 2024. This appears even more likely were either President Biden or Vice-President Kamala Harris to be the party’s standard bearer. The Republican Party is still dominated by Donald Trump, a fact that clearly unsettles most politicians and political thinkers in Europe. The marketers of both parties, over at least the past eight years, have failed to defend their once prestigious brand. 

Depending on Europe’s capacity to act independently after decades of accepting to remain in the shadow of the US, welcomed as their protector in the aftermath of World War II, it is highly likely that a movement will emerge to create a European and possibly Eurasian security framework that could replace or, at the very least, marginalize NATO. And even after the fiasco of the Ukraine War (Vladimir Putin’s folly), that new framework might even include Russia. 

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, Fair Observer’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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