https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd8j754hkGE
Sunday, July 31, 2022
Every Boss Has A Weak Spot – Find And Use It
https://popularresistance.org/every-boss-has-a-weak-spot-find-and-use-it/
By Alexandra Bradbury, Jane Slaughter, and Mark Brennerenlarge, Labor Notes. July 29, 2022
Steel production in the late 1800s used to require one crucial step: a 20-minute process called the “blow” that removed impurities, strengthening the metal. It was not unheard of for union members to go to the supervisor at the start of the blow and demand that some important grievance be resolved.
According to old-timers, it was amazing what the company could accomplish in those 20 minutes. These workers had found their employer’s vulnerability— and they used it to make the workplace safer and more humane.
Think about where your employer is vulnerable. For some companies it might be their logo or their image, which they have spent millions of dollars cultivating. For others it might be a bottleneck in the production process, or a weakness in their just-in-time inventory system.
Whistle While You Work
At a Fortune 500 truck factory, supervisors were ruthless and degrading. Discipline was arbitrary and unjust. At the monthly union meeting one worker noted that they were all being “railroaded.”
A few weeks later, 2,000 plastic whistles shaped like locomotives arrived at the local. The instructions were simple: whenever you can see a supervisor on the shop floor, blow your whistle.
At first, whistles were going off all over. But by the morning break the plant floor was quiet. Not a single supervisor dared to show his face.
The next day in contract bargaining, the employer refused to bargain until the whistles were removed. The bargaining team noted the company’s statements on refusing to bargain, and asked for a break to go call the Labor Board.
Bargaining resumed immediately, with positive results.
Lunch To Rule
On a military base, aircraft maintenance workers would happily interrupt their lunch in order to deal with urgent problems. But in return they had an understanding that, once the problem was solved, they would go back to their sandwiches even though the lunch period had ended.
The situation was mutually acceptable for several years—until a new supervisor came along. We all know how that is. Had to prove himself. Show who’s boss. Etc.
Steve Eames, an international rep for the Boilermakers union, explained that the new supervisor insisted that workers take their lunch between 12:00 and 12:30, period.
“So the steward said, ‘Okay, we’ll play by the rules,’” Eames remembers. The maintenance workers had previously eaten at a lunch table in the work area. But now, when 12 o’clock came, they left and went to a fast-food restaurant on the base. For three or four days they all went as a group, leaving the shop unattended.
One day a plane came in during the half-hour lunch period. No one was there to help bring the plane in, or to check it out. The supervisor had to park the plane by himself.
“The boss went and talked to the steward, and the steward said, ‘That’s our time, we’re at lunch,’” said Eames. “‘You got what you wanted.’”
The workers went out for lunch for a couple more days, and then they ended what we might call “lunch to rule.” “They didn’t want to file a grievance,” says Eames, “because the company would have won on the basis of contract language.
“Without anything in writing, it went back to the way it had been before. It empowered the guys. It told the supervisor, we’ll be a little flexible if you’ll be flexible.”
Keep The Boss Off Balance
Managers like routine. They like to know that what happened yesterday will happen today and that no one is thinking too hard about it. You can make them nervous simply by doing something different, even something normal that would be unthreatening to the non-managerial mind. When they have to keep guessing where the next shot is coming from, you have the upper hand.
“The corporate culture is not a creative culture,” says Joe Fahey, a former Teamster leader, “and we need to look at that as an opportunity.
“I used to bargain with Smuckers,” Fahey recalls. “We decided to do things that would freak them out. Factory life is very predictable. The workers decided to take their breaks at the railroad tracks, instead of at the same table and the same bench that they did every day. It was easy for the workers to do, but it was scary for management. They are more easily scared than we realize.”
15-Minute Strike
Pennsylvania social workers figured out how to catch management off guard. During negotiations with the state, spokesman Ray Martinez said, “we wanted an activity that would irritate the boss, educate the public, and at the same time get the members psyched up. We decided that we would all take our 15-minute breaks at the same time.”
The union used its phone trees to call members at home. “At the agreed date and time,” Martinez says, “all of our members would get up and walk out of the office. This meant that clients in the office, phone calls, and so on would be placed on hold. In other words, all activity ceased.
“This served a couple of purposes. First, management and clients would get a feel for what it would be like without our services if we were to go on strike. Secondly, we, the members, would be outside of the worksite having outdoor shop meetings and updating the workers on the latest on the negotiations.
“While this was going on, we had picket signs asking drivers to honk their horns to show us their support. The beauty of it all was that this was perfectly legal, so there was nothing management could do.”
At the end of the 15-minute break, everybody went back inside and went back to work.
Price Gouging at the Pump Results in 235% Profit Jump for Big Oil: Analysis
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/07/29/price-gouging-pump-results-235-profit-jump-big-oil-analysis
"Make no mistake; these profits mark a large transfer of wealth from working- and middle-class people to wealthy oil executives and shareholders," said Jordan Schreiber of Accountable.US.
Jessica Corbett July 29, 2022
As fossil fuel giants this week reported record profits for the second quarter, an analysis out Friday highlighted how eight oil companies have raked in nearly $52 billion over the past three months "while Americans continue to struggle at the pump."
The review by the watchdog group Accountable.US revealed that from April through June, Chevron, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Hess Corp, Phillips 66, Shell, and TechnipFMC "saw their profits skyrocket from the same time period last year, with income shooting up 235%."
The analysis also pointed out that leaders at Equinor, Halliburton, Hess Corp, and TechnipFMC have boasted "about excellent quarters while dismissing high prices for consumers."
Jordan Schreiber of Accountable.US called the companies' collective profit boost "eye-popping" but also unsurprising "after spending the past three months price gouging consumers by raising gas prices to unprecedentedly high levels."
"Make no mistake; these profits mark a large transfer of wealth from working- and middle-class people to wealthy oil executives and shareholders," she said. "While many consumers were feeling the heavy burden of a life necessity suddenly doubling in price, oil executives were keeping prices high to maximize their profits."
The Q2 profits of U.S. energy giants Chevron and Exxon—$11.62 billion and $17.85 billion, respectively—along with that of Europe's largest oil company, Shell—$11.47 billion—drew widespread criticism along with calls for action by lawmakers and President Joe Biden.
"Big Oil companies are making a killing and pouring fuel on the climate fire while communities pay for more and deadlier climate disasters. It's outrageous," said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, in a statement Friday.
"Exxon and other oil and gas corporations lobbied and lied for decades to keep the world addicted to fossil fuels, making billions while hardworking families pay for higher gas prices and costlier heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, and floods," he continued. "Now Exxon is once again using its record profits to line the pockets of executives and shareholders."
Wiles asserted that "elected officials cannot remain silent in the face of this injustice. Whether it's taxing these companies' record profits, or taking them to court to make polluters pay for climate damages they knowingly caused, it's time to stand up to Big Oil."
Public Citizen president Robert Weissman declared that "Big Oil is laughing all the way to the bank—and the joke's on us."
"We don't have to be suckers," he argued. "A windfall profits tax with rebates to taxpayers would offset the pain at the pump and end Big Oil's profiteering. Banning U.S. oil exports would actually lower prices for American consumers."
According to Weissman, "It's time for Congress and the Biden administration to stop complaining about Big Oil's rip-off and start doing something about it."
Some lawmakers agree. While Republicans "will continue to play politics and blame Biden for gas prices," Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said of the fossil fuel giants' quarterly profits, "we need to crack down on Big Oil."
Sen. Bernie Sanders concurred, tweeting that "it's time for a windfall profits tax."
While some of his colleagues have introduced legislation focused on Big Oil, Sanders has put forth a broader tax proposal that would target price gouging by a range of companies.
Amid rising fears of recession in recent weeks, calls have been mounting for federal lawmakers to more forcefully take on corporate greed. The Inflation Reduction Act unveiled Wednesday features some related policies, but climate activists have also sounded the alarm about its energy provisions. The bill—negotiated with fossil fuel ally Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—contains major handouts that are reportedly "delighting" the oil and gas industry.
The fossil fuel industry has not only used its record profits to enrich shareholders; it's also dumped money into influencing officials on Capitol Hill. As Common Dreams reported exclusively on Thursday, an analysis from Climate Power shows that since last year, the sector has poured over $200 million into sabotaging climate action.
¡Viva La Solidaridad! Latin America’s Left Leads The Way
https://popularresistance.org/viva-la-solidaridad-latin-americas-left-leads-the-way/
By Ben Hayes, Islington North CLP, and Arise Festival Volunteer, Labour Outlook.
July 29, 2022
Resistance Report
Hundreds joined international guests, solidarity campaigners and elected representatives for ¡Viva la solidaridad! Latin America’s Left Leads the Way: a session organised by Labour Friends of Progressive Latin America as part of this year’s Arise Festival.
Read the report back-or watch the meeting in full below:
Chairing the event, Arise’s Sam Browse went through examples of electoral successes and resilience in the face of aggression by the region’s left, and emphasised the importance of international co-operation amongst progressive forces: “those winning gains in the fight for a better future are an inspiration to us all”.
Secretary of the Presidency in Honduras Rodolfo Pastor outlined how the country faced “a dark period of history” following the coup against elected President Manuel Zelaya in 2009, with those who took power implementing “repression to benefit a small elite at the expense of our natural resources and the rights of the majority”.
Emphasising that last November’s electoral victory was “a product of those who resisted throughout those years”, he thanked those who offered international solidarity despite much of the media’s “deceptive” coverage of events and the stance of some governments: “the coup regime gained and held to power with brutal force and the support of the empire”. Pastor highlighted the situation faced by new President Xiomara Castro upon taking office: with debt at 50% of GDP, education, health and infrastructure having “collapsed” and in no position to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, and weakened democratic structures (also calling for former President Juan Orlando Hernández to face justice in Honduras in addition to his recent extradition to the US over drug trafficking and firearms charges).
Concluding by appealing for the continued support of those who have stood in solidarity with Honduran progressives over recent years, he called for movements to “stay connected across the world wherever struggles take place: the right are well organised and connected and we need to make sure we do the same”.
Rafaela Molina of Wiphalas Across the World began by reflecting on events in Bolivia during the coup of 2019: “what we thought was a thing of the past happened again”. Describing an alliance of right-wing governments, paramilitaries and international bodies as “committed to neoliberal restoration”, she discussed the repression that followed: with 37 people killed, thousands of activists jailed and violence against indigenous protestors – “racism was a key part of their project”.
Noting that the Wiphala flag became rallying banner for those resisting this agenda, she explained that this inspired the Wiphalas Across the World organisation formed by members of the Bolivian diaspora to help build international solidarity – with an alliance of social movements and unions helping to achieve “an unprecedented success” by forcing elections and the restoration of democracy.
Molina outlined how, since the victory of MAS candidate Luis Arce in the 2020 Presidential election, Bolivia now has the lowest inflation rates in the region and an economic model “that puts people before profit”. Whilst warning that destabilisation attempts continue and “vigilance is needed”, she described the current period as “representing the possibility of a golden age for Latin American integration” – as well as emphasising that “international solidarity has been indispensable for Bolivia and will continue to be in the coming years”.
MP for Newry and Armagh Mickey Brady discussed his experiences as an election observer in Venezuela, visiting six polling stations – contrasting the messages he was receiving from friends at home concerned for his safety with his experience in working class neighbourhoods. Stating that “as an Irish republican, I know the damage that outside interference can cause”, he argued that “only the people of Venezuela should determine their future”.
Brady cited former US National Security Advisor John Bolton’s recent open admission that he had “helped plan coups d’état (…) in other places” as evidence that “whilst the techniques may evolve, the same thing that happened to Salvador Allende in Chile during the 1970s still goes on”. Criticising the Irish government for a “lack of confidence to stand up the world’s powerful”, he called on them do more to stand up for sovereignty: “Ireland should be a voice for the oppressed, poor and marginalised of the world- not those who are stripping natural resources for the benefit of the few”.
Brady reflected on the boost that the emergence of 21st century socialism has given the left regionally and across the world, and described himself as “a proud internationalist” – describing internationalism as “a core part of republicanism”. Calling on attendees to build solidarity and challenge false narratives on Latin America, he argued that “the full potential of what the region can achieve is only just emerging”.
Teri Mattson of US-based peace campaign CODEPINK – Women for Peace listed examples of just how many significant election results had taken place in the region over the last two years- and noted that Brazil was scheduled to follow in October of this year. She argued that, whatever the exact political tradition represented by different progressive candidates who have recently achieved electoral success in various Latin American countries, they are all reflective of “a popular mood in favour of sovereignty and an economic model that works in the interests of ordinary citizens”.
Outlining how US aggression towards Nicaragua has been ramping up since 2018 and the passing of the NICA Act, she highlighted the material impact of sanctions on the country – including increasing tariffs on Nicaraguan sugar, hitting tourism, and isolation from international financial institutions as part of an “economic war”. Noting that numerous countries were currently in a similar position as they faced in 2007 of having to “deconstruct neoliberalism”, Mattson emphasised the importance of respecting the processes democratically chosen by their people and understanding the scale of the tasks they face – and called for progressives globally to focus their efforts on solidarity work by opposing any attempts from their own governments to undermine these attempts to help build a better world.
Colombian journalist Victor De Currea Lugo described neoliberalism as impacting “not just how we run the economy, but how we see the world- depriving the human being of their dignity”. This, he argued, made last month’s election triumph for progressive candidate Gustavo Petro all the more impressive – noting that Colombia was set to have its first government of the left in 212 years after declaring independence.
He also highlighted the record of newly announced cabinet appointments such as incoming Defence Minister Ivan Velasquez, who had previously been targeted for criticising military impunity, and soon to be Culture Minister Patricia Ariza, a member of the Patriotic Union Party in a period where over 5,000 of its members were assassinated. Noting Petro’s commitment to achieving “a social peace”, De Currea Lugo emphasised the importance of a peace process that, as well as securing disarmament, addresses the causes of conflict in Colombia by taking measures to ensure political inclusion, land reform, and address historical injustices: “peace means work, education, health and dignity”. Calling for campaigners to push their governments to “respect our decision” and provide support for the process being undertaken by the Colombian people, rather than going along with any attempts to undermine it.
Nathália Urban of the Brasilwire website provided an update on the current situation in Brazil – highlighting that polls have consistently shown a consistent lead for Workers Party (PT) Presidential candidate Lula da Silva whilst warning that there was “no room for complacency”, with far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro repeatedly threatening to undermine the electoral process or even attempt to cancel elections scheduled for later this year. She pointed to the recent assassination of PT official and trade unionist Marcelo Arruda at his birthday party as an example of the brutal reality on where attacks on democracy can lead.
Describing the “climate of fear” created by Bolsonaro, Urban summarised his Presidency as having “stripped away the dignity of Brazil and its people” – with 33 million Brazilians living with food insecurity, record levels of deforestation and ongoing threats to the Amazon rainforest, numerous killings of Afro-Brazilians by police forces, and over 677,000 COVID deaths. However, she also stated that huge numbers “continue to dream of a better future”, and pointed to Lula’s record of implementing ground-breaking anti-poverty programmes during his previous spell as President between 2003-10.
Acknowledging that she “will never forgive” the role played by governments who helped Bolsonaro come to power by backing the elected President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and (now discredited and annulled) ‘corruption’ charges against Lula to prevent him running as a candidate in elections two years later, she encouraged those attending to ask their MP to speak up in defence of democracy in Brazil.
Closing the session, Browse thanked all panelists, volunteers and attendees- and encouraged continued support for the work of the Arise Festival.
Junior Doctors In The UK Protest Government Disregard
https://popularresistance.org/junior-doctors-in-the-uk-protest-government-disregard-and-demand-pay-rise/
By People's Dispatch. July 29, 2022
And demand a pay rise.
Over the last two decades, the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK has been substantially weakened due to underfunding and understaffing. A good share of its staff, including young doctors, are now on the verge of leaving the NHS due to overwork and lack of decent wages.
NOTE: This is one of the benefits of having a public healthcare system – health professionals have a system to hold accountable for the specifics of the system, such as what they are paid. In the United States, there is NO system and no entity to hold accountable.
– Margaret Flowers
On Monday, July 25, junior doctors in London organized a protest march in the city demanding a pay rise. Under the banner of the Doctors Vote campaign, they took out a march from the Department of Health and Social Care Office to Downing Street. The doctors warned of more actions, including strikes, unless their long pending demand for pay restoration is met. Doctors from the British Medical Association (BMA), Doctors’ Association UK, and trade unionists and activists from Unite the union, Unison, Socialist Party, and others also took part in the protest march in solidarity with the junior doctors.
Working class sections across the UK, including medical staff, have been facing an acute cost of living crisis marked by skyrocketing fuel and food prices. Meanwhile, the National Health Service (NHS) has been steadily underfunded for many years. Doctors and other NHS staff including nurses and care workers have been demanding decent wages for a long time and full pay restoration to 2008-2009 levels, prior to the global financial crisis. During the COVID-19 crisis, resource crunch and understaffing stretched the NHS to its limits. Doctors across the country are demanding decent wages at par with the current rate of inflation.
According to reports, doctors’ pay has fallen against the retail price index by as much as 30% since 2008. On July 19, the government announced a pay award of 4.5% to the NHS staff, including senior doctors who are consultants and general practitioners. Most of the NHS staff deemed such a paltry rise in pay insultingly insufficient and threatened to resort to strike action for a decent hike in wages. Junior doctors and medical students are even more agitated as they are excluded from the current package announced by the government and are only entitled to a meager 2% raise as part of a multi-year pay deal agreed to before the COVID-19 crisis.
Following the protests on Monday, the Doctors Association UK said, “would you accept a 30% real terms pay cut over the last 20 years? That is what has been forced down the throat of NHS doctors and it is not good enough. Without better pay and conditions the NHS will keep losing good doctors!”
Following the announcement on wage hike on July 19, BMA junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr. Sarah Hallett and Dr. Mike Kemp stated, “today’s risible pay announcement demonstrates the blatant disregard our politicians have for junior doctors in England. To exclude our members from the 4.5% given to other NHS workers is nothing less than a betrayal of the profession,”
BMA council chair Prof. Philip Banfield accused that “the UK Government has excluded junior doctors in England, even from this year’s paltry offer due to a multi-year agreement made way before we could have anticipated the damage wrought by the pandemic and sky-high inflation, is a disgrace. It exposes their contempt for my already low-paid colleagues who will be rightly furious.”
“The NHS is already facing a precarious future due to chronic under-funding, a backlog of patient care that will take years to clear, and punitive pensions rules driving doctors out of the profession, when the Government should be doing all it can to recruit and retain them,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Health and Social Care select committee report of the UK House of Commons, released on July 25, warned that a grave workforce crisis in the NHS is putting people’s lives at risk. The committee found out that ‘the persistent understaffing of the NHS now poses a serious risk to staff and patient safety’ is a result of decades of cuts and privatization.”
Recently, Prof. Stephen Smith, former chair of the East Kent Hospitals NHS University Foundation Trust, urged the government to charge patients for hospital stay to generate funds for the NHS. The Tory government had already enacted the controversial Health and Care Bill by April 28, 2022 – dubbed by critics as the “NHS Corporate Takeover Bill” – which will further privatize key NHS services and legitimize the participation of private stakeholders in its decision-making bodies. According to reports, the act is likely to be implemented by July 2022, and will break up the NHS into 42 separate integrated care systems (ICS), each of which will have “its own tight budget which will force local cuts.”
On July 25, the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) stated that “supplementary payments in the form of patient charges, regardless of amount or reason, undermine the universality of NHS care and should be firmly opposed.”
“The soul of the NHS lies in its aims. All contribute to its running through general taxation and a contributory scheme of National Insurance. The aim is to treat all citizens, free of charge, regardless of age or condition,” the CPB added.
An Interview With John Pilger On Julian Assange
https://popularresistance.org/an-interview-with-john-pilger-assange-is-the-courageous-embodiment-of-a-struggle-against-the-most-oppressive-forces-in-our-world/
By Oscar Grenfell, WSWS. July 29, 2022
In an interview with the World Socialist Web Site, renowned Australian investigative journalist John Pilger has warned that the “US is close to getting its hands on” the courageous WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
“Assange is the courageous embodiment of a struggle against the most oppressive forces in our world.”
Last month, British Home Secretary Priti Patel approved Assange’s extradition to the US, where he faces 175 years imprisonment under the Espionage Act for publishing true information exposing American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Pilger explains, Patel’s order will be the subject of a further appeal, but the British judiciary that will adjudicate has facilitated Assange’s persecution every step of the way. This underscores the urgency of a political fight to free Assange, based on the powerful struggles of the working class that are emerging all around the world.
Pilger began his media career in the late 1950s. His first documentary, The Quiet Mutiny, exposed aspects of the US war in Vietnam in 1970. Since then, Pilger has produced more than 50 documentaries, many of them feature-length and centering on revealing the crimes of the major imperialist powers.
In a 2012 Rolling Stone interview, Assange was asked: “Who has been your most critical public supporter?” He replied: “John Pilger, the Australian journalist, has been the most impressive.”
Pilger has been unwavering in his defence of the WikiLeaks publisher. In 2018 and 2019, he addressed Socialist Equality Party rallies, demanding that the Australian government use its diplomatic and legal powers to free Assange.
Because of his principled defence of Assange and opposition to war, Pilger is hardly ever referenced in Australia’s official media, despite being one of the country’s most well-known and respected journalists.
WSWS: After Patel’s announcement allowing extradition, where is the Assange case up to? Are the dangers he confronts of a greater urgency than previously?
John Pilger: It is a dangerous, unpredictable time. Since the Home Secretary signed the extradition order, a provisional appeal has been filed by Julian’s lawyers. ‘Provisional’ is part of the tortuous process of appeal. The lawyers must submit what are known as ‘perfected grounds of appeal’ in the next few weeks, then the US and the Home Secretary file their responses. Only after that does it go to a judge (not sitting in a court) to decide whether or not he will accept it. It may sound meticulous but, having observed it, it looks to me like a finely spun blanket of obfuscation over a profoundly biased system.
Until the High Court hearing last year, I believed the country’s senior judges would reject the US appeal and reclaim something of the mythologised notion of British justice if only for the system’s survival, which partly depends on “face” within the arcane reaches of the British establishment. This show of “independence” in support of justice has happened in the past. In Julian’s case, the facts are surely too outrageous—no properly constituted court would even consider it—yet I was wrong. The decision by the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales last October that the US in effect had the right to fabricate and belatedly introduce “assurances” that had not even been part of previous due process was quite shocking. There was no justice, no process; the guile and ruthlessness of US power was on show. Might is right.
Today, the US knows it is close to getting its hands on Julian. Unlike previous parliaments at Westminster, there is not a single voice speaking up for him. In spite of a tenacious campaign emphasising the threat Julian’s extradition poses to a “free press,” he is barely acknowledged in the media, which remains intensely hostile to him. Journalists have never been as compliant as they are today, and Julian’s case is a reminder—to some—of what they ought to be. He shames them.
WSWS: You have consistently defended Julian for more than ten years. Over that period have you been shocked by the intensity with which he has been pursued?
JP: Perhaps not shocked; as a journalist, I have had my own taste of state ruthlessness. Remember the pursuit of Julian is a measure of his achievements. He informed millions about the deceptions of governments too many trusted; he respected their right to know. It was a remarkable public service.
WSWS: Do you think this is bound up with a broader assault on democratic rights?
JP: Yes, it’s the latest stage of the abandonment of what used to be called “social democracy.” The “rollback” of rights in the US and UK is in reaction to the uprising, in the 1960s an 1970s, of people and their conscientiousness and of ideas of equity. This was an historical “moment” when society was becoming more enlightened; minority and gender rights were gaining acceptance; workers were fighting back. At the same time, the so-called “information age” was launched. It was only partly about information; it was a media age, with the media establishing a ubiquitous, controlling place in people’s lives. One of the most influential books of the time was The Greening of America. On the cover were the words: “There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual.” The message of its author, a young Yale academic, Charles Reich, was that truth-telling and political action had failed and only “culture” and introspection could change the world.
Within a few years, driven by new opportunities of profit, the cult of “me-ism” had subverted people’s sense of acting together, their sense and language of social justice and internationalism. Class, gender and race were separated; class as a way of explaining society became heresy. The personal was the political, and the media was the message. The propaganda was that something called globalism was good for you. Corporatism, its specious language and its authoritarianism, appropriated much about the way we lived, ensuring what the economist Ted Wheelwright called a “Two Thirds Society”—with the bottom third beholden to debt and poverty while an unrecognised class war uprooted and destroyed the power of labour. In 2008, the election of the first black president in the land of slavery and the fabrication of a new cold war completed the political disorientation of those who, 20 years earlier, would have formed a critical opposition and an anti-war movement.
WSWS: Is there a relationship with the escalation of war, including the US-led confrontations with China and Russia?
JP: Events today are the direct result of plans laid in the 1992 Defence Planning Guidance, a document that laid out how the US would maintain its empire and see off any challenges, real and imagined. The aim was US dominance at any cost, literally. Written by Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney, who would play key roles in the administration of George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq, it might have been written by Lord Curzon in the 19th century. They formed “The Project for a New American Century.” America, it boasted, “would oversee a new frontier.” The role of other states would be as vassals or supplicants, or they would be crushed. It planned the conquest of Europe, and Russia, with all the zeal and thoroughness of Hitler’s imperialists. The roots of NATO’s current war on Russia and provocations of China are here.
WSWS: What do you think of the role being played by the Albanese Labor government? Can you comment on the Declassified Australia report, with internal briefings for Attorney-General Dreyfus, which indicated that the only focus of the Labor government is a hypothetical prison transfer, after Assange has been extradited to the US and convicted of Espionage Act charges there?
JP: The Albanese Labor government is as right-wing and compliant as any Australian Labor government—only the Whitlam government in 1972–75 broke the mould, and it was got rid of. It was the Labor government of Julia Gillard that initiated Australia’s collusion with the US to silence Assange. The “prison transfer” idea may be seen as a weasel way of satisfying support for Julian in his homeland. Whatever happens, the US will decide and the Albanese government will do as it’s told.
WSWS: We are raising the need for workers and young people to come to Assange’s defence, as the spearhead of the fight against war and authoritarianism. Why do you think ordinary people should take up the struggle to free Assange?
JP: Julian Assange is the courageous embodiment of a struggle against the darkest, most oppressive forces in our world; and people of principle, young and old, should oppose it as best they can; or one day it may touch their lives, and worse.
West Prepares To Plunder Post-War Ukraine
https://popularresistance.org/west-prepares-to-plunder-post-war-ukraine-with-neoliberal-shock-therapy-privatization-deregulation-slashing-worker-protections/
By Jake Kallio and Ben Norton, Multipolarista.
July 29, 2022
Educate!
With neoliberal shock therapy: privatization, deregulation, slashing worker protections.
While the United States and Europe flood Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars of weapons, using it as an anti-Russian proxy and pouring fuel on the fire of a brutal war that is devastating the country, they are also making plans to essentially plunder its post-war economy.
Representatives of Western governments and corporations met in Switzerland this July to plan a series of harsh neoliberal policies to impose on post-war Ukraine, calling to cut labor laws, “open markets,” drop tariffs, deregulate industries, and “sell state-owned enterprises to private investors.”
Ukraine has been destabilized by violence since 2014, when a US-sponsored coup d’etat overthrew its democratically elected government, setting off a civil war. That conflict dragged on until February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded the country, escalating into a new, even deadlier phase of the war.
The United States and European Union have sought to erase the history of foreign-sponsored civil war in Ukraine from 2014 to early 2022, acting as though the conflict began on February 24. But Washington had sent large sums of weapons to Ukraine and provided extensive military training and support over several years before Russia invaded.
Meanwhile, starting in 2017, representatives of Western governments and corporations quietly held annual conferences in which they discussed ways to profit from the civil war they were fueling in Ukraine.
In these meetings, Western political and business leaders outlined a series of aggressive right-wing reforms they hoped to impose on Ukraine, including widespread privatization of state-owned industries and deregulation of the economy.
On July 4 and 5, 2022, top officials from the US, EU, Britain, Japan, and South Korea met in Switzerland for a so-called “Ukraine Recovery Conference.” There, they planned Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction and performatively announced aid commitments – while salivating over a bonanza of potential contracts.
New NATO candidates Finland and Sweden committed to assure reconstruction in Lugansk, roughly 48 hours after Russia and separatist forces announced the region had fallen fully under their control.
But the Ukraine Recovery Conference was not new. It had been renamed to save the expense of a new acronym. In the previous five years, the group and its annual meetings were instead referred to as the “Ukraine Reform Conference” (URC).
The URC’s agenda was explicitly focused on imposing political changes on the country – namely, “strengthening the market economy“, “decentralization, privatization, reform of state-owned enterprises, land reform, state administration reform,” and “Euro-Atlantic integration.”
Before 2022, this gathering had nothing to do with aid – and a lot to do with economics.
Documents from the 2018 Ukraine Reform Conference emphasized the importance of privatizing most of Ukraine’s remaining public sector, stating that the “ultimate goal of the reform is to sell state-owned enterprises to private investors”, along with calls for more “privatization, deregulation, energy reform, tax and customs reform.”
Lamenting that the “government is Ukraine’s largest asset holder,” the report stated, “Reform in privatization and SOEs has been long awaited, as this sector of the Ukrainian economy has remained largely unchanged since 1991.”
The Ukraine Reform Conference listed as one of its “achievements” the adoption of a law in January 2018 titled “On Privatization of State and Municipal Property,” which it noted “simplifies the procedure of privatization.”
While the URC enthusiastically pushed for these neoliberal reforms, it acknowledged that they were very unpopular among actual Ukrainians. A poll found that just 12.4% supported privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOE), whereas 49.9% opposed it. (An additional 12% were indifferent, whereas 25.7% had no answer.)
Economic liberalization in Ukraine since Russia’s February invasion has been even more grim.
In March 2022, the Ukrainian parliament adopted emergency legislation allowing employers to suspend collective agreements. Then in May, it passed a permanent reform package effectively exempting the vast majority of Ukrainian workers (those at businesses with fewer than 200 employees) from Ukrainian labor law.
While the most immediate beneficiaries of these changes will be Ukrainian employers, Western governments have been lobbying to liberalize Ukraine’s labor laws for years.
Documents leaked in 2021 showed that the British government coached Ukrainian officials on how to convince a recalcitrant public to give up workers’ rights and implement anti-union policies. Training materials lamented that popular opinion towards the proposed reforms was overwhelmingly negative, but provided messaging strategies to mislead Ukrainians into supporting them.
West Calls For Aggressive Neoliberal Reforms At ‘Ukraine Recovery Conference’
The July 2022 Ukraine Recovery Conference, which was held by Lugano, Switzerland and jointly hosted by the Swiss and Ukrainian governments, featured representatives from the following states and institutions: Albania
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Iceland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Latvia
Lithuania
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Malta
Netherlands
North Macedonia
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Republic of Korea (popularly known as South Korea)
Romania
Slovak Republic
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Türkiye (formerly known as Turkey)
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United States of America
Council of Europe
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
European Commission
European Investment Bank
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
Among the prominent officials who attended were European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, Swiss President Ignazio Cassis, and UK Foreign Minister Liz Truss.
Ukraine’s Western-backed leader Volodymyr Zelensky also addressed the conference via video.
Physically present at the Switzerland meeting were Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and Zelensky’s top political ally Ruslan Stefanchuk, the chairman of Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.
Stefanchuk is the second-in-line for the presidency after Zelensky. He is also a member of Ukraine’s all-powerful National Security and Defense Council, which truly governs the country.
Even the United Nations gave its imprimatur to the conference: UN Secretary-General António Guterres delivered a video statement as well.
At the two-day meeting, the attendees agreed that Ukraine should eventually be given membership in the European Union. The country had already been granted EU candidate status just two weeks before, at a June summit in Brussels.
At the conclusion of the meeting, all governments and institutions present endorsed a joint statement called the Lugano Declaration. This declaration was supplemented by a “National Recovery Plan,” which was in turn prepared by a “National Recovery Council” established by the Ukrainian government.
This plan advocated for an array of neoliberal reforms, including “privatization of non critical enterprises” and “finalization of corporatization of SOEs” (state-owned enterprises) – identifying as an example the selling off of Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear energy company EnergoAtom.
In order to “attract private capital into banking system,” the proposal likewise called for the “privatization of SOBs” (state-owned banks).
Seeking to increase “private investment and boost nationwide entrepreneurship,” the National Recovery Plan urged significant “deregulation” and proposed the creation of “‘catalyst projects’ to unlock private investment into priority sectors.”
In an explicit call for slashing labor protections, the document attacked the remaining pro-worker laws in Ukraine, some of which are a holdover of the Soviet era.
The National Recovery Plan complained of “outdated labor legislation leading to complicated hiring and firing process, regulation of overtime, etc.” As an example of this supposed “outdated labor legislation,” the Western-backed plan lamented that workers in Ukraine with one year of experience are granted a nine-week “notice period for redundancy dismissal,” compared to just four weeks in Poland and South Korea.
In the same vein, the National Recovery Plan urged Ukraine to cut taxes on corporations and wealthy capitalists.
The blueprint complained that 40% of Ukraine’s GDP comes from tax revenue, calling this a “rather high tax burden” compared to its model example of South Korea. It thus called to “transform tax service,” and “review potential for decreasing the share of tax revenue in GDP.”
In short, the Ukraine Recovery Conference’s economic proposal was little more than a repackaged Washington Consensus: a typical right-wing program that involves implementing mass privatizations, deregulating industries, gutting labor protections, cutting taxes on the rich, and putting the burden on Ukrainian workers.
In the 1990s, following the overthrow of the Soviet Union, the United States imposed what it called capitalist “shock therapy” on Russia and other former constituent republics.
A 2001 UNICEF study found that these harsh neoliberal reforms in Russia caused 3.2 million excess deaths, and pushed 18 million children into poverty, bringing about rampant malnutrition and public health crises.
Washington and Brussels appear committed to return to this very same neoliberal shock therapy in their plans for post-war Ukraine.
More Calls For Neoliberal Shock Therapy In Post-War Ukraine
To accompany its July 2022 meeting in Switzerland, the Ukraine Recovery Conference published a “strategic briefing” compiled by a right-wing Ukrainian organization called the Center of Economic Recovery.
The Center of Economic Recovery describes itself as a “platform that unites experts, think tanks, business, the public and government officials for the development of the country’s economy.” On its website, it lists many Ukrainian corporations as its partners and funders, making it clear that it acts as lobby on their behalf, like a chamber of commerce.
The report that this corporate lobby wrote for the Ukraine Recovery Conference was even more explicit than the National Recovery Plan in its advocacy of aggressive neoliberal economic reforms.
Using right-wing libertarian language of “economic freedom,” the document urged to “reduce government size” and “open markets.”
Its proposal read as neoliberal boilerplate: “decrease the regulatory burden on businesses” by “reducing the size of the government (tax administration, privatization; digitalization of public services), improving regulatory efficiency (deregulation), and opening markets (liberalization of capital markets; investment freedom).”
In the name of “EU integration and access to markets,” it likewise proposed “removal of tariffs and non-tariff non-technical barriers for all Ukrainian goods,” while simultaneously calling to “facilitate FDI [foreign direct investment] attraction to bring the largest international companies to Ukraine,” with “special investment incentives” for foreign corporations.
It was essentially a call for Ukraine to surrender its economic sovereignty to Western capital.
Both the National Recovery Plan and the strategic briefing also heavily emphasized the need for robust anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.
Neither document acknowledged that fact that Kiev’s Western-backed leader Volodmyr Zelensky, who spoke at the Ukraine Recovery Conference, is known to have large amounts of wealth hidden in a network of offshare accounts.
Zelensky was named in the Pandora Papers, a leak of suspicious offshore companies, and he is linked to luxury properties in London.
Even More Calls For Liberalization, Privatizations, Deregulation, Tax Cuts
In addition to the National Recovery Plan and the strategic briefing, the July 2022 Ukraine Recovery Conference presented a report prepared by the company Economist Impact, a corporate consulting firm that is part of The Economist Group.
This third document, titled “Ukraine Reform Tracker,” was funded by the Swiss government with the stated “aim of stimulating and supporting discussion on this matter at the 2022 Ukraine Recovery Conference.”
The Ukraine Reform Tracker analyzed the neoliberal policies already imposed in Ukraine since the US-backed 2014 coup, and urged for even more aggressive neoliberal reforms to be implemented when the war ends.
Of the three reports presented at the conference, this was perhaps the most full-throated call for Ukraine to adopt neoliberal shock therapy after the war – a tactic often referred to as disaster capitalism.
Quoting the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the document insisted that Ukraine has “issues in deregulation and competition that still need to be addressed, such as ongoing state intervention” – depicting state intervention in the economy as something inherently bad.
In this vein, the Ukraine Reform Tracker pushed to “increase foreign direct investments” by international corporations, not invest resources in social programs for the Ukrainian people.
The report emphasized the importance of developing the financial sector and called for “removing excessive regulations” and tariffs.
“Deregulation and tax simplification has been further deepened,” it wrote approvingly, adding, “Steps towards deregulation and the simplification of the tax system are examples of measures which not only withstood the blow of the war but have been accelerated by it.”
The Ukraine Reform Tracker praised the central bank for “successfully liberalising the currency, floating the exchange rate.” While it noted some of these policies were reversed due to the Russian invasion, the report urged “the swiftest possible elimination of currency controls,” in order to “reinstate competitiveness within the financial sector.”
The report however complained that these neoliberal reforms are not being implemented quickly enough, writing, “Privatisation— which already progressed slowly before the war—stalled, with a draft law aiming to simplify the process rejected” by the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament.
It called for further “liberalising agriculture” to “attract foreign investment and encourage domestic entrepreneurship,” as well as “procedural simplifications,” to “make it easier for small and medium enterprises” to “expand by purchasing and investing in state-owned assets,” thereby “making it easier for foreign investors to enter the market post-conflict.”
“Further pursuing the privatisation of large and loss-making state-owned enterprises” will “allow more Ukrainian entrepreneurs to enter the market and thrive there in the post-war context,” the report urged.
The Economist Impact study stressed the importance of Ukraine cutting its trade with Russia and instead integrating its economy with Europe.
“Ukraine’s trade reforms centre on efforts to diversify its trade operations and enhance its integration into the EU market,” it wrote.
The Western government-sponsored report boasted of significantly reducing Kiev’s economic ties to its eastern neighbor, noting: “Russia was Ukraine’s main trading partner in 2014, capturing 18.2% of its exports and providing 22% of its imports. Since then, however, Russia’s share of Ukraine’s exports and imports has decreased consistently, reaching 4.9% and 8.4% in 2021, respectively.”
“Ukraine made particular progress in diversifying its trade portfolio within the EU, raising its trade volumes with member states by 46.2% from 2015 to 2019,” it added.
The report added that it is “essential” that Ukraine carry out other reforms, such as modifying its railways by “aligning the rail gauges with EU standards.”
The Ukraine Reform Tracker presented the war as an opportunity to impose even more disaster capitalist policies.
“The post-war moment may present an opportunity to complete the difficult land reform by extending the right to purchase agricultural land to legal entities, including foreign ones,” the report stated.
“Opening the path for international capital to flow into Ukrainian agriculture will likely boost productivity across the sector, increasing its competitiveness in the EU market,” it added.
The document proposed new ways for exploiting Ukrainian labor in specific industries, “especially pharmaceutical and electrical production, plastic and rubber manufacturing, furniture, textiles, and food and agricultural products.”
“Once the war is over, the government will also need to consider substantially lowering the share of stateowned banks, with the privatisation of Privatbank, the country’s largest lender, and Oshchadbank, a large processor of pensions and social payments,” it insisted.
The Ukraine Reform Tracker concluded optimistically, stating that that “post-war moment will be an opportunity for Ukraine,” and “there is likely to be significant pressure to continue and speed up the implementation of the reform agenda. Continued business reforms could allow Ukraine to further deregulate [and] privatise lossmaking SOEs.”
While Pushing Disaster Capitalism, The Ukraine Recovery Conference Exploits ‘Social Justice’ Rhetoric
While these three documents published by the 2022 Ukraine Reform Conference (URC) were vociferous calls for the imposition of right-wing economic policies, they were accompanied by superficial appeals to social justice rhetoric.
The URC released a set of seven “Lugano Principles” that it identified as the keys to a just, equitable post-war reconstruction:
partnershipreform focustransparency, accountability, and rule of lawdemocratic participationmulti-stakeholder engagementgender equality and inclusion(environmental) sustainability
These principles demonstrate the ways that hawks in Washington and Brussels have increasingly weaponized ideas about “intersectionality” to advance their belligerent foreign policy.
In his report “Woke Imperium: The Coming Confluence Between Social Justice and Neoconservatism,” former US State Department officer Christopher Mott discussed the growing use of left-liberal social-justice talking points to legitimize and enforce Western imperialism.
Mott observed that the “liberal Atlanticist tendency to push moralism and social engineering globally has immense potential to create backlash.”
Western-backed liberals in post-socialist Europe have spent three decades creating a false dichotomy between either a liberalizing cultural project that can only be realized under US-led trans-Atlantic hegemony and neoliberal economic reforms, or a purely fictional socialist past whose political legacy is somehow reflected in right-wing anti-communist nationalist parties attempting to roll back advances that women had achieved under socialism.
Despite its patent absurdity, this narrative has won adherents among younger liberal intellectuals, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, who have little or no memory of the socialist period, and who face increasingly desperate career prospects outside of the Western-backed ideological apparatus.
On the other hand, right-wing nationalists like Hungary’s Viktor Orban posture as the only defenders of their countries’ cultural sovereignty against hostile outsiders, while also refusing to break from neoliberal capitalist orthodoxy.
In turn, organic local activists struggling for legitimate social justice causes find themselves portrayed as agents furthering the agendas of foreign powers.
At best, during peacetime, this undermines their work and hinders progress for their causes. In a country like Ukraine, where Western governments have supported far-right, neo-fascist groups and eight years dragging out a civil war, this is life-threatening.
In Ukraine, What’s Even Left To Loot?
On May 9, 2022, the US Congress passed the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act, greatly expanding Washington’s authority to provide military aid to Ukraine.
Lend-lease provisions originated during World War II and were used by the US government to provide military aid to countries fighting Nazi Germany, including Britain and the Soviet Union, without formally entering the war.
Under this framework, the US provides military equipment as a loan; if the equipment is not or cannot be returned, recipient governments are on the hook to pay back the full cost.
The Joe Biden administration explained its use of lend-lease by the need to quickly move the bill through Congress before other funding ran out.
While many North Americans protested what they saw as a pointless giveaway of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to a foreign country, lend-lease provisions are loans, not grants.
Britain, one of the United States’ closest allies, only finished paying back its 60-year-old lend-lease debt in 2006. Russia settled its former Soviet obligations the same year.
Given this historical precedent, Ukraine will likely be saddled with debts it can’t readily pay back – debts extended to corrupt Western-backed elites under wartime duress. This means US financial institutions will have further collateral to impose neoliberal structural adjustment policies on Ukraine, subordinating its economy for years to come.
Washington and its allies have a long history of instrumentalizing debt to force countries to accept unpopular pro-Western policy changes, and difficulties of repayment often compel countries to accept even more debt, leading to debt trap cycles that are extremely difficult to escape.
It was in fact the International Monetary Fund, and specifically the refusal of Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych to accept IMF demands that he cut wages, slash social spending, and end gas subsidies in order to integrate with the EU, which led him to turn instead to Russia for an alternative economic agreement, thus setting the stage for the Western-backed “Euromaidan protests” and eventually the 2014 coup.
Meanwhile, in the current war, Moscow and Russian-backed separatist fighters are occupying and may annex what were historically the most industrialized regions of Ukraine, located in the east.
At the same time, much of what remained of the country’s pre-war industrial base has been physically destroyed by the war. And these same regions hold much of Ukraine’s energy resources, notably coal.
Millions of Ukrainians have already emigrated and are unlikely to return, especially if they are able to access work visas in the EU. Young and educated people with technical skills are the least likely to stay.
The situation is even bleaker when one considers that, well before Russia’s February invasion, Ukraine was already the poorest country in Europe.
While Soviet Ukraine had thrived as a centre of the USSR’s heavy industry, and a source for much of Soviet political leadership, post-Soviet Ukraine has been a playground for rival elites supported by the West or by Russia.
Post-Soviet Ukraine has been devastated by persistent economic crises and rampant and systematic corruption. It has consistently had smaller incomes and a lower standard of living even compared to neighboring post-socialist countries, including Russia.
Ukraine has not been able to restore the size of the economy it had in 1990, when it was still part of the Soviet Union. And looking beyond raw GDP data, the quality of life for many Ukrainian workers and their access to social services has significantly declined.
With limited financial means to provide for basic state functions, much less to repay foreign debts, a post-war Ukraine could be forced to accept humiliating and dangerous concessions in other spheres – serving, say, as an Israel-style trying ground for weapons testing, or hosting Kosovo-style black sites for US covert operations, or providing Western businesses a Chile-style no-regulation environment for tax evasion and criminal activities – all while gutting what little remains of its domestic welfare state and labor protections.
Yet instead of advocating for a diplomatic solution to the war, which could help the Ukrainian government and people concentrate their resources on economic recovery, Western governments have adamantly opposed proposed peace talks, insisting, in the words of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, “This war will be won on the battlefield.”
Washington and Brussels are sacrificing Ukraine for their geopolitical interests. And their Ukraine Recovery Conference shows they expect to keep benefiting economically even after the war ends.
The Shadow Bank That Owns The World
https://popularresistance.org/the-shadow-bank-that-owns-the-world/
For most people in America and much of the world, our life is — to some degree — owned, run, managed, or manipulated by a “shadow bank” that few people even know the name of. It holds between 9 and 10 Trillion dollars in assets. It is the largest or close-to largest stake holder in most enormous media companies like Disney and Comcast, most big tech companies like Google and Meta/Facebook, most big banks like Citibank, Bank of America, and Barclays. This secretive cabal is one of the biggest funders of deforestation, fossil fuel use, weapons contractors, and basically destroying the planet. And yet, despite all that, most Americans and most people around the world have never even heard of them. Watch the video to learn who it is that truly owns the planet.
All That I Ask Is That You Fight For Peace Today
https://popularresistance.org/all-that-i-ask-is-that-you-fight-for-peace-today/
By Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. July 29, 2022
The fragility of Europe’s energy supply has once again been on display in recent months. Gas shipments through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which runs from Russia to Germany, were reduced to 40% of capacity in June, a cut that Moscow said was due to delays in the servicing of a turbine by the German firm Siemens. Shortly thereafter, on 11 July, the pipeline was taken offline for ten days for annual routine maintenance. Despite receiving assurances from Moscow that the supply would resume as scheduled, European leaders expressed fears that the shutdown would continue indefinitely in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. On 21 July, the flow of Russian gas into Europe resumed. Klaus Müller, the head of Germany’s energy regulator, said that gas flows through Nord Stream 1 were below pre-maintenance levels during the first few hours of resumption, though they have now returned to 40% capacity.
European anxieties related to energy supply are linked to fears amongst the region’s governments of further instability in the Eurozone. On the same day that Nord Stream 1 resumed operations, Italy’s Mario Draghi resigned as prime minister, the latest in a dramatic series of resignations by heads of government in Bulgaria, Estonia, and the United Kingdom. Resistance from Europe to a peace agreement with Russia comes alongside recognition that trade with Russia is inevitable.
At No Cold War, an international platform seeking to bring sanity to international relations, we have been closely observing the shifting tenor of the war in Ukraine and the US-driven pressure campaign against China. We have published three previous briefings from this platform in our newsletters; below, you will find briefing no. 4, The World Does Not Want a Global NATO, which details the emerging clarity in the Global South regarding the US-European attempt to drive a belligerent agenda around the world. This new clarity relates not only to the militarization of the planet, but also to the deepening conflicts in trade and development, as evidenced by the G7’s new initiative, the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Development, which clearly targets China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
In June, member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) gathered in Madrid, Spain for their annual summit. At the meeting, NATO adopted a new Strategic Concept, which had last been updated in 2010. In it, NATO names Russia as its ‘most significant and direct threat’ and singled out China as a ‘challenge [to] our interests’. In the words of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, this guiding document represents a ‘fundamental shift’ for the military alliance, its ‘biggest overhaul… since the Cold War’.
A Monroe Doctrine For The 21st Century?
Although NATO purports to be a ‘defensive’ alliance, this claim is contradicted by its destructive legacy – such as in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), and Libya (2011) – and its ever-expanding global footprint. At the summit, NATO made it clear that it intends to continue its global expansion to confront Russia and China. Seemingly oblivious to the immense human suffering produced by the war in Ukraine, NATO declared that its ‘enlargement has been a historic success… and contributed to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area’, and extended official membership invitations to Finland and Sweden.
However, NATO’s sights extend far beyond the ‘Euro-Atlantic’ to the Global South. Seeking to gain a foothold in Asia, NATO welcomed Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand as summit participants for the first time and stated that ‘the Indo-Pacific is important for NATO’. On top of this, echoing the Monroe Doctrine (1823) of two hundred years ago, the Strategic Concept named ‘Africa and the Middle East’ as ‘NATO’s southern neighborhood’, and Stoltenberg made an ominous reference to ‘Russia and China’s increasing influence in [the Alliance’s] southern neighborhood’ as presenting a ‘challenge’.
85% Of The World Seeks Peace
Although NATO’s member states may believe that they possess global authority, the overwhelming majority of the world does not. The international response to the war in Ukraine indicates that a stark divide exists between the United States and its closest allies on the one hand and the Global South on the other.
Governments representing 6.7 billion people – 85% of the world’s population – have refused to follow sanctions imposed by the US and its allies against Russia, while countries representing only 15% of the world’s population have followed these measures. According to Reuters, the only non-Western governments to have enacted sanctions on Russia are Japan, South Korea, the Bahamas, and Taiwan – all of which host US military bases or personnel.
There is even less support for the push to close airspace to Russian planes spearheaded by the US and European Union. Governments representing only 12% of the world’s population have adopted this policy, while 88% have not.
US-led efforts to politically isolate Russia on the international stage have been unsuccessful. In March, the UN General Assembly voted on a nonbinding resolution to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: 141 countries voted in favor, 5 countries voted against, 35 countries abstained, and 12 countries were absent. However, this tally does not tell the full story. The countries which either voted against the resolution, abstained, or were absent represent 59% of the world’s population. Following this, the Biden administration’s call for Russia to be excluded from the G20 summit in Indonesia was ignored.
Meanwhile, despite intense backing from NATO, efforts to win support for Ukraine in the Global South have been a complete failure. On 20 June, after several requests, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the African Union; only two heads of state of the continental organization’s 55 members attended the meeting. Shortly thereafter, Zelensky’s request to address the Latin American trade bloc, Mercosur, was rejected.
It is clear that NATO’s claim to be ‘a bulwark of the rules-based international order’ is not a view which is shared by most of the world. Support for the military alliance’s policies is almost entirely confined to its member countries and a handful of allies which together constitute a small minority of the world’s population. Most of the world’s population rejects NATO’s policies and global aspirations and does not wish to divide the international community into outdated Cold War blocs.
In 1955, ten years after the US dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima (Japan), the Turkish poet Nâzim Hikmet wrote a poem in the voice of a seven-year-old girl who died in that terrible act. The poem was later translated into Japanese by Nobuyuki Nakamoto as ‘Shinda Onnanoko’ (‘Dead Girl’) and frequently sung in commemorations of that atrocity. Given the harshness of war and the escalation of conflict, it is worthwhile to reflect once more on Hikmet’s beautiful, haunting lyrics:
I come and stand at every door
But no one hears my silent tread.
I knock and yet remain unseen
For I am dead, for I am dead.
I’m only seven, although I died
In Hiroshima long ago.
I’m seven now as I was then.
When children die, they do not grow.
My hair was scorched by swirling flame.
My eyes grew dim; my eyes grew blind.
Death came and turned my bones to dust
And that was scattered by the wind.
I need no fruit, I need no rice.
I need no sweets, nor even bread.
I ask for nothing for myself
For I am dead, for I am dead.
All that I ask is that for peace
You fight today, you fight today
So that the children of the world
May live and grow and laugh and play.
Ready, Fire, Aim: US Interests In Afghanistan, Iraq, And Syria
https://popularresistance.org/ready-fire-aim-us-interests-in-afghanistan-iraq-and-syria/
By Chas W. Freeman, Jr., Antiwar.com.
July 26, 2022
Educate!
Contribution to a Panel Discussion at the DACOR Annual Conference, September 27, 2019.
I have been asked to join my fellow panelists in speaking about U.S. interests in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. For some reason, our government has never been able to articulate these interests, but, judging by the fiscal priority Americans have assigned to these three countries in this century, they must be immense – almost transcendent. Since we invaded Afghanistan in 2001, we have spent more than $5 trillion and incurred liabilities for veterans’ disabilities and medical expenses of at least another trillion dollars, for a total of something over $6 trillion for military efforts alone.
This is money we didn’t spend on sustaining, still less improving, our own human and physical infrastructure or current and future well-being. We borrowed almost all of it. Estimates of the costs of servicing the resulting debt run to an additional $8 trillion over the next few decades.[1] Future generations of Americans will suffer from our failure to invest in education, scientific research, and transportation. On top of that, we have put them in hock for at least $14 trillion in war debt. Who says foreign policy is irrelevant to ordinary Americans?
At the moment, it seems unlikely our descendants will feel they got their money’s worth. We have lost or are losing all our so-called “forever wars.” Nor are the people of West Asia and North Africa likely to remember our interventions favorably. Since we began them in 2001, well over one million individuals in West Asia have died violent deaths. Many times more than that have died as a result of sanctions, lost access to medical care, starvation, and other indirect effects of the battering of infrastructure, civil wars, and societal collapse our invasions have inflicted on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria and their neighbors.
The so-called “Global War on Terrorism” launched in Afghanistan in 2001 has metastasized. The US. Armed forces are now combating “terrorism” (and making new enemies) in eighty countries. In Syria alone, where since 2011 we have bombed and fueled proxy wars against both the Syrian government and its extremist foes, nearly 600,000 have died. 11 million have been driven from their homes, five million of them into refuge in other countries.
Future historians will struggle to explain how an originally limited post-9/11 punitive raid into Afghanistan morphed without debate into a failed effort to pacify and transform the country. Our intervention began on October 7, 2001. By December 17, when the battle of Tora Bora ended, we had accomplished our dual objectives of killing, capturing, or dispersing the al Qaeda architects of “9/11” and thrashing the Taliban to teach them that they could not afford to give safe haven to the enemies of the United States. We were well placed then to cut the deal we now belatedly seek to make, demanding that the governing authorities in Afghanistan deny their territory to terrorists with global reach as the price of our departure, and promising to return if they don’t.
Instead, carried away with our own brilliance in dislodging the Islamic Emirate from Kabul and the ninety percent of the rest of the country it then controlled, we nonchalantly moved the goal posts and committed ourselves to bringing Afghans the blessings of E PLURIBUS UNUM, liberty, and gender equality, whether they wanted these sacraments or not. Why? What interests of the United States – as opposed to ideological ambitions – justified this experiment in armed evangelism?
The success of policies is measurable only by the extent to which they achieve their objectives and serve a hierarchy of national interests. When, as in the case of the effort to pacify Afghanistan and reengineer Iraq, there is no coherent statement of war aims, one is left to evaluate policies in terms of their results. And one is also left to wonder what interests those policies were initially meant to support or advance.
In the end, our interests in Afghanistan seem to have come down to avoiding having to admit defeat, keeping faith with Afghans whose hopes we raised to unrealistic levels, and protecting those who have collaborated with us. In other words, we have acted in accordance with what behavioral economists call “the fallacy of sunk costs.” We have thrown good money after bad. We have doubled down on a losing game. We have reinforced failure.
To justify the continuation of costly but unsuccessful policies, our leaders have cited the definitive argument of all losers, the need to preserve “credibility.” This is the theory that steadfastness in counterproductive behavior is better for one’s reputation than acknowledging impasse and changing course. By hanging around in Afghanistan, we have indeed demonstrated that we value obduracy above strategy, wisdom, and tactical flexibility. It is hard to argue this this has enhanced our reputation internationally.
We invaded Iraq in 2003 for reasons that, aside from the pursuit of imaginary weapons of mass destruction, have never really been explained. To parody Hughes Mearns’s famous poem, Antigonish[2]:
Some time ago, Iraq was where
We looked for stuff that wasn’t there
We haven’t found it to this day,
And yet we feel obliged to stay.
By taking over Iraq, we successfully prevented Baghdad from transferring nonexistent weapons to terrorist groups that did not exist until our thoughtless vivisection of Iraqi society created them. We also destroyed Iraq as the balancer and check on Iran’s regional ambitions, an interest that had previously been a pillar of our policies in the Persian Gulf. This made continued offshore balancing impossible and compelled us for the first time to station U.S. forces in the region permanently. This, in turn, transformed the security relationship between the Gulf Arabs and Iran from regional rivalry into military confrontation, producing a series of proxy wars in which our Arab protégés have demanded and obtained our support.
Our intervention in Iraq ignited long-smoldering divisions between Shiite and Sunni Islam, fueling passions that have undermined religious tolerance and fostered terrorism both regionally and worldwide. The only gainers from our misadventures in Iraq were Iran and Israel, which saw their most formidable Arab rival flattened, and, of course, the U.S. defense and homeland security budgets, which fattened on the resulting threat of terrorist blowback. Ironically, the demise of Iraq as an effective adversary thrust Israel into enemy deprivation syndrome, leading to its (and later our) designation of Iran as the devil incarnate. Israel, joined by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, believes that the cure for its apprehensions about Iran is for the U.S. military to crush it on their behalf.
The other principal legacies of our lurch into strategy-free militarism, aside from debt and a bloated defense budget, are our now habitual pursuit of military solutions to non-military problems, our greatly diminished deference to foreign sovereignty and international law, domestic populism born of war weariness and disillusionment with Washington, declining willingness of allies to follow us, the incitement of violent anti-Americanism among the Muslim fourth of humanity, the entrenchment of Islamophobia in U.S. politics, and the paranoia and xenophobia these developments have catalyzed among Americans.
In March 2011, having unofficially cheered on the overthrow of our longtime Egyptian protégé, Hosni Mubarak, we joined some European allies in bombing and strafing Libya. The ostensible purpose for ignoring Libyan sovereignty was humanitarian – the alleged international “right to protect” civilians against their own governments (R2P). The immediate result was the overthrow and savage murder of Libya’s famously bizarre leader, Muammar Qadhafi. But the movement of the goal posts to encompass regime change was also the coup de grâce for any prospect that R2P might become established international law.
No matter. In April 2011, when unrest broke out in Syria, the Obama administration immediately called for the ouster of the Asad government. That government had the support of Iran, Iraq, and Lebanese Hezbollah, later joined by Russia. The insurgents enjoyed support from others in the region – primarily Qatar and Saudi Arabia, though each supported different factions. The Gulf Arabs were joined by the United States, France, and the U.K. Turkey facilitated these foreign interventions in Syria, as it did the passage through its territory of jihadis seeking to overthrow Asad. In 2015, Turkey intervened directly to confine hostile Syrian Kurds on its southwestern border.
Syria was soon the site of innumerable proxy wars. Saudi-supported Salafi jihadis fought Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Salafis supported by Qatar and Turkey. Sunnis fought Shi`a. Saudi and Iranian-supported forces fought each other. Hezbollah fought Lebanese Sunni forces in Syria. Israel fought Iran and Hezbollah and supported selected anti-government jihadis. Russia escalated its support of the Asad government. The United States and Israel targeted Iranian forces and intervened against both Asad and the Islamist extremists who were his most effective antagonists. Lately, we have been at risk of war with our erstwhile ally, Turkey. Throughout, a very large number of Syrians have been more alarmed by the alternatives to Asad than they are by him.
It is widely claimed that the United States was inadequately engaged in the Syrian maelstrom. Nonsense! Since 2014, we have spent well over $50 billion in appropriated funds to train, arm, and otherwise support various factions in the conflict, including some with direct links to al Qaeda. This fiscal year alone, DoD has budgeted $15.3 billion and the Department of State about $1 billion for Syria. In total disregard of international law, we have carried out well over 11,000 air and missile strikes against both government and rebel forces in Syria and deployed about 2,000 U.S. troops there to support secessionist factions. We cannot escape a considerable measure of moral responsibility for both the perpetuation of the conflict in Syria and some of the 200,000 undocumented and 375,000 documented Syrian dead, about 125,000 of whom have been verified as pro-government, 133,000 as anti-government, and 112,000 as noncombatant, neutral civilians. But we have made it clear we will not contribute to Syria’s reconstruction.
In a very sad way, that’s progress. Our forever wars have repurposed much development assistance into support for warfare and the amelioration of its consequences. The humanitarian crises in Gaza and Yemen exemplify this tragic transformation. What we and our security partners knock down with one hand, we rebuild with another before knocking it down again. This has discredited our aid to foreign societies in the eyes of Americans as well as its recipients.
To say, “we meant well” is true – as true of the members of our armed forces as it is of our diplomats and development specialists. But good intentions are not a persuasive excuse for the outcomes wars contrive. We have hoped that the many good things we have done to advance human and civil rights in Afghanistan and Iraq might survive our inevitable disengagement from both. They won’t. The years to come are less likely to gratify us than to force us to acknowledge that the harm we have done to our own country in this century vastly exceeds the good we have done abroad.
Of course, we will leave behind some concrete legacies of our misadventures in West Asia. The region is now littered with depopulated American bases and fortified bastions serving as embassies. But this architectural legacy inevitably recalls Shelley’s “Ozymandias.”
I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said – “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . .. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
For $14 trillion or more, we should get something more than that. But we won’t unless we finally figure out what our interests really are, build a strategy that addresses them rather than politically popular delusions, and rediscover the merits of diplomacy as an alternative to the use of force.
The Whistleblower Crackdown
https://popularresistance.org/the-whistleblower-crackdown/
By John Kiriakou, Consortium News. July 26, 2022
National Whistleblower Week is a call to action on behalf of Julian Assange.
His case marks a new extreme in a series of legal reprisals that have gotten more draconian since Kiriakou’s own national-security case in 2012.
This is National Whistleblower Week, with Saturday marking National Whistleblower Appreciation Day. The National Whistleblower Center in Washington has its annual lunch, seminar and associated events scheduled. Whistleblowers from around the U.S. attend, a couple members of Congress usually show up and we talk about how important it is to speak truth to power.
I’ve been attending these events for much of the past decade. But I’m not sanguine about where our efforts stand, especially on behalf of national security whistleblowers. Since I blew the whistle on the C.I.A.’s torture program in 2007 and was prosecuted for it in 2012, I think the situation for whistleblowers has grown far worse.
In 2012, when I took a plea to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 for confirming the name of a former C.I.A. colleague to a reporter who never made the name public, I was sentenced to 30 months in a federal prison.
In 2015, former C.I.A. officer Jeffrey Sterling, who blew the whistle on racial discrimination at the agency, was sentenced to what Judge Leonie Brinkema called “Kiriakou plus 12 months,” because I had taken a plea and Jeffrey had had the unmitigated gall to go to trial to prove his innocence. So, he ended up with 42 months in prison.
Things just got worse from there.
The prosecutors of drone whistleblower Daniel Hale asked Judge Liam O’Grady to sentence him to 20 years in prison. O’Grady instead gave Hale 46 months. But to spite him, and to show prosecutors’ anger with the sentence, the Justice Department ignored the judge’s recommendation that Hale be sent to a low-security hospital facility in Butner, North Carolina, and instead incarcerated him in the supermax facility in Marion, Illinois, with no treatment for his debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder.
I was in the courtroom during Hale’s sentencing. When prosecutors asked for the draconian sentence, Hale’s attorneys cited my sentence of 30 months and Sterling’s 42 months. Prosecutors retorted that they had “made a mistake with Kiriakou. His sentence was far too short.”
It was clear that since my own case, the Justice Department’s ongoing prosecutions of national security whistleblowers wasn’t discouraging people from going public with evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, or illegality in the intelligence community. Perhaps, they thought, tougher sentences would do it. Don’t count on it, I say.
In the meantime, I ran into another national security whistleblower at an event recently. He told me that the F.B.I. had recently paid him a visit. I chuckled and said, “Because you’re so close to them and they’ve been so kind to you?”
We laughed for a moment, but he was serious. He is still on probation and the F.B.I. offered to get that probation lifted if he would tell them anything and everything he knows about Julian Assange and Ed Snowden. He told them that he speaks through his attorney and wanted no further contact with them. His attorney told the F.B.I. that his client had nothing to say, would tell them nothing about Assange or Snowden even if he knew something and to not contact his client again. They haven’t.
The Assange Nightmare
If you’re reading this, you’ve likely followed the nightmare that Julian Assange has been experiencing for years now. He could be extradited to the United States by next year and he faces more than a lifetime in prison. That’s the Justice Department’s goal — that Assange die in a U.S. prison. Ed Snowden likely faces the same fate if he were to find his way back to the U.S.
In order to try to smooth the path for Assange’s extradition, prosecutors have promised British authorities that Assange would not be placed in a Communications Management Unit or a Special Administrative Unit, where his access to the outside world would be practically nil.
They’ve also promised that he would not be placed in solitary confinement.
But that’s all nonsense. It’s a lie. Prosecutors have literally no say in where a prisoner is placed. It’s not up to the judge and it’s not up to the prosecutors. Placement is solely at the discretion of the Bureau of Prisons (on recommendation from the C.I.A., which spied on Assange and his lawyers) and they haven’t made any promises to anybody.
Belmarsh Prison in London is awful. But Supermax Marion, Supermax Florence, USP Springfield, USP Leavenworth, USP Lewisburg and any of the other American hell-holes where Assange and other whistleblowers are and can be placed would be worse.
Though it’s National Whistleblower Week, we can’t pause to celebrate. We can’t bask in minor successes. We have to keep up the fight because that’s what the Justice Department is doing.